Chapter 57
Shao Yasi had almost reached the door when she suddenly turned back and asked, “Hey, what happened with that crush you mentioned last time? How’s it going?”
Lin Yuewei blinked. “Huh?”
Shao Yasi said, “Back when we were at the factory, you said you had a crush, and you even hallucinated it—someone in a white tracksuit, remember?”
“Oh, oh, oh.” Lin Yuewei remembered.
Back then, she had noticed that Shao Yasi might have developed a faint little crush on her. Lin Yuewei didn’t want that feeling to keep growing, so she lied and said she already had someone she liked. That day, on her way to work, she had seen someone in a white tracksuit who looked suspiciously like Gu Yanqiu; she’d simply seized the opportunity to test the waters and kill Shao Yasi’s feelings off at the root.
She had forcibly slapped the label of “crush” onto Gu Yanqiu back then. Who would have thought that now the joke would come true, and she really would fall for her.
Lin Yuewei knew Shao Yasi wouldn’t believe her, so she teased, “I married my crush.”
Sure enough, Shao Yasi looked at her with a face full of disbelief. “Hallucinations are an illness. You need to get that treated, okay? I’m leaving first.”
Lin Yuewei waved at her and laughed. “Bye, see you.”
Shao Yasi left with a shake of her head. Only after she disappeared from sight did Lin Yuewei send Gu Yanqiu a message.
[Two Trees: I’m done here. Are you finished?]
Gu Yanqiu replied instantly.
[Xi Gu: A little earlier than you]
[Xi Gu: I’m in the parking lot; the exact spot is… The license plate number is…]
Following the directions, Lin Yuewei arrived without trouble. Just as she drew near Gu Yanqiu’s car, she heard a click as the door unlocked. Lin Yuewei pulled the door open and got in.
“Where’s your secretary?”
“I sent him home first.”
Lin Yuewei’s gaze landed on the hand Gu Yanqiu had resting on the steering wheel; the ring that had been on her ring finger was gone. She had still seen it when she ran into Gu Yanqiu in the restroom earlier.
Lin Yuewei said an absent-minded “oh,” then looked at her other hand, unwilling to give up.
Still nothing.
Gu Yanqiu started the car, turned around with practiced ease, and followed the navigation home. After listening for a while, Lin Yuewei realized the navigation voice had been switched to Guo Degang. As someone from the north, and close to Tianjin at that, she had heard her fair share of crosstalk; she had even gone with friends to support De Yun Society before. But the usually laugh-out-loud jokes felt strangely out of place with Gu Yanqiu’s perpetually cool expression.
Ahead, the navigation announced an accident-prone stretch of road and cracked a little joke. Lin Yuewei’s lips twitched; she wanted to laugh, but seeing Gu Yanqiu’s proper, composed profile made her suspect that what Gu Yanqiu was hearing wasn’t Guo Degang at all, but the Great Compassion Mantra.
In the end, Lin Yuewei didn’t laugh.
Gu Yanqiu was puzzled. Lin Yuewei’s mother had said Lin Yuewei quite liked listening to crosstalk, especially the old masters, and could never get enough of the classics; she would pull them out every so often to listen again. She had even specially asked Lin Zhi to help her download this kind of navigation voice pack. Why did Lin Yuewei look so serious?
Worried that she might disturb Gu Yanqiu from listening to her “Great Compassion Mantra,” Lin Yuewei stayed quiet. Gu Yanqiu, seeing that Lin Yuewei couldn’t even smile at the jokes, assumed she must be in a bad mood today and also said nothing.
The two of them fell into a baffling silence the whole way there. It wasn’t until they reached their destination that Lin Yuewei waited for the car to stop, got out, and took her bag from the back seat; she even picked up Gu Yanqiu’s for her while she was at it.
Gu Yanqiu said, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“…”
Why did it feel like there was so much distance between them? Lin Yuewei thought in confusion. They had been perfectly fine at the Lin house yesterday, though there had been a few little interruptions in the middle.
She decided she needed a topic to liven up the atmosphere.
“Did you see me right from the start today?” Lin Yuewei asked after a moment’s thought.
Gu Yanqiu locked the car. “Not exactly. I just had a vague feeling it was you.”
“Instinct?”
“More or less.” Gu Yanqiu asked, “You dropped the curtain the moment I looked over, so I didn’t get a clear look.”
“I didn’t notice.”
“You… what friend were you having dinner with tonight? Do I know her?”
For some reason, hearing her stretch out that one word gave Lin Yuewei a bad feeling.
“She does.” Lin Yuewei only answered the second question, while silently praying Gu Yanqiu wouldn’t ask anything else.
Inside, Gu Yanqiu gave a cold little oh. So you really don’t want me to know who it is.
Just as she was about to speak, Lin Yuewei, carried along by the flow of the conversation, asked, “Were you talking business today? Did it go smoothly?” It sounded less like a question and more like a guilty attempt to change the subject.
“…It went smoothly.”
“Your secretary, then?”
“What about him?”
“Does he have a girlfriend? Or a boyfriend.” Lin Yuewei had backed herself into a corner and was indeed talking to fill the silence.
“He has a girlfriend.”
“Is she pretty?”
Gu Yanqiu stopped walking and turned to look at her. Her eyes were dark and cool; the meaning was obvious.
Lin Yuewei: “…”
She let out an awkward laugh. “I was just asking.”
Gu Yanqiu asked, “Does the friend you ate with have a partner?”
Lin Yuewei was caught off guard. “Huh?”
Gu Yanqiu said, “I was just asking too.”
Then she turned and walked toward the door. Out of Lin Yuewei’s sight, she frowned, looking thoroughly annoyed.
Lin Yuewei stood frozen for a second, then thought about it and decided Gu Yanqiu was probably teasing her. She hurried after her in three quick steps.
In student days, many people had experienced this: a familiar classmate suddenly coming up from behind, looping an arm around their neck, and dragging them over. But Gu Yanqiu had never had such an experience. So when Lin Yuewei caught up to her from behind and reached out to wrap an arm around her shoulder, intending to pull her into her embrace, Gu Yanqiu’s eyes widened in instant shock. She stared at Lin Yuewei, who was all smiles, and froze completely.
“I’m saying, are you—” Lin Yuewei hadn’t even finished her sentence before she swallowed it back. Her smile vanished just as abruptly.
Lin Yuewei withdrew her hand awkwardly and said softly, “I didn’t mean to.”
“It’s fine.”
Lin Yuewei lowered her head and followed obediently behind her, not daring to act up again. Gu Yanqiu unlocked the door with her fingerprint, then stepped aside to let Lin Yuewei go in first.
They had already gone through the “you first,” “no, you first” routine over who should enter first countless times. Every time, Gu Yanqiu stubbornly insisted on letting her go in first, so Lin Yuewei had long since stopped being polite and stepped inside.
“What happened just now…” Gu Yanqiu seemed to have been holding it in for a long time; when she spoke, there was a little tension in her voice.
“Hm?” Lin Yuewei had one hand on the shoe cabinet at the entryway and turned her head to look at her.
“You can do that to me in the future.” Those few short words sounded as if they were extremely difficult for her to say, even harder than making her argue with Gu Huai across a conference table.
Do what? It took Lin Yuewei a second before she understood. “You mean the thing where I put my arm around your neck?”
Gu Yanqiu nodded.
Lin Yuewei said casually, “Okay.”
She bent down to take off her shoes, toes facing inward, and placed them neatly side by side. Then she slipped into the slippers one step away and, as an afterthought, turned the slippers Gu Yanqiu had taken off and put on backward when leaving the house so they were facing the right way.
Gu Yanqiu changed her shoes, secretly glancing at Lin Yuewei, and couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. Not a single reaction?
Lin Yuewei sat down on the sofa and turned on the TV. It was an evening show, a xianxia drama with special effects worth maybe a single cent. The two leads were flying through the sky on swords while holding umbrellas; ten minutes passed, and they were still flying, saying the kind of useless dialogue that had no nutritional value whatsoever:
Male lead: “Go.”
Female lead: “I’m not going.”
Male lead: “Go quickly! If you don’t, it’ll be too late!”
Female lead: “I’m not leaving. I’d rather die with you!”
The male lead said affectionately, “Listen to me, go. I love you.”
Female lead: “I love you too, but I can’t leave.”
Male lead: “You…”
Female lead: “Ah, the pursuers are already catching up—”
With tomato juice diluted with water on his lips, the male lead declared grandly, “Fine, then let us die together today!”
Lin Yuewei’s mind was a blank. Who am I? Where am I? What did Gu Yanqiu just say to me? By the same logic, their child would already be in kindergarten by now, and the boys and girls crushing on them would be lined up in rows.
The scene ended, and the TV returned to regular commercials. The volume jumped abruptly, much louder than the drama had been, and Lin Yuewei was jolted out of her daze. The image on the screen reflected in her pupils.
Gu Yanqiu: “…”
Had Lin Yuewei really been spacing out for ten minutes?
Lin Yuewei asked Gu Yanqiu, who was watching TV with her, with complete composure, “What was that show called? It was so good I forgot to check the title.”
Gu Yanqiu couldn’t agree with her assessment of “so good,” but whatever Lin Yuewei said was right. She told her the title, and Lin Yuewei cheerfully searched for it in the video library.
She thought she’d just heard someone die. Lin Yuewei said, “Very touching.”
Gu Yanqiu agreed, “Yes.”
Lin Yuewei tried to create a chance for them to spend more time together in a roundabout way. “Then keep me company and watch it with me? Oh, it’s almost ten now. What time do you usually go to sleep?”
Gu Yanqiu slept around eleven if work wasn’t busy; if it was, there was no fixed time, usually one or two in the morning, and sometimes she even stayed up all night. During this period after returning to the country, she basically hadn’t gone to bed before eleven at all.
“I usually sleep at twelve.” This time, Gu Yanqiu understood the invitation. “I can watch for a while.”
They sat separately on two sofas. While the show was playing its opening theme, Lin Yuewei didn’t fast-forward. She picked up the empty fruit plate on the coffee table and said, “I’ll cut some fruit.”
“I’ll do it.” Gu Yanqiu hurried to stand.
But Lin Yuewei had already left the sofa and was standing in front of the fridge, choosing fruit: apples, pears, bananas, dragon fruit, and so on; she took a little of each.
Gu Yanqiu stretched her neck toward the kitchen, but could only see Lin Yuewei’s figure moving back and forth.
At home, Lin Yuewei was the classic young lady type; she had a father, a mother, and an aunt, and there was no way she’d ever need to cut fruit herself, so her movements were a little slow. By the time she finished cutting it, searched online for how to arrange the plate, and brought it out, more than ten minutes had passed, and there was a pause icon in the top right corner of the TV screen.
“Thanks,” Lin Yuewei said. “Come have some fruit.”
She set the fruit plate down on the coffee table in front of herself, and Gu Yanqiu had no choice but to sit over. Lin Yuewei silently gave herself a little victory sign in her heart; plan accomplished.
She pressed the remote, and the show resumed.
She had only watched a few minutes when the stiff acting and absurdly corny lines from the leads and supporting cast stunned her into silence. What nonsense had she just been saying to Gu Yanqiu? She only hoped Gu Yanqiu wouldn’t think she had something wrong with her brain.
Gu Yanqiu held a toothpick by the end and picked up a sliced pear for Lin Yuewei, smiling as she chatted. “I haven’t watched a TV drama in years. I don’t know any of the actors in this one.”
Lin Yuewei wanted to say, I don’t know them either, but if she said that, the two of them might not have anything else to talk about. She had a strong feeling about that, so she chose to pull out her phone and search for the drama title online. The cast list came up right away.
The still photos were all handsome men and beautiful women, but compared with the people on screen, quite a few of them were hard to recognize.
Lin Yuewei looked at her phone while also watching TV. “This Chu XX should be the male lead, right? He looks a bit wide on screen, and once he put on that fake wig, it became even more obvious.”
“Really? Let me see.”
As Gu Yanqiu spoke, she leaned closer. Their shoulders touched; Gu Yanqiu brought her face near to look at the phone screen, so close that if Lin Yuewei lowered her head even a little, her lips might brush Gu Yanqiu’s ear.
Lin Yuewei swallowed and didn’t dare move.
“Yeah, he does look wider on TV.” After checking, Gu Yanqiu agreed with her.
When she stood up, a strand of her long hair brushed past Lin Yuewei’s lips, carrying a lingering warmth. Lin Yuewei didn’t dare make a sound until the faint scent of sandalwood around her nose gradually drifted away and thinned out; only then did she say, “Screen presence is a pretty demanding thing.”
This was within Lin Yuewei’s area of expertise, and Gu Yanqiu showed a look of genuine interest.
So Lin Yuewei said a little more: “There’s a difference between the camera and real life. You see some celebrities, especially actresses—on screen they’re decent, maybe an eight out of ten, but in real life they could be a full ten. The camera has very high basic requirements for actors: small face, long legs. I’m talking about the mainstream route, the handsome-men-and-beautiful-women type. Of course there are also people whose looks aren’t outstanding but who still get famous. Just fewer of them.”
Gu Yanqiu blinked, wanting to hear more.
“To put it simply, there’s a wall between ordinary people and stars, between actors. No matter how good-looking an ordinary person is, once you put them among celebrities…” Lin Yuewei looked at Gu Yanqiu’s flawless face, so close at hand, and felt like a slap had drifted in from the sky, landing square on her own face.
She pressed her lips together and said, “Of course, there are also people who are especially good-looking and can compare to celebrities. It’s just that their vibe is different.”
Gu Yanqiu suddenly laughed.
Lin Yuewei thought her smile was the most beautiful thing in the world, but she also found herself wondering what exactly was so funny.
Gu Yanqiu’s eyes shone. “Your face would look especially good on camera, Yuewei.”
Lin Yuewei modestly waved a hand. “No, no, your filter is three feet thick.”
“What does ‘filter’ mean?” asked curious baby Gu Yanqiu.
“A filter is something you add when taking photos; it makes the picture look prettier.” Lin Yuewei answered patiently.
“I didn’t take a photo.”
“It’s a metaphor. It means you’ve put a filter over my face, so no matter what, you think I look good. ‘Three feet thick’ means your judgment is very heavily influenced by subjectivity.”
“I don’t have a filter. I’ve watched the show.”
“When I was on the show, I got cursed out so badly…” Lin Yuewei didn’t even want to bring it up, because her acting really had been bad. The online attacks on her character were nonsense, but out of the five people who debuted, her acting had been dead last, with a clear gap between her and the one in second-to-last.
“I think these people are strange.” Gu Yanqiu pondered for a moment before saying that.
“Why?” Lin Yuewei smiled, wanting to hear her reasoning.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. Just because people liked you, you have to get scolded?”
“Because my acting was bad.”
“This show never said it was picking the best actors, did it? Weren’t the debut spots decided by popularity? As long as your fans voted for you, that was enough.”
“You really know a lot.” Now that it was all over, Lin Yuewei no longer cared about public opinion to begin with. Hearing Gu Yanqiu seriously stand up for her felt incredibly novel. Gu Yanqiu had absolutely no connection to variety shows in Lin Yuewei’s mind, and yet she was genuinely earnest about it.
Lin Yuewei said, “Do you know what people like me are called? We’re called traffic stars. Actually, that’s not even fully a star. I’m just using the term loosely. And we’re the kind of traffic stars who have popularity but no acting skills. There are a lot of people like that in the industry these days, and some of them are hugely popular. Meanwhile, the serious actors who keep their heads down and actually work are nowhere near as popular or commercially valuable as those people. It’s unfair. Public anger was building and finally found a place to explode. I was unlucky enough to be born at the wrong time and just became the target.”
“I don’t understand the entertainment industry, but can I ask you a question?” Gu Yanqiu took off her Buddhist prayer beads and held them in her hand, rolling them idly.
“What question?”
“Actors, or stars, I guess—they usually get famous for what?”
“If you exclude the traffic stars who have no work and rely on fans, then either it’s a huge hit drama or movie, or a variety show; variety shows count as a different branch, and there are even specific variety stars who can be considered representative.”
One of Gu Yanqiu’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “All right. Then if there are two actors with excellent acting—let’s assume they’re evenly matched—and one of them acts in a great film, gets famous, while the other acts in a bad film and doesn’t, and the one who got famous keeps getting new projects and becomes more and more popular, while the other falls into obscurity from then on, is that fair?”
Lin Yuewei: “Mm.”
Gu Yanqiu smiled faintly. “Any circle is like this. True fairness doesn’t exist. Three parts are hard work, seven parts are fate. There were so many uprisings in ancient times, and so many eras of warlord division; why were only a few of them able to replace dynasties? Because the others were stupid? Then there must be far too many fools in this world. Very few people can become lords, but those who can change dynasties are all chosen by destiny.”
Lin Yuewei: “…”
Why had this suddenly turned into all five thousand years of Chinese history? She was just a little B-list celebrity.
“The people who curse you are only doing it because they can’t stand your luck and are venting their resentment at reality on you. By that logic, the people who sell lottery tickets and win the lottery are the ones who should be cursed. They’ve promoted the idea of ‘getting something for nothing’ and seriously affected the values of the broad masses. In short, their thinking isn’t on the same level as yours. If you’re troubled by this, it means you’ve been dragged down to their level of intelligence.”
Lin Yuewei almost laughed. She knew why Gu Yanqiu was telling her all this; Gu Yanqiu was comforting her, no matter what it took, even dragging all five thousand years of history into it. Gu Yanqiu was too cute. She was going to be killed by how cute she was.
Lin Yuewei solemnly nodded to show she had taken it in.
Satisfied that she had successfully comforted Lin Yuewei, Gu Yanqiu then said, “Still, before I went abroad, the entertainment industry wasn’t this distorted. It should be that capital has entered the field.”
Lin Yuewei nodded like a chicken pecking at grain. “Mm, mm, mm.”
Gu Yanqiu tilted her head, finding this a little odd.
Lin Yuewei said, “You’re right, but in recent years the traffic-star dividend has basically been exhausted. The fan economy driven by capital can’t last long. A lot of traffic stars are trying to transform, like Mu XX and Jian XX, those famous young male actors. People inside the circle are usually much sharper than outsiders. A lot of people don’t understand that and criticize them heavily.”
Now Gu Yanqiu didn’t quite understand that either. Especially those celebrities; aside from one whose name she’d heard the young female employees at the company mention, the others were a complete blank to her, so she only smiled lightly.
Lately, she had been smiling a lot in front of Lin Yuewei. Unlike the carefully polished smiles she gave ordinary people, these were all simple, clean smiles, with a pair of faint little canine teeth showing, making her look especially young, like an innocent high schooler of seventeen or eighteen.
Lin Yuewei’s heart jumped as if she’d been shocked by electricity. She felt like Gu Yanqiu was killing her with cuteness and quickly stuffed a bite of apple into her mouth.
Without meaning to, Gu Yanqiu had “committed murder” again. She asked, “So what route are you planning to take? Are you going to be an acting-oriented type too?”
Lin Yuewei steadied her racing heartbeat, ate two more toothpick-speared pieces of pear, and said, “I’ll work very hard and try to improve my acting, but this kind of thing really depends on talent. I don’t know if I can succeed.”
“Do your best and leave no regrets.” Gu Yanqiu gave her eight words.
“I will.” Lin Yuewei’s first impression of Gu Yanqiu had been that she was dull; later it became that she was interesting. Now, all she could see was that every inch of Gu Yanqiu was written through with cuteness, in bold capital letters.
Gu Yanqiu still didn’t know that, out in the world, she was the sort of commanding, queenly figure who would fit perfectly as a dominant older woman; instead, she had somehow become the little adorable one in her crush’s heart.
That adorable person’s face briefly showed a conflicted expression. “There’s one question I’ve always wanted to ask you. I don’t know if it’s too abrupt.”
“Go ahead.” Lin Yuewei said directly.
“Why did you enter the entertainment industry?”
“…” The smile on Lin Yuewei’s face froze.
Gu Yanqiu hurriedly said, “Forget I asked.” She didn’t want Lin Yuewei to be unhappy, not even if it meant making her frown a little.
“You misunderstood.” Lin Yuewei shook her head. “I just need to organize my thoughts.”
This was one of Lin Yuewei’s secrets. She had never told anyone, not even Jiang Congbi or her parents.
And Gu Yanqiu would be the first person to know.
Lin Yuewei bit her lower lip. After a moment, she let go; a row of tiny tooth marks remained on her lips. She looked into Gu Yanqiu’s eyes and said, “If I said I wanted to become someone like Ran Zhengrong, would you think I was daydreaming?”
Ran Zhengrong was one of the few currently active figures in the film market who truly had star power; he was one of the strongest guarantees of both reputation and box office. Besides being an actor and director, he had also founded his own agency. He had nearly fully integrated the entire chain from actors to scripts to theaters, and was an exceptionally successful businessman.
Anyone with even a little connection to the entertainment industry knew what a giant Ran Zhengrong was in that world.
Before Gu Yanqiu went abroad, Ran Zhengrong had written, directed, and starred in his first two films himself. Their box office results ranked third and eighth on the all-time chart, laying a solid foundation for his position in the industry. Back then, Gu Yanqiu had gone to the cinema to watch one of his movies. Five years later, he was already unshakable.
If you said Ran Zhengrong was number one in the entertainment industry, you had to break it down by category; he wasn’t number one in acting, directing, or business alone. But when those three were combined, Ran Zhengrong was the only one.
Lin Yuewei wanted to become the second Ran Zhengrong. That wasn’t merely daydreaming; it was practically insane.
“No.” Gu Yanqiu answered seriously, with not a trace of perfunctoriness on her face.
“Sometimes I feel pretty lost too. If I set my goal at such a towering mountain, will I just stop at the foot of it? But if I don’t try, how would I know? I don’t want to walk a road whose end I can see at a glance.”
Gu Yanqiu saw a kind of sharpness and fighting spirit in Lin Yuewei’s eyes that she had never seen before.
“The road I choose myself—no matter if it takes my whole life, I’ll keep walking it without looking back.” Her ideal was so unrealistic that saying it out loud sounded like fantasy. Lin Yuewei’s father and mother were practical people and wouldn’t care for it. Jiang Congbi might not say anything on the surface and might even agree, but deep down, she certainly wouldn’t place her hopes on it. Lin Yuewei didn’t like to boast, and she disliked making empty promises, so to everyone else she only ever said she wanted to act and wanted to become a star.
Gu Yanqiu thought about it and let reason take over. “Just like I said before, the ones who become kings and emperors are all chosen by destiny. This circle especially depends on fate. If you spend your whole life and still can’t become the second Ran Zhengrong, then what?”
Ran Zhengrong’s success could not be copied; it was something you might encounter once but not seek out. And Lin Yuewei was a woman; for a woman to achieve such a feat would be even harder.
Lin Yuewei tilted her head and smiled at her. “But I’ve become Lin Yuewei.”
Who said she wanted to be the second Ran Zhengrong? She simply wanted to be Lin Yuewei. To never give up, to keep walking one road until the end, and no matter where that end was, as long as she was Lin Yuewei, she had already succeeded.
When she was a student, a teacher had made them read the classics. There was a line that went like this: One should live one’s life so that, when looking back, one would not regret having wasted it, nor feel ashamed of having achieved nothing.
Her classmates all treated it as essay material, memorizing it and moving on. Only Lin Yuewei remembered what she had felt when she first read it; it was the sensation of her soul being struck with a powerful shock. By the time she came to herself, her eyes were already hot and wet.
From then on, she had taken that sentence as the rule of her life.
This was the first time Lin Yuewei had said it aloud, and probably the last. She felt a little embarrassed, rubbed the tip of her nose, and said to Gu Yanqiu, “What I just said, just hear it and forget it.”
But Gu Yanqiu shook her head very firmly.
Lin Yuewei: “???”
Gu Yanqiu: “I’m waiting to see that day with my own eyes.”
Lin Yuewei: “…”
A moment later, she rarely blushed and said, “Gu Yanqiu, when you say that, I feel really embarrassed.”
Gu Yanqiu couldn’t hold it in and burst out laughing. “Hahahahaha.”
Lin Yuewei was dazed for a moment.
This should have been the first time in her memory that Gu Yanqiu had laughed so freely.
Then, feeling both embarrassed and annoyed, she lunged over and pinched Gu Yanqiu’s face. “You’re going too far. You’re even laughing at me.” The moment she touched her face, though, something was wrong; it was way too smooth. Her fingers almost slipped off the flesh on her cheek.
Caught off guard, Gu Yanqiu let her push her down, falling onto the sofa on her back with her face trapped in Lin Yuewei’s hands, as if one more wrong word and she’d be punished.
Gu Yanqiu’s smile had already settled back into the usual faint one. Lin Yuewei felt a little disappointed.
Gu Yanqiu said, “I’m being serious. I wasn’t making fun of you.”
In the end, Lin Yuewei couldn’t bring herself to keep pinching; she only used her fingers to scratch at her cheek. “Then what are you laughing at?”
“I don’t know. I just really want to laugh.” Gu Yanqiu answered honestly.
“Hmph.” Lin Yuewei got up and let her go. It wasn’t that she was magnanimously sparing Gu Yanqiu; it was that Gu Yanqiu lying under her like that was far too tempting. If she stayed in that position too long, she was afraid she might do something beastly.
Her eyes dropped to the Buddhist beads on Gu Yanqiu’s wrist; Buddha was watching too.
Gu Yanqiu sat up and looked at her with bright eyes. “Am I the first person to know?”
“Know what?” Lin Yuewei issued a serious warning to herself: Please, Gu Yanqiu, take back that sparkling look, or I’ll report you for the crime of being too cute and sentence you to two hundred years with me, no parole.
“What you just said, about Ran Zhengrong.”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m your first career fan?” Gu Yanqiu said.
Lin Yuewei: “…”
What was all this nonsense? How did she even know about career fans? Weren’t you supposed to be an old-fashioned office lady who didn’t chase stars?
Gu Yanqiu held out a hand toward Lin Yuewei.
Lin Yuewei gave her a sideways look. “What for?”
Gu Yanqiu said matter-of-factly, “Do you have a number plate with ‘1’ on it? Give me one as proof.”
Lin Yuewei almost died laughing. “Hahaha, are you possessed?” She had never noticed before that Gu Cute was this funny.
Gu Yanqiu’s hand remained outstretched, stubborn as ever.
Helpless, Lin Yuewei took out paper and a pen from her bag, wrote a “1” by hand, tore off the sheet, and handed it to Gu Yanqiu. “Here. Happy?”
“Happy. I’ll use this one.” Gu Yanqiu actually carefully tucked it into the inner pocket of her wallet.
Lin Yuewei: “…”
Either Gu Yanqiu was having a fit today, or she was; otherwise why was nothing normal?
Lin Yuewei shook her head. Gu Yanqiu was putting her wallet back into her bag. It wasn’t an illusion; the person who had just been fooling around with her really was Gu Cute herself.
The TV kept playing. The two of them picked up their phones and, looking at the cast list, commented back and forth on the actors: this one acted stiffly, that one was decent, some people looked better on camera than in still photos.
Speaking of still photos, Lin Yuewei suddenly remembered that before the finals, they had done a magazine shoot. The stylist had specifically made her do an entirely different look for that issue, and by timing, it should be about ready to release. She hadn’t seen the official pictures yet, and a little anticipation was building inside her.
“Didn’t you guys shoot magazine photos before the finals? When will those go on sale?”
Lin Yuewei: “!!!”
If she hadn’t kept her mouth shut, she would have thought it was her own voice.
This was miraculous. Was Gu Yanqiu a worm in her stomach? She could even know what Lin Yuewei had just been thinking about the photo shoot. No, wait—Gu Yanqiu only watched the show, didn’t she? The show had never said anything about magazine photos. Those behind-the-scenes materials were only known to organized fan communities like Dou X groups, Weibo circles, and QQ groups.
Could it be that Gu Yanqiu was secretly following the fandom too? Otherwise how would she know the professional term “career fan”?
Lin Yuewei’s feelings turned complicated.
Gu Yanqiu didn’t realize she had accidentally given herself away, and looked at Lin Yuewei with puzzled eyes. Lin Yuewei suppressed her thoughts as casually as she could and probed, “Which contestants do you like?”
Gu Yanqiu’s non-fan persona did not crack. “I still can’t even recognize everyone yet.”
That wasn’t exactly a lie. Aside from Lin Yuewei, she couldn’t be bothered to look at anyone else. As for watching the show, apart from the finale live, she had only ever watched Lin Yuewei’s edited segments. She didn’t like variety shows; the only thing she usually found interesting was movies, and mostly foreign ones at that. From now on, she could add one more thing: anything related to Lin Yuewei.
Lin Yuewei said, “Then just tell me which ones you recognize that you like.”
Without hesitation, Gu Yanqiu said, “You.”
Lin Yuewei’s heart immediately skipped a beat. She thought, I’m dead. That answer came so suddenly it almost made my legs go weak. She straightened her expression and said, “That doesn’t count. I already told you; you have a filter.”
On one hand, she kept telling herself to calm down; Gu Yanqiu only treated her as a friend. They had already agreed before that they absolutely couldn’t fall for each other. If she couldn’t help getting moved, that was her own lack of self-control. Gu Yanqiu wasn’t that kind of person; at least, not yet, not at the right time. Her mother had been so good to her; even if you didn’t consider the monk’s face, you had to consider the Buddha’s. Besides, she was good-looking, so she deserved some special treatment. Who could spend time with her and not end up liking her? On the other hand, she couldn’t stop her imagination from running wild. What if Gu Yanqiu really meant that? Was she hinting at something?
Gu Yanqiu saw that her hint had failed and, after a moment’s thought, calmly answered, “Aside from you, I don’t like any of them. There’s only one I dislike.”
“Who?”
“Shao Yasi.”
Lin Yuewei: “………………”
She had only just had dinner with Shao Yasi tonight and thought of her as a sincere friend; how unfortunate that Gu Yanqiu happened to dislike her. Then in the future, wouldn’t she be even less able to tell her?
“Can I ask why?” Lin Yuewei tried to argue for a little leeway.
“There’s no why.” Gu Yanqiu got irritated just hearing Shao Yasi’s name; her eyes looked so cold you could practically hear ice chips falling out of them.
Lin Yuewei could see her emotions were written all over her face and quickly fell silent. “Let’s not talk about her. Keep talking about the show.”
“Okay.”
Since Lin Yuewei mentioned Shao Yasi less, Gu Yanqiu felt much more at ease as well.
They analyzed the characters from the episodes they had watched that night, and by the time the hour hand neared twelve, it was time for Gu Yanqiu to sleep. Lin Yuewei rarely got such a chance to chat with her and didn’t want to let it go, but Gu Yanqiu had work tomorrow, so Lin Yuewei reluctantly said, “It’s almost ten—”
Gu Yanqiu beat her to it. “How’s your new company? I keep forgetting to ask.”
Lin Yuewei was interrupted and temporarily forgot about sleep. She gave a vague, passing answer. “It’s okay. New people are all the same.”
She didn’t plan to tell Gu Yanqiu about being neglected. First, she didn’t want Gu Yanqiu to see her weaker side; second—and especially second—she had just told Gu Yanqiu about her ambition to become a giant in the entertainment industry. She had barely taken the first step on that path and was already stumbling in a ditch, struggling to climb back up the bank. It was embarrassing even to say out loud. If not for tonight’s long talk, she might even have gone to Gu Yanqiu to discuss it.
Before she had taken her first proper step, she would rather die than tell Gu Yanqiu the truth.
Gu Yanqiu said, “If you need my help, just say the word.”
Lin Yuewei looked at her in confusion.
Gu Yanqiu said, “I may not be able to help much with connections right now, since I’m not the one in charge at the company, but I do have a little money on hand. I know about the agreement you made with your family. If it’s useful to you…”
Lin Yuewei laughed softly. “No need.”
Gu Yanqiu said, “You don’t need to be polite with me. Just take it as me investing in you; money sitting around has to be invested anyway, so it might as well go into someone I like.”
There was that word “like” again. Lin Yuewei thought to herself that if she kept overthinking things like this, she really would end up with hallucinations.
“It really isn’t politeness,” Lin Yuewei said with a smile, refusing again.
Gu Yanqiu put on that stubborn expression again. She didn’t say anything; she just looked at her gloomily.
Lin Yuewei was practically afraid of her by now. “If I really need help, I’ll definitely come to you, okay?”
Only then did Gu Yanqiu give a slight nod.
Seeing how obedient she was, Lin Yuewei wanted to pat her head, but held back. “All right. Go shower and sleep. You still have work tomorrow.”
“Will you sleep with me tonight?” Gu Yanqiu asked, dropping a bombshell.
Lin Yuewei: “!!!”
She was really going to file a complaint. Was there no way to cure Gu Yanqiu’s habit of setting off her heart alarm over and over again?
Apparently not.
Lin Yuewei sighed helplessly and nodded. “I will.”
Gu Yanqiu sleepwalked; if Lin Yuewei wasn’t staying over, it was one thing, but since she was here, it would be unreasonable not to keep her company.
Lin Yuewei turned and went upstairs. “I’ll go back to my room and shower first.”
Gu Yanqiu followed her upstairs behind her.
The two of them parted ways at the door to Gu Yanqiu’s room. They exchanged their usual goodnights, then looked at each other and smiled.
“I forgot,” Lin Yuewei said.
“So did I,” Gu Yanqiu said with a small smile.
“Oh, right.” Just before Gu Yanqiu closed the door, Lin Yuewei called out to her, “Do you have trouble sleeping in unfamiliar beds?”
Gu Yanqiu shook her head. “It’s okay.”
Lin Yuewei suggested, “Then you can sleep in my room.”
When they had chosen rooms earlier, Gu Yanqiu had given the master bedroom to Lin Yuewei and taken the smaller second bedroom for herself. Lin Yuewei’s room was much larger than the second bedroom.
Gu Yanqiu nodded. “Okay.”
After showering under the handheld shower and coming out, Lin Yuewei passed the sink and glanced up at the mirror. That familiar idiot-like grin was back again.
Lin Yuewei: “…”
It took her a few minutes to rein in her expression. She blow-dried her hair, sat on the bed for a while, then heard a knock at the door. She sprang up instantly, took a few quick steps forward, then stopped and made herself walk over in an even, ladylike pace.
Lin Yuewei opened the door and politely invited Gu Yanqiu in.
It was late, and they were both rather reserved. Lin Yuewei said, “Then let’s sleep.” She lifted one edge of the blanket first, lay down on one side of the bed, and Gu Yanqiu lay down on the other.
This bed was larger than the one in the Lin family guest room, with a wide gap between the two of them. Lin Yuewei moved a little closer on her own initiative and took Gu Yanqiu’s cool wrist in her hand, staring fixedly at the ceiling as if it held some rare wonder of the world. So nervous she could hardly breathe, she only found her voice after a while and said calmly, “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Lin Yuewei slept until morning. When she woke, she and Gu Yanqiu were forehead to forehead in a sideways, face-to-face sleeping posture.
Gu Yanqiu had woken after her and asked, “Did I sleepwalk last night?”
Lin Yuewei shook her head. “No.”
Gu Yanqiu frowned, somehow feeling that Lin Yuewei’s “no” carried a thick note of regret.
Author’s note:
Miss Lin: [sighs] Sigh, no sleepwalking. I didn’t even get the chance to kiss her.
The number plate with “1” written on it was personally written by Miss Lin and handed to President Gu. What does that mean? Gu top shippers, don’t give up, charge!
The old debts are paid off; slowly, we’ll start paying off the new ones~