2023

It seemed the annoying rain had started again.

But inside the luxury apartment, the sound was muffled, broken up by thick walls and panels until it became a hazy blur.

Chi Xiaoman was still sitting the same way, both hands obediently resting on her knees, like a beautiful doll incapable of anger or resentment. She just reacted very slowly; her catlike eyes blinked blankly at the air for a long time before she quietly said,

“Chen Yue, why does your voice sound so much hoarser than it did just now?”

She tilted her head to look at her, and some defensive instinct in her panic made the curve of her lips look like a smile, and not quite a smile.

“Do you want to drink some more hot water first?”

Chen Yue couldn’t speak.

She stood silently two steps away from Chi Xiaoman.

Not knowing whether she should keep going forward.

And under the dim yellow light.

Chi Xiaoman looked at her, blinking in confusion for a long time before saying, “Okay.”

“Not that annoying...”

She repeated what Chen Yue had just said, her voice so soft it was almost a whisper; the corners of her mouth seemed to lift a little out of habit, or maybe she was just joking with her.

“So exactly how annoying is it?”

Chen Yue opened her mouth.

But after that line.

Chi Xiaoman didn’t wait for her answer either.

She smiled again. “Just kidding. Actually, I know you’re not really the type to hate people.”

Her tone was especially gentle, sounding very much like the truth.

After she said those few lines, the curve at the corners of her mouth stayed for a moment.

Then slowly faded.

And little by little, disappeared.

That gave Chen Yue, standing in front of her less than a meter away, a suddenly very real feeling—

as if she were someone sealed inside a glass jar, forever performing warmth, softness, and happiness for the people outside through a perfectly transparent shell, all the time.

Maybe Chen Yue had once seen the Chi Xiaoman outside that jar; maybe she had seen her real warmth, softness, and happiness.

But now, in the end, she was still just one of the people outside the jar; unable to fully gain her real trust, feeling sad and lost, yet never able to do anything about it.

So she could only be extra careful when drawing near.

“Chi Xiaoman.” Chen Yue called her very softly. Seeing that she sat upright, but seemed to be sitting with some difficulty, and that her upper body was swaying a little, perhaps from dizziness, she stopped her shadow at Chi Xiaoman’s toes and didn’t go any closer. “Are you drunk?”

“No.” Chi Xiaoman shook her head.

She felt like she was already looking at Chen Yue very hard, but her vision was still hazy.

“I just want to sleep a little.”

“Blow-dry your hair before you sleep.”

Chen Yue still stopped one step away.

Her voice was extremely light.

As if she was afraid of startling her. “Do you know where the hair dryer is?”

“I know.” Chi Xiaoman nodded, both hands still on her knees, not moving at all.

“Then why didn’t you use it just now?” In her field of view.

Chen Yue stood in the light, her face blurred. “You drank alcohol; don’t leave your hair wet.”

Her tone was impossible to read. “Do you want me to help you?”

“No need.” Chi Xiaoman shook her head. “I’ll do it myself.”

“Okay.”

Chen Yue didn’t insist. “Dry it before you sleep. Otherwise, when you’re older you’ll get migraines.”

Her voice was tender.

As if there were no annoyance at all at Chi Xiaoman’s earlier retort. After a pause, she called her,

“Xiaoman.”

“Ah?” Chi Xiaoman looked up blankly.

Chen Yue looked back at her too, her gaze gentle. “If I say it’s not that annoying, it means I don’t find you annoying at all.”

The meaning was clear.

There wasn’t any room to question it.

Chi Xiaoman froze.

After a long while.

She tried hard to lift the corners of her lips and say “thank you” to Chen Yue.

But just as she opened her mouth.

Chen Yue said softly, “But I also don’t really like it when you keep saying thank you to me.”

The smile on Chi Xiaoman’s lips stiffened for a second.

Then slowly faded again.

She stared blankly at Chen Yue in front of her, and for a long time, suddenly didn’t know what to say.

So she lowered her head.

And looked at the slippers on her feet.

“However—”

As if noticing her mood. Or perhaps Chen Yue had always been good at comforting and guiding people.

She didn’t make any demands of Chi Xiaoman based on her own dissatisfaction, but quickly reflected on her own overstep; and she had never been stingy about admitting fault,

“actually, there’s no need for you to change your habits just because I don’t like it.”

“If saying thank you makes you feel a little more at ease, then do that for now.”

Her voice softened.

As if she were afraid that sounding too heavy would make Chi Xiaoman uncomfortable,

“Okay?”

The inner core that had been on the verge of collapse was almost completely seen through by Chen Yue; lightly uncovered, yet wrapped in such gentle tolerance.

Chi Xiaoman was dizzy from the alcohol.

And because of Chen Yue’s words, she felt at a loss, confused and unable to tell what reaction would be the right one.

In ten years, she had played many roles; in truth, she should have known how to give emotion and reaction, but she no longer remembered when it had started—when she no longer knew which emotions and reactions belonged to Chi Xiaoman herself.

And Chen Yue’s charm probably lay here.

She was never aggressive.

Nor would she ask a question and insist that the other person must respond before letting it go.

Any response, any emotion. With her, all of it could be met with patient tolerance.

After saying that.

She stopped one step away from Chi Xiaoman. Her hand lifted slightly, as if she was about to come over and take something.

Or perhaps... wanting to touch Chi Xiaoman’s head. Though as soon as that thought surfaced, Chi Xiaoman felt she must be very drunk.

But in the end.

Chen Yue said nothing, did nothing.

She just looked at her for a while, then quietly walked away.

When she came back.

She brought the hair dryer and a not-too-thin stack of air-conditioning blankets over to the sofa.

“It might get cold tonight, so cover yourself more.” Chen Yue said.

Chi Xiaoman came back to herself.

Realizing Chen Yue might be leaving, she called her in a daze,

“Chen Tong—”

A completely instinctive reaction.

Even after saying it, she realized she had called Chen Tong, not Chen Yue.

And Chen Yue turned around, seeming surprised too, but she didn’t show any discomfort at the name; instead, she smiled at her. “Mm? What is it?”

Chi Xiaoman pressed her lips together. “Thank you.”

Afraid Chen Yue would think she was always hanging thank you on her lips and therefore being insincere, and afraid she’d think she had become a bad person.

Chi Xiaoman emphasized,

“I really mean it.”

She really did look like a drunk.

Her word order was a little strange, and her phrasing repeated itself.

But Chen Yue smiled.

The lights in the living room had already been dimmed by her. Her smile had a kind of cinematic beauty to it.

“Okay.”

“Dry your hair, and sleep early.”

She told Chi Xiaoman, “Staying up too many nights will give you migraines when you’re older too.”

Chi Xiaoman was slow to react because of the dizziness, and she laughed out loud. “Chen Yue, why are you always copying what I say tonight?”

Chen Yue froze.

After Chi Xiaoman said it, she too felt confused. Their relationship, however you looked at it, wasn’t really the kind where they could joke about the past like that. But maybe because she had drunk too much tonight, or maybe because Chen Yue’s tolerance had made her feel so relaxed that she’d said it without thinking.

“Chen Yue...”

In her panic, Chi Xiaoman opened her mouth.

She wanted to explain.

But didn’t know how to explain, or even what she needed to explain.

Chen Yue, though, just smiled again. “Yes, I remember you really did like saying that before.”

As if she were openly and completely treating it as something they could joke about.

“Sleep early, drink more hot water, don’t skip dinner, don’t lock yourself in...”

“And you always liked to use what would happen when you got old to threaten people...”

As if she realized that reminiscing about the past was making Chi Xiaoman uncomfortable, Chen Yue stopped in time and didn’t continue.

She changed the subject.

“I’ll use the bathroom in the bedroom; I won’t come out again tonight.”

She might have said that because she thought Chi Xiaoman would feel constrained in the living room, and wanted to mention it on purpose.

Chi Xiaoman looked at her always-tolerant eyes.

Regretted making the atmosphere she had just eased tense again, and could only press her lips together and agree,

“Okay, thank you.”

Again she instinctively added thank you. She subconsciously wanted to explain, “I...”

But Chen Yue might have wanted to tell her not to overthink it; she also knew that emphasizing it again could make Chi Xiaoman even more stiff, so she only sighed.

In a softened voice, she said,

“Don’t think too much.”

“Go to sleep early.”

-

The bedroom door closed with very light movements.

Chi Xiaoman stared at it blankly for a while.

Only then did she relax a little.

Looking at all the things by the sofa, she felt somewhat at a loss.

She hadn’t expected staying over to be so much trouble for Chen Yue; not only had she deliberately gone to buy so many things for her, she had even worried that Chi Xiaoman would feel constrained and not dare touch anything, and so she had brought everything over and delivered it right to her side.

Carefully, she moved the hair dryer aside.

Then Chi Xiaoman saw there was a charger on top of the air-conditioning blanket—one that fit her phone exactly.

She froze for a moment.

Squeezed her already dead phone.

Looked at the tightly closed bedroom door.

Pressed her lips together.

She looked around the living room in confusion.

Found the outlet.

Plugged her phone in.

And immediately set it to silent.

Afraid of disturbing Chen Yue’s rest, and with no time to tidy anything else, Chi Xiaoman first plugged in the hair dryer and dried her hair for a while.

She didn’t dry it for long.

It was already almost dry.

When she was about to put the hair dryer back where it had been.

Chi Xiaoman worried Chen Yue might need to use it.

So with her hair still loose and falling around her shoulders, she crouched by the outlet and carefully sent a message:

[Chen Yue, I’ve finished using the hair dryer. Do you need it?]

Maybe she was taking a shower.

Chen Yue didn’t reply right away.

Chi Xiaoman herself still had many messages to answer, so she crouched in the corner, waiting for Chen Yue’s reply while answering messages from Shen Baozhi and Fang A-Yun to let them know she was safe.

Fang A-Yun was probably asleep and didn’t reply.

Shen Baozhi explained the situation at the hotel today, telling her not to worry; it was just a few paparazzi staking out the car. She also said she’d come pick her up tomorrow, and told her not to move around on her own.

Chi Xiaoman thanked Shen Baozhi and said she would be extra careful and not to worry.

There were still many messages from her old team on WeChat, and from several producers she had previously been in contact with.

And several missed calls from her agent, Song Yingying.

Chi Xiaoman stared at the glowing screen for a while, then typed out a message and sent it to the private lawyer she’d been in contact with recently:

[Lawyer Xu, I suspect someone with inside knowledge deliberately leaked my hotel location to the paparazzi.]

Just a suspicion, and no evidence at all. Because this kind of method really was something Song Yingying could do—

knowing that every time she came to Hong Kong she only stayed at this hotel, removing the team, then leaking a blurry bit of information to the paparazzi she paid to keep on her payroll.

That way she could guarantee those paparazzi under her wouldn’t do anything too extreme that would threaten an artist’s safety, while also controlling some of the information about the artists under her, so she could use public opinion when necessary.

Slow-boiling the frog; that was Song Yingying’s most common tactic. And in most cases, the artists under her would choose to tacitly accept it. Because Song Yingying really did have the ability to push Chi Xiaoman from nobody to where she was now with all the capital she stood among, while also protecting her so she didn’t need to get involved in those messy, dirty things. Naturally, she could also make every artist who entered her camp believe, almost entranced, that they would be the next Chi Xiaoman.

Maybe this, in the end, was also a kind of mutual choice. The adult world didn’t have any such thing as getting everything one wanted without paying a price. If you wanted something, you had to pay for it.

It was just that next time she came to Hong Kong, she couldn’t stay here anymore.

Chi Xiaoman thought she still needed to terminate the contract as soon as possible; otherwise she’d never become truly free, and the filming process of Neon wouldn’t go smoothly either.

Thinking of all this.

She felt dizzy and lightheaded.

But still insisted on handling every message.

She crouched in the corner for another ten minutes before finally receiving Chen Yue’s reply:

[Just go to sleep. You don’t need to worry about these things.]

[I still have another one in my room]

Who keeps two hair dryers at home?

Chi Xiaoman pressed her lips together, wanting to ask if Chen Yue was deliberately saying that to take care of her. The next second—

She heard the sound of a hair dryer coming from the room.

So it was true.

Chi Xiaoman slowly deleted everything in the chat box, and only then felt relieved.

She unplugged the phone charger.

Put the charger away and arranged it neatly on the coffee table.

Put all the things back into the big bag.

She basically hadn’t used any of them.

Because she didn’t want to make Chen Yue’s space look messy.

The sofa wasn’t large, but it was more than enough for one Chi Xiaoman. Her sleeping posture had improved a lot over the years too; unlike in the past, when she slept with all four limbs sprawled out, now she basically lay flat before sleeping and stayed exactly the same after falling asleep, with neither position nor posture changing much.

Chi Xiaoman covered herself with the air-conditioning blanket.

And stared at the ceiling in a daze.

The effects of the alcohol slowly faded, and the dizziness lessened.

Instead she couldn’t fall asleep. She thought of how she and Chen Yue had reached an understanding tonight about collaborating on Neon, and no matter how she thought about it, it felt unbelievable. After all, she had once thought that if she and Chen Yue ever faced each other again, it would be at either her funeral or Chen Yue’s.

She also thought that this month, she and Chen Yue had already met three times, more than they had in the past nine years.

But these three meetings had never gone well; they were always caught in conflict and confrontation.

Their positions didn’t match, their views didn’t match, their thoughts were different. To reach an agreement, one side always had to work hard to persuade, while the other, after thinking with no result, chose to give in.

In just one month, there had been more conflict than there had been in the year they had been together.

Thinking carefully, they really had both lacked the ability to handle conflict back then.

Chen Yue’s nature was measured and unhurried; she didn’t like expressing dissatisfaction or discomfort, basically didn’t clash with others, and kept any negative emotions bottled up rather than affecting anyone else.

As for Chi Xiaoman, even though she was impatient, she was naïve and thought of everything simply; she didn’t hold grudges easily, wasn’t very hot-tempered, and also wouldn’t deliberately oppose others.

On top of that, back then they both spent so much energy just surviving. In that four-hundred-yuan rental room, the other person was basically equivalent to the only support each of them had; many conflicts never even had time to arise before they were dissolved by an embrace or a smile.

Maybe that was also why, later on, when they faced such huge conflicts, they were powerless and could only break up.

But compared to before, Chen Yue now seemed much more mature, and even better at handling conflict. Not only was she skilled at gently guiding people along, she also knew how to step back at the right moment and ease the atmosphere during a standoff.

Ten years had passed without moving forward, and even far worse than before...

Only Chi Xiaoman.

Thinking vaguely over and over, Chi Xiaoman sat up from the sofa.

She stood and straightened the air-conditioning blanket.

Then she heard the hair dryer stop in the bedroom.

So fast?

Chi Xiaoman thought hazily.

She didn’t know if Chen Yue’s hair was completely dry.

She stared at the faint light under the bedroom door and wanted to say in a relaxed tone—

Chen Yue, if you don’t dry your hair, you’ll easily get migraines when you’re older.

But the door was shut tightly.

She didn’t know whether her voice could even get through.

In the end, she didn’t say it.

Chi Xiaoman pressed her lips together.

She heard a faint click as the light in the crack under the bedroom door went out.

The living room became very, very dark.

Chi Xiaoman closed her eyes tight.

And lay back down.

At the same time, she tugged at the blanket.

Click—

Something was knocked to the floor.

The sound wasn’t loud.

But in the darkness sealed in by the curtains, it was especially abrupt.

Click— the light in the bedroom suddenly came on again.

Light leaked through the crack under the door, faintly driving away the darkness in the living room.

Footsteps came from inside the room.

They were a little hurried, but as they approached the door, they slowed down and stopped completely.

Then came Chen Yue’s somewhat muffled voice through the door.

“Xiaoman? What happened?”

She didn’t open the door directly, probably because she was worried Chi Xiaoman might not be convenient right now.

“I’m fine, I just dropped something.”

Chi Xiaoman was afraid of disturbing Chen Yue’s rest, and in her confusion hurried to bend down and look for it.

Chen Yue didn’t open the door, but she didn’t leave either; she seemed to be standing right by it. After a while, her muffled voice came through, “Be careful.”

Chi Xiaoman answered.

Then she forced her eyes open.

It took her a long while to find that it was the charger she had knocked off when pulling the blanket.

She picked it up with some effort.

Exhaling, she said to Chen Yue behind the door, “I’m fine, it was just the charger that fell.”

Chen Yue was quiet for a moment. “Okay.”

The thin light in the crack of the door didn’t disappear right away.

It was only after Chi Xiaoman put the charger back, lay down again rather stiffly, and pulled the blanket over herself that the bedroom fell silent for a moment.

Only then did footsteps appear again.

This time, they were much slower than before.

More than ten seconds later.

The footsteps stopped.

Click—

The light in the crack under the door disappeared again.

The apartment returned to silence.

Chi Xiaoman stared into the dark for a long time. In her daze, she blinked her stinging eyes. About a minute later, she came back to herself like waking from a dream and closed her eyes completely.

Maybe because she had entered Chen Yue’s space again after so long, and her subconscious believed Chen Yue was very close to her, she dreamed of Chen Yue that night.

But that also made no sense, because the smell in this space felt very unfamiliar to her, with not a trace of anything she knew.

And yet she still dreamed of Chen Yue.

Back then, Beijing summers were not only humid and sticky, but also full of mosquitoes. And Chi Xiaoman had a constitution that especially attracted mosquitoes; once she fell asleep, she would be groggy enough to get bitten all over her legs, leaving dense little red welts.

Meanwhile, Chen Yue was suffering from terrible insomnia during that period; it was hard for her to fall asleep. Every time Chi Xiaoman got bitten so badly she couldn’t sleep, Chen Yue would get up to apply insect-repellent lotion for her, and afterward would fan her for a long time with a palm fan.

So Chi Xiaoman always felt that summer nights might have been extremely long for Chen Yue.

Because even after she herself fell asleep again, the mosquitoes one by one quieted down.

And Chen Yue still wouldn’t be sleeping.

In the dream, Chi Xiaoman faintly opened her eyes and saw Chen Yue keeping watch by the bedside, blurredly applying medicine to her in the dark. When she saw Chi Xiaoman open her eyes, she smiled, then came over to touch her head and cover her eyes with her palm, saying softly,

“Go to sleep. Don’t open your eyes.”

Twenty-year-old Chi Xiaoman had to do many things every day, running to several places for work. By night she was always hard-pressed to resist sleep, and in Chen Yue’s very soft coaxing voice, she drifted off.

And in the dream, Chi Xiaoman had the chance to open her eyes; she felt heartache, and she felt sad.

Because on lonely nights like this, twenty-three-year-old Chen Yue had probably gone through it countless times alone. And thirty-year-old Chi Xiaoman no longer had the chance to make it up to her.

“Why are you crying?”

In her hazy awareness, Chi Xiaoman heard the woman’s low whisper right beside her. She struggled to lift her eyelids; the world was still very dark.

Dark, like that rental apartment ten years ago with a ceiling too shaded to catch sunlight and covered in mold.

And the woman looked at her tenderly in the dimness, her fingers gently brushing away the tears at the corner of her eye.

Once, twice.

Then.

She covered Chi Xiaoman’s eyes with her palm.

Her voice in the long night was very low, as if carrying a great deal of tenderness melted into water.

“Go to sleep. Don’t open your eyes.”

Hot tears slid from the corners of her eyes. In the darkness, Chi Xiaoman blinked blankly.

The woman’s palm trembled.

Chi Xiaoman was afraid it might feel itchy for her.

So she obediently closed her eyes again.

Maybe tonight really was too long; so long that she mistook the dream for reality.

Before falling asleep again, Chi Xiaoman even mocked herself for not being able to finish the dream quickly enough.

Her consciousness was hazy.

She felt herself sleeping, yet not sinking fully into sleep.

Because.

She could feel the soft palm pressed over her eyelids slowly moving away.

And she could feel.

The woman still standing beside her for a while.

Then.

Using something cool, she applied it to Chi Xiaoman’s hands and legs.

Those places were very itchy.

It must have been mosquito bites again.

Could mosquito bites in a dream really feel this real? Chi Xiaoman thought, muddled for a second.

But soon, that cool wetness covered the itchy spots on her hands and feet.

It wasn’t applied to any other part of her body.

And unlike before, no one would cup her face and turn it over, carefully check whether she had mosquito bumps behind her ears, then gently dab on insect-repellent lotion with a fingertip—

because that was the place she itched most easily, and the place she could least bear to itch.

Now the woman only applied it to the places that were obvious.

Chi Xiaoman didn’t know why the Chen Yue in the dream was being so polite to her.

She found it strange.

But she didn’t dare ask, afraid that if she did, the dream would wake.

And after applying it.

The woman still didn’t leave.

She stood beside her for a long, long time.

Unfortunately, Chi Xiaoman still couldn’t open her eyes again, and couldn’t make out the woman’s face.

She didn’t want to wake up.

But the woman still left in the end.

Only before going, hesitating and wavering, she reached out a finger and very lightly touched her hair.

Then.

In a voice very, very soft, she said,

“Has your hair grown long again?”

-

When Chen Yue woke, she could feel how quiet the room was.

The kind of quiet where there was no one else but her.

She hadn’t slept very well tonight.

Her cold had probably worsened quite a bit because of the night’s habitual overthinking.

Her nose was blocked.

Her throat hurt badly; even swallowing saliva was difficult.

Her head felt heavy.

Just looking at the ceiling made her dizzy.

But she didn’t like lying in bed for too long.

So she forced herself up, made herself open the door, and walked out of the bedroom; then she saw—

The living room was empty.

But maybe the person she had tried every possible way to keep there had, before leaving, opened the floor-to-ceiling curtains for her.

Sunlight poured in.

Its color was very white, a little harsh on the eyes.

But it also made the whole living room bright, bright enough to seem like the summers in Beijing in her memory.

Chen Yue raised a hand to shield her eyes and walked over slowly, only to see that the sofa had been tidied completely, restored to the state it should have been in with just two cushions on it, as if no one had ever slept there.

The air-conditioning blanket had been neatly folded and placed in the corner of the sofa. Beside it was the charger with its cord wound into a circle, along with the things she had rushed out to buy yesterday and didn’t know whether Chi Xiaoman still needed now.

There was basically no sign they had been used. What she bought yesterday still looked exactly the same today.

Chen Yue looked at them quietly for a while.

She didn’t touch the neatly arranged things.

She went to the bar.

Wanted to pour herself a glass of water.

But on the bar sat the thermos she had bought last night.

With a cold, people reacted very slowly.

Chen Yue walked over slowly, picked it up, and found there was weight inside.

It was full of hot water.

Chi Xiaoman had filled it with hot water, but forgotten to take it away?

Chen Yue hurried to look for her phone.

She wanted to ask Shen Baozhi where Chi Xiaoman had gone, and whether it was still in time to send the thermos over now.

But after only a few steps.

She suddenly caught sight of the things tidied up by the sofa and froze in a way that was extremely abrupt.

She sensed something was off.

She wouldn’t even use her eye mask.

How could she use the thermos and forget to take it away, making Chen Yue think of bringing it to her?

In a daze, Chen Yue returned to the bar and stared at the thermos for a long while. It had indeed been bought in a rush yesterday at a convenience store; it wasn’t really any particular style.

But remembering that Chi Xiaoman didn’t like black or dark blue, those old-fashioned colors, she had chosen a brown one from among them.

At the checkout counter, she had also seen loose stickers by the register and, possessed by some strange impulse, added a sheet.

But later, because she had been in too much of a hurry on the way, she hadn’t had time to stick them on, and so she had brought them out together.

And now.

It must have been that a person who disliked somber colors had bent over that whole sheet of stickers and studied them for a long time, and finally carefully selected a white little rabbit making a cute face, flashing a V sign and winking, and personally stuck it onto the brown thermos she had bought early that morning.

It was a little mismatched, but it no longer looked as gloomy as it had yesterday.

Chen Yue stared at the white little rabbit on the thermos for a long while. Then, hesitantly, she reached out and took it.

She also managed to open it—

It was hot.

Steam rose from inside.

It misted over her aching eyes.

Chen Yue stood there for a long time, holding it for a long time, and hesitated before taking a sip, only to freeze all at once.

It was pear water.

Boiled pear water.

It’s good for a cold and a sore throat.

It was hard to say what it felt like to see that Chi Xiaoman hadn’t taken away the things she bought, and it was also hard to say what it felt like to see the thermos Chi Xiaoman had left behind covered in stickers and filled with boiled pear water.

Chen Yue stood in front of the bar and drank the pear water little by little until it was gone, but she also realized with some difficulty that—

Chi Xiaoman had boiled pear water for her, yet hadn’t left any visible trace of it in her kitchen.

Everything was still in its original place, as if the cup of pear water in her hands had been conjured out of thin air by Chi Xiaoman.

Unable to make sense of it.

Chen Yue stood in the empty apartment, looking at the sunlight outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, lost in thought for a long time.

Maybe boiled pear water really did work; after drinking it hot, Chen Yue sweated quite a bit, and her stomach felt much better too.

Only her hands didn’t have much strength.

Leaning on the bar.

She very reluctantly washed the empty thermos clean.

Then passing the refrigerator.

Her phone suddenly buzzed somewhere.

Chen Yue looked around the apartment in confusion, finally finding it in a corner. On the screen was a new iMessage:

[Chen Yue, are you awake?]

From Chi Xiaoman.

No extra questions.

Chen Yue stared at it for a while, then replied simply:

[Awake]

[Thank you for the pear water]

After the two messages were sent.

Three little dots appeared beneath the chat bubble, indicating the other party was typing.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

...

The three dots disappeared.

No message came through.

Chen Yue guessed—

Chi Xiaoman might have fallen into hesitation again.

Afraid Chen Yue would think she had overstepped by boiling the pear water for her, so she was racking her brain for a way to explain it.

So Chen Yue wanted to proactively offer Chi Xiaoman a way out.

And just at that moment.

The phone vibrated.

It was Chi Xiaoman’s reply:

[You’re welcome.]

Admitting it so openly?

Chen Yue was actually surprised.

But the next second.

A new message came through:

[It was the pear Mr. Shen the producer bought.]

Chen Yue let out a laugh.

She didn’t reply, so the three dots under the bubble started again.

Chen Yue looked at them for a while, then sent:

[Then please help me thank Producer Shen]

[Okay.] This reply came quickly.

Chen Yue thought the conversation was over.

She wanted to put the phone down.

But she found that the other side’s three dots hadn’t stopped.

Chi Xiaoman was still typing.

Chen Yue waited patiently.

She didn’t rush her.

She held the already-washed thermos in her hand.

Gently rubbing the white little rabbit sticker on it.

Yesterday she had thought of Chi Xiaoman as someone locked inside a glass jar. Today she felt that Chi Xiaoman might be more like the white little rabbit she had put on the thermos herself.

Probably the gentlest of all rabbit-like creatures; always easily startled, soft-hearted, always so careful in front of her, afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing.

She might not be relaxed, and she really was no longer the old Chi Xiaoman who had never feared anything; even Shen Yin and Shen Baozhi’s evaluations of Chi Xiaoman were both: careful, in a bad state, not like someone bold enough to throw herself into filming Neon under these circumstances without hesitation.

She chalked that up to none of them having ever tasted that plate of fried sweet potatoes with sugar threads in person.

Because Chen Yue had always felt that, deep down, Chi Xiaoman was still soft, and still glittering gold; she had many kinds of loveliness and bravery she didn’t easily show to others.

If she wanted to try to get closer, to peel away those hard shells she used to protect herself from being hurt and see her inside again, then she would need to repeat to that rabbit-like Chi Xiaoman again and again—

that she didn’t dislike her, had never hated her, and wasn’t easy to anger.

Maybe after repeating it many times she still wouldn’t be able to obtain complete trust.

But fortunately.

Fortunately Chen Yue was willing to spend several years making a film, and was also willing to spend a full year as a volunteer in Nepal.

She had always been patient.

Buzz buzz—

Her phone vibrated.

Chen Yue pulled herself back from her thoughts.

At last she saw Chi Xiaoman’s reply:

[There’s still some in the fridge, but you need to heat it up before drinking it; don’t drink it cold]

Without hurrying to reply.

Chen Yue stood up.

And went to open the fridge.

Sure enough.

Inside sat a health kettle she had never used, and in it was a big jar of pear water; the liquid was clear, with pears that looked generously packed floating inside.

It stood out especially clearly in her fridge full of iced drinks.

Buzz buzz—

The phone vibrated again.

It should have been a message from Chi Xiaoman.

But Chen Yue didn’t hurry to look.

Because she had taken out the health kettle and then, behind it, saw a bowl covered by a plate—

The bowl was large.

Its capacity was deep.

Chen Yue took it out and lifted the plate.

She saw a plate of fried sweet potatoes with sugar threads.

It probably hadn’t been there for long.

It was still warm to the touch, and clearly didn’t look like Shen Baozhi’s handiwork.

Every piece of sweet potato inside was coated with an appetizing syrup; they looked golden and bright.

The taste must certainly be very good.

No need for Chen Yue to be doubted every time she said something was delicious, as if she weren’t sincere enough.

Then she set the bowl down with both hands and lowered her head.

Slid open her phone.

At last she could see the newest line in the iMessage thread:

[Also, it’s probably best not to eat too much of the fried sweet potatoes with sugar threads either]

[Author’s Note]

The twenty-second day of Little Neon’s serial run [sunglasses]