Scumbag Actor Screwup System

Chapter 40 - And so it starts again

Things went back to almost normal after those interviews were published. There were still references to what had happened in social media, people debated, but it was much more low key. The main thing was, no more attacks nor stalking happened, either because he'd hidden himself well or because the fans had been appeased.

Shen Yuan continued with his filming schedule for the drama he was doing while starting to learn his new lines for the next season and still dedicating a few hours a week to programming. It was a fucking lot. Luckily he was still dead the first two episodes, and other than two flashbacks, his acting for the first batch of episodes consisted mostly of lying there and most likely struggling not to fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion. It was sort of funny to read in the script that Binghe would be fighting Liu Qingge for his corpse. The bickering was very entertaining, like two kids fighting over a toy. A big, dead, toy.

It was a true whirlwind of waking up, working out, filming, studying or looking at apartments, reading gossip on social media and passing out. He barely got to talk to Qinghua in the weeks before the filming started, they exchanged messages but that was it. His friend had other priorities now, as did he.

Xu Tengfei did write regularly, about the most inane and random things. He sent a picture of a puppy and asked Shen Yuan if he liked dogs (the answer was an easy yes), he sent pictures of food he'd made himself and offered to let him try sometime, he even sent a picture of a fanart of them together where they looked very cute holding hands. He hardly knew what to say that time around. Either way, he felt a bit like he had someone accompanying him. That just added to the guilt of jerking off staring at actually raunchy Bingqiu fan arts.

His therapist was proud though, it seemed like listening to one's dick made people happy sometimes. He was still conflicted about whether fan arts constituted something like leaked nudes. Probably not, since they weren't real photos, but still, nothing he'd tell Xu Tengfei. Would Shen Yuan feel weirded out if someone told him they touched themselves to fan art of him? Maybe, just for the fact that they were telling him. And somehow he couldn't quite picture it. He knew that people found him hot, just like he knew atoms existed. It was a bit of an abstract fact, logical, and yet not something you felt was inherently true, like, for example, the sun being hot. You could feel the sun's heat, you couldn't see an atom or feel Shen Yuan's hotness.

So when the first day of filming came and Xu Tengfei was being patted on the shoulder by an attractive man, Shen Yuan could feel the "Oh" of hopes he didn't know were there, deflating.

Oh, he'd found someone already. It was obvious this was romantic. Nobody ever dared to touch Xu Tengfei other than to put makeup or clothes on him. The body language looked intimate, they were too close, too comfortable. They were together.

"Shizun!" When had Xu Tengfei turned towards him? Shen Yuan was considering what fleeing strategy to use while they stepped inexorably closer.

"Glad to meet you Mr. Shen, I'm this one's dad," said the man with a jovial smile, offering a handshake. Shen Yuan just froze. The person who'd rejected Xu Tengfei who knew why? The person whose only mention brought pain to the poor boy's face?

"He's playing Tianlang-Jun," explained Tengfei, and that phrase pressed the play button on Shen Yuan's muscles, he at least managed to shake the offered hand mechanically. His expression must have given him away though, because Tianlang-Jun looked at Xu Tengfei and whispered a bit too loudly.

"Does he know about your real dad?"

Xu Tengfei gave no answer, just looked at him with a very menacing glare.

"I'm his theater teacher actually, or I was for a few years while he was younger. Now he calls me daddy," Tialang-Jun joked as if the awkward moment hadn't occurred.