Divorce Application - Chapter 17

Chapter 17: Strength

Feng Mingming and she were both models, and their types were a bit similar.

To be precise, Feng Mingming only had ancient-style elements in a few famous shows, while Liu Sinan’s was because of Li Jinping.

The Li family was a jewelry dynasty. Since childhood, Li Jinping had been grinding stones with files, buying her own jade, designing her own pieces, and carving them herself.

Her talent was unparalleled; the jewelry she designed was priceless.

The design industry has always been interconnected. Li Jinping discovered Liu Sinan’s classical temperament, magnified it, and ultimately conquered the runway.

Originally, there wasn’t much to compare between Feng Mingming and Liu Sinan, but Feng Mingming was outgoing, and after a while, they became good friends who enjoyed each other’s company.

Liu Sinan still didn’t know where Li Jinping’s rejection of Feng Mingming came from, but she remembered Li Jinping’s words.

“Feng Mingming is too calculating and has too vicious a temper. You are not to associate with her anymore.”

Liu Sinan was stunned. Although Li Jinping often restricted her freedom to make friends, those were usually high-level methods, such as inadvertently revealing her friends’ dark secrets, secretly suppressing them to make them back down, or simply showing a faint disapproval, and her friends would stay away out of fear.

Liu Sinan was slow and a little dense, and it took her a moment to react.

“What’s wrong with Feng Mingming?” Liu Sinan ran her hand through her hair and walked up to Li Jinping. “Why won’t you let me associate with her?”

There was a look of suppressed impatience on Li Jinping’s face, and she didn’t explain. “There is no why. It’s not allowed, that’s it.”

Liu Sinan was so wronged she almost cried. “But she’s my only friend now.”

“Sinan,” Li Jinping paused as she was leaving, her movements elegant but her voice cold. “You had better not have any friends.”

Liu Sinan was upset about this for a very, very long time.

Li Jinping was too busy with work, and Liu Sinan also had her own job. The two spent more time apart than together.

Liu Sinan was too afraid of loneliness and didn’t want to be alone in the villa. She wanted to borrow some sunlight and moonlight from the outside world, but Li Jinping would snap off the branches that grew outwards, one by one.

No matter how much Liu Sinan protested, she eventually had to compromise.

“I understand. I’ll prepare well,” Liu Sinan fiddled with her cuff, her voice bitter. “I’ll try my best to last until the final episode.”

A section of white bandage’s edge slipped out of her sleeve, resting on the back of her thin hand.

Li Jinping saw it unintentionally. At the same time, her nose seemed to catch a faint scent of green grass.

Liu Sinan was wearing a baseball jacket today, the lamb fleece style that best concealed thinness, and a pair of white trousers, a soft fabric with no defined shape, which also did a great job of hiding her thinness.

But when she sat down, her knees protruded, creating two sharp lines.

When she lowered her head, her chin cast a small shadow, and the slender back of her neck had a few prominent cervical vertebrae.

This was a sick person.

With this thought, a chaotic, inky darkness suddenly bloomed in front of Li Jinping’s eyes. The scent of green grass in her nostrils instantly became several times more intense, stinging her mouth with a bitter taste, a sharp pain in her forehead, and bloodshot eyes.

“When will Salt be back? I’ll go wait for him in the yard.” Liu Sinan couldn’t stand the current atmosphere. She stood up as if to flee, and without waiting for Li Jinping to speak, she walked out.

Li Jinping did not withdraw her gaze. Instead, she followed her figure intently, her straight lips slowly tightening.

This was the little deer she had released with her own hands, and the first time it went out, it was covered in wounds.

The disintegration of her senses of smell, sight, and taste in her mind, and the tsunami-like pain of irregular brain waves, were all challenging her increasingly frail physical strength.

She maintained the same posture, as if using all her strength to put on a cold, detached expression.

In the blurry light and shadows before her eyes, she watched Liu Sinan leave without a change in expression.

In the yard, Wu Haoxue and Mi Fan were playing with a featherless cat teaser.

“Meow,” Mi Fan said. Seeing her approach, he walked leisurely to Liu Sinan’s feet, his pink nose twitching.

Liu Sinan pulled up her pant leg, lifted her foot, pointed the sole at Mi Fan, and cautiously backed away. “What do you want to do?”

Mi Fan circled her, sniffing here and there. Liu Sinan began to wonder if she had hugged another cat.

Finally, Mi Fan caught a familiar scent, stretched arrogantly, and rubbed his head against Liu Sinan’s pant leg a few times.

“Good job, our little Mi Fan,” Wu Haoxue laughed, holding the cat teaser. “He’s disgusted that you don’t smell like yourself anymore!”

Liu Sinan couldn’t manage to laugh with her. She tried several times but could only manage a slight twitch of her lips.

Looking at her, it was clear what had happened.

“So, you guys broke things off?” Wu Haoxue walked up to her. “Because of that Xia?”

“There’s no need for us to talk about a third party,” Liu Sinan shook her head. This time, she was silent for a long time before saying softly, “This is a problem between the two of us.”

She was a person with her own pride. She didn’t want to involve another person in their affairs. Her rival was never Lin Xia.

In the end, the two of them didn’t wait for Salt. It was getting late, and Salt still hadn’t returned. Wu Haoxue had a slight case of night blindness, and driving in the mountains at night was dangerous.

Liu Sinan didn’t say goodbye to anyone. She watched the sun quietly disappear behind the mountains, took the keys, and left with Wu Haoxue.

Mi Fan arched his back and stretched. His tail wagged and swept behind him, disappearing along with the remaining rose petals into the clouds at the horizon, watching them vanish at the end of the road.

There had been a major change in Liu Sinan’s work. The divorce had severely damaged her career, and most of her ongoing collaborations were cut short. Although she tried hard to keep them, nearly half the people left the studio.

Lan Qi and a few veteran members worked overtime for a week straight, doing their best to stabilize Liu Sinan’s current work situation.

“Have you made up your mind?” Lan Qi had the materials for Crossover Dance Queen in front of her, her brows furrowed. “This isn’t a show where an artist with a halo can just go on stage, dance, and get fans to cheer and scream.”

“Crossover Dance Queen is filmed in a closed environment. You’ll be eating and living with the production team for a whole month. It’s a brutal elimination system, from 30 to 20, then 20 to 6, then to 3,” Lan Qi’s eyelid twitched as she glanced over the document. “Also, the investor for this show is Zhao Qiran.”

Liu Sinan stood by the window. She had already read through the materials several times, and all the information she could gather beforehand was ingrained in her mind.

“Lan Qi, how old are you this year?” Liu Sinan suddenly asked.

Lan Qi was confused. “34.”

“34, in the prime of life, at your peak,” Liu Sinan leaned close, her breath fogging up the glass. She drew on the glass with her finger. “You can still work overtime and handle five different business projects at once.”

“But I can’t keep going,” Liu Sinan said softly.

Lan Qi sat up straight, her eyes complex. “Many famous models are still on the runway at 30. You can still walk.”

“Yes, I can still walk,” Liu Sinan said. “Maybe I can walk until I’m 30. Sliding downhill until I can no longer climb the steps of the runway.”

“Because of the divorce, this year’s runway shows have already shut me out,” Liu Sinan took a small breath, her nostrils filled with the icy scent. “I can skip this year, but what about next year? What if I can’t walk then either? I can’t just wait around.”

Placing her palm on the materials for Crossover Dance Queen, Liu Sinan said calmly, “Since there are no acting roles, I’ll go on a variety show.”

“I’ll go on whichever ones have high exposure and offer a complete transformation.”

“Whether it’s Zhao Qiran or a mountain of swords and a sea of fire, what else do I have to lose?”

Lan Qi looked at her slender forearms and pale face, a little worried. “Dancing is very physically demanding. Can you handle it?”

Liu Sinan lowered her eyes and nodded. “I will give it my all.”

For some reason, Lan Qi heard a lot more in that simple sentence.

At her core, Liu Sinan was not weak. She used to be like a child who hadn’t grown up, her actions and behavior naive and childish. But once life dealt her a blow, taking away all her rights as a child and forcing her to face the storm, she was able to transform quickly.

One eye was shedding tears for the child she had lost, one hand was trying to hold on to the beauty of the past.

But her other eye had started to search for a new direction, and her other hand was propping up her fallen self, feeling her way forward.

She was not stuck in one place, nor was she trapped in her own mind.