Having already registered her marriage, Shen Jin drove her Audi toward her company with her delicate brows furrowed.
She was already the most influential diva in Chinese entertainment, with the most resources at her disposal and a company of her own, yet her mother still kept pressuring her to marry.
Left with no other choice, Shen Jin had used her connections to find a gay man to marry.
She had already had someone investigate this supposed overseas-returned PhD, only to discover that his credentials were thoroughly dubious: he had graduated from an electronics and computer information engineering school in an old revolutionary region of France.
Still, at least she was married now. That ought to keep her parents satisfied for a while.
Just as Shen Jin breathed a sigh of relief, thinking her mission was accomplished, her phone rang.
"What is it, Sister Hua? I just finished registering our marriage."
"Jin'er, you got the wrong marriage certificate! The person I introduced to you hasn't even arrived yet. Who did you get a marriage certificate with?"
"What?"
Shen Jin froze for a moment behind the wheel, then forced herself to recover before saying:
"That's impossible. He said it was a sham marriage, and when I asked him, he agreed. How could he..."
At the same time, Shen Jin's heart lurched, and she listened intently to every sound on the phone.
"The man I introduced to you hasn't gone there yet. You must have married the wrong person! What's his name?"
Sister Hua sounded anxious on the other end of the line.
Shen Jin's mind was a complete blank.
A sham marriage was already such an unlikely arrangement. How could she possibly have married the wrong person? Refusing to believe it, Shen Jin undid the clasp on her bag with one hand and opened the little red booklet. Looking at the groom's name and his awkward expression, she read it out, syllable by syllable:
"Yun Xiaoran."
"That's the wrong man. Look at the candid photo I sent you. This is what he looks like."
Shen Jin opened the image. It showed a slightly chubby man with a full beard and a crew cut, wearing white socks and smiling at the camera.
"See that photo? That's what he looks like."
Staring at the photo on her phone, Shen Jin could hardly believe her eyes.
All she had wanted was to find a gay man through a friend for a sham marriage. That way, she could keep him from having any designs on her while also fooling her parents.
She began recalling every movement Yun Xiaoran had made and every expression he had worn in the restaurant.
Yun Xiaoran had stared at her in a daze and stumbled over his words in the restaurant. He must have been hiding something. Besides, she had been the one to take his hand and lead him through the registration, and after they were done, his gaze had lingered on her face. That was not how a gay man would behave.
Shen Jin was practically blinded by anger. Thinking of how eagerly she had dragged him through the registration, believing everything was settled, made her want to slap herself hard across the face.
The celebrated mainland diva Shen Jin, known as Shen Muge, had cultivated a public image as a career-minded woman who had no interest in romance-a true powerhouse.
And what had she done?
Secretly registered a marriage behind everyone's backs.
A cold sweat broke out over Shen Jin. If any paparazzi or stalker fans had secretly photographed them, her reputation would be completely ruined.
No!
Her slender hands clenched the genuine cowhide covering the Audi's steering wheel. Shen Jin's lovely face turned icy with rage as she ground her teeth.
Yun Xiaoran was a stalker fan!
Shen Jin began thinking back over those brief thirty minutes she had spent registering her marriage with Yun Xiaoran.
He had deliberately sat in that chair to wait for her. He had neither eaten nor drunk any coffee. He had simply been waiting for someone.
Who else could he have been waiting for?
It had to be her!
And when she questioned him, he had hesitated and stumbled over his words. He must have been afraid she would discover what he was up to.
He had even stared at her photograph after they received their marriage certificates.
By tomorrow at the latest...
The internet would be flooded with videos of Shen Jin registering her marriage, or pictures of her photograph on the marriage certificate.
"Jin'er, are you listening? Should we get ready and draft a PR statement in advance?"
Shen Jin took a deep breath, then said coldly:
"Yes. Of course we should. And make it clear that if that man dares release any photos or videos, we'll sue him for invasion of privacy."
Still, perhaps PR responses and statements were not what she should be preparing. Money mattered most to stalker fans or paparazzi like Yun Xiaoran. If she paid him off, perhaps this whole affair could be quietly buried.
Shen Jin was not short of money. She was the president of China Star Entertainment, a top-tier mainland celebrity, the National Goddess, and a singing diva.
But the thought of that paparazzo squeezing a sum of money out of her filled her with fury.
"All right, Jin'er. Just come to I Am a Singer and focus on rehearsing. Don't panic about anything else. If there's even the slightest stir online, we'll suppress it immediately!"
Sister Hua was Shen Jin's assistant, and the two were also close friends who could talk about anything.
Sister Hua also found the situation absurd. Who could have imagined that this stalker fan was so well informed that he could track Shen Jin straight to the café?
But now Shen Jin really was married to a man, and she had even given him a key card and a key!
The first season of I Am a Singer was now in its tense elimination rounds.
An autumn illness, compounded by her low spirits, had left Shen Jin's ranking hanging by a thread.
The internet was full of both support from her fans and insults claiming Shen Muge was washed up and her voice was ruined.
This afternoon's performance was about to begin, and she still had this whole mess to deal with.
Seething, Shen Jin cursed Yun Xiaoran all over again in her mind.
Divorce! She had to get divorced tonight. She couldn't wait another moment!
Every person's good fortune was a kind of misfortune. Who could say that someone's misfortune was not a kind of good fortune?
Yun Xiaoran sat in his rented room, gently strumming his guitar and fretting over his whirlwind marriage to the wrong person.
He was tall, with handsome features and perfectly balanced proportions. His rented room was clean and tidy, done entirely in plain white. He had never expected to have to end the lease so soon after moving in.
VA Site.
The "play" site.
It was China's largest community for amateur musicians and musical fan creations in this world, filled with everyday musicians and critics.
Amateurs posted songs, sang, or composed there, while critics offered biting reviews of every hit.
There was less of the restlessness that money brought and more love and devotion to music. Yun Xiaoran was happy to see ordinary people pursuing music.
He had registered an account long ago under the name Lone Cloud, but because he had devoted himself entirely to Li Qingxi, he had forgotten his own career and hobbies.
Now that they had broken up, Yun Xiaoran began playing and singing one of his favorite songs from his previous life: "Silence."
The song had a long intro that could easily be mistaken for an instrumental, but the moment its first line began, even the Dragon King of the seas would sink into melancholy. He had originally planned to dedicate it to Li Qingxi, but now Yun Xiaoran had to sing it alone.
"I can't help becoming a stubborn fish, swimming alone against the current to the very end."
Yun Xiaoran began to sing.
The camera recording him sat directly in front of him, showing only his throat and its bobbing Adam's apple, his white shirt, the plain white wall behind him, and his slender fingers strumming the guitar strings.
In the quiet rented room, there was only a man and a guitar.
Yun Xiaoran sang the song three times before uploading the take he liked best to VA Site.
After thinking it over for a long while, he decided to have a little fun:
"Feeling down today? Listen to this cheerful song and find some hope for tomorrow."
After entering the title, Yun Xiaoran waited anxiously for the video to finish uploading, then closed that screen on his phone and accepted the woman's friend request.
After agonizing over it for a long while, Yun Xiaoran typed a message:
Before you continue