23 Chapter 49

Rookie actress Zhou Siyou, stunning, insolent, and utterly unfiltered, was notoriously known as the entertainment industry’s walking rebel. She had once accomplished the absurd feat of triggering over a hundred censored bleeps in a single one-hour stream. Yet the moment she collided with Zhong Qing, that supposedly invincible troublemaker was tamed into total surrender.

Everyone assumed Zhou Siyou and Zhong Qing crossed paths for the first time on the gala red carpet. One was a scandalous actress famous for all the wrong reasons, doomed to leave another season empty handed; the other, an acclaimed prodigy director basking in boundless glory. When their gazes met, there was only the faintest flicker of emotion, distant and detached.

In a passing second, they brushed right past each other.

Yet for reasons she could not explain, Zhou Siyou found herself drawn to a distant memory: the afternoon Zhong Qing had convinced her to skip class. A gentle girl standing beneath the dappled shade of the trees, summer light dancing across dark hair.

Zhong Qing had smiled at her, whispering: "Jump. I will catch you."

A fragile, illusory dream; the colorless truth of who they became.