This Guy Has Two Faces
You’re an idiot, you’re an idiot, you’re an idiot
A gym was added to Luo Ke’s duplex apartment after all. A fitness coach came over every week to provide guidance, check on their progress, and set up the fitness plan for the following week.
Every day, Lin Sifei would howl that she didn’t want to work out, but she’d still obediently get on the treadmill and drag Luo Ke along with her.
Luo Ke wasn’t used to this kind of training at first either, but after three days, she had more or less adapted and was now the one dragging Lin Sifei to their sessions.
You couldn’t deny that the training was very effective. Lin Sifei looked at her toned arms in the mirror and took a deep breath. “Persevere. Perseverance is victory.”
“Right, didn’t you want to sign with a company before?” Luo Ke got off the treadmill and handed her a document. “This is a contract for Juluo Culture.”1
“Juluo Culture?” Lin Sifei frowned, thinking. “Isn’t that one of Yuan Corporation’s companies?”
“Yuan Mo made a bad call, so I took over a few of their companies. This is one of them.”
Hearing that, Lin Sifei happily took the contract. She was more than willing to take advantage of Yuan Mo. The moment she opened it, the four large, glaring words “Share Transfer”2 were at the top of the document.
She closed the contract and handed it back with a deadpan expression. “You gave me the wrong one.”
“I didn’t.” Luo Ke opened the contract again and slapped a pen down in front of her. “From now on, you’ll be a shareholder of Juluo Culture, holding twenty percent of the shares.”
“No way, why are you giving me shares?”
Luo Ke leaned against the table, her eyes darting around. “You can think of it as a gift.”
Lin Sifei sighed and shook her head. “I can’t accept this. Do you—do you have to make it seem like you’re my sugar mommy?”
“It’s just a portion of the shares. In the future, your status at Juluo Culture will be that of a shareholder, so no one will dare to pull any tricks on you.”
“How about this,” Lin Sifei said, closing the contract. “I’ll film shows, win awards, and earn money. Once I’ve proven my value is enough to deserve the shares in this contract, I’ll naturally discuss shares with Juluo Culture.”
Luo Ke didn’t understand. “There’s no need to beat around the bush like this.”
“There is a need!” Lin Sifei’s brows furrowed, and she waved her hand dismissively. “I can’t explain it to you. Today’s workout is over. You should go to work. I have plans with a friend.”
Lin Sifei walked to the door, plopped a bucket hat3 on her head, put on a pair of large sunglasses, and pulled the door open to leave.
Luo Ke stood by the table, staring at the contract in front of her before turning her head away.
“Fine, don’t take it.” She slammed the folder shut, changed her clothes, and grabbed her bag to head to the company.
Lin Sifei didn’t have a driver’s license, so she was walking along the road in the residential complex. Luo Ke drove up beside her and rolled down the window. “Who are you meeting? Where? I’ll give you a ride.”
Lin Sifei licked her lips. She hadn’t actually made plans with anyone; she’d just realized she was in a bad mood and wanted to go out to cool her head.
She glanced at Luo Ke’s cold expression and didn’t dare tell the truth. “It’s okay, it’s not too far. I can just grab a cab. You should hurry up and get to work.”
Luo Ke’s face darkened. What kind of friend does she have to be so secretive about, so insistent on rushing me to work?
“I don’t have much work today. Let me give you a ride.” She forced a smile. “What? Afraid I’ll meet your friend?”
“Of course not.” Lin Sifei flinched, terrified of being exposed. “I’m just afraid of holding you up.”
She walked around to the passenger side, got in the car, and immediately grabbed her phone to scroll through her WeChat contacts. It seems I really don’t have any friends I can just call out to hang out with!
It couldn’t be helped. She was either a cat or she was filming. The rest of her time was spent with Luo Ke, so she really didn’t have time to make friends.
She thought for a moment, her finger sliding past Li Jing’s profile picture. She’d definitely snitch to Luo Ke. She turned her attention to the members of the production team.
Chen Qiyuan ran off to the next production team to play a bit part4 as soon as filming ended. My relationship with Lu Heng is okay, but I don’t know if he’s free.
She sent him a message to ask.
【Lu Heng-ge,5 you free to see a movie?】
【Lu Heng: ?】
【Lu Heng: I am, but I’m surprised you’d ask me out.】
【Lin Sifei: I’m out of options. I told Luo Ke I was meeting a friend.】
【Lu Heng: …You two had a fight.】
【Lu Heng: Send me the address.】
Lin Sifei sent him the address.
Luo Ke drove, watching her chat for what felt like an eternity, a stifling feeling growing in her chest. “You two seem to have a pretty good relationship, chatting for so long.”
“We only exchanged a few messages.” Having resolved the crisis, Lin Sifei let out a sigh of relief, an unconscious smile appearing on her face. “He said he’s on his way out too.”
Seeing her look so happy right after sending that message, Luo Ke felt even more suffocated. But she had no outlet for her frustration, and after holding it in for a while, she ended up bringing up the old matter again.6
“Why did you refuse the shares?”
Lin Sifei had run out precisely because she didn’t want to talk about this anymore. She sighed. “You wouldn’t understand even if I told you.”
The traffic light ahead turned red. Luo Ke slammed on the brakes and turned to glare at Lin Sifei. “I’ll have even less of a chance of understanding if you don’t tell me.”
Lin Sifei let out a long sigh. “To put it simply, it’s the common ailment of artsy types being pretentiously aloof.7 Get it now?”
“But when you were filming the movie before, weren’t you pretty bold when you asked for money?”
Lin Sifei slapped her forehead in frustration. “That was an investment. You could make your money back. This is a share.”
“Shares can give you a return too, as long as you bring enough profit to the company.”
Lin Sifei exhaled in exasperation. “This is why I said you don’t get it. A shareholder needs to provide long-term returns. I can give you feedback on a single movie investment with tangible box office numbers, but long-term benefits can’t be judged that way. I can only take shares once I can prove my value.”
“I get it now.” Luo Ke tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “I’m just giving you shares because I hope you won’t get bullied, but you insist on getting serious about calculating value.”
“I don’t want a status my virtue doesn’t deserve,”8 Lin Sifei said, crossing her arms and looking out the window. “I already told you I’m being pretentiously aloof.”
The honking of the car behind them sounded, forcing the words in Luo Ke’s throat back down. She drove in silence and dropped her off next to the mall.
Lin Sifei unbuckled her seatbelt. “I’m going.”
“Mm.”
Seeing her cold attitude, Lin Sifei let out a cold huff, lifted her chin, and got out, slamming the car door heavily behind her.
She sent Lu Heng a message describing the sculpture she was standing near, and soon enough, he arrived wearing sunglasses.
Lin Sifei greeted him with a smile. “Let’s go. Is there a movie you want to see? I haven’t bought tickets yet, so we can watch whatever you like.”
Lu Heng raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like the fight was pretty bad.”
Lin Sifei pouted. “She’s too good to me.”
Lu Heng stumbled a step and clutched his heart dramatically. “Is this a new way of showing off your relationship?”
“It’s not,” Lin Sifei said seriously. “She’s insisting on giving me shares of Juluo Culture because she’s afraid I’ll get bullied after I sign.”
“Stop!” Lu Heng held his hands up in a cross. “Okay, I get it, you’re not showing off. Just don’t say any more, my heart can’t take it.”
Lin Sifei shot him a look, then thought about what she’d just said. It did sound a bit like she was showing off, so she shut her mouth.
Although Lin Sifei had said she was meeting someone to hang out, she didn’t actually know what to do, so the two of them headed straight for the movie theater.
As soon as they walked in, Lin Sifei noticed that the promotional posters were all for the same historical costume drama. She looked at the man on the poster and frowned. “This actor looks a little familiar.”
Lu Heng glanced over, then quickly looked away. “The Film Emperor Feng Tingyun. You don’t know him?”
“Oh, I know of him.” The relevant plot points about Feng Tingyun and Yan Yafei flashed through Lin Sifei’s mind, and she looked away in disgust.
She pursed her lips. “Let’s watch this one.”
Lu Heng’s eyes widened slightly in surprise, a hint of reluctance in them, but he still nodded like a gentleman and paid for the tickets.
“Hey, I said it was my treat.”
“You can pay next time we go out.”
Lin Sifei scratched her head, embarrassed. She thought about it for a second and decided not to argue, buying drinks and snacks with him before they went inside.
Lin Sifei took out her phone to put it on silent. Lu Heng, sitting next to her, couldn’t hold back his curiosity. “Why’d you want to see a Feng Tingyun movie?”
“To see if his acting is any good. Everyone hypes him up so much, I wanted to see for myself,” Lin Sifei said arrogantly.
“You’ve never seen any of his other work?” Feng Tingyun was, after all, a renowned Film Emperor. Lu Heng was a little surprised.
Lin Sifei glanced at him. “I’m so busy, where would I find the time?”
That really wasn’t an excuse. Before her showdown with Luo Ke, she had time when she was a cat, but she didn’t dare watch TV shows or movies. Later, when she could turn back into a person, she was busy with casting and filming her movie. Feng Tingyun wasn’t in her casting range, and she was so incredibly busy that she really hadn’t seen his work.
Hearing this, Lu Heng couldn’t help but laugh. “He’d probably be pissed to death if he heard that.”
“Are you and Feng Tingyun close, Lu Heng-ge?” If they are, he could help me when it’s time to break him and the female lead up.
The smile on Lu Heng’s face froze for a second. “Not really. We just knew each other back when I was first starting out. Now that the gap between us is so huge, it wouldn’t be right for me to try and get close to him.”
Lin Sifei patted his shoulder. “It’s a shame, Lu Heng-ge. If you had more of those male lead resources, you could’ve developed that kind of screen presence.”
“Plenty of actors have a strong presence the first time they’re the lead. I guess it’s a kind of talent. They just have that protagonist face.9 Me, I’ve got a supporting character face.” Lu Heng seemed to have come to terms with it; perhaps he just didn’t have what people called a protagonist face.
“Don’t improperly belittle yourself.”
Just as she finished speaking, the lights went out and the movie began. Lin Sifei couldn’t talk anymore and sat quietly in her seat to watch.
The movie’s plot was simple: a Xianxia Romance Film.10 The male lead was the female lead’s Shizun,11 and the two of them cultivated on an immortal mountain. The female lead fell for her handsome Shizun, but in reality, they were fated mortal enemies. Their souls had been damaged in a great war a thousand years ago, and they had each devoured a part of the other’s. A thousand years later, they were unconsciously drawn to each other, only to realize when their divine souls12 awakened that for their souls to become whole, one must devour the other.
The Shizun attacked the female lead, seemingly with fatal intent, but his true goal was to force her to harden her heart and kill him instead. In the end, the Shizun was killed, the female lead was kept in the dark forever, and she embarked on the Path of Apathy.13
The film’s cinematography was magnificent, and the score was perfectly suited. Watching Feng Tingyun’s performance, Lin Sifei couldn’t help but nod. His acting is pretty good. It’s just a shame he fell for the female lead; his brain isn’t all there.
The movie ended, but Lin Sifei sat motionless in her seat. Lu Heng looked at her strangely. “What’s wrong?”
“He acted really well.” It’d be great if I could work with him once.
Lin Sifei looked at Lu Heng seriously. “Lu Heng-ge, what kind of person do you think Feng Tingyun is? What’s his character like? Is he easily brainwashed?”
“Him? He’s a bit of an idiot. As for his character… if ‘character’ means selling a persona14 all day that’s the complete opposite of who you really are, then his is rotten to the core.”
Lin Sifei let out a disappointed “Oh.” Selling a persona was usually the company’s business, but if the artist was a complete puppet and also an idiot, then even good acting was useless.
“What a letdown. Let’s go.” Lin Sifei stood up, and a person in the row in front of them shot up as well.
Lin Sifei yelped in fright, clutching her chest and dodging to the side.
A man in a beige trench coat grabbed Lu Heng by the collar. “Silly Roe Deer,15 what did you just say?! Who’s an idiot!”
Lu Heng put on his sunglasses, his face expressionless. “Sorry, sir. You have the wrong person.”
The author has something to say:
President Luo (sitting in the car): Is my posture for throwing money around wrong?
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