Ch.91 – The Star Around The Sun

The last time Xia Xingcheng saw Zhu Tianjie was at Chen Hailan’s wedding. At that time, he had been one of Chen Hailan’s best men.

Zhu Tianjie’s status was actually a little awkward. He was already a top-tier figure in the TV drama circle, having acted in quite a few high-rating and highly talked about TV dramas, but there hadn’t been much development in the film industry.  

This time, he was making a special appearance and playing the role of Gao Hai. Fortunately, although Gao Hai’s scenes were not too heavy, he was also an important character that drove the movie’s entire plot. 

Zhu Tianjie was thirty-two this year, and his handsomeness was of the completely upright type. If one were to describe him, he would probably be a perfect fit for a role like Chen Jialuo^[1].

In this movie, he played Gao Hai, Qian Qian’s piano teacher. He was always clad in a soft loose sweater and wore a pair of glasses, appearing both gentle and refined. 

Zhu Tianjie also seemed like a mild-mannered person himself, he put on no airs and was a very easy-going person. On the first day he joined the crew, he invited the entire cast and crew to afternoon tea. All the girls in the crew liked him very much, and Xia Xingcheng even saw Yuan Qian grinning incessantly as he chatted with her. 

Xia Xingcheng also thought that Zhu Tianjie was a good person. 

In the scene where he acted opposite of Zhu Tianjie, Qian Chengjin was pressured by the debt collectors to pay back the money he had owed them, yet because he truly couldn’t pay them back, those people forced him to walk back home in a dress and a pair of high heels. The scene began right as he got home. 

Xia Xingcheng changed into a specially prepared costume–a sling dress that was bright red in color and even adorned with dark gold glitter.

When he put on the dress and stood in front of the dressing mirror, all the staff who were watching him laughed. 

Although Xia Xingcheng was thin, his shoulders were still male-wide. Moreover, his hair was short, and he never suited dresses from the beginning. He looked at himself in the mirror and burst out laughing, then asked the young girl from the costume department who was arranging his clothes beside him, “Am I ugly?”

It just so happened that Zhu Tianjie was in the middle of getting his makeup done, and he looked at him through the mirror and commented, “Not ugly.”

The young girl helped him pin the waist of his dress down and pursed her lips, smiling as she said, “It would look pretty with a wig, but you’d look too much like a ladyboy.” 

Those people in the script were only aiming to humiliate him, however, so there wouldn’t be a wig. 

The person next to him brought over the specially prepared large size high heels and also gave him Xia Xingcheng an unopened pair of stockings.

Xia Xingcheng was wearing these things for the first time. Eyeing the stockings packaging as he flipped it this way and that, he asked worriedly, “Will they fit?”

“They’ll fit, they’re very stretchy,” the staff told him as she helped him open the packaging. 

At this time, Xia Xingcheng was only wearing briefs underneath the dress. He sensed a chilly, breezy feeling on the lower half of his body that he’d never experienced before. He sat down on a chair, originally wanting to wear them by raising his legs, but abruptly thought that he was completely exposed underneath the dress, so he bent down again to slip the stocking over his feet. 

The sling dress’s neckline was slightly loose, and he himself didn’t realize that when he bent down, the person in front of him could see all the way through the open neckline. The red straps hung just above his prominent collarbones, and there was something oddly sensual about the way it stretched across his tattoo.

He pulled the stockings up his long bare legs, right to the edge of his skirt, then stopped to say, “Don’t look,” to the girls around him. Then, while they turned their heads, he raised his ass off the chair a little and pulled the stockings up and over his briefs.

When he sat down again, Xia Xingcheng noticed that Zhu Tianjie who was seated next to him had been watching him all along. He smiled at him and lowered his head, slipping his feet into the high heels. 

The high heels were very tall. He didn’t feel it when he first put them on, but once Xia Xingcheng took a couple of steps, he discovered that it was way harder than he’d imagined. If he wasn’t careful, he’d probably sprain his ankle. 

He tried walking around the dressing room and accidentally twisted his ankle, falling sideways. Zhu Tianjie immediately stood up to support him until he was steady on his feet and said, “Be careful.”

Xia Xingcheng nodded with a smile. “Thank you.”

Luckily, when this scene was shot for real, Xia Xingcheng didn’t need to walk in the heels for a long period of time. 

Qian Chengjin returned home dressed in women’s clothing. After hobbling through the door, he took off the shoes and flung them aside before continuing onward in his stockings. 

His mouth had been maliciously painted with bright red lipstick that exceeded his lip line, making him look wretched as well as comical. 

Qian Buqiong had been away on a business trip these past few days. Since his father wasn’t home, Qian Qian had also gone to stay at a friend’s house. Qian Chengjin, too, should’ve gone back to his university dormitory, so it could be said that the only ones in the house were his stepmother Jia Lizhi and their housekeeper with bad hearing who stayed on the first floor. 

However, when Qian Chenjin got back home, he heard the sound of a piano coming from the second floor. Feeling perplexed, he went up the stairs and towards his sister’s piano room on the second floor. 

None of the lights were on the whole way there. Qian Chengjin tread on the floor barefoot, his footsteps barely making a sound, yet he hadn’t reached the piano room when the sound of the piano suddenly ceased. He walked on and, in the moonlight, he found that the door was ajar, but when he looked through the crack of the open door, he couldn’t see anything. The curtains in the room should’ve been drawn, as it was pitch-black inside. 

Qian Chengjin pushed the door a little. The moonlight shone through the crack, shining on his wrist, when a hand suddenly extended from the darkness and captured his wrist, pulling him inside the room. Before he could react, somebody embraced him and called out “Zhizhi”, then kissed his lips. 

That’s right. Xia Xingcheng had a kiss scene with Zhu Tianjie. 

It was merely lips pressing against lips. In the darkness, Qian Chenjin’s eyes widened. Afterwards, Gao Hai lifted a hand and upon feeling his short hair, he abruptly pushed him away. Gao Hai tried to run, but Qian Chengjin responded by grabbing Gao Hai. “Who are you?”

The two of them wrestled in the dark and rolled on the ground. Qian Chengjin tried to hold Gao Hai down and Gao Hai’s glasses were knocked to the floor. Right in the midst of their struggle, somebody turned on the corridor light. 

At that point, Qian Chengjin was still on top of Gao Hai. Together, the two of them turned towards the door to see Jia Lizhi standing there. 

Jia Lizhi screamed with a look of horror on her face.  

Qian Chengjin strangled Gao Hai’s neck with one hand and pointed a finger at Jia Lizhi, saying viciously, “You’re having an affair!”

Throughout filming this scene, as Xia Xingcheng struggled and rolled around with Zhu Tianjie on the floor, there were several times where his skirt rode up his legs and the director would call for a stop, asking them to pay attention and adjust their movements to keep the skirt from slipping up.

Xia Xingcheng felt somewhat embarrassed, and after the director called for a stop, he stood up and pulled the skirt down. 

Sitting on the floor, Zhu Tianjie laughed and looked up at him, saying, “I’ll help you with my legs later, that way it won’t ride up so easily.”

Thus, on the next take, Zhu Tianjie’s leg was pressed particularly tightly against Xia Xingcheng’s, almost as if they were stuck between Xia Xingcheng’s legs, and the skirt really didn’t slide up anymore either.  

Xia Xingcheng slightly minded, but he felt that he was overthinking it. In the past, he wouldn’t have been so concerned about a man’s touch, but ever since he acted as Fang Jianyuan and got together with Yang Youming, he was indeed much more sensitive towards overly intimate contact. What’s more, the constant thought of not letting his skirt ride up also distracted him somewhat, making it difficult for him to fully immerse himself in his character. As a result, this scene was reshot many times before it passed. 

Xia Xingcheng felt that his dress was close to being torn apart.  

Afterwards, the shot of him pressing Zhu Tianjie underneath him served as the foreground while the main shot was of Yuan Qian’s reaction the moment she pushed open the door. 

Ding Wenxun was interminably dissatisfied with Yuan Qian’s reaction and repeated the shot many times.  

Xia Xingcheng had to try his best to brace himself so as not to press his entire body against Zhu Tianjie and refrain from being completely adhered to each other. When it was over, sweat covered the entire expanse of his back.

Once he’d turned away from Zhu Tianjie and sat on the floor, he felt Zhu Tianjie’s hand on his back, his palm right on his skin. Zhu Tianjie said, “You’re this sweaty?”

Xia Xingcheng smiled at him. 

Although filming this scene wore Xia Xingcheng out, in the end, there was one close-up shot made Ding Wenxun particularly pleased; after his initial surprise and anger as he pointed at Jia Lizhi and accused her of cheating, he slowly revealed a smile, his eyes like a predator that had suddenly found prey. He was fuming with rage as he repeated between gritted teeth, “You’re actually having an affair behind my father’s back!”

After that, Xia Xingcheng’s Qian Chengjin began to blackmail Jia Lizhi into giving him money, else he would tell Qian Buqiong about Jia Lizhi’s illicit affair with Qian Qian’s piano teacher.  

At the time, Xia Xingcheng had added that smile on his own. Although Ding Wenxun had made him reshoot a version without the smile, after repeatedly comparing the two shots, Ding Wenxun said to Xia Xingcheng, “The shot with the smile is more impactful. You did great.”

Xia Xingcheng was still wearing the red dress, his make-up along with the overdrawn lipstick had already faded with sweat, and as he wiped his face, the red lipstick abruptly looked all the more severe. 

Zhu Tianjie, who was also watching the replay of the scene next to Ding Wenxun, said, “Xia Xingcheng is really quite good.”

Ding Wenxun nodded. “Someone recommended by Lao-Yang definitely has no issues.”

“Lao-Yang?” Zhu Tianjie repeated in a somewhat strange tone. 

Yet Ding Wenxun didn’t notice and had already turned his head to do something else. 

Xia Xingcheng didn’t continue to stay there any longer and headed towards the dressing room to change his clothes.

Lying in bed after a shower that night, Xia Xingcheng felt a sense of exhaustion, like his brain had long stopped functioning, yet he still picked up his phone and opened Weibo. 

‘Accidental Murder’ was estimated to take about two months to film. Until now, it had already been twenty days. Huang Jixin had long since left, recruiting an assistant to remain at his side. This time it was a girl, and her nickname was Huahua. When Huang Jixin had left, he had repeatedly stressed that Huahua was a naive young lady. Later on, Xia Xingcheng discovered that this naive flower was really naive to the point of being a little silly, but he put up with her employment overtime. 

Ever since Xia Xingcheng joined the crew, he would send out a Weibo post every few days to console his fans. Some were selfies, and some were trivial everyday matters. 

Today, he had taken a picture of himself in that red dress. He hadn’t shot his upper body–only the red skirt, stockings, and high heels below. Lying on his bed then, he posted the picture along with the caption: “Crossdresser!” and added a frightened emoji.

This Weibo post garnered a large amount of comments and reposts not long after it was posted. 

The fans who followed him all knew that he was currently shooting a new movie, so they bombarded him with questions asking whether it was a look for the movie. Xia Xingcheng laughed and refreshed the comments. Shortly after, he saw Zhu Tianjie reposting his Weibo post with the caption “There’s also a kiss scene” and a 🤭 emoji.^[2] 

Zhu Tianjie had a lot more followers than Xia Xingcheng, and it quickly caused a large-scale fierce reaction, their names popped up side by side on the hot search.

Xia Xingcheng felt a little bad, and hesitated on whether he should respond, yet it turned out that even the official ‘Accidental Murder’ Weibo account had reposted their posts. He was thus relieved, treating it as promotion for the movie. 

 He didn’t want to reply to Zhu Tianjie, merely following him instead, and just as he was about to exit Weibo, he suddenly found that Yang Youming had actually liked his post. 

Instantly, Xia Xingcheng felt somewhat indignant. 

The author has something to say:
Ming ge: My hand slipped…

☆ ☆ ☆

[1] Chen Jialuo is the protagonist of popular wuxia novelist Jin Yong’s work ‘The Book and The Sword’. He’s handsome, elegant, well-versed, humble, polite, strong in martial arts, and a lot more. Google is your friend!
[2] I hope that emoji shows up on your phones… If it doesn’t, it’s the laughing with a hand over your mouth emoji Q___Q It actually mentions the emoji’s name/term/description in the original text but uhhh bear with me just this once.

t/n – thank you to Tinsunny and Anon for the kofis!! i really appreciate it ❤

⟵ Chapter 90 | TOC | Chapter 92 ⟶