Chapter 54 Scammer Decides to Be a Good Person 29: Campus Youth Idol Drama

Shi Lan wasn’t just being polite or flattering. She genuinely admired this girl’s work.

“May I ask what I should call you?”

The girl seemed a little nervous as she introduced herself. “My name is Sun Guo. My pen name is Bu Hua.”

Shi Lan smiled especially gently. “Then I’ll call you Bu Hua.”

The girl’s shoulders relaxed a little, as if she was used to being called that.

“I truly think this script is very good, and I sincerely want to buy it. What’s your asking price? We can talk about it.” Shi Lan took out a business card and handed it over. “Don’t worry, I’m not a bad person.”

Bu Hua said, “Hello, President Shi. I’m honored that you’ve taken a liking to it. May I ask why? You don’t seem to work in this industry either.”

Why?

Because this was a groundbreaking script.

What genre was it?

A youth campus idol drama. It also mixed in all kinds of melodramatic elements like Cinderella, domineering CEOs, and wealthy elite families. The story revolved around

an ordinary college girl and told the story of her and several of the campus’s most prominent boys. Each of those boys had his own distinctive charm: a cold, genius top student with sky-high IQ, a sunny and cheerful boy next door, an artistic and brooding noble young master, a rough-and-tumble athlete, a warm and gentle senior, a flirtatious playboy…

It was practically like collecting stamps.

What Bu Hua had arranged differently was that she didn’t make all these different types of men revolve around the heroine. These young people each had their own dreams, and they were all striving toward their own goals.

Under the skin of passionate youth, it was still a story about the regrets of youth and love.

At first glance, it looked like an old-school formula story, melodramatic as hell.

But what made it excellent was that there was nothing like this on the market right now. Mainstream tastes weren’t here yet. It was perfectly normal that Bu Hua’s script couldn’t get picked up. Something like this would only be criticized as trash.

But ever since idol dramas first emerged, they’ve remained popular for decades, and naturally they have their reason for existing. Just think of Meteor Garden¹, once worshiped like a god by an entire generation.

How many stars shot to instant fame because of one good idol drama, and from then on stayed buried deep in the audience’s memories, becoming an irreplaceable white moonlight² that could never be erased?

Shi Lan wanted to be the first to crack open this market. Mm, and peel it for Du Heng to eat.

With Bu Hua’s script, based on Shi Lan’s many years of reading web novels, aside from not matching current mainstream tastes, everything from the story structure to the character settings, the plot development, and the emotional progression was very mature.

It was clear that Bu Hua’s writing foundation and skill were solid, and just as she had said, she had truly put thought into it.

Shi Lan explained all of this to Bu Hua bit by bit. With every point she made, Bu Hua’s eyes grew a little brighter. By the end, she had grabbed Shi Lan’s hand, looking as if she wanted to claim her as a soulmate for life.

Bu Hua was so emotional she started crying. “They all said this is nothing more than the fantasy of a failed woman, just an empty daydream with no substance.”

Shi Lan soothed her. “I understand. I understand.”

Du Heng and Long Haoshu came downstairs and saw Bu Hua, who was practically weeping into Shi Lan’s arms. Their eyes asked: What’s going on?

Shi Lan blinked at them: I’ll tell you in a bit.

Hearing the noise, Bu Hua lifted her head, her hair a mess and her face streaked with tears, and suddenly found herself face-to-face with devastatingly handsome features.

She just stared blankly, forgetting to react.

Shi Lan handed her a tissue. “Wipe your face.”

Bu Hua said, “He… he’s Du Heng… and you two…”

Du Heng raised a hand in greeting. “Hello.”

Shi Lan said, “That’s right, he’s Du Heng. If you sell me the script, he’ll play one of the male roles in it.”

Bu Hua looked so excited she was about to explode. She bit her finger and confirmed, “Du Heng? Playing a character I wrote?”

It wasn’t surprising that she was so excited. Over these past few years, what Du Heng had gained wasn’t just acting skill and fame, but also his looks.

Yes, he’d always been handsome, but now he had risen to another level. He was more mature, and the tempering of time had given him even more charm.

Every gesture of his was enough to make fans scream.

But this man belonged to her, Shi Lan.

After leaving the company, Shi Lan linked her arm through Du Heng’s and asked Long Haoshu, “We’re going to get seafood. Coming with us?”

Long Haoshu said, “No, I’ll head home too. I won’t disturb your private time together.”

They didn’t go to any fancy restaurant. Instead, they went to a seafood barbecue stall by the shore. Shi Lan liked the seafood barbecue there, and every time she came to this city, she always made a point of stopping by.

Du Heng didn’t particularly like shellfish. After they sat down, they ordered a whole table of food. Of it all, only a bowl of egg fried rice and a bottle of mineral water were for him. All the seafood was for Shi Lan.

The advantage of having a husband who didn’t like seafood was that he could peel it all for you, and under Shi Lan’s training, he had gotten both fast and skillful at it. He could even dip different kinds of seafood into different sauces before handing them to her.

As a result, whenever she ate out alone or with other people, she never liked ordering seafood.

“Husband, do you think I’m a lot of trouble?” she asked limply.

Without even raising his head, Du Heng focused on peeling mantis shrimp for her. “You only just realized you’re troublesome? I knew you were spoiled and troublesome from the first day I met you.”

“The first day? What was it like the first day we met?”

Was it when he went to the hair salon for a shampoo, and “Shi Lan,” working there as a shampoo girl, attended to him?

Tsk… what a mood-killer. And she couldn’t say it outright.

She latched onto the topic and said, “The sauce for the shrimp. Did you put in too much vinegar? Why does it taste so sour?”

Du Heng laughed inwardly. He might never pierce that layer of paper³, just like her.

He knew that the first time they had met was when she carried a bag of little cakes to the construction site shed to find him.

He hadn’t understood it at the time. It was only later, while thinking back, that he noticed something unusual. He vaguely felt it should have been that time.

After that, his life quietly took a turn and sped forward.

He always worried that one day she would suddenly disappear, just like how she had suddenly arrived. If that day really came, he wouldn’t even know where to look for her.

All Du Heng could do was treat her as well as he possibly could, twice as well.

Give her his money, give her himself, give her his heart…

What she didn’t know was that every time she tilted up her chin and ordered him around, telling him to do this and that, he found her especially adorable, like a haughty little cat. Of course, he couldn’t say that to her face. His wife didn’t like being called adorable.

He always took peeling seafood for her very seriously.

When he did these things, he felt at peace. It soothed the restlessness brought on by the possibility of losing her and gave him calm.

At night, in the height of passion.

Shi Lan felt him bite the back of her shoulder again.

It hurt enough that she swung a slap at him, but before it landed properly, he caught her wrist and stopped her.

She grumbled, “Are you a dog or something? You bit me so hard. And every time, you pick the exact same spot.”

The man held her hand and sucked gently on each fingertip one by one. Then he kissed her and pinned down her squirming body. In a hoarse voice by her ear, like the whispering temptation of a demon, he said, “I’m leaving a mark, so in the next life I can find you by it.”

Then he forced her to promise that in the next life she would definitely wait for him to come find her, teasing her until all that came out were broken, breathless sounds.

Did men also care about something as intangible as lifetime after lifetime? She had always thought that was just a way girls looked for a sense of security.

At the time, Shi Lan thought her husband was so romantic and so sexy, and she was completely captivated, letting him have whatever he wanted.

Then the next morning, when she got up and looked in the mirror, she saw the bluish-red mark on the back of her shoulder. It still hurt a little when she touched it. As she cursed his dog mouth, her thoughts wandered.

If using this mark to find someone in the next life was actually possible, what kind of decent man would go around lifting girls’ shoulders every day looking for someone?

And just thinking that before finding her, this man might have looked over who knew how many other women’s shoulders… no, forget it, she didn’t want this dog of a man after all!

The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. She stormed out of the bathroom and went straight at the man who was setting out breakfast, driving her knee into his stomach with the anti-pervert move she’d learned before. He doubled over in pain and looked up at her blankly.

Shi Lan glared back viciously and threw out a single line: “Scumbag!”

Du Heng: “…”

What had he done this time to earn such “high” praise?

_

Bu Hua’s script was finalized, and Shi Lan delivered it into Long Haoshu’s hands.

As expected, he didn’t agree. In fact, he opposed it very strongly.

“To be honest, I really don’t see what’s so good about this script. The plot is a complete mess. Audiences won’t buy it, and it’ll be hard to find investors too.”

“Brother Shu, it’s not that bad.” Shi Lan dropped an even bigger bombshell. “Actually, I bought this script as a custom project for Du Heng. I want him to play one of the roles in it. As for investors, if we really can’t find any, I’ll do it myself.”

Long Haoshu looked at her, his eyes clearly saying, Are you out of your mind?

“No way! I absolutely won’t let Du Heng act in this kind of drama. It’s just ruining his reputation and image. Please think about him too. It wasn’t easy for him to get where he is today. Investing in a production isn’t child’s play. You may see a lot of businesspeople throwing money into the entertainment industry, but only a small number of them make money. Losing everything is the norm.”

Shi Lan patiently explained what made the script different and where the gap in the market was. She also analyzed audience stickiness, but no matter how she tried to persuade him, he refused to budge.

“There are plenty of genres the market doesn’t have. If they don’t exist, there’s a reason for that. Not everything that’s missing needs to be put on screen.”

When it came to the direction of Du Heng’s career, this was the first time Shi Lan and Long Haoshu had completely failed to see eye to eye. Ugh, what a headache. How could a creature like a straight man possibly understand the appeal of idol dramas?

After they parted on bad terms, Du Heng asked Shi Lan, “Lanlan, why are you so set on making this drama, and on having me in it too?”

Well, that was even more of a headache. This was another hopelessly straight man.

Du Heng wasn’t openly against it, but he didn’t understand Shi Lan’s decision either.

Shi Lan took his hand. “Du Heng, I’m not doing this on a whim, and I’m not treating your future like a joke. There has never been a show with this kind of premise on the market. You have no idea how huge a craze it could set off.” She thought for a moment, then gave an example. “You’ve filmed a lot of excellent works over the past few years and played all kinds of roles. In your own opinion, out of all the characters you’ve played, which one was the most popular with audiences?”

Du Heng thought for a moment and said uncertainly, “Yang Xiao?”

“Why?”

“Because that was my first drama?”

Even now, he still remembered the several sacks of letters viewers had sent him back then.

“No. It’s the appeal of an idol-type role.”

He tried to follow her line of thinking. “You mean the role in this script has that same kind of appeal too?”

“It’s not just that. The entire premise of this script revolves around that very thing.” She did her best to explain and put her thoughts into words. “Your acting is very good now, you’re incredibly popular, and you already have a lot of representative works. But you can still go even further. Once this drama airs, it’ll explode all across the country. It’ll take your popularity to an entirely different level. It’ll turn the characters in it into gods in the hearts of a whole generation. Even decades later, people will still talk about them with relish. Let me put it this way: in the current market, if a newcomer in the industry got cast in this drama, then even if he never acted in another role for the rest of his life, the long-tail effect⁴ of this one show alone could probably feed him forever.”

“Of course, a drama like this leans more toward the female market. Some things can’t really be spoken aloud or explained in words, so the two of you can’t understand the return and the purpose behind why I want to do this.”

Du Heng said, “I think I more or less get it. In that case, why don’t you show the script to Sister-in-law? If this story really has as much appeal in the female market as you say, then you won’t even need to step in. Sister-in-law will be able to handle Brother Shu.”

Hah, this dummy hadn’t spent all these years in the entertainment industry for nothing. He’d learned a few tricks and even knew how to take the indirect route.

Shi Lan quickly packed up the script and went with Du Heng to visit the Long family. Over the past few years, because of the relationship between the men in their two families, Shi Lan had gotten along quite well with Sister-in-law Long. So this visit didn’t feel abrupt. Before leaving, she left the script behind and said she wanted Sister-in-law to help take a look and give her opinion.

Still, she kept a precaution in mind. She didn’t leave the entire script, only the first third of it.

At eleven-thirty that night, she received a call from Long Haoshu, exactly as expected.

Even through the receiver, his irritation was obvious. “Don’t go out tomorrow. Wait for me at the hotel. I’m coming to get the rest of the script.”

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Translator’s Notes

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1. Meteor Garden: A landmark 2001 Taiwanese idol drama based on the Japanese manga ‘Hana Yori Dango’. It triggered a massive pop culture phenomenon across Asia and set the template for the ‘Cinderella’ and ‘F4’ (wealthy, handsome elite) tropes mentioned in the text. ↩
2. white moonlight: A popular Chinese internet metaphor (白月光, bái yuèguāng) referring to an idealized, unattainable first love or a cherished memory that remains beautiful and untarnished in one’s heart. ↩
3. pierce that layer of paper: A Chinese idiom (捅破那层纸) meaning to expose a hidden truth or bring a secret out into the open. Here, it refers to the couple both knowing Shi Lan is a transmigrator/soul-swapper without ever explicitly discussing it. ↩
4. long-tail effect: In the context of Chinese entertainment, this refers to the enduring popularity and commercial value of a ‘classic’ work that continues to generate revenue and fan engagement years after its initial release. ↩