Ye Chu looked at me for a long time and said: Shi Shan, you can't keep acting like this.
·
I've lost count of how many times I've been to the Muse magazine photoshoot location. But this is the first time I've been here as an inside page model.
The filming location for "Muse" was very well chosen; it was a church in Ruguan. This magnificent church has a history of over a hundred years and is considered a tourist attraction in Ruguan.
Ye Chu's team questioned the location of the shoot—Li Yiming is an atheist, so is it contradictory for the magazine to shoot in a church?
These words clearly came from Ye Chu; Ji Juntao, that businessman, wouldn't care about such things.
The explanation from *Muse* magazine is that the church served as an image during filming, symbolizing faith. Furthermore, in the drama, Li Yiming is a believer in God, while "Li Yiming" feigns faith in Guan Yu, blurring the lines between truth and falsehood. This interplay between fiction and reality, and the clash between atheists and God, is also a major highlight.
Ye Chu accepted this explanation.
Ye Chu arrived at the filming location at five o'clock in the morning. I knew this because I arrived even earlier than her. I brought her soup cooked by her uncle. — Filming flattens the actors by a third, so Ye Chu couldn't eat a full meal all day to maintain her physique.
I poured a paper cup of soup from my thermos and drank it all in front of Ye Chu. Ye Chu then smiled, sweetly saying, "You're so sweet," before taking the thermos and sipping her soup. A light flashed in the distance; I knew the trending topics list would have more material today.
The scene was so familiar it made me feel disoriented. Many figures flashed before my eyes, eventually fading away and becoming the shadows of the person in front of me.
I asked with a smile, "Are you nervous?"
Ye Chu nodded: "How could I not be nervous? I didn't sleep well at all last night."
Despite that, she didn't look like she hadn't slept well all night. She was energetic, radiant, and wearing light makeup—though she would soon remove it and replace it with a more dramatic magazine look. Female celebrities always do this; they can't afford to have even the slightest flaw in front of the camera.
Ye Chu exclaimed, "Your uncle's cooking skills are getting better and better."
I laughed: "Of course it's good. It's been honed by my seven or eight ex-girlfriends, and now this flavor is the most versatile."
Ye Chu burst into laughter, still managing to show off her most beautiful half of her profile to the paparazzi taking pictures. I glanced at the tissues on the table, indicating, "Would you like me to wipe your mouth for you?" She frowned slightly, an expression that meant, "No, that's too mushy."
The paparazzi will never know what we're talking about, and neither will anyone else. It's laughable that Ji Juntao is so wary of me; if he heard this conversation today, he'd probably be shocked.
Ye Chu never told me about Ji Juntao. In her words, there's a distinction between close and distant relationships, and it's not appropriate to get involved. I half-jokingly asked, "Am I close, and she's distant?" Ye Chu replied, "You seem close but distant, while she seems distant yet not distant, and close yet not close."
This woman is frighteningly intelligent.
I don't know when it started, but I always find myself wanting to provoke Ye Chu. Today was no exception. I lowered my voice and said to her, "If your fans see this, they'll probably get angry again."
Ye Chu remained unmoved, slurping up the soup as she said, "Your fans should be even angrier; they're attacking me on Weibo right now."
Of course I knew about this. To be precise, it was a proposal the studio came up with and I reviewed it. I only glanced at it twice before approving it. So the team delegated the task to professional fans, and they started stirring up trouble.
Of course, in front of Ye Chu, I feigned surprise and asked, "Really? What happened?"
Ye Chu said somewhat wearily, "That's enough."
Okay, okay.
I had no choice but to suppress my feigned surprise and said to Ye Chu with a wry smile, "There's nothing I can do about it. Since I took on the second role, the fan base has been in turmoil, so I have to find something for them to do, an outlet for their anger. Once they've vented their frustrations, the fan base will stabilize."
My wry smile was, of course, also an act, and Ye Chu knew that. She gave me a similarly theatrical, understanding look and patted my hand: "I've learned something."
She's always so funny; I have to do everything I can to avoid laughing in front of the paparazzi's cameras.
This is my daily routine with Ye Chu. This routine has been going on for ten months now, ever since she fired that shot at me in the shooting range.
I took her hand and said with a smile, "It's your birthday today, what can I do for you?"
Ye Chu tilted her head: "What have you prepared?"
"Plan A, a custom-made diamond bracelet."
"Pass, my boss will be furious if he sees this."
"Plan B: a lovingly prepared dinner and a custom-made cake."
"Pass, your skills are far inferior to your uncle's. Cake is acceptable, but not chocolate."
"Plan B is kept in half, and Plan C is a sincere 'Happy Birthday, Ye Chu' posted on Weibo."
"You don't plan to untie the bond in the future?"
This woman is truly difficult to please and even harder to fool.
I could only humbly ask for advice: "What else can I do besides these? You don't have any physical illnesses, so I can't find you a doctor; you and your boss have no plans to break up, so I can't help you with the lawsuit; the fruits and local specialties you want, Ji Juntao will airfreight them to you, so there's no need for me to fawn over you; you don't even have a son for me to take care of..."
Ye Chu was clearly stumped by the question; he drank soup for ages without uttering a single word. I laughed: "See? You always raise questions, but you never solve them."
Ye Chu sighed: "I don't want any birthday presents. If I could, I wouldn't even want to celebrate my birthday. It would be best if it were just an ordinary day, where I could film, work, and go home as usual."
I observed Ye Chu's face, unable to discern whether her words were sincere or feigned.
Just then, Ye Chu's phone rang. She picked up her phone and replied to two messages, making sure I couldn't see their contents.
I asked, "Director Koo?"
Ye Chu asked in surprise, "How did you know? Did you peek?"
“I didn’t,” I said. “Sending it at midnight would seem too eager and might make you misunderstand; sending it too late during the day would risk my message being drowned out by a flood of well-wishes. So I chose this awkward time of 5 a.m. so that you would see it as soon as you open your eyes—only Gu Wenhua would be so careful in choosing the time to send you birthday wishes.”
Ye Chu turned off her phone and put it down. I added, "Besides, for people who aren't worth it, you should at most just reply with a thank you, or simply ignore them. Ji Juntao is in your pinned contact list, but the spot you just clicked on wasn't pinned. You replied with two rather long messages, proving that this person is in your 'worth it' category. It should be that poor, but very valuable Gu Wenhua."
Ye Chu looked me up and down, raising her long eyebrows slightly: "Xiao Gu is my friend."
I nodded in agreement: "Teacher Zheng and Director Xu are also my friends."
The paparazzi finally left. Those idiots at *Muse* magazine were late in discovering him. But Ye Chu and I dared not relax our guard for a second. How could we?
Ye Chu finished her soup and wiped her mouth. Then she took a bottle of mouthwash from her bag and walked gracefully towards the bathroom. The thought of her gulping down a mouthful of mouthwash in the bathroom, then shaking her head violently, making her mouth feel dizzy and disoriented, actually made me find it a little funny.
At six o'clock, the church set was complete. *Muse* magazine had its own team, and the scale of that team was far superior to that of ordinary artists.
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