Chapter 35

Chapter 35

He Wei originally didn’t pay much attention—until her gaze moved upward and landed on that contact’s profile picture.

White background, black minimalist sketch.

…It looked far too familiar.

He Wei even couldn’t believe her own eyes. She froze for a long moment. Only when the elevator stopped with a “ding” did she snap back to reality. As she walked out, she asked Cheng Nuo: 【Did your brother see the message you sent him last time about adding me?】

After sending the message, He Wei didn’t even dare breathe too loudly.

She never expected that just by adding a “nearby people” contact, she would end up adding Cheng Yan.

More precisely—not only had she added him, she had even had a short-lived online relationship with him that lasted less than two weeks before breaking up.

Most importantly, she clearly remembered that the guy she dated online started with a favorability rating close to eighty.

Close to eighty… He Wei wasn’t sure she remembered correctly, so she specifically asked the system to confirm. “Sweetie, what level of liking is seventy-eight?”

The system always answered questions like this quickly: “It means being happy when you see them, missing them when you don’t, and a deeper stage would be love that wants to see them every day.”

That wasn’t hard to understand.

He Wei’s expression instantly froze.

System: “Host, what’s wrong?”

He Wei: “……”

So… Cheng Yan had already, unknowingly, developed that level of liking for her?

He Wei’s legs felt a little weak. After forcing herself to unlock the door and go inside, she collapsed straight onto the sofa.

Half her face was buried in a cushion, her long hair slipping off her shoulders and hanging over the edge of the sofa. She looked completely drained.

The system cautiously asked, “Host, are you okay?”

He Wei shook her head.

Wrong target. Her strategy had gone completely wrong, and she was in a very bad state.

No matter who her online boyfriend had been swapped with, Cheng Yan was the most awkward possible option.

Not to mention he was Cheng Nuo’s brother—setting that aside entirely… he was also Yan Huai’s good friend.

She had met him countless times; she couldn’t even count them on one hand.

There was still nearly a month left before her scenes wrapped. That meant for the next month, she and Cheng Yan would be constantly running into each other.

Just thinking about it was enough to make her cringe.

And wasn’t this basically another way of “I fell for my brother’s woman”?

He Wei’s scalp tingled. She raked her fingers through her hair randomly, and just then her phone on the side vibrated.

She picked it up and saw Cheng Nuo had replied.

Cheng Nuo: 【I just asked him. He said he never saw the message where I sent your WeChat ID, and even asked me if it failed to send.】

Then she sent a screenshot.

Cheng Nuo: 【I specifically scrolled back to check—it really did send!】

Cheng Nuo and Cheng Yan both lived in the Cheng family villa, under the same roof as siblings, so they rarely used WeChat to contact each other.

If it weren’t for He Wei’s recent situation, and Cheng Nuo suddenly asking Cheng Yan about it, she wouldn’t have even realized that Cheng Yan still hadn’t added He Wei.

Cheng Nuo felt her brother was unreliable, so this time she decided to let He Wei add him herself.

She didn’t dwell on the issue any further. She assumed that He Wei hadn’t replied for a long time because she was feeling shy, so she comforted her: 【Wei Wei, you don’t need to feel embarrassed. Just treat my brother like your own older brother.】

When the message came through, He Wei stared at those words with a troubled expression.

Cheng Nuo: 【My brother said he will treat you like his own younger sister.】

He Wei’s expression became even more conflicted.

If she didn’t know about Cheng Yan’s favorability toward her, it would’ve been fine. But now that she knew… she couldn’t help overthinking it.

He Wei let out a breath, then inhaled deeply. After repeating this several times, she finally managed to calm down a bit.

She was considering whether she should just delete this WeChat account entirely, or simply not add Cheng Yan at all.

After thinking for half a minute, she sent Cheng Nuo a message: 【Nuo Nuo, I think I’d better not add your brother for now.】

Cheng Nuo replied puzzled: 【Why?】

Why else?

Because your brother likes me!

He Wei didn’t dare reply that directly and instead typed another line: 【You also said your brother doesn’t use WeChat often, and none of the male and female leads in our crew seem to have added him either. It wouldn’t be very appropriate if I added him and others found out.】

He Wei: 【Let’s wait until my scenes are finished filming before we talk about it.】

By then, Cheng Yan would probably have already forgotten whether his online girlfriend had been a man or a woman.

Cheng Nuo had originally just wanted Cheng Yan to help take care of He Wei, and had forgotten about this point.

She also knew the entertainment industry was messy—black could be said to be white, and baseless rumors were common. If He Wei and Cheng Yan got too close, it really could be used by others to stir up trouble.

Only then did Cheng Nuo realize she might have caused trouble, and quickly replied: 【Okay, okay, then don’t add him for now. Wei Wei, if you need anything in the future, just tell me directly. I’ll think of a way too.】

He Wei almost wanted to send her a virtual hug.

The two of them both had free time and ended up chatting for nearly half an hour before ending the conversation.

He Wei went to the kitchen to cook some porridge. While waiting for it to cook, she opened her laptop and logged into her email to handle work messages.

She hadn’t opened her inbox for several days.

Now that she did, she found dozens of emails. After the system automatically cleared spam, there were still around twenty job offers left.

He Wei had left her email address on her Weibo, but usually only received three or four messages a month. This time, it had unexpectedly increased several times over.

She clicked through them one by one, then rejected them one by one.

They were all advertising collaborations asking her to promote products on Weibo.

From small domestic milk powder and diapers to larger items like watches and microwaves.

Thinking about the tens of thousands of followers she had gained from magazine covers, she politely declined each one while thanking them.

Half an hour later, after finally finishing all the emails, He Wei felt even more strongly that she needed an assistant.

She checked a job recruitment website again.

Only a few hours had passed, and someone had already messaged her: 【Hello, are you looking for an assistant?】

He Wei replied “Yes” and then went to the kitchen to turn off the stove.

When she came back out, the applicant had sent another message: 【May I ask… are you Sister He Wei?】

To avoid revealing too much personal information for safety reasons, her recruitment profile only listed her as “Miss He.” She hadn’t expected the other party to recognize her anyway.

He Wei didn’t reply immediately.

Two minutes later, the person seemed afraid she might misunderstand and explained: 【Sister He Wei, I’m Feng Ning… I’m the makeup artist who once substituted for Senior Sister Cheng and worked with the crew’s styling team…】

Afraid she wouldn’t remember, Feng Ning sent a long self-introduction.

Only then did He Wei remember. She felt slightly more reassured and asked: 【But aren’t you a makeup artist?】

【My skills aren’t really suitable for surviving in this industry… and after what happened with Mu Sheng last time, because she was unhappy that I didn’t follow her instructions, she told others not to hire me either… Although she doesn’t appear much anymore now… anyway, I don’t think I’m very suited for this line of work, so I also want to try something else.】

……

He Wei didn’t feel particularly guilty toward her, but the girl was still young, not bad-natured, and had helped her quite a bit last time. In every sense, He Wei shouldn’t refuse.

She first asked Feng Ning about her salary expectations.

He Wei was currently in the early stages of her career. She definitely couldn’t afford a high salary, but she wouldn’t be stingy with a normal market rate either.

The two of them were about the same age and got along quite well. After chatting through the basic details, they quickly settled on a start date.

Next Monday.

That just so happened to be the day He Wei would be going to Feili to shoot the final set of photos.

The assistant had been found.

He Wei felt that this truly marked her first real step forward. After this new “save file,” the plot had clearly become much smoother. The dark clouds in her heart dispersed, and everything gradually became clearer.

She was too lazy to cook, so she randomly grabbed a packet of pickled vegetables. While drinking congee to fill her stomach, she browsed Weibo on her phone.

Just like her email, He Wei hadn’t checked Weibo for quite a while either.

When the Mu Sheng incident first broke out, the moment she opened her private messages she was flooded with endless curses and death wishes, to the point she even uninstalled Weibo for a few days.

Only after things gradually calmed down did He Wei reinstall it.

Now, after logging in, she saw thousands of private messages—half of them calling her malicious and scheming.

He Wei swiped through a few times and couldn’t find a single positive comment. Not wanting to waste time or make herself angry, she deleted everything—useful or not—in one go.

The Weibo world instantly became quiet again.

She didn’t check comments or mentions either, only opened her profile page.

Originally, she just wanted to see whether she had lost followers—but when she saw the number next to “followers,” she froze.

She remembered that when she temporarily left Weibo a while ago, she only had a little over forty thousand followers. Among those forty thousand, there were more inactive accounts than active ones. Yet after just a few days, her follower count had increased more than twentyfold.

Afraid she was seeing things, she specifically took a screenshot and sent it to Jiang Jingyue: 【Sister Yue, how many is this?】

Jiang Jingyue: 【1.07 million.】

After a pause, He Wei asked again: 【What exactly happened on Weibo while I was gone these past few days?】

She had cleaned her social media break very thoroughly and even told close friends not to relay any Weibo news about her. Yet now, everything had changed drastically.

Jiang Jingyue: 【It’s not these past few days—it’s today. Go check the Weibo hot search.】

Afraid He Wei wouldn’t dare to look, she added thoughtfully: 【Don’t worry, this time it’s a friendly trending topic.】

Only then did He Wei feel reassured enough to take a look.

The fourth trending topic was her: #He Wei privately comforts an online user#

Clicking in, the top post was accompanied by a screenshot of a conversation where He Wei had seen a netizen being attacked and privately messaged her to apologize and thank her:

【A few days ago, I spoke up for this young lady and ended up being cursed at and spammed with endless private messages from Mu Sheng’s brainless fans. I nearly fell into depression and had to temporarily leave Weibo. Yesterday I was feeling a bit better in real life and finally gathered the courage to log back in, and then I saw a private message from the young lady herself comforting me… I instantly cried. She’s really such a good person. I’ve decided to stan her for life sob sob!】

This post had very high engagement, with likes and reposts both exceeding fifty thousand.

He Wei’s face turned slightly red as she read it.

That day, she had truly just acted on impulse and never expected it to turn into this result.

In fact, if this user hadn’t brought it up today, He Wei would have completely forgotten it ever happened.

She quietly gave it a like, then backed out and opened her new followers list.

Coincidentally, she spotted what looked like a burner account among them. Beneath it was a system-generated line: “Someone you follow, @Cheng Yan, also follows this account.”

He Wei looked at that ID again.

The name was extremely simple: “User.”

On Weibo, an ID like this was usually reserved for high-level users or internal platform staff.

The more He Wei looked at it, the more impressive the name “User” seemed. Unable to resist, she clicked into it.

And that click basically confirmed it was a burner account.

It had been registered today. Followers: 7. Following: 1.

He Wei wanted to see just what kind of person this was—someone who had registered on the first day and already got Cheng Yan to follow them.

Then she clicked into the account’s followers list and was stunned.

Inside, there were only seven people—but all seven were big names.

Aside from Cheng Yan, there was a Weibo CEO, the son of a wealthy second-generation heir who regularly trended online, and an international male model.

She recognized or had at least heard of those four. As for the other three, even though she hadn’t heard of them before, their follower counts alone made it obvious they were not ordinary people.

He Wei was so shocked she almost bit her tongue.

Her fingers trembling slightly, she clicked into the account’s following list.

There was only one person.

And that person had the same name, same surname, and same profile picture as He Wei.

“……”

So this “super big shot” followed by all those powerful figures… only followed her.

He Wei was almost scared into a heart attack.

There was no way she would dare follow this account back.

So… for the sake of avoiding suspicion, should she remove this follower… and block it?