Hook Fingers

Xu Zhitong slept all the way to the hotel.

When she got out of the car, she still felt half-asleep. She pulled up her hoodie and dazedly trailed behind Lin Yang.

While vaguely listening to Lin Yang check them in, she gradually woke up in the hotel lobby’s unfamiliar fragrance and looked around.

It was nearly noon. A few people were scattered around the lobby.

Someone seemed to be looking over here.

Xu Zhitong didn’t pay much attention. She pushed her suitcase and followed Lin Yang into the elevator.

The elevator stopped on an upper floor. Lin Yang swiped the card and led her into the room. It was exceptionally large, a two-bedroom suite in a lavish European style, with a 270-degree viewing balcony.

Xu Zhitong looked at the two opposite bedroom doors and felt a faint sense of disappointment.

What kind of bizarre room layout was this?

Besides Lin Yang, would anyone really book a two-bedroom suite like this?

Even if Lin Yang still didn’t acknowledge their relationship and only treated her like a best friend, they could still sleep in the same bed.

It’s not like she was really going to do anything to Lin Yang right now.

Xu Zhitong grew increasingly aggrieved, grinding her teeth. She had no status, no label, no claim to anything...

After hanging up their clothes in the walk-in closet, Lin Yang touched up her makeup too. The two of them ate lunch at the hotel, and then the staff from Yinfu came to pick them up.

In the afternoon, they were going to the recording studio to record.

The nanny van was waiting in the parking lot. In the elevator lobby stood a young woman with her hair in a bun. When she saw them, her eyes lit up behind her glasses.

“Ah, Teacher SleepyBlue, over here.”

She showed them her work badge and introduced herself. “Hello, I’m the liaison in charge of coordinating with you this time. My name is Xiao Lou; just call me Xiao Lou.”

She took the two of them onto the nanny van and handed them mineral water from the front passenger seat. “Teacher Shen finished recording this morning. You can relax and record this afternoon; we have all the time in the world.”

Teacher Shen was the Peking opera performer.

Xu Zhitong said thanks, then conscientiously unscrewed the first bottle of water and handed it to Lin Yang.

Lin Yang’s expression was faint; with outsiders around, she was always like this. She also said thank you.

Xiao Lou looked at them and smiled. “You’re both too polite.”

Xu Zhitong suddenly realized she had somehow also become someone people called Teacher.

It felt like not long ago, “teacher” was still the title of someone who made her stand at the back of the classroom as punishment.

But she probably understood; people like Xiao Lou, from within the entertainment industry, called everyone Teacher. She could only accept the title with a slightly embarrassed face.

Xiao Lou went over the key points for the next two days. After recording today, they would have time in the next two days to walk through the stage once. Tomorrow she and Teacher Shen were invited to dinner, and in the evening there would be the official rehearsal...

Lin Yang had already told her all this, so Xu Zhitong just nodded and said okay.

After they finished talking, the vehicle moved smoothly along the road. There was little sound. Xiao Lou lowered her head and started typing on her phone.

Xu Zhitong couldn’t look at her own phone, and she couldn’t hold Lin Yang’s hand in front of outsiders either. For a moment, she shifted her attention to Xiao Lou.

She asked, “Xiao... Lou, how old are you?”

Saying those two words still felt a little difficult. In her own mind, she wasn’t even twenty-five yet, so she couldn’t quite bring herself to say the word “Xiao” to a girl who looked like she had just graduated from college.

Xiao Lou quickly put down her phone, turned around, and smiled. “I’m twenty-three.”

Xu Zhitong thought that was about right and asked, “So you came to do liaison work right after graduation?”

Xiao Lou nodded. “Mm, yes.”

Xu Zhitong said, “Wow, that’s amazing. Isn’t it tiring? For jobs like this, you guys usually...”

She ended up chatting back and forth with Xiao Lou. She was very curious about this kind of behind-the-scenes industry life she had never experienced.

Xiao Lou answered every question and even told her some gossip she’d heard from inside the circle.

Xu Zhitong listened with great interest.

Unfortunately, they soon arrived at the recording studio building. There was an older woman waiting at the entrance. She introduced herself as the program’s producer.

She greeted Xu Zhitong warmly, then turned to Lin Yang, her enthusiasm even greater. “Miss Lin, you traveled all the way from Jiangshi. With such a rushed schedule, you even made the trip yourself. We really feel bad about it.”

Lin Yang nodded. “It’s fine.”

The producer smiled. “Let’s go. Everything’s ready in the studio. Xiao Lou, you can accompany Teacher SleepyBlue to go over the recording. Miss Lin, we’ve prepared a lounge for you. Actually, there’s also a summer concert project...”

She led them inside.

Only then did Xu Zhitong catch on. So this producer was really here for Lin Yang.

She knew it; now that Lin Yang was all grown up, she was impressive. Maybe she was so impressive that even Xu Zhitong herself couldn’t quite reach her anymore.

Walking alongside the producer, Lin Yang fell half a step behind. She turned her head and glanced at Xu Zhitong, her expression still as calm and composed as when she spoke to outsiders.

Perhaps she saw that Xu Zhitong looked a little wronged, because she gave a very faint smile and reached out to hook Xu Zhitong’s finger.

Xu Zhitong: !

Her face instantly heated up. Her mind, which had been wandering all over the place, went completely blank.

By the time they reached the studio door, they had to split up.

Xu Zhitong asked softly, “Will you come over later?”

Lin Yang said, “Mm, I’ll come once I’m done talking.”

Xiao Lou took Xu Zhitong to the recording booth. The recording engineer was very professional and meticulous. Perhaps because he knew she had no experience, he first went over the precautions once, then handed her the lyrics with the key points marked out.

Xiao Lou quietly asked from the side, “Teacher SleepyBlue, what would you like to drink? There’s honey water and chrysanthemum tea here. There are also yogurt and milk tea places nearby.”

“I’ll just have honey water,” Xu Zhitong said. “And another cup of milk tea, please; half sugar, warm.”

Xiao Lou’s eyes somehow brightened a little. “Okay, I’ll bring it over later.”

Xu Zhitong followed the recording engineer through the breathing points and stressed syllables a few times, then went into the booth and started recording.

Halfway through, she saw a slender, tall figure appear in the control room outside the observation window.

Lin Yang was standing there with the milk tea in her hand, watching her seriously.

Xu Zhitong pressed her headphones, her eyes lighting up. She waved at Lin Yang.

Too energetically.

Lin Yang looked helpless and picked up the intercom. “Focus on your recording.”

The recording went exceptionally smoothly. Afterward, the engineer escorted them out and said he hadn’t seen a singer this gifted on a first recording in a long time.

Xu Zhitong thought to herself that she hardly deserved to be called a singer, but she just squinted and smiled without refuting him. She figured it must be because of Lin Yang’s face.

With Lin Yang leading the way, she got to enjoy the benefit too.

After recording, Xiao Lou took them to the gala’s filming venue. The preparations were still underway one day in advance, and there were many staff members busy setting up equipment, clanking and rattling all around.

On the large stage, staff members were affixing the corresponding name labels and checking the camera positions and lighting effects in front of the lens.

Xiao Lou called over the on-site staff and took Xu Zhitong through the stage a few times.

There wasn’t really much to walk through. Xu Zhitong only needed to stand at fixed point A when the lights went dark, move to fixed point B after the chorus, sing a duet while making eye contact with the Peking opera teacher, then walk together to fixed point C and finish the whole song.

The only thing she needed to pay attention to was finding the camera.

But then the director said their live-switching team was experienced, so even if she looked at the wrong camera, they’d cut to the right one in a second.

Xu Zhitong immediately nodded and said they’d worked hard.

Only after arriving at the set for this program did she feel less nervous.

Everyone was busy with their own tasks, and everything had a fixed process.

On the surface, she seemed like the main character, but in reality she wasn’t involved that much.

Still, it was lively, and everything felt fresh and fun.

After stepping down from the stage, Xu Zhitong tested the microphone with the stage mic.

It was a little harder than singing on livestream, because the sound card for the stream had tuning built in, while the microphone here sounded thinner.

But it was still pretty good. After adjusting with the sound engineer a few times, Xu Zhitong sang through a full take and turned to ask Lin Yang, “How is it?”

Lin Yang said, “Very good. As long as you don’t get so nervous tomorrow that your voice trembles, we can have the sound engineer lower your backing track.”

Xu Zhitong was instantly delighted. She wanted to lean over and tug Lin Yang’s hand for praise, but there were too many people around, so she could only look at her with shining eyes.

They were busy until almost five before finishing.

Yu Dudu sent a message on WeChat in the afternoon saying she had booked a restaurant and would treat the two of them to dinner that night.

Xu Zhitong asked Lin Yang for her opinion, and Lin Yang agreed.

On the way back to the hotel, Xu Zhitong lay in the back seat, stretching and feeling a little sleepy.

She had been cooped up at home for too long and rarely went out. Suddenly being outside, she was thrown straight into a nonstop schedule, so naturally she was tired.

Lin Yang sat beside her and looked at her phone.

Her assistant sent over a post, saying that while monitoring public sentiment, they had come across a RedNote post that seemed to be talking about Xu Zhitong.

[LOL, a friend in the industry shared a CP she’s been shipping lately. My CP is real, hehehe]

When she clicked in, there were a few hundred likes and several dozen comments. The traffic hadn’t really picked up yet.

The original poster had screenshots of chats with her friend, with important names blurred out.

：I’m downstairs now 111

OP：Ahhh I’m nervous

OP：Real-time report! ：Whoa, I picked them up. [blurred] is so cool, but when she talks she’s very well-behaved and polite; she feels younger than me

：But I’ve got some bad news...

：There’s a beautiful older sister beside her. About the same age, the kind of face that could be a celebrity. She’s just a little cold... I don’t know who she is, but she definitely isn’t an assistant. The bag on her wrist is over 300k

：[blurred] even helped her carry the bag and unscrew the water

OP：Huh?!!

OP：Sister, can you sneak a photo? I want to see who it is [crying]

：Wait, she’s coming over to talk to me

：Feels like a girlfriend. When [blurred] was chatting with me, she kept turning to look at her

：Sorry, these two are too perfect. Do you think they’d open OF? I want to buy...

OP：Huh??

OP：You are not allowed to ship them, I’m done for!

：Oh, it seems like a sugar daddy

：That scared me. The big boss came over to pick her up, and they’re going off to talk privately

：Only the surname was called, so I can’t tell if it’s the [blurred] you mentioned before

：I’ll go ask the manager later

OP：Dead. Do not disturb

：I asked [blurred] what she wanted to drink; she told me to order milk tea for that sister, warm, half sugar

：The sister came over and picked up the milk tea right away, and even said thank you to me

：Yeah, they’ve probably been together a long time. [blurred] is so cute; I want to stay on-site and keep shipping

OP：If you don’t find out, I really will jump

OP：I’m begging you

：The manager said it’s [blurred]

：Is it the one you said?

OP：? x10

OP：I’m going to lose it!

OP：Ber

OP：Ahhhhhhhhh

OP：Holy crap, yes, yes, it’s her!

OP：Is she very pretty? Very young? ：Feels about the same age as [blurred], prettier than any celebrity I’ve handled, the kind with real presence. Even my big boss is being very polite to her...

OP：Sis, you’re my sister now, send me a picture!

：No way. The manager said her background is very powerful, and I signed an NDA

：I’m just telling you verbally

：And there’s another bit of sugar. When they went in just now, the manager was about to pull the sister away, and the sister secretly hooked her finger with [blurred]’s hand. Then the two of them whispered to each other

：Ship it

OP：Thank you, thank you, thank you

OP：Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you

OP：From now on, you’re my mom

：Get lost

The screenshot ended there. The poster said her friend had gone back to work, and she was currently on her knees begging for more fresh sugar from every angle.

Some people in the comments were guessing who it was, but for the time being, no one guessed it was a streamer.

Everyone was guessing which celebrity would be so bold as to bring their sugar daddy’s girlfriend to work.

The original poster never responded, so some people thought it was a fake post and that she was just writing shipping fiction based on chat logs.

They said, how could anyone possibly ship a sugar daddy and a celebrity?

The poster angrily replied: You just don’t understand!!!

Author’s Note:

Tongzi: Busy eating soft rice... do not disturb...

I saw a chat log from an industry friend complaining about celebrities, and Xiao Lou’s setup is also that she’s just graduated and hasn’t worked long, so don’t nitpick too much [pitiful]

TL Note:

nanny van (保姆车) is the luxury van celebrities use to travel, rest, and get ready between jobs.

OF = OnlyFans

fresh sugar (糖／新糖) means cute or romantic moments that give fans something to ship.

eat soft rice (吃软饭) means living off a partner’s money.