CH 27

He originally wanted to transfer money directly to the driver, but the driver didn’t know how to use his mobile phone for payments. Fortunately, Qi Yue had said that since he was going to the mountains and not the city, it was better to have some cash on him just in case.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it didn’t take long.” The driver hesitated for a while, only took an extra twenty and then pushed the rest of the money back into Ou Shaowen’s hand. “That’s enough, young man, go in and rest, you can still sleep for a few hours before dawn.”

Ou Shaowen took back the rest of the money, thanked the driver again, pressed the password for the access control of the community and walked in as lightly as possible.

The moment he opened the villa door, he breathed a sigh of relief, and finally felt at ease. A sense of exhaustion spread from his brain to the soles of his feet, making him want to find a place to fall down quickly. Now he could understand what it felt like to be exhausted. This feeling was not physical, but from the bottom of his heart.

He returned to his room, changed into pyjamas, charged his mobile phone, set an alarm clock, and fell asleep as soon as he lay on the bed.

“Good morning.” Ou Shaowen opened his eyes vaguely and saw Ou Renjin pressing off his mobile phone alarm, tilting his head to give him a smile that seemed to be stained with early morning dew, “When did you come back last night? Are you tired from filming?”

Ou Shaowen sat up and asked in return, “When did you go to sleep last night?” He didn’t know why, but he suddenly wanted to know the answer to this question.

“Me? It was almost eleven o’clock, what’s the matter?” Ou Renjin was a little surprised.

It turned out that he could have made that call. Ou Shaowen suddenly felt a little aggrieved. His throat felt tight; he pursed his lips and shook his head.

“Well, I’ll just make up for you for this day.” Ou Renjin laughed, took him into his arms and patted him on the back lightly, feeling that he shouldn’t always tease him. What if he made him cry?

They finished breakfast together. Ou Shaowen looked a little sullen the whole time, either because he was too tired from filming yesterday, or because he was too upset about the night he slept alone. 

Ou Renjin could only take the initiative to ask him: “Which one is more fun, to shoot advertisements or to take photos?”

“To take photos.” Ou Shaowen’s voice trailed off unconsciously, breathless and faint, with a hint of coquettishness.

“Didn’t you feel happy at the shoot yesterday?” Ou Renjin frowned, “Didn’t you tell me last night that the director was very nice?”

Ou Shaowen slowly picked up a steamed dumpling and stuffed it into his mouth, shook his head and said, “I didn’t feel unhappy during the filming. I just think they are all very careless. This is not very good.”

This kid rarely spoke ill of people, and it seemed that yesterday’s shooting was indeed not very happy. Ou Renjin thought so, but because he had an appointment with the person in charge of a movie company early in the morning to talk about stock acquisition, he didn’t bother to delve into it at this time. He said a few nice words to coax Ou Shaowen and hurried to go to work without saying anything else.

When he passed the gate, he met a young security guard who was about to change shifts. The guard stopped and nodded slightly to Ou Renjin to say hello. When Ou Renjin was about to move, the guard suddenly said to him: “Your family’s little Mr. Ou is even busier than you at work. He just came back after three o’clock in the morning. Artists work really hard.”

He woke up in the middle of the night and was about to go to the toilet when he saw Mr. Ou covered in dust. But when Mr. Ou walked in, he didn’t forget to step lightly. Sure enough, the richer the people, the more refined they were; Mr. Ou was probably afraid of waking him up.

Ou Renjin turned his head, frowned, and his face immediately changed, “Three o’clock in the morning?”

“Yes… yes, I just got up at that time.” When Ou Renjin looked at him coldly, it was a bit terrifying. At least the security guard didn’t subconsciously apologise to him after considering that he didn’t say anything wrong.

“Got it, thank you.” The car behind him honked its horn and urged him to move. Ou Renjin’s face didn’t look very good all the way.

Because he was in a bad mood, he seemed a little cold-blooded and ruthless when negotiating with the person in charge of the movie company, and the two of them went back and forth for half a day for a million or so, but finally each took half a step back and compromised.

President Ou wouldn’t usually pay attention to this million. He always said that time was precious, and it was absolutely not worth wasting half an hour of it for such a little money. Guan Qijun looked at his face for a while. Although he felt strange in his heart, he didn’t say much.

Ou Renjin turned over two pages of the contract they had signed, and suddenly said, “Guan Qijun, go and check when the shooting of the advertisement ended yesterday. Also, did anything happen to Ou Shaowen when he was shooting the advertisement?”

“Okay.” Guan Qijun finally understood why President Ou was unhappy early in the morning. He left the office and immediately called Qi Yue.

Qi Yue on the other end of the phone had just finished the conversation with Ou Shaowen. He had quarrelled with his girlfriend last night and was busy coaxing the little ancestor, how could he care about looking at his mobile phone? Seeing Ou Shaowen’s missed call early this morning, he hurriedly called back. Who knew that he didn’t accompany his artist once, and the artist would be bullied like this!

He was now overfilled with anger and answered Guan Qijun’s call with a somewhat grim tone.

Ou Shaowen, what a stupid kid! When Qi Yue asked him why he called him last night, he only said, “It’s okay, it’s okay now.” Qi Yue still interrogated him for a long time before he found out that after the shooting last night, he was left in the mountains alone, cry out to the heavens but the heavens don’t respond, cry out to the earth but the earth is impervious! So he had to walk down the mountain road in the dark for four or five hours. When this fool said that, his tone was just the flat tone of disapproval, which made Qi Yue angry and with nowhere to vent. He couldn’t wait to go directly to the director’s Weibo to scold him. 

Ou Shaowen trusted these people, so he repeatedly refused to follow Qi Yue in doing this. But in the end he was bullied like this; what was the matter with those people, were they just plain bitchy? The better they were treated, the worse they treated the others?

Guan Qijun frowned and listened to Qi Yue cursing and swearing about what happened, and calmly said: “It may just be that the crew miscalculated the number of people when they left. They worked with Qimeng many times, so they won’t deliberately offend us.” 

“Hehe, there are so many staff members in the entire crew, and there are six or seven group actors, all packed together without a problem. Why did they miss the most important spokesperson by accident? I don’t think Ou Shaowen’s sense of presence is that low that he could be overlooked by all of them!”

“I will investigate these things, give me their contact information.” Guan Qijun assured the angry Qi Yue. “Don’t worry, Qimeng is not so incompetent as to let people bully our artist like this.”

Guan Qijun did not call the advertising director directly, but first found the so-called assistant director. The person received the call and was very surprised after hearing the story. He explained in a loud voice: “It’s impossible. Let alone having a very happy cooperation with Mr. Ou, even if the cooperation was unpleasant, it is impossible for us to deliberately dump people in the mountains.”

The man tried his best to recall the scene at the time, “Before driving, I confirmed whether Mr. Ou got in the car. Didn’t someone say that he went to the group actors’ car in the back? I heard that he was friends with one of the group performers, and they were standing together chatting before driving.”

“Group performer?” Guan Qijun was puzzled, “Can you confirm who it was?”

“Wait a minute, I’ll make a call first and ask, and I’ll get back to you right away.”

Soon, the assistant called again and said the name.

“Yixin Entertainment, Dong Qiao.”

Dong Qiao came out of the company building, feeling a little anxious in his heart. Last night, he blurted out that sentence. It was not premeditated, but at that point in time, inexplicable emotions seemed to suddenly break through his reason, so his brain was confused for a while and he couldn’t consider the consequences. Anyway, he just wanted Ou Shaowen to taste a little bit of malice he had accumulated for a long time.

He said that sentence on the spur of the moment, but he didn’t expect the people in the crew to be so careless. When the car slowly drove away, things were like an arrow that was shot and couldn’t turn back.

On the way back, Dong Qiao’s sanity gradually returned, and he was immediately overcome with fear. He kept comforting himself, it was okay, if Ou Shaowen asked, he would shirk responsibility and say that someone else told him that he got into the car of the crew.

Originally, Ou Shaowen came in the crew car, and they, group actors, were squeezed so tightly they couldn’t stretch their legs.  Naturally, you would think he went in the crew car. You couldn’t blame him for that, could you?

Whose fault was it if the crew didn’t check carefully?

Yes, who made them be so careless?

He thought about it over and over again, as if he could really convince himself. At that time, the scene was messy and full of people, who could really put the blame for the incident on him?

At most, it was a matter of opinion, not evidence.

He was about to take a Didi (app-based transportation company) to go back to the dormitory when a car stopped in front of him. The car window rolled down, revealing Ou Renjin’s delicate profile. He turned his head and smiled softly at Dong Qiao, “Where are you going? I’ll let the driver take you.”

Dong Qiao’s mind went blank. His heart was beating so fast that it seemed to be jumping out of his throat, and his voice unconsciously trembled as he opened his mouth, “…President Ou.”

“Didn’t I hear that you came to the villa some time ago? You were looking for me, right?” Ou Renjin gazed at him with a smile, looking frivolous and attractive.

Dong Qiao was hesitant at first. Could it be that President Ou knew the truth about last night and came to retaliate against him?

Looking at his attitude, it did not seem like that.

He breathed a sigh of relief, and at the same time, a secret joy emerged from his heart. He couldn’t help but start to guess; could it be that Ou Renjin was about to change partners again, and because he had taken the initiative to go to the villa, it was a rare occasion for Ou Renjin to remember him, so he came to him specifically today?

Pulling himself together, he smiled at Ou Renjin quickly, “That time I came to the villa, it was because Shaowen and I practised in the same dance club. I took him home that day, so I went in for a cup of water.”

“Really?” Ou Renjin hooked his finger at him, “Get in the car first.”

Dong Qiao suppressed the excitement in his heart and got into the car. He tried to take the initiative to talk to Ou Renjin, “What brings you to Yixin? Is there any business?”

Ou Renjin shook his head, “No, I came here to find you specifically.”