Fu Hui’s graduation present was the premiere of Lan Xi’s new drama.
Both families wanted to sit with the two of them, eat together, and watch the first episode as it aired. But the Fu family could hardly sit at the same table as the Song family, so there was no way to satisfy both sides.
With practiced ease, Lan Xi suggested, “Fu Hui, let’s run away from home!”
Fu Hui smiled. “All right.”
That made taking the subway even less likely, so they went in the family car instead.
The only difference was that Fu Hui was driving this time.
Lan Xi was still unhappy as he opened the car door. “I could just fly you there!”
Fu Hui pressed a hand to his head and pushed him into the car. “Flying is banned throughout the city. You might get shot down.”
He walked around to the other side and got in, then added, “I’ll take you abroad to fly during the holidays.”
Only then did Lan Xi cheer up.
Their destination for running away from home had never changed. It was still that apartment in the city center.
Fu Hui took a small trolley out of the trunk, loaded it with the groceries he and Lan Xi had picked out together at the supermarket, and pushed it up from the underground garage.
Lan Xi walked ahead. When he reached the entrance, he stopped and gestured at the doorway. “The door got smaller.”
Fu Hui opened his mouth to speak, but Lan Xi supplied his own explanation. “Because I’ve grown bigger!”
But he was still very cute.
Fu Hui’s eyes flickered. He followed Lan Xi inside.
Lan Xi threw himself onto the sofa and flailed around a couple of times. “The sofa got smaller too.”
This time, Fu Hui answered, “We replaced it with a new one.”
Lan Xi had entered a period of rapid growth over the past year, and the changes in him were considerable.
Lan Xi shook his head. “Don’t replace it.”
Fu Hui knew that Lan Xi could never bear to throw away anything he liked. The oversized phone they had bought long ago was still tucked away in a drawer, even though Lan Xi no longer used it, so Fu Hui was not surprised.
Lan Xi added, “I’m going to grow more.”
While putting away the groceries, Fu Hui asked, “How tall?”
“Maybe two meters.”
Fu Hui looked at Lan Xi, who still only reached his shoulder, and could not help laughing. Then he began to feel genuinely concerned. “How tall can demons grow?”
Lan Xi looked a little lost.
He had been far too young when he left Hell. Judging by what the greater demons had looked like from the perspective of a tiny succubus, they might have been… “Seven or eight meters?”
Fu Hui looked up at the ceiling.
Lan Xi looked up too, then burst out laughing. “Haha! I’d break right through the roof!”
He immediately asked, “Then what would we do? Would Fu Hui build me a biiig, biiig, biiig house?”
“I would.”
Fu Hui quickly accepted the possibility that Lan Xi might grow to seven or eight meters tall. In an even tone, he continued, “But then Lan Xi would have to stay in that enormous house all the time. You wouldn’t be able to ride in cars or go into shopping malls anymore…”
Lan Xi’s face fell at once. “Then I don’t want that after all.”
At five thirty that afternoon, the food they had prepared together was set on the table.
This was a habit they had developed back when they first made a cake together. No matter how many dishes they could manage, they would not let anyone else help.
Of course, after all these years, both of them had improved their cooking skills at least a little.
“Delicious, delicious,” Lan Xi declared, being very generous with his praise.
Fu Hui promptly tasted what Lan Xi had made as well and gave it an exceedingly high rating.
Lan Xi beamed at the praise. At six o’clock, the first episode officially began.
Lan Xi’s character appeared at thirteen minutes and twenty seconds into the episode. In this modern supernatural drama, he played a mysterious figure whose loyalties were difficult to pin down.
His acting… really was not very good.
Fu Hui glanced worriedly at Lan Xi, only to find him staring at his own face on the screen, thoroughly enjoying the sight.
Apparently, he had worried for nothing…
Still, Fu Hui soon opened his phone again and discreetly checked the online reactions, anxious that someone might be criticizing Lan Xi’s terrible acting.
【I’ve finally lived to see this! More lines than he’s ever had before…】
【Can those face-licking edits finally run longer than two minutes?】
Fu Hui paused when he reached that comment.
Lick whom? Lick what?
【He was right to stick to mute roles before. Watching him act had me grimacing in pain, but then I looked at his face again and felt better.】
【Luckily he’s a supporting character. We get just the right amount of screen time without his acting wiping out the entire planet.】
【What kind of dress-up game is this? The director really gets it. Three different looks in a single episode! So beautiful, so beautiful!】
【It’s fine, I’ll spoil this Lan Xi rotten. Please don’t let the criticism crush your enthusiasm and make you give up playing mute characters!】
【The kid’s only just started delivering lines. This is all normal…】
Fu Hui skimmed the comments. No one was outright cursing him out.
Even the rare person who expressed dissatisfaction and claimed that Lan Xi had used connections to force his way into getting acting opportunities was immediately shouted down.
【If he actually wanted to use connections to get more opportunities, he wouldn’t have had so little screen time all these years, and it wouldn’t have taken him this long to finally appear in his first television drama!!!】
It was inevitable that a stunning beauty who attracted attention effortlessly would inspire some jealousy.
But what if that beauty hardly ever showed his face and seemed to want nothing more than to play mute characters?
Naturally, the general public thought extremely well of him.
Fu Hui finally relaxed and stopped checking the online reactions.
Lan Xi’s summer vacation soon began, but he was no longer interested in Fu Hui taking him abroad so that he could learn to fly to his heart’s content.
Instead, he began a new routine of sitting in front of the television at six o’clock sharp every single day.
At first, viewers still thought Lan Xi’s acting was poor. But as the episodes went on, his astonishing ability to learn became apparent.
【Was it because he hadn’t filmed enough before? How is he getting better and better as the drama goes on?】
The trouble was that the scenes had not been filmed in the same order as the episodes aired, so the audience got a thorough demonstration of how wildly Lan Xi’s acting could fluctuate.
The drama reached its halfway point.
In Episode Twenty-Three, Lan Xi delivered his standout performance.
As for what happened in that episode?
Another supporting character struck a nerve with the character Lan Xi played by mentioning his deceased older brother, triggering an explosive emotional outburst.
【Holy shit, that was satisfying to watch!】
【That made me cry.】
【Are we really sure Lan Xi’s character doesn’t have a brother complex?】
Fu Hui found the comments thoroughly satisfying. After wrapping up his intensive online patrol for the day, he turned around and casually scooped Lan Xi up from the sofa. “Time for bed.”
Lan Xi said nothing and rested his chin on Fu Hui’s shoulder.
Fu Hui reached up to pinch his cheek, only to find his hand wet.
Startled, Fu Hui hurriedly asked, “What’s wrong?”
Lan Xi sighed softly. “I don’t want Fu Hui to die.”
He had been made sad by the very plot he had acted in.
Fu Hui did not know whether to laugh or cry, and his heart softened helplessly.
“How could I die that easily?” Fu Hui put him back on the sofa, firmly turned his face toward him, and wiped away his tears. But he still could not resist asking, “Did you cry like this when you filmed that scene?”
His voice was very quiet, but his heartbeat was thunderously loud.
Once again, he felt that strange surge of excitement. It was so peculiar… How could Lan Xi’s sadness make him feel excited?
Fu Hui pressed his lips together and forced that bizarre reaction back down.
Lan Xi pouted. “No. There were lots of people on set, and there was this enormous camera pointed right at my face… I didn’t cry.”
Hearing that, Fu Hui stroked the corner of his eye and then pressed Lan Xi’s head against his chest.
It was entirely instinctive.
Lan Xi obediently leaned against him and sighed. “But I’m going to live for a very, very long time…”
It was something neither of them had thought about over the past several years.
Fu Hui froze. For a moment, he had no idea how to comfort Lan Xi.
But neither of them was the sort of person who would remain miserable over a problem for long.
The next morning, Lan Xi got up and immediately began searching for ways to extend a person’s lifespan…
“The last person who was this obsessed with living forever was Qin Shi Huang,” Fu Hui said.
Lan Xi had studied history, so of course he knew that Qin Shi Huang had failed.
Lan Xi declared fiercely, “That must be because he didn’t have a demon by his side! Fu Hui will be different…”
While actively searching for a solution, Lan Xi watched zombie films and vampire films… but still did not have the faintest idea what to do.
Lan Xi was unhappy. “I left Hell when I was too little. I hadn’t learned anything yet.”
Fortunately, his unhappiness soon faded.
The episode featuring Lan Xi’s standout performance set a new viewership record, and his manager called to share the good news.
Compared with the attention he had received before despite his limited exposure, this was when he truly set foot on the path toward enormous fame. His manager was beside himself with excitement and told Lan Xi that the drama was a hit. A massive hit.
Netizens began to wonder: 【That performance felt so genuine. Does Lan Xi have an older brother?】
【Word is he does! He’s mentioned him plenty of times since he was little and doing magazine shoots! His “brother” even showed up on set this time.】
【They must be so close! Are there photos? Is he good-looking? Why don’t they enter showbiz together and give us the full brotherly duo? Right now everyone has to imagine what the older brother in the drama looks like.】
Someone promptly snapped a photograph and posted it, and the image spread rapidly.
It reached Fu Hui’s eyes and then made its way to the Fu family.
That very day, Third Older Cousin called in a panic. “Uh, Fu Hui, I really didn’t do it on purpose…”
That was right. The photograph was of him.
Third Older Cousin anxiously tried to explain himself. “I really didn’t expect someone at the set to secretly take my picture and put it online.”
“…”
“Fu Hui, say something!”
“…”
“Don’t do this. You’re scaring me a little. I’ll register a social-media account right now and tell everyone I’m just an older cousin. A paternal cousin, all right?”
“…”
“I’ll get someone to wipe that photo off the entire internet right now! I could put up yours… uh, no, that won’t do either. Your photos absolutely can’t get out. Your father would kill me too.”
Third Older Cousin was close to despair. He could not seem to find a single way out of this predicament.
Meanwhile, Lan Xi was even angrier than Fu Hui. Fuming, he asked his manager for the login details to his own social-media account.
He had never bothered to manage it before, but this time things were different…
The Weibo account, which had always posted nothing but work-related updates, finally heard from its actual owner.
Lan Xi: Stop spreading that picture! That’s not my brother!
When Third Older Cousin saw the post, he felt relieved and choked up at the same time.
Wonderful. Had he just been expelled from the ranks of cousins too?
Netizens were seeing Lan Xi speak up for himself for the first time and flocked to the account in amazement.
【Is this really Lan Xi?】
【Baby, don’t be angry!】
【Yep, that’s definitely a brother complex.】
【Um… so can we see a picture of your real brother?】
Lan Xi aggressively singled out that comment to reply to. 【No! Nobody else is allowed to look!】
The commenter was stunned, then tentatively wrote: 【So… only Lan Xi himself is allowed to look?】
Lan Xi did not care in the slightest what anyone else thought. He dropped a resounding two-character reply: 【Mm-hmm!】
Fu Hui watched him typing and watched the netizens go through one wave of astonishment after another.
That excitement he had struggled to suppress suddenly engulfed him again.
He reached out and squeezed Lan Xi’s soft cheek.
Lan Xi turned and glared at him. “What are you doing? Don’t bother me right now.”
Fu Hui: “…” How could this succubus be so adorable?