After the Best Actress Played Me, My Acting Skills Improved by Leaps and Bounds

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"Have you ever loved someone for over ten years, but spoken fewer than fifty words to them in all that time, and been so miserable you couldn't sleep all night?"

Shao Niannian asked her friend, her face streaked with tears.

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Ten years ago, fifteen-year-old Shao Niannian was noticed by Director Lin, a friend of her mother, and cast in a film about a famous courtesan in Republican-era China. She starred alongside Jiang Yan, a newly crowned Linghua Award Best Actress who was at the height of her fame.

Everything about Jiang Yan entranced Shao Niannian: her every move, the way she lifted her brows and smiled faintly, her slender waist tightly wrapped in a cheongsam, and the soft Jiangnan accent she had specially learned and practiced for the film.

For ten years, figuring out how to get closer to Jiang Yan became the great challenge of Shao Niannian's life.

But after 3,650 days, their only connection was still that film. They weren't even on nodding terms. Jiang Yan was more familiar with the young actress who had recently become her new co-star.

Shao Niannian watched that actress, who had debuted years after her, call Jiang Yan "Sis." She tried to keep a calm face, while inside she was green with jealousy.

"I never expected her to like me, but she should at least know who I am, right?" Shao Niannian said in a chat with her friend.

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Falling in love, reuniting, getting to know each other again, falling for each other while filming, and finally turning love into hate.

That was how people described Shao Niannian's year of romance rumors.

After being dumped by the playboy Best Actress, Shao Niannian found her own style.

She was no longer confined to youth romance dramas, and she also held her own in star-studded Lunar New Year films.

"If dating a Best Actress improves your acting, I hope Jiang Yan goes around dumping every young actress with bad acting equally," a passerby remarked, impressed by Shao Niannian's superb acting. They followed the gossip, while also resenting pretty actresses with poor acting skills and wishing they would all have an epiphany like Shao Niannian.

Fresh out of the mountains, Shao Niannian looked at the hundreds of thousands of private messages and mentions, then silently turned off and restarted her phone, which had completely crashed from Weibo.

Only after she landed did she learn that the so-called "love answered" had already come true.

Jiang Yan V: "I'm not the one who dumped her! She was the one who didn't want me! I'm in a panic. Can someone please help me plead my case? I can't get out of her blacklist!"

"Love is answered, fireworks every year."

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Her friend changed the group name to "Future Wild-Vegetable Gatherers."

Shao Niannian changed it to "A Secret Love Beneath the Water Will Echo Back at Last."

In the end, her friend accepted two hundred yuan in a red packet and agreed to this overly clingy, hopelessly literary group name.

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+++Coming soon: The Twenty-First Strawberry. An agricultural worker x a criminal investigation team captain, an unrequited love that comes true.

+++++++++++++I Also Want to Be Mrs. Jiang. A writer x an artist. I fell for my aunt's ex-girlfriend, a real-life fairy tale.

++++++++++++++After We Pretended to Be Rivals on a Dating Show with My Proud Fiancée. Emotionally oblivious x an adorable tsundere. Hey, we agreed to act like we couldn't stand each other, so why are you kissing me?

A friend's upcoming story:

Taking a Look at Those Devoted Female Side Characters by Ye Qianling

There are many kinds of devoted female side characters.

For example, the ones who love and protect the protagonist in silence but will never say it aloud; the ones who turn evil after their love goes unrequited, becoming villains who may kill countless people but still can't bring themselves to hurt the protagonist; and, most of all, the ones who die saving the protagonist they love and become the protagonist's unforgettable first love.

Liu Yingge was a devoted female side character who died saving the protagonist and became the protagonist's unforgettable first love. But something went slightly wrong with the story: she was reborn.

Liu Yingge after being reborn: To hell with being a devoted female side character! I'm done with that job! But when did my well-behaved junior sister go astray?

Theme: No matter what happens, don't give up. Keep loving life just as you did at the beginning.