CH 3

February 18, 2021kaychandra

Chapter 3: Family

Translated and Edited by KChandraTL

Gongxi Qiao finished filming two scenes, took off his makeup and drove home, leaving a cadre of crew members staring at his car’s tail in disbelief.

“This car costs more than a million yuan[1], right?” said an extra who was picking at his lunchbox, with a bit of resignation in his eyes. “Good-looking people are the ones who get the spotlight.”

The group didn’t know the details of Gongxi Qiao. They only heard that he had someone behind him. The owner behind him had invested a lot of money in order to get him the role of the third male lead. How could this not make people who had dreamt of stardom in the entertainment circle for years but had no hope of success jealous?

“This circle is just like that, there’s nothing clean,” said a younger extra next to him cynically. “We can’t compete with these good-looking people.”

The few actors next to him heard the conversation and moved a few steps to the side with their lunchboxes, making it clear by their actions that they would never get involved in this conversation.

They were just extras trying to make a living. They would never offend these actors with status. Even if they listened to such words, those who dared to say such things had brains that were filled with water and shaken a few times.

When Gongxi Qiao returned home, he saw his father stir-frying in the kitchen, bare-chested. He took a sip from the glass of water handed to him by his nanny, Aunt Luo, and lazily walked to the kitchen door. He stretched his neck to look and said: “Dad, what are you doing?”

“In order to celebrate you becoming a big star, I, your father, will personally cook a meal for you, and ensure that the color and aroma are perfect so you’ll want to eat it again.” Gongxi Xiong waved his arm, and the gold chain around his neck, which was the thickness of his little finger, shook with it, flashing in the light with a blinding golden light.

Gongxi Qiao, who wasn’t the least interested in cooking, shrank his neck back. “How can it be that easy to become a big star?”

“My son is so good, what can’t he do? Big star’s nothing. Later you have to go out of the country, break out of Asia, into the world.” Gongxi Xiong’s eyes glared and his already serious big face suddenly gave off a bandit look. “Which of the sons of my colleagues are as competitive as you?”

Whenever friends came to their home, Gongxi Xiong would always take them to visit his family’s prize showroom, which contained all of Gongxi Qiao’s awards and trophies from childhood to adulthood, from the smallest “good child” award from kindergarten to the largest trophies from various competitions and art contests, and then watch with satisfaction as his friends showed various envious and jealous expressions.

He turned his head to look around and said, “Where’s mom?”

“What else could she be doing at this hour? She must be dancing in the plaza[2].” Gongxi Xiong carefully served the boiled fish in the pot. He used a cotton cloth to wipe away the oil and juice from the rim of the bowl, let the nanny carry the bowl out, then turned around and skillfully washed the pot, and fried a plate of mushroom and vegetable hearts.

“Go wash your hands, your mother should be coming back soon.” Today their son went to act in a drama. His wife would definitely come back early.

Gongxi Xiong pulled his undershirt on, walked out of the kitchen while wiping his sweat with a towel and asked, “Did anyone in the crew give you a hard time?” The tone of voice was as if as long as Gongxi Qiao said yes, he would sack that person in a minute.

“The people in the crew are very good, and Uncle Yao is the producer. Who would even dare to look at me sideways?” Gongxi Qiao just finished speaking when he heard his mother’s voice ringing out behind him.

“My son is back?” Qiao Lanfen’s chubby cheeks were smiling, and she smiled even wider after seeing Gongxi Qiao. Then she walked to Gongxi Xiong and took out two cotton T-shirts from her bag and stuffed them into his hand. “The air conditioning is on at home. Don’t wear a tank top all the time. Your back will get cold easily.”

After lecturing her husband, Qiao Lanfen turned around and sat down on the sofa and started to talk about someone who had just boasted in front of her about how capable their son was, but in fact was far worse than her own son. Then she took out the latest high-end cell phone produced in Flower Country from her bag and stuffed it into Gongxi Qiao’s hand. She had heard that many young people liked this phone recently, so her son couldn’t be lacking.

Every year, Gongxi Qiao had to change his cell phone several times a year. He reluctantly accepted the phone, which in the eyes of others was a luxury, and silently sighed in the bottom of his heart. It wasn’t easy for him to have such a proper outlook on life under the intense spoiling behavior of his parents.

When the meal started, Gongxi Qiao sat at the table, eating while listening to his parents talk, smiling and nodding every now and then and echoing a few words. When he was reincarnated in this life, he happened to meet his mother when she gave birth to him. After he was born, the family wasn’t in the best of conditions, but his parents never saved half a cent on him. They gave him almost everything they could, treating him like a treasure held in the palm of their hands.

In his previous life, he had three brothers, but because his mother died early and his father was an alcoholic, he went to work at a school as a helper when he was less than eight years old. At the age of fifteen or sixteen he began to make a living in the chaotic world, and simply never experienced true family love. Only in this life did he realize parents could be concerned and question him if he experienced even a single sneeze.

In his previous life, he managed to have the last laugh, but for him, this life was his greatest luck. This warm and comfortable life was something he didn’t dare to think about in his previous life.

No need to scheme all the time, no need to put on a show, no need to force himself to laugh when he was sad, no need to worry when he wanted to laugh. This kind of life was so comfortable that it was like a dream.

“I heard that life in film crews is very hard. Actors need to be taken care of. I asked someone to arrange an assistant for you. Let him accompany you to the crew tomorrow.” Gongxi Xiong touched the cigarette case on the table, but looked at his wife and son sitting beside him, and put his hand back. “If you are wronged, you must come home and tell us. Don’t let me and your mother worry.”

Gongxi Qiao put down the bowl in his hand and nodded. “Dad, don’t worry, I won’t let anyone bully your son.”

“That’s right,” Gongxi Xiong thought deeply, remembering how someone tried to bully his son once, and his son ended up beating the boy to the point that he was crying for his grandfather and grandmother. He couldn’t help but take a few more glances at the simple and harmless youth sitting in front of him, and his heart that had been on edge relaxed for the most part.

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The next day early in the morning, Gongxi Qiao met his father in the living room to arrange a personal assistant. The assistant was called He Peng. He was about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. Although his appearance was ordinary, his eyes were clear. Gongxi Qiao could see that he was a reliable person.

The two of them got into the car together. He Peng drove in the front seat, and Gongxi Qiao went through the script in the back seat. He Peng didn’t talk much from the beginning to the end, which made Gongxi Qiao more satisfied.

When they arrived at the set, everyone noticed that there was an extra personal assistant behind Gongxi Qiao. No one was surprised. No artists who were really rich or valuable would use the crew’s public assistant. For a new actor like Gongxi Qiao, who drove a million yuan luxury car and had a strong background, only having one assistant was already considered low-key.

After changing clothes and putting on makeup, Gongxi Qiao sat leisurely next to him playing mobile games, waiting for his part to start shooting.

Some people in the world only looked dignified if they were sitting upright, while others would look handsome even if they were sitting lazily on a chair with an electric fan and playing games with their cell phones. And without realizing it, his picture became the new favorite background on the cell phone screen of some female staff.

“The next scene, Xiao Qiao and Huaisheng need to prepare,” Director Zhang held up a loudspeaker and asked various staff members to adjust the camera position as well as set up props, and then began the scene where the hero General male lead and the enemy prince male third crossed paths.

The first shot Zhou Huaisheng forgot the words, NG once.

The second time Gongxi Qiao had problems with positioning, another NG.

“I heard that there is a magical flower called No-Mist in the country of Li. If someone accidentally eats it, it will cause people to hallucinate and not be able to distinguish between truth and falsehood. I wonder if Mr. Xu has heard of this flower?” The general dressed in dark robes was sitting at the table. Behind them were diners coming and going. It should have been a noisy atmosphere, yet there was a dark tide between the two of them, so that one could almost ignore the noisy crowd behind them.

“I’m just a rich idler. How could I have ever heard of something so amazing? If a single flower can make people unable to distinguish between truth and falsehood, wouldn’t that throw the world into chaos?” The gentleman in brocade laughed softly in a careless manner, his good-looking peach blossom[3] eyes revealing a faint sense of mockery, “It’s better for the general not to listen to hearsay.”

“Hearsay or the truth, perhaps some people know very well in their hearts.” The general’s eyes harshly swept over this good-looking somewhat excessive wealthy son, “From my, Lu Mou’s, point of view, I would prefer it to be hearsay.”

“Heh,” Xu Ruiheng laughed lightly, his white slender fingers gently squeezed the white porcelain wine glass, his index finger gently traced over the rim of the glass before he said with a light smile, “Who says it isn’t?”

Director Zhang watched the performance of Zhou Huaisheng and Gongxi Qiao behind the monitor, and took a deep breath. Zhou Huaisheng was an actor with acting skills. Among the second-and-third-tier actors, he was considered one of the strong ones. Gongxi Qiao appeared with him, but Zhou Huaisheng didn’t steal the limelight from him. Instead, it was easy to make people pay more attention to Gongxi Qiao, which couldn’t be done just by relying on his face.

The original Xu Ruiheng, before his identity was uncovered, was just like the one played by Gongxi Qiao, with amazing looks, full of talent, yet flirtatious and unrestrained, the object of the obsession of countless women.

The novel used a lot of rhetoric to describe how beautiful Xu Ruiheng is, how he made women crazy, how he made men jealous. Even after his identity was finally revealed, not many readers had ill feelings towards this character.

So this kind of character setting was very difficult for real people to perform the feeling described in the novel. Even Director Zhang himself never thought there could be an actor who would play a vain and exaggerated role so vividly and realistically.

His original intention to reduce the third male lead’s scenes had disappeared without a trace. Now what he needed to worry about instead was how to reasonably increase the third male lead’s scenes – his intuition told him that if the third male lead’s scenes in this drama were increased, the ratings would be much higher.

Two days later, when the majority of Weibo fans were still condemning the behavior of public figures taking drugs and fans defending their idols without distinguishing right from wrong, the official blog of the “Princess of the Closed Moon” cast that didn’t have many fans posted the stills of the new third male lead.

Many netizens who used Weibo weren’t hardcore fans of any artist. For them, whoever looked good was who they were fans of. In the morning they could call the artist their husband, and in the afternoon they called the artist their wife, and in their eyes they didn’t differentiate between men and women, young and old, or even race. As long as they looked good, they would lick the screen for their target, even if the target might be just a cat that looked like a beautiful boy. All of these types of netizens had a wonderful nickname: face fans.

All day, when certain face fans unintentionally saw the posts sent out by “Princess of the Closed Moon”, they were suddenly filled with nothing but a string of the same words, with a large row of exclamation marks.

That was…

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!

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