Chapter 45: Hollywood's Invitation

Ring-a-ling-ling-ling...

A shrill bell rang. This was not an alarm clock, but the school dismissal bell.

"Ah! Another day, truly fulfilling," Liu Jing muttered as he woke up and stretched.

The National Day of 1996 had just passed, and a full year had already gone by since Xixi's first runaway incident.

After that day, Sister Li had indeed resigned from her position. It wasn't that she remained idle at home, spending her days merely dropping off and picking up the children.

She was now a shareholder of Tongchan Investment and the legal representative of Jingxing Film and Television—not just a titular figurehead.

Through the production of *Romance of the Three Kingdoms*, Sister Li had cultivated a vast network of connections. Combined with her status as a partner at Tongchan Investment, although Zhang Min was quite famous, her interpersonal network in the mainland truly fell short of Sister Li's.

The division of labor among the trio at Jingxing Film and Television was very clear: Sister Li handled relations on the mainland side, Zhang Min managed connections in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the little aunt took charge of the company's daily operations and artist management business.

The grandparents were quite satisfied with this arrangement; as long as they didn't become actors, they supported whatever path they chose.

Liu Jing was now a third-grade student, as well as the most unusual student in the entire school.

While the classroom held dozens of students sitting two to a desk, he occupied a desk all by himself.

The teachers said nothing, and the classmates dared even less to speak up.

For Liu Jing, who suffered from a form of academic motion sickness, the teachers' monotonous lectures made him feel even more dizzy.

There were two typical examples at Poyang Street Primary School: An Feng was the positive example, while Liu Jing served as the negative one.

Student An Feng excelled in her studies, punctually, conscientiously, and exceeding expectations in completing the assignments assigned by the teachers, consistently ranking first in her grade on every exam.

What was even more astonishing was that this year, An Feng had applied to skip a grade and, with her stellar performance, was approved by the school to become a fifth-grade student.

Liu Jing had also wanted to skip a grade, but he had missed the start-of-term registration and thus missed the timing for the grade-skipping application.

Compared to the positive role model Xixi, he slept in class, frequently asked for leave, and never did homework. His grades weren't terrible, but they could hardly be called outstanding either.

Of course, this was entirely intentional on Liu Jing's part. Having stellar academic results would only bring more trouble. Therefore, on every exam, he deliberately landed around seventh or eighth place in the class—neither falling behind nor standing out too much.

Over the years, Liu Jing had filmed quite a few movies and commercials, yet none of them had been released in mainland theaters; he could only be seen on optical discs. Besides, there was still a certain gap between television appearances and reality, let alone in an elementary school where hardly anyone knew he was a child star.

It was precisely because of this that he was able to attend classes in peace.

"Liu Jing, tomorrow is your turn for duty cleaning," the class monitor walked over, asking in a consultative tone.

As the dismissal bell rang, students swarmed out of the door. No one paid any attention to Liu Jing, treating him almost as if he were transparent.

If not for official business, the class monitor wouldn't have bothered coming over; this fellow was not easy to deal with.

Liu Jing hadn't achieved the feat of "defeating the entire school without a single rival" in elementary school, but the impression that he was "not someone to be trifled with" had been deeply etched into the minds of everyone in the class.

"I definitely won't have time to sweep the floor. Handle it however you see fit, and I'll treat you to a meal later." Liu Jing was in no rush to leave, leisurely packing up his books.

"Um... I'd like to borrow the *Mr. Vampire* disc," the class monitor stammered, looking somewhat embarrassed.

"Sure! Come to my house this weekend, and you can pick whatever you want," Liu Jing replied generously.

"Xue Yuan, Feng Wenju, and Dong Yinghua all want to help you with your duty cleaning..."

"Come pick together."

"That's great!"

The class monitor left happily, just as Xixi appeared at the classroom door with a tight little face.

"Who bullied you? I'll beat them up." Liu Jing shouldered his schoolbag, lightly equipped with very few books inside.

To him, the classroom was a place to rest, and school was a vacation resort.

"Here!" Xixi pulled two letters out of her pocket, her expression full of disdain.

"Handle them however you see fit," Liu Jing said without even glancing at them. Those two letters were love letters.

He had zero interest in girls around ten years old.

Perhaps his demeanor made the girls think he was cool, leading to a steady stream of love letters.

Finding them stuffed inside his desk drawer was a regular occurrence, and it wasn't unusual for them to be handed to him directly. He simply acted as if he didn't see any of them.

Little girls were also afraid of humiliation; being ignored to their face was practically social death.

Consequently, many girls proactively sought out Xixi to be friends, adopting a roundabout strategy to entrust their love letters to her.

At first, Xixi had been thrilled, thinking her own charm was truly immense—not only did little boys like her, but little girls liked her too. This was a textbook example of captivating both genders, far superior to that annoying blockhead of a brother who only knew how to attract older women.

Later on... she fell into a deep emotional slump.

"When we get to middle school, don't tell anyone you're my younger brother," Xixi gritted her teeth.

"Got it," Liu Jing replied submissively.

"And those boys who are on good terms with me—you are not allowed to deliberately pick fights and beat them up." Whenever Xixi brought this up, her stomach was full of grievance.

The day before yesterday, one of her male classmates had been disciplined by Liu Jing under some pretext simply because he had given her a postcard.

The most infuriating part was that Liu Jing actually had reason on his side; who could she even complain to?

"Oh." Liu Jing put on his headphones, turned on his portable cassette player, and shoved both hands into his pockets, lacking only a pair of sunglasses.

Internally, he scoffed: *If Uncle An hadn't instructed me to protect you at school, I wouldn't even bother with this nonsense. That boy clearly harbored malicious intentions, trying to flirt at such a tender age. That definitely falls within my protection scope.*

"You..." Xixi felt anger first, followed by envy, and finally depression. This guy could bring anything he wanted to school, while she couldn't bring a thing.

Standing behind Liu Jing, she threw punches and kicked the air, striking a fierce pose, though she never dared to actually land a blow.

"Just now I heard the commander speak, Sister A-Qing is truly extraordinary. I admire your composure, cleverness, and courage, daring to play with a hidden gun right in front of the devils..." Liu Jing hummed a little tune, not paying a shred of attention to Xixi's words.

Xixi sneered inwardly. The vocal styling was right, and the pitch was on key, but when those elements were combined, it was as grating to the ear as it could possibly be.

Stepping out of the school gates, the two turned a corner one after the other. A red compact car was parked at the street corner.

"That looks like Sister Min's car. How come she's here?" Liu Jing asked in surprise. Under normal circumstances, Sister Li was always the one doing the pickups and drop-offs; only when Sister Li was busy would someone else substitute.

The substitute roster was strictly fixed: the maternal grandmother, the little aunt, the grandfather, and the paternal grandmother.

The car window rolled down, revealing the little aunt wearing sunglasses in the driver's seat. "Wooden Block, Xixi, hurry up and get in."

"Hehe, it's not your Sister Min. Disappointed, aren't you?" Xixi taunted.

"Bam..."

She climbed into the backseat and slammed the car door shut.

*What's her problem? I didn't even offend her! Such an unreasonable little brat at such a young age,* Liu Jing muttered silently to himself.

"Wooden Block, did you bully Xixi again?" the little aunt asked.

"I can't be bothered to bully her; I don't have that kind of spare time." Liu Jing picked up a bottle of Wahaha purified water—a newly launched product that year, which he was quite fond of.

"Give me the portable player," Xixi demanded, setting down her schoolbag and holding out her small hand with absolute entitlement.

"You don't even like listening to traditional opera. I'm listening to *Sha Jia Bang*, and you wouldn't understand it anyway," Liu Jing said as he took off his headphones.

"Give me the schoolbag too," Xixi added unceremoniously.

"Don't ruin it." Liu Jing handed over both his schoolbag and the cassette player; there were several cassette tapes inside his bag.

In class, he would at most sleep. He never whispered to neighbors, never made a commotion, and never read casual books or listened to music...

Though he kept quite a few things in his schoolbag, actual textbooks were scarce. Inside were novels, cassette tapes, snacks, a handheld gaming console, a portable player...

The little aunt chuckled secretly. The only person who could order Wooden Block around like this was her niece.

"Wooden Block, we're going to the US for auditions this summer vacation. Do you remember that?" the little aunt asked as she started the engine, displaying quite proficient driving skills.

"How could I forget? I thought the boss had boundless capabilities, but she really gave me quite a shock. Because of this production, I didn't even get to register at school," Liu Jing said with a depressed expression.

"Haha, Wooden Block, you shouldn't talk about your boss like that. That eight million for the fourth year—she paid it out very readily. Just think about it, you only filmed one movie this year," the little aunt laughed aloud. Nothing felt quite as comforting as hard cash.

"I took on so many commercial endorsements this year, and the company didn't lose money either. When people outside hire me to make a movie, the paycheck is several million per film. We're worth that price," Liu Jing huffed softly. With his growing fame, he had already earned the qualification to choose his own scripts.

However, the company required that he could not casually take on external projects, leaving him with no choice but to look on and drool.

More than half of 1996 had already passed, and the company didn't have a suitable script for him; Fatty Wang was busy directing Category III films. He had filmed one movie during the winter break, but the box office was only a little over ten million, so the company didn't make a huge profit.

During the summer vacation that year, the company hadn't arranged a single film for him, though they did book quite a few commercial appearances and several endorsement deals.

"Open the glove box in front of you. There's a surprise," the little aunt said mysteriously.

Liu Jing opened it and was startled to find an invitation letter: "Dear Mr. Luvei, in view of your outstanding performance during the auditions, congratulations on securing the role in *Home Alone 3*. Please..."