Chapter 12: Irresistible

Kong Can had no idea about any of this as she ducked under the eaves. She folded her umbrella and shook off the water before heading upstairs. The lights in the stairwell flickered on one by one with her footsteps. There were stairs on both sides, but she chose the right one simply because it was closer to her apartment.

This time, though, she regretted it. She ran into Ruan Ting far too soon.

“Hiding from me for days?” Ruan Ting asked, stubbing out her cigarette with the heel of her high-heeled shoe.

Kong Can braced herself and kept walking. “I haven’t been.”

The staircase wasn’t narrow—wide enough for two people side by side—but she felt trapped, cornered against the wall by Ruan Ting.

“Mm…” Kong Can’s hand hurt from the tight grip, but just as she was about to cry out, Ruan Ting loosened her hold a little.

Ruan Ting gently brushed Kong Can’s cheek, chilled by the wind, with her other hand. “Scaredy-cat. Where have you been sleeping these past few days? At Miao Miao’s place?”

They knew so little about each other. Ruan Ting didn’t even know Miao Miao’s family name or where she lived. That ignorance, though, created the purest attraction. When their hearts drew close, their souls seemed to intertwine.

By contrast, the familiarity built through blind dates was abundant yet shallow. That’s why Ruan Ting had such poor judgment in people and kept ending up with the wrong ones. She wanted a child but couldn’t divorce, or she wanted to divorce but couldn’t have the child. She couldn’t take it anymore, so she fled to this remote town with her daughter, buying herself one more day at a time.

The rain outside grew heavier, pounding relentlessly against the aluminum carport.

Kong Can’s heart pounded wildly, as if Ruan Ting—who stood so close—had cast a spell on it. She caught the faint scent of cigarette smoke on her and instinctively tried to pull back. Her rigid body pressed even tighter against the wall, the fabric of her clothes rustling softly.

“Didn’t you say you were taking Yuan Yuan to the zoo in the provincial capital to see the animal show?” Kong Can asked, her accusation lacking any real conviction.

Ruan Ting shot back, “Didn’t you say you’d text me right after finishing that customer’s shampoo?”

The guilty one fell silent, head bowed. Kong Can had always been a wild child, lying as casually as breathing. After her parents’ divorce, it got even worse. Sometimes she’d act out so badly that the school had to call her parents—just to get a little extra attention from her father, even if it meant a solid beating with a bamboo switch afterward.

“Why aren’t you mad at me?” Kong Can looked up at Ruan Ting. She hoped to see a flicker of anger in those eyes, something to ease her guilt.

Ruan Ting smiled. “Because getting mad at you wouldn’t make me feel any better.”

Kong Can, barely eighteen, was still too inexperienced. She froze for a moment, reading a hint of pity in Ruan Ting’s gaze. Suddenly, all those childish antics from her youth felt pointless.

Some feelings were wasted on the wrong person, and the right one always came too late.

Kong Can bit her lip, then slowly released it. “We can’t keep doing this.”

“Doing what?” Ruan Ting found it amusing. After all, they hadn’t done anything yet.

The dim yellow bulb cast a cheap glow on Kong Can’s face. The southwest mountain city’s water and soil were famously nurturing—her self-cut hair was uneven at the ends, short in front and longer in back, which made her face look even smaller. Her lips were red, teeth white, and her brows and eyes carried a captivating charm. Customers at the salon often made crude jokes at her expense.

Right now, though, her brows were furrowed in deep conflict. As Kong Can opened her mouth to speak, Ruan Ting’s soft lips pressed against hers.

She should have dodged, but her body wouldn’t obey. The Paradise Umbrella lay forgotten at her feet, leaving only the damp chill of rainwater in her palm.

Zhong Jia wasn’t sensitive to the camera positions. That morning during rehearsal, she’d walked her marks a few times, and Nong Siqing had explained everything in detail: how the two of them should stand, how to coordinate the kiss for maximum visual appeal…

When Zhong Jia asked about where to kiss and for how long, Nong Siqing replied, “You’re Ruan Ting and Kong Can. Why ask me?”

Xie Yingnian hadn’t asked—it was Zhong Jia who had.

Forget kissing; Zhong Jia had never even been in a relationship. Her acting teacher had covered stand-in techniques, but Nong Siqing’s films demanded total realism—those tricks were useless here. Film and music were both arts, and Zhong Jia didn’t mind giving her first kiss to the screen. She was open-minded about that sort of thing; she just worried her inexperience would ruin the scene.

This take, Zhong Jia immersed herself completely in the film’s world. She was Kong Can—every line’s subtext, the reasons for avoiding Ruan Ting, the reactions to a deep kiss. She knew it all.

Nailing it perfectly was still tricky, but she could feel Xie Yingnian’s performance growing more uninhibited than last time, more aggressive. Zhong Jia found herself swept along into the right rhythm.

This kiss was no different.

Before it started, they’d both swished mint water in their mouths. Xie Yingnian, as Ruan Ting, had smoked half a cigarette, so the kiss carried a faint tobacco tang. She cradled Zhong Jia’s face and deepened it, their breaths turning heavy and ragged.

Ruan Ting’s kiss needed that desperate urgency, barely restrained, yet tender—testing bit by bit, silently asking if the girl she wanted truly desired this.

She did. Zhong Jia gazed at Xie Yingnian’s gentle, focused expression, treating her with such gravity.

The next second, Zhong Jia wrapped her arms around Xie Yingnian’s neck, eyes closed, and kissed her back.

Off-camera, Ai Yilan felt embarrassed and turned her face away, but Nong Siqing pulled her hand down. “Focus,” she said coolly.

Nong Siqing’s set was hyper-realistic. The lights shifted, capturing the two women locked in an embrace, kissing in the cramped stairwell. The walls were plastered with all sorts of stamps, missing person posters torn and reposted endlessly.

The smaller the space, the more crowded it felt; the more crowded, the more tension built and fermented. Wind howled, rain poured, but their world stood still—only their breaths rose and fell, low then high, as the entwined shadows surged like waves threatening to drown them.

Zhong Jia even felt the warm softness between her teeth. Her eyes flew open, and she let out muffled whimpers. Xie Yingnian seemed ready to devour her whole—it was a little frightening.

Xie Yingnian’s other hand slipped inside Zhong Jia’s cotton jacket, resting at her waistband. In the script, Ruan Ting wanted to go further this time, but she couldn’t bear Kong Can’s cries; they reminded her of how marriage had stripped her of control over her own body. So she stopped.

Zhong Jia’s emotions felt utterly genuine—anyone could see it wasn’t acting. Like Kong Can, it was her first kiss. The raw awkwardness and confusion flowed naturally, succumbing to long-buried longing, yet stumbling at that final inner hurdle. She pressed her hands to Xie Yingnian’s shoulders and pushed outward.

They’d reached the plot’s turning point. Xie Yingnian’s wandering hand paused for a few seconds. Pressed so close, Zhong Jia’s heaving chest was impossible to ignore.

“Come to your place?” Xie Yingnian panted softly, recovering enough to whisper the question.

Zhong Jia said nothing, her eyes reddening. She stared down at Xie Yingnian’s hand until it withdrew in understanding. She straightened her clothes, then suddenly remembered Yuan Yuan stamping a one-yuan piggy stamp on Kong Can’s hand—the mark of family. She’d give one to her dad too, when he came.

But kids of divorced parents had no family.

A brief silence fell. Before the lights dimmed, Xie Yingnian saw Zhong Jia silently crying.

“Did I kiss you that badly? Why are you crying?” With those final words as Ruan Ting, she pressed a gentle kiss to Zhong Jia’s damp eyelashes.

Nong Siqing called, “Perfect.”

Before the slate could snap, Zhong Jia bolted downstairs, no one knew where to. She was in such a rush she kicked the prop umbrella on the floor.

Xie Yingnian watched her frantic retreating figure. Jujiu came over to fetch her, saying the director wanted to see her.

“Where’s Tiantian?” Nong Siqing paused the playback when only Xie Yingnian arrived.

Ai Yilan hopped down from the director’s lap and toddled over, clinging stickily to Xie Yingnian.

Xie Yingnian took the little girl’s hand, and the pair sat beside Nong Siqing. She glanced out the window before answering irrelevantly, “Got a bit too into it, huh.”

It was hard not to draw parallels. Both Kong Can and Zhong Jia came from broken homes—the difference was that Kong Can had at least received some mother’s love, while Zhong Jia had always been the unwanted extra.

Zhong Kefei had wanted a son, so Qiao Yingqiu gave him one. Except it turned out to be twins—a boy and a girl.

Nong Siqing misunderstood, thinking Xie Yingnian meant something else. She was used to actors blurring lines between fiction and reality. Her tone was flatly cold: “Amateurs have to go method like that. Weren’t you the same back in the day?”

“Worry less about others and more about yourself.” Her gaze fell on the prayer beads Xie Yingnian had slipped back onto her wrist.

Xie Yingnian just smiled and said no more.

Soon Zhong Jia returned, her delicate skin glistening as if she’d just washed her face and a layer of mist clung to it.

Nong Siqing rewound to the kiss. She always reviewed multiple times, but she still wanted the actors’ input.

During the take, it hadn’t felt off, but watching herself onscreen, Zhong Jia barely recognized the girl. The lighting wasn’t the usual stark white glow; her face was so flushed, it looked like her whole body was burning.

With everyone crowded around the monitor, she buried her chin in the prop scarf, mortified.

Xie Yingnian offered her a candy—bought specially to placate the young actor. “You did great. Stop hiding your face.”

Nong Siqing had the final say. Shi Heng had been pacing nervously, like a husband waiting outside the delivery room, and now he held his breath listening.

“It’s an improvement,” Nong Siqing said. “Some details still need work, like right here…”

Her feedback was fair and constructive—not the blanket praise from Xie Yingnian, but it acknowledged Zhong Jia’s progress all the same.

She let out a long breath and focused on the monitor alongside Xie Yingnian. The fruit hard candies were filled ones; once she bit through the shell, the mango flavor flooded her entire mouth.

They reviewed it several more times, all the way until past five in the afternoon, when Nong Siqing finally selected the version she liked best. That evening featured solo scenes, with the cast divided into A and B groups, so the two women didn’t cross paths again until they wrapped for the day.

It was past ten at night by the time Zhong Jia made it back to the hotel. She noticed that no light seeped from under the door of Xie Yingnian’s room.

Shi Heng, fussing like a mother hen and all too ready to spread the latest gossip, didn’t fully trust A Cha to handle things properly. He escorted Zhong Jia to her room to check that all her daily essentials were accounted for. But seeing how bone-tired she was, he didn’t linger—two or three minutes at most before taking his leave.

Zhong Jia took a shower. She’d spent the whole day in a fog. The similarities to her own past experiences were one thing, but what lingered even more was her lingering confusion over certain reactions during the kissing scene—were they truly hers, or had they belonged to Kong Can?

Her gaze drifted to the wall that separated her room from Xie Yingnian’s, and she sank into thought.