Transmigrated into the Film Emperor’s Death-Seeking Fiance

Jiang Mo Chen looked at Yan Qing Chi, “Don’t you seem to have forgotten something?” For example, how he didn’t know how to draw.

Of course Yan Qing Chi hadn’t forgotten, “Just draw something, anything. It’s very simple.”

Only then did Jiang Mo Chen take the pencil dubiously and draw a straight line in the corner.

He handed the pencil back to Yan Qing Chi, who gave it to Qiqi, “Qiqi draw something too, and then Daddy will perform magic for you.”

Qiqi took the pencil and bit his lip as he contemplated what to draw. He drew a straight line as well at a distance not far away from the straight line that Jiang Mo Chen had drawn. He returned the pencil to Yan Qing Chi, full of expectations.

Yan Qing Chi said, “Watch closely.”

And then he began to move his pencil. He drew very quickly, adding multiple things in some areas while only making minimal strokes in others. Using Jiang Mo Chen’s straight line as a base, he swiftly drew a tree trunk with extended branches and flowers, as well as floating flower petals.

The short straight line that Qiqi drew on the side became a sapling that had just grown two branches.

Yan Qing Chi drew very swiftly. Soon enough, he was done. The whole drawing became a spring scenery drawing with cartoony coloring. It had flowers, grass, trees, a kitty, puppy, and a little bird perched on a branch.

“Wow!” Qiqi exclaimed, extremely delighted, “It looks so so good.”

Yan Qing Chi signed his name in the corner, then he handed the pencil to Qiqi. “Sign your name, little artist.”

Qiqi was quite bashful when he heard Yan Qing Chi call him ‘little artist’. He took the pencil and, very seriously, wrote in strokes the two characters ‘Qi Qi’.

Then he handed the pencil over to Jiang Mo Chen.

“I have to sign too?” He looked at Yan Qing Chi.

“Yeah, since you had also contributed1.”

“Mn, sign.” Qiqi held the pencil up closer to Jiang Mo Chen.

Jiang Mo Chen had no other choice but to accept the pencil and sign his name under Qiqi’s. He had become accustomed to signing his name. When he picked up the pencil, his hand habitually moved in a certain trajectory. Poor little Qiqi; he stared at Jiang Mo Chen’s name for a long time before asking, perplexed, “Father, did you draw another thing? But we’re not drawing anymore. You have to write your name.”

Yan Qing Chi ducked his head, snickering soundlessly2.

Jiang Mo Chen had no other choice than to properly write his own name under his habitual signature. Now Qiqi was satisfied. He pointed at their names, reading each character aloud, “Yan Qing Chi, Qiqi, Jiang Mo Chen.”

“Mn.”

Qiqi was extremely happy as he looked at the drawing. So, he said, with a cheerful tone, “Let’s draw another drawing!”

Jiang Mo Chen was practically so angered by his son’s words that his breath nearly got caught in his throat. Yan Qing Chi promised him, “Just draw randomly. It’s fine if you draw straight lines every time.”

With the man’s promise, Jiang Mo Chen’s breathing eased. ‘Sure enough, children were debts!3’ young father Jiang Mo Chen remarked.

Thus, when the new round of drawing began, Jiang Mo Chen completely followed Teacher Yan’s guidance and drew a straight line every time it was his turn. Qiqi protested, “You can’t do that.”

Jiang Mo Chen brazenly replied, “I’m doing what your daddy said to do.”

Qiqi looked towards Yan Qing Chi, who rubbed his head, “I’ll perform a magic trick for you later.”

Only then was Qiqi reassured, and he drew carefully.

When Yan Qing Chi applied the finishing touches, he connected Jiang Mo Chen’s straight lines together and turned it into a fence. Inside the fence, there was a house. In front of the house, there were several chicks eating rice grains. There was a dog laying in a girl’s arms.

“Wow!” Qiqi marveled once more. “Daddy is so amazing.”

“Qiqi is also very amazing. The three of us are all very amazing.”

Qiqi nodded. He collected the two drawings, intending to bring them back with him. Before Qiqi collected the drawings, Jiang Mo Chen had taken pictures and he looked at them closely.

Strictly speaking, this drawing didn’t really have much to do with him or Qiqi. It was all because of Yan Qing Chi’s divine brushwork at the end; he was the mastermind behind the entire drawing. But that didn’t stop Jiang Mo Chen, who had never had a knack for drawing, to feel quite happy about it. After all, his name was on both drawings.

Qiqi noticed that the clock had reached 9 PM, so he wanted to sleep. Yan Qing Chi took him into the bathroom.

Jiang Mo Chen took advantage of this time to send the second drawing to the WeChat groupchat that he, Yu Xi He, Ren Xu, and Liao Si Bo had.

Jiang Mo Chen: 【[photo]】

Jiang Mo Chen: 【What do you guys think? I drew it!】

Yu Xi He: 【…】

Ren Xu:【[fright][fright][fright]】

Liao Si Bo: 【Have I gone blind?】

Ren Xu: 【Jiang Mo Chen, if you’ve been kidnapped, blink!】

Yu Xi He: 【Match the secret code. This one’s got to be a fake. Hey, if I call you “Sixth Brother”4, do you dare answer?】

Jiang Mo Chen: 【…】

Ren Xu: 【Looking at it closely, in this drawing, did you only draw your own name?】

Yu Xi He: 【Or the rice grains that the chicks are eating?】

Liao Si Bo: 【Or their eyes?】

Jiang Mo Chen fumed: 【You guys are doing this on purpose, aren’t you? I’ve drawn at least one-third of this drawing, okay?!】

Yu Xi He: 【Alright, it’s official. This is a fake Chen. The Chen I know would not pick up a drawing pencil under any circumstances.】

Ren Xu: 【Yeah. Whoever makes him draw, he will block.】

Liao Si Bo: 【Looking at it closely, there are three names. I remember that your son is only five years old. If he is able to have this kind of brushwork, then he would probably be more popular than you. So, it’s the one in your family who had drawn it, isn’t it?】

Jiang Mo Chen attempted to reason with them, 【We collaborated on the drawing. Everyone contributed.】

Ren Xu: 【So what did you contribute?】

Jiang Mo Chen:【…】

Yu Xing He: 【One-third, and it’s not the rice grains that the chicks are eating. I’m going to make a brazen conjecture: you didn’t draw the fence, did you?】

Ren Xu: 【He couldn’t draw that. He could probably only draw those rows of straight lines, hahahaha】

Liao Si Bo:【hahahahahaha, straight lines, hahahaha】

Jiang Mo Chen:【…】

System Notice: Jiang Mo Chen has left the groupchat.

Yu Xi He, Ren Xu, and Liao Si Bo: 【HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA】

Yu Xi He swiftly invited Jiang Mo Chen back into the groupchat, reassuring him: 【Actually, this row of straight lines was drawn quite decently. They’re super straight!】

Jiang Mo Chen: 【Hē5】

Ren Xu: 【Yeah, and the rows are very evenly distributed.】

Liao Si Bo: 【And it really does make up one-third of the drawing.】

Jiang Mo Chen: 【Too late. Plastic friendship6, I’m cutting off relations with you all right now!】

Yu Xi He: 【Well, it’s just that…】

Liao Si Bo: 【This really is a little…】

Ren Xu: 【Don’t listen to them, Mo Chen. You’ve gotta think about it like this: being willing to play with you and satisfy your interest in drawing despite knowing that you can only draw a row of straight lines, Yan Qing Chi must truly be in love with you!】

Yu Xi He immediately concurred: 【It’s got to be true love. Truer than a diamond.】

Liao Si Bo felt somewhat awkward. He had such a not-very-pleasant past with Yan Qing Chi. Although they had made peace now, and he had accepted Yan Qing Chi, he still couldn’t quite compliment him. However, he did grow up with Jiang Mo Chen and knew that the man’s artistic ability was practically in the negatives. Liao Si Bo also thought that it was truly not easy for Yan Qing Chi to accompany Jiang Mo Chen in drawing. Thus, he sent: 【He (YQC) truly does not have it easy.】

Jiang Mo Chen was going to die from anger due to these three, 【He’s not accompanying me. It’s the two of us playing with Qiqi.】

Ren Xu sent a judgmental sticker, 【Dude please, don’t demean Qiqi. Did you draw as well as Qiqi did?】

Yu Xi He: 【Did you draw as well as Qiqi did?】

Liao Si Bo: 【Did you draw as well as Qiqi did?】

Jiang Mo Chen threw his phone to the ground in fury! This was a drawback to childhood friends: having grown up together with you, they knew better than anyone about your strengths and weaknesses. It sucked!

After Qiqi finished showering, he slept on a bed with Jiang Mo Chen and Yan Qing Chi. He slept in the middle with Yan Qing Chi on his left and Jiang Mo Chen on his right. Qiqi held their hands and announced, “I’m gonna sleep now.”

Yan Qing Chi kissed his forehead, “Good night, baby.”

Seeing this, Jiang Mo Chen recalled how Yan Qing Chi had mentioned Qiqi liking it very much when other people kissed him. So, he also leaned over and landed a kiss on Qiqi’s face, “Good night.”

Yan Qing Chi, seeing him kiss the right side of Qiqi’s face, very naturally landed another kiss on the left side of the child’s face.

Having been kissed on both cheeks by them at around the same time, Qiqi was so bashful that his face reddened. He held his cheeks with his hands and closed his eyes, “Qiqi is sleeping now.” After a while, he said, “Good night to Daddy and Father too.”

Yan Qing Chi thought that he was cute, and wanted to poke him. However, he didn’t want to prevent the child from sleeping, so he didn’t act upon his urge. Instead, he merely gazed at Qiqi with merriment in his eyes.

Soon, Qiqi fell asleep. His hands also fell and he rolled into Yan Qing Chi’s arms.

“Are you sleeping at my place tonight?” Yan Qing Chi looked towards Jiang Mo Chen.

Jiang Mo Chen nodded, “I’ll accompany Qiqi.”

Yan Qing Chi had no objections to this. He merely remarked, “Then it might get a little cramped.”

“It’s fine.” Jiang Mo Chen smiled.

And so Yan Qing Chi did not continue troubling himself with this problem.

He recalled how Little He had sent him several links earlier. Thinking how he wasn’t busy with anything at the moment anyway, he held up his phone, tapped into the WeChat app, and followed where the links took him.

The first two links that Little He had sent were normal discussion threads—but the number of pages in this thread was a little higher than normal.

Yan Qing Chi had heard Jiang Mo Chen say before that he (JMC) was going to drum up some interest for him (YQC). Yet, in the end, he had only seen several hundred comments and several tens of reblogs. He had been very curious at the time too, thinking to himself, ‘What kind of interest does this count as? It cannot even compare to the number of Jiang Mo Chen’s fans.’ Who would have thought that the “interest” was actually here?

Qiqi was a very deep sleeper. As long as it wasn’t too loud of a sound, he usually wouldn’t wake up. So, Yan Qing Chi opened his mouth without having to worry about it, “Jiang Mo Chen,” he turned his head towards the other man, “I’ve got a question to ask you.”

“What is it?” Jiang Mo Chen sent a 【Hold on】to Wu Yuan. Then he set his phone down and looked towards Yan Qing Chi.

“Why is it that for that picture of the two of us going to watch a movie today, there seems to be very few reblogs and comments. It didn’t even appear on the trending topics list. But in the discussion forum, there seems to be a lot of discussion about it.”

“Because this is part of my personal life. The statistics for reblogs and comments are typically related to promotions for work. It is a way to let other people see your popularity and your economic value, which are converted into film or advertisement offers. However, when it is something in one’s personal life, the fans have a tacit agreement to not make a big deal out of it. This is due to their fear that it will affect their idols’ lives and that doing so7 would give the person who released the photo too much attention, letting that person experience the sweetness of doing so and henceforth disturbing my life or flat-out spreading rumors and slander/libel.”

“Huh?” Yan Qing Chi didn’t quite understand.

“Think of it this way: this person posted our picture today. Everyone knows that they met me. If at this time, there are a lot of reblogs and comments—drawing the attention of normal people—and then that person posts another post. In this post, they express that they were very disappointed, that they hadn’t thought that I was ‘this kind of person’, that I was someone who was unexpectedly so lacking in public ethics and social morality. Do you think that everyone would believe them?”

Yan Qing Chi scarcely had to think about it, “They will. Because that person had previously posted our photo, so people know that they had certainly encountered us.”

“Correct. So, the fans would typically not give too much attention to this kind of Weibo post that pertains to their celebrity’s personal life. It is because they fear that they would help boost the poster’s popularity and the latter would bite the hand that fed it. As for the trending search, celebrities actually shouldn’t frequently appear on the trending searches list.”

“Why not?”

“Think about it. There’re only so many spots in the trending searches list. Everyone would want to buy the spots closer to the front when they buy the trending search, because they want more people to see it. As a result, if someone appeared on the trending searches list on the first day, you would find it a novelty. If they appeared on the trending searches list again on the second day, you would be curious what happened to them this time. But if that person is always on the trending searches list, you will become fed up with them, thinking, ‘Why is it you?! Why is it always you?!’ Imperceptibly, they become hateful.”

“But I saw that there were many celebrities who frequently appear in the trending searches?”

“Because celebrities essentially live in the spotlight—only if you are active and in everyone’s line of sight would people remember you. So, even if they know that doing so would arouse the normal person’s distaste, some companies would still keep the talents under them on the trending searches list. After all, negative popularity is still popularity. The popularity is the most important part.” He looked at Yan Qing Chi, “Got it?”

Yan Qing Chi nodded, “Got it.”

He looked down at the forum post on his phone, “So they can discuss in the discussion forum? They don’t need to worry about anything anymore?”

“Most of the people who would post a forum post for you in the discussion forum are your fans. For a forum post like this that is clearly about a certain celebrity’s personal life, those who would enter it are all fans so naturally they can discuss it. However, because of the public nature of the discussion forum, they normally wouldn’t go overboard. They will be somewhat more restrained.”

Yan Qing Chi understood now. He began to read the forum post. As he read and read, he began to lose his composure.

 

 

 

Footnotes

The raw says “you had also drawn (something), after all”.The raw says that he “sneakily laughed/smiled (偷笑)” and I envisioned it as him laughing silently. I bet his shoulders were shaking though.果然儿女都是债啊! The original saying this refers to (儿女是债) states that a parent’s sons and daughters were the embodiment of debts that the parent owed in their past life. Thus, the child(ren) make the parent’s life more difficult because the parent is paying off the debt they owe in the past life.It’s a character from Calabash Brothers (Hulu Wa). Specifically, it’s the sixth gourd baby, who has the ability to turn invisible and sometimes incorporeal. He’s the most mischievous out of the seven gourd brothers. Wikipedia here and Baidu about the character here.Cold laugh or sneer or scoffThis is a term meaning that the friendship is for appearances. Beneath the surface, the ‘friends’ are actually competitors/enemies/etc. So they’re not really friends, but they continue to put up appearances of friendship. Here’s a Baidu answer link with some more explanation.referring to making a big deal out of something related to the celebrity’s personal life