CH 16.1

Song Shiyu stared at Ji Fanyin intently as if this was the first time he had truly gotten to know her, but he rationalized her ‘abnormal response’ with his own reasoning.

Ji Fanyin was able to play Ji Xinxin impeccably, so surely she would be able to play a person who doesn’t like me well too. Her nonchalance sure looks convincing. She must treasure her dignity a lot.

Song Shiyu snorted at Ji Fanyin’s pretense and said, “It’s my fault for not managing my schedule properly. You can head back now. I’ll call you again.”

“There won’t be any refunds,” reminded Ji Fanyin.

Song Shiyu looked at her pitifully and said, “It’s just 200,000 dollars. I won’t go to the extent of asking you to refund me.”

One quality which Ji Fanyin demanded from her clients was generosity, and Song Shiyu and Bai Zhou at least qualified on that aspect.

After receiving Song Shiyu’s promise not to pursue a refund, Ji Fanyin’s smile grew more sincere. “Alright, I shan’t get in your way anymore. See you, young master Song.”

She turned her back on Song Shiyu and joyfully made her way home.

What could be better than skipping work for two consecutive days without any repercussions?

Ji Fanyin was planning on heading home to continue her movie marathon till nightfall, but while she was traveling down an escalator, she noticed a poster advertising a recently released film.

It was a niche mystery thriller, and she noticed that the director was someone whose works she had watched over the last few days and had a favorable impression of.

Today was the first day of the movie’s screening.

The moment she arrived at the end of the escalator, she turned around, headed back up, and rushed for the cinema.

It was a weekday, so the cinema was unsurprisingly deserted.

To her delight, the next screening happened to be ten minutes later, so she quickly bought her soda and popcorn before heading into the theater.

She went in expecting to watch a simple mystery thriller, but to her surprise, the movie highlighted human altruism amidst a cesspool of evil. It was filmed in a way that emulated a phone recorded video, taking the angle of an innocent child. Be it the writing, directing, or acting, everything was on the dot. The film was overflowing with feelings, but at the same time, it spurred deeper contemplations about society too.

It’s a rare masterpiece.

Ji Fanyin always entered movie theaters with a serious attitude. By the time she left with an empty popcorn tub in her hands, her eyes had already turned red.

As she tossed the popcorn tub and the soda cup into the rubbish bin, she decided to buy herself some spicy food to drive off the heavy feeling in her heart.

While she was queuing up for a bon bon chicken in the shopping mall’s B1 Gourmet Street, she took out her phone and tapped into her Weibo. She logged onto an account she had recently created to post movie reviews and began penning down her impression of the mystery thriller. (Weibo is a microblog website/application that’s one of the go-to social media platforms in China.)

She was a professional in the film industry in her previous life, so writing reviews weren’t a challenge to her. She was able to keenly pick out the key points of the movie and encapsulate them with in a concise and interesting way. Due to that, she was able to accrue over a thousand fans within less than a week.

The movie she had just watched earlier in the day was newly released and in a niche genre, so there were hardly any professional reviews yet.

It was precisely due to her passion in films that she was extremely careful whenever she wrote a paragraph in the review. She edited it again and again, and all that was left in the end were two key sentences.

“4237!”

Hearing a call from the counter, Ji Fanyin took a look at her receipt before walking over to collect her food. To her surprise, there were familiar faces standing near the counter too—Bai Zhou and his little buddies.

Bai Zhou noticed her too and frowned.