64 5.10

Armed with ample funds, established cast members, and uncomplicated sets, Chen Yu's proposed script swiftly progressed toward becoming a film. Just a month after the project received the green light, the production process commenced.

Contrary to what Sun Ri had expected, however, his character and Kai's had, so far, rarely appeared together, nor had his doll shown any signs of warming up to him. Hoping to trigger a conversation, he'd passed the youth's phone back to him at the read-through meeting, explaining that he'd mistakenly taken it along with him after taking care of him on the night of the wrap party, but his attempt had fallen disappointingly flat. That indifferent face hadn't changed at all while the youth had uttered an emotionless "Thank you," then walked away.

Since that encounter, despite trying his best for several weeks, the most he'd glimpsed of the boy had been a few minutes here and there, when he'd scarcely been granted a few words. Worse still, his doll had replaced his phone as soon as he got it back, so that Sun Ri wandered around on tenterhooks, worried that he might have discovered his modifications and been disgusted.

Chen Yu's cold behavior actually wasn't deliberate, he was simply unwilling to deal with Sun Ri right now. From what the man had said about accompanying the drunk Xiang Kai and the spyware installed on his phone, the thigh was his lover, but that, in turn, indicated that his favorite man had disdained him, glared at him, ridiculed him for some outsider. And for what, because he'd been duped by the protagonist halo?

Logically, Chen Yu understood that his lover was different from him, he couldn't retain his memories of their previous lives, he had no idea of his existence. Nonetheless, he didn't want to believe that the person he'd been searching for was so annoying, he resolved to resist it until he had further proof. Thus, somewhat reluctant to accept the likely outcome, Chen Yu transferred the task of tracing who'd been monitoring his phone to another IT specialist instead of cracking it himself. In the meantime, as a distraction while he waited for the results, Chen Yu busied himself by arranging some gifts for the protagonist.

As part of his preparation, a while ago, he had used his laptop to reregister in Guo Ziyue's fanclub under the same username 'Longing_for_the_Moon,' planning to quietly stand by for the drama. But the moment he'd logged in, Chen Yu had faced a string of questions from the needy star on why he hadn't responded to some mysterious message he hadn't even laid eyes on. Guessing that Guo Ziyue had sent it to his mobile's private chat inbox, Chen Yu sighed at the troubles his lover brought him, then fended off the inquiry by apologetically claiming that he'd lost his phone, thereby restoring their harmonious relationship.

Unfortunately, before they could get quite as intimately acquainted as Guo Ziyue would have liked, a small scandal erupted, courtesy of an 'anonymous source.' The issue was that a photo of the protagonist French-kissing another man had surfaced, and his partner had been identified as the director of the popular serial drama in which Guo Ziyue had been cast as the second male lead.

Whereas originally, this character had merely been a guaranteed-to-be-defeated suitor for the female lead, his screen time had been increasing every episode, so much so that the viewers had eventually started to doubt who would end up with the girl in the end. The reason this confusion was incriminating was that the drama was an adaptation of a novel, implying that the plot should already be settled. Thus, the observation that Guo Ziyue's part had diverged this greatly from the predicted narrative strongly suggested that the actor had bribed the director, apparently with sexual favors. Due to the fact that the protagonist wasn't yet a top-tier actor, this wasn't a big deal, but it did negatively impact his image, which was further damaged by the director asserting that the young man had approached him of his own will.

Chen Yu naturally wasn't so stingy as to stop at that. From the beginning, his purpose in spreading this picture had been to provoke someone else: Peng Muzhi, the CEO of Fanxing Entertainment Group and current boyfriend of Guo Ziyue.

A few months back, when Chen Yu had arrived in this world, the protagonist had been in the midst of winning over this influential shou that he'd been introduced to by Sun Ri, and the CEO hadn't been averse to the well-connected, handsome young man, so they had gone to bed together on innumerable occasions. But Peng Muzhi was different from the others whom Guo Ziyue had seduced, he was more powerful than any of the random directors, fans, producers, and so on.

Therefore, once the CEO had realized that he quite liked this young man, he had immediately insisted that they become exclusive, a demand that the rookie actor had no choice but to agree with. In this way, the two had been a couple for some time, and Peng Muzhi wasn't unaware of his boyfriend's playboy past. Accordingly, this incident wouldn't have been critical, except for the fatal detail that the circulated photo was dated a week after the pair had officially begun dating.

While Peng Muzhi was furious at his boyfriend's betrayal, he nevertheless ordered the company's PR department to minimize the fallout from this incident, since Guo Ziyue technically remained a part of Fanxing's talent. With the bare minimum of his professional obligation accomplished, he sat brooding in his office. There had long been rumors that Guo Ziyue slept around behind his back, but Peng Muzhi hadn't believed the man would be moronic enough to dare to cheat on him. At the thought, Peng Muzhi snorted scornfully. No, Guo Ziyue hadn't been having flings, he'd been selling himself, and he himself had clearly been one of the customers. How cheap had that bastard's rates been for the others? What had he charged that director, an additional second of exposure per session?

Right as he was about to explode from anger, a text notification chimed. The instant he recognized who'd sent it, Peng Muzhi became even more irritated. His stupid younger brother, who constantly suspected him of being a gambling addict, was probably 'reminding' him again that he shouldn't return to the betting table no matter what problems cropped up at work, but he hadn't even been considering it until the idiot had bothered him. Scrubbing his face, Peng Muzhi ignored the message's content, instead interpreting its presence itself as a way for the universe to hint that he should try his luck tonight. He was in a foul mood, having been toyed with by some newbie wannabe then pestered by his own younger brother, and he hadn't touched a chip for weeks, he might as well go and see if he could revive his spirits.

Chen Yu, who had hooked into the phone of Peng Muzhi's brother to push the CEO to gamble, waited for a response for a few minutes. Discerning that there wouldn't be one, he hummed his appreciation for the neglect. In the first place, this had been an astonishingly easy hoax, because the younger brother rarely contacted his sibling for anything besides an intermittent nagging and Peng Muzhi certainly wouldn't bring up his gambling issue himself, so there wouldn't be any cross-checking conversation between them. The CEO's silence just further reduced the tracks Chen Yu would have had to cover up.

Then, once his target set off to visit his favorite casino again, Chen Yu called into play the hustler he'd set up long ago to greet the CEO. His chosen delegate was a middle-aged man who existed at the mercy of his gambling addiction, having even abandoned his family to hop from den to den. Despite his shoddy standard of living and poor luck, the man had managed to maintain a veneer of respectability and had plenty of experience in luring marks, he was exactly the tool Chen Yu required. Furthermore, all it had taken to convince him to swindle Peng Muzhi had been premium access to an elite casino, something that had taken barely a few minutes to create. With this man's goading, the CEO became more and more ensnared, he didn't even notice how quickly his debt was piling up.

At the same time, Guo Ziyue, who had been panicking at the thought that his boyfriend would retaliate against him for his affair, was simply relieved at the dwindling communication. At least, that was the case until a whole slew of videos, photos, and testimonies was released by several magazines, documenting his liaisons with many different people.

Based solely on the protagonist's present status, his promiscuity wouldn't have garnered that much article space, except that the sheer number of partners he'd gone through was so high that media outlets judged that there was enough shock value to merit it. Moreover, some editors felt that they should properly repay the 'anonymous source' who had painstakingly collected all this evidence, every piece of which had been verified to be true.

During this crisis, without CEO Peng to back him up, the protagonist's reputation plummeted. Although Sun Ri acknowledged that as a guardian, he should rescue Guo Ziyue, with his collapsed estimation of the brat and his jealousy over how much Xiang Kai liked him, he merely warned the media once they had already published everything.

Following this disgrace, even those members of Guo Ziyue's fanclub who had stuck with him through the former scandal dropped like flies, leaving only a handful of devoted supporters. 'Longing_for_the_Moon' was naturally one of them—after all, this was when Chen Yu's little play would really start.

The day that this news of the protagonist's prodigious sex life broke, however, Chen Yu was too preoccupied to launch his plan. Not only was he scheduled to film a packed sequence of scenes, but also, he had finally received the email report from the IT technician. Sitting alone in his dressing room, Chen Yu stared at the words which confirmed that the data from his phone had often been streamed to a network address that correlated with the physical address of Sun Ri's home.

The displeasure was stronger than he'd expected, as various ideas passed through his mind. Before he could recover his composure, however, Sun Ri, who had been silently watching him after opening the door, stalked in and locked the exit.