Chapter 93: She Didn't Want To Leave Her
This translation was originally posted on https://love4baihe.blogspot.com please read it there. and check out other stories too.
Even Yan Tinghuan found it troublesome. Ruan Yesheng felt even heavier, even deeply regretting, "It looks like our surveillance on the room next door startled the snake."
She lowered her head. "I also made a wrong decision."
Although Ruan Yesheng still didn’t know what Xi Mo saw through the peephole, she was sure Xi Mo was greatly frightened.
She blames herself for what happened to Xi Mo tonight.
If she hadn’t planned to monitor the room next door tonight, Xi Mo could have gone to bed early. Perhaps anything that happened next door would have nothing to do with Xi Mo. Xi Mo wouldn’t have stayed with her until this late hour, nor would she have gone to the peephole to check the situation outside after hearing noises next door.
"Ruanruan, you didn’t do anything wrong." Yan Tinghuan handed over a wrapped napkin: "This surveillance still yielded some results. At least we have a better understanding of some things, and next time we deal with it, we’ll be better prepared and won’t be so easily fooled by the other side."
"What is it?" Ruan Yesheng took it and carefully opened it.
"The ashes from the mosquito coil. I secretly took a bit from the next room. There might be some clues in it."
Ruan Yesheng was surprised when she heard this. "What? Didn't you say you were going outside to check the situation? How did you end up going into the room? Didn't you forget the police set up surveillance in the next room? The police must have people constantly watching the footage. If you went in, wouldn’t you be caught right in front of them?"
Yan Tinghuan’s expression turned serious as she shook her head. "It’s fine, the surveillance in the next room was already destroyed by that woman. The police are probably in chaos right now."
"Destroyed?" Ruan Yesheng, who had stayed in Xi Mo’s room the entire time, knew nothing about this.
"Yes, I saw that woman destroy it. Right in front of the police watching from the monitor, she even said good evening to them."
Yan Tinghuan recalled that moment and said, "When you noticed something was wrong and came to help me, my cicada still had a faint bit of awareness. I could vaguely see her destroying the surveillance, but I could not open my eyes, and my body could not move at all.”
Ruan Yesheng immediately breathed a sigh of relief. "That is good. Anyway, we must never get involved with the police, or it will be very troublesome."
"Understood, I know my limits.”
After looking at the mosquito coil ashes, Ruan Yesheng was at a loss. She handed the ashes back to Yan Tinghuan and asked, "You have no clue about this at all?"
"I don't know. I can't smell anything from it." Yan Tinghuan walked to the chair and sat down. "I'll keep it for now and continue investigating later."
Ruan Yesheng also sat down, deep in thought. "Now that the surveillance in the room is gone, and there are so many blind spots in the hallway cameras, it's even harder to find clues. The area outside Xi Mo's room and the next room can't be recorded at all. Last time, someone left a collage threat letter at the door. Do you still remember? We investigated for a long time, but we still have no idea who did it."
The more she thought about it, the more her head hurt. Frustrated, she said, "After the last threat incident, we already knew about the flaws in the hotel's surveillance. But it’s not realistic to openly ask the hotel to modify the hallway cameras. So Xi Mo and I thought about installing a miniature camera at the door. That way, without drawing attention, we might catch some clues."
"But this is a hotel. Installing a miniature camera without permission—if hotel staff or other guests found out, there’d be no way to explain it. Especially since I come to Xi Mo's place often, and entertainment reporters who follow me are always lurking nearby. If word got out that I secretly installed surveillance, it’d be a huge problem. That’s why we never did it."
Because of the shameless actions of some criminals, society now absolutely despises miniature cameras in hotels. The moment one is found, it causes an uproar. If a hidden camera were discovered—especially in a hotel packed with celebrities from a film crew—it would definitely become a huge scandal.
On this floor alone, there were a few starlets. Being deeply immersed in the entertainment industry, most of them were highly sensitive. If anyone misunderstood and thought they were secretly gathering gossip, it would be a disaster. They couldn't take that risk.
"There’s no way around it," Yan Tinghuan understood Ruan Yesheng’s dilemma and said, "It’s because both of you are actors. Especially Xi Mo—too many eyes are watching her. Even having a meal could get her secretly photographed. If you mix that kind of constant exposure with everything you’re dealing with now, it’ll only make things harder for you in the future, leaving you completely restrained."
Ruan Yesheng frowned deeply and fell into silence.
Celebrities chose to face the cameras, to live under the spotlight, basking in fame and attention.
In return, they had to endure the constant surveillance of countless other lenses in society, with no privacy to speak of.
How pathetic. How ridiculous.
Once you stepped into this world, no one could escape the rule of the camera.
Unless you gave up everything you had gained.
Unless you were willing to return to obscurity.
Yan Tinghuan sighed and said softly, "Ruanruan, you have to know that when you chose to leave the entertainment industry at the peak of your fame, after spending years in silence, the media and public finally shifted their focus away from you, and only then were you able to smoothly..."
Ruan Yesheng's heart skipped a beat. She quickly raised a finger to her lips, signaling Yan Tinghuan not to mention this matter again.
Xi Mo was in the bathroom and might hear it.
Yan Tinghuan also realized her slip of the tongue. She raised a hand apologetically and mouthed a silent "sorry" to Ruan Yesheng.
At this moment, Xi Mo leaned her back against the bathroom door, looking up at the bathroom light, silent and still.
She did hear it.
Even though she only heard half of it, with her careful thinking, Xi Mo more or less already guessed why Ruan Yesheng left the entertainment industry.
As she had previously suspected, Ruan Yesheng indeed left voluntarily.
There was no so-called blacklist, nor was anyone forcing her.
This was Ruan Yesheng's own choice.
Although Xi Mo did not know the exact reason why Ruan Yesheng made such a decision, she knew that it must have been due to something very important that forced Ruan Yesheng to make this choice. For Ruan Yesheng, who loved acting, this decision was undoubtedly painful, but she still chose to go through with it. This was enough to prove that whatever Ruan Yesheng needed to do was perhaps more important to her than acting itself.
Xi Mo finally realized that she had made a mistake.
This translation was originally posted on https://love4baihe.blogspot.com please read it there. and check out other stories too.
After their bodies had swapped, she couldn't help but feel uneasy about Ruan Yesheng occupying her body. She needed to keep her within her line of sight. So, she convinced Ruan Yesheng to agree to attend an interview at Lin Qitang's place under the guise of her identity, so they could both join the same filming project.
The filming of "Sui Ting" caused waves of sensational publicity, bringing Ruan Yesheng back into the public eye.
The media started noticing Ruan Yesheng, and her old fans remembered her.
Ruan Yesheng received a lot of attention, and perhaps in the future, this kind of external focus would only increase.
But was this really what Ruan Yesheng wants now?
It was all because she was not at ease. Without realizing it, she pulled Ruan Yesheng back into the entertainment industry.
Xi Mo felt a strong regret. That regret was like ocean waves surging inside her, making it impossible to stay calm. Indeed, Ruan Yesheng had switched bodies with her. But now that she thought about it carefully, did she really have the right to decide where Ruan Yesheng’s body should go? Did she really have the right to let her join the Sui Ting production team?
What exactly did Ruan Yesheng want? Did she really think about it?
Why had she never thought about these questions before?
At first, she was distant and indifferent toward Ruan Yesheng, so she naturally did not understand Ruan Yesheng’s feelings. But now, she had long been used to having Ruan Yesheng by her side. Had this habit of companionship made her ignore Ruan Yesheng’s true feelings?
For the first time in her life, because of the name "Ruan Yesheng," an indescribable pain pierced deep in Xi Mo’s heart.
Xi Mo covered her face. Her back slowly slid down along the bathroom door until she finally squatted on the ground, staring blankly at the bathroom floor.
"I’m sorry... I'm sorry." She murmured silently.
At the same time, Cui Jiayu was still moving through the hotel hallway. With not enough manpower, she urgently called in another batch of helpers.
The police officer guarding the stairwell said they did not see Ding Qihong come down the stairs. The other exits also reported that no one was spotted. As Cui Jiayu ran, she spoke through her communication earpiece in a low, reprimanding tone, "We arranged for someone unfamiliar to stay next door to Ding Qihong so they could control her movements immediately. Where is that person now? When I got there, the door to the room next to Ding Qihong's was closed. There was such a big commotion in the room's surveillance footage, yet there was no reaction at all. They actually let Ding Qihong escape! What was the person in charge of contacting them even doing? Did they not inform them?"
"Sorry, Boss! When Ding Qihong was destroying the surveillance, I immediately contacted the person watching the room next door, but there was no response," one of the police officers quickly replied. "I am heading to their room right now. I will report immediately if anything happens."
Cui Jiayu had always thought her team had decent overall competence, yet now, Ding Qihong had managed to throw them all into chaos.
What exactly was Ding Qihong’s background?
After some time, the police officer who went to check reported again, "Boss, the person watching Ding Qihong from the next room is still inside, but they have already passed out. I do not know when it happened."
Cui Jiayu gritted her teeth. A properly trained police officer actually passed out inside their own room?
If Ding Qihong was the one behind this, how did she do it?
Right now, there was no sign of Ding Qihong leaving through any of the exits. She was not in the hallways, and she was not in the stairwells of any floor. Could she have hidden inside one of the rooms somehow?
Cui Jiayu gathered her team and started checking every room under the pretense of a "routine inspection to ensure the hotel was following regulations and only allowing guests with registered identification to stay."
Cui Jiayu was not someone easy to deal with, and she was willing to put in the time and effort. She divided her subordinates into groups, assigning each group to a different floor. If they encountered an unoccupied room, they had the hotel staff swipe the key card to enter and check directly.
If there was someone inside, they knocked on the door one by one.
All the hotel guests were woken up, but since it was a routine police inspection, they had no choice but to cooperate and obediently show their identification. The police used the excuse of carefully verifying information to enter the rooms, making it clear who was inside and what they were doing.
Some rooms responded very slowly, and the people who opened the door stammered and made all kinds of excuses, unwilling to let the police in. As a result, the search uncovered one room engaged in illegal gambling and two rooms with improper relationships.
Especially Liu Yusi—she refused to let the police in no matter what. The police thought Ding Qihong was hiding inside, so they forcibly entered, only to see someone wrapped tightly in a blanket on the bed. The officers immediately ordered the person to show their face.
The person trembled as they poked their head out, their clothes messy and disheveled.
This person was also an actor from the crew. Their face flushed red as they stammered, "Uh… Officer, we… we like each other. That is not illegal, right?"
Liu Yusi was so ashamed and angry that she even had the urge to end her own life.
She thought, how could she be this unlucky? The last time she went to a hotel with a male actor, the police raided the place because some overly enthusiastic Chaoyang masses* reported it. The officers busted a criminal gang hiding in that hotel, and she was unfortunately caught up in the room inspections.
*a group of public informants who cooperate with Beijing law enforcement to report on illegal or dangerous activity within the Beijing district of Chaoyang, the term has gradually come to stand in more generally for such forms of mass mobilization for the public security
But now, she was in Hengdian. The Chaoyang masses were all the way in Beijing—so far away. Could they still somehow cause trouble from there?
Liu Yusi was furious, yet at the same time, she secretly hoped that other actors from the same cast would also get caught in this room inspection. That way, she would feel a little better.
Ruan Yesheng had guessed early on that the police might check their room. After talking to Yan Tinghuan, she urged her to go back and rest first and discuss the remaining matters in detail tomorrow.
"Ruanruan, aren't you leaving?" Yan Tinghuan stood up and looked at Ruan Yesheng: "If the police knock on the door later and check here, how will you explain that you and Xi Mo are together so late at night?? Just say that your relationship is so good, you sleep together?"
In the bathroom, Xi Mo heard every single word: "..."
"I’ll just say we're rehearsing the script," Ruan Yesheng waved her hand. "This is too easy."
She actually knew that she should leave now.
But Xi Mo had been shaken earlier, and she didn't want to leave her.
Author's Note:
I have updated again, thank you all for your ratings and comments~Muah~
