125: Chapter 125 When the Plums Ripen: Childhood Sweetheart Male Lead 3

The night breeze was slightly cool, dispersing the summer heat lingering in the air.

Meng Zhu was driving. Outside the car window, the city's neon lights flashed past like streams of light, casting shifting shadows inside the car.

In the passenger seat, Nan Li was fast asleep, her breathing steady and deep. The streetlights occasionally swept across her flushed cheeks, making him want to pinch them.

But Meng Zhu was in no mood for that right now. He slowed down and turned up the temperature of the car's air conditioning a bit.

The entire world seemed to be reduced to the faint sound of tires rolling over the road and the even breathing of the girl beside him.

On the streets and in the tunnels, the night's light and shadows looked like an oil painting, breathtakingly beautiful.

The bullet comments were busy admiring the view, failing to notice Meng Zhu's unusual behavior.

As Meng Zhu drove, his mind was in a state of turmoil.

Unlike during the previous few movies, Meng Zhu was not thinking about or planning for the future at this moment.

He did not even review the plot.

The reason was that there was actually a huge difference between being the male lead and being a supporting character, and it wasn't just a matter of status.

When the movie first started filming, he had just arrived at Nan Li's small apartment. According to the plot, he was there to pick Nan Li up and take her back to Suzhou, so he should have waited for her at the apartment.

After all, he shouldn't have even known that Nan Li was out having dinner at the time.

But while his character didn't know, Meng Zhu did. Meng Zhu knew the plot, so he was fully aware that Nan Li was currently having dinner with her college classmates.

As a result, intense possessiveness, jealousy, envy, worry, and other emotions instantly surged within him.

These emotions were beyond Meng Zhu's control, hitting him both fiercely and relentlessly.

That desire made Meng Zhu wish he could rush to Nan Li's side immediately and never be apart from her for even a second.

Reflecting on the memories of the original host, they had been inseparable since childhood, but ever since Nan Li started high school, they had spent very little time together.

The bitter forbearance in those memories almost crushed Meng Zhu completely.

It felt like chewing on an unswallowable candle, or being slowly squeezed by airtight walls.

At times, his heart felt as if it were being pricked by countless needles, followed by a sudden, heart-wrenching pain.

This sudden emotional outburst was truly terrifying.

After taking a long time to ease himself, desperately recalling his three wives in his mind and replaying his sweet moments with them over and over again, he finally managed to hold his ground.

The consequence of keeping his composure in front of the bullet comments was that his back was drenched in cold sweat and his entire body felt numb.

Meng Zhu had long known that the male leads in these female-oriented movies were not normal people; they could endure what ordinary people could not.

A classic example was that most male leads were completely infatuated.

They would sacrifice their lives for their wives—after all, they didn't know they were acting, so if they died, they were truly dead.

But compared to death, Meng Zhu only now realized that certain types of forbearance and restraint could make one truly long for death.

Looking closely at the male leads in these movies—with their depression, stomach illnesses, psychological trauma, kidney or heart donations, and extreme humbleness—these were truly things no normal person could do.

Compared to the minor memory implantation when replacing a supporting male character,

after replacing the male lead, those memories felt as if they were truly his own, vivid in every detail and deeply felt.

There was only one answer: the Heavenly Dao's influence or control over the male lead was far greater than its control over supporting characters.

At that moment, it felt as if there were a tiny person inside Meng Zhu's heart, screaming and roaring frantically.

For a moment, it made him feel as if he were about to develop a split personality.

To alleviate those symptoms, he had taken the initiative to alter the opening plot and call Nan Li.

He had to go to her side immediately to find some relief.

He hadn't heard Nan Li's voice on the phone; instead, Lin Xi had answered.

At that moment, Meng Zhu's heart felt like a volcano on the verge of erupting.

He forced himself to stay calm, which was why he had quickly hung up after only uttering the three words, 'Where are you?'

Now in the car, Meng Zhu glanced at Nan Li's sleeping face from time to time, and his state of mind finally began to settle down.

Using the drive home, Meng Zhu began to think deeply about this matter.

Without a doubt, the male lead's years of unrequited love carried an emotional burden that had been borne for too long and was far too heavy.

It would have been better if it had accumulated gradually, but Meng Zhu had suddenly inherited this love all at once.

At first, Meng Zhu even wondered if the original host was a paranoid, yandere man.

But now that he had recovered, he understood that it was his own problem.

If he didn't have his real-world memories, the integration of the male lead's memories would have been seamless and natural.

Precisely because he possessed real-world memories, the original host's memories felt like an inheritance rather than a natural return.

The concentrated outburst of over a decade of bitter unrequited love had almost caused him to fail.

Having figured this out and knowing that the original host wasn't actually a yandere, he realized that this obsessive emotion should gradually settle back to a normal level in the future.

Then there was the second issue: the tiny person in his heart.

The Heavenly Dao's control over the protagonist was clearly much stronger, more meticulous, and pervasive.

At every moment, Meng Zhu felt as if someone were whispering in his ear, telling him exactly what he should and shouldn't do.

He possessed real-world memories and knew he was acting, so it seemed like he could just ignore it.

However, this constant influence was also very terrifying.

This meant that Meng Zhu had to keep his mind absolutely calm at all times in the future, without a single moment of laxity.

Once his emotions took over, he might act on impulse and follow the voice in his heart, thereby making a mistake.

After letting out a long sigh of relief, Meng Zhu made a silent resolution in his heart.

He usually liked to read to accumulate knowledge, and now, psychology books had to be elevated to the highest priority.

Having worked through these key issues, Meng Zhu finally began to think about the future of this movie.

First of all, the difficulty of this movie was much higher than most netizens imagined.

For example, the goal of this movie was like requiring an adoptive older brother to make the younger sister, who had viewed him as her biological brother since childhood, fall in love with him.

That was already extremely difficult, and this movie was even more challenging.

The female lead, Nan Li, was naturally dense when it came to romance, and she didn't even know what her true feelings for the male lead were.

Secondly, she carried psychological trauma, which made her resistant to love and marriage, and terrified of infidelity and separation.

On the contrary, having been pampered by everyone since childhood, she naturally believed that friendship lasted forever and family affection was deep and enduring.

Getting her to fall in love with Meng Zhu was truly no easy task.

Even the battle-hardened Meng Zhu didn't have much confidence this time.

When he agreed to Li Feng back then,

firstly, his options were limited, and choosing another movie might not have been any easier than this one;

secondly, relying on his cheat of possessing memories, he also wanted to take on the challenge.

In the end, he had been too successful for too long and had gotten a bit ahead of himself.

No one knew that on this journey home, Meng Zhu had already developed new insights and experienced new growth.

...

After a while, the two of them finally arrived at the small apartment Nan Li had bought.

Instead of waking her up, Meng Zhu bent down and carried her on his back from her seat again.

The girl's body was very light, carrying a faint scent of alcohol and her own unique fragrance.

She mumbled a few words in a daze, then lay docilely on his back, even finding a comfortable position and rubbing her small head against his cheek repeatedly.

The elevator ascended smoothly and stopped on the 18th floor.

Carrying Nan Li on his back, Meng Zhu walked up to the door. Instead of pulling out a key, he expertly pressed a sequence of numbers on the keypad lock.

With a soft beep, the door opened.

The male lead had been to this place many times, and was even more familiar with it than Nan Li was.

Entering and turning on the lights, carrying her all the way into the bedroom, and then going to pour some water—it was all completely second nature to him.

The moment Nan Li touched the bed, she let out a comfortable hum, rolled over, and wrapped herself in more than half of the blanket like a silkworm cocoon.

Meng Zhu let out a soft laugh and turned to go to the kitchen.

A moment later, he walked back with a glass of warm water and a few hangover pills.

"Zhaoyu, wake up. Take the medicine."

He sat on the edge of the bed and gently patted the girl's shoulder.

"Mmh..."

Nan Li wrinkled her small face, blearily cracking her eyes open. Seeing him, she immediately whined with a hint of a spoiled nasal tone.

"No... Zhaoyu isn't sick... No medicine..."

"Be good, you'll feel better after taking it."

Meng Zhu spoke as if coaxing a child.

"I'll give you a candy after you take it."

"You promised..."

She mumbled indistinctly, propping herself up halfway, and obediently swallowed the pills and water.

Then she tilted her little head up, parting her mouth slightly to say 'Ah~', clearly waiting for her candy.

But those full, glossy lips were more enticing than the most delicious delicacy.

Meng Zhu tried his best to suppress the surging emotions in his heart, his gaze instantly turning incredibly deep.

Fortunately, when he was a general in his past life, he had trained diligently every day, giving him excellent willpower.