Chapter 7

Zhou Siyou slept poorly all night.

Every time she closed her eyes: those two question marks in the chat box—or, from many years ago, the days of their school years.

The cold wars, the making-ups, the time one of them said something cutting without thinking—usually Zhou Siyou—and then went groveling to apologize.

Teenaged Zhong Qing would spare her a glance, her porcelain-pale face composed. “Don’t let it happen again.”

And she would say: Okay. Never again.

Summer evenings, the classroom sparsely populated, the ceiling fan at full speed, pages rustling.

Model student Zhong Qing, the aloof academic ace—who competed in science or arts contests and often took the stage as the students’ representative.

While Zhong Qing gave her speeches, down in the audience Zhou Siyou would cup her cheeks in her hands, boasting giddily to whoever sat nearby, “Look! That’s my Zhong Qing!”

What were they to each other? Friends? Classmates?

Zhou Siyou had rarely used words like those to define what she and Zhong Qing were.

She was Zhong Qing—and so Zhou Siyou liked her, liked being with her.

They secretly kept a cat together, went to the vet together, settled the bills together. They used tape to lift cat hair off each other’s uniforms before strolling home as if nothing had happened.

—Ah, right. For a long stretch of time, Zhong Qing lived in Zhou Siyou’s home.

Their first meeting, too, had happened because of that lame Dragon Li cat Zhou Siyou rescued—the night she climbed, bit by bit, from her own garden fence back into the house.

The moonlight hung cold and clear, catching a strange youthful figure in the first-floor garden.

She didn’t know her—but Zhong Qing had such a pretty face, after all.

Zhou Siyou took one look and was hopelessly smitten.

And so, back then, when Zhou Siyou looked her over, she was outrageously familiar at first meeting, eyes half-smiling, reciting some line she’d picked up who-knew-where. “I’m the Eldest Miss of this house—so even if I break curfew and come home late, you can’t punish me~”

Eldest Miss?… Punish?

Zhong Qing gave her a long look and didn’t deign to answer, as if speechless at her childishness.

…

Zhou Siyou turned over and over in bed, thinking hazily.

The moment she closed her eyes, she wanted to strangle yesterday’s self for slapping down two question marks in a row.

No matter how many twists and turns her heart had gone through, how many soliloquies it had performed—factually, objectively, last night’s conversation had gone like this:

Zhong Qing: “Are you free these next few days?”

Zhou Siyou: “?”

Zhong Qing: “…”

Zhong Qing: “Your current address. Send it to me, please?”

Zhou Siyou: “?”

Zhong Qing hadn’t replied after that.

As if any ghost would reply after that!

Not until morning did Zhou Siyou, eyes bleary, running on her last breath of consciousness, grope for her phone in a daze and try to salvage her blunder.

After sending her exact address, she absentmindedly typed out the passcode too.

88XXXXXX

…Wait. Why was she sending the passcode too?

She smacked her forehead in mortification and long-pressed to recall the message.

Too late.

Who was on the other end? The model student Zhong Qing—no matter what hour she fell asleep, up at seven sharp the next morning.

She had naturally witnessed Zhou Siyou’s idiotic maneuver.

At 7:05, Zhong Qing replied with one word: “Received.”

Zhou Siyou stared dumbly.

But there was no more thinking to be done. Receiving Zhong Qing’s reply, it was as if a boulder in her chest had finally dropped; having held out all night, the last string in her mind snapped, and she dropped off to sleep.

By the time she woke again, disoriented, she hadn’t picked up a single one of agent Fang Ming’s frantic barrage of calls.

She glanced at her phone screen: the last call had come in forty minutes ago.

While washing up, she opened the work group chat: 99+ unread notifications, all different colleagues setting off fireworks.

Apparently someone was scattering wealth, firing off a flurry of hefty red packets.

No telling what the celebration was for.

Zhou Siyou was scrolling one-handed, about to dig up the reason for the festivities, when she heard her own front door chime with a “ding-dong.”

The door opened.

The person outside seemed startled—or embarrassed—and shut the door again.

Zhou Siyou’s first instinct was Fang Ming.

Zhou Siyou slept like the dead; whenever something urgent came up, Fang Ming could never reach her, and storming her home like this wasn’t a first.

But Zhou Siyou didn’t like people walking into her home without a word of warning.

At the sink, she scrubbed a hand over her face in mild irritation, cool water streaming down, soaking the hair at her forehead through.

The person outside went quiet. But that didn’t mean she’d left.

Deliberately leaving the person hanging, Zhou Siyou dawdled and pretended not to hear—scrolling Weibo, picking out a jacket—until a good long while had passed before she finally went to open the door.

—The instant the door swung open, every shadow on Zhou Siyou’s face was replaced by astonishment.

And embarrassment.

The person outside had cool, clear brows lowered, fair skin, that same bare-faced, understated composure.

Black straight-leg trousers, a snow-white jacket and scarf.

She had been hugging an iPad, doodling and jotting, and only when Zhou Siyou opened the door did her eyes flick over. “You’re up?”

Zhou Siyou’s brain short-circuited.

—Would someone please tell her why the person standing at her door was Zhong Qing!?

“What… what are you here for?”

Zhou Siyou instinctively pulled the door half-shut again, hiding a flash of panic.

In the entryway, she fussed with her collar and hair before the full-length mirror, flailing like someone about to fall flat on level ground.

Zhong Qing stood outside, tucking the iPad into her bag. “You sent me the passcode.” Her expression was mild, her words economical. “I asked your agent—you’ve been free lately, so I came.”

Zhou Siyou caught on at once: Fang Ming’s frantic barrage of calls, and all those baffling celebrations in the work group chat.

Presumably… Zhong Qing had gotten in touch with Fang Ming and asked for Zhou Siyou’s recent schedule.

So Fang Ming, believing Zhou Siyou had landed the role, had gone flush with “her girl made it, so we all made it” excitement and played Santa in the work group chat.

Before the entryway mirror, Zhou Siyou half-covered her face, at a loss.

She genuinely might not even land the role…

“One— one moment.”

Three minutes later, Zhou Siyou had finally tidied herself presentable and opened the door again.

Zhong Qing stood outside and peeked in, apparently with no intention of entering.

She let her gaze settle on Zhou Siyou’s face. “Are you wearing makeup?”

Zhou Siyou blinked, shaking her head. “Not wearing any.”

Zhong Qing blinked, leaned in a little, rose slightly on tiptoe, studying Zhou Siyou’s features at close range. “You really aren’t…” she murmured, sounding half-disbelieving.

They were far too close. Zhou Siyou could see the clear eyes inches away, every lash distinct.

In just an instant, Zhong Qing drew back, her gaze dropping to Zhou Siyou’s wrists.

She asked, “Are your nails trimmed? Do you usually get them done?”

Zhou Siyou nodded, then shook her head.

Strange questions—Zhou Siyou had no idea what she was after.

But she answered earnestly all the same: “I trim them, but I don’t get them done.”

Zhong Qing then stared at her, grave, for half a minute.

After the half minute: “Zhou Siyou,” Zhong Qing asked next, “are you free today?”

Zhou Siyou nodded.

Only then did Zhong Qing state her purpose. “Good. Before you join the crew, I’d like you to set aside a whole day and go some places with me.”

…Join the crew?

Zhou Siyou’s eyes went huge. “Zhong Qing—did I, did I pass the audition!!?”

Zhong Qing countered, “Are you that surprised?”

Zhou Siyou looked back at her, joy leaping in her eyes.

Surprised, no—there was absolutely delight, though.

She suddenly ached to ask Zhong Qing whether she still remembered what was written in a diary long ago—her promise that if she ever became a director, the first leading lady would be Zhou Siyou, no one else.

So then, the reason 《Baroque Round Table》 didn’t shoot a single human figure must be that Zhong Qing was saving her first leading lady role for Zhou Siyou!—Clearly, Zhou Siyou was a person with a surplus of ego, supremely gifted at flattering herself.

At this moment, her invisible tail wagging, she smothered her giddy grin and asked Zhong Qing, “Little Director Zhong, when do we leave?”

Zhong Qing: “Now.”

“…” Zhou Siyou’s eyes glazed.

What a swift-and-decisive Little Director Zhong.

Zhong Qing’s earlier questions about makeup and manicures had simply been to keep Zhou Siyou true to the character.

“Jiang Jin”—the script’s heroine—would never wear makeup out of the house; her nails were kept trimmed and even, but she would never get them done.

And now, before heading out, Zhong Qing’s coaching on Zhou Siyou’s outfit devoured a full ten minutes.

Eight of those ten minutes were spent arguing over shoes.

With Zhou Siyou one step from the door in a pair of combat boots, Zhong Qing insisted that Jiang Jin would never wear such heavy shoes.

Zhou Siyou shot back: “Then what would she wear?”

“Sneakers.”

Sprinting through the script and the character profile in her head, Zhou Siyou craned her neck stubbornly. “No. Jiang Jin would wear combat boots.”

“Your reasoning?”

“…”

Zhou Siyou pressed her lips together, ground her teeth, and answered in earnest. “After she breaks free of the male lead, she carries no guilt. She’d want a different style of dress—a self severed from the controlled woman she used to be. Sneakers are too stiff, too plain—just like her old life. After what happened at the church, if Jiang Jin ever returns to a normal life, she’d love the sound of boot heels clacking against cobblestones. That rhythm—something within her control—would carry her away from the dull life she used to have.”

Zhong Qing’s eyes narrowed. She stared at her for two seconds, then finally relented.

She drew Zhou Siyou into the elevator bay, watched the numbers in silence for a moment, and then, as the doors opened, laid it bare in one stroke: “Zhou Siyou. All that talk—you just don’t like wearing sneakers yourself, do you.”

Zhou Siyou played deaf.

As it was, she was in black on black, platform combat boots beneath track pants—not so different from her usual look.

The elevator reached the ground floor; the sky outside hung with a sun caught between setting and not, everything steeped in egg-yolk gold.

Zhou Siyou sighed at the slanting sun—and heard Zhong Qing sigh in perfect sync beside her. “Domestic paparazzi… quite the professionals.”

Zhou Siyou blanked for two seconds, then caught Zhong Qing’s meaning.

Her complex’s security really wasn’t great; the paparazzi staked out along the roadside were as thick as guerrilla fighters.

Two years as a third-tier, controversy-famous celebrity had long since inured Zhou Siyou to this; but Zhong Qing was still half civilian, and naturally found it all deeply uncomfortable.

She asked Zhou Siyou: “Do you have experience dealing with paparazzi?”

Zhou Siyou had been about to say “yes”—then something seemed to occur to her, and she switched on a beaming grin. “Zhou Siyou does. But Jiang Jin… probably has no experience dealing with paparazzi at all.”

In the light, quick wind, amid the street’s endless streams of traffic, Zhou Siyou’s fox eyes glinted with a thread of mischief.

“Little Director Zhong, just treat it as Jiang Jin being tailed by the police.”

“Tailed by the police…” Zhong Qing paused slightly at that. “If Jiang Jin were being tailed by police, would her first instinct be to flee, or…”

Zhou Siyou shook her head, cutting the question short.

“—Let’s go, let’s go,” Zhou Siyou drawled, laughing lazily, and took Zhong Qing’s hand. “Jiang Jin would only walk straight ahead, bold and unafraid.”