03 – 02. Mutual Love? Mutual Hate!

Ye Lu didn’t like Shang Lu very much at first.

Upon their first meeting, she immediately exposed his embarrassment of the wrongly buttoned shirt. She always maintained an indifferent expression as if she was an outsider. Despite being the most hated celebrity voted by netizens, her expression seemed to suggest that she didn’t care about participating in this kind of variety show, which was designed to embarrass them and make netizens laugh at their humiliation.

But after seeing the content on the card, he felt a little at a loss.

Not to mention Shang Lu, even he felt uncomfortable looking at those highly insulting words. Obviously, the program group was deliberately targeting her.

Shang Lu didn’t want to argue with these people either. As the director group said, they were just following orders.

So she said directly, “Give me five minutes. I want to make a phone call.”

Shang Lu went upstairs alone and entered a separate room without cameras or anyone else.

This call was naturally made to Jiang Yi.

After three rings, the phone was finally answered by a tired-sounding man who asked, “What’s up?”

Without beating around the bush, Shang Lu asked directly, “The people from the production team are from your company, so was this your arrangement?”

But instead of answering the question, Jiang Yi said, “You should apologize to Ning Lin.”

That was already an answer in itself.

Because Jiang Yi believed that Shang Lu had bullied the woman he loved, he wanted to force her to apologize in this way.

“I’ll f***ing apologize to your grandpa! You got addicted to playing the domineering president’s script of guarding your beloved woman, didn’t you?” This was the first time Shang Lu had cursed at Jiang Yi, and she hung up the phone without hesitation, blacklisting all his contact information.

It’s ironic that Jiang Yi took over his family’s media company for the sake of love, so that he could provide better resources for Ning Lin and pave the way for her in the entertainment industry.

And because Shang Lu liked him, she had acted in countless terrible movies under his company’s banner just to spend more time with him.

But now, just because his beloved woman had been hurt, was it necessary to punish Shang Lu indiscriminately even if she had said it wasn’t her doing?

It was really disgusting, he didn’t leave her any face at all.

Even though she had been influenced by the plot before, just the thought of her actually caring about this person for over a decade made her feel nauseous.

In an instant, Shang Lu understood two things:

One, being in love can be really dangerous for the brain.

Two, men with big eyes are never good.

After realizing that she was just a tool and a supporting character, Shang Lu also realized that her feelings for Jiang Yi were not that of a love.

But after all these years of being childhood sweethearts, Jiang Yi still held a special place in her heart.

During the years when her mother passed away due to complications during childbirth, her father, who deeply loved his wife, refused to see her. Her brother, who couldn’t accept their mother’s passing, also hated her, and even the family’s servants treated her like a jinx. Only Jiang Yi had ever reached out to her.

He gave her candy, sent her cute dolls, and wrote letters to comfort her and tell her not to be sad. He really treated her well.

So even though Jiang Yi treated her poorly after Ning Lin appeared, Shang Lu still found reasons to forgive him, such as being controlled by the plot.

She didn’t want to be his lover or friend, but she also didn’t want to hate him.

Her eyes were dry and sore.

But surprisingly calm.

Shang Lu turned out to be stronger than she imagined. Soon after, she went downstairs as if nothing had happened and said the program could continue recording.

The production team explained the live broadcast interruption just now as a device malfunction, and the recording continued.

Shang Lu’s response was to the first half read out by Ye Lu, and she said, “Seeing such comments, I realized that everyone seems to have some misunderstandings about me. I earn more than everyone imagines, not enough to sell myself. As for Jiang Yi, he’s not my type. When he announces his girlfriend, I will sincerely wish him all the best.”

After finishing her words, Shang Lu deliberately paused for two seconds and pointed the card in her hand towards the camera.

The focus of Shang Lu’s response was “announces his girlfriend.”

With the heat of the program and the audience’s curiosity and gossiping level, she didn’t need to say more. As long as the netizens were curious enough, there would naturally be people who would take the initiative to investigate.

At this moment, the barrage reacted from the live broadcast interruption just now.

[Right… Jiang Yi has never announced his girlfriend. Why do people treat Shang Lu as a third party? Are some CP fans high on fantasy?]

[Agree +1, I always thought so, but the number of LinJiang CP fans is too large…]

[I think Jiang Yi and Ning Lin can’t be more real! Not announcing it is just for Linlin’s career, right? As an insider, Shang Lu must know the truth. Why is she pretending?]

[I think Shang Lu’s bad comment is worse than Lin Yanyan’s just now. Can it really be like that?]

[Did the live broadcast suddenly interrupt because she was venting her anger? Does Lin Yanyan have a princess disease, or does Shang Lu have one?]

[So can anyone tell me in the end why the live broadcast suddenly interrupted? Is the device problem a deception?]

…

No one believed the reason given by the program group, and they all thought that it was because Shang Lu couldn’t handle the negative comments that the live broadcast was interrupted. They mocked her for being too sensitive and still participating in this variety show.

Some people also noticed something strange.

[I feel like the number of characters on Shang Lu’s card doesn’t match what Ye Lu read out.]

[I can’t see it clearly in the live broadcast, let’s wait for the recording to come out and watch again.]

At this moment, the recording was still ongoing, and the next segment was group tasks.

But as a program that sells itself on causing trouble, this kind of segment is also necessary to generate buzz.

For example, the grouping is done in a very immoral way.

Each person has to write down the guest they currently hate the most on paper, but it’s not specified how the groups will be formed.

This doesn’t have much impact on everyone present, so Shang Lu starts lightly tapping her leg with a pen while corresponding to others’ seats, silently chanting in her mind—

Whichever little rooster I point to, that’s who I’ll choose.

She points to Xu Ze, congratulations to this lucky unfortunate one.

So Shang Lu writes his name on the whiteboard without hesitation.

Soon everyone takes turns revealing the names on their whiteboards.

Jiang Jing and Song Zeqian voluntarily propose to write each other’s names, as among the actresses present, Song Zeqian only recognizes Jiang Jing’s acting skills, and gives her face.

On Ye Lu’s whiteboard, it’s also Xu Ze’s name, honestly stating: “If I don’t choose him, who else can I choose?”

Except for Xu Ze, the others are two senior and two girls, so there was no one else for him to choose.

After all, it was the first time they met, and everyone wasn’t there to argue with each other. Ye Lu couldn’t bully the seniors, nor was it appropriate to bully the girls.

The only thing that surprised people was that both Lin Yanyan and Xu Ze had written Shang Lu’s name on their whiteboards.

The barrage immediately began to mock Shang Lu.

[As expected, it hasn’t even been recording for long, and she’s already the most annoying one]

[The two seniors chose each other to give face to the juniors, but the real decision-makers were only three people, among which two voted for Shang Lu. Everyone’s eyes are sharp!]

Lin Yanyan looked at Shang Lu angrily and asked, “Did you deliberately not come downstairs to help me move my luggage earlier?”

Shang Lu : “…?”

She was silent for a few seconds before asking, “You only just figured that out?”

This sentence not only insulted Lin Yanyan’s intelligence but also her reaction time.

Some people in the barrage laughed.

[When Shang Lu confronts Lin Yanyan, why does this scene seem so funny?]

[Shang – Righteously Confident -Lu]

[Hahaha, I found a virtue of Shang Lu, she seems to be quite honest (thumbs up emoji)]

Of course, there are also those who don’t like Shang Lu and immediately come to argue.

[Honest? Previous commented, don’t you have some misunderstanding about Shang Lu?]

After understanding the reason why Lin Yanyan dislikes her, Shang Lu felt it was quite reasonable.

The PD then turned to Xu Ze and asked, “Do you and Shang Lu have any unknown grievances? Why did you both write each other’s names?”

Shang Lu replied, “We’re not familiar with each other, I just wrote it randomly.”

Xu Ze lowered his eyelashes and only said, “Me too.”

Although Xu Ze said so, Shang Lu’s gaze still lingered on him for a few seconds.

Actually, Shang Lu had been feeling strange all along. She felt that since they met, Xu Ze seemed to have…stolen glances at her several times.

Does Xu Ze hate her? They don’t even know each other.

Shang Lu didn’t figure it out, but she didn’t care either.

The staff of the program were somewhat disappointed, as there was no gossip they wanted in this round.

Because Jiang Jing, Song Zeqian, Shang Lu, and Xu Ze all filled in each other’s names in the “hated guest” list, satisfying the condition of “mutual love, mutual hate”, they successfully formed two pairs.