Chapter 1

"Are you threatening me?" Walter Casson, the director, roared, his voice shaking.

His grip on the phone was so tight he nearly crushed it.

On the other end of the video call, Nikita Ragland, an actress, leaned languidly against the couch in her hotel suite, posture utterly relaxed.

"No, Mr. Casson."

She let out a light chuckle before going on to say, "I'm simply making my stance clear."

Walter drew a deep breath, forcing down his anger.

"Nikita, we sent you this script a month in advance. If you weren't okay with it, you could have turned it down back then. You had a whole month to go through the script, and you couldn't tell how many kissing scenes there were?"

Nikita shrugged. "I don't read scripts ahead of time. I only look at my lines on the day of filming. That's on you. You knew I had a boyfriend, yet you cast me for a romance series."

Walter was momentarily speechless.

"Nikita, you're an actress. Isn't this literally your job? Besides, am I supposed to know whether or not you have a boyfriend?"

He had poured two years of painstaking effort into preparing for this series. The locations, the lighting, and the schedules of all the other cast members—everything had been locked in tightly.

If the female lead walked out now, the whole production would have to be scrapped and started over.

Nikita said nothing, merely raising an eyebrow.

Walter was silent for a long time before finally speaking.

"Look, we're already halfway through filming. What will people say if you just walk out now? Besides, the cast has already been publicly announced.

"What do you say if we work with camera angles for all the intimate scenes? I guarantee you won't have any physical contact with the male lead at all. Will that work?

Nikita frowned.

"No," she said, a hint of helplessness creeping into her voice. "My boyfriend keeps a tight rein on me. It won't work even if we fake the intimate scenes with camera angles. He said he won't accept me doing any intimate scenes with another man, even if they're fake."

Walter was at his wit's end. "Then what the hell will it take for you to come back?"

Nikita sat up a little straighter, finally adopting a more businesslike demeanor.

"I told you. Either we pause production for a month while I smooth things over with my boyfriend, and once he's happy again, maybe he'll let me do the fake scenes. Or… you replace the male lead with my boyfriend."