On the way to the studio, Xu Xinyi gained a clear understanding of what happened last night. Fortunately, Anya and the studio staff were all experienced people so they quickly smelled the unusual black material that was being mixed in with Jiang Nian's hot search.
Anya was an old veteran in the circle, and she had good relationships with all the major media and marketing companies. So she quickly figured out which marketing company was behind things, but she hadn’t been able to figure out who was paying the marketing company.
When she received the name of the marketing company Anya gave her, Xu Xinyi was surprised to see that it was a very powerful company. As far as she knew, the price to get this company to move was not low.
Who had such a deep grudge with her, or such a deep grudge with Jiang Nian, to spend so much money on smearing Jiang Nian?
"Anya, what's going on?" As soon as she arrived at the studio, Xu Xinyi couldn't wait and went directly to Anya's office.
Anya had just hung up a phone call. When she saw Xu Xinyi, she frowned. "I haven't found out who is behind this, but you can rest assured that this black material won’t be able to set off any waves."
After hearing Anya’s reassurance, Xu Xinyi breathed a sigh of relief.
"Where is Jiang Nian?"
"He came in early this morning. He should be in the practice room now... Wait!" Anya's phone vibrated and she looked very startled after looking at the screen. She hurriedly stood up and walked out of the room with a sullen look on her face.
Xu Xinyi didn't know what was going on, "What's wrong?"
"I told Jiang Nian a hundred times this morning that he should not post any messages or pay any attention to this matter. What's wrong with him?"
The studio was not very big, so Anya's rebuke reverberated loudly as she walked across the office.
Seeing Anya was angry, Xu Xinyi dared not say anything more, she just followed Anya in fear that she might destroy a perfectly good fresh meat her heavy hand or even eat Jiang Nian alive.
When Anya shoved the door to the practice room open, Jiang Nian was sitting on the ground with his phone in his hand.
When she saw this scene Anya didn’t even slow her stride, she quickly stepped forward and grabbed Jiang Nian's phone. The screen still had the Weibo reply interface open.
"Jiang Nian, how many times did I tell you? What's the matter with you?"
Anya was the kind of person to 'take pity on the beauty', which anyone could see because of her near unlimited tolerance for young fresh meats and handsome boys. So seeing her take this attitude with Jiang Nian, Xu Xinyi really did not know what was going on.
"Anya, why don’t you speak nicely?"
"Speak nicely?" Anya handed the phone over to Xu Xinyi. "Just look at what he posted. We’ve been working hard to refute the rumors for him out front but look at what he’s been doing behind us. It’s practically stabbing us in the back. By doing this isn’t he just delivering gossip material into our enemies’ hands?" Then to Jiang Nian, she said: "I’m confiscating your phone so you won't use Weibo anymore for the time being. We'll talk about it when this is over."
Xu Xinyi took a look at the phone screen and frowned slightly.
As the saying went there were people who would ‘take people's money and eliminate disasters’* and everyone here should know about those sorts of people. There were marketing companies who would take a person's money and then make any story run. Of course, those dirty materials being released online were all absurd but, to put it rudely, Jiang Nian could only be regarded as a fledgling in the entertainment industry so there were people eager to take advantage of his apparent consideration and naivety.
"Forget it," Xu Xinyi shook her head at Anya. "You leave first, I'll handle this."
Anya really seemed to be annoyed this time, she sent one last glare at Jiang Nian and then left in an angry huff.
Jiang Nian slowly lowered his head but said nothing.
Xu Xinyi sat down next to him and briefly read his recent Weibo replies. They were pretty much all just scolding the ugly comments left by other people. Of course, Jiang Nian's replies themselves were not necessarily very pleasant.
Probably because he knew that he had caused trouble again on impulse, Jiang Nian apologized in a low voice, "Sorry, I've caused you trouble again."
Xu Xinyi smiled. "It’s fine, I can understand. People online say some really terrible things. When I first joined the industry I also received my share of these kinds of personal attacks, some of them were even worse than these."
Jiang Nian looked up at her.
"You know, I used to have a bad reputation before so a lot of fans didn't like me. I would receive countless private messages scolding me every day, eventually you get numb to it."
"Didn’t it make you angry?"
"Of course it made me angry. How could I not be angry when people were smearing me for no reason? But do you want to know how I handled it?"
"How did you handle it?"
"I made countless secondary accounts that I used to find the fans who scolded me the most harshly. I had to look very carefully. I couldn't waste time on the bot accounts made by marketing companies, I had to find the real fans, and when I did find them I would scold them back in private messages and also smear their favorite stars that they supported on their Weibo. After that, and remember this because this is the most important step, I would block them!" Xu Xinyi smiled slyly. "After they are blocked they can’t reply to your private messages anymore. So they would spend who knows how long writing an essay scolding you back but would then be unable to deliver to you because they were blocked. So all they could do was be angry all night."
Jiang Nian looked at her blankly.
Xu Xinyi coughed. Maybe she should get back to the point.
"But Jiang Nian you are a star now. When you have a lot of people who like you, you have to bear the possibility of some people not liking you. Usually, you shouldn't have to care about those people's words. You should just pay more attention to the fans who support you. After all, we have to deal with this every day."
Xu Xinyi handed the phone back to Jiang Nian. "Anya was just feeling a bit flustered and she spoke without thinking. Just remember what I told you. You can use Weibo normally but you must remember to open a secondary account first."
Jiang Nian looked at the phone Xu Xinyi was offering, he hesitated for a moment, but eventually nodded and accepted it.
"Sister Xinyi, don't worry, I won't cause you any more trouble."
"Great, I believe you. The whole studio has been up all night because of you so later, you should buy everyone lunch and maybe treat them to something this afternoon."
"Mhm."
"Things are fine, don't worry. Someone smearing you is actually a good thing, it just means you're popular. No one bothered to smear you when you were in big_five, right? That’s because you weren’t popular back then."
Jiang Nian nodded slowly.
"So don't think too much," Xu Xinyi patted Jiang Nian on the shoulder. "I'll go and talk to Anya."
She got up and left the practice room after she finished speaking.
The door to the practice room closed and Jiang Nian sat there motionlessly for a long time. Eventually he unlocked his phone screen and began deleting the words in the Weibo reply interface one after another. After exiting out of the reply window, another vicious message had appeared on the screen.
"What else does Jiang Nian have besides his face? When he entered Xu Xinyi's studio, it was all initiated by Xu Xinyi, right? That Xu Xinyi is no good."
It was a bit weird.
He had been full of anger before but now that feeling had miraculously quieted down. Even when he saw those disgusting words, it seemed that he didn’t mind them so much anymore.
As soon as Xu Xinyi neared the door of Anya's office, she heard Anya’s impatient voice from the front desk. Curiously, she turned her head and walked over to the front desk.
There was a man at the front desk who was holding 99 roses. He was looking at Anya with a depressed look on his face. "Miss Anya, I'm just a flower delivery man. There's nothing I can do about it."
Eventually, Anya signed the receipt with an impatient look on her face. The delivery man quickly put the roses behind the front desk and then immediately slipped away with a look of relief.
"Roses? Who sent them?"
When Anya heard the question, she felt a headache coming on, "Luo Jie." With that, she told the receptionist, "In the future, some people might send flowers, don’t look for me about it, just directly throw them into the trash can. I don’t need to be informed."
The receptionist at the front desk nodded and agreed.
Xu Xinyi followed her with a smile, "Luo Jie? Is he still bothering you?"
"Don't mention him. I get a headache whenever someone mentions him. I'm bored to death of it."
The whole studio was busy until late that night as they kept a close eye on all the emerging developments without a break.
While she was working, Xu Xinyi received two phone calls and ten text messages from Yi Yang asking when she would get off work. But Xu Xinyi replied to all of them with one word: "Busy"
At Lanting Yi Yang looked down at the perfunctory one word reply on his phone and was lost in thought.
How big of a deal was this Jiang Nian? She needed to be busy all day for his sake.
Yi Yang was feeling some deep grievances toward Mrs. Yi, who was currently busy with another man's affairs.
Today, he had cleared his schedule and made some special arrangements, thinking that he could cultivate a good relationship with Xu Xinyi using the advice he had interrogated from Zhao Bin. He didn’t expect he would be defeated by Xu Xinyi before the battle even began.
After thinking about it for a while he sent another text message to Xu Xinyi.
"Do you know what day today is? Come back earlier."
What day today was?
Xu Xinyi, who received that message, fell into a daze as she thought carefully about today's date. But no matter how she thought about it, it didn't seem to be an important day.
Was it grandpa's birthday? No, Grandpa's birthday was in July, and if it really was one of the two Yi elder’s birthdays she would have been informed well in advance. Plus the family would have made a big deal about it.
But other than those days, she couldn’t think of any other big dates to remember.
Was it Yi Yang's birthday?
Xu Xinyi patted her forehead in thought. When was Yi Yang's birthday? It seemed to be sometime in the first half of the year, right?
She remembered that Mrs. Yi had told her in the past that Yi Yang did not like lively birthday parties, not to mention big events. So in the previous years, he would just eat a meal with his family. But Xu Xinyi had always solved his birthdays with a video call because she had always been busy with work outside the house during the past two years.
Was it really his birthday today?
Xu Xinyi couldn't ask anyone about this kind of thing. Was she supposed to say that she was a wife who loved her husband so much that she couldn't even remember her husband's birthday?
So she immediately replied with a message: "Husband, of course I know. I'll be right back. [kiss]"
"Xiao A, when is Yi Yang's birthday?"
I don't know. Heh, you only talk to Xiao A when you want something from me. If you don’t have anything, you won't care about me, huh. Women.
…
Xu Xinyi quickly packed up and drove home immediately. When she noticed a shopping mall on the way, she got out of the car and bought a gift for Yi Yang. Whether it was his birthday or not there was no loss.
Then she rushed back to Lanting as quickly as possible.
She opened the door and found the huge room was dark and empty. The only lights came from the dining room table, where there were a few white candles burning brightly. The candlelight together with the lights of the whole city outside the huge windows glimmered in Xu Xinyi's eyes.
When she saw this, Xu Xinyi felt a little guilty and entered the house with her gift. "Husband?" She called.
Yi Yang's voice sounded from the living room, "You’re back? Have you eaten yet?"
"Not yet." Because the lights were off Xu Xinyi could not see Yi Yang's expression clearly.
"That’s good, I prepared dinner."
Xu Xinyi sat down at the table with the gift she prepared and looked at the candlelit dinner that was clearly carefully prepared by Yi Yang in front of her.
--"Since when can you do a romantic thing like a candlelit dinner? Is it really some big day today?"
Yi Yang raised his eyebrows. He frowned slightly. "You don't know what day it is today?"
Xu Xinyi smiled guiltily. "Of course I know!"
That said, she took out the gift she had just bought and handed it to Yi Yang. "This for you."
Yi Yang looked at the gift that Xu Xinyi handed to him and a rare smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He reached down and took out his long-prepared gift: an exquisite jewelry box.
"Happy birthday."
"Today is our wedding..." ...anniversary.
Their voices overlapped.
The jewelry box in Yi Yang’s hand froze in mid-air, and Xu Xinyi's gift also stopped in its tracks.
Silence, that was the romance of tonight.**
"Xu Xinyi, today is not my birthday! Have you forgotten our wedding anniversary?"
"What wedding anniversary? Our wedding anniversary is not today!"
The two people fell silent for a moment.
The candles on the table flickered quietly.
Yi Yang gritted his teeth. "You don't even remember my birthday?"
Xu Xinyi knew the louder person won so she raised her eyebrows and said angrily, "…don't mess around, you've forgotten our wedding anniversary!"
"You don't remember my birthday?"
"You don't remember our wedding anniversary?"
"When is my birthday, then?"
"When is our wedding anniversary, you tell me!"
There was another long silence.
"My birthday is on May fifth."
"Our wedding anniversary is on March 27th."
They both put their gifts away, quickly reached a tacit understanding that none of this had ever happened, and began to eat.
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*this is an idiom (拿人钱财，与人消灾)
**hmm I’m not sure about this line (沉默，是今晚的浪漫。)