When the door opened, Zhazha shrank back behind it, clutching her chest nervously.

"What the..."

Han Lie had just gotten half a question out when he turned his head, and his eyes instantly went blank.

Hiss, this girl is gorgeous!

Normally righteous Brother Lie was having a hard time keeping his eyes from wandering today.

Fine... he basically didn’t try to keep them in check at all.

Zhazha’s cheeks were flaming red, but in the end she still braved the shame, spread her arms, and did a spin in front of Han Lie.

"Jingle jingle..."

There was a gold chain around her slender waist, with a tiny bell tied to the end; as she twirled like she was dancing, it swayed and chimed with a pleasant, crisp sound.

"This is the Valentine’s Day gift I prepared for you... do you like it?"

"I like it way too much!"

...

At this moment, the importance of being able to level up attributes finally showed itself.

Go back half a month: with all stats at 79, if Han Lie pulled an all-nighter and then did several rounds of high-intensity "workouts," he’d probably be staggering when he walked the next morning.

Okay... no need to guess, after that all-nighter playing Dou Dizhu last time, his head felt completely hollow the next day.

No matter how young you are, not sleeping enough + sleeping too much is a huge drain.

But today, with key attributes like Constitution and Health up to 89, after a hard night, Brother Lie still retained about seventy percent of his state.

Dealing with just one little Zhazha was more than manageable.

She was a bit better in this department than that noob Pan Ge, but not by much.

...

When the fooling around finally paused, the dog man struck while the iron was hot and handed her the gift.

But her reaction was completely different from Sister Qing Ting’s.

"Can I really? Can I really act this well?"

She was very happy, but even more insecure.

"Thank you, babe, you’re so good to me! But I’m so dumb... in class, I’m always at the bottom when we turn in skits, I don’t think I’m ready to be a female lead yet..."

As she talked, she suddenly wrapped her arms around Han Lie and started to cry.

Zhazha’s personality is pretty strange: in some areas she’s absurdly confident, but in others she’s very self-abasing.

In his last life, the first time Han Lie got to know her was on Mango TV’s reality show Idols Are Coming, where he saw her crying in public like some kind of moron—her face looked bitchy, her voice sounded bitchy, and when she cried she looked bitchy too.

You could say the first impression wasn’t great.

Later she trended because of that crying incident; Han Lie clicked in and saw the Weibo comments full of overwhelming abuse and all kinds of filthy sex rumors.

Han Lie originally didn’t care about that stuff. Traffic stars, right? You get flamed even without a black mark, and if you’ve got something actually on record, who else are they gonna flame if not you?

But then some of the comments genuinely disgusted him.

Back then her father had just died, and she was also getting brutally attacked by the official (Shuang Family Army) fans over her relationship with Zhang Han; not being able to hold back her tears was actually pretty normal.

And then the most rancid "official" fan group in the entire C-ent fandom started focus-firing on her dad: "Your dad was jinxed to death by you, go keep him company in the mortuary already!"

As someone with basic human decency, Han Lie felt this kind of organized lowb cyberbullying was way over the line, so with a bit of rebellious mindset he followed a few episodes of Idols Are Coming.

And then he saw an iconic scene—

Xie Na jokingly asked her: "Are you Nana or Zhazha?"

She laughed like she didn’t have a care in the world: "Zhazha, mine’s the three-dots-water one, the ’scum’ from ’human scum’. My comments are all calling me scum, hahaha!"

From then on, "Zhazha" became her derogatory nickname.

And Han Lie also got used to clicking into her news whenever he saw it, keeping casual tabs on her in his spare time.

Later he slowly realized that yeah, her acting really wasn’t good, and she really was a love-brain. But aside from that, her personality was actually quite adorable, and she wasn’t the type of woman who would do anything just to climb up.

So, the reason she got massively blackened was simply because she blocked someone else’s path, huh!

From Fairy Sister to Big Secret, even down to some small-time hack writing tycoon-op novels—who doesn’t get blackened when they’re popular?

Rumors like An Xi being trans and Secret’s feet being insanely smelly still have idiots who believe them; taking black fans and morons seriously is just asking for trouble, isn’t it? 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

Everyone else can shrug it off, but she insists on bottling it all up, which is why her emotions seem extra unstable.

Given how she is today, she’s clearly been wronged somewhere again recently, so the moment she was moved, she suddenly couldn’t hold it together.

"Don’t cry, don’t cry, I’m here. What are you afraid of, that you won’t act well?"

Han Lie patiently comforted her, all pear-blossoms-in-the-rain in his arms, tossing out sweet talk like it didn’t cost a cent.

"Your acting isn’t bad at all compared to other actresses your age, it’s just that you’ve never had a role that really suited you, and you’ve never had enough time to prepare in a targeted way.

You know why I dared to tell you even before the contract was signed?

This time, it’s a project from our own company, something I specifically prepared for you!

So the female lead is one hundred percent yours, but there’s no rush to start shooting.

Just take advantage of this period to really read the original novel and the script, prepare slowly, and make good use of the faculty at the Film Academy—practice more, ask more questions, you’ll absolutely be able to bring a classic character to life!

By then, who would dare make fun of you?

And in the future, whenever something happens, don’t treat me like an outsider!

You have to remember, you’re now a little princess with a man to protect you, no longer some rootless Cinderella. If some idiot doesn’t know their place and you can’t beat them, don’t you still have me?

Don’t go crying over every tiny grievance and making me worry for nothing, okay?"

Zhazha is a girl who needs coaxing.

Dog Lie prescribed the right remedy, and had her tamed just right; she curled up in his arms like a kitten, humming softly through her nose.