Almost at the same time that Starlight Records" new artist, a recently popular online sensation, was announced to be releasing a new alb.u.m, the other big label spread the news that Liu De, the prized treasure of Dreamer entertainment, would be cooperating with a subsidiary record label to produce an alb.u.m too.Since the latter had a bigger reputation than the online singer, more attention naturally went to him. A lot of the male lead"s fans were excited since it had already been months since their idol produced some songs.
As for Jiang Li"s alb.u.m, the momentum and hype from the ma.s.ses were not that small, yet it paled in comparison to Liu De. His around five million followers were simply no match with the other"s more than fifteen million.
This could be said to be a natural outcome when competing with somebody favored by the heavens.
"Your alb.u.m will be a flop," once, when Jiang Li greeted the scriptwriter, the woman replied to him with a sneer. After that, she ignored him again.
His co-actor, the one playing the second male leave, a suave prince dressed in light green with a fan in his hand approached him, asking, "Hey, what did you do to make Ms. Tang mad at you? I just noticed that she seems to be always ignoring you or if she doesn"t, her replies or statements were always spicy."
Jiang Li chuckled, "Isn"t she like that to everyone? One time, she even openly scolded our second female lead, Miss Ke, for troubling her to modify some parts of the script just because she couldn"t pull off certain expressions."
From a distance, they could see that the extras playing the roles of commoners had gathered on both sides of the street. There were rows of symmetrical-looking ancient traditional houses on each side but the roofs of those houses were barely visible at a glance due to the countless people around. The scene was where the other male supporting character was parading the streets for some sort of ancient event. In the storyline, this person was the favored son of the emperor to ascend the throne. However, since he was vain and a bit stupid, he would end up overthrown by a commoner-born magistrate, the male lead.
The director dropped his usual line to start the filming, so the place ahead started to become noisy.
Thankfully, since the two actors, who were not yet needed for that part, were quite a distance away, they could at least speak to each other without shouting. Jiang Li saw the scriptwriter taking a seat on a lounge reclining chair under an open tent. She pulled up a tablet where she typed things from time to time while watching the shooting.
"Mr. Jiang." The handsome young man standing beside him noticed where Jiang Li"s eyes were, so he laughed and teasingly said, "I think I know now why our drop-dead gorgeous scriptwriter is like that. You"re too obvious. So she, of course, can only be wary."
"Too obvious in what?" replied the singer to his colleague. There was a smile hanging on his face as he pretended to be oblivious.
"You seem to like her. I mean, Ms. Tang." The dog-like grin from the green-wearing guy widened.
He waited for the actor who came from nowhere yet surprisingly competent in his role to blush or start looking around everywhere. To display typical reactions of somebody whose secrets got found out. He reckoned a calm and soft-spoken guy like Jiang Li would be the shy type or awkward type when it comes to talking about romance.
Who knows where this actor got the idea and the confidence to tease or test somebody older than him by a few years?
A couple of seconds later, he received a response from Jiang Li. But it was not what he was expecting.
The man laughed, looking both valiant and carefree while wearing the black-red heavy-looking armor. "So it"s actually obvious huh. Good."
"Huh? What good? Which guy who has no courage yet to confess would want people to know of their crush on someone?" wondered the other, puzzled.
Jiang Li cracked a slight smile. He sounded like a lunatic, or a fool daydreaming when he said, "Well, I want everyone to know that I want to take Selena Tang home."
"…" "Bro… I never knew you"re that ambitious. I hope you won"t fall to the ground with no bones intact once you soar from a cliff only to realize you have no ability to fly."
The second male lead actor looked around and felt that his colleague was lucky that the extras in the street in front were too noisy so those standing only a couple or so meters away from them did not hear him.
A smile was still on the singer"s face when he looked back at him. The actor thought he probably needed to stay away from the guy for a while in case he did something bad that would implicate others.
…
Jiang Li had not yet forgotten about the alb.u.ms and why the woman told him his own records would be a flop.
While the others, the girl included, were simply thinking it had something to do with being backed by a highly influential person within a major label, he knew that the matter was not that simple.
This was why he fetched his phone from his manager and checked something through it.
He received a message, which was more like a complaint, from Qin Tai.
"The capital is only two hours away from your filming location. You should be available by evening, right?"
"If so, meet me because even though I already have a hunch on what"s going on, I still need to hear the explanation directly from you,"
He took note of the comma after the last word and felt like there was a word that should have been there. He reckoned that Qin Tai was quite annoyed for being pulled into something troublesome. What could be the deleted word? Jerk? Or b.a.s.t.a.r.d?