Chapter 116 - Clear Her Name
Rebirth of a Fashionista: This Life Is Soo Last Season
The storm brewing on the internet had little impact on Sheng Jiaoyang. On the contrary, this negative scandal led to fewer people asking her for her signature or to take pictures, and of course, there was also a lot of finger-pointing.
After her entire class stood forth to clear her name, she returned to the house in the Northern suburbs and began to decorate the interior.
At night, as soon as Shen Zhining entered the house, the beautiful melodious notes of a violin playing travelled to his ears.
The table was covered with a tablecloth, and the person who’d said that she would wait for him to come back for dinner was in the middle of sketching an ink drawing on the sofa.
Only when he stood next to her did she notice his presence.
“You’re back!” Sheng Jiaoyang immediately corrected her posture and raised her head to smile at him.
Her face was clean and free of makeup. Meanwhile, her smiling eyes under her black-rimmed glasses made her appear exceptionally bright and lovely today.
At this moment, she resembled a soft and fluffy animal without any traces of aggression.
Shen Zhining inexplicably remembered the way she brushed her teeth with a rabbit ear headband…it really matched her well. He coughed lightly and asked, “Dinner’s ready?”
“It’s ready, but it might’ve gone cold by now. I’ll go and have a look.” Sheng Jiaoyang put the sketchbook down and walked to the dining table.
“It’s gone cold. I’ll heat them up in the microwave right away!”
Sheng Jiaoyang hurriedly brought the dishes to the kitchen.
Shen Zhining turned, and his gaze landed on the sketchbook on the coffee table. He sat down on the sofa and stared at it. Perhaps it was because the ambience in the room was comforting, but his expression also relaxed somewhat. After a while, he picked up the sketchbook and browsed through it.
All the sketches were drawn with a fineliner pen, and the whole sketchbook consisted of black and white drawings. However, the flexible and nimble use of techniques gave each drawing a different finish and feel. Some were wild, some were poetic, and others were vivid and lifelike.
There was a saying: To learn about someone, study his or her writing. One’s style reflects one’s character. Since she could draw images that could warm one’s heart and delights one’s eye, she wouldn’t be a pessimistic person. When one’s heart was obscured, they would see the world in a dark light. Whatever colour a piece of glass was, whatever the colour of light it reveals, only a pure and limpid crystal diamond could release multicoloured light.
“It’s ready, come and eat!”
Shen Zhining put down the sketchbook, washed his hands, and went to the table. Upon seeing that half of the dishes on the table were what he liked to eat, he looked at her in surprise.
“Try it and see if you like it,” Sheng Jiaoyang urged as she sat down opposite him.
Shen Zhining picked up the chopsticks and tried a dish. Under the other’s expectant gaze, he nodded slightly to express his approval.
Sheng Jiaoyang’s lips curled into a smile as she thought: That’s great! Next time, I’ll order food from the same restaurant again.
After dinner, she took the initiative to give Shen Zhining a head massage, and in passing, she told him about what had happened to her at school today.
She was now wholeheartedly trying to leave him with a good impression, and things like getting in Boss Shen’s good books couldn’t be achieved overnight. She had to do it step by step, such as first talking a bit about her matters and things happening in daily life. Then, she could finally ask him the things she wanted to ask.
The next morning, Sheng Jiaoyang got up early again and went out to buy breakfast. Afterwards, she waited for Shen Zhining to wake up to eat breakfast together.
“Remember to come back for dinner tonight, I’ll wait for you.”
Shen Zhining sat in the car and stared at the trees outside the window. He quietly thought about a lot of things, finally remembering how Xu Jiaojiao had expressed her worries last night about the adverse scandal going on the internet while giving him a head massage. After second thoughts, he took out his cell phone and called Li Yu.
Li Yu, who was currently at home and in the middle of eating his wife’s breakfast made with love, almost spurted out a mouthful of porridge when he received a call from his boss.
“This matter is already being taken care of, things will soon come to light soon,” Li Yu guaranteed.
When he hung up, his wife sitting next to him gently asked, “What happened?”
“Boss personally called to inquire about the negative news going around about the future Lady Boss. Alas, judging by the frequency of trouble caused by Xu Jiaojiao, these kinds of things will only happen more often in the future,” Li Yu helplessly said.
“You can let her manager take care of her matters.”
“You’re right, but…all the managers in the company already have people under them. Looks like I have to pick someone from the Reserve Talent Unit.”
“It’s up to you. Hurry up and eat before the food gets cold.”
As soon as Li Yu arrived at the company, he immediately called the PR manager to ask about the progress of things.
Concerning this incident of ‘Xu Jiaojiao showing disrespect to her teacher’, the PR Department hadn’t made any big moves so far. Since they knew that this wasn’t the truth, coupled with the fact that there was video evidence, most people in the PR Department felt that this was a great opportunity and that there was no need to strike back so soon. They should wait until the scandal was blown out of proportion to the max, and then present the evidence. When the time came, the slap in the face would certainly be refreshing, and simultaneously, they could take advantage of this opportunity to push Xu Jiaojiao’s popularity to another level.
There was an immutable rule in this industry: As long as a bad scandal was proven to be false, the ones being hated on because of the scandal could always turn defeat into victory. Then, the haters would become their fans, and in turn, their popularity would skyrocket like there was no tomorrow. Thus, some people liked to take advantage of this trick to boost their artists’ popularity. First, they would hire an Internet Water Army to trash the person they wanted to boost as much as possible to increase the exposure, and then clear up the matter neatly. Consequently, the person boosted would see their popularity increase to the next level.
For example, when people saw a clean white radish, they wouldn’t think that it was very special. However, if they were to find a white radish covered in dirty mud and then saw how white it looked after washing it, they would feel: Wow~ This radish is so white and clean!
Using that reasoning, the same logic applied here as well.
This was exactly what the PR Department was aiming for.
As soon as Li Yu heard this, he thought: This was indeed a good method to boost her popularity. However, Boss was paying close attention to this matter… Thus, in the end, he still asked the PR Department to solve the matter as soon as possible. After all, using this method to gain popularity would only last for a short while. If one wanted to be loved by the public, they ought to stabilise their standing in the industry and rely on their projects and skills to speak for them. Of course, the most important point was that Xu Jiaojiao was still very young.
Being young was great indeed. One could do a lot of things without scruples.
Now that the president had spoken, the PR Department had no choice but to proceed quickly. They first pushed the full version of the video to the headlines, and then cooperated with the Legal Affairs Department to sue Zhu Yongzhi for slandering Xu Jiaojiao. They also made use of the behind-the-scenes supporter to force the school into firing him.
In the complete video, it was clear that Zhu Yongzhi had deliberately made things difficult for Xu Jiaojiao first, and he’d even used spiteful words to scorn her. Only then did Xu Jiaojiao question Zhu Yongzhi’s teaching standards. In the video, it was clear to see that all her classmates were standing on her side. This also proved that Xu Jiaojiao wasn’t the kind of person who looked down on others just because she was a celebrity.
In the video that followed, the clips of Zhu Yongzhi’s lecture were in sharp contrast to those of Xu Jiaojiao sharing her study methods. And, from the video, it could be seen that Xu Jiaojiao got along with her class very well. It was no wonder that the whole class would stand on her side.
For a moment, all the various ‘evil voices’ that were indirectly or directly criticising Xu Jiaojiao for not respecting her teachers immediately quietened down. Following this, the first thing that many people did was to delete the blog posts criticising Xu Jiaojiao.
Ning Xiaoruan, who’d signed up for a Weibo account and authenticated himself as Xu Jiaojiao’s assistant, forwarded the video and posted: [I’m going to borrow a word from someone else: Our Jiaojiao can withstand as much slander as the number of praises she receives. Come on, let the ‘likes’ come our way; the more intense, the better!]