LWDC Chapter 24

Chapter 24 – Resources from Rivals

Chapter 24 – Resources from Rivals

Chapter 24 – Resources from Rivals

Ning Fei and Duan Yunhong’s confirmation of a long-term relationship didn’t change much from before.

Besides seeing each other in private more often, they both did their jobs at work. The competition between them remained the same. Ning Fei even had the feeling that Duan Yunhong was snatching Su Cenxi’s gigs even more aggressively. The evidence was that ST’s models had even started to publicly engage in “tearing” activities to gain traffic!

–How can they even copy the tactic of hyping up topics to become famous!

Ning Fei knew he couldn’t influence ST’s operations, but he couldn’t help but send Duan Yunhong a message: [Copycat!]

Duan Yunhong: [What?]

Ning Fei ignored him.

After a while, Duan Yunhong sent another message: [I’m coming back to S City tomorrow night after my business trip. Come to my place?]

Ning Fei replied this time: [Tomorrow night? I have an appointment with the 4S store to look at cars.]

Duan Yunhong: [You’re getting a new car? You can come after you’re done looking at cars.]

Ning Fei: [Probably not. Work will be over at least 10 pm, and I specifically made an appointment with the salesperson for later. I don’t know what time it will end.]

Duan Yunhong: [Why are you making such a fuss about this kind of thing? Can’t Gu Hechen just make a phone call and get it all done for you?]

Ning Fei: [I’m not Su Cenxi. Why would he care about me? If my old car wasn’t in bad shape and expensive and time-consuming to repair, I wouldn’t bother replacing it.]

Duan Yunhong: [Doesn’t getting a new car also take time? What are you going to do during that gap?]

Ning Fei: [I’ll just buy a cheap commuter car. It won’t take a few months. It should be here in a week or two.]

Ning Fei: [Oh right, you reminded me. I don’t have a car during this time. If I come to you, you have to give me travel expenses, Director Duan.]

Just as this message was sent from the secondary phone, the primary phone received a call. This call lasted a long time, and Ning Fei even opened the schedule on his tablet while talking to check it. After half an hour, he barely hung up the phone.

But after hanging up this one, Ning Fei made three more calls in a row. Even when Jia Silin came to talk to him, he raised his hand to signal her to wait. The three calls added up to less than twenty minutes. After that, Ning Fei returned the call to the first person, and everything ended.

Jia Silin had already guessed the situation from his few words just now: “Do you have a temporary job?”

“Yeah, you know that designer competition on M TV, right? For the next recording, each judge needs to have a so-called ‘industry friend’ to be a consultant, which is a guest judge. Lin Man is also a judge on that show, and her original guest judge couldn’t make it temporarily. The TV station wants to find Su Cenxi to fill in,” Ning Fei explained the ins and outs of the matter in a few words. “The show will be recorded the day after tomorrow, and I’ve already moved the work for the day after tomorrow back. You go and finalize the transportation and accommodation with the others. Leave overnight tomorrow night and come back overnight the day after tomorrow. The production team wants us to bring our own clothes to the show, but the brands revealed must be reviewed first. Have the stylist prepare a list of items and send it to me.”

Jia Silin nodded: “Okay. By the way, the new accessories from K, Miss, have arrived. Should we match them?”

Ning Fei replied: “Match them if you can, but don’t make people too high-profile. You’re going to be a guest judge, don’t treat yourself as the main character. Also, go and check Lin Man’s information, including her classic events as a model, actress, and on variety shows, and show them to Su Cenxi. Don’t go and be someone’s friend without even knowing their experiences.”

Jia Silin took her orders and left.

Ning Fei then took out his secondary phone again. It had vibrated three times just now. He didn’t know what Duan Yunhong was nagging about.

As a result, there were two messages. One was Duan Yunhong transferring five hundred to him, with the note [See you the day after tomorrow night]. The other was Duan Yunhong asking twenty minutes later: [Not accepting it?]

“Pfft…” Ning Fei was really amused. Was this guy’s money too easy to scam, or was his own scamming level higher? If this continues, when he works in other worlds in the future, he should just find a man who he can sleep with and who will give him a place to sleep, saving him the trouble of finding a house and a car himself.

Ning Fei casually turned his thoughts, while quickly replying: [I’m not accepting it. I have to go on a business trip directly tomorrow night, and I can’t even look at the new car. I don’t know what time I’ll be back the day after tomorrow night. Let’s make an appointment when I’m free.]

Duan Yunhong replied with “OK, I’ll contact you then,” and the exchange of messages stopped temporarily.

*

Su Cenxi seemed to be used to pretending to be an expert on fashion variety shows. He put on an act and smoothly went through the entire program.

The sponsored brands of this show were all domestic light luxury brands. Ning Fei contacted all the brand representatives in one day, and the results were a bit unsatisfactory. These brands mainly focused on urban women’s clothing, and their spokesperson choices tended to be female actors and female singers. Even female models had a hard time getting their endorsements. However, these brands were quite interested in Su Cenxi and wanted him to attend their brand events. Ning Fei took all their business cards with a smile and immediately decided that he could skip the daily events of these brands, and magazine promotions, hard photos and large-scale events could be discussed further.

However, Su Cenxi brought Ning Fei a piece of insider news from recording the show.

“N’s streaming media is going to hold a new model competition in China, and it’s likely that they’ll be co-hosting it with ST?”

Ning Fei was very surprised to hear this news: “I haven’t heard anything about this. Did Lin Man tell you? Are you sure it’s really going to happen?”

“Lin Man said that when she went to N’s to record other shows before, the director chatted with her in passing. It wasn’t a very formal conversation, they should have just wanted to ask her intentions, and then she asked me just now during the chat if I had also gone,” Su Cenxi thought for a while. “And it seems like she’s not going to be a judge, just the kind of guest who watches from the sidelines and gives evaluations…”

“‘Observer’? I thought so. Although Lin Man’s popularity is okay, her qualifications in modeling shouldn’t be enough to be a judge for selecting models,” Ning Fei thought for a while. “A competition co-hosted by N and ST, could it be that Duan Yunhong will be a judge himself? Judging from his increasingly high-profile operations since returning to China, this competition will definitely attract a lot of sponsors, and top luxury brands and fashion magazines will definitely be involved. Then on the judging panel, there will most likely be Teresa, the editor-in-chief of V Magazine…”

“Sounds very luxurious,” Su Cenxi sighed. “But ST is targeting me so much, I guess they won’t give me an invitation. And even if other agencies co-host the competition, they can at least take the winning newcomers into their company to work. Our studio won’t take any newcomers, and it doesn’t seem like we can offer any resources worth cooperating with…”

“Lin Man can’t offer any cooperative resources either. Isn’t she also on the production team’s list of desired candidates? It shows that ‘observers’ don’t need to provide any resources, as long as they’re related to the fashion industry and have popularity, they have a chance,” Ning Fei spun the phone in his hand, and a plan gradually formed in his mind. “Alright, I’ll go and find out about this.”

“Really?” Su Cenxi blinked. “Are you going to ask N?”

“You don’t need to worry about it,” Ning Fei thought to himself, ‘My method of inquiry will scare you to death.’ “Anyway, if you can get into this show, the income and popularity are small matters. It’s important to get familiar with those fashion resources inside. Can you win a global spokesperson for a luxury brand this year, huh? Even if you don’t get into the top ten, can you get me the highest-earning Money Boy?”

Su Cenxi opened his mouth, and in the end could only weakly utter: “It’s not that I don’t want to…”

“Hey!” Ning Fei poked his forehead hard with his index finger in disappointment, turned around and left.

*

That night, when returning to S City, Ning Fei actively sent Duan Yunhong a message before boarding the plane.

[Director Duan, the plane lands at ten o’clock. A fresh Ning Fei is included with the recharge, delivered directly from the production area to your door!]

Duan Yunhong actually understood this quirky message and replied: [Are you coming directly from the airport? Doesn’t your studio’s car take you?]

Ning Fei had just connected to the wifi on the plane when he received this message, so he replied: [Your house and my house are in two different directions. If you take me in, I’ll be too lazy to go around again.]

Duan Yunhong: [East Airport? Got it, I’ll call a car to pick you up.]

Ning Fei: [Really? That’s the best, but don’t get too close to my studio’s car, okay? I’ll send you the location of your studio’s car later. Tell the car picking me up to stay far away and send me the location, and I’ll go over myself.]

Duan Yunhong: [Is it that embarrassing to be picked up by my car?]

Ning Fei: [Gu Hechen will scrutinize me again because of this, annoying. Or you can just push the driver’s contact information to me, and I’ll talk to him directly.]

Duan Yunhong: [No need, I’ll say it.]

Since he said so, Ning Fei didn’t bother anymore and just let him be the message relay station. Ning Fei and the group from Morning Sun Studio quickly landed in S City and left the East Airport in a low-key manner. The lack of airport pick-up activities made Ning Fei much easier. He watched Su Cenxi and the other assistants walk towards the waiting van outside, then turned and walked towards the airport’s underground parking lot.

On the first basement level, Ning Fei saw the familiar black car.

He even saw a familiar person in the driver’s seat.

He chuckled, strolled to the window next to the driver’s seat, and knocked on it. The car window lowered, and Ning Fei leaned in and asked, “Big brother, are you playing?”

“What era is that saying from?” Duan Yunhong looked at him speechlessly. “Do you have luggage to put in the trunk?”

“No, it’s just for one day, I just grabbed a bag and ran,” Ning Fei replied, consciously turned to the passenger seat, got in the car, put down the bag, fastened the seat belt, and asked in passing, “Why did you come in person?”

Duan Yunhong started the car and turned on the music: “Didn’t you ask to keep it a secret? So I didn’t dare to assign the job to the driver.”

Ning Fei laughed and said, “Director Duan is so humorous. If you didn’t say it, I would have thought you were just trying to please me by running this trip yourself.”

“I also got back late today, I was just too lazy to let the driver run this trip alone,” Duan Yunhong replied faintly, but Ning Fei still smiled, “Yes, yes, yes, Director Duan just came to pick me up on the way, then I’ll also thank Director Duan for his kindness.”

Duan Yunhong didn’t take his joke, just took the time to turn his head and glanced at him, asking: “You’re back today, so are you going to look at the car tomorrow?”

“I’m not looking tomorrow, I don’t know what time I’ll be working until, it’s hard to make an appointment,” Ning Fei didn’t feel it on the plane, but after sitting down in the car, he unconsciously yawned, “We’ll talk about it when I’m free.”

Duan Yunhong said: “You can’t even spare this bit of time? Su Cenxi has so many assistants, you don’t need to be there for every job.”

Ning Fei laughed and said, “You have the nerve to say me, don’t you often show up too…”

The two were talking back and forth, until Ning Fei didn’t answer anymore.

Duan Yunhong turned his head and swept a glance, and found that he had fallen asleep.

Seeing this, Duan Yunhong lowered the volume of the car stereo, and the light music flowed slowly, and the atmosphere in the car was calm and warm.