"Once I dreamed of wielding a sword to roam the ends of the earth,"
"To gaze upon the bustling grandeur of the world."
"A youthful heart is always somewhat reckless and wild,"
"And now you have made your home in every corner of the world."
Just these four lines, and Wang Da felt as pierced in his heart as if the Northwest Hammer King had struck him a vicious blow.
"Damn it, this fucking song actually has some soul!"
Wang Da lit a cigarette, memories already flowing in his eyes.
"My damn dream when I was a kid was to be a scientist! Who the hell wanted to come to a construction site to haul bricks?! Fuck!!"
Indeed, Wang Da felt a fierce wave of sympathy.
The music continued.
"The girl who once made your heart ache,"
"Is now quietly gone without a trace."
"Love always leaves you yearning yet troubled,"
"And has left you battered and bruised."
With these four lines, Wang Da didn't resonate quite as deeply.
"A girl who made my heart ache? Nope, never met one!"
"If I really have to count one, then Number 18, the one I always book, definitely breaks my heart."
"Speaking of her, a gambling dad, a sickly mom, a younger brother in school, and a broken-hearted her—my heart aches so much, it aches to pieces."
Wang Da reined in his stray thoughts and went back to listening to the song while watching the movie trailer.
This was basically just turning a movie trailer into a music video, anyway.
"Dilililidilililidenda..."
By this point, Wang Da lit his second cigarette.
Through the hazy smoke, Wang Da's eyes were red. At that moment, he wanted to throw down the safety helmet in his hands, mount his beat-up little bicycle, and ride west to see the horizon.
"Damn it, this fucking song is good, but it burns through way too many cigarettes!"
"Huh? Why are my eyes wet? Must be because I stayed up late watching movies last night and I'm tired."
"Every time I feel sad,"
"I look at the vast sea all alone."
"I always think of the friends walking beside me on the road,"
"How many of them are waking up?"
"Let's drain this cup of wine,"
"A true man's heart is broad like the sea..."
Wang Da's feeling at that moment could be summed up in one word: pain. The really searing kind of pain.
It hurt even more than last time when he went to book Number 18, only to find she had been taken by someone else.
"Damn it, why can't I search for this song on NetEase Cloud?"
"Sung by Su Yu? What is the deal with this guy Su Yu?"
"Goodbye Mr. Loser, is it? Sounds interesting. Just you wait, I am definitely going to watch it!"
Before October 1st rolled around, however, Wang Da still needed to go find his Number 18 to soothe the heartbreak he'd just gotten from this song.
At that exact moment, Li San was feeling a pain ten thousand times worse than Wang Da's...
No, a hundred million times worse.
Because the song he was listening to was Those Flowers.
"That patch of laughter reminds me of those flowers of mine,"
"Quietly blooming for me in every corner of my life."
"I once thought I would forever guard her side,"
"Today we have already drifted apart into the vast sea of humanity."
"Are they all old now? Where are they now?"
"The lucky thing is I once accompanied them in their bloom."
"La... missing her..."
The reason Li San was in so much pain was because, back in his school days, he had a secret crush on his deskmate.
Boys always mature a bit later than girls back then, and he could never quite tell whether his deskmate liked him or not.
It wasn't until years later, at a class reunion, that he saw his former deskmate show up with her husband and child, while he was still a lone single dog.
Taking a moment when she had some free time, his old deskmate asked him why he never responded to the love letter she wrote him inside the dictionary he'd given her back then.
Li San looked at his old deskmate, who now looked like a fully mature young married woman, and he burst into tears.
The miserable, sobbing kind of tears.
That dictionary had been taken by his dad as kindling to light the coal stove.
"It hurts, it hurts too much, it's killing me~"
"Why? No~~~ No~~~"
Naturally, Li San also seized a brief moment to ask his old deskmate, "Are you happy now?"
And as luck would have it, her husband happened to overhear.
If his old deskmate hadn't stepped in to block her husband, Li San probably would have gotten the beating of his lifetime.
"Don't ever hang out with a guy like this again!"
"He just liked me back in school, and I didn't like him back, that's all. Don't misunderstand, I'm deleting him right now!"
That was the conversation Li San overheard between his old deskmate and her husband.
And now, it hurt even more.
Just when Li San had finally managed to push that memory to the back of his mind, today, a song called Those Flowers dragged it all right back up.
"Goodbye Mr. Loser, right? I've memorized your name."
"I'll listen to your song for now, but on October 1st we're going to settle accounts. If the movie sucks, I'm leaving a three-thousand-word negative review!"
"Some stories are still unfinished, so let's just leave it at that."
"Those feelings are hard to tell true from false in the passage of years."
"Now this place is overgrown with weeds and there are no more flowers."
"Fortunately, I once owned your springs, autumns, winters, and summers."
"Are they all old now? Where are they now?..."
Wang Da and Li San represented a huge swathe of you, me, and everyone else.
In short,
When Once Upon You and Those Flowers were released alongside the trailer for Goodbye Mr. Loser,
the internet exploded instantly.
Right around then, the original footage of Su Yu beating up XXX was also leaked by someone.
Just like that, XXX went viral all over again, and correspondingly, Goodbye Mr. Loser benefited the most.
Next came Zhang Tian'ai.
Zhang Tian'ai's sudden fame was entirely driven by her looks.
After all, everyone loves beautiful things.
As for this phenomenon:
Celebrity Chat Group:
Xiaoming: "Wow~~~ This Goodbye Mr. Loser looks hilarious! Just watching the trailer makes you so happy!"
Chao Ge: "You guys listen to this version of Once Upon You—it's way clearer than the one Shishi posted. I feel like it was tailor-made for me."
Hehe: "Does anyone have Director Su's number? I'm begging for a job~~"
Yifei: "Shishi has it. I want it too, I just want to see how handsome Su Yu really is!"
Shishi: "I am currently offline."
Directors' Chat Group:
Director Kaige: "Heh, I watched this trailer. Utterly vulgar."
Kuzi: "Is this even how you make a comedy? Just messing around blindly~"
Director Yi: "I thought it looked pretty good. Quite uplifting."
Wang Jing: "I have a strong hunch this movie is going to blow up."
Lou Ye: "That kind of hollow, boring subject matter is truly meaningless. Stories of genuine hardship are the real good material."
Even though most people in the industry were green with envy and refused to admit this film would succeed,
facts speak louder than words. The rise of Goodbye Mr. Loser was already unstoppable.
And that was just from releasing a trailer.
As the saying goes,
Wise men are still watching from the sidelines, while the wiser men are already diving in.
Shishi hadn't lied to them; she really was offline.
She was out having dinner with Yang Mi and Su Yu.
Looking at the woman sitting across from him, whose looks were by no means inferior to Mimi's,
and seeing the 30% favorability rating provided by the System,
Su Yu wasn't the least bit anxious.
"Woman, you can't escape me!"
A bit chuunibyou~~~
As a woman, Shishi could naturally tell at a single glance that her good friend Mimi was completely head over heels for Su Yu at this moment.
This made her somewhat envious.
She actually wanted to have a sweet romance of her own, too.
Shishi had asked Su Yu out today for two reasons: first, to meet the man who had her girlfriend so completely mesmerized, and second, to see what the director she was investing in was actually like.
And the third reason: to look for a job.
"Here's the thing, Shishi, the female lead for my next film is already locked in, so I'm afraid I can only collaborate with you on the film after next."
Su Yu cut straight to the point.
"Well, alright then. Just make sure Director Su doesn't forget about me when the time comes, hehe!!"
Shishi offered a slight smile, leaving even Su Yu—who had seen plenty of battles—feeling just a little dazed.
Just a little, though.
"Of course not! If anything, I'm afraid Shishi won't want to work with me by then!"
After some polite pleasantries, the dinner party broke up.
Once Shishi had left,
Yang Mi gently leaned close to Su Yu's ear:
"Brother Su Yu, it's been over ten days—did you miss me?"
"Every single night I missed you so much I couldn't sleep~~~"
"Oh, and I noticed Brother Su Yu kept staring at Shishi just now. Did your heart skip a beat?"
"Brother Su Yu, let me tell you a little secret: Shishi isn't as big as me, and Shishi doesn't know how to please you like I do, either!"