Global Film Emperor

Chapter 214 I hope you forget me

The taxi ride home took twenty minutes, but the return trip only took ten. Lu Ze casually tossed a wad of cash into the car and got out. The green belt was wet from the rain and a bit slippery. Lu Ze tripped and fell two meters away.

He got up without checking if he had any injuries from the fall, but his legs hurt a lot and he couldn't use them. He limped to the bottom of her building, where a group of people had already gathered.

The group of people were carrying long lenses and cameras, constantly taking pictures of something, with flashes going off incessantly. The area had been cordoned off, and there were quite a few onlookers.

"Get out of the way! Let me through!"

"Hey! Don't you have any manners?"

In his haste, Lu Ze abandoned all manners and nearly pushed one of the older women on the outermost edge of the crowd, which displeased many people, and he also lost his temper and started talking without restraint.

"Hey! What are you doing here? No one's allowed in here right now."

Just as Lu Ze was about to lift the police tape to go inside, he was stopped outside by a policeman wearing a raincoat.

"She's my friend! Let me in, she's my friend!"

Lu Ze took off his hat, lifted the police tape, and went inside. The policeman seemed to recognize Lu Ze and didn't stop him. He stepped aside to let Lu Ze in.

Suddenly, Lu Ze lost his strength and his head began to spin, as if he was lacking oxygen or suffering from carbon dioxide poisoning. He sat down on the ground and stared blankly at the person covered with a white sheet.

There was no heart-wrenching pain, no excruciating grief, just a feeling of dizziness, a spinning vision, and difficulty breathing.

He found it hard to accept this fact. Just thirty minutes ago, he was alive and well, and now he was lying there motionless? What a joke! Lu Ze lay on the ground, numb to the rain hitting his face.

"Mr. Lu? Mr. Lu, are you alright? Let me help you up. Are you alright? Nurse! Come and check on you!"

The police officer tried to pull Lu Ze away, but found he couldn't move him. So he called over the nurse from the ambulance to give Lu Ze a thorough examination. After all, he was a public figure, and it wasn't right for him to just lie there, especially with so many reporters taking pictures.

"I'm fine, I'll get up. Wen Shu, take a look at me. I'm Lu Ze, look at me, move a muscle?"

Lu Ze didn't dare to call out to her loudly, nor could he manage to do so. He cautiously shouted once, and the police officer grabbed Lu Ze's waist from behind, not wanting him to get any closer.

He could only accept reality; this was the damn reality. The sound of his heart pounding seemed to be right next to his ears. Lu Ze stood in the rain, his whole body stiff. Rainwater soaked his hair and streamed down his cheeks. Lu Ze turned to look at the group of reporters who were still taking pictures of him.

He stared at them blankly, and the group showed no sign of backing down, as if Lu Ze were just a puppet being filmed, and so was the one lying on the ground.

"hehe."

He suddenly felt very tired and didn't want to curse those stupid reporters. He wiped his face, took off his coat, and walked over.

"Mr. Lu, please step back a little and cooperate with us to protect the scene. Otherwise, I'll have to ask you to leave."

Lu Ze ignored her, walked to her side, covered her with his coat, and muttered something under his breath.

“Let’s shield her from the rain. She was freezing in Beijing before, and she’s afraid of the cold. She’s so vain and doesn’t want others to see her make a fool of herself.”

The police officer was speechless, and his heart suddenly felt heavy. He turned his head away and refused to look at Lu Ze anymore. Lu Ze's numb expression was truly heartbreaking to see.

Sitting down next to her, Lu Ze breathed a sigh of relief as the pain in his legs subsided. He checked his pockets and found the cigarettes were still inside his jacket. He looked up at the police officer and asked a question.

Do you have any cigarettes? Can I have one?

"Oh, yes."

He lit a cigarette, inhaled into his chest, and slowly exhaled. Lu Ze realized he had no tears at all. Was he feeling sad? Yes, but it seemed all the tears were stuck in his heart, and not a single drop could fall.

The stairwell door was pushed open, and an older policeman came out. He glanced at Lu Ze sitting on the ground, hesitated for a moment, and then walked over.

"Mr. Lu, you arrived at Miss Jiang's house at 9 p.m. and didn't leave until 11:05 p.m., is that right?"

"Ah."

"Please take care of the deceased here. All onlookers, please leave! Mr. Lu, could you please come back to the station with me to cooperate with our work and give a statement?"

The police dispersed the onlookers, and medical personnel came over, opened the black body bag, and Lu Ze stubbed out his cigarette and looked up at the policeman, who was about forty years old.

Where is she going?

The police officer hesitated for a moment, perhaps feeling a little sorry for Lu Ze, and licked his lips before slowly speaking.

"funeral parlor."

"Can I go with her? I'll keep her company."

"I'm afraid that won't work. According to regulations, the written record must be video-recorded. You'd better come back to the station with us."

"Really not possible?"

"It really doesn't work."

Lu Ze nodded. These were their rules, and they couldn't be broken just because of him. He followed the police into the police car. The reporters were still taking pictures. After the car started moving, he kept turning his head to watch the ambulance driving away in the opposite direction from the police car.
What exactly were you and Ms. Jiang talking about at that time?

She said she was leaving, and when I asked where she was going, she said she didn't know.

The statement was quickly taken down, and Lu Ze had no suspicion whatsoever. After all, the incident happened only ten minutes after Lu Ze left, and a witness saw Jiang Wenshu walk onto the balcony. The witness was a reporter. Lu Ze extinguished his cigarette, rubbed his face vigorously with both hands, and looked utterly exhausted. He was very tired, truly exhausted.

"This is a letter that Miss Jiang left for you. It was under this photo frame and is now being handed over to you."

The police handed over the camera, which was photographing a desk with a framed photo on it. The photo showed Lu Ze and her standing not far apart, both smiling brightly.

Beneath the photo frame lay a letter, the one the police had now handed over to Lu Ze. The envelope was pink kraft paper, just like her style.

I carefully opened the letter. The contents were neither too long nor too short. I gently unfolded it. The handwriting was delicate and a little small, but the letter was clean and did not affect reading.

"Brother Ze, I'm so sorry for making this decision. By the time you read this letter, I'll probably be gone. You must be sad, right? I'm really sorry, and I hope you can forgive me. But I don't actually regret making this decision."

“I used to think I wouldn’t regret what I did, because I walked my own path. I traded my body for an opportunity, and it wasn’t a bad deal for me. At least it gave me hope of getting ahead, instead of never seeing the light of day again. I lost my shame and my self-respect, but at the time I really didn’t care.”

"Until I met you, to be honest, I fell in love with you. That night on the rooftop, I knew we were impossible, but I still fantasized that feelings are unpredictable. But you didn't surprise me; you rejected me directly. From that moment on, I realized I regretted it. I realized I still had a sense of shame. I even thought that if I hadn't done that, you wouldn't have rejected me, right?"

"But thinking about it, it makes sense. If I hadn't done it, I wouldn't have met you. Maybe I would be home, married, and have kids by now. There are never perfect stories in life. Maybe the mistake was that I shouldn't have fallen for you? Hehe."

"So I started to hate myself. I started to worry about this every night, and I couldn't sleep all night. I was worried that things would be exposed one day. Even now, I am still not mentally prepared. I am afraid of the contemptuous look others will give me, and I am even more afraid that you will distance yourself from me or even hate me because of the exposure of this matter."

"I can only work hard, and then I can sleep soundly in bed when I'm so tired. I work non-stop every day to alleviate my fear of the future. It feels really bad to be held hostage. But soon, I got tired of the disgusting pretense and the purely self-serving social interactions. I was always racking my brains for fear that someone would set a trap for me. This kind of anxious life made me feel lost."

"So I started to get used to being alone, learned to control my daydreaming and fantasizing, thought of you on my travels, thought of you at work, thought of you when I was resting, and even thought of you while I was taking a shower. From then on, there was a non-existent person in my life who was with me every day, cared for me every day, and accompanied me to sleep every night. That person was you."

"From then on, my dreams were half sweet and half stinky. The sweet ones were about you, and the stinky ones were also about you. Sometimes I would wake up laughing in my sleep, and sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and cry my heart out. I know you are not that perfect, but you are so perfect in my heart. There is nothing I can do. Who told me that I cannot truly have you and cannot discover your bad habits in life?"

“Until the matter was exposed, the thing I least wanted to see still happened. I was worried that you would hate me, but thankfully you called me that night, which put my mind at ease. I thought that as long as you didn't hate me, that would be fine. But I was wrong again. I found that I still cared about other people's opinions, afraid that their contemptuous looks would destroy the self-esteem I had finally built up for you. I started to suffer and was tormented for the past few days. I used to hear inspirational quotes say that people live for themselves, not for others, but in reality, people do live for others.”

“After the incident, I thought about running away, but I realized with despair that there was no place for me in this world. As for foreign countries, I would feel afraid to go to foreign lands, but in China, could I run to the deep mountains and forests? So, rather than living a life of hiding, I might as well die. At least I would no longer suffer and be tormented by this incident. So I made this decision. Actually, it was also because I was broke. I lost a lot of money. After four years of hard work, I only had a little over two hundred yuan left in my account. Even if I ran away, it would only be enough to buy a train ticket, and it would be a slow train.”

"If this letter ends up in your hands, then I'm probably dead by now. Don't be sad for me, and don't shed tears for me. After all, only the serious Lu Ze is the real man! That's the Lu Ze I like!"

"Death is a relief for me. Although I can't let you go, please forgive my selfishness. I won't be able to check out girlfriends for you anymore. Although I'll definitely be jealous when I do, after all, my biggest dream in this life has changed from becoming a star to becoming your wife, doing your laundry and cooking for you, and raising your children. Does that sound pathetic? But my dream will never change. To put it more bluntly, I want you to sleep with me every day, to keep sleeping with me, and to rock you in bed every night. That's my dream. Unfortunately, I've never been able to do it."

"I'm leaving. I hope you miss me, and I also hope you don't. I'm sad when I write this letter, and I'm even sadder when I see your photo on the table. If you're sad for me, I'll be even sadder. So wish me well, that I'll be reborn into a good family in my next life. If I can meet you again, that would be even better."

"May you find a virtuous wife, may you be happy and healthy, may you have many children and grandchildren, may you be rich and noble throughout your life, may you rise step by step, and may you forget me."

"From Jiang Wenshu, who has loved you for 1,517 days and whose heart stopped beating, February 25, 2020."

Lu Ze gently placed the letter on the table, rubbed his face vigorously a few times, exhaled, picked up the letter, folded it, put it back in the envelope, held it in his hand, lit a cigarette, and took a deep drag.

"Can I leave now?"

"can."

Lu Ze got up, his leg aching, and limped as he pushed open the door. Shen Jinghan was standing outside. Upon seeing Lu Ze, he quickly came over and draped the new clothes over Lu Ze.

"Aze."

Shen Jinghan was extremely nervous, not for any other reason than that he was afraid that Lu Ze's already very serious condition would worsen.

"Ah, let's go."

"Where?"

"I'll go to the funeral home to keep her company."

Shen Jinghan was taken aback, but did not refute him. She silently accompanied him out the door. In the current situation, let alone going to the funeral home, she would have to agree even if Lu Ze wanted to go to Afghanistan to become a mercenary.

Upon leaving the police station, Lu Ze was met by a group of reporters who pounced on him like sharks smelling blood. Lu Ze ignored them and, limping, prepared to leave, still wearing his clothes.

"Lu Ze, what were you and Jiang Wenshu talking about in the room? Was her suicide attempt related to you?"

"Snapped!"

He slapped the idiot with the microphone across the face without thinking, knocking him to the ground. This was the first time he had hit someone in all his years in society, and he didn't regret hitting a reporter.

"She made a mistake, I admit it, and she never denied it, but did she have to pay with her life?! Go and see! Open your eyes and look! She's dead! Dead! What were you talking about? What's it to you? I'll talk your ass! She lied to her fans, disappointed them, and they deserved to be criticized, but what about you? What business is it of yours? Did you ever earn a single penny from you? You were kept alive by her popularity, and now that she's dead, you still want to make a quick buck off her?"

"Why did you hit me?!"

“Remember! It was me, Lu Ze, who hit you! Make sure the video is clear! Go ahead and sue me wherever you want! This is the police station, go ahead and go in! I'm waiting for you! I'll give you one last piece of advice, listen to me carefully, I'll fuck your mother.”

"Excuse me, Lu Ze is not giving interviews right now. Please move aside. Also, this is the police station. Let's go in now. If you want to settle this privately, you can get a medical examination for your injuries and then come to Qian Shijia to find me. I am Lu Ze's agent. My name is Shen Jinghan. Now I'll give you time to choose. Three, two, one, that means we can settle this privately. I'll be waiting for you at Qian Shijia tomorrow."

While Shen Jinghan was speaking, she kept looking at the press card hanging on the reporter's chest and the media label on the microphone, memorizing the media outlet. The reporter who had been beaten fell silent, and only then did she leave with Lu Ze in the car.

"."

The reason why I gave Lu Ze a ring on his little finger has been explained.

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(End of this chapter)