["Xixi Is the Best"]: "Why the hell is Lyra Donovan still on the show?"
["Variety Fan Cam"]: "She’s seriously so gross. Can someone please get her off the program already?"
["Veteran Bullet-Comment Critic"]: "Exactly. How did Celebrity and Civilian Love Trip even end up inviting someone like her?"
["Little Baby from Harrison’s House"]: "If my brother Harrison Caldwell weren’t on it, I wouldn’t even bother watching."
["Go Go Brother Harrison"]: "Can she please stop clinging to our guy? Like, has she even looked at herself? Is she worthy of him? Total toad dreaming of swan meat."
...
Lyra Donovan scrolled through the flood of abuse under her Weibo without so much as a flicker in her expression. Comment after comment. Curse after curse. Even the private messages were packed with pure malice. Only after seeing all that did she fully confirm one thing—
She had transmigrated into a novel.
The original book, The Movie Emperor’s Sweetheart, told the story of a bright, kind, upbeat girl who joined a dating variety show as an ordinary guest and successfully paired up with the newly crowned movie emperor, Harrison Caldwell. The two flirted their way through the whole romance show, sweet enough to give people cavities. And in a touching love story like that, of course there had to be a cannon-fodder female side character there to stir things up.
That was exactly why the original host existed.
She was the disposable tool used to push the leads’ romance forward.
The original Lyra was also a civilian guest. The moment she found out that the rising film emperor Harrison Caldwell was joining Celebrity and Civilian Love Trip, she got her family to invest in the production team and squeezed herself into the show as a female guest—specifically, the second female guest.
On the show, she chased Harrison Caldwell like her life depended on it. If anyone got close to him, she’d pop out and sabotage it. If he needed anything, she’d rush over before anyone else could move. A full-on simp, no joke. Netizens dragged her nonstop and called her shameless.
After sorting out the whole mess from beginning to end, Lyra was honestly speechless.
How down bad did the original host have to be?
He was just a newly popular movie emperor, not some once-in-a-millennium miracle. As for this cannon-fodder tool-person role, whoever wanted it could take it.
Lyra kept scrolling through her own Weibo. Every single post was about Harrison Caldwell. Looking at it gave her a headache. She deleted everything in silence, wiped the account clean, then logged it out for good and directly canceled it. After that, she changed to a new phone number and registered a brand-new Weibo account.
Her haters were still gearing up to keep flaming her, only to discover in the very next second that the account had already been deactivated.
People instantly started guessing why Lyra Donovan had deleted her account. Some thought she had quit the dating show. Others guessed she had finally cracked under all the fans’ insults. For a while, every kind of theory was flying around.
Lyra lifted her eyes and looked at herself in the mirror.
She was wearing a black slip dress. Her long black hair hung loose behind her shoulders in an easy, casual fall. Her face was bare, not a trace of makeup on it, yet she was still stunning enough to make people pause. Add in that flawless figure of hers, and the whole picture was honestly unfair.
The corner of Lyra’s lips curled up slightly.
A rich heiress with looks this insane being forced to play foil to some ordinary girl—yeah, only a novel could come up with something that ridiculous.
For some reason, though, Lyra kept feeling that all of this was weirdly familiar, like she had seen it somewhere before. But no matter how much she thought about it, she couldn’t make sense of that feeling. In the end, she could only tell herself to deal with things as they came.
"Lyra, the second trip starts filming next Monday. Gather at the airport at eight o’clock."
Lyra glanced at the message in the group chat where the production team had tagged her, then lowered her eyes and fell into thought.
A little while later, a private message from the director popped up.
"Lyra, why did you deactivate your Weibo? Are you still filming the second part?"
Lyra almost laughed.
She had only canceled one account, and somehow everyone found out this fast.
Love Trip: Celebrities and Civilians was planned for eight episodes total. Every episode was filmed during a trip, using a live broadcast format, with the edited version released afterward at the same time. In other words, every little thing the guests said or did on the show was out there for viewers to watch whenever they wanted.
There were four pairs of guests in total. The four male guests were all from the entertainment industry, while the four female guests were all non-celebrities. The whole thing was basically about building chemistry through travel and seeing who matched with whom. If a pair worked out in the end, great. If not, no big deal.
At this point, the original Lyra Donovan had just finished filming the first episode and had already been dragged online so hard it was brutal.
Lyra Donovan watched the replay of episode one and kept shaking her head. Right from the beginning, when the original host body had shown up in a cheap T-shirt and jeans just to look like some “ordinary girl,” Lyra was already getting secondhand embarrassment and could barely keep watching.
On the show, her beauty level and her simp behavior had practically risen in perfect sync. Still, because she was genuinely pretty, even with the flood of hate coming at her, she had somehow managed to hang on to a tiny group of face fans.
Now she was weighing whether to keep filming. Back when the original host had cried, kicked up a fuss, and begged her way into the production team, her father had only made one request: if she breached the contract, she would pay the penalty herself. Honestly, that man really did know his daughter best. The foresight was insane.
After checking the penalty fee, Lyra was speechless. What had the original host even been thinking when she signed this? The liquidated damages were sky-high. Right now, she had zero interest in burning that much money for nothing. All she wanted was to be a rich, pretty couch potato and coast.
If she kept filming, then the returns from the family’s investment in the show would go to her, and she would also get paid appearance fees. After comparing the pros and cons, Lyra had no choice but to continue on to the second episode.
“Shuyu, are you still going to film episode two? If not, let’s go travel abroad.”
Lyra looked at the WeChat message that had popped up. She thought for a moment, then replied, “I’m going. My family won’t pay my breach fee.”
After sending that reply, Lyra gave the director a clear answer too.
She then glanced through the clothes in the walk-in closet. It wasn’t that they were awful. They just didn’t fit her current vibe at all.
Before transmigrating into the book, she had also been a rich heiress. But her parents had died early, and while still young, she had no choice but to keep studying nonstop, holding tight to the family business they had left behind while working hard to stabilize it and expand it. She’d barely had any extra time to relax, let alone mess around and enjoy life.
Thinking about the filming that would start in a week, and then looking at her slightly dull skin from too much stress, Lyra immediately went to run herself a hot bath.
She got in touch with her private house manager and told her to replace everything in the closet according to her instructions. She also booked a beautician to come to the house. As a hardcore looks person, there was no way she was going to let herself get ugly. Absolutely not.
At the moment, Lyra was the only one living in this villa. The security system was top-tier. The house was two and a half stories with a small garden. The first floor had a gym, kitchen, dining room, and living room. The second floor had her bedroom and walk-in closet. The third floor was a storage room plus a huge terrace. The surroundings were great too. It was inside the Second Ring of Yanjing, which made daily life super convenient. So in a lot of ways, she lived very freely.
Just as Lyra was happily scrolling through the clothing styles her private house manager had sent over and picking looks, a new WeChat message suddenly popped up.
“Lyra Donovan, I hope that during the upcoming recording you won’t do anything excessive and bring a bad influence to everyone. Thank you for your cooperation.”
After Harrison Caldwell learned that Lyra was still filming the second episode, he hesitated for a long time before finally sending that message. The second he thought of her, disgust flashed through his eyes. Girls these days were seriously like lunatics. He really had no idea how the production team picked people.
After reading it, Lyra frowned, then immediately blocked and deleted him in one go. Looking at the situation now, Harrison had no clue how many fans he’d pulled in on the show by riding her storyline, and now he had the nerve to act all self-righteous after benefiting from it. Shameless much.
The memories surfacing in her mind one after another also made her feel that the male lead of this novel was kind of a letdown. Sure, the original host had been wrong to keep pestering him, but all those luxury bags, clothes, shoes, and other expensive gifts she had given him? He had accepted every single one without missing a beat. Acting disgusted while still taking the pricey gifts anyway.
Who gave him the audacity?
She hadn’t even had time yet to deal with all the black material online, and he was already coming to her door first. For example, there were rumors saying Lyra Donovan was money-hungry and had accepted luxury gifts from Best Actor Harrison Caldwell, complete with a photo of Lyra and Harrison both holding a C-brand bag box. But the truth was the exact opposite—it was Harrison who had accepted the bag Lyra gave him.
Once she mentally added up the total value of the gifts Harrison had taken, along with the resources the original host had quietly lined up for him behind the scenes, the whole thing felt ridiculously ironic. Where exactly had Harrison Caldwell gotten the confidence—and the face—to send her a message like that?