Chapter 52: Chapter 52: Closing the Gap
Pei Muchan was in a trance for a moment, but she quickly calmed down.
She took a step back from the crack of the door and took a deep breath.
"You shouldn't have been so impulsive. Do you know who you were arguing with just now?"
"I know, Ji Chen, he already announced his identity just now," Xu Qingyan answered, seemingly unconcerned about what had just happened.
She rubbed her forehead and sighed.
"Don't stand at the door, come in and we'll talk."
The suitcase, after being passed around, ended up back in his hands, and they entered the room one after the other. Xu Qingyan glanced around and saw that Pei Muchan's room was smaller than his.
Although it was also a suite, the external living room was about half the size.
Xu Qingyan pushed the suitcase into the corner and, without waiting for permission, took out his phone and lay down on the couch in the living room.
Seeing this, Pei Muchan couldn't help but feel somewhat helpless. Xu Qingyan had almost no hesitation in standing up for her, naturally, she felt touched.
But on the other hand, she did not want Xu Qingyan to get involved in those messy situations.
"Those people from Xiliang are a bunch of lunatics, offending them could likely result in being cyberbullied by their fans. Don't do something so dangerous next time."
"Got it."
After a few seconds of silence, she spoke again.
"Thank you."
"No need." Xu Qingyan lowered his gaze, already launched a game, and without looking up said, "This wasn't entirely for you; I am a hater of Xiliang myself."
Hearing this, Pei Muchan looked at him once more, but before she had a chance to speak, he added another sentence.
"Hurry up, it's getting late, go take a shower."
She instantly remembered that she had to go downstairs later to shoot for Heartbeat Photo Shoot, and felt somewhat relieved that the production team hadn't followed them upstairs. Her mind was filled with a jumble of thoughts.
Thinking it over, Pei Muchan replied with an okay and turned to enter her room.
The living room fell quiet, and faint sounds of movement could be heard from the neighboring room. The rustling sound was likely Pei Muchan getting clothes, and the sound of the shower was not very clear.
On the sofa, Xu Qingyan put aside the game he just started and took out his phone to search for the studio under Pei Muchan's name.
"Mu Chan."
His fingers slid down the screen, his expression calm, with a faint cold light in his eyes.
In China, the well-known singers eventually go solo, establishing their own studio to manage their copyright, or even starting a small entertainment company, which is not surprising.
Only... Pei Muchan's foundations were unstable, wasn't it too early for her to establish a studio and go solo?
Scrolling to the end, he saw one of the few public event photos of Pei Muchan. She stood among a group of celebrities, smiling gently.
Behind her was a large poster that read, "Starlight Entertainment."
The sound of the "All-out Assault" game came on, but Xu Qingyan ignored it. He continued to search Ji Chen and was instantly bombarded by articles from marketing accounts.
Thinking it over, he added "apology" to Ji Chen's search term, bringing up a few articles detailing Ji Chen inciting fans to cyberbully other celebrities, with relatively low readership.
He flipped through a bit more and read an article that named Ji Chen, this seemed to have happened around half a year ago. The gist was about striking at celebrities with scandals and resisting cyberbullying.
In the end, it all came to nothing.
Feeling bored, he slowly put away his phone and lay back on the sofa to continue gaming. He left it on autoplay for five minutes, the AI wasn't bad, handling a little adversity wasn't much of a problem.
Before long, Pei Muchan finished her shower, changed clothes, and walked out drying her hair. It probably only took her fifteen minutes in total , as she quickly found the hairdryer in the living room.
The buzzing sound of the hairdryer started, time was pressing, and as she dried her hair, she raised her voice and spoke to Xu Qingyan, who was gaming.
"I've been thinking, Ji Chen wouldn't go after you over such a trivial matter. He was punished half a year ago for inciting fans to cyberbully a waiter."
"If he really repeated his old trick, you don't need to be afraid, I'll find a way to deal with it."
Upon hearing this, Xu Qingyan didn't say much, just nodded.
He was fully aware that Pei Muchan had this kind of personality, and there was no need for him to act the hero and refuse her kindness. If he was being honest with himself, he admitted there was a selfish component to his actions too.
After leaving the reality show, the most suitable candidate to sell his songs to was Pei Muchan.
Firstly, although she was about to leave the industry, she had her own studio and the ability to independently produce and distribute songs. Secondly, only Pei Muchan would consider sharing profits with him.
As for why not sing them himself and amaze everybody, making all the big shots in the music industry collectively shocked. In fact, it wasn't impossible, dreaming about it with an early bedtime and an early rise.
Only it would probably look like an inspirational life, debuting with the name of an unwanted commoner. One person against the world in cyberbullying, then becoming self-moved to the point of tears.
In the eyes of those at the top, it would just be a small fry causing trouble, and what really mattered in this business was your background and power.
He was just a rootless duckweed; taking shortcuts was fine. It wasn't that he couldn't play the game of showing off and slapping faces, but the heavenly queen sister provided better value for money.
Getting on good terms with Pei Muchan, and if possible, working together to accumulate capital. With this capital, start rolling the snowball, opening a small studio, spending money to make money.
Holding a whole library of songs and movies, he was confident in growing to the same scale as Pei Muchan in a short time. Living off a woman was just a joke, relationships with mismatched statuses would not last long.
This was his selfishness, apart from fulfilling the director's task, that little bit of selfishness that sprouted on its own.
As for whether he was afraid of Ji Chen from the West Liang Band, only Xu Qingyan knew the answer.
He was young, strong, single, and had a mother who needed a huge sum for a lifesaving surgery, and apart from that, he was on his own.
He had never been in a relationship, and he had no attachments.
The reality show had signed a guaranteed contract with him, and his mother's treatment was also secured. Her life from here on out would be surgery, resting, and retreating to the countryside to live out her years.
The Xu family village was a clan village, where outsiders could hardly enter, and the locals were fierce. Apart from being a bit poor, almost every family had some connection or another.
Ji Chen lacked nothing, but Xu Qingyan couldn't scrape together seven hundred.
He was never one to hesitate or shrink back; rather than whether he was afraid, he simply hadn't bothered thinking about it.
Pei Muchan had already dried her hair, and without much conversation, they hastened their steps and headed downstairs in silent agreement.
By noon, they had to finish a set of Heartbeat Photo Shoots, time waits for no one. The afternoon light is completely different from the morning's, not to mention there are other photo shoots scheduled for the afternoon.
"Hurry up, hurry up!" Pei Muchan was even more anxious than he was, almost breaking into a jog.
"No need to rush, go slower, the beach isn't far from here," Xu Qingyan said somewhat speechlessly, just as he was about to slow down sneakily, Pei Muchan grabbed his wrist with a snap.
The two of them started running, with the wind blowing behind them, summer of the twenty-sixth year, as if traveling through time.