Being a gigolo was too much for him, so he had to become a music superstar.

"Me too..." Su Nianwei bit off the rest of the sentence.

She turned around and walked back to the sofa to sit down.

"Alright, that's enough. Time to take a shower."

Lin Buyi watched her retreating figure, his mind racing for a few seconds.

Is this woman jealous, throwing a tantrum, or... something else?

He didn't understand.

But one thing he was very clear about was that he was likely to suffer tonight.

He was right.

When I came out of the shower, Su Nianwei was already in the bedroom. The lights were off, with only the small nightlight on the bedside table casting a warm glow. She was lying on her side on the bed, her back to the door.

Lin Buyi closed the bathroom door and walked over.

He had just sat down on the edge of the bed when Su Nianwei turned over.

She reached out and put her arm around his shoulder.

He wasn't very strong, but his meaning was very clear.

Lin Buyi sighed inwardly.

really.

That night, Su Nianwei's demands were abnormally intense.

It wasn't like usual. Even when she was collecting debts most aggressively, there was a rhythm and intervals, at least giving him a moment to catch his breath.

Not at all tonight.

One wave after another, without any buffer. When she pressed herself against him, she did so with a reckless abandon, not to enjoy it, but to declare something—to declare that he was hers, that she had bought him, that he belonged to her alone.

Lin Buyi was exhausted from her antics, feeling like he couldn't take it anymore several times. His physical strength had been severely depleted by the high pressure of days of singing practice and competitions. These past few days, Su Nianwei hadn't been too demanding, and with the supply of bird's nest and nutritional supplements, his condition had barely recovered somewhat.

One night wasted.

The next day, Lin Buyi was awakened by back pain.

A deep, aching ache seeped from his very bones, making even turning over difficult. He groaned and slowly sat up, supporting himself on the edge of the bed.

The pillow was empty. Su Nianwei sat at the dressing table, applying makeup, drawing her eyebrows stroke by stroke, without turning her head.

Lin Buyi looked at her for a few seconds.

"What time is it?"

"7:30," Su Nianwei said to herself in the mirror, her voice flat.

"Um."

Then they fell silent.

Lin Buyi recalled what happened last night. The incident of Shen Yihe handing her water—a trivial matter to a normal person—was a landmine for Su Nianwei. Her reckless demands weren't about enjoyment; they were about asserting dominance.

He didn't say anything. After getting dressed and getting out of bed, his lower back ached again, but he gritted his teeth and straightened up.

Su Nianwei saw his hunched posture in the mirror.

Her lips moved slightly.

"you--"

"It's nothing." Lin Buyi straightened up, didn't look at her, opened the door and went downstairs.

Su Nianwei stared at the direction he had disappeared in the mirror, paused for two seconds with her eyebrow pencil, and then continued drawing.

On the first floor, breakfast was already laid out: millet porridge, steamed eggs, two small dishes of side dishes, and a bowl of bird's nest soup.

Lin Buyi sat down and ate a couple of mouthfuls of porridge when Su Nianwei's high heels came down the stairs.

She sat down opposite, and the maid brought her coffee.

Su Nianwei took the cup, took a sip, and picked up her phone to start scrolling.

There was a long table between the two people, and neither of them spoke.

Lin Buyi ate his porridge while she looked at her phone. The clinking of dishes filled the space between them, replacing all conversation.

When Su Nianwei was almost finished with her porridge, she spoke up.

What are your plans for today?

"Practicing singing."

"Um."

They're speechless again.

Lin Buyi put down his bowl and prepared to get up. The moment he stood up, his back jerked, and he braced himself on the edge of the table to steady himself.

Su Nianwei shifted her gaze from her phone screen.

"Have the maid heat up a back patch for you."

"Need not."

Lin Buyi turned and walked towards the basement.

Su Nianwei sat at the dining table, picked up her coffee and took a big gulp, wincing slightly from the heat.

"Serves him right," she muttered under her breath.

I don't know who they're talking about.

Su Nianwei entered the study, pulled down the blinds, and turned on the computer.

A trending topic on Weibo's real-time hot search list is: "The production team owes Lin Buyi an explanation," ranked twelfth.

She clicked in and read through several highly-rated comments.

The mentors all gave it a score of 90 or higher, but the audience only got 68? Was there a mistake in the calculation?

It wasn't a miscalculation; someone deliberately manipulated the numbers. How many of the audience members voting live were just there for the atmosphere?

We suggest the production team release detailed data for every vote. Fair competition, are you brave enough?

Su Nianwei's lips curved slightly.

This trending topic arose naturally; she didn't actively promote it. However, her PR team had already guided the discussion in the comments section last night—avoiding attacks on the production team and advocating for fairness, directing public sentiment towards questioning the competition format rather than attacking Chen Jiahao or any specific individual.

This was her strategy. Attacking specific individuals would give the opponent an opportunity to retaliate. But questioning the fairness of the competition format would leave the opponent with no openings to counterattack—she couldn't very well come forward and say that the 68 points were deliberately lowered by us.

Data shows that Lin Buyi's public favorability rating increased by 11 percentage points compared to yesterday.

Su Nianwei picked up her coffee, took a sip, and put the cup down.

What's on her mind right now is what Wang Shaohui will do next.

The 68-point attack missed its mark, and the smear campaign didn't kill Lin Buyi. The other side now knows that someone is manipulating things on Lin Buyi's side, but they don't know who it is yet. This is her biggest advantage right now—she's still operating in the shadows.

But this advantage won't last long.

Wang Shaohui wasn't stupid. As long as his team continued to investigate deeper, they would eventually follow Zhang Yang's lead to her.

The window of opportunity is short.

Su Nianwei rested her chin on her right hand and stared at the screen for a while in a daze.

Then her phone vibrated.

It was a call from her assistant, Cheng Yi.

She answered the call.

"President Su, something bad has happened." Cheng Yi's voice was filled with barely concealed panic. "A large number of posts have suddenly appeared online, saying that Lin Buyi's 'Sorrow' is suspected of plagiarizing a niche foreign song. The video comparing the sheet music is already circulating, and it's circulating very quickly."

Su Nianwei's hand stopped on the table.

"What song?"

"It's an English song called Drowning Sorrow, credited to an independent musician named Derek Mills, and the release date is listed as three years ago."

How similar are the two songs in the comparison video?

"The chorus parts are played together, and the overall sound quality is about 70-80%."

Su Nianwei did not speak immediately.

She quickly opened her phone, searched for Derek Mills, and went to the song's page. The number of plays was shockingly low, less than two thousand, with very few comments—typical of a niche, independent artist's work.

She then opened the comparison video.

The chorus sections of the two songs were superimposed, and the melodies were indeed similar, but Su Nianwei's ears were not professional enough to judge whether this similarity constituted plagiarism.

Her heart sank.

Plagiarism accusations are among the hardest to clear in the music industry. Not because it's difficult to distinguish truth from falsehood, but because the public doesn't need the truth; they just need something that sounds plausible.

Su Nianwei stared at the comparison video on the screen and watched it again from the beginning.