Who Needs a CEO? I Choose Stardom

At this time of year, the sun still favored the Tropic of Capricorn, so night fell exceptionally early in the Northeast.

The Huang family finished dinner early and went to their respective rooms, settling onto the heated *kang* beds.

The old couple lived in the east room. At that moment, one was smoking a long-stemmed pipe while the other sat cross-legged, leaning against the low *kang* table and counting money.

Old Huang was a well-known fishing crew leader in the area. Every winter fishing season, he would lead his team out onto the lake. After the fish were sold, everyone would split the money.

This was his share, which he had just received today.

"The catch wasn’t as good as last year. We’re short several thousand."

Old Huang’s wife sighed as she counted.

To a thrifty homemaker, several thousand was a huge sum of money—enough to buy more cabbage than they could eat all winter.

"What’s the use of saying that? Fish in the lake aren’t like melons in a field where you can just pick one and take it home. Getting this much is already great! A person has to be content..."

"Alright, alright, I know. ’Contentment brings happiness,’ right?"

Seeing his wife give him a smiling glare, Old Huang pushed against the stack of quilts to sit up a little straighter. Just as he was about to speak, he heard his granddaughter shouting from the west room, "Grandpa! It’s an emergency! Quick, get online and look!"

"What’s wrong? What is it? What am I supposed to look at?"

Before he could get a clear answer, his granddaughter burst in like a little cannonball, holding up a phone.

"Grandpa, look! People are spreading rumors about the young woman who gave us the tickets!"

Thanks to the children’s play, the Huang family’s granddaughter had a very good impression of Ni Bingyan. She had even pestered her mom to find several photos of her to look at. She had just been playing on her dad’s phone when she saw a push notification. The person in the photo looked familiar, so she clicked on it, skimmed the article, and couldn’t stop herself from running to find her grandpa.

He took the phone, but before he could get a good look, his son and daughter-in-law came over too.

"It’s so cold! Hurry up and get on the *kang*. What’s going on? Tell me clearly."

And so, the family of five gathered around, staring at the phone on the *kang* table.

The young couple had been in the middle of a discussion. When they saw their daughter suddenly run off, they followed her over. Taking a look, Xiao Huang’s wife couldn’t help but chuckle.

"See? I told you she was the one who bought the tickets! Look, someone took a picture of it. She bought them right here at our local theater’s ticket machine."

She was quite pleased to find new evidence supporting her guess.

"Hey, honey, that’s not the point. The point is that people are spreading rumors about this young woman, saying her kid is already several years old! But she obviously gave those tickets to our family!"

When Xiao Huang’s wife heard that, she realized he was right and started to worry too.

"Yeah, Dad! This Big Dog is a real piece of work! Using just a few ambiguous photos to spread rumors that a young woman is married with a kid. For a young actress, being rumored to have a kid... that’s going to have a bad impact on her career, right?"

Old Huang didn’t say anything. He put on his reading glasses and zoomed in on each photo one by one.

In one photo, two people bundled up from head to toe were walking side-by-side out of an inn. In another, the young woman was buying tickets at a children’s theater. A third photo was of the ticket machine’s screen, which displayed the purchase interface for "The Three Little Pigs," the only children’s play currently for sale.

"Hmph! Isn’t this just slander? She should sue him!"

Old Huang was furious.

Although he had only met her twice, he had an excellent impression of Ni Bingyan.

Furthermore, the fact that the tickets were clearly given to his family but were now being used to create a false rumor made him feel terribly guilty.

"I don’t think this Big Dog guy actually said much! He just posted the photos and let the netizens see for themselves. It’s the netizens who are saying she’s married with a kid. I’m afraid it would be hard to sue him."

Xiao Huang was quite calm.

"Taking photos of people without their permission should be illegal, right?"

"I don’t think so? People take pictures on the street all the time, and I’ve never seen anyone get arrested for it."

"But it should be, right?"

The family began to debate the issue. Old Huang frowned and made a final decision. "Regardless of how she decides to handle this, we need to help clear things up for her."

"Then, Dad, how about you record a short video explaining what happened?"

"Alright, let’s record it!"

Old Huang sat up straight, glanced down at the thick padded jacket he was wearing, then stood up. He took a nicer set of clothes from the cabinet on the *kang* and changed before calling his son over to film him.

Normally an articulate man, he suddenly found himself at a loss for words when facing the camera.

After stumbling over his words several times in a row, Old Huang had no choice but to write down his lines and read them. At last, they managed to film the entire video.

As she watched them fiddle with uploading the video, Old Huang’s wife put the money away in the locked cabinet. She sighed and went to the outer room.

"Sigh, these netizens are really too nosy. Isn’t it normal for a woman to get married and have kids? As long as she’s following the law and it’s what she wants, what age she marries and what age she has kids... isn’t that her freedom? Does becoming a celebrity mean you can’t get married or have kids anymore?! I just can’t understand why people are scolding her for it."

Meanwhile, Ni Bingyan was out eating cabbage wraps with the film crew, completely unaware that she was trending online again, much less that the Huang family was getting all worked up on her behalf.

"Don’t forget to put some peanuts inside, they’re delicious!" Su Tong cheerfully instructed Ni Bingyan. "But don’t overfill it, or everything will spill out."

"Okay, Sister Tong."

Ni Bingyan agreed, spooning some of the rice back out of the cabbage leaf. She rolled it up deftly and popped it into her mouth.

She chewed with satisfaction before swallowing and couldn’t help but exclaim, "This is so good! These big leaves are the soul of the dish! By the way, how do you all grow your cabbage here? It’s so different from other places."

Sang Yuan felt like laughing when he heard her speaking with a full-blown Northeast accent.

Anyone who didn’t know better would probably think she was a local girl from the Northeast.

’This must be a sign of her strong talent for languages, huh?’

"President Sang, you should eat too! Don’t just spend your time staring at the beautiful lady."

Luo Guangkun had noticed something between them and couldn’t resist teasing the young pair.

’If they get together, it’ll make for a great story. Maybe they’ll even have to give me a matchmaker’s red envelope!’

Ni Bingyan had heard countless suggestive jokes in her two lifetimes, so what was a little teasing like this?

Her expression perfectly composed, she wiped her hands, picked up a cabbage leaf, and continued making another wrap. "President Sang probably doesn’t know how to make these. Here, let me make one for you!"

With that, she handed the finished wrap to him.

Sang Yuan took it, thanked her with a smile, and began eating with an equally calm expression, not saying a word.

’Last night, when he saw Ni Bingyan post a photo from "Rainy Days with an Umbrella" online, it all came back to him. That drama had been so explosively popular that it spawned a massive group of shippers. In his last life, even several years after he and Bingyan were married, some of those shippers still couldn’t let it go.’

’How could he not be jealous?’

’In his past life, after they got married, no matter how hard the shippers tried to tear them apart online, he could always remain composed. He knew Ni Bingyan was a woman of high moral character; once she had started a family with him, she wouldn’t spare another man a second glance.’

’But right now, he had no official status in her life. What if Bingyan took a liking to someone else and actually started a relationship with them?’

’It hadn’t happened in their last life, but what if this life was different?’

’The most urgent thing was to become her official boyfriend. Once he had that status, everything else would be much easier to handle.’

’But Ni Bingyan showed absolutely no romantic interest in him.’

’What should he do?’

’Before the New Year, he had only hinted at his feelings, and she had suddenly taken on a ton of work, not even returning to Beijing. If he actually confessed, the chances of being rejected were absurdly high.’

’He wasn’t an idiot; he would never do something so reckless.’

For his visit to the set this time, the production team had specially arranged for the main actors to have a meal with him as a show of hospitality.

Thinking that it wasn’t unreasonable for an investor to inspect the production before they changed filming locations, Ni Bingyan treated him as naturally as she would any ordinary friend—neither overly warm nor deliberately cold.

Sang Yuan felt like a dog trying to bite a hedgehog—there was simply no opening. He spent the entire meal feeling distracted.

Luo Guangkun found the lack of drama boring and turned to discuss location arrangements and the shooting schedule with the production coordinator.