Your Scandals Are Way Cuter Than You

“You ask why we have this big ship logo?” Jiang Ying sat on the back seat of the car, pinching soft-shelled walnuts casually. “I don’t know, it popped up one day I guess? I don’t remember clearly.”

Assistant Chen only got that logo after chatting with his girlfriend for three years straight. So, he felt stuffy in his chest when he found out about Jiang Ying and Qi Zhu’s big ship, which was acquired by their daily quarrels. It felt blasphemous, somehow.

The organizer’s gift looked quite pleasing, so Jiang Ying brought it with him in the end. The fat penguin doll was very comfortable to rub and squish.

“Don’t worry about the things on Weibo, the company will help remove the hot searches tonight.” Assistant Chen urged.

“Don’t worry, I promise not to fight further, especially not on my main account.” Jiang Ying hugged the penguin doll and swore, “This is just my personal opinion. I think netizens these days should think more about the consequences when they say bad things about people behind their backs.”

“That’s right. Oh, uhm…” Chen Shu said as he remembered something, “There is a new TV drama series that the company wants you to audition for.”

“Which one?” Jiang Ying’s hand, which was pushing the car’s handle, paused for a moment.

“An adaptation of a huge IP, it was popular a while ago. It was a xianxia1Chinese immortal fantasy story; featuring cultivators, demons, etc tragedy, called ‘Auspicious Snow2“瑞雪”, It’s from 瑞雪兆丰年, “auspicious snow heralds a good year”’.” 

“Which role should I audition for?” Jiang Ying rubbed the penguin doll in his hand, “It must not be the male lead. I know myself, with my current status and popularity, I can’t afford to play the main male lead.” 

Assistant Chen said with a smile: “The director wants you to play the biggest villain in the drama, Xuan Moling.”

“Why?” Jiang Ying was puzzled.

“Because…” Assistant Chen paused for a few seconds, speaking quickly, hoping that Jiang Ying wouldn’t hear him clearly, “The director thinks that you already act like a villain in real life. If you are beaten up by the protagonist, most netizens should like it.”

“This is the director’s original words,” Chen Shu hurriedly added, scared that Jiang Ying would shoot the messenger, “And this is also voted by netizens! 100% genuine public opinion.” 

Jiang Ying: “???”

“I won’t act.” Jiang Ying refused, “I may be controversial, but even I don’t want to lose my face3the concept of face is like ‘public image’ and ‘pride’..”

Holding the penguin doll in one hand and the paper bag Qi Zhu gave him in the other, he pushed the door and got out of the car. “My acting skills are bad. A lot of hard work has been poured on the original work and the script of this drama, right? My poor acting skill would just harm it, so I won’t act in it.” 

Jiang Ying waved to Assistant Chen under the street lamp and went home.

Chen Shu looked at the direction Jiang Ying left, shook his head helplessly, and made a call.

“He disagreed?” Jiang Xun asked on the other end of the phone.

“Yes, he disagreed.” Chen Shu said, “He said that the reason is, and I quote, ‘my poor acting skill would just harm a good script, so I won’t act in it.’“

“I’ll talk to him later.” Jiang Xun sighed in his heart, then hung up the phone.

Qi Zhu was not cute, but the penguin was adorable. Jiang Ying put the penguin doll on the bedside, and turned his attention to the smart speaker. According to the manual, this was an artificial intelligence that could talk, and could even adjust its own voice according to the conversation. Some functions.

“Hello, I’m Xiao Gua4gossip classmate is “Xiǎo Guā Tóng Xué” 小瓜同学 (literal: Classmate Little Melon, but melon is a slang for gossip), and it speaks in third person.” The smart speaker greeted him after the power was plugged on.

“Childish.” Jiang Ying glanced at the speaker, but did not respond further.

“My hobby is singing, what’s your hobby?”

“My hobbies…” Jiang Ying’s interest was aroused, so he replied to the childish machine, “It’s too fresh and refined, you won’t understand.”

Vegetarian5in this case, it’s referred at how he’s happy to stagnate in his career; not ambitious actor Jiang Ying had a cheerful personality and few hobbies. Except for verbal fights and trolling his trolls, his other hobbies would be ‘eating melons’ – especially about his fellow celebrities’ dirt and juicy hearsays.

Others might forget after eating it, but Jiang Ying would never forget anything.

No, in fact, he gleefully collected every bit of them.

All of his collection sat prettily on his computer’s hard drive, all labelled up with tidy names and dates.

Who had sung something that went horrendously off-tune, who dated their fans and dumped them, et cetera, et al. He remembered all of them very, very clearly – maybe even more than the original person involved. 

He knew all the delicious scandals and gossip better than those shitty tabloids and marketing accounts6like Pop Crave or allkpop twitter accounts, or Dispatch. They publish gossip articles or break scandals from journalists.. 

Jiang Ying turned on his computer. He found a folder named “Qi Zhu”, then took out a video from the computer desktop and moved it into the said folder. 

This folder is full of all kinds of black materials about Qi Zhu collected by Jiang Ying, ranging from the small ones – Qi Zhu misidentified his fans when he first debuted; to the big ones – Qi Zhu scolding his co-worker on the set. All of these were painstakingly collected and saved by Jiang Ying. 

“Qi Zhu’s scandals are way cuter than him.” Jiang Ying said to himself, “But that can’t be said about the person himself.”

The artificial intelligence speaker behind him captured the name Jiang Ying muttered, and activated the search function by itself: “Qi Zhu, a popular actor, rumored to be the son of the famous director Qi An, whose masterpieces include…”

“Shut up, Xiao Gua.” Jiang Ying turned around when he heard the robotic voice, then  said casually, “Qi Zhu… he is just a frigid monk7as in sexual frigidity; also, the “monk” part does not mean he’s an actual Buddist monk, but my word choice to describe his sexless lifestyle..”

“Information received. The definition of ‘Qi Zhu’ has been updated with the query ‘a frigid monk’. The correct version will be provided next time.” The smart speaker said. 

Jiang Ying: “?”

“Whatever you want.” Jiang Ying gave up correcting this matter further. Anyway, he would not mention Qi Zhu’s name at home often. This wouldn’t bite him in the ass, he was sure.

During the charity dinner’s speech, Jiang Ying pointed his middle finger at Qi Zhu. He noticed it, and that made him miss the middle part of his speech. Somehow, only Jiang Ying noticed Qi Zhu’s blunder.

After the dinner party, he went to the organizer to ask for the video for his collection. His impressive 50 GB of Qi Zhu’s black material folder got a new entry today. 

Qi Zhu, who was perfect in his fans’ eyes, was just a flawed man for him.

After Jiang Ying took a shower, he realized that there were three missed calls on his phone, all from his brother.

“What’s the matter?” Jiang Ying called back.

“Did your assistant tell you about that TV drama?” Jiang Xun asked.

“Ge,” Jiang Ying said solemnly, “What time is it? You are a person who has a sex life. You don’t enjoy your ‘harmonious’ time, but instead you pay attention to your younger brother’s career. Wouldn’t this make Weiwei unhappy?”

“You call him Weiwei? Who let you?” Jiang Xun said, “In any case, I think he is very happy.”

“Don’t change the topic, let’s get down to business.” Jiang Xun forced the topic back, “The role of Xuan Moling in ‘Auspicious Snow’ is voted by the netizen. Plus, the director and dad are old acquaintances. So, I hope you can, at least, try to audition.” 

Jiang Ying was silent for two seconds, and said a little embarrassedly: “Then this old man… haven’t seen an idol drama I starred in? The one where I acted poorly?” 

“He shouldn’t have seen it. But he thinks that the legendary actor’s son’s acting skills wouldn’t be bad.” After two seconds of silence, Jiang Xun said, “Two days from now, at nine o’clock in the morning. Don’t be late. Just get yourself there. For the rest, you can do whatever you want.” 

“He’ll give up on me.” Jiang Ying said confidently, “Based on my poor acting and line reading skills… yeah… ah, by the way, I have a middle school reunion that night. That audition better not run late.” 

“Okay, then. It’s settled.” Jiang Xun wanted to hang up the phone, but he added something first, in a gentler tone: “Happy birthday to you in advance, if you want anything, just tell me on WeChat.”

At 11:30 in the evening, one of WeChat groups on Jiang Ying’s mobile phone became lively.

[Qi Jun]: Big-Clawed Crab! Jiang Ying, are you there? 

[Zheng Yinyin]: Big-Clawed Crab.

[Big-Clawed Crab]: Here I come! QuackingLaugh.jpg

[Qi Jun]: Are you coming to the party the day after tomorrow?

[Big-Clawed Crab]: Of course! I must attend! 

[Zheng Yinyin]: We might haven’t seen each other much after graduation, but I think we are still closer than ever. 

[Qi Jun]: Yup. I agree.

[Qi Jun]: True, true. When we were still  in school, Jiang Ying was a regular at being criticized by the morning announcements. And now Jiang Ying is a frequent guest on Weibo hot search for some scandals or other things. It totally evokes the feeling of you are here all the time, you know. Like you never left to begin with. You never change, huh. 

[Big-Clawed Crab]: …

[Qiao Yue]: Big-Clawed Crab, let’s get down to business. Is Qi Zhu coming to the reunion party?

[Qi Jun]: He doesn’t seem to use WeChat, and he hasn’t responded on QQ yet. Jiang Ying, you should go and ask on our behalf. Although you two always quarrel, you were deskmates for a long time. I remember that you seem to be still in touch with him?

[Big-Clawed Crab]: Okay, okay. I’ll go ask him now. I’ll make sure to complete the task. Idol’s honor!

Jiang Ying looked at the time. Qi Zhu probably wouldn’t sleep at 10:30 in the evening. He switched back to QQ and clicked on the [Class Leader] chat interface. The conversation between the two still stopped at Qi Zhu’s last reply from two hours ago: ‘oh’. 

Jiang Ying has always felt that Qi Zhu was a bit boring. Forget about WeChat, even his QQ profile picture was still the default penguin one.

[Big-Clawed Crab]: [Poke poke]

[Big-Clawed Crab]: [Poke poke]

[Big-Clawed Crab]: [Poke poke]

[Class Leader]: Hello, I’m currently away for something. I’ll contact you later.

With no other choice, Jiang Ying had to dig out Qi Zhu’s number from his address book and called him directly.

Qi Zhu was reading a new script in his living room. When he returned to his bedroom, he found a crab profile picture flickering in the lower right corner of his computer. With a slight frown, he put down the script, and opened the QQ dialog box. Before he had time to reply, the other party called him.

“Popular actors sure are busy. They don’t even have time to reply to messages.” As soon as the call was connected, Jiang Ying began to complain.

“No busier than you, someone who is very diligent visiting the hot search. You still have time to have a direct verbal fight with me?” Qi Zhu’s voice was faint, and no emotion could be detected from that cold tone.

“Hey! I’m not here to quarrel. I’m here for business.” Jiang Ying complained with a faint sigh, “What are you currently doing?”

Jiang Ying heard the rustling of papers from Qi Zhu’s end.

“I’m reading a script from a new drama. The filming will start soon.” Qi Zhu said.

“Then I won’t disturb you, I’ll get down to business quickly.” Jiang Ying sped up his speech, “Qi Zhu, you…”

Jiang Ying’s voice was interrupted by a cold, robotic voice. Qi Zhu was surprised, as he heard—

“Qi Zhu… Qi Zhu is a frigid monk!”

Qi Zhu: “???”

Jiang Ying: “…”

This was not artificial intelligence.

This was artificial stupidity.

He’s rivaling Gu Wei’s pit digging ability huh ╰(▔∀▔)╯

If you can, please support me by donating on my ko-fi~ For every 2 ko-fis, I’ll release an additional chapter ^^

1Chinese immortal fantasy story; featuring cultivators, demons, etc2“瑞雪”, It’s from 瑞雪兆丰年, “auspicious snow heralds a good year”3the concept of face is like ‘public image’ and ‘pride’.4gossip classmate is “Xiǎo Guā Tóng Xué” 小瓜同学 (literal: Classmate Little Melon, but melon is a slang for gossip), and it speaks in third person5in this case, it’s referred at how he’s happy to stagnate in his career; not ambitious6like Pop Crave or allkpop twitter accounts, or Dispatch. They publish gossip articles or break scandals from journalists.7as in sexual frigidity; also, the “monk” part does not mean he’s an actual Buddist monk, but my word choice to describe his sexless lifestyle.