Quick Transmigration: The Beautiful Host Wants to Have Both Love and Career

He reached out and ruffled his graying hair, his fingertips touching the lingering scent of jasmine.

"Anyway, I'll have my assistant find out about him tomorrow."

Ran Cang grabbed his wrist with her other hand, the warmth of her palm seeping through his skin:

"Brother, what if it really is him..."

Her unfinished words hung in the air, carried by the evening breeze past the gauze curtains.

Sui Si grasped her hand and felt the fine calluses on her sister's palm—marks that had remained since her rebirth.

"No matter who it is, let's take it one step at a time."

"all will be good."

He spoke softly, but his gaze unconsciously fell back onto the photos on his phone.

The man's cold, handsome features became increasingly blurred in the twilight, much like the figure in his memory who always waited for him to come home in the twilight.

The afternoon sunlight flowed slowly into the studio like melted butter, casting a dim, yellowish shadow behind Sui Si.

He was wearing wired headphones and hunched over the drawing table, a marker between his fingers hovering above the A3 storyboard. He didn't even notice when Ran Cang, carrying a stack of documents, slammed open the glass door.

The pen tip hovered beside the boy's clenched fist in the picture, about to write the sentence "True courage is facing fear," when suddenly a violent tremor startled him, causing him to draw crooked ink marks on the paper.

"Brother! Something terrible has happened!"

Ran Cang's voice sounded like it was on fast-forward, and when the folder in his arms slammed heavily onto the table, the colored pencil case crashed to the ground.

Sui Si's blue light blocking glasses slipped down to the tip of his nose. When he looked up, he saw his sister's flushed face—her eyes were wide open, and her nose was covered in fine sweat, making her look like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.

Her fingernails dug deeply into the edge of the folder, her knuckles turning bluish-white.

"The company is going to sell the animation adaptation rights of 'A Glimmer of Hope' to Wang Daxing!"

"Wang Daxing?"

The marker "plop" fell onto the storyboard, the ink stain spreading across the protagonist's pupils like drops of blood and tears mixed with water.

In an instant, screenshots of trending posts from online forums flashed through Sui Si's mind:

Last year's "Blue XX" animation featured PPT-style fight scenes, with characters' limbs stiff as if they were broken puppets.

There's also a sci-fi short film that was found to have a 90% similarity in storyboarding to a classic domestic animation, with even the transition effects exuding a strong sense of cheapness.

He took off his glasses and rubbed his aching brow vigorously. Suddenly, the cicadas outside the window started chirping sharply and piercingly, as if someone was scraping his eardrums with a steel needle.

"Boss! That old fox is no good!"

The sound of Assistant Li kicking the door open startled the curtains.

His white shirt was wrinkled like a crumpled piece of waste paper, and his crooked tie was stuck on the second button.

The moment the tablet slammed down on the table, a controversial animation was playing on the screen—the female protagonist, dressed in armor, was wielding a sword, but her hair remained strangely stiff, as if it were fixed in place by super glue.

"He wants to use our phenomenally popular IP 'A Glimmer of Hope' to boost the popularity of his own team!"

Xiao Li's spittle splattered on the screen as he said, "We also need to change all the traditional Chinese elements in our designs into futuristic sci-fi elements!"

Ran Cang's phone screen was scrolling rapidly, and the forum page refreshed like a machine gun.

"Look at this!"

She suddenly shoved her phone in front of Sui Si's face. (Hot post title:)

"Wang Daxing drastically alters 'Blood XX,' turning the male lead from a war god into a naive and innocent character?!"

"This is outrageous! The second female lead's independent growth storyline has been changed into the male lead's devoted follower!"

In the video, flames with cheap special effects awkwardly burned at the character's feet, and the barrage of comments flooded in: "Is this a children's play?" "The director must have embezzled all the budget."

Sui Si's gaze was fixed on the storyboard. The boy's tightly pursed lips and slightly hunched back in the drawing were the culmination of three months of his hard work.

I remember that in order to design the scene where this character awakens in the darkness, he spent two consecutive weeks in the library studying existentialist philosophy;

When arguing with the artist team about the character's eye color, they even used Photoshop to create seventeen versions of a comparison image.

"Has the platform agreed to cooperate with him?"

His voice sounded as if it had been pulled from an ice cellar, and his knuckles tapped the table unconsciously, producing a rhythmic yet suppressed sound.

Xiao Li pulled a crumpled contract out of the file folder; the coffee stains on the edges of the pages had oxidized to brown.

"you do not say!

If it weren't for your insistence on adding "the animation script must be reviewed by the original author" to Article 7 of the screenwriting contract,

He jabbed the clause number hard with the tip of his pen, saying, "I'm afraid 'A Glimmer of Hope' is going to become a non-mainstream, low-age animation!"

In the comparison image, Wang Daxing boasts that even the direction of the cracks in the floor tiles in a subway station scene of one of his animations is exactly the same as the storyboard of the comic "A Glimmer of Hope in the Darkness".

"Brother, we can't let him ruin all his hard work!"

Ran Cang suddenly grabbed the character design book from the table and slammed the heavy hardcover book onto the pile of documents, making the pen nib jump.

A draft paper slipped out from between the yellowed pages, densely covered with the protagonist's biography and the arc of psychological transformation repeatedly revised in red pen.

"Look at these annotations!"

Her voice suddenly trembled, and her eyes welled up with tears.

"Those plot lines that metaphorically represent social alienation, the dialogue was revised seven times overnight..."

Sui Si silently picked up the marker, hovered the tip over the blank space of the storyboard for three seconds, and suddenly wrote down the four big characters "Never Compromise".

The sound of the pen tip piercing the paper was crisp and jarring, and the ink seeped along the crack to the next page.

He opened the drawer and took out the contract. He repeatedly highlighted the clause "major adaptations require the author's written consent" in red pen, the ink piling up to form raised lines, like an insurmountable red barrier.

"Contact the legal department and send a lawyer's letter immediately."

He put his glasses back on, and the gaze behind the lenses was so cold it could freeze the air.

"By the way, have the public relations department prepare a statement—I will only give the animation adaptation rights of 'A Glimmer of Hope' to teams that truly respect the work."

"This platform is inhumane; they're trying to treat me like an easy target. They've really given them a lot of face!"

No sooner had he finished speaking than the sunlight outside the window was suddenly swallowed up by dark clouds.

The moment the studio was plunged into shadow, the comic book posters on the wall rustled in the draft, as if the characters in the paintings were also holding their breath for the upcoming battle to defend themselves.

At 2:17 a.m., the air conditioner's outdoor unit hummed softly outside the window, but Sui Si's studio was as bright as day.

The cold light from the computer screen reflected on his flawless white face, and his eyelashes cast delicate shadows under his eyes.

He mechanically refreshed his social media page, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down with the scrolling comments. The coffee in his glass had long since gone cold, a layer of brown grease forming on its surface.

"Sui Si is a greedy guy. The director was willing to buy his copyright, but he still complained and didn't know what was good for him!"

"What's so great about 'A Glimmer of Hope'? It's just hype and attention-grabbing. Does it really think it's some big shot?"

"I heard that Sui Si is hindering the progress of the animation project for his own selfish interests. People like him should be banned!"

Negative reviews flooded in like a tidal wave, with hundreds more appearing with each refresh.

Sui Si's fingers unconsciously rubbed the edge of the keyboard, which had been worn shiny.

Those meticulously crafted plots and painstakingly crafted characters are nothing more than commodities that can be trampled on at will in the eyes of these people.

He recalled how he spent three consecutive months in the library, devouring more than twenty philosophical works, in order to conceive all the settings for "A Glimmer of Hope in the Darkness of the Willows";

I recall repeatedly revising the character designs with the artist team; we drew thirty-seven versions of the protagonist's eyes alone.

Now, these memories are like sharp glass, piercing his heart with pain.

Ran Cang sat on the sofa to the side, her eyes red and swollen like ripe peaches.

Her phone screen kept lighting up with private message notifications.

"Brother, stop watching! These people are completely unreasonable; they're definitely all paid trolls!"

Her voice was choked with sobs, filled with helplessness and anger.

My finger swiped frantically across the screen; for every abusive message I deleted, three new ones popped up.

But Sui Si seemed to be nailed to his chair, still staring intently at the screen, his eyes revealing a sense of unwillingness. Even Ran Cang's tearful attempts to dissuade him failed to rouse him.