My Queen, My Rules - 60
Don't Cry
Ji Mingshu said nothing. She didn't need her friend to tell her. She already knew she was being torn apart on the trending list.
#Designer'sAbode#
#DesignerJiMingshu#
#JiMingshuYanYuexing#
Three of the top ten trending searches were about her, while further down, past the fifteenth spot, were Pei Xiyan and Feng Yan, two innocent bystanders the production team had forcibly dragged into the mess. For a home renovation show to manufacture hype like this, the production team had clearly spared no expense.
Ji Mingshu pressed her lips together, her face held no expression. But anyone paying close attention would have noticed the hand clutching her phone trembling ever so slightly.
The other girls who had come to the musical with her hadn't been sitting in the same row as she and Vivian. When they came over after the show, they had already heard about the trending searches too. They crowded around her, talking over one another in shocked disbelief. "What on earth happened?" "Who even is Yan Yuexing? She looks like some nobody from the bottom of the industry. Is she trying to use our Xiao Shu to get herself attention?" "Obviously." "Wait, isn't Junyi the sponsor of this show? How did things turn into this? Has the production team lost its mind?" ...
To be honest, these girls were as fake as they came, but when they stood firmly on your side and unleashed their full arsenal to viciously insult a common enemy, they could be surprisingly comforting.
Just like now. If these girls hadn't been taking turns flattering her and cursing Yan Yuexing on her behalf, Ji Mingshu suspected she would have been so furious she couldn't even walk out of the theater, much less calmly climb into her waiting car.
The entire drive home, Ji Mingshu sat in the back seat staring at her phone. The driver kept glancing at her through the rearview mirror. The worse her expression grew, the more anxious he became, dreading the little princess might suddenly order him to change destinations halfway there again.
After all, the last time she'd said she needed to go to Xinggang International to pick something up, she'd never returned after getting there. Not even a sound. Afterwards, Assistant Zhou had given him a thorough warning and told him that if it happened again, his year-end bonus would be docked.
And with Lunar New Year just around the corner, losing that bonus was the last thing he wanted.
The driver made up his mind that if the young lady really did throw a tantrum later, he would call Assistant Zhou first and make absolutely sure none of the blame landed on him.
Fortunately, what he'd feared never happened. Although the young lady's expression grew worse and worse with every passing minute, she still made it back to Mingshui Mansion without incident. Once he'd delivered her there safe and sound, whether she was in a good mood or not was no longer his problem.
[You fucking bitch! May every last one of your ancestors rot in hell!]
[Who the hell do you think you are, acting all high and mighty in front of our Xingxing? You pathetic piece of shit!]
[Hope your mom dies, your dad dies, your whole damn family dies!]
Her Weibo comments and private messages were flooded with a relentless stream of vile insults. Some of Yan Yuexing's fans had even taken screenshots of Ji Mingshu from the show, edited them into funeral portraits, and sent them to her.
Ji Mingshu sat alone on the living room sofa. The crystal chandelier overhead blazed with dazzling light, making her eyes ache. She rubbed them absently, and suddenly large tears began crashing down.
For more than twenty years, she'd been pampered and cherished. This was the first time so many strangers had hurled such vicious insults at her. She was furious, so furious she felt ready to explode. Yet beneath the anger was a helpless, frightened panic she didn't know how to deal with.
After sitting there blankly for more than half an hour, she picked up her phone and called Cen Sen, only to hear a mechanical female voice inform her that the number she had dialed was powered off.
The rusted gears of her thoughts finally creaked into motion at the sound.
Right. He should be on the plane right now.
From the capital to Paris, it would take nearly eleven hours, maybe longer if there were delays.
That useless pig.
Her trembling fingers lowered the phone. Curling up on the sofa, she wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her face against her knees, forcing herself to calm down, forcing herself not to think about those hateful words.
In truth, in that short half hour, plenty of people had called and messaged to check on her. Gu Kaiyang, Jiang Chun, Cen Yang, Li Che, Feng Yan... Even Pei Xiyan, who had just come out of evening self-study and been reminded by his manager to check the news.
But she didn't want to answer any of them, didn't want to read their messages, didn't want to reply. She only wanted to hear Cen Sen's voice. She only wanted to see Cen Sen. Nothing else mattered.
Meanwhile, Cen Sen had just arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport. It was afternoon in Paris, the daylight was bright and hazy.
With the New Year approaching, he hadn't intended to travel for work, and Zhou Jiaheng hadn't scheduled any business trips for him either.
But this time, Cen Yuanchao had personally called and ordered him to fly to Paris to meet potential investors regarding the Nanwan project, a joint venture between Jingjian and the Ji family.
Nanwan was a twenty-five-square-kilometer free trade island just off the eastern coast of Nancheng, occupying an exceptionally strategic location.
During the Ji family's peak, they had joined forces with the Su family to secure the development rights to Nanwan and established the Nanwan Development and Construction Company. The Ji and Su families controlled fifty-one percent of the company's shares between them, while the remaining forty-nine percent belonged to the Nanwan district government.
Following the dissolution of the Ji and Su families marriage alliance, power shifted within the Su family. The new person in charge believed the Nanwan project would take too long to pay off and carried too much risk. Even at a loss, they were determined to sell their shares and withdraw.
The Ji family didn't want outsiders stepping in and gaining influence over the project, so they turned to their new in-laws, Cen Yuanchao, for cooperation.
Cen Yuanchao found the project promising. Unlike the Su family, with their smaller, closed-loop capital, the Cen family had more than enough spare resources to take on such a massive long-term investment. After assembling a specialized team to evaluate the project, Cen Yuanchao approved the acquisition of the Su family's stake and joined hands with the Ji family to develop Nanwan, investing billions upfront just for the initial infrastructure.
A project of this magnitude, spanning such a long development cycle, obviously couldn't be sustained indefinitely by just the two families. So the Ji and Cen families had continued searching for suitable investors while making sure neither side surrendered control.
This time, a wealthy French Chinese businessman had expressed interest in the project. Cen Yuanchao specifically sent Cen Sen to negotiate in person. After all, the future development of Nanwan, along with the entirety of Jingjian, would eventually be entrusted in his hands.
Zhou Jiaheng, as usual, accompanied him on the trip. After landing, he briefed the Paris itinerary to Cen Sen while simultaneously switching his work phone back on.
Less than ten seconds after it powered up, a call came in.
"Hello?" He fell a step behind and answered the call, but the longer he listened, the paler his expression became.
Cen Sen's phone was still booting up. He glanced at Zhou Jiaheng, and for some reason, an ominous feeling suddenly rose in his chest.
Sure enough, once Zhou Jiaheng ended the call, he lowered his head and reported grimly, "I'm sorry, President Cen. There was a problem with Madam's appearance on Designer's Abode. I'm sorry. This was my failure."
"Explain."
His training as a chief assistant kicked in, Zhou Jiaheng immediately organized the information into the shortest possible summary. He recounted how Ji Mingshu had been dragged onto the trending searches after the second episode aired, then said quietly, "I'll contact the production team and the relevant media outlets immediately to have the stories taken down."
Zhou Jiaheng knew he bore an unavoidable responsibility in this. Not long ago, after Cen Sen and Ji Mingshu had reconciled, Cen Sen had specifically asked him what he had told the production team before and whether he'd instructed them to cut all of Ji Mingshu's footage.
He answered truthfully: "No." He had only asked the production team to remove the romantic pairing edit between Ji Mingshu and Li Che and avoid making Ji Mingshu the central focus of the program.
Concerned the production team might misunderstand and cut her from the show entirely, Cen Sen had even instructed him to clarify again and make sure Ji Mingshu had normal screen time.
It should have been a simple conversation. But Zhou Jiaheng had tried to think a few steps ahead. To keep the production team from overcompensating and suddenly turning Ji Mingshu into the show's main star, he hadn't explicitly revealed her identity. Instead, he'd asked the production team to send over the edited footage for him to review first.
At that point, only about half an episode featuring Ji Mingshu's group had been completed, essentially the first half of the premiere.
Zhou Jiaheng had gone through it carefully and found that the production team hadn't misunderstood him, nor had they erased Ji Mingshu from the program.
Her screen time was comparable to those of the other amateur designers, and as for her performance, it was perfectly ordinary and normal.
So he had relaxed and hadn't bothered to give them any further instructions.
But he rarely dealt with entertainment programs and had never even considered the existence of malicious editing.
Besides, he had a huge number of responsibilities to handle every day. It was impossible for him to go through mountains of raw footage and compare every bit of it against the final cut.
So when he heard the news, his mind had gone completely blank.
Zhou Jiaheng had followed Cen Sen for years, always walking on eggshells and never once making a serious misstep. Yet this tiny production team had managed to trip him up twice, and each time was worse than the last.
His heart had gone completely cold. He didn't even dare think about his year-end bonus anymore. At this point, he only wanted to annihilate with the production team, clean up the online mess, and then find himself a patch of land in this foreign country where he could go lie down and die for a while.
Cen Sen, however, clearly had no interest in dealing with him right now.
The moment his phone finished powering on, Cen Sen called Ji Mingshu directly. It rang perhaps three times before she answered.
There was complete silence on the other end. He couldn't even hear her breathing, only the faint hiss of static filled the line.
He didn't know what he was thinking. He simply stopped in the middle of the airport terminal and didn't move again.
His meeting with the investor was scheduled for that very evening. The other party had gone to great lengths to free up an evening specifically to host him, and had even told him in advance what an authentic French feast he had arranged, how he intended to give Cen Sen a taste of genuine French culture, and how sincerely he looked forward to their cooperation.
If Cen Sen turned around and caught the next flight back to the capital now, this deal would almost certainly be over.
After a very, very long silence, he suddenly said, "Mingshu, I'm sorry. I'm coming back right now."
Ji Mingshu had been holding herself together this whole time, telling herself over and over that it wasn't a big deal, that once Cen Sen found out, he would definitely make things right for her. But when she finally got his call and heard him say, "I'm sorry," she suddenly couldn't hold it in anymore. Her tears spilled over as she sobbed, overwhelmed by grievance.
She cried and hiccupped between words, never forgetting to curse him through her tears. "W-what kind of husband are you... You can invest in a show and still let your wife get bullied like this... Are you secretly holding a grudge against me or something? Sob, sob... Cen Sen, you bastard! I didn't do anything... It wasn't like how they showed it on the show. I, I didn't bully anyone! Hic..."
"Mm. I'm a bastard." He closed his eyes, his voice growing lower and raspier. "Don't cry. Be good."
Ji Mingshu wiped away her tears with tissues as she continued cursing him, keeping it up for a full five minutes.
But when she heard Cen Sen lower his voice and tell Zhou Jiaheng to book the earliest flight back, she suddenly remembered how important he'd said this partnership was before leaving. She choked back a sob and cried out, "No!"
"What?"
"Don't you dare come back! You stay in Paris and think about what you've done!"
Cen Sen only paused for a moment before understanding.
After a long silence, he asked, "Will you be okay?"
"Of course I'll be okay! My cousin already got the trending searches taken down for me. By the time news reaches you in that godforsaken backwater, the grass would be growing over my scorned grave! You're not allowed to come back!"
Her voice was still thick with tears, but after letting everything out, there was an unmistakable sense of relief. And beneath that relief was another feeling known only to herself... contentment from having been comforted.
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