Atlas Studios

  Atlas Studios

  He had not gone online in these past few days; moreover, since his mother left very early for work during the day and only returned very late at night, he had not noticed anything amiss with her.

  On this day, the woman had to film two night scenes in order to catch up with the filming schedule, so she would not be returning home for the night.

  After school, the boy was on his way to shop for groceries when an article in a certain newspaper on the magazine stand caught his attention as he was walking by.

  He would usually just walk past this stand since he did not have the habit of reading the local newspapers, but the headline on one was too eye-catching to be ignored. A face shot of his mother was printed on it, marked with a red circle. The backdrop, meanwhile, was dim, so he only vaguely identified the woman to be his mother.

  The headline read: ‘The Green Apple’ female lead, the overnight sensation, engulfs in rumors after ‘cheating’ exposed.

  Shocked, he rushed to the stand to take a closer look, then dug out some pocket change to buy this newspaper. Once he got home, he carefully read the article; the more he read, the angrier he got.

  Little Yichen, who happened to be entering the living room after completing his homework, saw his twin looking gloomy as he sat on the sofa with a newspaper beside him. Curious, he reached for the newspaper, but his actions alerted the younger boy, who snatched it out of his hand. “Don’t look!”


  Startled, his eyes bulged wide as he asked askance, “Why? Is there something that I shouldn’t see?”


  His younger sibling clutched the newspaper tightly as he said with a frown, “There’s a bad article about mommy, but it’s fake. Those unscrupulous journalists fabricated some stories; there’s no need for you to look at them.”


  “What! Bad article about mommy?”


  He snatched the newspaper before the younger boy could react and skimmed through the aforementioned article. His eyes instantly became lit with anger.

  In his fury, he tore the pages of the newspaper apart and squashed them into a ball before throwing everything on the floor.

  “Who wrote that rubbish? Mommy seduced another man? How’s that possible! Who the hell wrote that?”


  Youyou’s eyes flickered before he charged into the study at once and turned on the computer. The screen lit up to display a webpage, which had been accidentally closed; he restored it out of curiosity. It turned out to be a link to the full video of Ji Yan’s press conference. He clicked on the play button, and after a moment’s buffering, the full content was presented to him.

  His brother had also followed him into the room and was now standing next to him.

  Both lads bore with the anger raging inside them as they watched the video to the very end. The younger one nearly smashed the keyboard in his fury afterward.

  “They’re all mad! This is clearly libel—it’s defamation!” he cried in exasperation. “Mommy will never do such a thing!”


  “Does daddy know of this?”


  “I’m unsure.”


  The boy took a moment to gather his thoughts before logging into Weibo.

  He would occasionally check in to monitor his mother’s activities. It was what he enjoyed doing; in fact, he created his account just to follow his mother’s.

  However, he had been negligent these past few days and had not paid much attention to the online goings-on; therefore, he was clueless that such a thing had happened to his mother.