Chapter 14
Seeing Shen Chaomu put down her spoon, her cheeks puffed out as she swallowed quickly as if she wanted to say something, Fu Qingli immediately spoke up to stop her. “I didn’t expect the director to be so nosy too?”
Gou Zhu explained with a perfectly serious face, “This is also for the convenience of planning the variety show. If you’ve broken up and we still arrange for you to share a bed, that would be a bit too much to force on people.”
Fu Qingli said, “We’ve already broken up. One hundred percent broken up. It reflects the true intention of both parties, and neither side objects.”
Shen Chaomu swallowed the unmixed lump of oatmeal with difficulty and glanced at Fu Qingli in surprise. Seeing her firm attitude, she nodded along.
Gou Zhu was a little surprised. Rumor had it that Fu Qingli had always been the one shamelessly using money and casting-couch power to coerce people. Why was she the first to draw the line? Could she be planning to use this variety show to seamlessly transfer to another female celebrity?
“Who brought up the breakup?”
Fu Qingli noticed the contemptuous look Gou Zhu threw her way and reflected for a moment. It did seem somewhat ungentlemanly to say she had been the one to bring up breaking up, so she did not speak again.
Shen Chaomu pointed at Fu Qingli. “She did.”
Fu Qingli felt the facts still needed to be restored. “I brought it up first, but you didn’t agree. Yesterday, you were the one who brought it up, and I agreed. Strictly speaking, the final breakup was brought up by you.”
Shen Chaomu scratched her hair. “That does seem to be the case. Fine, I brought it up.”
Gou Zhu’s eyes were opened wide. She had never seen a breakup like this. They could even go back and forth discussing it? Even more outrageous was that she had confirmed the recording address with Tang Lin, and these two were even still living together!
Fu Qingli had also stayed up all night with Shen Chaomu. Broken up but still rolling together? They were playing way too wildly!
Were D-rank Alphas also this strong?
Had they really broken up, or was this some kind of bedroom roleplay?
Wasn’t breaking up supposed to mean tearing each other’s scars open? Hysteria! Heart-rending agony! Kneeling on the ground, hugging someone’s legs while crying bitterly! Blood and flesh flying everywhere! Fighting to the death, then finally perishing together?
“Then why did you break up?”
Shen Chaomu had learned her lesson. She first glanced at Fu Qingli. Seeing that Fu Qingli was lowering her head and using a pen to mark something, not expressing any opinion, she thought to herself that Fu Qingli wanted her to speak.
“Because of the property certificate.”
Tang Lin knew very well Shen Chaomu’s occasional way of speaking, so she directly asked what Gou Zhu wanted to ask. “What property certificate? Don’t say things without a beginning or end. Explain clearly.”
Shen Chaomu glanced at Fu Qingli again. Seeing that she still had her head lowered and was writing, Shen Chaomu helplessly continued explaining. “She hid it from me and put my name on the property certificate. I found out. No, that’s not right. She couldn’t hide it anymore, so she was forced to surrender and confess.”
Gou Zhu dug at her ear, feeling as if she could no longer understand human speech.
Wasn’t it usually only because one’s name wasn’t on the property certificate that people made a fuss and broke up? What kind of thought process did Shen Chaomu have? Why did Fu Qingli even need to surrender?
Unable to resist, Gou Zhu looked at Fu Qingli, her gaze full of pity. “President Fu, if you have a lot of houses, I don’t mind you putting my name on one.”
Tang Lin thought further and asked, “The house you’re living in now?”
Shen Chaomu nodded. As expected, Tang-Tang was her soulmate. Fu Qingli pulling this kind of stunt was obviously an attempt to morally kidnap her and make her so stressed she could not sleep.
Tang Lin sucked in a cold breath and forcibly suppressed the urge to ask how the house would be divided now that they had broken up.
East Lake Villa was in an excellent location that money alone could not buy. Its owners were either celebrities or people near the top of rich lists. If Fu Qiqin had not made her fortune early and had a good eye for investment, buying in during the project’s development phase, her current net worth would not even be enough to make her an East Lake homeowner, let alone own that villa, which was the king of the buildings.
Sensing everyone in the meeting room looking at her, Fu Qingli felt slightly embarrassed. She had known it. What the original body had done had already exceeded the realm of ordinary human understanding.
But in this life, she would definitely be someone who could afford to live in a villa in the future. This variety show was only the beginning.
Tang Lin reminded the two of them of some common reality-show precautions, and then the video meeting ended.
In the study.
Fu Qingli looked at the doodle in her notebook: a cartoon rabbit burying its head in a bowl and eating heartily, its three-petal mouth covered in milk stains.
Completely inexplicable. She raised her hand, tore it off, and threw it into the trash can.
Other than the few rules she had recorded, there was no useful information.
These past few days, she had squeezed in time wherever she could and watched Gou Zhu’s travel variety shows at triple speed. They all involved finding a few middle-aged nationally known celebrities and having them slowly experience local customs and scenery. The audience they attracted was mostly older viewers or people who had few chances to travel, so they had little reference value for this variety show.
The original novel’s description of this romance variety show was only a short two chapters as well. In an impoverished mountain village, among a group of ordinary amateur guests, the female lead Shu Man’er was willing to endure hardship and came across as grounded. She quickly went viral, gained fame, soon received film and television drama offers, and welcomed a high starting point in her career.
The original body and Shen Chaomu had not participated in this variety show at all.
Love’s Number Tag. Romance variety show. CP…
Fu Qingli casually wrote down these high-frequency keywords from marketing accounts and guessed at the production team’s guiding direction.
Romance?
After her pen finished the question mark, Fu Qingli’s confidence instantly lost a few points.
Her past acting career had almost nothing to do with romance themes. Most of her roles were based on family affection, friendship, or villainous enemy lines. She had never put effort into studying romance dramas, and now she suddenly felt somewhat at a loss.
In the entertainment industry, someone like her, whose romantic experience was a complete blank slate, could not exactly be called rare. She was probably almost extinct.
The pen landed heavily on the paper.
The word “romance” was outlined with a thick circle.
Fu Qingli searched related posts on various platforms, and the more she searched, the tighter her brows drew together.
A secret crush on a straight female neighbor; sneaking off work with a coworker to eat and date, only to bump into the boss; an older sister cheating with her best friend; a one-night stand at a bar getting one’s stepmother pregnant…
Fu Qingli put down her phone and inhaled deeply. These were even less reliable than that law firm director who said Shen Chaomu was pregnant.
Sure enough, novels were stranger than reality, and the only thing better at spilling dog-blood melodrama than an author was a screenwriter.
“Gurgle…”
Before her brain cells could protest, her stomach protested first. Fu Qingli checked her watch. It was indeed dinner time.
As she walked through the second-floor corridor, Shen Chaomu’s bedroom door was slightly ajar, faint light seeping out. She did not hear any sound of gaming. It was rare for Shen Chaomu to be this quiet.
In the first-floor hall, the enormous crystal chandelier was dazzling, its light bright as day.
Fu Qingli descended the spiral staircase and glanced over from above. She did not see anyone. She guessed Shen Chaomu had forgotten to turn off the lights after the video meeting and then gone upstairs.
“Are you going to cook?”
A muffled, hoarse voice suddenly rang out, echoing through the spacious first floor.
Fu Qingli looked toward the sound, and her gaze crashed into the entire floor-to-ceiling window.
Against the light, a pale, upside-down face appeared out of nowhere. Its features were blurry, its mouth hollowly sunken above the eyes. It was impossible to tell whether that sinister figure was hiding indoors or outside. It looked exactly like a twisted, eerie ghost from the oil painting The Scream.
Caught completely off guard, Fu Qingli’s foot, which had landed on the edge of the stair, became unstable. She stepped into empty air and staggered forward two steps. In her panic, she hurriedly grabbed the stair railing. The cold touch of the matte brass made the chill in her heart grow even worse, all the hairs on her body standing on end.
“Did I scare you?”
Fu Qingli did not dare look toward the floor-to-ceiling window again. She turned her head and saw Shen Chaomu come out from the blind spot beneath the spiral staircase. She breathed a sigh of relief, forced herself to straighten up, kept her expression as usual, and continued downstairs while holding the railing.
“Why did you suddenly think of using a face mask?”
Shen Chaomu pressed the corner of the mask near her mouth, afraid it would wrinkle, and tried to move her lips as little as possible while explaining. “Tang Lin is afraid I’ll go on camera with dark circles, and she’s also urging me to lose weight. She made me record a video and send it to her.”
“Tuesday is almost over already, and I have to be on camera Sunday. There are only a few days total. Even if I stop eating, I won’t lose much. I might as well let nature take its course.”
Fu Qingli glanced over and saw two yoga mats placed blatantly in the empty area of the living room. On one of them lay a dog sleeping flat on its back, its limbs spread in all directions. A face mask was also covering its face, twisting its dog features into something bizarre.
Fu Qingli suddenly understood what had happened with the upside-down pale face she had seen just now.
“Are you going to cook?”
Shen Chaomu eagerly followed behind Fu Qingli step by step. She had not forgotten that Fu Qingli had promised to provide her meals.
Fu Qingli turned around and saw Shen Chaomu’s face-mask face. She could not help turning back again. She had been hungry before, but now she had completely lost the strength to cook.
“I’m not cooking. There are no ingredients in the kitchen. I’m going out to eat and buying some things for the variety show along the way.”
“Beep beep beep…”
Hearing the phone vibrate, Shen Chaomu hurriedly peeled off the mask and continued following Fu Qingli, asking, “What do you need for a variety show? Isn’t it enough to bring clothes and toiletries?”
“Mm. If you’re eating chaff, swallowing wild vegetables, and sleeping under a bridge, then it should be enough.”
Fu Qingli turned and went upstairs, thinking that times were different now. Finally, it was her turn to disguise herself before going out and avoid being recognized.
Shen Chaomu stopped, thought for a moment, and her eyes lit up. “Then I want to go with you. I also have very important things to buy.”
“You can shop online.”
Fu Qingli’s steps on the stairs paused. Looking helpless, she turned back and lowered her eyes toward her waist.
Shen Chaomu was gripping Fu Qingli’s thin black-and-gold belt tightly. “Aside from filming, I’ve never gone shopping at a supermarket. Just take me with you. I’ll pay the bill, and I’ll treat you to Cantonese Michelin after. How’s that?”
“Not how anything.”
Fu Qingli did not believe Shen Chaomu’s nonsense at all. Even three- or four-year-old children could go to the supermarket with their parents and throw tantrums in the toy or snack aisles. Shen Chaomu was not an alien who had just arrived on Earth, so how could she possibly never have been to a supermarket?
“I don’t think I tied your feet up.”
Seeing Shen Chaomu lower her head in confusion to look at her feet, Fu Qingli’s gaze hurriedly swept past those fair, faintly pink toes. “I mean, you can go by yourself.”
Shen Chaomu’s eyes dimmed slightly, and her voice dropped. “I’ll be recognized. People will hold up their phones to take photos and videos. I’ll get surrounded, more and more people will come to watch, and everywhere they’ll be shouting your name. There’ll be nowhere to escape. Then I’ll get scolded online, and Tang Lin will nag me too.”
Fu Qingli thought of how she had been surrounded at the entrance of East Lake Villa last time, and she was currently only a minor figure borrowing Shen Chaomu’s fame.
No wonder Shen Chaomu never left the house and could still enjoy herself after withdrawing from the industry and living in seclusion for half a year.
After hearing no response from Fu Qingli for a long time, Shen Chaomu slowly loosened the half of the belt in her hand. The black metal buckle at the end finally slid from her palm, and for some inexplicable reason, her breathing felt stifled.
“I’ve been recognized twice too. Following me, you won’t be afraid?”
That clear voice was like moonlight spilling over a lone stone on a cliff. Shen Chaomu suddenly lifted her head, and her fingers clenched again around the black metal buckle that had just slipped away.
“I’m not afraid.”
“I know you definitely have a way, right? You’re so smart.”
Fu Qingli turned around, leaving the clingy monster whose soft, sticky voice was comparable to cotton candy behind her.
Shen Chaomu quickly chased after her, cheering with delight. “You agreed, right?”
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