Chapter 44

Gu Yanqiu blinked in shock.

Lin Yuewei’s palm was pressed so tightly over her mouth that she could feel the faint pulse beneath the skin around her lips.

There was a force pushing back against her hand; Gu Yanqiu had closed her lips. Lin Yuewei snatched her hand away as if she’d been shocked, and for a moment, she could barely find her voice.

“Sorry.”

Gu Yanqiu, who had just been “molested,” felt her heart thudding hard in her chest. She slowly rolled a bead between her fingers and looked at Lin Yuewei for a long moment before saying calmly, “It’s fine.”

Lin Yuewei turned back toward the window. Gu Yanqiu shifted a little farther away, as if she were afraid of her. Lin Yuewei caught the movement in the car window’s reflection and felt so awkward she could hardly bear to think about it, much less savor it.

That little episode left them silent for the rest of the ride. When they arrived, the waiter led the two of them into a private room one after the other. Lin Yuewei pushed the menu over and asked, “What tea do you drink, Miss Gu?”

Gu Yanqiu remembered the night they had just received their marriage certificate; Lin Yuewei had shown an unusual knowledge of tea then, so she said, “Miss Lin, you really know your stuff. You decide.”

Lin Yuewei asked the waiter for a pot of Biluochun.

Gu Yanqiu flipped through the menu, ordered two dishes, and handed it back. Lin Yuewei added another dish and a soup.

The tea still hadn’t arrived. After they finished ordering, the waiter left, and sitting stiffly alone in the room wasn’t an option. Lin Yuewei, acting as the host of sorts, had to do her duty and couldn’t leave Gu Yanqiu hanging; she racked her brain for something to say.

Ask about family? Her own family was a mess, and one wrong question might step on a landmine.

Ask about work? Tianrui had internal and external troubles, and as the Gu family heir, she was probably already worried enough to have a headache. Besides, her own family was, in a roundabout way, Tianrui’s opponent; talking business over a meal wasn’t appropriate.

Ask about her personal life?

Lin Yuewei narrowed her eyes and made a preliminary decision.

“Miss Gu.”

“Mm?”

The private room door was knocked on, and the waiter came in carrying a pot of Biluochun. Lin Yuewei glanced at the teapot; the material wasn’t top-grade, but it wasn’t terrible either. She turned the two upside-down cups over to warm them, then poured a cup for Gu Yanqiu and nudged it over with two fingers resting on the rim.

Gu Yanqiu’s gaze lingered on her long, nimble fingers for a moment before returning to her face, waiting for what came next.

“What school did you study abroad at?”

Gu Yanqiu: “……”

She hadn’t expected Lin Yuewei to make such a big show of things just to ask that.

“You don’t know?” Gu Yanqiu asked in return.

Why would I know? Lin Yuewei thought, genuinely baffled. Back when her mother had first talked to her about the contract marriage, she had mentioned it once in passing: a very famous university in the United States. Lin Yuewei hadn’t paid much attention then; she only remembered it was in the U.S., and there were famous schools everywhere in the U.S., so forgetting was normal. Later, one thing after another came up; Lin Yuewei was busy with her own matters. Then her mother brought up Gu Yanqiu trying to set them up, and Lin Yuewei simply covered her ears and refused to listen.

“I don’t know,” Lin Yuewei admitted honestly.

Gu Yanqiu told her the name of the school. Lin Yuewei went “Oh” and said, “I went there with a friend when we traveled abroad a couple of years ago. Nice scenery.”

Gu Yanqiu looked at her.

Lin Yuewei held the cup in one hand, studying the color of the tea, and when she glanced up unexpectedly and caught that look, she asked, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Nothing.” Gu Yanqiu looked away. “Is there something wrong with this tea?”

“No problem. Drink it.”

Gu Yanqiu blew lightly across the surface and took a sip.

Lin Yuewei watched her lips, glossy from the tea, and the pressure of her thumb against the cup deepened little by little.

“Miss Lin graduated from Qing University?”

“Yes.”

“I heard from Auntie that you studied finance and did very well. Why didn’t you continue with graduate school or pursue work in that field?”

“Different interests.” Lin Yuewei smiled faintly. “For the first twenty-one years of my life, I really did like finance. Now I really want to enter the entertainment industry too. Who says life has to stay the same? I want to try every possibility.”

“That’s a little risky. Aren’t you afraid of ending up with nothing after all that effort?” Gu Yanqiu set down her cup.

“If there’s no success, what is there to lose? At most I’d just be back where I started.”

Gu Yanqiu paused, then smiled. “I’m three years older than Miss Lin, but on this point I’m not as carefree as you. Shameful. Let me toast you with tea instead of wine.”

Lin Yuewei raised her cup in return across the table.

She could feel her own way of speaking being led farther and farther off course. Gu Yanqiu had wrapped her in a shell, and she could only follow that style of conversation; Lin Yuewei felt uncomfortable all over, like she was sitting on pins and needles.

“Miss Gu, I have a suggestion.” At last Lin Yuewei figured out where the strange politeness between them was coming from and couldn’t help saying it.

“What suggestion?”

“When there’s no one else around, can we use different forms of address?” Going back and forth with honorifics was making it sound like they were negotiating, for all anyone knew.

“How do you want to address me?”

“……” Lin Yuewei found herself stumped. Calling her “Yanqiu” seemed too intimate; she never addressed people that way. Jiang Congbi was always given nicknames, and when she was angry, even the full name. But calling her Gu Yanqiu by both family and given name didn’t sound right either. Beyond that, the only options were either too distant or too intimate.

“Wuwei?” Gu Yanqiu, seeing that she didn’t answer for a long while, tried softly first.

The fine hairs at the back of Lin Yuewei’s neck instantly stood on end. “Absolutely not. That sounds awful.”

Gu Yanqiu: “……”

Lin Yuewei rubbed the goosebumps on her arm. “Just keep using your full name, or don’t call me anything at all. Just say ‘you.’”

“...Alright. Then what about you?”

Lin Yuewei said, “I don’t know. I’ll tell you when I think of something. Let’s not add any title for now; it sounds weird to me.”

“Lin Xia—”

Lin Yuewei glared at her.

Gu Yanqiu smoothly changed course. “Whatever you say.”

Only then did Lin Yuewei’s expression relax.

The door was knocked on again, and the dishes started arriving.

“Miss Gua—” Lin Yuewei still hadn’t corrected herself either. Gu Yanqiu shot back the glare she’d just received. Lin Yuewei gave a small laugh. “My mistake. Please, you go first.”

At the table, they kept getting each other’s names wrong over and over; whether it was deliberate or whether changing a form of address really was that difficult, the two of them kept glaring at each other, each trying to outdo the other. Their eyes were practically bulging.

After they’d eaten and drunk their fill, Lin Yuewei offered to send Gu Yanqiu back to the hotel where she was staying. When she asked the name of the hotel, it turned out to be the same one she was staying at. Lin Yuewei thought, How could that be such a coincidence?

Gu Yanqiu also looked surprised when she heard that Lin Yuewei was staying there too. “What a coincidence.”

Lin Yuewei couldn’t tell whether it was a real coincidence or a fake one; a flicker of suspicion crossed her face as she turned away from Gu Yanqiu.

Whether it was a real coincidence or a fake one, the two of them had come to eat together and would be going back to the same hotel together. The hotel had been arranged by the production team; besides Lin Yuewei, there were contestants like Shao Yasi staying there too. Lin Yuewei didn’t want Gu Yanqiu running into them and raising suspicions. Fortunately, Gu Yanqiu and she weren’t on the same floor. Lin Yuewei escorted her to her room, then dragged her other suitcase along and was about to leave when Gu Yanqiu called her back.

“Lin—” Before she could finish the last two syllables, Lin Yuewei turned around. “What is it?”

“There’s something I haven’t given you yet.”

Gu Yanqiu crouched down and opened her suitcase, finding a delicate wooden box inside. She handed it to Lin Yuewei. “The prayer beads I promised you before.”

“Thank you.”

After Lin Yuewei returned to her room, she dropped her suitcase carelessly in a corner, put the box on the bed, and opened it. The strand of prayer beads was a little longer than the one on Gu Yanqiu’s wrist. The beads were a dark purplish black, glossy and smooth like black agate, with a hint of purple shining through in the light; they looked bewitching and deep. Each tiny wooden bead had scriptures carved into it, as fine as ants, impossible to make out with the naked eye. Lin Yuewei didn’t know much about prayer beads, but from the faint fragrance of the wood, similar to the scent on Gu Yanqiu herself, and the smooth, rounded feel in her hand, she could tell they were worth a great deal.

She looked them up online and found that ordinary red sandalwood wasn’t this color; only after careful maintenance and years of patient handling would it develop this kind of quality. Gu Yanqiu had definitely worn these close to her body. The more Lin Yuewei looked, the more she liked them. She looped them around her wrist twice to try them on, then stood in front of the mirror admiring herself over and over.

Just then, someone knocked on the door. Earlier, Lin Yuewei had told Gu Yanqiu her room number. Lin Yuewei’s ears perked up, and she hurriedly took the beads off and put them back in the box. “Wait a moment.”

After thinking it over, she came back and placed the strand of beads on top of the quilt, where it could be seen at a glance from the door.

That way it wouldn’t look like she treasured them too much, but it also wouldn’t look like she despised them. Either interpretation would work.

Lin Yuewei composed herself, checked the selfie camera on her phone, and when she could no longer hold back a smile, she opened the door.

Standing outside was Shao Yasi. The moment Shao Yasi saw her expression, hers became wonderfully complicated, even a little disgusted. She took a hard hit and said, “You don’t want to see me?”

“No, I thought..."

“Thought what?”

“Nothing.”

Lin Yuewei opened the door wider and let her in. “What are you looking for me for?”

“Can’t I look for you if there’s nothing else?” Shao Yasi glanced casually around the room, then focused on Lin Yuewei’s face and smiled. “I came to have dinner with you. Isn’t it dinner time now?”

“I already ate.”

“You already ate? It’s only six.”

“I suddenly got a little hungry, so I ate something earlier. Now I can’t eat anymore. I forgot to tell you, sorry.”

“All right then.” Shao Yasi suddenly noticed the prayer beads lying right out in the open on the bed as if she were afraid no one would see them. Her eyes lit up, and she pointed at them. “Are those yours? Can I look?”

Since Shao Yasi had asked that way, and they were friends, Lin Yuewei couldn’t be stingy, even if she wasn’t very willing. She nodded and said with a smile, “Go ahead. You know about these?”

“A little. My grandma believes in Buddhism.” Shao Yasi narrowed her eyes to study the scriptures engraved on the beads, nearly going cross-eyed in the process, and said excitedly, “These are carved so beautifully. Where did you buy them?”

“I didn’t buy them. A friend gave them to me... She carved them herself.”

“Then this friend must really like you.”

Lin Yuewei held back, then failed to hold back and let the corners of her mouth lift slightly. “How do you figure that?”

“Do you know how long it takes to carve just one bead?”

“How long?”

“I don’t know, haha. Anyway, a very long time.” Shao Yasi handled them with obvious reluctance to let go and asked, “Can I try them on? Just for a moment.”

The first few things she’d said had put Lin Yuewei in a wonderful mood. She immediately agreed. “Go ahead, but be very careful.”

“Okay.”

Knock, knock, knock—

Lin Yuewei glanced at Shao Yasi, who was putting on the beads, then turned back to open the door, still smiling.

Gu Yanqiu was smiling too. But the smile on her face vanished instantly when, through the gap between Lin Yuewei and the door, she saw Shao Yasi sitting on the bed with the purple sandalwood prayer beads that had never before left her wrist wrapped around her own arm.

Shao Yasi couldn’t see who had come because Lin Yuewei was blocking her view. She asked, “Who is it?”

Before Lin Yuewei could answer, Gu Yanqiu said coldly, “Wrong room. Sorry.”