Book 1: She Becomes Glamorous After the Engagement Annulment

Chapter 36

Chapter 106: Sweetcherry Is Trending~

The building management?

They did indeed come to offer him birthday wishes every year, but that was usually in the evening. Surely they wouldn’t intrude upon them at noon, right?

Besides, it was almost twelve. Why wasn’t Ms. Smith here yet?

Was she not intending to come anymore?

The thought caused a wave of restless irritability to suddenly well up in Justin and he stood up abruptly. His deep-set eyes stared hard at the door and the beauty mark at the corner of his eye flashed with frosty displeasure.

At the sight, Chester, who was playing games on his cell phone, asked, “Are you waiting for someone, Justin?”

“No, I’m not,” replied Justin, who denied it without even a second thought.

He had given the woman an opportunity to get close to him, but she hadn’t seized it. It was her loss. What did it have to do with him?

That woman was obviously the one in love with him, but why was he instead the one feeling insecure now?

Justin was stunned.

At the door, a smile formed on Tina’s face when she overheard their conversation.

She had really thought that Mr. Hunt had invited her over when she saw Nora at the door just now. From the look of things now though, that wasn’t the case. She must have heard from somewhere that it was Mr. Hunt’s birthday and specially came to appeal to him!

How shameless.

How dare she set her sights on Mr. Hunt when she already had a kid!

In that case, she would make it such that she couldn’t even get past the door!

As soon as the thought formed, Pete ran out of his room and said, “Daddy, I heard that you refused to let Mommy in?”

Justin’s eyes darkened at once. As if he had suddenly realized something, he strode toward the door.

He abruptly pulled the door open, revealing a bored Nora outside. The empty-handed woman looked at him lazily, her voice low and leisurely as she asked, “I heard it’s not convenient for you to host female guests today, Mr. Hunt?”

For some reason, Justin felt a slight tremor in his heart the instant he saw her, and his unhappiness from just now disappeared without a trace.

A smile appeared on his face and he replied, “It is indeed inconvenient to host other female guests because we’re expecting a special little female guest today”

He tore his gaze away from Nora and looked at the little fellow next to her, upon which the corners of his lips started to spasm.

Cherry’s face had been painted dramatically to look like a clown. The area around her eyes was painted black and lipstick stretched out from the corners of her mouth.

The child’s original appearance wasn’t distinguishable, but she nevertheless still looked cute.

The little fellow’s big eyes were filled with grievances. She pointed at Tina and said, “But that middle-aged woman said she’s not letting us in!”

Justin frowned and looked at Tina.

Tina was dumbfounded.

She clenched her fists tightly. She hadn’t expected that the Smith woman had already won over the little mister!

With an awful look on her face, she said awkwardly, “Mr. Hunt, I wasn’t lying to you on purpose. It’s because you guys said just now that it’s inconvenient for you to host female guests, so I misunderstood! As for saying that it was building management staff…”

She looked at Nora, sighed, and said, “Mr. Hunt hates women coming to his place without his consent the most. I was afraid that he would get mad at you if he knew you were here, so I told a white lie. But as it turns out, he had invited you. I didn’t mean to overreact!”

“…”

Nora couldn’t help but let out a ‘tsk’ at her explanation.

Just look at that fake and manipulative way of speech; she could make even lies sound like the truth. The corners of Nora’s lips turned upwards and she said, “Am I supposed to thank you, then?”

“No, it’s fine.” Tina smiled and said, “After all, I was the one who made a mistake. Fortunately, I didn’t cause any misunderstandings.

Nora was about to reply when a voice reached them. “You sure know how to make excuses for yourself, Ms. York! You’re obviously trying to hog Mr. Hunt by driving other women away and allowing only yourself to stay. Do you think no one can tell that you like Mr. Hunt?”

Tina’s expression instantly changed dramatically. “No, I wasn’t. I…”

Nora, “?”

Why did that annoying voice sound kinda familiar?

She looked over to see someone standing in front of her and smiling at her. “We meet again, Ms. Smith!”

Nora was a little taken aback. “Who are you?”

The corners of the man’s lips spasmed a little. “Your memory isn’t very good, Ms. Smith. We met in California. I’m Lawrence Zimmer, Mr. Hunt’s executive assistant!”

Nora asked, “Why have you become so tanned?”

Lawrence, “??”

Who wouldn’t become tanned after being thrown into the tropics for half a month? Let’s not expose people leading a hard life, please!

However, he clearly remembered why he had been thrown into the tropics, so he tried his best to force an ingratiating smile.

Nora said, “Please don’t smile. Your face looks even more tanned when contrasted with your teeth.”

Lawrence, “…”

The few of them walked into the room as they chatted.

Seeing that they were no longer paying any more attention to her, Tina took a deep breath and followed after them. However, when she reached the door, Lawrence stopped in his tracks, looked back at her, and said, “Ms. York, it’s Mr. Hunt’s birthday, so it’s inconvenient for us to host female guests today.”

After saying that, he slammed the door shut with a loud bang.

Tina, “!!”

She felt as if someone had just given her a few tight slaps across her cheek! She gritted her teeth. It was all because of Nora that she was shut out!

However, the people inside the villa were completely unaware of how angry Tina was outside the door.

Nora spotted the birthday card on the coffee table the moment she entered. She immediately picked it up and asked, “Is this the birthday card that your son made for you?”

Pete, who was staring at his sister’s strange clown makeup, was bewildered.

He looked at the birthday card in silence and then at Justin. At once, he saw the tyrant giving him a long look before he replied, “Yes.”

Pete, “…”

Nora looked at the birthday card again and again before she finally put it down reluctantly. Her son was the sweetest after all! Look at that stinky little Cherry!

All she had was just a crazy bout of flattery!

To that, Cherry would like to express that this was unfair!

After having lunch at the Hunt's, Cherry finally successfully gave Justin the birthday gift she had prepared—a crazy bout of flattery. Nora then took Cherry back home.

After the two of them left, Pete finally picked up the birthday card, handed it to Justin, and commented disdainfully, “Daddy, your handwriting is too ugly!”

Justin, “…”

That was him deliberately imitating Pete’s handwriting with his left hand!!

Did Ms. Smith forget to give him a birthday gift today though?

He entered the study. Sean and Lawrence followed after him.

Sean said, “Your uncle bribed people to kidnap Pete again. They supposedly even gave them photos this time.”

Photos??!!

Justin frowned. “Nothing about Pete must be leaked!”

Sean nodded. “Yes, sir!”

Justin instructed, “Create a screening system. This way, if photos of Pete surface anywhere on the Internet, we’ll be notified right away!”

This was the only way they could strictly prevent information on Pete from being leaked!

Sean replied, “Yes, sir!”

At the same time at the live-stream platform’s studio.

The person-in-charge of the gaming channels said excitedly to the supervisor, “sweetcherry really lives up to expectations! This is just her fourth face-off, but she’s already trending!!”

Chapter 107: Little Cherry Is Famous Now!

The supervisor was a little taken aback to hear that. “How come?”

sweetcherry wasn’t a huge celebrity. It was a little hard for even the big-name live-streamers on their platform to trend on social media, let alone sweetcherry when she was only in the top 80?

The supervisor picked up his cell phone. At once, he noticed that a hashtag, #whoselittleprincessisthat, was actually trending at 49th place.

Although it wasn’t ranked very high, for someone like sweetcherry who only had 250,000 followers, the number of engagements it had was very impressive.

One must admit that sweetcherry’s ability to attract followers was superb. They didn’t even promote her much, yet she had already gained 50,000 followers on her own just by relying on the face-off contest’s popularity and the way she dissed people without repeating any of the jokes.

Her follower count in the app had been visibly increasing ever since she started to trend.

The supervisor checked the hashtag. Right away, he saw that more than 100,000 people had actually started to follow the keyword ‘sweetcherry’.

One of the top posts under the hashtag

#whoselittleprincessisthat was:

“Make no mistake, Sweetcherry is definitely a little princess from a wealthy family!

“To be honest, you can tell just by the way she speaks! In one of her game rounds, she said to a teammate, ‘Why is your horse slower than even my Whitey?’ A fan then asked who Whitey was, to which she replied, ‘My little pony, of course. It’s currently in the stable. Speaking of which, I kinda miss it!’ Horseback riding is a very expensive sport. Of course, it’s true that anyone who’s rich can take lessons, but! sweetcherry actually has her own little pony! Think about it! Think about it veeery carefully!”

There were almost 10,000 replies to the post.

Everyone became Sherlock Holmes and started to piece together Cherry’s daily life through the bits and pieces of information that she revealed whenever she dissed someone.

After much analysis, everyone finally concluded that sweetcherry was definitely a little princess from a wealthy family!

Otherwise, there was no way a five-year-old would have people like Sponsor Grandpa and Sponsor Daddy tipping them so generously!

Whenever someone who didn’t know what was going on clicked on the trending topic and asked who sweetcherry was, everyone enthusiastically filled them in and even affectionately nicknamed her Sweetie.

The photo featured in the post was a screenshot of her live-stream when she revealed her face.

Although it was blurry, one could still tell at a glance that she looked very sweet and adorable. This gave her even more bonus points!

The supervisor looked through the posts one by one. At once, he said excitedly, “I wanted to keep her low-profile and wait until she got into the top 20 before I start promoting her, but I didn’t expect her fans to make such a good showing. She’s actually become popular on her own! This child is meant to be famous!”

Right after the supervisor said that, the corners of the person-in-charge’s lips spasmed a little. He said, “Sir, she’s in a new trending post.”

The supervisor was surprised.

When he looked at the trending topics again,he saw that a new post had appeared at 45th place and was even showing signs of going further up the rankings. The hashtag was #weonlyhave75milliondollars.

A video of a live-stream was featured in the post.

In sweetcherry’s live-stream, a follower who saw the trending post had asked: ‘Sweetie, are you from a wealthy family?’

The video was of the game. sweetcherry asked, “What’s a wealthy family?”

The follower replied: ‘People who are rich.’

sweetcherry said, “We aren’t rich. Mommy says that we’re very poor. We only have 75 million dollars, so she told me not to overspend. If not, we’ll have to ask my Grand-aunt for money.”

Everyone was utterly bewildered.

‘Only’ 75 million dollars?!?!

Amidst the rows and rows of ‘???’ in the comments, Sponsor Grandpa gave her a tip of 9,999 airplanes. The comment that came together with the tip was bold and capitalized: “Your family is indeed very poor. Buy some clothes for yourself with this.”

Everyone, “!!!”

The big boss was here again!

As a result, #weonlyhave75milliondollars started to trend.

The supervisor’s hands were shaking from excitement.

He looked straight at the person-in-charge and instructed, “Contact the relevant social media platforms and get this post into the top three trending topics!”

The person-in-charge laughed and said, “Got it.”

The bonus that the company got from the big boss’ tip alone was enough for them to put the post into the top three trending topics!

He had a hunch that sweetcherry would definitely be the rage all over the world!

Cherry was in the midst of her live-stream. The only thing she intuitively felt was that she was receiving more and more comments in her live-stream. It was to the extent that she couldn’t even keep up anymore.

Thus, she stopped interacting with the comments and focused on her game instead.

It was only when she glanced at her follower count two hours later when the live-stream ended that she received a huge shock—she had actually gained 500,000 followers in two hours!

On top of that, even though the live-stream had ended, her follower count was still soaring.

Each page refresh saw an increase of a few thousand followers. She swallowed hard. She had a bad feeling about this.

If she told Mommy about this, Mommy definitely won’t let her live-stream anymore!

But Sponsor Grandpa was waiting for her every day…

Little Cherry made a big decision at this moment —she wouldn’t tell anyone about this. After all, her face wasn’t shown during the live-streams, so no one knew what she looked like, right?

Cherry, who wasn’t on any social media platforms, was completely unaware that one could replay live-streams, let alone the fact that she had already gone viral.

In the study at the Hunt's villa.

The psychiatrist placed two pill bottles in front of Justin and said, “Let him take one pill a day for this one, and two a day for this one, Mr. Hunt. I’ve made these pills for mental disorders look like vitamins. Have Pete take them for a while.”

Justin stared at the two pill bottles.

To be honest, he had wanted to take it slow. After all, Pete’s ‘condition’ had improved after they returned to New York. In fact, he hadn’t had any relapses for a while.

However, his personalities were starting to switch back and forth frequently again during the past few days…

Yes, that’s right. The psychiatrist had re-diagnosed him after Justin told him about Pete’s behavior. Children with mild autism weren’t very mentally stable after all.

Therefore, the psychiatrist had made a bold deduction—Pete had schizophrenia!

One of his personalities was a boy.

The other was a little princess.

After some discussion between the two, they decided to try putting him on medication.

However, it was imperative that patients with such disorders not be resistant to treatment, so the psychiatrist came up with a solution to disguise the pills as vitamins and have Pete take them unknowingly.

This way, everything would be fine!

Justin took the bottles and nodded.

After the psychiatrist left, he walked out of the study to see the nanny sorting out the gifts he had received. At the sight of him, the nanny said, “Mr. Hunt, this watch is from Mr. Chester.This is from Mr. Sean, and this is from Mr. Lawrence. There’s also this—it’s a scarf from Ms. York…”

Justin frowned and said, “Put everything in the storage room. As for the scarf… It’s getting cold. You can wear it when you go out for groceries!”

A troubled Justin stood in place after the nanny left. What could he do to remind Ms. Smith that she had forgotten his gift?

While thinking, he went to Pete’s room, placed the two pill bottles on his desk, and said, “These are vitamins. Remember to take them every day.”

Chapter 108: Daddy, Are You Awake

Night had fallen.

The little Pete was currently reading at the big desk.Upon hearing what Justin said, he looked up from the book silently and glanced at the bottles. He stretched out his arms, opened the bottles, and took a couple of looks at it.

Then, he said, “I’m not taking them.”

Justin replied, “…These vitamins are nutrition supplements. You have to take them.”

Pete fell silent for a moment before he asked, “Can they boost brainpower?”

“Probably?”

As soon as he said that, Pete pushed the bottles to him and said, “You’ll need them very much, then.”

Justin, “?”

His expression instantly darkened and he said sarcastically, “Peter! Hunt! I have an IQ of 301!”

301 was the highest IQ among human beings thus far!

It was just that he was a low-key person who never behaved ostentatiously. Neither had the test results ever been publicly announced.

Pete, however, glanced at him disdainfully and said, “It’s said that people with high IQs have low EQs. True enough, you’re really very stupid. It’s been so long, yet you haven’t landed Mommy yet.”

They were supposed to be reunited today, but he had displeased Mommy again.

Sigh!

Poor tyrant.

He pushed the two bottles of vitamins toward Justin again and said, “Remember to take them every day. They can boost both your brainpower and EQ.”

“…”

Justin walked out of Pete’s room sullenly. The man, who had always been shrewd and unreadable, often found himself so exasperated by Pete that even his chest hurt.

He couldn’t help but think of the little girl that Ms. Smith had brought today.

To be honest, before meeting Cherry, he had been somewhat averse to her.

He couldn’t help feeling somewhat uncomfortable whenever he thought of how she was a child that the woman had with an i***t. He had thought that even if he did accept Nora, he wouldn’t be able to accept a child that she had with another man.

But for some reason, even though the little fellow had been painted to look like a clown, her voice was so young and tender. She sounded just like how his son did during his occasional bouts of abnormality.

Did all children add a ‘yeah’ at the end of their sentences?

Then, he thought of the unceasing flow of praises that had poured out of her mouth that had been painted big and red. The things she said—such as how he was ‘even more handsome than Prince Charming’ and how his ‘good looks were out of this world’—were clearly very explicit, yet they sounded so nice when she was the one saying them.

After that, the little fellow even naturally held his hand.

Children were all soft and tender. He wanted to push her away, but what he instead did was carefully hold her, for fear that he might accidentally break her hand if he was too forceful.

After comparing them like that, it seemed like a daughter was more lovable after all.

For some inexplicable reason, he was actually starting to miss how Pete had behaved during his relapses.

Justin felt that he must be out of his mind. Otherwise, why would he possibly think of having his son turn into a girl again?

His gaze fell onto the two bottles of ‘vitamins’ that he had brought back with him. In the end, he actually really opened the bottles and took a couple of pills.

He laid down casually after taking the pills. Then, he realized that he had missed Sweetie’s live-stream today.

Come to think of it, there were some who addressed sweetcherry as Cherry, too.

It was actually the same name as the little girl who had come over today…

Why was he thinking of that little girl again?

She was a child that Nora had with another man! Why was he caring about and missing her so much?

Justin felt that he must not have taken enough medicine.

He suppressed his irritability. When he took a look at his cell phone, he accidentally opened his f*******: account and saw that Chester had posted a photo of the gathering that afternoon. The photo was captioned ‘Happy birthday, Justin! Do you like my gift?’

‘Gift’…

Why was it back to the topic of gifts again!

Justin coughed. He had suddenly thought of a way to remind Nora about the gift!

He got up, entered the storage room, and took random photos of a few things in his own collection. The man who had slight obsessive-compulsive disorder arranged the photos into a nine-box grid collage. Then, he wrote: ‘Thanks for the gifts today, everyone.’

After that, he set the post’s privacy level so that it was visible only to Nora.

After posting the photo, he tossed the cell phone aside. The man, who had originally decided not to work that evening so that he could spend some time with his son, couldn’t stop himself from picking up his laptop and using work to distract himself.

A minute later, he picked up his cell phone and glanced at it.

There weren’t any notifications.

Thinking that he wouldn’t get a response so quickly anyway, he put down the phone.

Besides, what was he being so nervous for? He just wanted to give Ms. Smith a reminder and another chance to send her birthday gift for him over, that was all.

For example, she could leave a comment saying ‘Oops, I forgot to pass you the gift’.

Then, he would reply: “It’s okay, I’m on a business trip nearby. Go get it.”

Oh, but it didn’t seem quite right to tell her to go and get it. That would make him seem like he was asking her for a gift.

He would just say that he was on a business trip nearby, then. She would definitely say that she would bring it over.

While thinking about it, another five minutes went by. Justin picked up his cell phone again, but there still weren’t any notifications.

He frowned and stared hard at the phone.

Half an hour later!

He finally got a notification—there was a red ‘1’ at the alerts!

The corners of Justin’s lips curled upward and

his slender and well-defined finger tapped lightly on it. His heart even skipped a beat when he tapped on the notification.

Then, he saw the words ‘Nora Smith likes your post’.

“…”

Justin stared at the notification for a very long time until he was sure that that was all there was. Then, he chucked the phone aside angrily.

_

At 8 pm.

The person-in-charge of the live-stream app called the supervisor who had just knocked off.

He said, “Sir, hurry and take a look at f*******:!”

The supervisor, who had only just got home, suddenly had a bad feeling.

He hurriedly opened f*******: to see that another hashtag, #fantasiaclaimssweetcherryisfake, was now trending.

Fantasia was also a live-streamer registered with them. However, she wasn’t in the gaming channels but in the entertainment channels. She was supposedly a young lady from a wealthy family.

During her live-stream today, someone had asked her about sweetcherry in the comments.

She had immediately replied, “Oh, sweetcherry? Do you guys actually believe that a princess-y background like hers is real? Real wealthy families will never allow their children to show their faces in public like that when they’re just five! I only managed to start live-streaming after fighting with my family for a really long time!”

Her words suggested that sweetcherry’s background was fake and that it was just an image that a management company had created in order to hype her.

Due to sweetcherry’s popularity, the post about what she said had shot straight up to the top 20 trending topics!

The person-in-charge asked nervously, “What should we do about this?”

The supervisor frowned and replied, “I suppose you can also say this is a different way of trying to get popularity. But Fantasia really just leeches off the popularity of whoever is a hot topic at the moment. Issue her a warning.”

The person-in-charge said, “Okay, got it. sweetcherry is the most promising live-streamer in my opinion this year. Besides, she’s only five; the things that children say are the cutest. I mustn’t let Fantasia ruin it.”

Cherry, the topic of their discussion, was currently tucked snugly under her covers at the moment. After sending some stickers to ‘Grandpa’ on f*******: Messenger to maintain their spark of friendship, she said happily, “Mommy, I added Daddy on f*******: today! What should I say to him?”

After thinking, she typed a message seriously: ‘Daddy, are you asleep?’

Her message filled Justin’s mind with question marks right away: ??

He was still in the midst of being mad at Nora for being so heartless, yet she had thrown herself right into the line of fire. Who had given her permission to call him Daddy?

Justin replied coldly: “I’m not your father.”

Then, he blocked Cherry on f*******:.

He wasn’t going to accept the child that woman had with an i***t! Not even if she was free of charge!