Chapter 45
The hotel room door opened inward. The doorknob was right behind Lin Yuewei’s right shoulder at that moment, and Gu Yanqiu gave her a shove straight into the room. Then she slammed the door shut with a bang and disappeared from Lin Yuewei’s sight.
Lin Yuewei: “……”
Shao Yasi: “???” What was going on?
Shao Yasi pulled the prayer beads she’d been trying on off her wrist and set them back exactly where they’d been on the quilt, marveling, “That woman is so weird. She actually closed the door herself.”
An odd sense of unease surged up in Lin Yuewei. It took her a while to blink herself back to awareness.
Was that really Gu Yanqiu just now? Or was she hallucinating in broad daylight?
“Did someone come by just now?” Lin Yuewei turned to ask Shao Yasi.
Shao Yasi nodded. “Yes. A woman said she’d gone to the wrong room. Her voice was pretty nice, too.”
Lin Yuewei stared at the empty space in front of her, then suddenly reached out and grabbed Shao Yasi’s arm, half-dragging and half-begging her out of her room. “I just remembered my mom asked me to call her back. It’s urgent, so I can’t keep you.”
Shao Yasi: “Huh?”
She was sent off in a complete daze by Lin Yuewei.
Lin Yuewei turned back and put the prayer beads away in the wooden box, then was about to rush out the door. After running to the doorway, she abruptly came back, shoved the box into her suitcase, closed it, glanced back once, and then left again.
Gu Yanqiu was not in her room. Lin Yuewei knocked, but no one answered. She walked to the fire escape and called Gu Yanqiu.
Fortunately, Gu Yanqiu picked up.
Lin Yuewei: “Where are you?”
Gu Yanqiu: “In a taxi.”
Lin Yuewei: “Where are you going?”
Gu Yanqiu: “Why should I tell you?”
Lin Yuewei: “……”
She sounded angry, but Lin Yuewei had no idea what she was angry about and asked directly, “Why did you suddenly leave just now?”
“I went to the wrong room.”
“You think I’d believe that?”
“If you don’t believe me, then don’t. I’m busy with something important right now.”
“What important thing?”
“Work.”
“Then when are you free? Let’s talk.”
There was a pause on Gu Yanqiu’s end before she finally gave her an opening. “Tonight. I’ll be back before ten.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
“If I don’t call you before ten, then go to sleep first.” Gu Yanqiu’s voice had lost its edge and returned to the same calm tone as usual, as if the person who’d been trading barbs with Lin Yuewei just now wasn’t her at all.
“It’s fine. I go to bed late.”
“See you tonight.”
“See you tonight.”
Gu Yanqiu arrived at the private room half an hour early. The person she was meeting was a business partner from this side; this trip to S City was for work. When ordering, the partner considered that Gu Yanqiu was a woman and intended to replace the alcohol with juice or tea, but Gu Yanqiu said, “No need. Just bring the liquor.”
The two of them drank until they were slightly tipsy, and the deal went very smoothly. In the end, they shook hands and said their goodbyes at the hotel entrance.
By then it was already 9:50 p.m.
Gu Yanqiu pressed her temples; the familiar post-drinking headache was starting to rise. She habitually glanced at the seat beside her. Lin Zhi wasn’t with her, so no one handed her an eye mask to let her rest for a bit. Since she was in a taxi, Gu Yanqiu didn’t even dare close her eyes to conserve energy; her nerves stayed taut the entire way.
Lin Yuewei waited from a little after six in the evening until after ten, and Gu Yanqiu still hadn’t sent a message.
At 10:20, Lin Yuewei slipped out from her own floor to Gu Yanqiu’s door, raised her hand to knock, and pressed her ear against it, determined to hear something from inside.
The elevator in the corridor arrived with a ding. Lin Yuewei lowered the brim of her cap, pretended to be passing by, and walked a circle in front of Gu Yanqiu’s room before heading away.
Someone stepped out of the elevator; tall, long-legged, and straight, she walked directly toward the place Lin Yuewei had just vacated.
Gu Yanqiu took the room key card from the side slot of her bag and was about to open the door when she heard footsteps rapidly approaching from behind. Her alcohol-burdened mind snapped instantly awake. Her previously hazy gaze sharpened; she turned at once, grabbed the newcomer’s arm from behind, and yanked hard. The other person was caught, but she did not let herself be restrained as Gu Yanqiu intended. She reacted just as fast, using her free hand to clamp down on the wrist of Gu Yanqiu’s hand that was gripping her arm and twisting viciously, while her shoulder drove straight toward Gu Yanqiu.
If Gu Yanqiu had been a second slower, her chest would have been rammed flat. She let go and stepped back two paces, then looked over at the other person.
The newcomer removed her cap, shook her head once, and let a waterfall of long hair spill down, along with delicate brows and eyes.
Lin Yuewei said in shock, “Are you trying to murd—someone?”
She’d originally meant to surprise Gu Yanqiu, but the surprise was gone, and she was the one who had to suffer this treatment.
“Sorry.” Gu Yanqiu opened the door with the room card and ushered her inside.
“Why did you come downstairs?” Gu Yanqiu wanted to pour her a glass of water, but since she had been in and out in a hurry and hadn’t boiled any, she opened a bottle of mineral water on the table, screwed the cap back on loosely, and placed it on the coffee table in front of Lin Yuewei.
“Didn’t you tell me to wait for you to come back?”
Gu Yanqiu looked at her watch. “What I said was for you to go to bed earlier after ten.”
Lin Yuewei said, “Anyway, I’m not asleep now, and you’re not asleep either.”
Gu Yanqiu leaned against the edge of the table, opened another bottle of mineral water, and tipped her head back to swallow a few gulps. Her collar was slightly open, revealing a stretch of glistening collarbone; her small throat bobbed up and down with the movement in a way that was almost sexily delicate.
“You drank?” Lin Yuewei had caught the scent of alcohol when Gu Yanqiu had pressed her against the door just now.
“A little.”
A thought surfaced in Lin Yuewei’s mind: had she gone to drown her sorrows in alcohol? Did she really...
Gu Yanqiu then explained, “Money isn’t easy to make. Social obligations and business talks; drinking is unavoidable.”
Lin Yuewei: “……”
Fine. She was being self-important again.
Gu Yanqiu asked, “What did you come to see me for?”
Lin Yuewei asked back, “Shouldn’t I be the one asking what you wanted with me? Why did you suddenly get angry and leave in the afternoon?”
“I wasn’t angry.”
“You still say you weren’t angry?”
“What proof does Miss Lin have that I was angry?” Gu Yanqiu lifted her brows, her expression puzzled.
Lin Yuewei stiffened her neck and said, “The proof is that you started calling me that again.”
Gu Yanqiu: “……”
Lin Yuewei didn’t want to make the atmosphere this bad. Their relationship had eased so much these past few days; if they went back to how they’d been before, she’d be twisted up with discomfort to death. Lin Yuewei took a deep breath and said as gently as she could, “The most important thing when being friends is communication. Whatever you want to say, you can say it to me; I’ll definitely give you a satisfactory answer.”
Gu Yanqiu pulled out a chair and sat down. She didn’t look at Lin Yuewei; her expression only grew colder and harder. “Why did you pass on the thing I gave you to someone else?”
“When did I pass anything on to someone else?” Forget about the Lin Yuewei who was only just beginning to harbor vague feelings for Gu Yanqiu now; even the Lin Yuewei from before, who still disliked Gu Yanqiu, would never give away something the other person had given her. At most, she would have returned it.
“The prayer beads.”
“The prayer beads?” Lin Yuewei replayed what happened in her mind. Gu Yanqiu had clearly been smiling when she opened the door. It was only after that sudden change in expression that she’d gone cold. Because of the prayer beads? What about them? Right; they were on Shao Yasi’s wrist.
Lin Yuewei opened her mouth, but for a moment, she didn’t know what to say.
Gu Yanqiu glanced back at her and caught that expression right in the middle of her face. Thinking Lin Yuewei was feeling guilty, she became even more disappointed. “You admit it? Miss Lin, if you don’t like the gift I gave you, you can return it. Giving it to someone else is an insult to my effort.”
Lin Yuewei: “……”
Gu Yanqiu sulked at the wall by herself, not on guard in the slightest, when a pair of hands suddenly landed on her shoulders. She jerked, nearly flinging Lin Yuewei’s hands away.
Lin Yuewei pressed on her shoulders and said in a deliberately drawn-out, lazy tone, “Tsk. I didn’t expect you to be this kind of Gu Yanqiu.”
Gu Yanqiu didn’t make a sound. She sensed something was off.
Lin Yuewei bent down and leaned close to her ear; her lips were almost brushing the shell of it. “I didn’t give them to her. She just tried them on for a moment. Unluckily, you happened to catch it, and I’ve already put the prayer beads away. No one’s allowed to touch them.”
She was too close. Gu Yanqiu almost wanted to let her ear actively meet the source of that hot breath, but in the end she still restrained herself.
“Even so, you shouldn’t have let someone else try them on. This isn’t like ordinary things; it has a different meaning.”
“I was wrong.” If it had been under normal circumstances, Lin Yuewei definitely wouldn’t have admitted fault so readily. But now she’d discovered something wonderful, something enough to draw all her attention.
Gu Yanqiu’s ears were red, and they were getting redder.
“This time I’ll let it go.” Gu Yanqiu also noticed that her own ears were burning, so she dragged her chair farther away from Lin Yuewei with both hands.
Lin Yuewei rubbed the hand that was no longer resting against the other woman’s shoulder through her clothes and couldn’t help missing the sensation just now. Gu Yanqiu had only panicked for that brief moment before she recovered her usual composure.
Gu Yanqiu said, “I was looking for you earlier because I had something important.”
“What important thing?” Her expression was serious, and Lin Yuewei also reined in her smile.
“That string of prayer beads is one I used to wear on my wrist and turn over in my hands for a long time. It’s very precious, so there are some things I need to tell you about caring for it.”
“Go on.”
Gu Yanqiu then explained a number of things to be careful of in order to keep the beads in good condition. They mustn’t get wet; they had to be taken off when washing clothes, showering, and in similar situations; they also couldn’t be cleaned with detergent. When using the bathroom, they had to be removed and put into an inner coat pocket, not the trouser pocket. If she wasn’t handling them, they needed to be stored in a sealed bag and couldn’t be kept together with other fragrant items, or the scent would transfer, and so on and so on.
After she finished, Gu Yanqiu sent her an electronic memo. The edit time shown on it was after Lin Yuewei had taken the prayer beads back to her room in the afternoon; Gu Yanqiu had written it then.
“Okay, I remember.”
Lin Yuewei asked, “Anything else you want to tell me?”
Gu Yanqiu shook her head. “Not right now.”
“Then let me know anytime you think of something.” Lin Yuewei also didn’t want to ruin a prayer bead strand that someone had painstakingly completed over many years because of her own mishandling.
“Mm.”
Everything that needed saying had been said. Lin Yuewei remained sitting on the sofa without getting up. Gu Yanqiu glanced at her and said, “Lin Xi... do you have anything else?”
Lin Yuewei brushed her fingers along her knee, then braced both hands on the sofa and stood. “No. I thought you might have something else, but if not, I’ll head up first. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Gu Yanqiu picked up the cap Lin Yuewei had left by the side and handed it to her.
Lin Yuewei took it and thanked her.
Gu Yanqiu escorted her to the door. Lin Yuewei could feel that gaze from behind watching her the whole time, and she straightened her shoulders and waist even more.
It wasn’t until she got into the elevator that the shadow-like gaze finally disappeared. Lin Yuewei looked at the floor numbers rising, and her overexcited brain finally found room for clear thought.
What had she just done? She’d actually touched the shoulder of the cold, aloof one, and leaned in so close to talk to her, teasing her until her face was red all over!
Had she borrowed a bear’s guts and a leopard’s courage? Or had lard blinded her heart?
Too terrifying.
Lin Yuewei wandered back into her room in a daze and collapsed onto the bed. She had already showered before going out; slowly, she took off her clothes and changed into sleepwear, then burrowed under the blanket, face down and back up, burying her face completely into the pillow.
Gu Yanqiu also took a shower and lay down on the bed. She tended to get headaches after drinking and usually fell asleep easily, but today she tossed and turned instead; all that kept looping through her head was the scene of Lin Yuewei leaning close to her ear to speak.
Lin Yuewei rolled over onto her back.
Gu Yanqiu pulled the blanket over her head and rolled herself into a ball inside it.
Daylight broke bright and clear.
Lin Yuewei was woken by her alarm. She propped herself up, eyes heavy and unfocused, and sat against the headboard for a while to wake up. She should have fallen asleep around one in the morning last night; she’d had a nonsensical dream and felt so exhausted it was as if every part of her had been run over.
Lin Yuewei got out of bed, dressed, washed up, and called Shao Yasi, who was staying on the same floor, to go to the restaurant for breakfast.
The hotel restaurant was a buffet with a wide variety of dishes. Lin Yuewei gave the waiter both their room keys to register them, and the two of them took their trays and went to get their breakfasts separately.
They’d agreed to sit by the window. Shao Yasi only got a bowl of porridge and two small side dishes and took her seat first, while Lin Yuewei picked a little of this and a little of that; besides breakfast, she also took a plate of fruit for after the meal.
“Shao Shao, do you want anything to drink?” Lin Yuewei was going to get a cup of soy milk and asked Shao Yasi on the way.
Shao Yasi answered, “Do they have milk? If they do, bring me a cup; hot.”
“Okay.”
When Lin Yuewei came back with a cup of soy milk and a cup of milk, someone suddenly appeared at the empty table behind Shao Yasi and set down a tray in her hands.
Gu Yanqiu saw her too. Her gaze swept over Shao Yasi opposite Lin Yuewei, then she calmly withdrew it, as if she were looking at a stranger.
With Shao Yasi there, Lin Yuewei didn’t dare greet her, but she couldn’t help looking up again and again over Shao Yasi’s shoulder toward Gu Yanqiu, who was eating.
After she turned back toward her several times, Shao Yasi glanced behind her, saw Gu Yanqiu, and widened her eyes. Then she turned around and said softly to Lin Yuewei, “She’s really beautiful.”
Lin Yuewei felt uncomfortable hearing someone praise Gu Yanqiu. She raised one index finger and said, “Shh.”
Shao Yasi made an “OK” gesture to show she understood. The person was right behind them, after all; talking about her like this wasn’t good.
Gu Yanqiu methodically cut off a piece of butter with a dinner knife, spread it evenly over a slice of bread, added ham and other toppings, took a bite with her head lowered, then turned to look out the window. Her profile looked hazy and beautiful in the morning light.
Shao Yasi suddenly blew hard on her face.
Lin Yuewei: “???”
Shao Yasi lowered her voice to remind her, “Stop looking. Look any more and be careful her boyfriend or girlfriend beats you up.”
Lin Yuewei: “……”
She’d beat herself up, huh?
Still, Shao Yasi’s reminder was timely enough. Lin Yuewei stopped paying attention to Gu Yanqiu. They still had appointments to run today, so they had to finish eating early and hurry to the company.
When Gu Yanqiu left, whether intentionally or not, she passed by the two of them. Lin Yuewei had her head lowered at the time, and a faint trace of agarwood drifted into her nose; she knew at once it was Gu Yanqiu.
Shao Yasi stared after her back and sighed again and again, praising her looks, praising her figure, still reluctant as they headed to the company. Lin Yuewei couldn’t stand listening to her recite sutras, so she took a candy from the restaurant out of her pocket and stuffed it into Shao Yasi’s mouth.
Shao Yasi puffed out her cheeks.
Lin Yuewei ate one herself too, then looked out the car window. The world was quiet at last.
What they were filming today was a mobile phone commercial. The two of them respectively represented cool elegance and gentleness; they were also the two color schemes of the phones. Although Lin Yuewei’s acting wasn’t as good as Shao Yasi’s, she had strong camera presence, and she could basically deliver whatever expression the photographer asked for. Shao Yasi was reserved and mild-tempered; since the start of the program, she and Lin Yuewei had gone everywhere together, and she was extremely dependent on Lin Yuewei. Whenever the photographer spoke to her, she would unconsciously look at Lin Yuewei, trying to get some opinion from her.
Lin Yuewei realized that this wouldn’t do. Although she was working on their relationship, she didn’t want to cultivate Shao Yasi into a doddering vine dependent on her. Besides, Shao Yasi had signed with another agency, and the two of them would have to separate sooner or later.
After the shoot ended, Lin Yuewei took Shao Yasi aside and had a serious talk with her. The two of them could support each other, but they also had to remain independent. They should become a mutual support system within the industry; Shao Yasi’s own excellence was in no way inferior to hers, so she shouldn’t belittle herself or erase her own brilliance. Shao Yasi took it to heart. The next day’s schedule went much better; it was obvious she was still afraid, but she no longer looked back at Lin Yuewei even once.
Over the next two days of running appointments, Lin Yuewei occasionally sent messages to Gu Yanqiu. Gu Yanqiu’s replies were always about work, so Lin Yuewei stopped bothering her. After all, the other woman had come on a business trip, not specifically to see her.
Seeing Gu Yanqiu at the restaurant that first morning had been a coincidence; for the next two days, Lin Yuewei didn’t see her again.
Before long, Lin Yuewei’s stay in S City was coming to an end. There was only one day left before she had to return to Yaning; after going to the new agency, she would probably be even busier. The night before she returned, Lin Yuewei went downstairs to a convenience supermarket to buy something. The elevator stopped midway, and she unexpectedly ran into Gu Yanqiu, who walked in.
There was no one else in the elevator, so the two of them started talking.
“When are you heading back?” Lin Yuewei asked first.
“Tomorrow.”
“So am I.” Lin Yuewei looked at her. Gu Yanqiu was no longer dressed formally, but in some trendy brand’s clothes, and she couldn’t help asking, “Where are you going?”
Gu Yanqiu didn’t answer; instead, she asked back, “You?”
“Oh, I’m going to the supermarket to buy some instant noodles.”
“Instant noodles aren’t good for you.”
Lin Yuewei touched her nose. “I know. It’s just that there’s no other way; it’s convenient.”
“Eat them less in the future.” Gu Yanqiu reminded her naturally.
“Mm.” Lin Yuewei agreed just as naturally.
The conversation was ordinary, yet not ordinary at all; somehow, the two of them both sensed a trace of something special and intimate in it.
It was impossible to tell who looked over first. In the quiet elevator, their eyes met; their gazes tangled and clung in the air. Lin Yuewei unconsciously stepped forward.
Author’s Note:
Gu Yanqiu: Why eat instant noodles when I’m right here in front of you, healthy and delicious ╰(*°▽°*)╯
Even today, Gu-attack is still a little unstable