Capturing My Demon King Costar

Xin Hulei drives him back to the hotel. Yao Shen walks through the hallways with his head held high, even though some of the hotel staff give him odd looks.

He and Xin Hulei ride in silence all the way up the elevator to his room. Yao Shen sees a sliver of light shine from under the door, meaning that someone is inside.

He exchanges a look with Xin Hulei and slides his keycard against the reader.

Bi Jialu is standing in the middle of the room, holding a phone to her ear, looking in confusion at the opening door. The moment she sees Yao Shen her face goes pale, and she disconnects her call.

"Laoshi, I'm so glad you're back," she says, smiling thinly.

"Are you?" Yao Shen asks, walking towards the sofa and taking a seat. He pats the cushion next to him, and Xin Hulei crosses the room to sit at his side, his expression unreadable and his cold eyes fixed on Bi Jialu.

"Of course, I was very worried...I was actually just on the phone with HuaHua, trying to get laoshi a lawyer as soon as possible."

Xin Hulei adjusts his posture, stretching out his right arm over the top of the sofa. Bi Jialu's eyes are anxiously drawn to his movements, as if she expects him to strike at any time.

"I haven't heard anything from HuaHua lately," Yao Shen says, inspecting his nails. "I think I'm not their biggest priority, right now."

Bi Jialu's eyes shift around the room. "Well, I'll call again and let them know that laoshi is back, and maybe tomorrow we can discuss how to proceed from here on out," she starts shifting backwards towards the door. Her cheery smile remains in place, but her eyes are panicked.

"Stay where you are Lulu," Yao Shen says, dropping his own pretence. He has no intention in dragging this out and cornering her like a mouse. "I just want to know why."

She laughs. "I don't know what laoshi is talking about, maybe a good night of sleep-"

Xin Hulei clears his throat, startling Bi Jialu. "There were some changes in HuaHua during the summer, weren't there?"

"I- I...I have no idea, I'm just a personal assistant, no one keeps me informed about internal changes in the company."

Yao Shen gives her a cold look. "There were a lot of rumours about me, Xin Hulei, and Tan Liansi during the drama's hiatus, and of course, even more so now. We caused a lot of trouble for very powerful men when we exposed their crimes on live TV. So Xin Hulei asked his connections to look into whether they were behind our recent string of "bad" press."

Xin Hulei grins, and Bi Jialu slinks against the wall, trying to make herself smaller, like a small animal confronted with a much larger predator. "I found something really interesting."

Yao Shen elaborates, since she might keel over from fright if Xin Hulei keeps talking. "Turns out, that while the three of us were busy with a very personal crisis, the son of one of the criminals was also busy trying to acquire our talent management companies."

"Really? I had no idea," she chances a look towards the door, calculating her odds of making a run for it if necessary. Clearly she thinks it's possible that they'll try to do something to her.

"He couldn't buy Xin Hulei's and Tan Liansi's management company, no matter how much money he threw at them." 

According to Xin Hulei this was a common occurrence, and likely the reason why no one had told him anything when it happened.

"HuaHua was eager to sell, though," Yao Shen says, watching Bi Jialu's widen once she realises they have her now. "I didn't know about the financial troubles, but then again I guess they were trying to keep them under wraps. This offer couldn't have come at a better time."

He clicks his tongue, leaning against the back of the cream sofa, shifting closer to Xin Hulei. "Of course, when he bought the company, he got all its staff too, which includes you."

"I don't know what laoshi is trying to imply...I really..."

Yao Shen smiles sadly. He's feeling hurt and betrayed, but above all, he's feeling responsible. He's sure Bi Jialu wouldn't have done what she did if she hadn't felt cornered into it, somehow.

"I just want to know why," he pleads. "I'm not even talking about trying to frame me. Why would you kill Gao Wu on someone else's orders?"

He expects her to deny everything once again, but instead she crumples to the floor, holding her face in her hands. "You don't know, you have no idea." She lifts her face from her palms, and her cheeks are streaked with tears. "For years I've heard you complain, about not getting work, about struggling to make ends meet, and I sympathised. We were together, being cruelly exploited by people who didn't give a damn about us."

Her face twists painfully, and she points a shaking arm at Xin Hulei. "But then you met him! How quickly you forgot your earlier struggles just because of him."

Yao Shen opens his mouth but he closes it again. How can he explain to Bi Jialu that she only knows half of the story. That his entire world perspective shifted when he found out about the Underworld, Youdu, and his place in it.

He can see how from her point of view he might look like a sellout who shacked up with the first rich guy who payed him any attention. Unfortunately, he's afraid that's all he'll remain as in her eyes, because there's no way for him to explain himself.

She chuckles to herself, the sound raw and wounded. "It's fine that you stopped caring about yourself, your image, and what you needed to do to get more work just because of him. You can do whatever you want with your life." She lifts her chin to look Yao Shen in the eye and sneers. "But you just had to go and play white knight on national TV."

Yao Shen is confused. "Is this because of the hiatus, your salaries shouldn't have--"

She cuts him off with a snort. "It's not because of that. But you still forgot to take into account how the lives of others would be affected by your actions."

Bi Jialu tries to dry her eyes, but the tears keep falling despite her attempts. "One of those men who was arrested, owned a lot of factories in the countryside. One of those factories was in my hometown, and it employed my parents, my elder brother, and my three uncles."

Yao Shen goes very still.

Bi Jialu sees the moment he understands the implications and smiles triumphantly. "After his arrest, his son inherited the company, but he had no interest in an ironworks factory, so he shut it all down."

She laughs.

"Almost all my family was unemployed from one day to the other, and on the verge of losing their houses, jut because you had to go and defend the honour of some prostitutes whose families didn't even report them missing!"

Yao Shen is stunned silent, he doesn't know what to say to her. His mind is stuck on the image of a single leaf fluttering down into a pond and causing a flood in a nearby village.

It's Xin Hulei who breaks the tense silence with a chuckle. "Why do you think Yao Shen is to blame? Sooner or later the son would have inherited the factory, and his decision would have been the same. Maybe your parents would have been retired by then, but your uncles would still end up unemployed."

Bi Jialu's eyes widen, and then narrow in humiliation, she opens her mouth to retort but Xin Hulei isn't done talking.

"Why not redirect your rage at the man who killed two women just because he could, and who raised a son who thinks that depriving hundreds of people of work is fine, because its too much work?"

"A powerful family like that, what can I do against them?!"

Xin Hulei nods. "So you direct your rage to the people you can reach, you blame the people that have as much to lose as you do. In the meantime, while you, and everyone else who is cruelly exploited by the ones on top, continues to point fingers at everyone else in the gutter, they soar through the skies, triumphant that they have kept the rabble where it belongs."

He gets up from sofa and approaches Bi Jialu with long, measured steps. "They offered you money right? They told you they could pay for your family's debts, give them a stipend to cover their lost salaries, if you'd only do this one little thing..."

Bi Jialu's lower lip trembles. "What was I supposed to do? My family had such high expectation for me, they were so proud that I had a big job in the big city, but what do I do? Besides schedule photoshoots and bring him breakfast?" She starts crying in earnest, her thin shoulders shaking with the strength of her sobs. "I couldn't let them down.....I- I couldn't."