Chapter 344 - Princess’ Bestie
Rebirth of a Fashionista: This Life Is Soo Last Season
On this night, Jiaojiao was slated to attend another award ceremony.
However, the fans found that Jiaojiao actually did not show up for the event. Once again, their idol had slipped away from them, and she was nowhere to be found.
For this award ceremony, Jiaojiao won another newcomer's award, but because she was absent, Gu Zhou had to take the award for her.
This incident generated a lot of criticism, and many netizens made a lot of scandalous speculations. But overall, more people believed that Gu Zhou and Jiaojiao had a pure and magnanimous relationship. Otherwise, Gu Zhou wouldn’t have stepped forward to help Jiaojiao collect her award. Furthermore, with how good Jiaojiao’s relationship with her boyfriend was, Gu Zhou could only ever be a friend.
Due to the Peerless Couple’s strong relationship, even Gu Zhou’s fans didn’t have any objections to his actions. Only a few haters still made a big fuss about it.
These haters turned Jiaojiao’s absence into a big deal. They claimed that she was looking down on the organizers of the event, and didn’t respect them at all. This created the impression that Jiaojiao was now on the organizer’s blacklist.
However, the event organizer wasn’t stupid. Impressions meant nothing. As long as the celebrity had a powerful backer, and as long as their fans were present, the celebrity would still be invited for the award ceremony, and they would be presented with the awards that they deserve.
The Jiao fans completely ignored the rampaging haters. They were fully absorbed in locating Jiaojiao and many of them pinged Xu Ping and Zeng Huan to ask them about Jiaojiao’s whereabouts. However, the fans were told that Jiaojiao had left the country, without any further details. In fact, Xu Ping and Zheng Huan didn’t even know why Jiaojiao left the country. Jiaojiao had boarded a private plane, and nobody knew where she went.
Therefore, all of Jiaojiao’s fans came together to launch a mission to find her whereabouts.
As a result, the search term ‘Where is Jiaojiao’ became the top search result.
This was a rare event. Even though nobody could find a single trace of her, her name still appeared as the top search result. No wonder she was called the ‘Top Searches Master’.
Eventually, somebody saw Jiaojiao and took a picture of her. They posted it on Weibo and tagged Jiaojiao’s fan club.
The picture was taken in an art exhibition, and numerous uniquely colored oil paintings could be seen in the background. These paintings were hung on the wide walls of the exhibition halls, and amongst these paintings was a popular 3D painting.
Jiaojiao was chatting with a foreign man who had long sideburns and a ponytail. Naturally, Big Boss Shen was there with her as well.
The poster also commented that the pony-tailed foreign man was the famous Malik Ludille, painter and owner of the paintings.
The Jiao fans couldn’t help but sigh. Turns out, Jiaojiao’s love for paintings was so deep that she was even willing to miss an award ceremony just to attend the art exhibition. Clearly, painting was Jiaojiao’s favorite hobby.
Some of the fans commented that Jiaojiao’s painting skills were being held back by her acting, but these comments obviously attracted a lot of rebuttals. Jiaojiao could obviously do both painting and acting without neglecting either, so how is her painting skills being held back? Besides, if Jiaojiao really pursued painting single-mindedly, then wouldn’t the people who were waiting for Jiaojiao to act in even more roles find themselves at a loss?
Just when all the fans thought that Jiaojiao left the country just to attend the art exhibition, Xiao Mei, the reporter who had previously announced that Jiaojiao was participating in Prince Wight’s birthday banquet, suddenly released another piece of shocking news.
Jiaojiao is going to be Princess Wight’s bridesmaid! Not only that, she’s going to be the maid of honor!
Reporter Xiao Mei took a screenshot of Prince Wight’s latest tweet and zoomed in on two of the attached images.
The first image was a photo with four people in it. In the middle stood Prince Wight and his Princess, their love clear to the world. Jiaojiao stood beside Princess Wight, hugging her arm intimately.
The second photo only had Princess Wight and Jiaojiao in it. The two appeared even more intimate, and their lips were almost touching. From the picture, it even looked like Princess Wight was taking the initiative.
This piece of news completely stunned the Jiao fans, much less other people.
When news that Jiaojiao was going to attend Prince Wight’s wedding as the maid of honor was revealed, it immediately occupied the top headlines and lead stories of many newspapers and news broadcasts.
Everybody had their own opinions, and there were many interesting comments.
[I don’t know why, but it seems like every time Xu Jiaojiao leaves the country, it’ll be to do something big.]
[This is like the neighbor’s kid[1], but the idol version! Just look at the people in her Weibo posts. There is the Movie Emperor, Big Boss Shen, a famous painter, and even a princess! My Jiaojiao only knows famous celebrities!]
[Er Jiao, you’re so awesome! You became the princess’s bestie like a bolt out of the blue, you’re seriously so lowkey!]
[Damn, is Xu Jiaojiao stepping into high society and never looking back? Why do I feel like she’s getting cooler and cooler? Hahaha.]
[Jiaojiao, good job! You really made us fans proud. In the future, nobody needs to ask me who my favorite celebrity is. I would proudly say, my favorite celebrity is best friends with Film Emperor Gu, dating Chairman Shen, and besties with Princess Wight. She is the one and only Xu Jiaojiao!]
Everyone, including Xu Ping, was shocked by Jiaojiao’s sudden appearance as Princess Wight’s maid of honor.
Jiaojiao had never told Xu Ping about personal matters like these, so before Ye Zi told her about it, she had no idea.
Jiaojiao’s work was mostly managed by Jiaojiao herself, so Xu Ping never had to do much. Now that she had Ye Zi under her win, all of her efforts as a manager were directed on her.
With Xu Ping’s own contacts and the connections she got with Jiaojiao, Ye Zi’s path looked very promising. Originally, she could only play small roles with a few lines, but now, she already got to play a rather important role with a famous film crew, after just half a year of work.
This was the difference between having a manager and not having one, as well as the difference between having superiors that valued you versus superiors that neglected you.
While working with Jiaojiao, Manager Xu Ping was basically turned into Assistant Xu Ping. However, with Ye Zi, Xu Ping could show off more of her managerial ability, and help Ye Zi grow by scheduling her work and giving her opportunities to audition for many important roles.
Opportunities were extremely important. They were like the bridge that connected two mountains together. A bridge could help a traveller find their way to their destination. But without such a bridge, how many twists and turns would the traveller have to take before he or she finally makes it?
Ye Zi also understood this, so she had always been very grateful for Xu Ping. Of course, she was even more grateful to Jiaojiao. If it weren’t for Jiaojiao’s patronage, she wouldn’t have had her current success, and without Jiaojiao’s recommendation, Xu Ping wouldn’t have accepted her and helped her.
After shooting a drama together with Jiaojiao, Ye Zi had long become Jiaojiao’s fan. Even though Jiaojiao was younger than herself, Jiaojiao was someone she greatly idolizes.
Therefore, whenever Ye Zi was on break, she would go and search the web for Jiaojiao’s latest news. And this time, she found out about Jiaojiao’s location even sooner than Xu Ping did.
When Ye Zi saw that Jiaojiao was attending Prince Wight’s wedding, Xu Ping was on the phone, trying to arrange a suitable time for Ye Zi to participate in an audition.
After Xu Ping hung up, she went to talk about the audition with Ye Zi. However, she found that Ye Zi did not respond at all. She frowned and looked at Ye Zi, only to discover that she was staring at her phone intently.
“Ye Zi, what are you looking at? Did you hear what I just said?” Xu Ping didn’t treat Ye Zi in the same way she treated Jiaojiao. After all, Jiaojiao was her boss, while Ye Zi was just an artist under her.
“Huh?” Ye Zi raised her head and looked at Xu Ping with a blank face. “What did you just say?”
Xu Ping was a bit annoyed, but she knew that Ye Zi was somebody who normally worked hard, so she didn’t get angry. Instead, she just asked, “What are you looking at? You didn’t even pay any attention to what I just said about your audition.”
“I saw Jiaojiao!” Ye Zi said excitedly. Normally, she would definitely listen closely to what her manager said, but today was different.
“Jiaojiao? Did you see her somewhere?” The annoyance in Xu Ping’s heart instantly disappeared, and it was now replaced with curiosity.
Xu Ping always considered herself as Jiaojiao’s subordinate instead of her manager, so she had never asked about Jiaojiao’s private travel matters. Could you question your boss and ask them where they go for fun? Of course not, it was always the boss who asked about their staff’s whereabouts, not the other way around.
“Sis Ping, do you know that Jiaojiao is actually at Prince Wight’s wedding right now?”
Xu Ping blinked, and she almost thought that she had misheard.
“Let me see.” Xu Ping took Ye Zi’s phone and skimmed through the post.
Once she finished reading the post, Xu Ping became filled with excitement.
After one look at Xu Ping’s expression, Ye Zi knew that Xu Ping wasn’t aware that Jiaojiao would be at Prince Wight’s wedding, and that she would even serve as the maid of honor. She waited for Xu Ping to finish reading the post before saying with a smile, “Sis Ping, Jiaojiao is too amazing. Now the people who criticized Jiaojiao for missing the awards ceremony won’t be able to say anything.”
“Of course, netizens aren’t stupid. Prince Wight’s marriage is a once in a lifetime event, but there’s an awards ceremony every year. It’s obvious which event is more important,” Xu Ping said.
“Nowadays, us Jiao Fans don’t even bother to fight with the haters anymore, because we all know that in the end, Jiaojiao will definitely prove them wrong. That Ren Jiayin even pinged Jiaojiao on Weibo with her criticism, but now, she has to delete it with her tail tucked between her legs,” Super Fan Ye Zi said with extreme pride.
“We don’t have to care about people like Ren Jiayin. She can only rely on little tricks like that to become relevant. How dare she slander our Jiaojiao as somebody who relies on selling her body to get a backer, when she herself is completely reliant on her backer?!” Xu Ping snorted coldly.
Ye Zi was in complete agreement with Xu Ping’s words, “Sis Ping, don't worry. Jiaojiao doesn’t need to do anything. Soon I’ll beat Ren Jiayin into the ground.”
Xu Ping smiled, “Alright then. Good luck! You have to work hard. Our Jiaojiao has great expectations of you.”
After hearing Xu Ping’s words, Ye Zi’s confidence grew greatly.
1. The neighbor’s kid is kind of a joke in China referring to how parents would always scold the neighbor’s kid to be better (Look at the neighbor’s kid, he has such high grades! He has such a good job! etc.)