I'm Rich - 12
Chapter 12
When Xiao Ran called, Qi Chengyan was in his office. Some time ago, after learning that Guan Zhiyi would be on the same show as Xiao Ran, he'd mentioned her in passing and asked Xiao Ran to look out for her a little while they were filming.
That was all he meant by it. Just look out for her. He figured Guan Zhiyi might not get many opportunities to stand out on the show, so he hoped Xiao Ran could give her a little push. He certainly had no intention of having the two of them manufacture some kind of CP for publicity.
“Why’d you go quiet?” Xiao Ran said. “Oh~ So I was right. That girl isn’t exactly your little sister in the traditional sense, is she?”
Qi Chengyan couldn't even be bothered to entertain him. “Don’t talk nonsense. If that’s all, I’m hanging up.”
Xiao Ran: "Wait, hold on. Explain yourself. Is that girl your secret girlfriend?”
Qi Chengyan paused. His voice turned serious. “Don’t joke about her.”
Xiao Ran hadn't known Qi Chengyan for all that long, but he understood him well enough. Qi Chengyan wasn't the casual type. If he spoke with that kind of gravity, then she was definitely not a person Xiao Ran could casually tease him about.
Xiao Ran rubbed his chin. So Guan Zhiyi was someone Qi Chengyan cared about, just not in the way he had assumed.
"Alright, alright, I get it. Since you've laid it out like that, I won’t deliberately do anything.”
“Mm.”
The next day, filming resumed.
After a week together, everyone in the cabin had grown familiar with one another. And after that brief conversation with Xiao Ran by the staircase last time, Guan Zhiyi had stopped being quite so obvious about her avoidance of him. She simply let things develop naturally, eating with everyone, working out with everyone, doing the assigned tasks together...
By the final week of filming, the first week of Get Lost, Fat! officially went live online.
An hour before the premiere, viewers were already camping out under the official Weibo account and across the internet.
“Waiting for Xiao Ran! I’m so excited!”
“With Hou Lu and Huang Xiao together, I'm already laughing just thinking about them.”
“Jia’er is super-duper gorgeous! Waiting for the beauty to appear~”
“Can I say I’m here specifically for xr and gzy’s scenes? (doge)”
“Hoping that certain female celebrity with the surname Guan stays farther away from my idol.”
“She’s obviously one of those fake sweet white-lotus types. Why did the show even invite her?”
“They've got a drama together after this, obviously they're using the variety show for buzz.”
“Talk about gzy if you want, can you leave my idol out of it?”
“What the hell? What did my girl ever do to you? Who wants to cling to your precious idol?”
...
The show hadn't even started, and the two fandoms were already at each other’s throats. Not that it mattered much—Xiao Ran's fanbase was so massive they could drown out Guan Zhiyi's supporters with a single spit.
But apart from Guan Zhiyi’s own fans, no one saw anything wrong with the fact that she was being collectively torn apart online. The public barely knew her—all they'd seen online were either her laughably bad fluffy dramas or that blind date incident that had already been cleared up. For an actress with neither notable work nor much popularity, getting dragged was hardly unusual.
So when the first episode premiered, everyone tuned in expecting entertainment, and more than a few were ready to tear her apart.
But as they watched, something shifted. It wasn't quite what they'd expected…
The episode started with the standard fare: the artists meeting, touring the cabin, and drawing their rooms. Nothing unusual. Everything was normal with the others, except that whenever Guan Zhiyi appeared, the barrage of comments would immediately exploded with mockery.
More than ten minutes into the episode, night fell.
The camera caught Xiao Ran in his room, sitting there hungry. After a while, apparently unable to stand it any longer, he went downstairs to the kitchen to make something to eat.
“Ahhhhhhh! Is Gege going to cook something?!”
“Poor baby. He's barely eaten all day.”
“Production team, please have a heart! Get my idol some food! He can barely cook!”
“Hahahahahaha, the way Xiao Ran is staring blankly into the fridge is way too cute.”
...
The scene cuts to the other celebrities’ rooms. Some were on their phones, while others were still washing up. When it cut to Guan Zhiyi, viewers saw that she had just finished her shower and was sitting in a chair in her pajamas, staring into space while blow-drying her hair.
Grrrrr—
The sound effect of a growling stomach played over the scene. Guan Zhiyi hesitated in her room for quite a while before finally getting up and headed out. Then, at the staircase, she ran into Lin Jia’er...
The comments had already lost it the moment Guan Zhiyi's stomach growled:
“DON'T YOU DARE GO HUNGRY!!! DON'T GO TO THE KITCHEN!!!!!”
“Gege, eat faster! That woman’s coming!”
“Fuck, is she going to eat the food my idol made?”
“You guys are such hypocrites! Lin Jia’er is going to the kitchen to eat too. It’s not just Guan Zhiyi.”
“Jia’er is so skinny, of course she needs to eat. She’s not like certain people, all scheming and fake.”
“Where exactly did you see her scheming? Lin Jia’er showered, changed into pajamas, and didn’t even take off her makeup. That’s ‘real’ to you?”
“Speaking of which... don’t you guys think Guan Zhiyi has really good skin? She looks insanely pretty without makeup.”
“I thought Lin Jia’er was pretty, but comparing her heavy makeup to Guan Zhiyi’s bare face, she suddenly loses by several points.”
“Guys, perhaps, ever heard of something called a filter?”
“Yang Ziruo took off her makeup in her room just now too. Her skin didn’t look anywhere near that good. Explain that.”
...
While the screen was still full of furious comments, Guan Zhiyi and Lin Jia’er made their way downstairs. The viewers and Xiao Ran’s fans who already disliked Guan Zhiyi were practically rubbing their hands together, waiting for this white lotus to start acting cute, clinging to him, and throwing a fit for attention.
But to their surprise, once they reached the kitchen, Guan Zhiyi didn't approach or strike up a conversation. Lin Jia'er, on the other hand, was all over him, enthusiastically helping fry the eggs and chop vegetables.
And what sent the barrage into an even greater frenzy was that Lin Jia’er ended up burning Xiao Ran while frying the eggs.
The two of them immediately descended into chaos in front of the camera. At that moment, Guan Zhiyi stepped in to help. She took the spatula with practiced ease and very efficiently directing the two flustered people around her...
“Fuck! My Ranran’s hurt!!!”
“What is Lin Jia’er doing? Couldn’t she just wait for someone else to cook? Why’s she trying so hard to show off?”
“Trying to show off, obviously. She tried to steal the spotlight and ended up making a fool of herself.”
“Guan Zhiyi isn’t as fake as I imagined.”
“If Guan Zhiyi knows how to cook, why didn't she step in earlier? She was just standing there watching the show.”
“How was she supposed to know Lin Jia’er couldn’t cook? And there's only room for two people in that kitchen anyway.”
“Exactly. Guan Zhiyi didn’t get in the way at first. Once she realized the two of them really had no idea what they were doing, she stepped in to help. That’s perfectly normal.”
...
On the show, Xiao Ran and Lin Jia’er went to the living room to treat the burn, while Guan Zhiyi stayed behind to clean up the mess.
Twenty minutes later, she carried out a platter of boiled food and two plates of fried eggs. She told Xiao Ran and Lin Jia’er to eat first, then went upstairs to ask the other three if they wanted any…
Eventually, all six celebrities happily sat down in the dining room for a low-fat “late-night snack.”
The barrage exploded.
“Hahahaha, I’m dying. Why did Guan Zhiyi tell Xiao Ran, ‘It’s cheaper to eat at home’? Why did that sound so broke?”
“That absolutely wasn’t a slip of the tongue. As a longtime fan, I can tell you our girl is genuinely broke. Wuwuwu.”
“What did Guan Zhiyi put in that sauce? It looks so good.”
“I need to know too!”
“+1, please give us a tutorial!”
“Guan Zhiyi looks like the pretty-but-vacant type but she's actually really steady. That’s really not what I expected.”
“She’s seriously gorgeous. That one close-up shot of her face… no flaws at all! I'm a looks-only fan and I think I’m ready to stan her.”
...
The episode cut to the next day.
An early-morning run, shopping for groceries at the market, working out...
In the six-person group, Hou Lu and Huang Xiao were supposed to be the comic relief. But no one could have expected that the segment that had everyone laughing until their stomachs hurt would end up being Guan Zhiyi’s grocery-shopping scene.
Because they had a fixed daily budget for ingredients, they had to be extremely frugal while shopping. On camera, Guan Zhiyi tried to save every penny by haggling with the aunties and uncles at the market, chatted about their family and everyday life to build rapport, cracked jokes, put on little performances—charming them so thoroughly they didn't know what hit them…
The highlight came when she busted out an impromptu girl-group dance in the middle of the market just to score a few bundles of scallions and cilantro. The combo of awkward moves and desperate effort made the audience completely lose it.
[WHAT IS THIS DANCE MOVE ARE YOU SERIOUS LMAOOOO]
“Our girl haggling like a pro is simultaneously adorable and heartbreaking.”
“What does that mean? Is there some backstory?”
“Look up her career struggles in the industry and you'll get it, she's been BROKE broke!”
“Still hilarious though. How does she manage to be so cute and so cheap at the same time hahaha.”
“To everyone saying my girl is trying to ship herself with your Gege, open your eyes and look. She barely interacted with your idol the entire episode.”
“Now that you mention it, it does feel kind of strange. Guan Zhiyi seems to be deliberately avoiding him?”
“Probably got dragged so hard before filming even started and trying to stay out of trouble now.”
“Actually, she’s kind of innocent in all this. She hasn't really done anything wrong...”
“I came here for Xiao Ran! Now I’m completely hooked on this girl! She’s so cute!! Is there a fan group that can add me?”
“Me too, me too! I haven’t even watched her dramas, but she’s just so adorably goofy!”
“She’s so cute and squishy~”
“Nonsense. My girl isn’t squishy at all! Ahem. Her face is just a little round.”
...
By the middle and latter half of the first episode of Get Lost, Fat! the people who had spent the entire beginning mocking and cursing Guan Zhiyi gradually disappeared, even the dedicated trolls got buried under a wave of "hahaha."
In the end, nobody saw it coming: after one episode, Guan Zhiyi walked away as the biggest winner, and she had done it without manufacturing a CP with Xiao Ran.
But while the first episode aired, Guan Zhiyi was still filming the final week of the show and had no chance to watch it in time.
It was only later, when Liu Yun happily sent her a screenshot of the trending hashtag #GuanZhiyiGroceryShopping, that she learned how well the show had been received.
"Didn't expect you to be such a natural at reality TV." Liu Yun's voice on the phone was genuinely impressed. “It’s only the first episode and you’ve already gained quite a few followers on Weibo.”
Guan Zhiyi said, “First I trended for a blind date. Now I'm trending for grocery shopping. Really making a name for myself."
,
“Zhiyi, this image you have now is really solid. Hardworking, poor, making the best of a difficult life. Young girls can really relate to that. It makes you quite distinctive in the industry.”
Guan Zhiyi: "???”
"Mm... We'll build on this going forward. I'll have the company put out a few articles to reinforce it!"
Guan Zhiyi’s face nearly turned green. “Yun-jie, isn't this image a bit inappropriate?”
Haggling at the market was something she'd learned from experience, sure, but during filming she'd just been genuinely trying to save everyone some money. She hadn't been trying to cultivate some “distinctive” persona!
“I think it’s great. The online response has been amazing! Anyway, don’t worry about it. That’s the company’s job. You just be yourself.”
“But I...”
“Oh, right. Filming ends tomorrow. I’ll come pick you up then.”
“...All right. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
A hardworking persona was one thing, but a poverty-stricken persona—was that actually a thing?!
It was true that life had been rather tight for her over the past few years, but turning that into her defining label made it sound far more miserable than it really was.
The more Guan Zhiyi thought about it, the more speechless she became. She decided to have a proper talk with Liu Yun when she saw her tomorrow.
But the next day, after all the other artists had been picked up one by one, Liu Yun was still nowhere to be seen. Most of the filming equipment in the cabin had already been packed away. Guan Zhiyi sat alone in the living room, playing on her phone while waiting for her.
Another ten minutes passed. Just as she was about to call Liu Yun and ask what was going on, someone suddenly called out from behind her.
“Xiao Wu.”
The familiar voice made Guan Zhiyi freeze for a moment. Then her eyes lit up instantly. She whipped around, and there, in the cabin that a moment ago had held only her, stood two people. One was Xiao Ran, whom she'd spent the last month with every day. The other—the other was Qi Chengyan!
“Gege! How come you're here?” Guan Zhiyi immediately got to her feet and hurried over.
It had been a whole month since they'd last seen each other. She had missed him terribly to begin with, and now that he suddenly appeared here, she had the urge to run over and throw herself into his arms the way she had when she was little.
But she knew things were different now. So she stopped just in front of him, though she couldn't hide the excitement and joy on her face.
Qi Chengyan lowered his eyes to look at her, then frowned. “How did you lose so much weight?”
Guan Zhiyi immediately spun around once. “Right? I lost a full seven pounds! My body fat percentage dropped a ton too!”
“You guys actually did this for real?”
Xiao Ran laughed from the side. “Big brother, we’re filming a healthy weight-loss reality show. What did you think?”
Guan Zhiyi had been so happy to see Chengyan that she'd almost forgotten Xiao Ran was still there. Come to think of it, Qi Chengyan had mentioned before that he knew Xiao Ran, so it wasn't surprising they'd shown up together. But her entire heart was occupied by Qi Chengyan right now, and she had absolutely no desire to spare any of that attention for anyone else.
“You still haven’t told me why you're here.”
Qi Chengyan helplessly pinched her now visibly smaller cheek. “Of course I came to take you home.”
---
Author's Note:
Small career arc wrapped up. Time to kick off the romance!
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