The young girl answered happily, "That's right, it's him. He's all grown up now and got into the Film Academy. He's my junior fellow apprentice."
"Wait, how did you two get in touch? Did he look for you?" Liu Xiaoli was still skeptical. She always found her daughter's erratic behavior a bit of a headache; the girl had stirred up enough trouble back then, so how did they reconnect now?
"We've been in touch all along. I added him on QQ back then, and we've kept in contact ever since. We're good friends," the young girl started making things up.
"Don't tell me you're dating him?" Liu Xiaoli felt her head splitting. Her daughter had been hanging out with a young boy behind her back for years, and she hadn't known a thing about it.
"We're not dating. He was just a little brat back then, still in middle school—dating him would've been breaking the law! He's grown up now, but he won't confess his feelings to me, so of course I'm not going to make the first move." Every single word the young girl said was tweaking Liu Xiaoli's nerves.
"You mean if he confesses to you, you'll date him?" Liu Xiaoli's temples throbbed; this little girl was going to drive her to death.
"If he confesses, I'll consider it," the young girl replied with a cheeky grin.
"Consider my foot! Which celebrity dates their fan?" Liu Xiaoli was furious, reaching out to grab her ear.
The young girl dodged her mother's claws. Ever since her mother wanted her to star in The Forbidden Kingdom while she took all her money to invest in Wanted, she had gained confidence when dealing with her mother. She was no longer afraid of her mother, who also acted as her scapegoat manager.
"Mom, don't rush. My fan isn't an ordinary fan," the young girl said halfway, then waited for her mother to play the straight man—this was how adults communicated.
Sure enough, Liu Xiaoli took the bait as if she had been programmed: "How is he not ordinary?"
The young girl chuckled secretly. She used to chat with Chen Hao often, and that guy loved talking to her like this. She had picked up a bit of it herself, and it was quite fun.
"Mom, my fan is a genius—a truly incredible genius," the young girl said proudly.
"How is he a genius?" Liu Xiaoli once again fell into the conversational rhythm, instinctively playing along.
"You've always thought those songs of mine weren't written by me, haven't you? Guess who wrote them." The young girl had complete control of the pace.
"Don't tell me this kid wrote them for you?" Liu Xiaoli replied on cue.
"That's right. He started writing songs for me when he was fifteen, and he wrote loads of them. I still have some unreleased ones."
"He's that good?" Liu Xiaoli began to understand why her daughter liked this kid; talented men always appealed to fair maidens.
Yet she immediately noticed something wrong: "It's one thing for him to write songs for you, but why didn't he take credit?"
"Precisely because it's him, he didn't want his name on them. He was still a high school student with a heavy workload, and he didn't want to be disturbed by the media. If I bought songs from anyone else, would they give up their rights to authorship?" The young girl had anticipated this question long ago and answered with complete composure.
Hearing this, Liu Xiaoli found it quite reasonable. She shook her head with a smile, never expecting such a talented individual to emerge from among her daughter's fans.
Having been through it all, Liu Xiaoli knew the kind of pull such talent held over a young girl like her daughter. Xixi might really be falling for him—how on earth was she supposed to pull her back?
Though the kid was talented, she still didn't want her daughter dating so young. Who announces a romance right when their idol status is peaking?
"We should thank him properly then. When you took his songs, did you pay him?" Liu Xiaoli decided to solve the problem with money.
"I didn't pay him. He said he's my fan and gave them to me for free." The young girl immediately caught on to her mother's intentions, but she wasn't in a hurry and decided to play along for a bit.
"That won't do. How can you not pay someone for writing songs for you? Not only must we pay him, but we'll pay top dollar—we'll pay him the highest market rate." Experienced as she was, once money changed hands, this matter between the kid and her daughter would simply become business.
"Paying him is fine, but what about the tens of millions of dollars I made from investing in Wanted because he told me to, not to mention how he turned me into an international star? How much should we pay him for that?" the young girl asked with a smile, her expression looking remarkably like a certain handsome hunk's.
"What do you mean?" Liu Xiaoli was truly startled now.
"Mom, don't you find it strange? I don't even like reading comics, so why would I go all the way to the US specifically to buy the copyright to an obscure comic book?"
"Didn't you say you just happened to see it by chance?" Liu Xiaoli did feel something was off; she had been fooled by this dead girl back then, and now that the young girl mentioned it, the more she thought about it, the weirder it seemed.
"Chen Hao was the one who saw it. He thought the female lead was a perfect match for me, which is why he made me buy the comic's copyright."
"He's just a high school student from a small county—how would he even see American comics?" Liu Xiaoli wasn't stupid; she still had her doubts.
If the young girl had to answer that herself, it wouldn't be easy, but Chen Hao had anticipated it and given her the answer in advance.
"He's a genius. He often surfs the web and circumvents the firewall to check out foreign websites. That's what you call a scholar who never steps outside yet knows everything under the sun."
Even though the answer still had plenty of bugs, Liu Xiaoli was no bug-hunting expert, so she let herself be hoodwinked.
Now beginning to grasp the extent of Chen Hao's genius, Liu Xiaoli felt a twinge of jealousy and said sourly, "You believed whatever he said and dared to gamble your entire net worth on it? What if he was wrong?"
"Mom, the money I invested in Wanted was earned from the songs he wrote anyway. If the bet failed, it didn't matter—I could just make him write a few more songs. Besides, he didn't just pull those theories out of thin air; his analysis was logical and well-reasoned. The concept of bullets curving in Wanted was extremely eye-catching, and the female lead had tons of action sequences, making it a stellar fit for an action actress like me who has average acting skills but decent martial arts chops. It was practically tailor-made for me—why wouldn't I believe him?"
"How does someone so young know so much?" Liu Xiaoli looked up and sighed, raising her white flag in surrender. When genius reached this level, there seemed to be no point in objecting anymore, right?
The young girl piled on the pressure: "He was also the one who told me to turn down The Forbidden Kingdom. I briefly mentioned the plot to her—him, and when he heard it was about a white man saving the Monkey King, he didn't hesitate to declare it a massive flop that even two Kings of Kung Fu couldn't save."
Liu Xiaoli: "……"
Back then, the moment Liu Xiaoli saw a movie featuring two Kings of Kung Fu, she thought it was a gigantic golden opportunity, completely ignoring the script and single-mindedly wanting her daughter to star in it.
Comparison is the thief of joy, but damn it, you're hurting me!!
The young girl wasn't finished yet and kept going: "Not only does he understand movies, he understands finance too."
Liu Xiaoli: "……"
"Don't you know my personality inside out? Do you think I'd know anything about China's Growth Enterprise Market's first batch of listed companies, or how the entertainment industry's premier stock was bound to skyrocket??"
The young girl was fighting tooth and nail for uncle, even willing to demean herself to elevate uncle's status.
Liu Xiaoli: "If you two want to date, go ahead, but just make sure you don't get anyone pregnant."
Liu Yifei: "???"