Who's the Sourpuss Today?

A secret, off-the-record relationship | older man | actress x wealthy heir

A timid, sneaky, drama-loving beauty 🍋 x an openly affectionate, old-fashioned sugar daddy 🐟

At a movie premiere, the audience asked the leads to video-call their pinned contacts.

Ning Meng, who played the third female lead, curled her toes inside her high heels. If she really did it, the whole internet would mock her: she was a nobody despite being kept by a powerful man!

She was overthinking it. Everyone wanted to see the lead actor’s sugar daddy: Fu Yuyuan, a business tycoon worth hundreds of billions by the age of thirty.

Unfortunately, the video call was rejected the instant it was requested. The lead actor tried to save face: “Mr. Fu is very busy.”

Mr. Fu was busy? Ning Meng instantly relaxed.

“I’ll go next!” she volunteered, beaming.

She thought, If he hangs up on me, I’ll say I’m busy too. Perfect plan!

But the man who had just rejected the video call answered Ning Meng’s in a heartbeat.

On screen, long, elegant fingers turned a limited-edition Montblanc Meisterstück pen. His wrist was strong, and veins stood out as he moved in rhythm.

His low, lazy voice came with the sound of writing. “Finished? Has Lin Xu been behaving himself, or has he been picking on my Mengmeng?”

The sexy lilt at the end of his words and his indulgent smile were unmistakably intimate.

Everyone on and off the stage looked at Lin Xu, the lead actor who’d just been called out in front of them. Only the cameraman was quick enough to zoom in on Ning Meng’s phone.

Ning Meng had nowhere to run. If she hung up now, the man would do what he’d done last time and send his private jet to pick her up, treating it like a royal bridal carriage.

But being scolded by the old man was better than having their relationship exposed and ruining her career! She steeled herself. “Wrong number! Hanging up!”

But his voice chased after her. “Where are you? I’ll have my secretary send you a room key. Same place as usual.”

Comments flooded the premiere’s livestream: [Hand fetish] [Is that Mengmeng?] [Where’s the usual place? What’s the room number?] [Spicy gossip!]

Lin Xu smiled slyly. “He sounds just like my sugar daddy!”

Ning Meng was really panicking now. “It’s not Mr. Fu! He’s just a fishmonger at the market!”

On the other end of the call, Fu Yuyuan understood. They were making a show out of it.

He’d long been unhappy that Ning Meng made their perfectly legitimate relationship seem like a secret affair. So he decided to play along, picked up his phone, and appeared on camera. “Lin Xu, what are you doing there?”

A wealthy heir reduced to a market fishmonger? The comments went wild, and the trending hashtags #FuYuyuanSugarDaddy and #LemonFishFuYuyuan quickly shot to the top.

Clearly, a household-name business tycoon attracted far more attention than minor celebrities like Lin Xu and Ning Meng.

You might ask: Ning Meng has worked steadily since entering show business, so why has she never become popular? Is she a nobody whom even wealthy backers can’t help, or a career-focused actress who refuses to bow to capital?

Perhaps only Fu Yuyuan, who has been watching Ning Meng all along, knows the answer.

Content warnings:

1. The author doesn’t follow celebrity fandoms and isn’t familiar with the Chinese entertainment industry. This is a completely fictional showbiz setting. It isn’t realistic, so please don’t read it as such. It’s simply an everyday-life story dressed up as an entertainment-industry novel.

2. There may be some melodramatic plot points, but overall it’s an everyday-life story.

3. There’s a significant age gap.

Theme: Love is all about perseverance