Chapter 14: The Summer Promise

"You two know each other?" Lei Jun and Luo Xuan were both taken aback.

"Didn't I tell you before that I saved a girl during the opening parade? It's her," Ling Chen said with great certainty, then looked back at Li Sishi, "How are you? Have you been to the hospital?"

"I'm fine, thank you for your concern." Li Sishi replied briefly, then asked Ling Chen for his opinion, asking if he wanted to film the music video himself.

"Of course! This song was originally dedicated to my fans, and you happen to be one of them, so you can just play yourself." Ling Chen was very satisfied with Li Sishi's appearance and temperament.

The female lead in his music video represents his fans – Li Sishi's youthful and beautiful image allows them to easily identify with her.

Upon hearing the reply from the early morning, Li Sishi immediately smiled: it was precisely because she saw that the set looked like a classic MV of the song "Summer Promise" that she volunteered to be a substitute.

In this industry, good resources are extremely hard to come by, and people fight tooth and nail for them. After the song "Summer Promise" was released in the early morning, it became a classic hit that won many awards, and there was also an album of the same name. His company, PolyGram, must have allocated a lot of promotional resources to it.

In addition, "Summer Promise" is said to be the song that "destined love" between Ling Chen and his fans. Almost all of Ling Chen's concerts will end with this song. This will give her more opportunities to collaborate as a guest singer in the music industry.

In this situation, Li Sishi was extremely careful in her selection: among various early exposures, being a music video model was a good opportunity to skirt the edge of entering the entertainment industry, as it was not likely to cause contract disputes and could still provide a certain level of exposure, without being considered a "recycled" model.

Humans are naturally more interested in the unknown. If they come out too early, the novelty of participating in the Miss Hong Kong pageant will be greatly reduced, and the higher-ups will re-evaluate the development potential of "recycled" contestants. If they can become famous before then, why would they need to compete with a group of amateur "new pork" contestants?

Undoubtedly, new pork is more appealing to investors than twice-cooked pork; however, if there is no exposure in the early stages, it will hinder the initial development of the business.

Currently, the hit song MV of the rising star, plus the upcoming exposure of "Band 3 Middle School Golden Phoenix", are enough to meet Li Sishi's expected early exposure needs.

Li Sishi is quite confident in her voice: after debuting in her previous life, she was taken care of by Miss Zhuang and received several offers.

Every role she played resulted in complaints from viewers to the TV station due to her acting skills. So, Ms. Zhuang, who discovered the problem, quickly enrolled her in a training class as a transfer student to practice her acting skills... As for the exposure gap in between, she made up for it by releasing songs.

Compared to her terrible acting skills at the time, which were unbearable to watch by both insiders and outsiders, her singing voice was widely recognized by the public. Everyone felt that she had a rare, clean, ethereal, and powerful voice. If she had a few good songs and some good luck, she could probably be a regular at the Golden Melody Awards.

Unfortunately, Huasheng Records, affiliated with the TV station, didn't have many good song resources and couldn't compete with other established record companies with deep roots. Moreover, Ms. Zhuang's main focus wasn't on the music scene, so even with her excellent voice, she was still pushed by Ms. Zhuang to move towards film and television.

This time, she didn't want to waste her talent—moreover, the music scene from the 1990s to the 2000s was still very lucrative. If she could seize the opportunity to collaborate with one of the most influential male singers at PolyGram, it would probably be easier for her to move into the music industry in the future.

Opportunity favors the prepared mind. Although she still plans to follow Miss Zhuang's path to debut, at least in this life, she can no longer be used as Huang Qianyan's substitute without any autonomy.

Although Li Sishi was well aware of the gap between her acting skills and Huang Qianyan's, Huang Qianyan was not a perfect artist either—in any case, her top singer-songwriter boyfriend, with whom she had a love-hate relationship for many years, had failed to bolster Huang Qianyan's music career...

She will no longer use her weaknesses to attack others' strengths. Instead, she will integrate her own advantages into her future development path and forge a path of both singing and acting.

Even if she can't reach the pinnacle of both the music and film industries like Rong Juezhang and Pei Yansang, the support of her fans at least makes people a little more forgiving of her acting skills...

Honestly, even after retiring from acting in her previous life, Li Sishi couldn't stand herself when she occasionally looked back at her early roles, let alone expect others to give her any face.

No matter how beautiful a person is, if they can't fit into the role, they become unbearable.

As for her acting skills back then, to say they were subpar would be a lie.

One moment she's flamboyant and affected, the next she's completely wooden. She single-handedly dragged the entire cast out of the story, resulting in hundreds of complaints from family viewers. She was even described as having "a cake crust at the bottom of a bowl of swill, making you want to vomit after just a couple of glances."

...

As for her, who is practically useless except for her face...

Some gossip magazines, taking great care to combine her Miss Hong Kong runner-up title with her age and appearance, gave her a new nickname: "The Copycat Shang Lanyu (early stage)".

This title refers to the fact that she, like the film queen Shang Lanyu, was a runner-up in the Miss Hong Kong pageant and was too young at seventeen or eighteen when she participated in the competition; however, the word "early stage" in parentheses is quite mischievous, implying that this "copy" is completely inferior to the original film queen Shang Lanyu, who already had a bunch of acting awards at that time.

Before Shang Lanyu's acting skills matured, she was known as a pretty face but not a true actress...

Even though Li Sishi later graduated from the training class and her acting skills were barely at the level of a TV character actor, at least she didn't look out of place, and she could even occasionally have a shining moment when she encountered a suitable role—but she was compared to Shang Lanyu, who is considered to be among the pinnacle of acting skills among actresses in the industry, and Huang Qianyan, who has many classic roles in the golden age of film...

The only thing she could surpass Huang Qianyan and Shang Lanyu about was her singing voice, yet she couldn't develop a career in the music industry—so how could she compete? What could she possibly do?!

The more I think about it, the more frustrated I feel.

Seeing the change in Li Sishi's expression, Ling Chen, who was sitting on the other side, thought for a moment, then put down the script in his hand and came over: "Is there something you don't understand?"

Before he became famous, he had worked with new models who had no experience in shooting music videos, so he had encountered all sorts of situations. Therefore, when he saw Li Sishi suddenly frowning and looking down, he assumed that she had encountered a problem.

“Oh…yes, there’s a description here that says ‘two people are intimately embracing and snuggling on the sofa’…” Of course, Li Sishi couldn’t reveal the truth that touched her heart, so she just continued along with what Ling Chen had said.

Hearing Li Sishi's question, I suddenly realized in the early morning: Newcomers—especially young girls who are new to the industry—are indeed a little reserved in intimate scenes.

Fortunately, the most intimate scene here is the one where they're embracing while sitting on the sofa. The others are just everyday moments between couples, like playful bickering and holding hands. If all goes well, the whole shoot can be completed in two or three days.

"Don't worry too much, just think of me as your brother..." Based on past experience, Ling Chen said a few words to Li Sishi, then suddenly winked at her, "Besides..."

Practice makes perfect, doesn't it?

Seeing Li Sishi pause slightly, then seem to remember something and lower her eyelashes, Ling Chen felt a surge of joy at successfully teasing a child, and added, "The rest..."

"Just do what you normally do."

Li Sishi paused for a moment, then finally spoke: "There's something... I think I should tell you."

"What is it?" Ling Chen asked in the early morning.

"Actually, I'm not your fan. I went there to help my cousin get an autograph, but then something unexpected happened..." Li Sishi looked at Ling Chen's slightly aggrieved expression and quickly added, "It's not that I don't like you, it's just that I like Pei Yansang more."

"Oh, Sister Pei is really good. I admit defeat." Hearing the name of the ever-changing queen, Ling Chen's appearance improved a lot.

“Actually, you didn’t lose anything. The reason I like Pei Yansang is because I can make her my future goal, while you boys can’t be my goals,” Li Sishi comforted her.

Hearing Li Sishi say this, Ling Chen was somewhat surprised: "It's rare for a girl of this age to aim for Pei Yansang. I originally thought you would prefer to compete in the Miss Hong Kong pageant."

“I’m not old enough to meet the requirements yet, and Miss Hong Kong is just the first step. I need to think carefully about how to proceed from here,” Li Sishi said with a smile.

Unexpectedly, the young girl in front of him was quite mature despite her young age. After thinking about it seriously for a moment, she said, "If you really want to participate in the Miss Hong Kong pageant in the future, you can ask me to be your nominator."

Although there may be some rumors, having a sufficiently influential nominator to help with the nomination will definitely bring more benefits.

He had learned from previous conversations that Li Sishi came from a relatively low-class neighborhood, and he always felt sorry and worried: ultimate beauty often needs a strong force to protect it, otherwise it is a crime to possess a treasure.

Although this industry is very complex, for a person as talented as her, entering the entertainment industry is undoubtedly one of the more worthwhile opportunities to change her destiny.

Seeing that Ling Chen's gaze was still clear and bright, Li Sishi thought for a moment and then shook her head: "Thank you. If I really do run for office and can't find a nominee, I will definitely trouble you."

"But don't blame me for being blunt, if it were someone else, I wouldn't really want it to be you." Li Sishi adopted an honest demeanor. "You know, although most fans are good people, there will always be a few extreme ones..."

"I understand." Ling Chen had seen many celebrities receive blood letters or even be attacked by extreme fans after going public with their relationships or being involved in scandals, so he nodded in understanding.

"Actually, the entertainment industry isn't as wonderful as people imagine. For example, right now, when I'm busy, I often can't even get four hours of sleep a day..." With the intention of getting to know each other better so that the filming would go more smoothly, I chatted with Li Sishi for a while in the early morning.

As soon as he finished saying that in the early hours of the morning, Lei Jun, the agent who was not far away discussing the last-minute changes to the model contract with Luo Xuan, immediately yelled: "Isn't sleeping for about four hours a day enough for you? How can you become famous if you're this lazy?!"