Chapter 14   - His Everlasting Love

Lan Jinyao moved into the Fu house straightaway, with Fu Bainian telling his Mother, “This is my girlfriend. She’ll come here pretty often from now on.”

In the past few days, Lan Jinyao had gotten to know the sizeable house like the back of her hand. So much so, she now knew what was in every room. After living here for several days, however, she’d realised that there was one room in the house that Fu Bainian prohibited anyone from entering. That day, she’d only stood outside the room for a while, and he’d been furious.

Lan Jinyao swore to god that she’d only briefly stood there. She wasn’t even going to enter. But, after Fu Bainian had demanded that no one was to enter, she was curious. She couldn’t get rid of the nagging urge that she must get inside the room. Maybe President Fu was hiding a massive secret from everyone.

When Lan Jinyao arrived on set, the lead actress had finally decided to show up. The sunglasses she was wearing hid her palm-sized face, and her chin was slightly lifted, making her seem somewhat arrogant. She had two Assistants and an Agent following her around. She was utterly unlike Lan Jinyao, who didn’t have an Assistant, and her Agent, Vivi, was nowhere to be seen. She probably went with Xu Jin’ge, the other star under her, to her job.

Originally, the morning was going to be used for shooting scenes of the supporting female character, but now, the lead actress had finally arrived. Of course, the time was obviously allocated to her for the scenes that she’d missed earlier. Therefore, Lan Jinyao spent her whole morning watching the people on set.

While she was sitting on the sidelines watching, one of the crewmembers walked up to her. “Chen Meimei, have you reconciled with President Fu?” she asked. “Yesterday, President Fu kicked people out just for you; it was awesome! See, the female lead was being a poser and didn’t bother coming to set. Laughably, since she heard that President Fu was angry, she immediately decided to get her butt over here today.”

Lan Jinyao smiled without a word, but inside her head, she was partying. She hadn’t realised that Fu Bainian would be so useful. Everyone here was afraid of him!

“Meimei, the Assistant Director didn’t treat you very well yesterday. Do you hold any grudges against him?”

The girl’s voice was hesitant, making it clear that someone asked her to come. Lan Jinyao looked around the set and saw the Assistant Director smiling at her. It was clear that he was buttering her up; Lan Jinyao couldn’t be more pleased.

She waved her hand. “Of course I don’t, he was only telling the truth. But, I’ll show everyone what I can do.”

Lan Jinyao’s optimistic tone moved the girl. So, she bowed to Lan Jinyao, bending her back by 90 degrees. “Thank you. The Assistant Director is actually a pretty good person; he just can’t quite control his mouth sometimes. It’s great that you don’t mind!”

Lan Jinyao gestured her closer. Once the girl was standing beside her, she asked in a low voice, “You got in through other people, too, right?”

“Eh? How’d you know?”

Lan Jinyao gave her a mysterious smile. “Well, I could see it. I could just see it!”

This girl was so naive. She had dared to not only ask Lan Jinyao for forgiveness but also criticise the Assistant Director behind his back. He must’ve been a relative of hers.

After finishing the lead actress’ scenes in the morning, it was going to be Lan Jinyao’s turn in the afternoon. At noon, she opted out of going out to eat, and just had the lunchbox that was provided on set. As she was browsing through Weibo while she was eating, someone suddenly loomed over her. Before she could look up, a chicken leg was dropped into her lunchbox.

When she raised her head, she saw Chen Zetao’s expressionless face staring back at her. “Don’t you like eating?” he asked flatly.

Since when did I like eating? Lan Jinyao’s head was filled with questions. After a good while, she finally realised that it was Chen Meimei who’d liked eating as she’d never cared about her weight. She would eat whatever she wanted to eat, and she had liked to eat food that was high in fat.

Staring at the chicken leg, Lan Jinyao didn’t know whether she wanted to cry or laugh. “I’m on a diet.”

“You’re fine the way you are,” said Chen Zetao. “Seriously, you’re perfect. Don’t listen to what other people say!”

It was the first time that someone had said that she was fine as she was. Lan Jinyao was a little moved, but she really was trying to lose weight. A person’s figure was important in this world where looks meant everything.

Chen Zetao stared at her for a while before picking up the chicken leg and walking away.

Lan Jinyao had been busy browsing through the trending topics on Weibo, so she hadn’t really paid him any attention.

Actually, one of the leading posts was about Fu Bainian. She clicked the title and saw Xu Jin’ge leaning against Fu Bainian. They looked intimate, with Xu Jin’ge looking shy. She looked like a girl in love.

Lan Jinyao put down the chopsticks in her hand and examined the picture. Why did she find it so familiar?

Oh, right! It was taken when they were having dinner at the Fu house. At that time, Xu Jin’ge had stuck remarkably close to Fu Bainian. It turned out that she’d had a plan all along. This woman was really something.

Lan Jinyao closed the app and called Fu Bainian to mock him. Fu Bainian had had a meeting in the morning, and he was now having lunch when he received her call. He thought that something had happened to her on set again, so he quickly asked, “What happened? Did someone take advantage of you again?”

Her patron wasn’t only wealthy, but he also knew to ask after her. That was good progress.

Lan Jinyao silently laughed. “Not me. You’re the one who was taken advantage of. Hey, Fu Bainian, do you use Weibo? Earlier, I saw a picture that Xu Jin’ge had uploaded, and it was of you and her. Weibo is an uproar with all her fans saying that you’re getting married to her.”

“I am getting married, but not to her!”

“Then to whom? Me?” she blurted.

Fu Bainian didn’t respond for a good long while. In the end, he hung up on her.

Lan Jinyao stared at her phone in confusion as she muttered, “It can’t be me, right?”

When Lan Jinyao returned to the Fu house, there was no one home. She was just about to enter her bedroom, but as she reached the door to the forbidden room, she stopped. On impulse, she decided to go in.

It was a regular room. There was nothing special about it at all.

Picking up a diary that was lying on the desk, she found that it was filled with words that were written in bold handwriting.

‘A person is like half of a circle. Since the day we are born, our other half is somewhere in the world, waiting for us. As we continuously grow, we learn how to search. Then, our long journey of looking for the other half of our circle begins.’

‘I was lucky that I managed to find her so early in life. The moment I saw her, I heard my heart as it started pounding. Thump, thump, thump. Every beat was a scream saying, “It’s her! Her!”’

‘Unfortunately, before love could come knocking at my door, she left this world. My life is now incomplete. I will never be a closed circle...’

Reading this, Lan Jinyao was amused. She hadn’t expected that this man would carry such deep feelings for so long. She wondered who it was that he’d fallen in love with.