Letter from Hong Kong Chapter 101

Ridiculous.

The whole auditorium was thinking the same thing.

The guy sitting beside him – the one who had elbowed Shang Shao earlier – was practically leaning his head back, lips parted in utter confusion.

How did you even get there? Are those two questions supposed to be connected?

No, seriously, bro. WeChat, Moments, boyfriend… Did a laid-off entertainment reporter find a new career?

Everyone else burst out laughing too, turning one after another to stare at this absolute legend.

Amid the uproar, Ying Yin steadied herself. Her voice was taut with a mature, composed calm. “Zhou Qing’s character doesn’t have such a nuanced romantic storyline in the film. But judging from her characterization… if she were in a relationship, …I don’t think she’d go through her partner’s Moments.”

So hot.

My face is so hot.

Under the glare of the spotlight, Ying Yin could feel herself sweating beneath her hoodie and jeans. Afraid that anyone might notice something was off, she kept a bright, sweet smile plastered across her face, looking warm and approachable – but she didn’t dare look at Shang Shao.

“As for me…”

She subtly pressed down on the microphone and turned her face slightly away.

The people below exchanged glances before turning to look at Shang Shao again, thinking: He didn’t even ask you! He asked about the character! Why did you just volunteer yourself for the firing squad?

Although the actress onstage appeared perfectly composed, anyone paying close attention could see that her tiny gestures and microexpressions had completely betrayed her. First, she pressed her lips together hard. Then she drew a deep breath. Finally, she lowered her gaze before saying, “Maybe I would… depending on how much I liked him.”

The entire screening room collectively froze.

Then, from somewhere in the audience, some idiot let out a wolf whistle. In an instant, the room erupted into applause, laughter, and catcalls. Someone even stood up and started filming the whole scene on their phone.

“Then,” Shang Shao continued in that same mild tone, with just the right touch of seriousness, “if there were still traces of a previous relationship that hadn’t been completely deleted from his Moments, would the female lead get angry?”

Another person who clearly loved watching the world burn shouted from the crowd, “Yes! Good question!”

A wave of applause swept through the room. For a moment, the entire screening hall was filled with people absolutely delighted by the drama.

The host finally realized he needed to rein things in. With a half-smile, he asked, “We’re here for a special preview screening of Justice Prevails. Which media outlet are you with?”

Shang Shao replied, “Film Weekly.”

He paused for a beat before saying, “We’re attempting to explore the layers of expression and potential manifestations that the personality traits demonstrated by Zhou… Qing. Zhou Qing, during this operation to recover the national treasures, might assume when projected into the realm of romantic relationships, in an effort to investigate the underlying intrinsic connection between the character logic of female protagonists in commercial action films and romantic comedies.”

Everyone: “…?”

What?

What on earth was that string of words that just went in one ear and straight out the other?

The host: “…”

He cleared his throat and, forcing himself to play along, gave an awkward laugh. “Wow… wow. That’s a very serious and academic line of inquiry. So, Xiao Yin…”

Ying Yin lightly licked her lips. It took considerable effort to suppress the corners of her mouth, which were threatening to curl upward. Keeping her eyes lowered, she said， “She would get angry. Not only would she be angry, she’d also check every now and then to see whether he’d deleted them. But she wouldn’t ask, because she’s a proud person. One moment, she’d be thinking, Whatever. If he doesn’t want to delete them, then so be it. And the next, Why hasn’t he deleted them yet? Did he forget, or does he still have feelings for her?…”

She racked her brain, desperately trying to keep pace with his stream of nonsense. “I think this stubborn, competitive, and slightly contrary side of her personality is also reflected in her treasure-recovery mission this time, and is one of the key factors behind its success. At any point, even if you’re only competing with yourself, that in itself makes you a hero.”

Everyone at the scene was left completely dumbfounded.

Shang Shao listened patiently and quietly until she finished. The smile at the corners of his lips faded as he gave a slight nod. “Thank you. The box office is going to do very well.”

His tone sounded less like a blessing and more like a promise. Of course, the box office wasn’t actually up to him, but somehow, hearing him say it in that tone made it strangely convincing.

When the microphone was returned to the staff member, she took it back and hugged it to her chest as though she had narrowly survived a disaster.

If I ever give you this thing again, I’m a dog.

But apparently, her worries had been unnecessary. For the remaining half hour of the Q&A, the man she couldn’t help keeping an eye on from the corner of her vision never raised his hand again.

He sat with one leg crossed over the other, relaxed yet dignified, his hands loosely folded over his knee. His gaze travelled across seven or eight rows of seats and remained fixed on the leading actress onstage from beginning to end.

There were an especially large number of questions directed at Ying Yin. She always answered them earnestly and sincerely.

But who could have known that the tips of her ears had remained burning hot the entire time?

Forty minutes later, the meet-and-greet came to an end. The cast and crew hurried straight into their business vans and rushed to the airport.

In the underground car park, security from the shopping center and cinema kept the crowd under control in case the fans got too carried away. Beneath the dim lights, the echoing commotion drifted like the haze of a half-remembered dream.

Through the layers of people, Ying Yin glanced back at Shang Shao just as they passed each other.

She had a powerful feeling that she already knew what was coming.

Once she got into the car, she quietly asked Junyi, “You gave him our hotel information?”

Junyi looked extremely guilty, like a thief caught red-handed. “I did…”

Ying Yin froze, then confirmed again, “The one in the next city?”

“Mm.”

She was both amused and exasperated. She tapped Junyi lightly on the head. “You’re all spies. Every last one of you.”

The private jet departed half an hour before the commercial flight.

Just thinking about being able to see Shang Shao again in yet another unfamiliar city after landing made the journey ahead seem unbearably long to Ying Yin.

While they waited to board, everyone else was racing against the clock to catch up on sleep. Only one of the young women from the publicity team sat clutching her phone, scrolling through real-time reactions, while her colleague was proofreading the press copy with the media for that afternoon’s screening.

“Huh? That can’t be right. Film Weekly isn’t on the media list.” Her colleague scrolled up and down repeatedly, blinking several times.

“Could it be a different city’s outlet that came early?” the young woman said distractedly, still glued to her phone. “The real-time reactions are actually really good. I think this could be a dark horse.”

Her colleague switched to another spreadsheet containing the full media matrix, including traditional print media, independent online outlets, television and radio, subway TV, professional film critics, and so on.

She hit Ctrl+F and searched directly for Film Weekly.

The result came up. It was a Hong Kong media outlet, and judging from its circulation figures, it was practically on the verge of extinction.

She breathed a sigh of relief. “But this outlet only publishes articles. They don’t actually attend screenings.”

“Obviously they’re just Miss Ying’s fan.”

They continued collecting posts and reactions from the real-time feed until they had boarded.

Once the plane took off, a short video posted by a major influencer quickly received algorithmic promotion on the platform.

[Just finished the preview screening of Justice Prevails. Ying Yin was absolutely explosive. No wonder she’s the only daoma dan among the young actresses. Those long legs and that figure when she fights – so gorgeous. I feel like even her hair could kill someone. There isn’t much room for acting in this role, but for an award-winning actress, it’s obviously a piece of cake. The male lead feels more like an accessory hanging off his older-sister-type heroine. He’s a newcomer, but at least he didn’t drag the movie down. The pacing is tight from beginning to end, and there are plenty of action scenes. They blew up fifteen cars alone. All I can say is, Fang Zhi really went all in on this one and finally proved that he can handle commercial films. I think this could be the dark horse before the summer season. Also, at the Beijing cast meet-and-greet, there was this one guy who was absolutely hilarious. He showed up in a suit, and the questions he asked were even more incredible. Just watch the video and see for yourself.]

He had filmed the entire thing from beginning to end, and since he had been sitting in the front row, he had an unobstructed view, capturing the reactions of everyone onstage in perfect detail.

At first, the comments were perfectly normal:

[Bro, maybe listen to the question you’re asking yourself.]
[Is he a laid-off finance guy trying his hand at entertainment, or the other way around? Come on, tell us.]
[LMAO, Yinyin was obviously caught completely off guard.]

The blogger was an Ying Yin fan, cheering her on throughout the entire thing. The camera stayed trained on her the whole time, only panning around the room when the atmosphere was at its liveliest, briefly lingering on Shang Shao for a few seconds.

He was filmed from the side, at a distance, and the image quality was blurry, but none of that mattered.

[LOL, the only guy in a suit really stands out.]
[Can I say it? He kind of has that vibe (shy).]

A whole thread quickly sprang up underneath that comment:

[I know, I know! It’s the feeling of suddenly developing a lovesick brain!]
[Wait, seriously? You can recognize a handsome guy through footage this blurry?]
[Suit + glasses + nice voice + gorgeous profile + broad shoulders and long legs. PLEASE!]
[And add one more: a hand-lover’s blessing. Screenshot of him gripping the microphone.jpg]

The post was tagged with things like #AMatterOfCourse #YingYin #YingYinZhouQing and made its way onto the main trending feed. The traffic kept pouring in, and several independent entertainment influencers reposted it.

The fans arrived spontaneously and rapidly. They weren’t trying to manipulate the comments or steer public opinion; they simply had the habitual instinct to occupy the front rows of the discussion, getting people excited for Ying Yin’s new film and drawing attention to her new character, Zhou Qing.

It was only after the post was reposted into an entertainment gossip group that things began to show faint signs of getting out of hand.

[Ying Yin’s ears turned red! Enlarged screenshot.jpg]
[Her face: I’m fine. Her ears: WE’RE DOOMED.]
[So why were her ears red? They asked about the character, not her. I remember she’s usually pretty confident and commanding in public.]
[Hmm… now that you mention it…]
[I’m shipping it (yes, it happened that fast).]
[Holy crap, is Ying Yin basically an instant-CP factory?]
[Does nobody else think he looks a little like that guy? Secret code – QD?]

[!!!! I’ve been wanting to say it for ages!]
[Get out of the gossip group, you cryptic little riddler! (So what does QD mean?)]

QD was an abbreviation for the initials of Qinde.

Because of the man’s “married” status, the fans who shipped Ying Yin and Jin Yuanmin kept an extremely low profile, understanding the unwritten rule of keeping your shipping within your own little corner of the fandom. Although the two had absolutely no interaction in real life, real-person shipping didn’t need to make sense. As long as there was chemistry and enough of a compelling dynamic, people could get hopelessly invested.

This group had already secretly set up a chat group, where they spent their days obsessively shipping the two of them.

The original blogger may have realized that the video was having a far greater impact than the film review itself. Or perhaps they simply couldn’t stand seeing their goddess being shipped with someone from the same industry. Either way, they decisively deleted the video.

But it didn’t matter.

Someone had already saved a copy and reposted it into the CP group.

To determine whether the man was actually Jin Yuanmin, their methods included, but were by no means limited to: comparing the audio waveform of his speech at an awards ceremony with the audio in this video; taking screenshots of his side profile and overlaying them at the same scale; calculating his height based on the height of the seat he was sitting in…

And, of course:

[I DON’T CARE. IT’S HIM. IT’S DEFINITELY HIM!] – an argument requiring absolutely no evidence whatsoever.

Commercial flights had no signal, but private jets did.

When Shang Shao received the public-opinion monitoring report from Zhuang Tiwen, his response remained the same as ever. “Delete it.”

This time, Tiwen had a legitimate reason to act. She contacted the film’s publicity company and pointed out that the direction the video’s discussion was taking could negatively affect both Ying Yin and the film, and that there were signs it might be deliberate hype. She recommended letting the matter die down quietly.

Before long, all the media present at the event had been contacted and instructed not to publish any related short videos.

By the time the plane landed, it was already six-thirty in the evening.

In the north, April still brought early darkness. As they made their way into the city, a vast expanse of lights stretched across the plains. Tiny new buds had appeared on the trees lining the roads on either side. Ying Yin lowered the car window, and the night air carried the cold, acrid bite of dust.

By the time they reached the hotel, staff who had arrived ahead of them had already prepared the rooms. Junyi went to collect the key cards and heard the receptionist say, “Same arrangement as always. Sister Yin has the executive suite on the twenty-fifth floor. The executive lounge is on twenty-four, and you’re on twenty-three.”

After a full day of exhausting travel, everyone was worn out, so dinner was kept simple. The hotel buffet had been arranged, while Ying Yin, being too recognizable to dine in public, had the food delivered privately to her room.

The meal cart was wheeled up to the twenty-fifth floor. The attendant was just about to press the doorbell when they noticed the brightly illuminated DO NOT DISTURB sign.

They called the room from the front desk. The phone rang for a while, but no one answered.

Only a wall separated the two suites.

Inside the adjoining room, the pristine white sheets had already been thoroughly rumpled.

The lights were off, and the night outside was deep and heavy. Ying Yin had barely knocked once before Shang Shao pulled her inside.

They kissed for a while by the door, pressed against the wall, until their clothes were no longer sitting quite properly. Only then did she find the presence of mind to ask, “Why didn’t you turn on the lights?”

It was an old state guesthouse. Although it was the most prestigious hotel in the city, it still required guests to insert their key card to activate the electricity, unlike other luxury hotels where the lights came on automatically.

Shang Shao answered in a hoarse voice, “I just got here. Haven’t had the chance.”

“You didn’t even ask whether someone had knocked on the wrong door.”

She said it softly, then leaned in again, wanting another kiss. His hand cupped her jaw, and even that wasn’t enough for her; impatiently, she tilted her face up toward him.

They kissed, speaking in between kisses.

“I could tell it was you from the sound.”

Ying Yin pressed her lips together and gazed up at Shang Shao with her beautiful eyes.

The curtains were still open. Reflected in the glass were the lights of the buildings high above the city. A plane passed in the distance, the lights on its wings blinking steadily.

“Since you were coming here anyway, there was no need to make that extra trip to Beijing this afternoon.”

“I wanted to see you first.”

Ying Yin swallowed, her voice turning slightly husky in a way that was almost alluring. “But we only parted this morning… You scared me.”

In the dim light, everything seemed suspended in a dream. Wind high above the city stirred the moon-white curtains.

Shang Shao gazed down at her, completely absorbed. He lowered his face, breathing in the fragrance of her skin. The tip of his nose was cool against her cheek. Ying Yin tilted her neck back a little farther and turned her face aside, a soft sigh escaping through her slightly parted lips.

“You’ve been checking Moments this whole time. Why didn’t you ask me? Were you really afraid I still had feelings for her?”

Ying Yin didn’t shy away from the question at all. She gave a soft, melodious “Mm.”

Shang Shao lifted his face slightly from the curve of her neck. “When I went to Ningxia to visit the set, she came to see me.”

“That evening, when we were having dinner? You went outside to smoke, didn’t you?”

“You remembered all that. Why didn’t you ask?”

Ying Yin didn’t sound hurt. She was simply sweet and obedient.

“I didn’t have the courage to ask back then. And when I thought about asking later, it seemed petty. She was your first love. They say it takes ten years to forget your first love, and you still had…” She counted silently, then said innocently, “Seven years left.”

Shang Shao let out a quiet laugh, lowering his eyes helplessly. “She did come to see me. And she did say some things that weren’t particularly easy to repeat.”

“She said she couldn’t forget you?”

“She didn’t believe that what I felt for you was real.”

“Then you…”

Shang Shao held her face in one hand, his fingers threading into her thick hair. He turned his head and kissed the corner of her lips, then lifted his face again and looked straight into her eyes.

Word by word, he said, “I told her that even if I had really married her, if I had met you afterward, I still would have fallen for you. And I would have spent the rest of my life with my heart forever wandering.”

Ying Yin stood there stunned, not yet daring to believe what he had just said, while a strange current shot up her spine.

An emotional affair.

He had actually used such a terrible word for what he felt for her.

But in the very next second, her heart began to ache. She suddenly wrapped her arms tightly around him and said, with absolutely no reason or restraint, “Don’t marry her.”

“I won’t.”

Shang Shao patted her back gently before lifting her into his arms.

Once they were on the bed, she lay on her stomach with him holding her from behind, keeping her close. “Delete it now, okay?”

Shang Shao opened his phone and scrolled for a long while before finally finding that one remaining trace.

Ying Yin rested her chin in both hands. She blinked, and the photograph disappeared from his history.

“You were drunk that day. It was the first time you ever called me, and you asked how heavy a girl could weigh for you to carry. Was that because of this?”

After deleting it, Shang Shao asked as though it were merely an afterthought.

“Mm.” Ying Yin nodded. “That was the day we’d just had our first dinner together.”

Ying Yin rolled onto her back and looked up at him. “When we went back that night, Junyi added you on WeChat. I never expected you’d actually accept the request.”

She followed along with his words, remembering that time together completely unguarded.

“So, after we had our first dinner together, you went home that very night and spent half the night scrolling through my Moments.”

Ying Yin: “…”

“And got jealous because of it.”

“…”

Shang Shao let out a laugh. “Didn’t you?”

Appearing at the preview screening could, at most, be called a pleasant surprise. Deleting that post from his Moments was, at best, something he happened to do along the way.

But this was the question he actually cared about.

He wanted to look at her face, into her eyes, and hear her answer beyond any doubt.

Ying Yin covered her face with both hands, but he slowly and firmly pulled them away.

He held her wrists against the snow-white sheets and, calm but smiling, delivered his verdict. “Ying Yin, so you’ve actually liked me since that early on.”