"It's fine, there will be other opportunities in the future. That magazine kind of owes us a favor now, too." Ethan Carter comforted, "Things are pretty good right now. No work tomorrow morning, so you can sleep in and eat something nice. You've lost weight again lately. Oh, and when you get back, tell Caleb Grant that if he orders takeout in the middle of the night again, I'll force him to go on a diet. He has no sense of being an idol at all—his cheeks are all chubby, is he planning to switch to being a comedian or something..."

Listening to his manager nag, Henry Foster's phone suddenly vibrated. He took it out and glanced at the screen, where [Assistant Director Miller] flashed. After two seconds, he pressed the side button to turn off the screen, pretending he hadn't seen it.

But less than a minute later, the phone vibrated again—this time, it was a text message.

[Why aren't you answering the phone?]

[What about the thing I asked you to consider last time? Have you thought it over?]

[Call me back, hurry up!]

[Don't worry, I definitely won't treat you badly.]

The messages kept pouring in, like snakes slithering out of a hole in the darkness.

His fingers were so cold they felt stiff, and he typed slowly.

[I've already refused what you asked last time.]

Barely two seconds after sending it, the phone rang again. Henry Foster had no choice but to answer. The middle-aged man on the other end spoke, irritated and angry, "I'm giving you one more chance. This won't do you any harm! If you still want to be on the show, you'd better listen to me."

"Sorry." Henry Foster's calmness seemed out of place at this moment. Ethan Carter noticed something was wrong and glanced at him again, "Who is it?"

After half a month of threats and enticements, Assistant Director Miller had lost all patience by now, and all sorts of nasty words came pouring out. "Do you know how many people who can't make it are begging to follow me around? Who do you think you are, some kind of pure thing?"

Here we go again.

"I'm letting you follow me because I think you're worth it, because of your face. You think I'd go out of my way to find you? Pah, a whore acting all virtuous. Don't bother coming to record anymore! Pack your things and get lost, you really don't know what's good for you!"

Henry Foster listened quietly to the tirade, not saying a word. Only when the other side, furious, hung up did his heart finally settle.

"What happened? Who was that?"

"Assistant Director Miller." Henry Foster announced the result as if nothing had happened. "He told me to get off the show."

"What?!" Ethan Carter slammed on the brakes and turned his head. "Wait, wh-what happened?"

Henry Foster licked his dry lips, simplifying things as much as possible. "He's been wanting me to go along with him. I refused, so now he's kicking me out."

He said "go along with" very blandly, but Ethan Carter's expression changed, and he was momentarily speechless.

"This isn't a joke. We signed for six episodes, and we've only recorded three! That's a breach of contract."

Henry Foster's tone was flat. "It's not the first time they've done this kind of thing. There's no point talking about contract spirit with people like that."

That was true. Ethan Carter rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. The cold wind rushed in, stinging his face. "They'll probably try to pin the blame on you, for sure. If you suddenly leave, they'll have to make up some excuse... No, I need to contact the TV station. We can't just let him mess around like this."

Hearing this, Henry Foster's coldness finally cracked. Sometimes he wished he wasn't part of the group, so he could take all the consequences himself and not drag anyone else down.

"Sorry to trouble you, Mr. Ethan." He finally sighed, breaking his outsider's calm.

Ethan Carter's hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. He muttered something under his breath, brows furrowing and then relaxing. He quickly stubbed out his unfinished cigarette, rolled up the window, and started the car again. "It's fine. This crappy show has messed with us before, and nothing happened last time either."

Last time...

A tall figure walked by on the roadside, and the distracted Henry Foster mistook him for someone else. He wiped away the white mist from the window, but when the person turned around, it wasn't who he'd thought. His mood calmed down.

Of course nothing would happen—who would dare mess with a little devil with power and influence?

After a while, Ethan Carter heard a soft "sorry" from the back seat. It made him feel even more powerless. Outside the windshield, the city nightscape kept sliding by, the halos from the streetlights blurring his vision. Suddenly, he remembered the first time Henry Foster came to the company. Back then, a female colleague had pulled him aside to gossip, saying the company had a super impressive new trainee who was unbelievably good-looking.

He'd wanted to see just how "unbelievable" that was, so he put down his work and went to take a look.

He really was exceptionally good-looking—so much so that the talent scout deserved to be on the company's annual honor roll.

Back then, Henry Foster was only eighteen, wearing a black hoodie. He even thought that plain, designless hoodie looked good on him. The bare-faced youth's skin had a kind of translucence, and near the left eye, close to the temple, there was a small, slender, pale red birthmark—very distinctive.

In this industry, beautiful faces are always in oversupply. They're refined and approachable, drawing you in, sparking your imagination.

What made Henry Foster special was that his beauty had a sense of distance.

He naturally had an air that kept people at arm's length, like a low-saturation, cold, and silent work of art.