Chapter 137

  Jiang Chuan had no idea that the world he faced before and after boarding the plane would be completely different. He thought he was keeping a calm heart as he boarded the plane, but when it landed, his phone rang as soon as he turned it on, and he received a frantic call from his agent. Before he could even speak, he heard the person on the other end of the line yelling: "Young Master! No, I'll call you Old Master from now on - what did you feed that idiot Yuan Jinran to make him so stubborn and unreasonable? He's been staring at you with eyes that won't let you suffer any grievances!!!"

  "...The man furrowed his brow, slightly moving the phone away from his ear. After the seatbelt sign on the plane beeped and went out, the other passengers around him stood up. He then lowered his voice and spoke slowly, "Speak slowly, I couldn't understand what you were saying when you were yelling like that. What happened to Xiao Ran?"

  The person on the other end of the phone was clearly taken aback for a moment by that extremely natural and smooth "Xiao Ran".

  "You know Yuan Jinyan is older than you, right?"

  "I know, how?"

  “……”

  About thirty seconds later, when Jiang Chuan thought the signal was bad and couldn't hear anything from the other side, he said "hello" again. At this time, Fang Yu finally spoke up and continued: "I don't understand how you guys think, anyway, I just went online and saw those rumors, now I'm determined to come out of the closet, and I've already stopped filming the movies that were about to start shooting - do you know how much money will be lost?! A person who loves money so much doesn't even want money anymore! A workaholic doesn't even want to work anymore! All because some unknown people on the internet scolded him a few sentences - I've seen the greatness of love!"

  When he first heard Fang Yu say that Jian Ran was going to come out, the man was slightly stunned and subconsciously felt a variety of worried emotions. However, by the time Fang Yu finished speaking, amidst the agent's roar, he stood up from his seat and inadvertently caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the window. He clearly saw the corners of his lips slightly curled up...

  “……”

  The man paused, raised his hand to touch the corner of his lips, and waited until it returned to its usual calm straight line before putting down his hand. He lowered his eyelashes to cover up the complex emotions in his bright blue eyes, and with a completely different calm tone from the one he used on the phone, said: "I'll take care of the money, don't worry... Has Xiao Ran told you when she plans to hold the press conference?"

  "What's wrong with you, can't wait?"

  "I'll get someone over here to take a look," said Jiang Chuan, facing the other party with an air of protection like a mother hen guarding her nest, "I don't trust the security system at IM Company."

  "You uprooted our company's cash cow and took it home with you, and on your way out, you still had the nerve to look down on the company's basic setup."

  "Don't say that, I'm still a contracted artist of the company - it's just that compared to you, I care more about Xiaoran's safety issues. I heard that in this kind of gathering at home, it's easy to make trouble, and with my own people, I can rest assured. The only thing is that the permit for carrying firearms may not be able to be processed immediately in a short period of time. I will discuss with Luo Cheng that our company only needs to provide corresponding equipment..."

  "A gun?! You think our company's security system would have something like that? At most, it's just a stun baton!!! It's just a press conference for a celebrity coming out, no need to use a gun, right?!"

  "No, I'm worried."

  “……”

  Fang Yu did the bravest thing in her life, such as: ruthlessly and rudely hanging up Mr. Reynolds' phone call.

  ……

  Finally, a press conference was arranged five days later.

  Five days sounds like a long time, but in reality, when everything really gets started, it suddenly dawns on you that the five-day timeframe is actually suffocatingly tight.

  Don't say it's Jiang Luocheng, even he himself probably didn't think that one day he would resolutely walk this path.

  During these five days, the first thing he had to do was to explain the situation and apologize sincerely to the people on the other side of the river. When he announced that he would take all the compensation and start filming the movie, none of the high-level officials present at the scene said a word, and the atmosphere was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop... Just as Jianyan felt more uneasy and wanted to apologize again, unexpectedly, it was Li Rui, who was considered the most conservative in everyone's impression, who broke the silence. This veteran of the film industry simply picked up his tea cup, took a sip, and then said "We'll talk about this later" before dismissing Jianyan. The specific amount of compensation wasn't even mentioned, and Jianyan thought to himself that it wasn't something that could be settled with just a few words. So, after one last deep bow, he left the conference hall obediently.

  Jin Yan quietly left the film crew, and not many people knew about it. He left early in the morning of the second day, returning his script and costume to the prop department. The little girl from the prop department hadn't reacted yet, until Jin Yan smiled and said "goodbye". It was as if they suddenly realized what had happened, and everyone stood there in stunned silence. After the young man with black hair left the prop room, the little girl who had taken the things handed over by Jin Yan looked down at her hands still holding the script that had been flipped through countless times. For some reason, a strange sense of grievance surged up in her heart, and she burst into tears. For about ten seconds, the entire prop room was filled with her crying.

  ……

  Before boarding the plane back to G City, I sent an email to the crew of "Leviathan" explaining the situation.

  ……

  Three hours after getting off the plane, I rushed to the headquarters of IM Company. On the way, I made a phone call home, and this time it was my mother who answered the phone calmly throughout my entire confession. Except for the sound of a water bottle and cup lightly colliding after I revealed my sexual orientation, Mrs. Yuan didn't express too many opinions during the whole process. Until I finished speaking, she remained silent for a long time, then said "sorry" over the phone. She let out a long sigh and replied, "What's there to apologize for?"

  I don't even know what I'm supposed to apologize for.

  He just feels sorry.

  For everyone around.

  He hung up the phone, and at this time, his mobile phone was pulled out of his palm by someone beside him. He was slightly stunned and turned around, only to find that the person sitting next to him was looking at him seriously: "The one who should apologize is me."

  After a moment of stunned silence, he forced a smile and said: "What does it have to do with you? It's my own decision. You asked me before what would make me willing to come out, I told you that it would be when someone appeared by my side who made me feel like I could come out for them. Now that person has appeared, and I've fulfilled my promise. Everything is just happening naturally."

  The man heard this, raised his hand and rubbed the tip of his nose as if somewhat uneasy. After a moment, he furrowed his brow as if making up his mind to say: "I'll tell you something, actually that day on the talk show I ——"

  "I know."

  “……”

  "It doesn't matter anyway." Jian Ran smiled and said, "Who made me a turtle, you can't understand why you're so anxious?"

  Jiang Chuan wanted to say what kind of analogy this was, but the words reached his lips and he remained silent. He hadn't expected that instead of the imagined tearing apart, he would be magnanimously forgiven... He couldn't help but feel that as he let out a sigh of relief, the guilt in his heart grew exponentially. He lowered his head to look at the young man with black hair, gazing at his calm profile, and suddenly felt that maybe he had really met his match in life.

  This dead skin is thick and warm, silently infiltrating, even before he can resist, when he comes back to his senses, he finds himself being eaten to death.

  The man sighed, and after a long while, he raised his hand and placed it on the shoulder of the person beside him, pulling him into his own embrace. As his large hand rested on the young black-haired man's shoulder, the clear sensation of touching bone made him subtly tighten his grip. He really didn't know what kind of curse could make a good person suddenly lose so much weight in just a few days; he truly had no idea.

  ……

  Returned to the company, completed the handover work and shared own thoughts with Luo Cheng and others.

  He was naturally subjected to a storm of criticism, and Luo Cheng looked so suffocated that he almost wanted to eat someone, but when he raised his head, he saw the expressionless, tall and majestic figure with azure eyes standing behind the young man with black hair, written all over with "it's only natural" - the "Golden Bodyguard". In the end, he still withdrew his fist, which had been ready to punch Zhen Ran in the face to wake him up, and weakly sighed: "When it rains, a mother wants to marry..."

  Jiang Chuan continued with a straight face and added: "I'll be good to him."

  Luo Cheng waved his hand tiredly: "I didn't mean to marry a son, keep this sentence and tell it to Xiaoran's mother - ah, imagine what Auntie would say, the number one grass protector in her heart, now still can't help but secretly pull out that thriving grass..."

  Jiang Chuan: “......”

  "I seduced him first."

  Jiang Chuan raised his hand and gently stroked his hair, then firmly grasped it and held it in the palm of his own hand.

  Luo Cheng: "……Get out, both of you."

  Jin Ran and Jiang Chuan cooperated to "roll" out, after leaving the IM company, they had nowhere to go, so they simply drove back to Jiang Chuan's villa. On the way, Jin Ran received an email from the "Leviathan" crew on his mobile phone. In response to Mandro's handwritten letter, which was full of reasons and apologies as a producer, he only replied with one sentence: When the camera starts shooting, you are no longer yourself.

  He stared at this sentence for a long time, unable to determine what it meant until he couldn't help but ask the man driving next to him. The latter heard and turned his head to look at him deeply: "It means that in Mandro's view, you are just Lando, the male lead of the movie 'Leviathan'. Who you are in reality, what kind of background you have, what kind of person you like, whether that person is a man or a woman, and whether you are dating an investor, none of this has anything to do with him."

  "...stared at Jiang Chuan's handsome profile for a while and said, "Don't speak so crudely."

  "Your mouth is about to reach your ears when you speak."

  He slowly raised his hand to touch the corner of his lips, and only then did he realize that he was indeed smiling - after all these days, he had finally encountered something good... What was that saying again? In a pile of bad things, there will always be one good thing at the end. If it's not a good thing, then it just hasn't reached the end yet.

  At night, at Jiang Chuan's home, the two of them played online games for a while on their phones. Afterwards, Jiang Chuan went online to read news, and Jin Yan sat behind him watching for a bit because he couldn't understand German and finally gave up accompanying him. He took a bath, went to bed, leaned against the bedside reading a book for a bit, but in the end still couldn't resist picking up his phone to go online and kill time. After making a decision in his heart, he became very calm, and when facing those curses on the internet again, Jin Yan found that these things suddenly didn't seem so important anymore.

  It was unexpected by him that his intentional withdrawal from filming in Chongqing had been leaked out.

  Public opinion quickly divided into two factions. One faction was cheering and saying "it serves them right" and "thieves are always nervous", while the other faction, mostly fans of Jian Ran, were instantly panicked upon hearing this rumor and began inquiring about it under every Weibo post they could find, such as IM Company's official Weibo, Luo Cheng's personal Weibo, Fang Yu's personal Weibo, and even Li Gouhai's Weibo, as if they had already guessed that Jian Ran's move seemed to imply something was about to happen.

  If you were to leave too, I wouldn't know what's worth staying for in this circle. Sometimes I wonder if it's time to return to real life, until later I realized that you've become a part of my life.

  ……

  At this time, there were still two days before Jianran's press conference.