—Friends grabbing a meal together is completely normal. Marketing accounts, no need to be so snide. If you’ve got that much free time, go hit “remind me” on my guy’s upcoming drama instead [Night Walker reservation link]
—Just friends having dinner. Stay tuned for Lu Chen’s upcoming works: Night Walker, Code Name Thunder, Long Night Before Dawn.
—I don’t know if the person eating is really Lu Chen. All I know is Lu Chen’s spy drama Night Walker has locked in a CCTV slot. Stay tuned! [cheering]
—As everyone knows, whoever’s name comes first bought the Hot Search! Even a meal gets hyped now. Some people are obscure for a reason! With character like that, they deserve to flop straight through to the earth’s core!
—My Brother Chen is kind and too quick to trust people. I can only warn certain people: give them an inch and they’ll take a mile [angry]
—Solo Stan Sister, don’t work yourself up. It’s just two friends sharing a meal, no? Why the personal attacks? [doge]
—Yesterday’s Hot Search said the two barely exchanged two words on the show, that they were just alumni who weren’t close? So how come they’re sitting across from each other eating today?
—Teetering right on the edge of this rabbit hole. Can someone summarize the sweet moments? Feels like a good ship [peeking]
@Sweet Chen-Nian Past: [Super Topic: Lu-Zhi Known to All] Anyone with sharp eyes, help me out here—is this a mosquito bite or… [drooling] [YeZhinianEatingHotpotEnlargedCloseup.jpg]
—Married ten years here, let me tell you: no need to doubt, that’s a strawberry [doge]
—It’s not even May—where would mosquitoes come from? And even if one existed, it’d be a 1.82-meter human-shaped mosquito [doge]
—Not just 1.82 meters, but also single-lidded, a boy band captain, an actor, and a fashion ICON [doge]
—But aren’t strawberries red? This one’s gone all bruised-purple.
—Little one, run along and do your homework. The Super Topic isn’t for you at this hour [head pat]. Strawberries are red when they’re freshly “planted,” but after a while they turn into bruises. And I must say, Niannian’s cool-toned fair skin really makes the strawberry pop.
—He’s doing it on purpose, right? Does he not own a mirror? If this isn’t a blatant flex, what is?
—Not necessarily. The strawberry’s positioned pretty low—an ordinary collar would cover it. If Niannian hadn’t happened to be hunched over his food, it never would’ve shown.
—Flexing is fair game, no? Look at how they act on the show—they have zero idea how normal friends behave. The story leaks from every seam [doge]
—Ah! What I want to know right now is when the sweet-moment edits drop. After a livestream variety show ends, don’t the content creators start cutting highlight videos right away?
When Lu Chen answered Mi Yan’s call, he had just laid a slice of freshly blanched Diaolong Ribeye onto the plate in front of Ye Zhinian. The instant he heard what Mi Yan said, he reflexively glanced at Ye Zhinian.
Ye Zhinian had been buried in his food, but who knew how his radar was built—barely a second of scrutiny and he lifted his head, on alert.
“What’s wrong?”
Lu Chen didn’t answer, speaking into the phone instead. “Understood. Handle it the same way as last night. Mm. Mm. Right. We’re leaving now.”
Ye Zhinian frowned, set down his chopsticks, and pulled out his phone. One swift scan of Weibo later, he wordlessly picked up his hat and put it on—his gaze lingering, mourning, on the unfinished Diaolong Ribeye and Shangnao Chuck.
Seeing this, Lu Chen thought for a moment, raised a hand to flag the waiter, and pointed at the beef left on the table. “Pack this up. Also add one full order of everything on the menu and pack that too—I’m taking it with me. Please hurry.”
The waiter nodded and left. Lu Chen then lowered his voice to Ye Zhinian. “Drive ahead without me. I’ll have Brother Mi come pick me up in a bit.”
Ye Zhinian sighed, didn’t waste time dawdling, and—under cover of a parting handshake with Lu Chen—grabbed the car keys and left.
Another ten-odd minutes passed before Lu Chen boarded the Nanny Van, arms stacked high with packed ingredients.
Mi Yan sat in the passenger seat. Eyeing the towering pile of takeout boxes in Lu Chen’s arms, he smirked. “Think of it as an early preview. Time to get adjusted. Once you two go public, this will be your normal—every time you step outside, you’ll both be giant pandas in the zoo.”
Lu Chen scoffed. “This time was just bad luck—the place happened to have no private rooms, and we took our hats off halfway through the meal… What are you looking at? We’ve never been spotted before!”
Mi Yan regarded him with disdain. “Then was then; now is now. That CP you pushed with your own two hands—do you have any idea how hot it is? Even if you don’t, doesn’t crashing the top ten of Weibo’s main Hot Search chart on pure organic traffic yesterday tell you everything? Sir, open your eyes and look around. The times have changed!”
Lu Chen fell silent. Just as Mi Yan thought he was finally beginning to reflect, he heard him murmur into the stack of boxes, “I thought it was strange too. I haven’t even started flexing yet. Where did all this heat come from?”
Mi Yan turned to face front, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared straight ahead, using posture and expression in vivid combination to convey his true inner feelings—
Hopeless. Terminal love-brain. Even a zombie would glance at that brain and mutter “bad omen” before walking away.
While Lu Chen remained utterly baffled, Xu Zhenzhen had just dropped Liu Chen off at a magazine office.
After two days of livestreaming, Liu Chen’s public standing had recovered somewhat. Striking while the iron was hot, she’d bought a cover and exclusive interview with a second-tier women’s magazine and, folding in feedback from every corner of public opinion, tailored a full interview script just for Liu Chen.
She didn’t expect one magazine to fully redeem him—it was only necessary groundwork. As long as the feature could earn him points at the right moment, that was enough.
Leaving her assistant to keep a close watch on Liu Chen, Xu Zhenzhen stepped out of the studio and called the company’s PR department.
“Dig up anything useful?”
“Nothing. On the surface, Ye Zhinian and Lu Chen are simply high school alumni, but…”
“But what?” Xu Zhenzhen pressed impatiently.
“Ahem. There’s a theory spreading online that the person Lu Chen secretly loved in high school was Ye Zhinian,” the head of PR answered in a small voice.
The rumor had first crawled out of the Lu-Zhi Known to All CP Super Topic. Wild claims from CP Fans were never credible—but once the livestream ended and the fan editors descended, the rumor ran rampant and began spreading outward in earnest.
“Secretly in love…” Xu Zhenzhen murmured, brow knotted tight, half believing, half doubting.
Though she was Liu Chen’s manager, he wasn’t her only artist, and she hadn’t had the energy to follow the livestream from start to finish; everything she knew about public sentiment had been relayed secondhand by her PR staff.
She’d known about the secret-love theory, but had filed it away as CP fan delusion. And yet today, Ye Zhinian and Lu Chen’s dinner had landed on Hot Search…
Xu Zhenzhen drew a deep breath, instructed the PR department to keep monitoring all coverage of Ye Zhinian and Lu Chen, and hung up.
She’d been fretting over this for two days. Partly because the rise of Lu-Zhi Known to All had already disrupted her bundling plan—only the decent livestream results had kept her in wait-and-see mode—and partly because of the pressure from her madman boss, Fang Chengyuan.
The mere memory of Fang Chengyuan’s reaction upon seeing the Lu-Zhi Known to All Hot Search last night had Xu Zhenzhen rubbing her temples.
But worry as she might, the work still had to get done. Checking the time, she returned to the studio to supervise Liu Chen’s cover shoot, then—once it wrapped—ordered her assistant to see him safely home and drove off to a gathering with her best friends.
Not until she reached the private room did Xu Zhenzhen truly relax. Half a bottle of red wine in with her two friends, she began pouring out her grievances.
No one on earth dislikes gossip. Even being used as an emotional dumping ground, the chance to hear the entertainment industry’s untold secrets left neither friend remotely bored; both listened with relish, chiming in with questions.
“Is your boss in love with Ye Zhinian or something? Why else care this much?”
Xu Zhenzhen waved a hand through wine-hazed eyes, swallowing her mouthful before answering. “Nothing like that. He’s just psychologically twisted. Watching his ex-wife’s career flourish has him green with envy, and he’s dead set on stomping Brilliance into the dirt.”
“But what does that have to do with whether Ye Zhinian terminates his contract?” the other friend asked curiously, refilling Xu Zhenzhen’s glass.
“Think about it. If Ye Zhinian really is dating Lu Chen, and the man is held in Fang Chengyuan’s grip, couldn’t he use it to threaten Wang Can into surrendering resources? Even if Lu Chen and Wang Can wouldn’t be intimidated—with Ye Zhinian in his hands, could Lu Chen just stand by and watch the person he loves get crushed? One way or another, Fang Chengyuan tears off a piece of flesh.”
Lowering her voice deliberately, Xu Zhenzhen went on, “And most importantly—the reason he clung to Ye Zhinian’s contract like life itself in the first place is that Wang Can once approached Ye Zhinian, handed him her card, and told him to come to Brilliance the moment he terminated, promising him an A-Grade Contract. When Fang Chengyuan found out, he detonated on the spot!”
Right palm up, Xu Zhenzhen pressed her fingers together and flung them apart in an explosion, then shook her head and took another sip of wine.
“He sat on Ye Zhinian’s contract for three years. The only way I could talk him into agreeing to the termination was on the condition that we bundle Ye Zhinian and Liu Chen together. Only the thought that Ye Zhinian might go to Brilliance—that he could keep bleeding his ex-wife through the bundling—made the madman finally relent. And now, thanks to Lu Chen’s appearance, the whole plan is about to die in the womb.”
The more Xu Zhenzhen spoke, the angrier she got, slapping the table. “That bastard Fang Chengyuan loses his mind the instant his ex-wife comes up! He wants me to confirm the true nature of Ye Zhinian and Lu Chen’s relationship before Utopia’s second livestream begins, or he’d rather kill a hundred innocents than let one guilty man slip—he’ll void the contract on the spot. Tell me, is he sick or what? Liu Chen is my one and only money tree, and he just has to snap him in half. He may not want to make money, but I do, damn it!”
“Okay, okay, calm down. Who hasn’t had a bastard boss? Drink, drink.”
Round after round of toasts later, all three were thoroughly drunk. One of the friends asked, “So how do you… plan to investigate… Ye Zhinian and Lu Chen’s… relationship?”
Sprawled across the table, swirling her wineglass between two fingers, Xu Zhenzhen smiled bitterly. “How am I supposed to investigate…? I’m no Sherlock Holmes…”
“How about… posting on Moments to ask?” The other friend was clearly far gone, giggling as she fished out her phone. “Isn’t there that… thing… the six-degrees-of-separation rule? Maybe… hiding in our own friend circles are… legendary dragons and phoenixes… hic~”
“Post it, post it! If you actually turn someone up, I’ll send you a fat red packet!” Xu Zhenzhen grinned, tilting her chin in encouragement.
“Deal! You said it!”
Emboldened by alcohol, this particular phoenix chick posted a Moments update asking friends and family whether anyone knew the relationship between Ye Zhinian and Lu Chen. Posting done, she wagged her phone smugly at Xu Zhenzhen and the other friend, and all three, howling with laughter, called the server over and opened another bottle of red.
The three women carried on until eleven at night before summoning designated drivers and dispersing. Thanks to a tolerance honed over years of business banquets, Xu Zhenzhen retained a sliver of clarity—and now that she was idle, she couldn’t help pulling out her phone and logging into every major social app to track the sentiment.
What she saw stopped her cold. In just five or six hours, across every major social platform and long- and short-form video site alike, every single tag related to Lu-Zhi Known to All had hit the trending lists—some had climbed straight to number one.
Phone cradled in her hands, staring at this golden age belonging to Lu-Zhi Known to All, Xu Zhenzhen went completely numb—
She’d only been offline for a few hours. How had the sky turned over?
In truth, all of it had been traceable.
Back when livestream variety shows first emerged as a form of entertainment, fan editors were already recording screens, cutting highlight clips, and promoting their idols to wider fame.
