2023

The day after the award win, her follow-up schedule was packed.

Her agent sent word that she already had several interviews lined up in Hong Kong today.

Chen Yue had flown in from Hong Kong overnight. She stayed at the hospital for less than an hour before she had to rush to the airport.

That was also why she had no choice but to trouble Xiao Qi and ask her to arrange a car.

It had been so long since she’d been back in Beijing, and in the end she’d only stayed for less than half a day.

But that was normal too. Over the years, every time Chen Yue returned to Beijing, she was always in a rush and never stayed long.

In the car.

Chen Yue closed her eyes for a moment, then suddenly said, “Actually, this matter should count as my fault too.”

“Huh? Sis, what did you say?” Xiao Qi was busy driving; she might not have heard clearly.

“Nothing.” The rising sun spread over her face like a web spun by a spider.

Chen Yue said softly, “Focus on driving.”

“Okay.” Xiao Qi agreed.

Chen Yue lifted her eyelids.

Seeing those golden streets that seemed to have been carved out of her memory, she suddenly remembered something—

Actually, the script for Neon had never belonged to Chi Xiaoman alone.

In 2014.

They lived in the basement garage at No. 5 Xiangshui Lane, Xingfu Road. Across the way, in the building opposite, there was a neighbor named Lang Lang.

That was Neon’s screenwriter, Lang Lang.

She split the entire script for Neon into two identical copies and mailed one to each of them.

For so many years, Chen Yue had never touched that script.

Until two days ago.

She’d heard from a producer she knew that Chi Xiaoman was planning to make her own film.

After so long, Chen Yue had suddenly thought of Neon.

So she found time to print out the script, originally intending only to read it carefully herself.

But then the Golden Image Awards nominations happened to come out, and she had paparazzi following her everywhere.

That day, she got out of the car with the script in her hands.

A flash of light caught her eye.

At the time, she hadn’t paid it any mind.

Now that she thought about it, the rumor that dragged the two of them together most likely came from the fact that she had been photographed that day.

Thinking of this, Chen Yue drew her gaze back from the golden streets. She closed her eyes for a brief, exhausted moment, then opened her phone again. The trending topics were still glaringly obvious on the screen—

#Chi Xiaoman Chen Yue

#Film Neon

It was strange.

This was the rare time in all these years that their names had appeared side by side.

What a pity.

Both times, it had been for a black hot search.

Chen Yue stared for a moment.

Then she tapped into the tag.

The first post was still from that gossip account. By now, the reposts had exceeded a million, and the comments underneath were unbearable—

[Chi Xiaoman? Making a movie? Directing? Hah? Has she lost her mind?]

[Trying to piggyback off a Golden Image Best Actress win, and she wants to direct it herself too? Does Chi Xiaoman even deserve that?]

[Seriously, Chi Xiaoman, why don’t you privately compensate Chen Yue a little? She won Best Actress twice and should have been celebrating, and now you’ve stolen all the attention. What’s that supposed to be?]

[May heaven protect us; I hope something’s wrong with her.]

…

Comments like these filled the post, and there were countless more, many of them even uglier.

Chen Yue looked for a while.

Then she exited Weibo.

Lowering her eyes, she scrolled down. A vertical video started playing automatically—

It was night; the image was blurry and pixelated.

Chi Xiaoman wore a gray hoodie with the hood up.

Her face and head were covered, only a slender, pale chin barely visible.

She was walking quickly down the roadside with her head lowered.

The person filming followed behind her.

Their voice was sharp.

Like a hot knife shoved straight toward someone’s eyes, forcing its way forward—

“Chi Xiaoman, get out of the entertainment industry!”

“Chi Xiaoman, you’re addicted to stealing roles, aren’t you?”

“Resource queen! You’ve got the guts to steal someone’s role and no guts to speak? Chi Xiaoman, do you have no mother or what!”

At that line.

Chi Xiaoman’s steps faltered.

The person filming quickly rushed up and grabbed her arm, pulling so hard she nearly lost her footing.

But Chi Xiaoman still kept her face turned away from the camera. She didn’t dare use much strength to shake the person off either; her whole wrist was being dragged like a crushed little flower, held in a death grip.

And from behind the camera.

A thin, shrill laugh came through.

“So you’re happy just hearing that you don’t have a mom, huh—”

The video ended there—

On the sharp laughter behind it.

On Chi Xiaoman’s hand, red from being gripped too tightly. On the face hidden in the hood’s shadow. On the narrow chin that had grown so thin in that period she was almost unrecognizable. On the tiny, translucent tear that slowly slid down from her chin.

The video finished.

Then it started again from the beginning, looping on repeat.

The image quality was extremely blurry; it must have been a very early video. It was also obvious that by then Chi Xiaoman had only just debuted, with no one protecting her, and people had chased her and cursed at her all the way.

As for the reason, Chen Yue had also heard some things while she was in Hong Kong back then.

At first, it was only a character who died in the opening of a suspense drama, with not many scenes and not much importance.

The original actor had thought the role was too small and turned it down.

Later.

The role went to the then-obscure, newly debuted Chi Xiaoman.

Yet after the drama aired, it exploded.

So did that character who died in the opening.

Chi Xiaoman’s name started gaining traction, and more and more people began to like her. At first they praised her, saying the new actress’s acting was good—how had no one noticed her before?

After a while, the role’s popularity somehow surpassed the lead’s, and someone vaguely leaked that the originally intended role had belonged to an actor who already had quite a fanbase. Then those voices started spreading too.

Seeing this video with her own eyes now.

Chen Yue didn’t know whether she still had the right to feel wronged, bitter, stifled, and sad on Chi Xiaoman’s behalf.

After all, so much time had passed. She wanted to ache for her, wanted to take the Chi Xiaoman of that time away from that road, away from that camera pressing straight toward her eyes…

But even that thought couldn’t be spoken aloud; it was separated by years.

Besides, after being in this line of work for so long, Chen Yue wasn’t ignorant of the fact that such voices were unavoidable.

Sometimes they came from peers.

Sometimes from enemies she’d somehow made in this circle.

And sometimes, perhaps, they were deliberately manufactured by the management team itself.

And what she understood even more clearly was—

Maybe if the current Chi Xiaoman heard these voices and saw this video, she would be even less affected than Chen Yue was.

The phone locked.

It reflected Chen Yue’s face, which looked very calm.

She put her phone down. After a long pause, she asked gently, “Why do you keep looking at me today?”

The car was waiting at a red light. Xiao Qi in the front froze for a moment. “Sis, weren’t you looking at your phone? You even noticed that?”

Chen Yue said nothing.

It had just rained heavily; the weather was good now, and golden sunlight poured down. Her skin and flesh were thin over heavy bones; with the light shining like that, it flowed perfectly along the contours of her face. Red lips, pale skin, long black hair drifting around her—it looked like a movie scene.

Especially now that she seemed to be in a bad mood, carrying a trace of tired, melancholic beauty.

Xiao Qi looked at her and explained, “It’s just that what you said earlier was really cool.”

“What did I say?” Chen Yue seemed not to react.

“That line—”

Xiao Qi thought back to Chen Yue’s tone and imitated it with a laugh,

“‘I don’t not believe in anything.’”

Chen Yue froze.

“So cool,” Xiao Qi said.

The red light changed.

Xiao Qi started the car again.

“Especially when you said it, it sounded just like a line from a movie.”

“Is that so?”

Chen Yue lowered her eyes.

Wind blew in through the window. She said softly,

“I learned it from someone else.”

-

[Not…]

[Nothing…]

Inside the hospital room, Chi Xiaoman drew in a sharp breath from the pain, yet she still kept herself propped up against the headboard.

She leaned her phone against the plaster cast on her hand.

Then, straining with all her strength, she lifted her head, squinting at the small screen, and typed the sentence out word by word until it was complete—

[There’s nothing to doubt.]

After typing the final period.

She was drenched in sweat.

She had no choice but to lean back against the headboard and rest, giving her aching eyes a moment to recover.

An hour ago.

Chen Yue had left the ward.

Chi Xiaoman hadn’t been able to fall asleep again, and the hot search had made her terribly anxious, so she kept wanting to open it and look.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to explain. It was just that the direction of public opinion was too hard to control right now. If she explained, it might actually make things worse, just like last time.

Not to mention.

After the Weibo incident last time.

Her Weibo had been strictly managed by the team, and under these circumstances, there was no way they’d hand it over to her.

She could only check things with a burner account.

She hadn’t expected that when she went on.

She’d already see people starting to dig up rumors about Chen Yue.

That was how this circle worked; the more famous you were, the more trouble followed.

When you were obscure, you had a good reputation and everyone echoed the same line, saying you were a good actor. Once your popularity rose, plenty of people wanted to dig up black material on you, and if they couldn’t find any, they’d make some up anyway.

And Chen Yue had been low-key and hardworking for years, with not much daily presence in the circle.

The easiest thing to target now was the two years she’d spent doing volunteer teaching in Nepal.

So the hot search had been climbing from last night until now. In less than twenty-four hours, someone had opened a thread on a certain platform, posting what looked like plausible evidence about this matter and claiming with absolute certainty that Chen Yue had never gone to Nepal to do volunteer work in those years.

Chi Xiaoman found the original thread and looked at it for a while.

Then she pressed her lips together, used a newly registered burner account with the system-default gray avatar, held the phone with her plaster-cast hand, and slowly typed with the other. She also dug through the clues in the photos Chen Yue had posted from Nepal, listed the evidence one by one, and fought with the other person.

The thread starter thought she was unreasonable. Later, maybe because arguing back and forth with someone as slow as her for dozens of minutes was exhausting, they asked impatiently—

[Do you really believe a celebrity would be willing to go to Nepal and do volunteer work for several years? Are you stupid?]

[There’s nothing to doubt.]

That was Chi Xiaoman’s reply.

After sending it.

She held her breath on the bed, eyes wide, waiting for the other person to answer her.

But after waiting a while, there was no response.

Thinking about it, she slipped out of the thread.

She didn’t dare tap into any clearly related groups about herself. Half-lidding her eyes, she carefully scrolled a few times and clicked into one related to extras.

Inside, someone was sharing information they’d compiled about casting crews hiring people; someone else had opened a thread sharing their experience as a drifter in Beijing; and there was even someone who looked like a group leader posting a short video link around ten-odd seconds long.

Curious, Chi Xiaoman tapped in.

And caught, without warning, a face she knew far too well.

It was a very old interview, specifically about extras and stand-ins who had drifted in Beijing in those earlier years.

A voice behind the camera asked, “Do you believe you can become a good actor?”

The girl in the video was only nineteen then.

She still hadn’t met Chen Yue, and she still hadn’t moved into that basement garage that cost four hundred yuan a month.

She wasn’t wearing makeup that day. Fortunately, she was still young; her skin was fair, clear, and clean, though her hair hadn’t been tied properly and looked a bit messy.

Because at the time, Chi Xiaoman was a stand-in and had just finished filming a scene where someone got beaten. She washed her face with cold water and was then dragged over for the interview.

Hearing that question.

Nineteen-year-old Chi Xiaoman first froze.

A few seconds later.

She grinned at the camera and nodded hard.

“Mm!”

Her eyes curved into crescents, yet her expression wasn’t soft at all; there was so much stubbornness and conviction, as if she were certain nothing bad would ever happen in the future.

“There’s nothing to doubt.”

[Author’s Note]

Day five of updating little Neon～

Together with our “Man Yue,” wishing everyone a Happy Mid-Autumn Festival～[glasses]