Chapter 18

Wen Jiu could not, for the life of her, figure out why Shen Xingzhou had suddenly decked the male supporting role.
She’d thought he was joking.
After a moment of stunned silence, a dark bruise slowly surfaced on Ji Yujing’s face.
When the manager came in with tea, the three of them were seated in the suite’s living room. One accidental glance at Young Master Ji’s battered face was enough to send the man silently back out again to fetch hard-boiled eggs.
Left alone, Ji Yujing picked up an egg and rolled it over his cheek and jaw, hissing and baring his teeth in pain, but never saying a single bad word about Shen Xingzhou.
The instinct to pamper his little cousin was coded in his bones; whatever happened, Little Cousin was always right.
“So that’s how it is.” Ji Yujing admitted frankly that he’d been the one to release the rumor.
Shen Xingzhou still glared daggers at him. At first, Ji Yujing had felt wronged, but after realizing what he’d done and owning up to it, he turned, and met a second pair of furious eyes.
He was Young Master Ji, after all, bold enough to fight his own brother over a white moonlight. Normally he wouldn’t be intimidated. But the throbbing, multi-colored pain in his face was a vivid reminder of what had just happened, and he swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing.
“I’ll call Big Sister Yue Ling and clear it up right now.” He hadn’t wanted this; he’d been pushed into it.
Yue Ling picked up quickly, voice warm as ever. “Yujing, don’t do that again.”
She didn’t scold him, but that was what broke Ji Yujing.
He started sobbing.
And sobbed so miserably the sky could’ve cracked, tears pouring down like a busted dam.
Wen Jiu’s furious expression melted away; she even started feeling a little sorry for him.
Mostly because this handsome “pharaoh” crying had an exotic, rain-drenched-peach-blossom kind of beauty, it was hard to stay mad.
“Little cousin, Big Sister Yue Ling will never like me again, wuwuwu…” Ji Yujing wailed, clinging to Shen Xingzhou. His tears soaked half of the boy’s shoulder.
Wen Jiu’s face shifted from sympathy to utter speechlessness.
So this was the so-called obsessive, relentless male supporting role who tormented the heroine? Because right now he looked more like the neighbor’s over-emotional husky.
“My cousin cries ugly. Older sister, don’t look, or you’ll have nightmares,” Shen Xingzhou whispered, thinking he was being quiet.
But with Ji Yujing leaning on his shoulder, he heard every syllable loud and clear.
The tears and howling surged back in full force, nearly drowning both Wen Jiu and Shen Xingzhou.
The rumor was dealt with quickly, but now there was an even bigger problem than the rumor itself: Ji Yujing’s nonstop crying.
“Come be Big Sister Yue Ling’s assistant with me. That way you can see her every day,” Wen Jiu suggested at last, just to get him to stop.
“Big Sister Yue Ling won’t agree,” Ji Yujing said, clearly tempted but still pitifully hesitant.
“You can be my lackey. I’m Big Sister Yue Ling’s assistant. If you’re my lackey, then logically, you’re also one of her assistants.” A lightbulb went off over Wen Jiu’s head.
She added seriously, “But I can’t pay you. You’re pretending to be my lackey, so you should pay me hush money.”
Ji Yujing: ???
Work for you and pay you on top of it?
Shen Xingzhou sat up straighter, suddenly inspired. “Don’t let him come. Let me do it.”
“Older sister, I can cook.” Kids who grew up overseas, even with chefs at home, were usually great in the kitchen.
Older sister, I can wash your clothes, change your sheets, and drive you around as your chauffeur. I have lots of cars, we can use a different one every day and never repeat.”
His competitive edge was so overwhelming that Wen Jiu’s jaw actually dropped.
To be honest, she was extremely tempted.
But there was no way she could afford Shen Xingzhou.
This was a real, all-inclusive, full-service lackey.
Ji Yujing had stopped crying ages ago. His handsome face was mottled with bruises, eyes swollen and red, staring suspiciously from Shen Xingzhou to Wen Jiu, suddenly getting the distinct feeling that the family’s precious cabbage had crawled off to feed itself to a pig.
He stepped forward, wedging himself between them. “You’re not allowed to touch my cousin. I’ll be your lackey.
If you dare have any ideas about him, I’ll find someone to, wuwuwu, Little Cousin, let me go!”
Before he could finish his threat, Shen Xingzhou slapped a hand over his mouth, dragged him off, and shoved him into the bathroom.
He even casually swung the door shut behind him. A series of bangs and clatters sounded from inside, but Shen Xingzhou didn’t so much as blink.
Wen Jiu cracked one eye open and pointed toward the bathroom. “He’s… okay in there, right?”
Sure, the male supporting role in the book was a walking red flag, but this one in real life was clearly still salvageable. No need to beat him to death.
“He’s fine.”
“Older sister, I really can’t be your lackey together with my cousin?” Shen Xingzhou pressed. “I can pay double.”
Wen Jiu was very tempted, but she didn’t dare agree.
She hesitated, then murmured, “Just him is enough.”
The boy looked at her with the pitiful eyes of a puppy left out in a thunderstorm, drenched and abandoned.
Wen Jiu straightened her spine and said righteously, “I’m not doing this for your cousin’s sake. I’m doing it for Young Lady Yue Ling.”
She rose on her toes to whisper into Shen Xingzhou’s ear, “It’s exactly because he’s too far from Young Lady Yue Ling’s level that his mind runs wild, and he keeps scheming. It’s too easy for her to get hurt that way.
I’m going to protect Young Lady Yue Ling properly. I can’t let anyone hurt her.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she slapped her own forehead.
Why was she explaining all this nonsense? Weird.
Shen Xingzhou suddenly smiled, his two little tiger teeth peeking out. That sunny grin on such a beautiful face made him almost blinding.
Wen Jiu stared for a second, dazed. His genes are insane…
She pinched her own cheek.
Fortunately, the original owner hadn’t left her with a bad face either.
Ji Yujing’s life as Wen Jiu’s lackey, chauffeur, cook, general dogsbody, felt like the sky had fallen. Twice.
“Little cousin’s gone. I’m done serving you!” He yanked off his cooking apron and stormed toward the hotel door.
Wen Jiu answered her ringing phone. “Young Lady Yue Ling? You’re coming to see me tonight? Dinner together? …Yes, I’ll cook here.”
Ji Yujing silently stepped back in and picked the apron up from the floor.
“Sister Yue likes tomatoes, celtuce, beef…” he muttered, already digging into the fridge.
He was young and healed fast, after icing his face, most of the bruises had faded. His even wheat-colored skin covered the last traces of damage.
Wearing an apron in the kitchen, he looked like some wild mountain leopard that had been kidnapped and forced into the role of a gentle housewife.
Wen Jiu watched him for a while, took a photo, and uploaded it straight to the cloud.
Dinner was lavish.
Wen Jiu wasn’t picky. She could eat almost anything.
The second she sat down, Ji Yujing started craning his neck. “Where’s Sister Yue?”
“I lied. She’s not coming.”
“You!” Fury shot out of his nose like steam, and he sprang up. “You’re not allowed to eat.”
“If I get too hungry, I might slip and hit ‘send photo’ by accident. Hm… I’ll send it to Shen Xingzhou and have him forward it to all your buddies.”
The sickly-sweet threat almost made him choke on his own anger.
He grabbed her phone and saw himself on screen: apron on, eyes soft, absolutely devoted, looking every bit the happy, domestic wife in the kitchen cooking for Sister Yue.
Impossible. He couldn’t look like that.
It had to be Photoshopped.
Quick as lightning, Ji Yujing hit delete.
Wen Jiu’s brows curved; before he could relax, she reminded him gently, “Luckily, I have a habit of backing everything up to the cloud.”
Ji Yujing missed a breath and nearly passed out on the spot.
“You, you, you, most poisonous of women!”
“Brother Yujing, Sister Yue starts filming tomorrow. If you behave and work hard, I’ll bring you along.” Wen Jiu’s lips curled upward, which only fanned the flames in him.
“You call your girl ‘Young Lady,’ but you’re not allowed to call her ‘Sister Yue.’”
“But Young Lady Yue likes it when I call her that. Look.” Wen Jiu pulled up their chat.
Yue Ling thought “Miss” sounded too distant and made her change it. Wen Jiu typed “Sister Yue,” and Yue Ling replied with an approving sticker.
Unable to win the argument, Ji Yujing stomped out in a rage.
He screamed silently, swallowing all his anger back down.
Once he’d gone, the tight chord in Wen Jiu’s chest finally loosened.
She really had been afraid this unpredictable male supporting role would just snap and hit her.
Still, the results were promising, she felt motivated to keep going.
If she kept up this poisonous-green-tea routine long enough, Ji Yujing would develop his own “tea detector.” By the time the heroine showed up, no matter how much warmth she offered, he wouldn’t fall for it.
That was Wen Jiu’s grand plan.
In Mistook the Boss for My Boyfriend, heroine Lan Mingyan was the breakthrough; but in The Film Emperor’s White Moonlight Stand-In, the heroine had prophetic dreams, the male lead refused to follow the plot, and the white-moonlight female lead’s character was rock-solid. The only piece left to move was the male supporting role, Ji Yujing.
She was absolutely going to protect her white-moonlight Young Lady.
If the male lead Ji Yanting didn’t cherish her, didn’t know her worth, Wen Jiu would personally deliver a fully “house-trained” male supporting role Ji Yujing to Young Lady Yue Ling’s bedside.
Of course, everything depended on the lady’s preference.
Whoever Young Lady liked, that was the male lead of her life.
Yue Ling’s entry into showbiz was handled at lightning speed, company agent, team, everything arranged in no time.
The next day, Wen Jiu took Ji Yujing with her and followed Yue Ling into the production.
What she hadn’t expected was that, even without male lead Ji Yanting’s intervention, she’d still run into Wen Ling on this set.
In the book, once Wen Ling became the white moonlight stand-in, Ji Yanting never touched her again, but in terms of resources, he gave her the best of the best.
The heroine’s first project, the one that launched her from eighteenth-tier to third-tier, was exactly this drama.
Even though, just like in the book, Wen Ling was still playing the heroine Mingzhu this time, the supporting female role had been given to Yue Ling.
After all, Yue Ling had returned to the country almost a full year earlier than she was “supposed” to.
When Wen Ling saw Yue Ling, her expression was visibly stunned.
After the opening ceremony, she strolled over and said gently, “Good morning, Sister Yue. I’m Wen Ling, playing Mingzhu, the female lead in this drama.”
Their temperaments were similar; if you looked closely, their features even shared a few points of resemblance. From behind, their silhouettes could almost be mistaken for each other.
Everyone around them instinctively turned to look, like they’d just bitten into a huge, juicy piece of gossip.
Wen Jiu stepped forward to stand in front of Yue Ling, acting as her human shield.
But Ji Yujing was even quicker.
He’d tossed and turned all night over that “Sister Yue” Wen Jiu had called, and now, with dark circles under his eyes, he’d dragged himself to set, only to be assaulted by an even more grating sound than Wen Jiu’s.
Ha. Yet another woman dripping fake sweetness who thought she could fool people.
“Sister Yue was born into the Beicheng Yue family, their only daughter,” Ji Yujing said, voice cold. “She graduated top of her class from Beicheng University and is doing grad school at one of the world’s top institutions. The first time you meet her, you should call her Teacher Yue, not Sister Yue.”
Wen Jiu: “…”
Ji Yujing, you were wasted as an obsessive male supporting role. You should’ve been cast as a vicious supporting young lady.
That wording, that tone, this was exactly how the mean-girl lackey of a villainous young miss talked.