HOYSE CHAPTER 56

Chapter 56 — Proximity Has Perks

On the plane, Director Liu Yu sat beside Gu Xi and said, “Off screen this time, you and Rong Jing should keep your distance and act like strangers.”

Gu Xi didn’t answer, but his eyes seemed to speak. He looked at the director as if he disagreed, yet also seemed unsure.

Liu Yu said, “I know your choice wasn’t selfish. You spotted a promising kid and wanted to lift him up. I get it. Outsiders don’t. From the outside, we made a huge show of casting and then picked someone with a black résumé. If you were a netizen, you’d suspect a backroom deal too. The public doesn’t want ‘truth,’ they want gossip.”

Gu Xi said, “Didn’t you also say we need publicity?”

Liu Yu replied, “Depends on the kind. The negative spillover is beyond what we expected. The producer wants us to tamp it down.”

“You say that, then for all those past rumors about me, do I need to run the same play every time?” Gu Xi countered.

“Is that comparable? Were any of them about to act opposite you? Times have changed. Your value can touch the ceiling now. If you two show any interaction off screen and people start spinning stories from screenshots, old rumors will spread again. If that trashes the reputation we’ve built, will you be willing to see it go? We’ve put the whole house on this film; if we lose, there’s no nest egg left.” He paused. “And there are so many eyes on you, watching through a ten-times magnifier for any slip. They can smear you when you did nothing. If something actually happens, you’ll be kicking a hornet’s nest.”

Gu Xi didn’t respond, so Liu Yu added, “You know the size of your influence. If anything happens between you, Rong Jing’s just starting out. Even a breeze could cut off his path.” 

He didn’t say the key part out loud: Xie Group’s Slantline Entertainment had just signed on for five times the earlier investment, with the condition that the director restore the crew’s reputation, especially for “the newcomer.”

No need to spell out who that meant. When the investor says jump, you execute.

“Besides, you two weren’t close to begin with. This isn’t a hard ask,” Liu Yu said matter-of-factly.

“Not hard,” Gu Xi said. Who told you we weren’t close?

Truthfully, Gu Xi didn’t need the reminder. He had already decided to keep his distance from Rong Jing during the shoot. He wanted to pave Rong Jing a flower-lined road, even if he himself was the obstacle, he wouldn’t allow it.

After landing, Liu Yu opened a three-person chat and pulled in Rong Jing and Gu Xi, repeating to Rong Jing what he’d told Gu Xi.

Rong Jing had come to pick him up, but the arrivals hall was a wall of fans and a sea of reporters. If anyone noticed Gu Xi’s destination was unclear, it would hit the hot list by nightfall. Rong Jing gave up on greeting him, stood back at a distance, and played the passerby.

In a small fan cluster, a girl noticed a man bundled up in a corner: Rong Jing.

He’d kept himself as low-key as possible, as if he believed that not wanting attention would make him invisible. There are always exceptions.

“Luoluo, what are you looking at?”

“Nothing. Xi-Xi’s flight is in, he’s probably at baggage claim,” the girl whispered, quietly snapping a photo of the man in the corner, like a big, abandoned dog curled up quietly, waiting for someone, and tucking it into a hidden album. No other motive: the image just felt poetic and she couldn’t help herself.

She didn’t tell her friends that he was the Alpha who’d helped her pick up a banner at boarding, gentle and gentlemanly. Nor that he’d just trended and been torn to shreds in the comments as a thigh-hugger, hype chaser, show-ruiner…

Luoluo hadn’t piled on. She was a graphics-team fan who just wanted to be a Photoshop machine. She’d seen the group chat say Rong Jing would flop soon and to ignore him. She felt people shouldn’t talk too big since the slapback comes fast. People with a lot of “black marks” either go quiet or rocket up and wash it all clean.

Rong Jing accepted the director’s request as reasonable as it helped both the crew and them. In tricky times, rather than fretting about messy write-ups, better to keep some distance. The director only asked for the filming period, nothing more. In truth, he and Gu Xi had met by chance. After Gu Xi got through his heat, he should have bowed out; he’d only lingered because the tender little cabbage he’d nursed was hard-won.

He DM’d to confirm: “Are you still coming back to my place later?”

Gu Xi: “Not for now. People are watching me closely. I’ll stay at a hotel first.”

Rong Jing paused. “That works.”

As long as the little cabbage was safe, he should set down that habit of cradling responsibility everywhere. The twinge of wistfulness was just a reflex.

He had just stood up when a landslide of screams rolled through the terminal. If not for airport security, people would have rushed over. Reporters were first: “Director Liu, your thoughts on the award?” “Was winning within your expectations?”

Gu Xi smiled as he answered, eyes searching through gaps in the crowd.

He was a little near-sighted, and before landing he’d put in contacts to see better. He finally spotted the man on the steps in the distance. Afraid of being photographed, he was bundled up, head to toe, fully armed, terrified of being recognized. Gu Xi blinked at him.

Rong Jing saw it wasn’t a business smile and couldn’t help responding. He dipped his head, signaling he’d slip away before being spotted. Gu Xi caught the cue and said goodbye with his eyes.

They had barely lifted their hands when passersby blocked their line, and both had to withdraw their gazes to the roiling crowd.

Rong Jing walked along the curb. He waited on the edge of the road and saw a little girl step into the center to pick up her cloth doll and an out-of-control bus barreling toward her.

With an Alpha’s power and mental focus, he could scoop her up and still dodge. A life about to vanish in front of him left no time to think.

He didn’t hear his phone howling in his pocket.

Mid-sprint, a blind spot flashed in his mind. It was afternoon sun and buildings and people all matched that light, except the little girl. The light on her was a noon angle, with a smaller shadow. Since when did sunlight discriminate?

The realization hit like a bucket of cold water. He braked so hard he nearly fell, then sprang backward without thinking.

The scene shifted in an instant. A bus roared past, horn blaring, close enough to brush him. The driver looked spooked. The guy was fast, and he’d almost hit him.

This bus, the one that nearly hit him, was real. If he hadn’t moved, he’d have been struck. As for the little girl in the road… she was gone.

So that had been a hallucination.

Rong Jing stared at his intact body, not in pieces. False alarm. He looked up at the blazing sky as if it were mocking how small he truly was.

From the traffic light at the start, to the manhole later, and now a living figure, each step was an escalation. The blows always came when his guard was down.

This time, it used his compassion.

Had it read his character that well? Because he was compassionate, he deserved it. Who told you to save people? Be sensible and protect yourself. If you stop trying to save others, maybe I’ll spare you.

As if something were whispering that, but how could he? If he let go, the plot would snap back. Those marked for death, including him, would still die. Faces flashed through his mind: soft-hard Xie Ling, unreliable Xie Zhanhong. If he failed, what would be waiting for them?

What stuck with him was that today’s illusion had a flaw, enough to warn him so he could evade. Maybe Heaven hadn’t faced someone this hard to kill and was trying this trick for the first time on a mere human. If it tried more, the illusions might get more real. If one day they were indistinguishable from reality…

Would he still dodge?

Only then did he notice the phone buzzing. It was Gu Xi.

He’d just hung up, and Rong Jing was only now hearing it. Before he could call back, a second call came in.

Gu Xi didn’t speak at first. He’d seen the whole thing and had been scared speechless.

Minutes earlier, surrounded by fans and media, he’d gotten into the car. As it rolled forward, a glance out the window caught Rong Jing sprinting into the street for no reason, with a bus charging down the road. Gu Xi’s heart almost flew out of his chest. He hit the speed-dial.

Rong Jing’s inexplicable move made him think of the manhole incident, both bizarre, with no warning.

“You… you didn’t hear your phone ringing?” Gu Xi forced his voice to steady.

“I heard. Did you see it?” Rong Jing scanned and picked out a low-key nanny van with treated glass rolling by that you couldn’t see in from outside.

“Mm. What happened?”

“Sometimes I get strange hallucinations,” Rong Jing said. “Things other people can’t see that only I can.”

No deflecting this time. Gu Xi wasn’t slow. Since it was the second time, he might as well give half the truth, even if it sounded fantastical.

“You mean you’re a medium?” Gu Xi asked.

Rong Jing huffed a laugh. “Where are you going with that? It’s probably a kind of illness.”

An illness where Heaven has it in for you.

No one can help me. I have to pass the tests myself. If it could strike at will, given how much it wants him dead, it would be daily. It had appeared three times, each after a gap. Could he assume Heaven needed some kind of energy? The more he changed, the more the protagonist suffered, the more the plot splintered, the lower its energy.

“Can it be treated?”

“I’ll keep seeing the doctor. Don’t worry. See how I keep turning danger into nothing.”

“Really?”

“Of course. If I’m lying, then punish me by…”

“No erections,” Gu Xi blurted before his brain.

Silence stunned both ends. Maybe it was that first in-person impression, then hearing Rong Jing mention it on the phone, the phrase had lodged in his head and popped out at the most delicate moment.

Rong Jing: “…”

Rong Jing: “Are you… Gu Xi?” Not a body swap, right?

Gu Xi hung up at once and pretended he hadn’t said it. Everyone in the car was staring. He bristled, embarrassed and annoyed. “What are you looking at? Never seen someone get mad?”

All: …

Never seen someone this guilty and this fierce at the same time.

Rong Jing had played it light, steady even on the edge of danger, but Gu Xi still felt rattled.

“Gu… Gu Xi,” Mo Dian said carefully, “could you let go of me.”

Only then did Gu Xi realize he’d squeezed Mo Dian’s wrist hard enough to bruise it. No wonder his own hand didn’t hurt. He let go, embarrassed, and pulled out the ointment Rong Jing had given him, dabbing it on.

“Why is your bag like Doraemon’s pocket?” Liu Yu said. “It has everything.”

“Someone else stocked it.” Don’t mention the fat blue cat or I’ll start spiraling.

“Who?”

“No one.”

All the way, Gu Xi fell into thought. Was it really just hallucinations, like Rong Jing said?

A few days later, Rong Jing handed company work to two professional managers and his all-purpose assistant Zhou You, packed up, and headed to a hotel near the studio base. The entrance was packed with reporters and cameras, clearly there to interview the crew.

The hotel had strict rules: no unrelated visitors.

Rong Jing showed his crew badge and went in. Most of the team were waiting in the lobby.

From a distance he saw Gu Xi on a chair, chatting with the other lead. When they noticed each other, their eyes met for a beat, then veered away. Strangers. No one clocked it. Everyone assumed they didn’t know each other.

Outside, paparazzi trained lenses on the two rumored names, only to see that they didn’t approach, didn’t speak, didn’t even look each other’s way. That was pretty cold. So Xun Jiarui had made things up. How could Gu Xi be sleeping his way through anything, especially not with a tall, strong Alpha. That would be reversed. Maybe the truth was what Director Liu Yu said: the crew wanted to push a newcomer, and Gu Xi and the newcomer weren’t on good terms.

Among the actors, Rong Jing spotted a familiar face: Qi Ying.

Qi Ying acted like he hadn’t seen him and brushed past. After that candle-lit campus confession, his attitude had been ice. Rong Jing thought, fine, better not to disturb each other.

When rooms were assigned, Rong Jing drew 1209. He didn’t notice Qi Ying craning to peek, and even the assistant director, and Gu Xi flicked glances over.

The production had booked two floors. The director took 1207 beside Rong Jing, and the other side, 1211, was still free. A staffer fanned out a dozen room cards, including 1211. “Too many of you. Pick for yourselves.”

Two hands landed on 1211 at almost the same time.

Qi Ying snapped his head over. Which little b****-

Gu Xi looked over, cool as ice. Who’s trying to tangle right under my eyelids.

You want the advantage of being closest? Did you ask me first?

---

PREVIOUS           TOC           NEXT