The moment that Weibo was posted, Qin Cheng’s voice sounded like he was choked by something. He coughed for a while before his slightly raised voice was heard. “You… are coming out?”
“I would’ve come out sooner or later.” Xie Yang refreshed his Weibo and clicked on the comments area. Seeing the question marks and exclamation points below, he smiled. “You can deal with the rest. Don’t expose Qiu Xing’s existence for the time being.”
Qin Cheng quickly calmed down and prepared to hang up.
“What a minute.”
“What is it?”
Xie Yang explained, “Find a media outlet to expose the news that Hong Zhijie and Mu Zhouyi are living in the same community and expose their ‘love relationship’. By the way, you can also ask Vice-Director Yang. If she agrees, let people pick up on Hong Zhijie’s marriage cheating and Mu Zhouyi as his mistress. They exposed my ‘love affair’. I will be sorry for their intentions if I didn’t return the gift.”
There was laughter in Qin Cheng’s voice. “Your temper… okay, I’ll do it.”
The moment Qin Cheng hung up, Qiu Xing’s call came through.
Xie Yang picked up and got ahead of this person. “Good morning, male mouse.”
“……”
There was silence for a few seconds before Qiu Xing’s forcedly calm voice was heard. “Talking nonsense again. You… you’ve lost fans.”
“It’s fine. I’ll gain more.”
Qiu Xing didn’t speak and Xie Yang didn’t speak either, so the phone was silent. After a long time, Qiu Xing snorted. “Who is the mouse?”
Then he hung up.
The male mouse was stealing happiness.
Xie Yang put down his phone and was about to open Weibo to read the comments when Qiu Xing called again. He picked up and Qiu Xing’s voice was immediately heard. “You aren’t allowed to take photos with messy people in the future!” Then he hung up again.
Xie Yang looked at the phone record of only two seconds and laughed.
***
After arriving at the set, Xie Yang found that everyone was peeking at him. The atmosphere was strange and restless. A long time passed before Man Feidi came over to Xie Yang with the script. He paused for a moment before saying, “You… do you like men?”
Xie Yang raised an eyebrow. “Same-sex marriage is legal. Is it strange that I like men?”
“No, it’s just…” Man Feidi watched Xie Yang with a very complicated expression. “You really are…”
Xie Yang looked at Man Feidi and waited for the next words. Man Feidi once again hesitated. He glanced around before saying, “You have just debuted and you are young. You actually dare to… it is good to have money. You can say whatever you want to say and do whatever you want to do.”
Xie Yang smiled. “Senior, you made a mistake. It isn’t that I have the confidence to do everything because I have money. Rather I have the strength to be rich and confident enough to do everything. I don’t rely on other people to profit. I don’t ask girlfriend fans to spend money on me so I dare to say and do it.”
Man Feidi was taken aback. He pursed his lips, watched Xie Yang silently and then turned to leave.
Later, Xie Yang received euphemistic inquiries from Gao Xuanhang and Wen Han. Even Zhou Huairen asked. Fortunately, they asked him but they didn’t have any malicious intent. Xie Yang gave a simple response and no one talked about it any further.
The rest of the crew found that Xie Yang was so calm and open and slowly relaxed. The atmosphere on set quickly returned to normal.
During the noon break, Xie Yang looked at Weibo and found that the topic #Xie Yang coming out of the closet# was already on the hot search. Under the topic, there were indeed some people who said they would stop being fans because of his coming out. However, there weren’t many. After finally reacting, most of the comments were: [Hahahaha.]
One of the posts was liked by other fans who felt the same way.
Setting Sail: Male mouse? Male mouse… male mouse?! Ahhhhh! Hahahahaha! Not a little mouse but a male mouse! Hahaha, I’m not crazy! I’m not crazy! I really like Yang Yang who doesn’t allow himself to be used by someone else! I want to hug Yang Yang like crazy! I want to know who the male mouse is!
Xie Yang smiled and turned to the girl’s Weibo account to look.
Not long after he posted on Weibo, the girl also posted a clarification that she wasn’t familiar with him and the love affair was just made up by a marketing account. She even changed her Weibo ID and cleared her past posts.
Under her clarification post, many people were ridiculing her in an aggressive way, giving people a poor impression of the commenters.
Xie Yang raised his eyebrow when he saw this. He thought for a few moments before calling Qin Cheng and exchanging a few words.
Towards the end of the break time, Xie Yang clicked on the girl’s clarification post again. He saw that all the mocking and curse words in the front area of the comments area were gone. It was replaced by the ‘comfort’ of the fans.
Hot comment 1: Miss sister, don’t be angry. I believe that you must’ve been injured by mistake. We don’t believe those who say that you have signed with an entertainment company and that you were deliberately raising the enthusiasm for your debut! Miss sister, I’m cheering for you!
Hot comment 2: Miss sister, don’t cry! We will help get back at the person (or water army?) who scolded you. I’m sorry that the marketing account dug out several Weibo posts related to Yang Yang. The marketing account is so unreasonable. This brand of thermos and the nickname of ‘Mouse’ isn’t exclusive to Yang Yang. They actually used this to slander a young lady. So bad! Fortunately, Yang Yang clarified in time. The marketing account should no longer harass you.
Hot comment 3: Miss sister, there are actually people who say that you will soon accuse us of online violence, saying that you will use this to continue taking advantage of others’ popularity and discredit them along the way. How is this possible? Us fans don’t support cyber violence! Miss sister, you are definitely not an opportunist! It is obviously the marketing account that messed up!
The satisfied Xie Yang closed the comments area and went to the hot search to check. Sure enough, the topic #Little mouse signs with Huangtian# was rising. This should completely block the ‘gossip girlfriend’ from continuing to do anything.
Xie Yang quit Weibo, entered WeChat and sent Qin Cheng a thumbs up expression.
In the afternoon, Xie Yang only had three scenes, two of which were group scenes. One was a separate rival scene with Wen Yao. During the rest time after filming the two group scenes, Xie Yang went on Weibo again.
The hot searches #Xie Yang coming out of the closet# and #Xie Yang’s romance exposed# had fallen out of the top two topics. They were replaced by #Hong Zhijie cheating during marriage# and #Mu Zhouyi the third party#
Under the topic, a certain marketing account exposed that Hong Zhijie and Mu Zhouyi lived in the same community and the two of them always entered and exited the community together. They were suspected of living together which made this Weibo very lively.
The netizens who looked at the topic were all shocked by this unbelievable style. Recently, Mu Zhouyi had relied on being low-key and invisible whitewashing to moderate her image. Now she was quickly covered in dust again by the news.
Xie Yang noticed a shadow in front of him, locked the phone screen and looked up. Wen Yao was standing in front of Xie Yang and holding a script. “Can I sit down?”
Xie Yang nodded and asked Wu Shui to give Wen Yao a stool. The two of them sat together and used the script to tacitly cover up the real conversation. “I saw the topic about Mu Zhouyi. She and Hong Zhijie… are they real?”
“It really can’t be fake.”
Wen Yao was silent. “The news on Weibo, did you look for someone to burst it?”
“What do you think? Senior, I don’t have the obligation to satisfy your curiosity.”
Wen Yao was taken aback and then looked embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to… Xie Yang, do you think… never mind.” She got up and wanted to leave, but was called back by Xie Yang.
“Senior, do you have a suitor with a good family background?”
Wen Yao’s expression changed and she looked around.
“Senior, you don’t need to be so nervous. I heard this by chance from a friend in the business circle and it hasn’t spread widely. I’m mentioning this to remind you that if you have a good impression of the suitor and want to develop with him, I suggest you don’t take him to see Mu Zhouyi. Even better, it is best to not let Mu Zhouyi know about his existence.”
In the original novel, Mu Zhouyi also increased her good impression with Wen Yao’s rich boyfriend. Fortunately, at that time, Mu Zhouyi had already established a relationship with Feng Qinglin. The goodwill skill was mostly used on Feng Qinglin and she didn’t use it on Wen Yao’s boyfriend too much. Wen Yao’s boyfriend really liked Wen Yao and wasn’t affected much by the favourability, their relationship remained stable.
Now there were no high-quality men around Mu Zhouyi. If she knew that Wen Yao had a good one, she would probably approach him deliberately. Then it would be uncertain if Wen Yao could keep her boyfriend or not.
Wen Yao hesitated and sat back down. “What do you mean?”
Xie Yang didn’t answer directly. “Mu Zhouyi and my relative met through a car accident. They established their relationship a few months later. Afterwards she met Shen Yan through ‘Crazy Musician’ and after only three months of knowing each other, Shen Yan was ready to help her move to Huanyu. Last year she then met Hong Zhijie at an event A few months later, Hong Zhijie got a divorce and jumped to Huangtian. There is also Fang Chengnan, who got to know Mu Zhouyi through Hong Zhijie. He only saw her two or three times, yet decided to invite her to participate in ‘Extreme Battle’.”
Wen Yao’s brow furrowed tighter the more she heard.
“There are many more similar examples. Senior, I might be presumptuous but how long have you and Mu Zhouyi known each other?”
Wen Yao gripped her skirt with her fingers.
“Senior, can you do me a favour?”
Wen Yao’s senses returned. She turned to look at Xie Yang, her expression slightly confused. She was obviously shocked. She barely stabilized her mind and asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“Help me pass a message to My Zhouyi. Tell her not to move her crooked thoughts to my side. I’ll keep staring at her and will definitely repay her twice over if she dares to make the smallest move. So it would be better for her to stop making trouble.”
***
When Xie Yang finished his work that night, the news of Hong Zhijie and Mu Zhouyi on Weibo had been suppressed. Hong Zhijie gave a ridiculous explanation for the daytime news. He said that he and Mu Zhouyi returned to the same community because Mu Zhouyi was temporarily living in the company dormitory after selling her previous house. The company dormitory happened to be in the same community as his residence.
It didn’t matter if the melon eating netizens believed this explanation or not. In any case, this small storm had clearly passed.
Xie Yang summed it up. He felt that this time, he and Hong Zhijie punched each other. He lost a little bit while Hong Zhijie was a bit more injured, but it still didn’t hurt much. Then Qin Cheng called him and Xie Yang changed his evaluation of Hong Zhijie’s injury.
“Huangtian has lost a lot of cooperation and artist endorsements?”
“Yes.” Qin Cheng’s tone was filled with excitement and joy. “All endorsements and cooperation with Rongding have been lost. The endorsements and cooperation that Huangtian lost have been switched to Yang Xing.”
Xie Yang’s eyebrows rose up.
“Xie Yang, you… really married well!”
Xie Yang hung up on Qin Cheng and digested the information for a long time. Then he called Qiu Xing. Qiu Xing answered in seconds but didn’t speak.
Xie Yang wondered, “The mouse has come to show his territory?”
The two people previously hadn’t made an explicit agreement but they usually consciously and tacitly avoided interfering too much with each other’s business. They tried not to let the companies of both parties intersect. However, now Qiu Xing took the initiative to break the ‘non-interference’ agreement between the two people.
There had been no intersection on the surface, which meant they could withdraw cleanly at any time. The establishment of contact represented a certain determination to accept and enter the other person’s life. Xie Yang knew that Qiu Xing had to know the meaning of this.
“What mouse!” Qiu Xing reprimanded. Then his tone became noble and cold. “It is just Huangtian. Is it worth struggling with them for so long?”
Xie Yang smiled. “It isn’t that I want to struggle with them. It is that Yang Xing hasn’t risen up yet and I have to be as careful as possible.”
“What do you have to be careful of? They are just weaned people who are acting as grown ups. Don’t you know that you aren’t the same as before? You have someone in your family… Instead of dealing with them, you better go to sleep early!”
Xie Yang was unable to hold back and laughed. The phone was quiet and it was only after a long time that Qiu Xing’s low voice was heard. “Promise… tell me if something happens in the future.”
6th Anniversary Event Page
Proofreader: Mnemo & Paranoid Kitten
Comments