Completely unaware that she had once again become a target, Laila had been staying at home with little Eli ever since the Oscars ended.
Children grow up so fast, and Eli was an especially easy baby to take care of. Give him a toy, and he could happily play with it for a long time. Unless he was hungry or needed to pee, he would only make a soft "hmph hmph" sound to call for someone. As for crying? Don't even joke about it—he didn't even know what crying was.
Not only was it rare to see a smile on his face, but crying was just as uncommon. Even if someone deliberately took away his favorite toy, his eyes would only brim with tears that stubbornly refused to fall. He would just stare angrily at the "culprit" with his big, round eyes. If an adult did that, it might be intimidating. But coming from a tiny baby, all it did was make people want to pinch his soft, chubby cheeks—there was absolutely nothing scary about it.
With such an easy baby, Laila was quite happy. The free time allowed her to keep working on her scripts and storyboards. Immersing herself in film work every day, life couldn't be sweeter.
But perhaps even the Western God thought that everyone else had their troubles, and Laila, being the only one so blissfully happy, was just too eye-catching. So, fate decided to let the goddess of misfortune give her a cold, sinister smile…
On a Sunday morning, Laila was still sleeping when the shrill ring of the phone woke her up.
"This is Laila," she answered in a groggy, just-awake voice. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the clock on the dresser read just after five. If she hadn't seen that it was her mother calling, she would have hung up without hesitation.
"Laila, did you check your FB?" Janet's voice came through as expected, but unlike her usual tone, it was brimming with fury.
Laila yawned, patting Roy—who had been woken up—so he would go back to sleep. "Mom, do you know what time it is? I'm not even up yet; why would I check FB?"
Last night, she had come up with a great new shot idea and had been thinking about how to integrate it, so she had gone to bed late. Being woken up so early left her head in a fog.
"Then open it right now! I swear, after seeing what some people are saying, I'm going to explode!"
Laila chuckled. "Mom, let people say whatever they want. You can't stop them. And this is the internet—no one knows who's who, they'll say whatever they like."
"Go look first! If you aren't furious after seeing it, I'll… I'll admit defeat!" Janet shouted angrily.
"Alright, it's turning on," Laila replied, knowing all too well that arguing with her mother was a battle she'd never win. She had already started booting up her laptop the moment Janet mentioned FB.
Under professional management, FB had already become as influential as it was in her previous life. Thanks to some of her own experience, various new features have been added, significantly improving the user experience and making more and more people addicted to it.
As soon as she opened the familiar logo, she was startled by the flood of notifications. She always got a lot of messages, but it had never been so many that her computer nearly froze.
It seemed her mother wasn't wrong—something had happened.
But when she saw countless comforting comments under her account, she felt completely lost.
"Laila, I'll always support you, no matter what happens. You'll always be my favorite director!"
"Don't let setbacks defeat you. We're always on your side!"
"I can't believe you went through something like that, Laila. Please don't give up on hope or filmmaking!"
Laila was utterly baffled. What exactly had happened to her? Why was she the only one who didn't know?
After flipping through several pages of supportive messages, her mind finally cleared, and she began piecing together the problem from fragments in the comments.
Following the clues they mentioned, she searched online and finally found the "truth" behind the incident.
It all started with a casual post admiring Laila and Roy's loving relationship. The author, apparently a young woman, gushed about wanting a boyfriend who loved her as deeply as Roy loved Laila.
Underneath her post, many of her friends had left teasing or blessing comments—until an abrupt, jarring comment appeared.
"Do you think they're that happy? If they were truly happy, then why has no one ever seen a photo of their child all this time? The truth is that the child isn't even Roy's! They're hiding the kid on purpose to keep outsiders from finding out, probably using the excuse of 'protecting the child from harassment'!"
Naturally, saying this in front of Laila and Roy's fans was like tossing a grenade.
"Everyone in the world knows how much Laila and Roy love each other! Besides, Laila is famously anti-social—aside from film-related events and a few charity occasions, you never see her anywhere. How could she have had someone else's child?!"
"Exactly! If you're going to say that, show us proof!"
"Don't think you can just talk nonsense online without consequences!"
Under this barrage of attacks, a typical troll might have run away. But instead of fleeing, this person provided "evidence."
"Don't be so naive. Laila and Roy were together for so many years and never had plans for a child. Then, after coming back from South Africa, she suddenly got pregnant? Did you all forget what happened to her in South Africa?"
"That's right! She was kidnapped! Do you think those kidnappers treated someone like her as just a regular hostage? You saw how she came back and continued filming—that means she wasn't harmed during captivity."
"So why would those kidnappers be so 'kind' to her? There's only one answer! She became their woman! And the child was conceived during that time! Do the math—you'll see it lines up!"
That explosive accusation stunned everyone who read it. Some people even started counting the months on their fingers and realized that the child was likely conceived in South Africa. And in her film, there was no sign of Roy being there!
"Could it be that the baby is mixed race? That it would be obvious at a glance, so they've been hiding the child all this time?" Someone finally voiced this uneasy speculation after the initial shock.
From there, the manipulated public opinion spiraled into bizarre territory: Laila being violated by the kidnappers, becoming pregnant, and then giving birth…
Oh God, the more they thought about it, the more horrifying it sounded!
"Who the hell is spreading this garbage?!"
Half-awake, Roy leaned over when he saw Laila staring at the screen. What he saw was an overwhelming mass of nonsense and filth.