Chapter 125: Joy in It

In the hushed private room, loneliness and regret had wrapped Lin Yanran so tightly that not even a sliver of air seemed to reach her.

At that moment, Lin Yanran chose not to sit in a chair; she no longer even had the strength to straighten her back.

She leaned against the wall, watching the room’s restrained, luxurious decorations drift and blur as if slowly floating upward. At last, she wrapped her arms around her knees and sat on the floor.

She knew she had no reason to cry, yet she wanted to. Still, for some reason, not one tear came.

Su Chen had changed, become even better. I had changed too, become more worldly, more deceitful…

That thought kept circling in Lin Yanran’s mind, impossible to shake off.

After sitting there for a long time, Lin Yanran finally called Xu Fangyuan.

“Hello… Yuan-jie, I’ve had a little drink. Could you come pick me up?”

On the other end, Xu Fangyuan paused, then laughed with a lilting tone.
“How would you have me pick you up? Where’s Manager Feng? You don’t need to worry or be shy—let him take you home.”

“Manager Feng is a good man. And if you can keep this path steady, things at Wan Da will be fully secure. You don’t want your crossover plans to be ruined before they even begin, do you?”

Xu Fangyuan’s voice was full of temptation.
In an ordinary moment, Lin Yanran would likely have followed her advice.
But now, Feng Shixiang—the very man Xu had intended to trap her with—was nowhere near Lin Yanran. Not only was he not beside her, he had left her alone in the private room and walked away first.

In one phone call, Lin felt as if she had gone from a fragrant bun to refuse.

“Yuan-jie… Manager Feng left for the office due to work. I’m the only one here now, in the private room of a Jiangzhe private-cuisine restaurant on the Bund in Shanghai.”

Her voice was low and hoarse, and finally Xu Fangyuan sensed something was wrong.
“Manager Feng went back to the office? What happened to you all there?”

Yanran said nothing. Alarmed, Xu immediately said, “Yanran, stay where you are and don’t move. I’m coming right now. Don’t wander off.”

As soon as she finished speaking, Xu didn’t even hang up. She hurried downstairs to the underground parking lot and drove to Yanran’s location.

Yanran obeyed. She sat in the corner of the room, staring blankly, thinking over this complicated life.

A little over twenty minutes later, Xu Fangyuan came in carrying a Gucci handbag, pushing open the room door with force.

“Yanran? Yanran, what is this?!”
She had seen her crouched on the floor, small and helpless.

Xu quickly moved to her side and crouched down as well, speaking gently.
“Tell me, Yanran. What’s the matter? Did Manager Feng take advantage of you?”

She glanced at Yanran’s clothes as she spoke, and seeing no signs of disorder, she frowned.
How could this Feng Shixiang be so ridiculous—offering up prey and then not even taking it? And then leaving Yanran alone in the room?
Had his mind gone bad?

In Xu Fangyuan’s mind, she had never intended for Yanran to return home unharmed.
By bringing Yanran to Feng Shixiang, she wanted, on one hand, to cultivate a good relationship with him, and on the other hand to have him “help” Yanran, so she would lower her guard and survive in the entertainment world with greater ease.
Before Yanran even stepped out, Xu and Feng had already planned everything: Feng would get her drunk and force the matter through, and Xu would handle the aftermath. It was a complete sequence, seemingly flawless.
But Xu had never imagined it would break down at Feng Shixiang’s end.

At last, when she still could not make sense of it, Yanran spoke.

“Manager Feng was fine. He didn’t do anything to me. He had office matters to attend to, so he left first. He already settled everything.”

Hearing this and seeing Yanran’s lost, ghostly expression, Xu Fangyuan grew even more puzzled.
“Then why do you look so as if you’ve been crying? Who made you feel this bad?”

Yanran only shook her head and pointed toward the television.

Xu followed her gesture.
The television was still broadcasting Star of Tomorrow.

“This is… Star of Tomorrow? What’s going on?” Xu said, bewildered.
She couldn’t understand what Yanran meant, so Yanran said simply, “Su Chen has advanced.”

“Su Chen… has advanced?” Xu briefly froze, then let out an incredulous cry.
“Su Chen advanced? That can’t be true!”

Reflexively, Xu picked up her phone and noticed she still had the call to Yanran connected.
After hanging up, she saw more than a dozen missed calls.
Among them were a few from the head of promotion at Bright Star Mutual Entertainment, while the rest—well over ten—were all from Zheng Huayu.

Xu had no intention of returning any of the calls yet. She opened Weibo and expertly checked the trending list.
Unsurprisingly, the number-one trend was “We owe Su Chen an apology.”
She opened it and scanned the list; by the time she finished, her whole body seemed to go numb.

What the hell! Is Su Chen dangerous? She was almost knocked down, and yet she still pulled off a complete reversal?
Not only had she not become the villain to be shouted down as Xu had expected, she had actually advanced successfully—and she had done so as the winner of this round!

Elsewhere, deep in the night, Su Chen had also finally finished filming this session of Star of Tomorrow.
After the PK between Yanmi and Zheng Huayu’s teams, nearly half the people in the live room had already left.
Most had come for the Su Chen hotspot, and thus paid little attention to the battle between the Han Hong team and the Zhou Zhiqian team.

From backstage, Su Chen saw little. She only knew that the final face-off between the two teams ended in a draw, and among the four contestants moving into the quarter-finals, both Han Hong’s team and Zhou Zhiqian’s team took two spots each.
Su Chen could only think: friendship first, competition second.

When everything had settled, Su Chen walked out with Yanmi from the Xiang Province Television building.

“You really want to make your sister worry herself to death! If something had happened to you today, how was I supposed to answer to Sister Fuyu?” Yanmi said in her own distinctive voice—though she was scolding Su Chen, it sounded almost like petulant pleading.
“I’m telling you—next time, if there’s any problem, tell your sister first, got it?”

Seeing Yanmi about to tug her ear, Su Chen quickly said, “I got it, I got it. No more doing this again.”

“You still want another chance?!” Yanmi shot back angrily.
Though Yanmi looked willfully fierce, Su Chen understood she had truly been worried.

So from the Xiang Province television building to stepping out onto the street, Su Chen could neither argue back nor retort, and she even found a strange joy in it.
After all, how good it feels to know that someone truly cares.