After Going Bankrupt, I Got Clung To By A Canary Omega - Chapter 3

“Knock, knock, knock… knock, knock… knock… knock, knock…”

Fu Qingli rubbed the space between her brows. Was Shen Chaomu using the door as a drum set?

She turned the doorknob.

Before Fu Qingli could speak, a soft body suddenly crashed into her arms.

Bare arms, warm and delicate. A weight of less than a hundred jin leaned into her with full force from the side, her figure fitting against Fu Qingli as if embedded in her embrace. Fu Qingli could easily feel the other woman’s rising and falling curves, while the shirt at her waist was gripped tight by slender, milky-white fingers.

Fu Qingli raised a hand to help Shen Chaomu steady herself, turning her head to avoid the scent of grass and trees still lingering at the tip of her nose.

The shampoo smelled pretty good.

She wondered what brand it was. She could have Aunt Liu pay attention to it later.

Shen Chaomu finally stood firm. Awkwardly, she took a step back and waved her hands to clear herself. “I didn’t do that on purpose. I just lost my balance. I almost thought there was no one in the room and that you’d secretly slipped out…”

In any case, there was no way she would admit she had been lying against the door listening for movement just now.

Fu Qingli frowned. This was her villa. If she went out, why would she need to “secretly” do it?

Afraid that Shen Chaomu would lead her train of thought astray, she held back the urge to point out the problem with that wording.

Seeing Fu Qingli’s impatience, Shen Chaomu stopped explaining. “I didn’t mean to bother you. I have something for you.”

After saying that, Shen Chaomu was just about to lift her hand, only to discover that the thing had vanished. Suspecting that she had dropped it when she lost her balance earlier, she shifted her feet and lowered her head to search.

The clean, milky-white marble floor was empty.

Unwilling to give up, Shen Chaomu bent up her lower leg and examined the sole of her slipper. Could it have stuck to her slipper?

Fu Qingli silently watched as Shen Chaomu inexplicably began performing the Golden Rooster Stands on One Leg.

Then Shen Chaomu’s center of gravity tilted, and she came crashing over again.

Fu Qingli grabbed Shen Chaomu by the doll collar and lifted her upright.

“Shen Chaomu, I wasn’t joking with you about breaking up. Throwing yourself into my arms won’t work either.”

Thinking of that failed negotiation, Fu Qingli added another sentence.

“I won’t raise the price.”

Shen Chaomu froze, then hugged her slipper and steadied herself. Once she realized what Fu Qingli had said, she wanted nothing more than to smash the slipper into this person’s face.

She had only felt that eating someone’s food made her indebted, so she had specially called Aunt Liu to ask where the thing was, hoping to return the favor a little.

Yet she had actually been treated as if she were seducing her?

Who wanted to seduce her!

A narcissist with no self-awareness. Acting-obsessed trash. Bad at it but addicted anyway. An old-family-sucking leech. A face-changing woman with no contractual spirit…

Shen Chaomu gnashed her teeth. “You want to break up, right?”

Fu Qingli looked at Shen Chaomu’s face, now flushed like a Red Fuji apple. Her expression did not change as she quietly waited for Shen Chaomu to demand an outrageous sum.

In any case, she had no money.

“Wait until your next life!”

“I’ve discovered you’re my true love!”

“In this life, even if I become a ghost, I’ll cling to you!”

Fu Qingli scratched her ear, which had been shaken by the volume, and watched as Shen Chaomu finished throwing down her ruthless words, then shot downstairs around the corner like a whirlwind with one bare foot.

She wondered whether Shen Chaomu would wash her foot before getting back into bed.

Fu Qingli tugged at the clothes Shen Chaomu had pulled crooked. On the champagne-colored silk fabric, the marks from her grip were clearly visible.

Fu Qingli lifted the hem and was just about to smooth it out when she saw a bandage stuck to the corner of her shirt.

The anti-stick backing paper on the bandage was misaligned. At some point, it had attached itself to her.

Fu Qingli peeled off the white backing paper and wrapped it around the fingertip that still retained a faint trace of blood.

Maybe there was no need for a small-property-rights bungalow after all.

Shen Chaomu could not cook, and her mouth was picky. Living in the city would make it more convenient for her to order takeout.

Fu Entertainment office building.

Tang Lin felt that she and Fu Qingli were incompatible by fate.

Back then, after disagreeing with her former employer’s philosophy, she had resigned with Shen Chaomu, whose contract had expired, only to be blacklisted in the industry by her old employer. With no other choice, she could only seek refuge with Fu Qingli.

Originally, with her network and resources, Shen Chaomu’s looks and adequate acting skills, and the Fu family’s financial strength, stepping on her old employer and turning the company into one of the top ten entertainment firms should not have been a problem.

But Fu Qingli was a spendthrift love-brain.

She let Shen Chaomu stay at home and live as a salted fish without doing any work. A perfectly good company pillar and golden signboard had been directly raised into a canary.

Fine, that was one thing. But Fu Qingli also had no self-awareness about her own acting skills. After a few films, she had directly driven Fu Entertainment’s reputation into the gutter.

Thinking of the recent sci-fi film’s box office, so terrible she could barely look at it, along with the rumors that Fu Qiqin’s company’s cash flow had broken, Tang Lin felt that she had to go talk to Fu Qingli immediately. The romance variety show Fu Qingli had asked about was the perfect opening.

As expected of a love-brain. All her thoughts were on dating.

Her acting skills had not improved, yet she could actually come up with new tricks for romance. Going on a variety show to date?

Why didn’t she just start a livestream and show off every day?

Tang Lin was ambitious. After working in the entertainment industry for the past ten years, she knew very well that Fu Qingli was one of the few people who had resources, was willing to let go, and could help her achieve her goals.

As long as there was still any saving her, Tang Lin did not want to start from scratch elsewhere.

Tang Lin pulled out the proposal this variety show had sent over two months ago. The moment she stepped out of her office, she nearly bumped into someone.

“Xiao Die, why are you being so reckless? Hurry and apologize to President Tang.”

One of the company’s less experienced agents dragged a girl into a bow. “President Tang, this is a newcomer here for an interview. She just graduated from the Film Academy and was the campus belle. Her name is Cheng Die.”

Tang Lin sized the girl up. She was young and had decent features, though her nose had probably been worked on. Fortunately, it had been done well enough and looked fairly natural. Her large eyes flickered with life.

She was an ambitious child.

And she understood very clearly what she wanted.

If she was cultivated well, she might become the next Shen Chaomu and shoot to fame overnight.

“Your name is a bit tacky. You can change it later. But you came to interview at our company because you’re interested in acting in films?”

After all, because of Fu Qingli, the company had always focused on film.

Although those films all lost money in exchange for empty noise and scoldings, aside from Fu Qingli steadily playing the lead every time, everyone else in the company could at least get roles. It was just that the box office was poor, there was no exposure, and the whole thing was rather useless.

Cheng Die smiled sweetly. “President Tang, I just want to become a celebrity. Whether I act in films or not depends on your arrangements. But I’m actually pretty interested in variety shows, idol dramas, and things like that. Joining a variety show to travel, form a CP with a partner, interact and all that—how fun would that be!”

Tang Lin smiled and looked toward the company agent. “Look at our newcomer. She understands things much better than Mumu did back then. Smart, obedient, and sweet-tongued.”

The agent knew as soon as she heard this that the person she had interviewed had passed President Tang’s test too.

Smiling, she echoed, “She really is smart. Back then, she was admitted first place in the second-round exam, received scholarships for four years, and was an outstanding graduate of the academy. We wouldn’t dare hope she can catch up to Teacher Shen’s achievements. It’ll be good enough if she can make a name for herself.”

Tang Lin asked for a copy of Cheng Die’s résumé and had the agent take her around the company. Then she drove to East Lake Villa.

At four in the afternoon, the late-spring sunlight was warm and gentle. It was exactly the most pleasant time of day.

On the neatly maintained lawn, a long-haired girl in a beige knee-length skirt was being dragged by an oversized golden retriever, rushing toward a dirt pit that had been dug out at some unknown point.

The leash stretched into a straight line. In the breeze came the girl’s panicked attempts at persuasion, but they were soon drowned out by the golden retriever’s excited barking.

“Jinzi, stop digging holes! You were just sent to be washed. Are you trying to go back to being filthy in half a day?”

Tang Lin saw this scene as soon as she got out of the car and felt that every trip to East Lake Villa was a test of her worldview.

Ordinary people walked their dogs around the neighborhood at least. For Shen Chaomu, the villa’s own lawn was enough.

It was really hard not to hate the rich.

Seeing Jinzi excitedly pounce over, Tang Lin hurriedly stepped back and avoided its dirty paws.

She bent down and rubbed the wonderfully fluffy fur on top of its head. “Jinzi, it’s time to lose weight.”

When she lifted her eyes and saw Shen Chaomu’s bare face, flushed pink from rapid breathing, love and hate tangled together in her heart.

She was clearly someone heaven had given food to, a seedling who could have firmly occupied top-tier stardom. Yet after Fu Qingli ruined her, Shen Chaomu had turned into a salted fish.

“I’m saying, instead of being a perfectly good big star, you just like being dragged around by a dog every day, don’t you?”

Shen Chaomu tugged on Jinzi’s leash and stubbornly argued, “I’m helping it lose weight, okay? I’m not being dragged around. I’m the one dragging Jinzi!”

Tang Lin did not expect Shen Chaomu to respond directly to her problem of refusing to work anyway. No matter how much Tang Lin wore out her tongue, Shen Chaomu would still happily play games as usual.

Tang Lin took out a document envelope. “I picked a few scripts suitable for you and brought them all over. You’d better read them properly. At least take part in one.”

Shen Chaomu looked at the sky, the grass, and Jinzi—anything except Tang Lin.

Tang Lin could not hold back and lightly tapped her on the head, hating iron for not becoming steel.

“Have you been raised useless by Fu Qingli’s fine clothes and gourmet food? Fu Qiqin still hasn’t nodded in approval, and you’re already treating yourself as a pampered rich-family wife who can retire from the industry?”

Shen Chaomu rubbed her head, her deer-like eyes looking at Tang Lin.

“Weren’t you the one who said that Fu Qingli’s private life is at least clean, and that if I followed her, I wouldn’t have to film?”

Tang Lin was furious. Back then, they had been at the end of their rope. She had only said that so Shen Chaomu, who was afraid of the casting couch, could sign with Fu Qingli’s company without worry.

She refused to listen to the useful words, yet remembered the twisted ones perfectly.

“How can anyone else be more reliable than yourself?”

Tang Lin lowered her voice. “The Fu family’s money didn’t fall from the sky either. For Fu Qingli’s dream of becoming Best Actress, Fu Qiqin could throw in five hundred million, but can she keep throwing money in endlessly?”

“And besides, those rumors about the valuation-adjustment agreement recently didn’t come from nowhere. If Fu Qiqin ends up unable to protect even herself, then Fu Entertainment won’t be preserved either. You need to make plans early.”

“Fu Qingli said the same thing.” Shen Chaomu also copied Tang Lin and lowered her voice.

Seeing Tang Lin’s shocked gaze, she told her about Fu Qingli’s strange behavior that morning.

Tang Lin’s brows knitted tightly. After a long while, she looked at this innocent girl whom she had protected not long after she entered the industry and who had been protected by Fu Qingli until now, and sighed.

She really had been raised into a greenhouse flower. If Fu Qingli could not shoulder things…

Shen Chaomu watched Tang Lin’s expression change and understood that she was worrying for her. Her warm, fair fingers rubbed the space between Tang Lin’s brows. “I still have some savings…”

Tang Lin rubbed Shen Chaomu’s soft, fluffy hair. “It’s not to that point. If there really is no other way, I’ll take you away again.”

“But the next company won’t be as easy to fool as Fu Qingli. You’d better film properly and save up money for me!”

Suddenly thinking of something, Tang Lin hesitated, then still asked tentatively, “That illness of yours, is it any better?”

Shen Chaomu instantly wilted. “Last month, the research institute said they’d made a major breakthrough, but they still need time for further screening and verification or something. I paid them eight hundred thousand so they could buy experimental equipment. I hope there’ll be good results soon.”

Tang Lin patted Shen Chaomu’s drooping shoulder. “Go play with Jinzi. I’m going to find Fu Qingli.”

“Oh.”

Seeing that Tang Lin had forgotten about giving her the scripts, Shen Chaomu lowered her eyelids to hide the secret delight in her eyes, then happily ran off into the distance with Jinzi on the leash.