CH 24

The first episode’s recording came to an end really soon with Liang Rong and Song Ning’s team being the only one who acquired all the materials needed and were crowned as first place.

There was still a week to go before the recording of the second episode. During this time, the production team produced a teaser video from the first episode to create some hype in advance.

Song Ning was busy all day so he didn’t have the time to check his phone until Liang Rong sent a message after work and asked, “Did you watch the teaser video?”. Only then did he remember this matter.

Song Ning took a long time to prepare his heart. He wasn’t worried about his own performance being disliked by netizens, but only afraid that their relationship would led to speculations and ultimately impact Liang Rong’s career. After all, something like this had happened before in the industry.

Song Ning sucked in deep breaths before he opened Weibo. The first topic he saw was:

“Liang Rong dated early’.

42.

Song Ning first watched the three-minute long trailer video. There were only two clips about Liang Rong and Song Ning.

The first clip was where Liang Rong went to an actor’s house to steal eggs from their chicken nest. The other one was their conversation on meeting each other at 16 as well as the tacit smile and gaze that the two of them shared afterwards.

The production team were very kind enough to add a pink-colored filter on that scene, which made even Song Ning himself blush a little when he watched it.

Song Ning thought this had turned into a big deal and hastily clicked on the topic ‘Liang Rong dated early’ with trembling hands.

“Wow, 16 years old. Wasn’t that only in highschool first year? Doesn’t that count as dating early?”

“Liang Rong is 30 years old now. So they have been together for 14 years.”

“I’m sure they’ve registered by now then.”

“Yeah, that’s a good thing. He has a stable career and family.”

Song Ning was bewildered. Why were the comments like they were discussing about a pair of old, married couple?

43.

Song Ning’s Weibo account were not made public by the production team. But there were still a few dozens of people – unclear if they were viewers of the program – who managed to find him and gave him a boost of followers.

One of the fans were named ‘Rong Ning Ning’. Her username caught Song Ning’s attention as he intuitively tapped into her account.

This Rong Ning Ning had around 100,000 followers and her most recent Weibo post from this afternoon was a repost of the teaser video. She captioned it with, “Graduated, he has graduated. They are now a mature, little couple. From now on, you have to depend on yourself for content.”

Scrolling further down, she reposted the official teaser video post with the caption, “Oh my god, are they going to announce it publicly?”

And who knows who captured it, but there were photos of Song Ning visiting Liang Rong at the magazine shooting site, where their hands were tightly clasped together. The number of reposts exceeded 10,000 times, with numerous ‘Ning Ning is so cute’ comments.

Song Ning’s quickly scrolled even further down at a fast speed, skipping over countless fanfics and fanarts, and finally found the original post. It was a clip of Liang Rong’s speech on this year’s Film Festival Award Ceremony: “I want to thank my psychiatrist, Song Ning, for accompanying me through the most difficult three years of my life.”

Song Ning felt like he had ventured into the lair of some monster.

44.

After returning home, Song Ning invited Liang Rong over as they pondered on the matter together. Both of them couldn’t stomach dinner, each holding their phone and checking the comments until late night instead.

Song Ning came to a realization that some things could never be hidden forever. Instead, people’s minds could supply what was missing or being hid away.

He put down his phone, utterly exhausted as he said to Liang Rong, “I’m so tired. I feel like I finished my entire life’s worth of love-making.”

Liang Rong nodded distractedly, while making a mental note of a few new positions.

45.

A few days later, the recording of the second episode came as scheduled.

Song Ning had always maintained a cautious attitude during their last recording, fearing that their relationship would be exposed.

Yet, now that they had undergo several days of CP baptism online, Song Ning was completely numb to this, and even took the initiative to show affection by wearing the new diamond watch given to Liang Rong before they left.

Liang Rong was overjoyed as he took out his own watch from the drawer, which Song Ning only realized was a couple set of wrist watches.

And so, the two of them blinded everyone around them when they sat under the lights.

46.

The guests sat around the fireside, chatting and eating barbeque.

The male actor and his friend mentioned how their results were at the bottom and second bottom of the class when they were in school, causing everyone to burst out in laughter.

The male actor was embarrassed from being laughed at and hurriedly threw the topic to Song Ning: “Dr. Song is likely to be the honour student in his school life, right? You look a lot like those who would take first place in exams.”

Song Ning smiled shily, “It’s not much. I only took second place in exams.”

The guests let out a series of praises and pulled Song Ning into telling them stories about his school life.

The female idol was nibbling on corn, suddenly appearing out of nowhere and said, “I bet the film emperor often went to you for math tuition.”

Liang Rong smiled a little, not replying to that.

47.

After they got off work, Liang Rong and Song Ning sat together on the grain field outside the cabin to watch the stars.

The air in the countryside was a lot better than the city. It had been a long time since Song Ning had seen so many stars so he excitedly pulled Liang Rong with him to find the constellations in the sky.

Liang Rong responded occasionally in a casual manner, but his eyes were downcast as he looked a little forlorn.

Song Ning asked, “What’s wrong? Are you sleepy?”

Liang Rong shook his head, went over his thoughts a little before speaking, “Ah Ning, I’ve been thinking, you have been by my side for so long now and you have participated in both my ignorant youthful days as well as the me who’s under the spotlight. You have seen all of me, my everything.

As for me, you’re already such a great person when I got to know you. I don’t know what kind of life you have experienced. Were there sad and difficult times or were there any happy memories. I know nothing about your past.”

Liang Rong looked up at Song Ning with resignation in his eyes, “Ah Ning, this isn’t fair. I want to understand the past you too.”

Song Ning smiled as he held Liang Rong’s hand tightly, leaning on his shoulder. “Sure. We have a long way ahead of us, I’ll slowly tell you about it.”

[End]

T/N: And that’s the end! Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed their little story as much as I did. Although it was shorter than most novels and are in a different format than usual, it was quite a fun story to TL. It’s also the first webnovel I finished translating so I’m happy too! Let me know your thoughts after finishing the story, if you would like to talk about it ^^