I Ran His Biggest Hate Account, Then Became His Live-In Assistant novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Roast on the Steps
A temp worker posts his nastiest roast of a top actor while climbing the steps of his new client's house, and the actor opens the door reading the same post; he signs on as the live-in assistant, and that night the actor DMs the hate page.
Qin Yao typed the last word of his roast with his thumb while climbing the third stone step.
"Episode three of The Long Snow Between Us. Xie Lanzhou stares into the distance for ninety seconds. Is he grieving, or reading the lunch menu?"
He hit post, and the little wheel began to spin.
The red lacquered door in front of him swung open before he could knock.
A tall man stood in the doorway with his head bent over a phone, and the screen showed Yao's post.
Yao knew the face before he understood what he was looking at.
It was the face from the bus-stop ads and the face from forty thousand screenshots.
It was the face he had made fun of every single day for two years.
Xie Lanzhou scrolled down to the comments, and one corner of his mouth moved.
Then it went flat again, and he lifted his eyes.
"Qin Yao?" His voice was low and cool, the one from the dramas. "From Qingtian Staffing?"
"That's me," Yao said, an octave too high.
The agency had given him a street name, a time and the words "high-profile client, NDA at the door."
Nobody had said whose door.
Yao's phone buzzed in his hand with the first thousand likes.
Lanzhou's phone buzzed too, and he glanced at it before he put it in his pocket.
"Come in," he said. "It's cold."
The courtyard was swept clean, with one persimmon tree holding the last orange fruit of the year.
Yao walked through it.
In the north room, a woman in a black blazer sat behind a stack of paper with a phone at each ear.
"Hu Qiaoling," she said, without hanging up. "I'm his manager. Sit."
She slid a contract across the table.
"Four months, live-in. Twelve hours on call and you eat when he eats."
"The pay is three times what your agency gave you," she went on. "Four assistants have quit in two months."
"Why did they quit?" Yao asked.
"They said he was strange." She tapped a line. "Clause three. You never post, film or describe the client online. Not ever."
Yao read the clause twice.
He pictured his page: a cartoon policeman holding a magnifying glass, with two million followers underneath.
He needed to stand up and leave.
His phone lit with a message from his landlord.
"Tomorrow, or I change the lock. Two months, Qin Yao."
He looked up and found that Lanzhou had sat down across from him, close, with one long hand resting on the table.
"Do you follow me online?" Lanzhou asked.
"Like everybody," Yao said carefully.
"Opinions?"
"Your face is very expensive."
"I meant my acting."
The room went still, and Hu Qiaoling stopped talking into both phones.
Lanzhou was watching him with an odd, hungry attention.
Yao's mouth opened before his brain could stop it.
"You hold your breath right before the sad parts."
Lanzhou did not move.
"It makes your shoulders go up," Yao said. "Then the tears come out, but it already looks like a plan."
"Everyone says that?"
"Everyone I've asked."
Lanzhou nodded slowly.
Hu coughed, and Yao picked up the pen.
He knew exactly what he was doing and signed anyway.
He signed his full name at the bottom, Qin Yao, in letters that shook.
Lanzhou walked him to a small room in the east wing, with a narrow bed, a desk and a radiator that knocked.
He stopped in the doorway, which made the doorway very small.
His arm went up and rested on the frame above Yao's head, and Yao could smell soap on him.
"You're shorter than your voice," Lanzhou said.
"You're warmer than your face," Yao shot back.
The dimple appeared in Lanzhou's left cheek for one second, and it was a crime.
"Dinner is at eight," Lanzhou said. "Don't be late, Assistant Qin."
He left.
Yao sat on the bed and put his face in his hands.
He ate noodles in the kitchen at eight, with Lanzhou across the table not looking at him.
Lanzhou ate with perfect manners, and every few minutes his eyes dropped to his phone.
Yao made himself not look at the screen.
At midnight, he lay in the narrow bed with the blanket over his head and the burner phone glowing under it.
His post had two hundred thousand likes.
The comments were a riot of cops, magnifying glasses and shouting.
"Citizens, lunch menu confirmed," said the top one.
He started to grin.
Then a new message dropped into the page's inbox, from an account with a blue verified tick.
The name was Xie Lanzhou.
The message was one line long.
"I know you're close. Tell me what I did wrong."
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