Chapter 4 They bumped into each other again in the crowd…
Liang Kongxiang hurried downstairs and strode out of Zaiying Film Studio. She opened the car door while on the phone, and paused after seeing who was in the driver's seat. "...Okay, I understand, Sister Chen. I'm coming now."
She hung up the phone and sat down inside.
"Sister Kongxiang." The driver turned his head to greet her, not noticing Liang Kongxiang's momentary daze.
Liang Kongxiang nodded: "Why are you the one who came?"
"After I dropped Ms. Bi and the others off at the company, Sister Chen asked me to pick you up at Zaiying," the driver said, stepping on the gas.
Liang Kongxiang hummed in response and said nothing more. Seeing Liang Kongxiang leaning wearily against the back seat, the driver naturally didn't say anything more either.
However, Liang Kongxiang's silence at this moment was not due to exhaustion. She stared blankly at the Zaiying Building, which had shrunk from the size of a peanut to the size of a mung bean, through the rearview mirror, and suddenly she understood.
Jiang Jiaoming...
She stared blankly out the window. Oh well, let nature take its course.
"Sister Kong Xiang, is it stuffy in the car?" The driver glanced at the rearview mirror, his finger resting on the button: "Do you need me to open the window? I heard you sigh just now."
"Need not."
"OK."
Back in Yunhe, Liang Kongxiang immediately went to find Chen Yun. Her complexion was much better than in the morning, and she was clearly relieved.
“I sent you the news as soon as I heard it,” she said, without mentioning Liang Kongxiang’s renewed contact with Jiang Jiaoming. “I was also surprised. When President Bi first told me that Zaiying had decided to invest, I didn’t understand at first. Later I found out that it was President Jiang’s idea. He had just agreed when Zaiying’s rescue was already trending on social media. This little President Jiang is really shrewd.”
Liang Kongxiang's gaze was fixed on the light-colored wooden table, lost in thought.
Chen Yun: "You don't look too well. Take a rest for the next couple of days. You have a business event in a couple of days. After you're done with this, I'll give you half a month to get back into the swing of things and get back to work."
"Okay." Liang Kongxiang belatedly realized her eyes were sore and swollen. She rubbed her eyes, as if she had just remembered something, and asked, "What about the other production companies that withdrew their investment before? What did Wang Jianbai say?"
“He had already spread the word about Zaiying Investment, and those companies that had been watching probably decided to follow suit after hearing the confirmation,” Chen Yun paused, looked at Liang Kongxiang and said, “I don’t know if this is a good thing or not. I heard that the third female lead is going to be replaced and the new investors are going to put someone in.”
"Director Cao has his own reasons." Liang Kongxiang didn't offer any comment.
The originally slated third female lead had a one-sided feud with Liang Kongxiang. During the photoshoot for the year-end issue, Liang Kongxiang was on the cover, while the third female lead was in the inside pages. This sparked a fan war that trended on social media. The third female lead's alternate account was exposed, revealing that she had liked comments criticizing Liang Kongxiang. Further commotion ensued, with the third female lead later claiming her account had been hacked. However, the truth remains to be seen; those who believe will ultimately believe, and those who don't will never believe.
Liang Kongxiang doesn't care about these things. Joining a film crew isn't a social gathering for her; she just wants to cooperate with the staff and do her job as an actress. She doesn't want to be insincere or waste time on superficial interactions. So some people always think she's taciturn and unapproachable, but this is actually Liang Kongxiang's own unique set of social rules.
In the two weeks leading up to joining the production team, Liang Kongxiang maintained a regular schedule and diet, thoroughly understood the character, and wrote a thick biography of the character. In her spare time, she would play with birds, feed fish, and water flowers, and rarely thought about Jiang Jiaoming anymore.
Two days before filming began, Chen Yun sent Liang Kongxiang a message about the opening banquet, along with a list of names, instructing Liang Kongxiang to memorize the personalities of the attendees to avoid saying the wrong thing.
She opened the file and saw the first person's profile. Her thumb froze on the screen, but after only two seconds she scrolled down to see the second one.
There were quite a few people, from producers to actors and script supervisors, a total of more than fifty people, and they stayed at a hotel near the filming location. However, this document only collected information on a few producers and supervisors.
After scrolling to the bottom and reading through it, she returned to the top of the document, lingered on the photo for a few seconds, and then moved to the text description on the right.
The phone was placed on the table by Liang Kongxiang, the screen lit up, always displaying those few lines of text that Liang Kongxiang knew by heart.
Jiang Jiaoming, male, 28 years old, producer of Zaiying Pictures...
The thin white gauze curtains by the window, billowing in the wind, curled and rolled like waves, swaying and undulating in waves.
She rested her head on her arm, and the breeze let in, gently brushing the strands of hair on Liang Kongxiang's face. Her gaze fell on the white gauze with its light floral pattern, and the flower floated up and down softly with the gauze.
The air was filled with the unique scent of autumn, drifting in through the white gauze curtains. Occasionally, a car horn would sound from downstairs, mingling with the dialect of local residents where the filming location was being shot.
Liang Kongxiang closed her eyes, as if she were lying on a high school teacher's desk. The surroundings were quiet yet chaotic. Ruan Jiayan was looking in the mirror next to her, chattering to herself.
"Oh no, my bangs are like this again at this crucial moment..." She took the curling iron and curled them again in front of the mirror, only to find they looked even worse. With a pained expression, she poked Liang Kongxiang's arm and pleaded softly, "Don't sleep! Help me take a look, waaaaah! Class 8 is playing basketball against Class 10 today. What color do you think would look good on me?"
Liang Kongxiang wasn't actually asleep; she was just resting. Upon hearing Ruan Jiayan's request, she lifted her head and opened her eyes to see Ruan Jiayan holding five open lipsticks in each hand, pleading pitifully, "Kongxiang, Kongxiang, please, please help me see which one looks the best!"
Before Liang Kongxiang could nod, Ruan Jiayan had already lightly drawn a line on the back of her hand and shown it to her: "How is it?"
She observed Liang Kongxiang's reaction, noticing no surprise on the other's face, and then proceeded to draw another skewer, gazing expectantly at Liang Kongxiang. Only then did Liang Kongxiang belatedly react differently to each color, ending Ruan Jiayan's dilemma with nine different compliments.
"Come with me." Ruan Jiayan finished applying her lipstick, put down the curling iron, looked at herself carefully in the mirror, and wrapped her arm around Liang Kongxiang's arm: "You're the best, I'm begging you, please come with me. There are so many handsome guys in these two classes, especially Jiang Jiaoming from Class 8."
Liang Kongxiang was so dizzy from being shaken that a head kept bobbing against her chest. After Ruan Jiayan had had her fill of bobbing, she looked at her helplessly and said, "Okay."
"Yay!!" Ruan Jiayan jumped up on the spot. She originally wanted to pick out lipstick to put on Liang Kongxiang as well, but when she looked down and saw Liang Kongxiang's lips were red without any lipstick, she gave up.
Although it has been more than a year, Ruan Jiayan is still often so captivated by Liang Kongxiang's face that she feels dizzy and breathless. She glances at the ten different shades on the back of her hand and then at Liang Kongxiang's lips.
"What's wrong?" Liang Kongxiang picked up a book she hadn't finished reading, intending to do her own thing while keeping Ruan Jiayan company. Seeing Ruan Jiayan staring at her chin, she subconsciously touched her lips: "Is there something there?"
"No." Ruan Jiayan stared blankly for a few seconds, then muttered softly, "Why doesn't they have this lipstick color that matches yours..."
"What?" Liang Kongxiang walked beside her, tilting her head slightly to listen.
"It's nothing, it's nothing!" Ruan Jiayan pulled her down the stairs, waving from afar at the wooden bench next to the basketball net, and turned to Liang Kongxiang to say, "I had someone save us a spot! A perfect vantage point!"
She was pulled through the crowd by Ruan Jiayan, who was clumsy and reckless, and accidentally bumped into many people. Liang Kongxiang followed behind her and apologized.
The two sat on a wooden bench, with the basketball net just across the gravel path. The court had been cleared out, and the players from both classes hadn't all arrived yet.
The area was packed with students who had come to join the fun. Ruan Jiayan was very popular and had already made friends with a group of strangers around her. Liang Kongxiang had nothing to do, so she simply opened the book she had brought.
She smoothed out the folded corner and started reading from the first line, so engrossed that she didn't notice the sudden commotion around her until something bumped her toe, bringing her gaze back down to the next line of the book.
A bottle of ice water, with water droplets still clinging to its surface. Because it had rolled around on the ground a few times, the water droplets were cloudy and covered with bits of grass.
A hand with distinct knuckles and prominent veins reached out, its fingers curling back into the water.
Liang Kongxiang subconsciously looked at the owner of the hand. The first thing she saw was the collarbone under the other person's jersey, the prominent Adam's apple, and then an arrogant face. That face was expressionless, cold and indifferent, with a hint of listless annoyance.
"Sorry." The other person was holding the bottle cap, and although they were talking to her, their eyes were fixed on the dirty bottle, and they frowned.
It wasn't a big deal. Liang Kongxiang simply said "It's okay" and went back to doing her own thing with her head down, so she didn't know when the other person left.
After a while, Ruan Jiayan leaned on her shoulder and whispered, "That's Jiang Jiaoming."
"What?"
The air was thick with the lingering heat of late September. Sunlight streamed through the crowd, and everyone instinctively tugged at their clothes to cool down. A cheer erupted from the basketball court, a deafening roar of shouts and applause that exploded through the crowd. A group of boys in basketball jerseys, drenched in sweat, high-fived each other. Liang Kongxiang's gaze and Jiang Jiaoming's gaze briefly met in the drifting golden light.
The sky was twenty degrees Celsius, the clouds were white, the earth was yellow, and something was silently and cautiously clamoring.
...
The door was opened.
Liang Kongxiang's recollection was interrupted, but she remained lying on her arm, her eyes closed.
Before he could finish speaking, he suddenly noticed a faint mark on Liang Kongxiang's nose.
Like freshly dried tear stains...
The windows blocked out the outside noise, and the room became quiet. Chen Yun didn't look away, remaining silent, lost in thought.
A few seconds later, Liang Kongxiang opened her eyes and slowly sat up. There were two red marks on her arms, clearly from lying down for too long.
"Let's go." She stood up, went to the bathroom, washed her face in front of the mirror, stared blankly at her reflection for a few seconds, then splashed water on her face to clear her mind. She dried her face, grabbed her bag, and went to the Lavande Hotel with Chen Yun.
The car stopped at the entrance, and the waiters on both sides bowed their heads to greet the customers. The place was booked for the whole day, and it was unusually quiet inside. Only the sound of the guzheng flowed like clear water in the lobby. Liang Kongxiang and Chen Yun were led into the private room by the waiters.
As soon as she entered, the other lead actors who had arrived earlier all stood up to greet Liang Kongxiang. Liang Kongxiang smiled and nodded in response to each of them, and then sat down next to Cao Lengyu.
Chen Yun sat to her right, Cao Lengyu sat to her left, and there were two empty seats to Cao Lengyu's left, opposite Wang Jianbai.
Clearly, the latecomer to the main seat must be the most important person tonight.
The private room was filled with conversations in various voices, some high, some low, some sharp, some rough, and laughter that was either hearty or insincere, creating a lively atmosphere.
As the door to the private room opened again, everyone stopped talking in unison and turned to look at the tall, aloof man standing in the doorway.
Chen Yun sensed something and hesitated before slowly turning her head to look at Liang Kongxiang beside her, only to find that she was also looking towards the door.
After so many years, Jiang Jiaoming and Liang Kongxiang met each other again in the crowd.
Neither of them took it back first.
A note from the author:
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