Everyone Spends Money to Make Me Debut as Center (GL) - Chapter 6
As the progress bar moved on and the video neared its end, Chi Ling’s voice softened to conclude the song. The person watching on the screen saw the red-haired beauty slowly walk closer to the camera and extend her hand. The closeness was almost “in-your-face,” and it was another powerful visual attack.
After this moment, the camera started shaking. You could feel You Xiaotao’s excitement and nervousness, but she managed to stay rational, steadying the camera to capture both of their hands together.
Watching this part on a phone, it felt like Chi Ling was inviting the viewer to hold hands with her, a perfect “girlfriend’s perspective.” Then came Chi Ling’s sincere words into the microphone.
“I wasn’t perfect in the past, and I disappointed my fans many times. But if I can, I want to be like the lyrics of this song and hold your hands and walk forward with you.”
[Ahhhhh, Chi Ling! Stop seducing us!]
[Holy smokes, is that Chi Ling? That can’t be Chi Ling, can it? Is that really Chi Ling? Come back already, I’m a fan now! Who said she was a pretty face with no talent? Come out and face me!]
[I want to say she’s lip-syncing, but I can hear the metal sound of her earrings clinking… And even if she were lip-syncing, she couldn’t have gotten to this level of dancing in a short time. She’s putting so much effort into a commercial event, which is honestly quite professional.]
The video’s popularity grew. Soon, marketing accounts, smelling meat like flies, found it and reposted it. The haters and fans fought, and the onlookers joined the spectacle, pushing the video onto the tail of the trending topics.
There was no helping it; the name “Chi Ling” was synonymous with hot topics. Her old personality meant she would take on anyone and offend anyone, and she’d been a constant topic of conversation since her debut. Being famous for being hated was still being famous.
Bai Chang saw the slew of “@” messages from the suddenly reanimated couple’s fans in the early hours of the morning. She was in the car on the way back from her wrap party when her assistant, Bai Yuanyuan, couldn’t hold it in and told her about the video. Weibo had been too lively today, and she just had to share!
“Boss, did you see Weibo?” Bai Yuanyuan started with a tentative question.
Bai Chang glanced at her, picked up her phone, and started scrolling. She had a habit of checking Weibo regularly, similar to how middle-aged people read newspapers—for the same purpose, to stay informed about current events.
She quickly found You Xiaotao’s post. By now, there were already hundreds of comments tagging her to watch Chi Ling dance.
The relationship between Bai Chang and Chi Ling was seen completely differently by couple’s fans and by the general public.
After the “slap gate” incident, the public thought that the “Chi Ling and Bai Chang” couple’s pairing was over. They believed that only a foolish team would continue to tie Bai Chang to Chi Ling.
But for the couple’s fans, it was different. Weren’t Chi Ling’s words upon her retirement an obvious declaration of love for Bai Chang? So they were now acting like they were dragging Bai Chang to the altar, tagging her to watch the video.
After watching it, Bai Chang couldn’t help but get hooked.
She was different from her peers who became popular quickly. She had been learning to dance since kindergarten, later going to a dance academy. Because of her outstanding looks, she signed a trainee contract with MK at the age of fourteen. She started in a girl group, and she worked hard as both a singer and a dancer to support her teammates, which helped the group get popular. She then went abroad for two years to study composition, and after returning, she released her first solo album. A famous director saw a shot of her in her music video and cast her as a supporting actress in a movie, which successfully launched her acting career. She was a woman of many talents, and she mastered all of them.
She was gifted, intuitive, and hardworking. After a few years of acting and humbly learning from seasoned actors, she gained a lot of experience. Only after winning three Best Actress awards did she finally shed the label of being a “pretty face” and ascend to a mythical status.
But acting was acting; she could never forget her original profession. Bai Chang could tell that the series of fluid and powerful movements in Chi Ling’s video required a tremendous amount of practice. At least two years, maybe even more. Some people could train for ten years and not get these results—effort wasn’t always equal, and she couldn’t deny that geniuses existed.
But based on what she knew about Chi Ling, someone who would complain for ages just to stretch their legs, practicing? A lot? She thought it was impossible.
Even if there was a one-in-a-million chance that the dancing could be learned through hard work, singing techniques and vocal range were not that easy to improve. In the ballad Chi Ling performed to warm up the crowd, she had always used a falsetto for the chorus. In this video, Chi Ling sang it with ease, not even a wrinkle in her brow.
“Boss, you saw it, right? What do you think?” Bai Yuanyuan’s face was full of excitement. “When did my sister-in-law get so good? I’m almost her fan now.”
Tang Yu, the agent in the passenger seat, turned and shot a look at Bai Yuanyuan. “Yuanyuan, why are you talking so much today?”
Bai Yuanyuan realized she had blurted out the term “sister-in-law” for Chi Ling, but she was so excited she couldn’t stop. Now, with Tang Yu’s warning, she immediately made a face of surrender and muttered, “Sorry, boss, just pretend you didn’t hear that.”
Fortunately, Bai Chang didn’t seem to mind. Her expression showed that she didn’t take it to heart. And when you thought about it, Bai Chang and Chi Ling’s marriage wasn’t going to be over for another six months, so “sister-in-law” was technically correct for now.
“What event is this?” Bai Chang lifted her eyelids, her finger tapping the screen nonchalantly.
Tang Yu didn’t say anything, but Bai Yuanyuan excitedly took over. “Boss, look at the poster behind the stage. It’s an Alfredo commercial event.”
“I know it’s a commercial event,” Bai Chang said, turning off her phone and looking at the passenger seat. “What did Zhou Ping tell you? Don’t tell me this is the only offline event she’s done as a warm-up for ‘Nation’s Girls’.”
Tang Yu sighed inwardly. The fire was coming to her now.
In the beginning, Zhou Ping had been a new assistant, gaining experience under Tang Yu. She was the same generation as Bai Yuanyuan. But she had a familial connection to Wei Xike—they were cousins—so Tang Yu was always a little more polite to her. No matter how much she disliked Zhou Ping’s opportunistic ways, she never showed it. After all, when you’re in the industry, you have to leave yourself a way out—even though Tang Yu looked down on Zhou Ping for being a bully with her family’s connections.
What happened later was that Zhou Ping volunteered to be Chi Ling’s agent, and Tang Yu was relieved. Normally, agents were on the same level and didn’t report to each other. Bai Chang asking Tang Yu this wasn’t for her to answer immediately, but a roundabout way of telling her to look into it and report back as soon as possible.
Just thinking about the name “Zhou Ping” gave Tang Yu a headache. “I’ll contact her now.”
On the surface, Bai Yuanyuan looked like a naive, cheerful girl, but after being with Tang Yu for so many years, she had learned a thing or two about reading the room. She noticed the awkward atmosphere in the car and quickly put on a smiling face, moving closer to Bai Chang.
“Hey, boss, look! You just liked the post, and so many fans came out of the woodwork! The original post has almost 200,000 shares!”
Bai Chang slowly lifted her head. “Liked?”
Bai Yuanyuan’s smile froze. “No way? You liked that fancam post of Chi Ling, did you forget, or was it a slip of the finger…?”
Unless Bai Chang had dementia, the first option was a possibility, but unfortunately, Bai Chang’s medical report didn’t show that.
Tang Yu reacted quickly. “I’ll contact the team immediately to come up with a plan. Don’t un-like it or say it was a slip of the finger. It’ll just lead to more messy rumors about you two not getting along.”
Chi Ling and Bai Chang’s marriage was never public, but even if it was, liking a post from a person who was a target of internet-wide hate was an extremely risky move. If a display of affection went wrong, it could ruin both of them.
And not to mention, there was no longer any emotional connection between the two of them.
“No need,” Bai Chang said, turning her head to look out the car window. She only gave the speechless Bai Yuanyuan and Tang Yu a wordless side profile. “Just leave it.”
It was just one like. Today’s Chi Ling deserved it.
••••
That night, the hashtag #ChiLingCommercialFancam#, which was just on the tail of the trending list, jumped to the top five. Not only that, but another topic, #BaiChangLikesChiLing#, shot to number one, activating a large number of Bai Chang’s “zombie” and “apathetic” fans who flooded the comments section with “Bai Shen, so you do remember you have a Weibo account!”
After the teasing, everyone’s attention naturally turned to the star of the video. After dyeing her hair, Chi Ling looked much better, and her eyes had a spirit she never had before. Her smooth and confident performance made it seem as if she had been completely reborn.
[Is Chi Ling a snake spirit? Was she shedding her skin in her nest for the past few months?]
[The sister above has a great metaphor, hahahahaha!]
[At first, I thought Bai Shen was kidnapped and that’s why she liked the post, but after clicking on it, I’m proven wrong…]
[Also, didn’t she retire? Why is she still taking up public resources?]
[Here we go again, with “public resources.” Everyone’s apology statements these days mention this, but they still pay for trending topics, don’t they?]
[So… is Chi Ling making a comeback?]
[A comeback? It’s time to unleash my long screenshot. Let’s see how cool this girl was when she left. [Image]]
Later, the comments were filled with debates about Chi Ling’s comeback. Coincidentally, “Nation’s Girls” announced its contestant list that day, but not before revealing the person who had been the subject of a long-standing mystery—Bai Chang as the show’s producer.
—In fact, the original plan was to announce all the contestants after they had entered the training camp, but with such a hot topic trending, the production team, in the spirit of “why not take advantage of it,” held an emergency meeting and moved up the announcement time.
The list was sorted by the first letter of the names. Chi Ling’s name was quite high on the list. There was no official photo yet, but the show’s official Weibo account had tagged each trainee’s Weibo. Chi Ling’s main account was right there.
[What am I seeing? Chi Ling? Is that Chi Ling?????]
[No, if Chi Ling wanted to make a comeback, she should have just held another press conference. Why go back to being a trainee on a talent show and steal the spotlight? Does she have no shame?]
[Why is Chi Ling allowed to participate? That’s so unfair to the other contestants.]
[Can we boycott her participation?! I’m never voting for her! Let her fail!]
Weibo was divided that night. Half of the comments on Chi Ling’s Weibo were hateful and called for a boycott, while the other half of the comments on Bai Chang’s page were filled with praise and excitement for the goddess’s appearance.
Meanwhile, Chi Ling, one of the people at the center of all the commotion, was stretching her old, rusty joints and scrolling through her phone, following the gossip. Since she had already anticipated the consequences of joining the show, Chi Ling was unfazed by the surge of hateful comments on her Weibo.
The only thing was, the new insults from these kids were so creative, she didn’t understand all of them.
But she wasn’t just sitting there doing nothing. After seeing Bai Chang like You Xiaotao’s fancam, she thought for a moment and pulled up Bai Chang’s WeChat to draft a message.
[Ms. Bai, can I request a new agent?]
Author’s Note:
Ms. Bai is on her way to becoming a loyal fan.