Chapter 96
Time rewound to a month earlier.
Jiang Congbi had clearly fallen hard. She and her little girlfriend had been all sweetness and tenderness for several months now, still stuck to each other like glue. None of her previous relationships had ever lasted more than three months; this one had already gone on for five.
“Ah...” Jiang Congbi used a fork to scoop up a chocolate truffle and feed it to the little girlfriend opposite her, who was still only a freshman in college. The girl smiled so sweetly that Jiang Congbi’s heart practically melted into a puddle. She immediately leaned over and pulled her onto her lap, the two of them perched on the sofa together.
Jiang Congbi had drawn all the blinds in the office and told her little girlfriend not to make a sound.
Jiang Congbi was full of tricks; by the time she was done, the girl had bitten her lower lip until it split. Only then did Jiang Congbi smile and lower her head to kiss the wound on the other’s lips, reaching for a few tissues from the box on the coffee table.
Lin Yuewei’s call came at exactly the right time.
Jiang Congbi answered while coaxing her red-eyed girlfriend, and said with a laugh, “If you’d called two minutes earlier, I would’ve blocked you.”
“You’ve got a temper lately.”
“It’s not a temper problem.” Jiang Congbi smiled disdainfully, her expression bright with amusement as she let out an exaggerated “ah” and said, “You don’t get it.” Filming had made her so clean and sexless she was almost ready to become a nun; how could Lin Yuewei possibly understand?
“Is Boss Jiang living the high life lately?” Lin Yuewei teased her.
Jiang Congbi squinted with a satisfied smile. “Living the high life, yeah. Career’s going well, love life’s going well; what do I have not to enjoy? Hiss—” Her just-worn-out little girlfriend pinched her waist, and Jiang Congbi hurriedly stopped herself and changed the subject. “How are things with Gu Yanqiu?”
Lin Yuewei said, “Just... pretty good.”
Lin Yuewei had told Jiang Congbi the moment she got together with Gu Yanqiu; more accurately, Jiang Congbi was simply too gossipy, and as they chatted she had taken the initiative to ask about Lin Yuewei’s progress. She seemed utterly convinced that Lin and Gu were destined to end up together, just a matter of time, and was genuinely invested in the Lin-Gu CP. Thinking of that, Lin Yuewei suddenly remembered that her mother hadn’t asked about her love life on recent phone calls. That was a little strange.
Jiang Congbi clicked her tongue and said, “That’s no fun, is it? We grew up together with our pants off, and you think I can’t tell what your ellipsis means? Besides, it’s still work hours, right? If it wasn’t something important, would you be calling me at this time?”
“I don’t have any scenes this afternoon; I’m at the hotel right now.”
“Oh, so you don’t have scenes this afternoon, but instead of staying at the set you came back to the hotel early to call me. That still doesn’t prove you’re acting weird?”
Lin Yuewei: “...”
Ever since Lin Yuewei started working and dating, the time she had for Jiang Congbi had grown less and less; that didn’t stop Jiang Congbi from understanding her after all these years, though. Lin Yuewei made a peep, and Jiang Congbi could tell whether she was hungry, thirsty, or fighting with Gu Yanqiu.
Jiang Congbi pressed a finger between her little girlfriend’s brows. The girlfriend pulled her hand down; Jiang Congbi put it right back. The two of them played around happily while Jiang Congbi asked lazily, “Miss Lin, really not going to say? I’m busy, you know.”
The little girlfriend glared at her.
Lin Yuewei stayed silent for a full ten seconds before saying, “I’ll say it.”
Jiang Congbi stopped fooling around and leaned back against the sofa, suddenly serious. “Go on.” She had a feeling whatever Lin Yuewei was about to say was probably going to be big news.
Jiang Congbi listened attentively.
Lin Yuewei stammered through telling her about Gu Yanqiu coming to visit her on set.
Jiang Congbi immediately played the clown, saying in an exaggerated tone of envy, “Wow, so romantic. Your wife loves you so much.”
Lin Yuewei’s mouth twitched. “Enough already.”
Jiang Congbi snapped back to normal in a second. “So?”
Lin Yuewei said, “Last night, the two of us...” She trailed off evasively.
Jiang Congbi blurted out, “You slept together?”
Lin Yuewei’s ears heated. “No. I touched her a couple of times.”
Jiang Congbi grew even more excited. “You just rubbed against each other, but didn’t go all the way?”
Lin Yuewei had always been the model student who only ever wanted to study the sages. She was nothing like Jiang Congbi, who loved to run wild outside. Jiang Congbi had gone through a dozen boyfriends in college; Lin Yuewei hadn’t made a peep. The people who pursued her could have lined up from the school gate all the way to Shenwu Gate, and she still forced them all back with one cold face.
So in Jiang Congbi’s mind, Lin Yuewei was probably destined to die alone. Who would have thought Gu Yanqiu would somehow show up by pure chance? And once Gu Yanqiu did show up, somehow the eternally abstinent Lin Yuewei had even awakened a human desire.
Yes, although Lin Yuewei didn’t look abstinent at all and from some angles even seemed a little seductive, she was actually a solidly “home nun” type; that was Jiang Congbi’s nickname for her. Back in college, boys would joke about girls in private, and girls did the same; they’d secretly discuss whose nose was big, whose fingers were long, and their limits weren’t necessarily any milder than the boys’. As Lin Yuewei’s best friend, Jiang Congbi naturally had no scruples discussing such things in front of her, and even used her ex-boyfriends as examples.
Jiang Congbi once had Lin Yuewei come over to her place. Jiang Congbi put on a little movie in the living room while Lin Yuewei read in the study, wrote papers, and checked the stock market. Jiang Congbi forced her to watch for a few minutes, and Lin Yuewei’s disgust was impossible to hide. After a long time, Jiang Congbi stopped pressuring her.
So it was easy to imagine how shocking what Lin Yuewei was saying now was to Jiang Congbi; she was so moved she was almost in tears. “My little Lin baby has grown up. Mommy is so relieved.”
Lin Yuewei: “...”
What was all that about?
Lin Yuewei said, “No. What I touched was her waist.” She paused, then, with great humiliation, added in a low voice, “Through her clothes.”
Jiang Congbi gave a cold “oh,” clearly disappointed. “Then why are you telling me this? Let’s block each other; goodbye forever.”
“I’m not done yet.”
“Go on, then.” Jiang Congbi sounded lazily uninterested.
“That night we kissed a little too much, and later when I went to shower I found...” Her last few words were so soft that without Jiang Congbi’s sharp ears, it would have been impossible to hear what she was saying.
Jiang Congbi shot up in excitement. “Nice, nice! Your tiny step is a giant leap for your relationship!”
“Aren’t you being a little too dramatic?” Lin Yuewei said helplessly.
“You got wet!” Jiang Congbi said. “Isn’t that worth celebrating?”
The little girlfriend beside her, who had been silently listening: “...”
Lin Yuewei: “...Can’t you stop shouting so the whole world knows?”
Jiang Congbi said, “My office soundproofing is pretty good, it’s fine.”
Lin Yuewei was desperate to move on from this topic as quickly as possible. “After that, what am I supposed to do?”
Jiang Congbi asked, “What exactly do you want to ask?”
Lin Yuewei didn’t watch the kind of movies Jiang Congbi was obsessed with, but she still understood the basics of physiology. She also knew what her own reaction meant. So her question was: “I don’t know how to do this, and Gu Yanqiu seems to really resist it. No, not resist exactly—she just doesn’t want to move too fast.”
“Oh, oh, oh.” Jiang Congbi basically understood. Stroking her chin, she said, “If you don’t know how, you can learn; once the time comes, your instincts will kick in. That’s not a big problem. As for not wanting to rush... you can look into it a little more.”
“Look into what?”
“Figure out what’s behind her not wanting to rush. Does she not like it, is she shy, or is there some special psychological reason?”
“Special psychological reason?”
“Like refusing premarital sex,” Jiang Congbi said. “I remember she’s always been fiddling with that string of beads of hers. Is she Buddhist? Does Buddhism oppose this kind of thing? I only know Christianity seems to forbid it; I don’t really get it.”
“She’s not Buddhist, and besides, weren’t we already married?” Lin Yuewei had no idea where to start complaining.
Jiang Congbi laughed twice. “I’ve been living such a fairy life lately that I don’t remember things. Forgive me, forgive me.” To keep Lin Yuewei from punching her through the phone, Jiang Congbi hurriedly returned to the previous topic. “Two possibilities. First, she doesn’t like it. Second, she’s shy and thinks things shouldn’t progress this quickly.”
Before Lin Yuewei could say anything, Jiang Congbi went on, “Both of those have the same solution.”
Lin Yuewei waited for a long time, but there was nothing more. She couldn’t help asking, “So say it already.”
Jiang Congbi snorted with a laugh. “The boat will straighten itself out when it reaches the bridge.”
Lin Yuewei: “...”
That was basically saying nothing.
Jiang Congbi said, “Let me guess, you’re trash-talking me in your head right now, aren’t you? Thinking that was nonsense? It means you need to hurry up and row the boat to the bridge. Try a few more times and you’re guaranteed to succeed; practical experience, tenfold refund if fake.”
“Jiang Congbi, my dear, things were a little rocky at first between me and my girlfriend too. She’s young, and her family was strict, so she avoided this kind of thing like the plague. Now she isn’t always clinging to me? Last week I couldn’t even get out of bed for two days.”
Jiang Congbi nimbly dodged the kick her girlfriend aimed at her.
Jiang Congbi got even more energized. “We’re both in the office right now; we just had some office play a second ago.”
Lin Yuewei: “...”
Jiang Congbi said, “I’m not talking to you anymore. I’m about to get beaten. I’ll recommend you some stuff tonight. Take a look when you have time. You’re still in the crew; filming comes first, don’t keep thinking about this kind of thing. It’ll wear you out.”
***
That was where the things in Lin Yuewei’s computer came from. Jiang Congbi had sent them to her ages ago, but Lin Yuewei kept getting distracted by other things; besides, she wasn’t that enthusiastic about it herself. Asking Jiang Congbi was mainly because she didn’t want to have any obvious shortcomings. It’s only when you need a book that you regret not having read enough; the same went for this kind of knowledge.
She had watched videos with men and women before, and her only impression at the time was that they were too exaggerated, exaggerated everywhere. Now watching women with women, the feeling was pretty much the same.
Unfortunately, Gu Yanqiu happened to call at exactly this time. Lin Yuewei had finally forced herself to open the video, so once she got going, she naturally kept watching.
“I-I’m not doing anything.”
She rarely ever sounded this guilty. Gu Yanqiu’s one cup of vinegar instantly turned into a whole vat, and she said, “Do you have something else on your hands?” Like talking to Shao Yasi while you’re on the phone with me, for example.
Gu Yanqiu wasn’t someone with a narrow mind, but when it came to Shao Yasi, she had long held a grudge. Ever since the show recordings, even through that screen, she could feel Shao Yasi’s faint good feelings toward Lin Yuewei. Don’t ask her why; it was just intuition.
“Nothing else now,” Lin Yuewei replied. She had already closed the video.
Gu Yanqiu pressed further. “Then what were you doing just now?”
“Studying a script.” Right; a different script. Lin Yuewei answered with complete confidence.
With her so certain, the doubts that had risen in Gu Yanqiu’s heart gradually receded. She wasn’t comfortable with Shao Yasi, but she was still comfortable with Lin Yuewei; Lin Yuewei wasn’t the kind of person who would be easily led away by others.
“Still need to study?” Gu Yanqiu’s suspicions gone, her courage to interrogate her disappeared too, and her tone softened.
“Nope. I’m going to coax you.”
“What’s there to coax me about?” Gu Yanqiu lowered her eyes, looking at the coffee table in front of her. Her fingers hooked a strand of hair that had fallen over her chest, and even the curve of her lips turned soft.
“Weren’t you jealous just now?”
“I’m done being jealous.”
“Really?” Lin Yuewei’s tone turned teasing.
“...No.”
“Then let me coax you.”
“How are you going to coax me?”
Lin Yuewei was terrible at coaxing people. The only thing she could think of was chatting. “Um, what did you have for dinner tonight?”
Gu Yanqiu was silent for a few seconds. “Abalone.”
“You always eat such nourishing things?”
“I was entertaining clients outside.”
“Oh, oh. Drink less.”
As expected, the conversation died.
The two of them once again realized they really weren’t suited to this style of chatting. Rather than forcing it, they cut their losses in time. Gu Yanqiu said, “The reason I called you actually has something else to it.”
“What is it?”
“Mr. Liu has made new progress.”
Gu Yanqiu told her about it in detail.
The results of her and Gu Feiquan’s paternity test had already come out three weeks earlier; they were half-siblings on the father’s side. There was no issue there. To be honest, both of them had been very nervous before getting the result. Gu Feiquan was afraid that his perfectly good sister would suddenly disappear, while Gu Yanqiu’s feelings were complicated. On the one hand, she worried that all the conclusions built on that foundation would turn into nonsense; on the other hand, there was also a fantasy buried inside her: if the two of them weren’t biological siblings, did that mean the truth of the matter might not be so cruel? But at the same time, she hadn’t forgotten the smallest possibility of all; that Gu Feiquan was Gu Huai’s son, while she was not Gu Huai’s daughter.
When the results came out, the dust settled.
Although Lin Yuewei still hadn’t completely let go of her suspicions toward Gu Feiquan, ruling out one point of doubt still put her at ease.
Mr. Liu had gone to C University and found the old professor who had taught Shen Huaiyu back then. Using the class photos from that year, he tracked down Shen Huaiyu’s classmates and spent more than a month interviewing people everywhere.
The result, however, was not ideal.
When Shen Huaiyu was in college, she not only had excellent grades, but was also very popular. Who wouldn’t like a beautiful, cheerful girl? She had countless people close to her. Homosexuality was still something shocking in those days, and Shen Huaiyu was a smart person; she probably hid it very well. Girls being a little affectionate with one another usually wouldn’t arouse suspicion, and as the years passed, everyone’s memories blurred. If they were forced to name the person she had been closest to at the time, they couldn’t.
Gu Yanqiu provided a clue midway through: Shen Huaiyu had used the alias Luo Yu, and she suspected the surname had something to do with the girlfriend she had at the time, so she asked him to pay attention to anyone with the surname Luo, or any names related to the character Luo.
Mr. Liu hadn’t found anyone surnamed Luo, but there was one woman surnamed Ma and one surnamed Luo. One had married far overseas, the other was divorced with a child. After a careful investigation, both were ruled out as possible former girlfriends of Shen Huaiyu, and the clue from the name went cold there.
“Were there no other suspects?” Lin Yuewei asked.
“There were,” Gu Yanqiu said. “Counted up, there are probably more than fifty suspects; they’re being screened right now.”
Lin Yuewei was astonished. “How can there be so many?”
Gu Yanqiu sighed. “Classmates, same year, same school, other schools.”
“...” Lin Yuewei couldn’t help thinking to herself: My future mother-in-law really made a huge scene. She could have had something ambiguous with so many people?
Gu Yanqiu pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. “I don’t know how long it’ll take to screen them all.”
Lin Yuewei put away her gossiping mindset and asked, “Do you have any priorities?”
“I want to have them, but the old classmates’ memories don’t line up. Some people describe exactly the opposite things, so we can’t find a focus.”
“That’s pretty tricky.”
“Mr. Liu has lost a big handful of hair over it lately.”
Lin Yuewei snorted. “Hahahaha.”
Gu Yanqiu said, “Do you have no conscience?”
Lin Yuewei said righteously, “Nope.”
Gu Yanqiu laughed with her. “I’m planning to give Mr. Liu a raise.”
“Finding him a hair-growth remedy would work better than anything.”
“That’s reasonable,” Gu Yanqiu said.
Lin Yuewei said, “If you could find a hair-growth remedy, Yanzu wouldn’t be bald either. I heard Wang Yuanyuan say yesterday that A-Zu is going bald too; he even posted on Weibo yesterday about his hair volume. Just give him more money instead.”
Gu Yanqiu smiled. “Okay, I’ll listen to you.”
The words themselves, and the tone they were spoken in, inexplicably pleased Lin Yuewei, and she got a little carried away. “You’ll listen to everything I say?”
“I’ll listen to you.”
“Then I have a request. Will you agree?”
“Tell me what it is first.”
“You were just saying you’d listen to me.” Lin Yuewei said unhappily.
“Specific matters need specific analysis. What if you want me to sit on your lap from now on? That won’t do.” Gu Yanqiu said with complete seriousness.
Lin Yuewei deflated at once. “Then never mind.”
Gu Yanqiu raised a brow. “So it really was that.”
Lin Yuewei dug in her heels. “No.” But it wasn’t much different.
Gu Yanqiu asked, “Mad at me?”
Lin Yuewei said sarcastically, “How dare I get mad at Boss Gu?”
Gu Yanqiu could tell she was unhappy, and tried to lighten the mood. “You’re my sweet little darling; of course you can be mad at me.”
Lin Yuewei didn’t fall for it. “Learn how to act like a domineering CEO first, then we’ll talk.”
She had only said it offhandedly, and never expected Gu Yanqiu to take it to heart, which later led to some laughable little incidents; that was for later, so there was no need to mention it here.
Neither of the Lin-Gu pair were the type to coax people, especially over the phone. Most of the time, they either worked things out themselves or relied on changing the subject to smooth things over. Today was no exception. Last time, Lin Yuewei had asked Gu Yanqiu to keep an eye on her family situation, and Gu Yanqiu had taken it seriously and paid attention.
“I went over every weekend. Twice your dad wasn’t home; once he personally cooked; and once he was in the study, only coming downstairs briefly for a meal in the middle. After eating he went back up. Your dad and mom still seemed fine. Since I didn’t understand their usual way of getting along, I couldn’t notice anything subtler. Sorry.”
“It’s fine, I know,” Lin Yuewei said. Even though there didn’t seem to be anything abnormal from Gu Yanqiu’s brief description, the uneasy feeling in her heart was growing stronger and stronger.
“Didn’t you say you wanted to study? Go on, then. I should shower too; my head hurts a little.”
“Go ahead, go ahead. Bye.”
“Bye.”
Gu Yanqiu held the phone, already disconnected, and sank into thought, her brows faintly furrowed. There was one thing she didn’t know whether she should tell Lin Yuewei. Just tonight, when she was out entertaining clients, she ran into Lin Yuewei’s father in a private room in the same club.
Yanning was neither too big nor too small; the business world people moved through only had so many places, so running into each other wasn’t strange. But Lin’s father had clearly drunk too much; enough to lose the composure expected of a successful businessman.
By the time Gu Yanqiu left, Lin’s father was still in the private room; he hadn’t noticed her.
Something was probably really wrong with the Lin family.
Gu Yanqiu showered with a heavy mind. For a while she thought of Gu Huai and He Songjun; for another while she thought of her mother, Shen Huaiyu; and she still had to split off part of her attention to think about the Lin family. It was all tangled together, impossible to sort out.
Her brain, after drinking, began to throb faintly. The tossing and turning stopped; she forced herself to fall asleep as quickly as possible.
She had a dream; long, noisy, and terrible.
When she jolted awake, her head felt like it was splitting apart. She was drenched in sweat, gasping for air. When she finally came to her senses and looked around, she was once again asleep on the sofa in the first-floor living room. Since she’d been together with Lin Yuewei, her sleepwalking had become much less frequent, so suddenly seeing a familiar scene left her momentarily unable to react.
Gu Yanqiu went barefoot to the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and drank it all in one go. She pressed a hand to her chest, where her heart was beating much faster than usual, and let out a heavy breath.
After going back to find a pair of slippers and putting them on, Gu Yanqiu sat on the sofa for a while. Then she heard the alarm from the open bedroom door on the floor above. She went upstairs to turn it off and sent Lin Yuewei a “good morning.”
Lin Yuewei replied in seconds:
[Er Mu: Good morning [rabbit]]
She must have gotten up early for filming.
[Xi Gu: Muah muah [eating hands.jpg]]
[Er Mu: When you send stickers like that, I get a little bit of a feeling that I’ve mistaken the person]
[Xi Gu: Gu Feiquan sent me this last time; I saved it]
[Er Mu: Gu Feiquan is really getting very gay now. Was the one you sent me last time, the rolling around and acting cute one, also from him?]
[Xi Gu: Yes]
[Er Mu: Okay, I now believe he has no improper intentions toward you. The guy’s just gay]
[Xi Gu: Hahaha]
Talking nonsense with Lin Yuewei for a few words in the morning swept away much of the gloom Gu Yanqiu had been carrying from that dream. She left her with a “I’m going for my morning workout,” and Lin Yuewei replied with a “okay” plus a voice message that sent another muah muah.
Gu Yanqiu put on her watch, changed clothes, and went out for her morning exercise. Exactly an hour later, she returned, prepared a simple one-person breakfast, and ate while listening to the morning news.
Her phone on the table buzzed.
Gu Yanqiu lit up the screen; it was Cheng Guiyuan, who hadn’t bothered her in a long time.
[Big Kite: I broke up]
As expected, Gu Yanqiu replied expressionlessly:
[Xi Gu: That’s rough]
[Big Kite: I’m coming back to the country]
[Xi Gu: Last time you said you were coming back, you didn’t. Remember?]
[Big Kite: This time it’s for real]
Gu Yanqiu didn’t quite believe it; just as she was about to snap back, another message popped up right after:
[Big Kite: I got kicked off the project team here [heh]]
[Big Kite: I’m almost boarding. I’ll tell you when I land]
Author’s Note:
Cheng: I am so wronged.
Alright, more or less all the supporting characters are here ╰(*°▽°*)╯
Finally we can deal with them all in one pot, coat them in egg wash, dredge them in breadcrumbs, and fry until golden; the kids next door are drooling already [not really]
Don’t go away; the commercial break is where the good stuff is.
[rubbing hands together like a fly.gif]