Q: Why don’t you like Cui Muhuo?
A: Sigh, it’s quite the long story. But honestly, she didn’t like me first. 0.0.
—
“I love U～”
The Stitch keychain let out a deflated, mechanical voice, and Chen Wenran found it amusingly novel.
She turned to look at Cui Qijin on the balcony.
By now, Cui Qijin was fully geared up—mask, rubber gloves, headscarf, apron, not a piece missing. She was wrapped from head to toe, leaving only her eyes exposed.
With her back to the locust tree stretching up to the eleventh floor, she tilted her head and wiped the balcony’s floor-to-ceiling windows with meticulous care.
As if she hadn’t heard a thing.
Chen Wenran looked away, turning back to the Stitch keychain in her hand. She pressed it several more times in a row.
“I love U～”
“I love U～”
“I love U～”
……
After several more presses, her initial fascination hadn’t worn off. And it wasn’t the keychain’s glowing persistence in declaring “I love U” that intrigued her.
No, it was how something so silly and lowbrow had been allowed into Cui Qijin’s space.
Of course, Chen Wenran didn’t think it was lowbrow herself.
She just firmly believed that Cui Qijin couldn’t possibly grasp the appeal of such a trinket and would dismiss it as “lowbrow” at first glance.
Sharp-tongued, even cutting, with no mercy—that was the first impression Cui Qijin gave.
“This must be something Chen Xing left here, right?”
Chen Wenran assumed as much, naturally. And the thing was so addictively squeezable that she absentmindedly pressed it again without realizing.
The blue Stitch emitted a particularly loud, deflated, and grating “I love U～.”
Cui Qijin’s glass-wiping paused. It was as if she’d just been snapped out of a daze, her expression a little dazed.
“What?”
“This thing—”
Propping lazily against the mop handle, Chen Wenran twisted the mop to face her and dangled the Stitch keychain.
“No way it’s yours, right?”
The winter sunlight blazed white-hot, making the dust motes in the air dance. Cui Qijin pulled her mask tighter to keep the dust out of her lungs.
She squinted at it for a moment, studying it carefully before asking,
“Where’d you find it?”
“Right here,” Chen Wenran said, pointing to a silver suitcase.
“I thought it was empty at first and picked it up to stuff some odds and ends inside. But it rattled around, and when I opened it, there was just this weird keychain.”
Cui Qijin glanced at the corner where the suitcase had been, then lazily looked away. In a flat tone, she said,
“Not mine.”
“Then it’s Chen Xing’s.” Chen Wenran jumped on the conclusion quickly, as if she’d expected it.
“But has your little sister Chen Xing been dating in college or something? Why else would she leave something like this behind? Could be from some boy or girl. As her big sister, you should keep an eye on her—wouldn’t want her bringing home some punk kid with dyed hair…”
Cui Qijin kept wiping the glass, but the corner of her eye twitched.
Then Chen Wenran wandered the room in circles, like a fretting top. Finally tired of pacing, she tossed the keychain back into the suitcase.
“After looking around, the suitcase still seems the best spot. I’ll put it right back where it was…”
Cui Qijin didn’t respond.
“I’ll stick the suitcase back in its spot too, yeah?” Chen Wenran added.
Cui Qijin was still recovering from her hangover—sore waist, pounding head. Not only did she have to spend the afternoon deep-cleaning to carve out space for a guest, but her mind was plagued by fragmented memories popping up unbidden.
They played like scenes from a movie, triggered by whatever caught her eye. She couldn’t control the play or the pause.
Watching Chen Wenran bustle around the apartment, she impatiently shut her eyes and exhaled slowly.
“Whatever.”
—
But “whatever” was the last thing Cui Qijin felt.
Only after clearing the clutter and dividing the space into host and guest zones—shoving Chen Wenran and all her belongings into the “guest” area—did she finally relax.
The sofa, dining table, and coffee table were split down the middle; the master bedroom and bathroom were hers alone, while Chen Wenran could use the living room bathroom temporarily but couldn’t leave her disgusting Crayon Shin-chan butt toilet plunger there.
The balcony section by the living room belonged to her, since she needed to lounge in the rattan chair every weekend for three hours of sun. The rest went to Chen Wenran, provided she didn’t drink and party in the living room or toss clothes everywhere, leaving a mess without cleaning up.
Of course, the biggest rule: Chen Wenran couldn’t set foot in Cui Qijin’s personal domain.
No casually moving her things, no violating any rule she’d set for the space…
Only then could she tolerate the invasion of her private sanctuary, ceding half to her homeless friend.
This wasn’t the first time Chen Wenran had nowhere to go.
The first time, she hadn’t even moved to Chengdu for work yet. Dragging her suitcase, dressed in a fancy long skirt, her makeup ruined by rain into a ghostly mess, she’d stood dumbfounded at the door.
She wiped the rain from her face, listened to the house rules Cui Qijin laid out ahead of time, and grumbled, “You’re drawing a line down the middle like a battle line?”
Cui Qijin replied that they were at the thirtieth parallel north—no battle line here.
The sixth time, Chen Wenran had been in Chengdu for three years. She still had that hot-tempered streak, blowing up and threatening to break up with Ran Yan at the drop of a hat.
Yet here she was, early in the morning, wrapped in a StellaLou nightgown.
No makeup, face unwashed, eagerly helping tidy up and perfectly complying with the “battle line” division.
So Cui Qijin gradually peeled off the “troublemaker” label she’d stuck on Chen Wenran’s head.
Truth be told, they’d been college roommates for four years, and their habits meshed well enough.
After graduation, Cui Qijin, a landscape architecture major, pivoted to floral installation design. Chen Wenran, an architecture grad, joined a company with projects nationwide, then transferred to the Chengdu branch.
The first two years, Cui Qijin’s design work was just taking off. Freelancing solo, she’d pull all-nighters on renders and scrape by on two or three thousand a month.
It was her chosen path—no complaints, no whining about the hardship. After graduation, Cui He and Yu Hongdong had been blunt: We probably can’t help you on this road you’ve picked.
And they were right. The daughter of two engineering professors had ditched sciences in high school for arts, studied the rare landscape architecture track in college among art majors, then dreamed of heading to South America for an environmental project—only to end up as a freelance floral designer in Chengdu. A fresh, job-market-oddity of a career.
From her parents’ perspective, they might not fully get it. But they never said a word.
Chen Wenran often teased, “You’ve got a bit of a rebellious streak, Cui Qijin.”
In a way, she wasn’t wrong.
But Cui Qijin didn’t see it that way.
Most of the time, she just preferred dealing with plants over people. Sure, going completely off-grid from humanity wasn’t feasible—she wasn’t delusional enough to think she could live in total isolation.
Trading some financial security for freedom, picking a job she loved? To her, that was an exchange worth every bit.
Not foolish. Not rebellious.
And these past two years, her career had been on the rise. No more scraping by like right after graduation.
Chen Wenran, now established at the architecture company, had helped a ton. It started with a subcontract for the East Suburb Memory Cafe project—Chen Wenran had recommended her.
The owner loved the result, the company linked up with Cui Qijin, and soon small gigs came her way regularly.
Bigger projects meant pitching designs; smaller ones went straight to her as they built rapport.
Then private clients and other firms started calling. She cherry-picked jobs, settling into a sweet spot:
Busy but manageable, time off when needed, and decent pay.
She harbored real gratitude toward Chen Wenran. But she’d never let her know.
No one else, either.
“What about Chi Buyu?”
Chen Wenran’s voice cut in abruptly, yanking Cui Qijin’s drifting thoughts back to earth.
Snapping them clean in two.
One half wondered: What about Chi Buyu?
The other: Has Chi Buyu woken up yet? What does she even remember from last night? Should I reach out?
Scattered fragments, yanked loose, whispered in Chi Buyu’s voice by her ear: One more kiss!
Cui Qijin shut her eyes.
Like hell.
She tugged at her scabbed lip. It stung.
Peeling her eyelids open, she saw Chen Wenran perched on the other end of the sofa. Fully made up now, she squinted at her laptop screen, clamping her eyelashes with a comically twisted expression.
Ran Yan’s voice came from the computer, shushing first, then dropping low.
“Don’t ask. She’s all mopey, wilted like a frostbitten eggplant. Won’t say a word about anything—just keeps whining that her favorite camisole’s gone missing…”
Cui Qijin’s face stayed impassive.
She even flipped through several pages of her Botany Magazine.
Then Chen Wenran let out a “ha,” whispering back, “She’s still sleeping?”
“You bet—”
Ran Yan shifted the screen, swinging Cui Qijin’s view to a coffee-colored beanbag chair.
White daylight blanketed it in a blinding glow, like burning daytime fireworks or some bright, overflowing liquid.
Piled on the beanbag was a banana-yellow bear.
And a woman clutching the bear, dressed in a flamingo-pink hoodie under denim overalls. The hood covered her eyes, her brown hair tied into two soft low ponytails that draped outside.
The woman’s head was thrown back, neck stretched, sprawled every which way around the bear. Probably with the AC on, she wasn’t bundled up, her fuzzy slippers dangling as she rocked gently in the white light.
Her nose wrinkled faintly, as if deep in sleep.
Chi Buyu had a touch of skin hunger, always needing something to hug in bed.
Still sleeping?
Cui Qijin found it ridiculous.
Then her gaze landed on the bear Chi Buyu clutched so tightly—its face wrinkled beyond recognition.
She couldn’t hold it back and burst out laughing. The motion tugged painfully at the scab on her lip, so she schooled her expression and forced the smile away.
In the middle of it all, she glanced over to see Chen Wenran balancing her laptop on her knees, positioned just right for Cui Qijin to see if she looked up. The screen flickered, and Ran Yan’s face popped up again. She said casually,
“I wonder if you were out sneaking around like a thief last night.”
Chen Wenran let out a “Whoa,” and chuckled.
Cui Qijin quickly turned her face away. She lowered her gaze to the magazine in her hands and flipped through it. Sure enough, she heard Chen Wenran say,
“Guess what? Cui Qijin was too.”
Cui Qijin looked up as if nothing had happened. Her eyes landed on Chen Wenran, who had set aside her eyelash curler and was now lounging on the sofa like an octopus splayed out in a frying pan.
“I thought you two didn’t break up until dawn this morning,” she said succinctly.
“That’s exactly what happened,” Chen Wenran replied. She shifted the laptop toward Cui Qijin so she could see the Tencent Meeting logo on the screen. “We’re in the middle of a breakup recap meeting right now.”
Cui Qijin suddenly had nothing to say.
From the laptop, Ran Yan chimed in. “So what was up with you last night, Cui Qijin?”
Cui Qijin parted her lips to respond, but before she could make a sound, she faintly caught a very soft voice from Ran Yan’s side.
“Cui Muhuo? What’s wrong with Cui Muhuo?”
The voice wasn’t loud—muddled and a bit drowsy amid the cluttered background noise, it was barely noticeable. Had Chi Buyu just woken up?
Cui Qijin calmly turned a page in her magazine. She paused for a second, then shifted her position on the sofa.
She crossed her arms over her chest, setting the magazine on her knees.
It still felt off, so she picked it up again, propping her left hand on the sofa’s armrest.
Still not comfortable.
She was about to adjust once more when Chen Wenran’s voice cut in, gleeful with schadenfreude. “Oh, she came back this morning with her mouth all torn up. No idea which lady ghost bit her—”
She didn’t even finish the sentence.
A struggling, sleepy voice erupted from the other side, louder and clearer than before. “What? Which lady ghost bit her mouth?”
Chaos erupted immediately, accompanied by a massive crash. Ran Yan shouted from her end, “Hey, take it easy!”
The magazine slipped from Cui Qijin’s hands in shock.
It fluttered down to the floor at her feet with a rustle. In that instant, she inexplicably looked up—and there was Chi Buyu’s just-woken face leaping onto the screen.
Their eyes met suddenly.
After a long second, Cui Qijin leisurely picked up the magazine. She tugged at the corner of her mouth, ignoring the sting, and let out a soft “Heh.”
You tell me, lady ghost.
The lady ghost herself trembled her eyelashes on the screen, as if suddenly remembering something. She abruptly buried her entire face into her hood. A slender white wrist emerged slowly from the sleeve of her flamingo pink hoodie…
And yanked both drawstrings all the way tight.
Only her tightly closed mouth remained visible. She clenched her teeth for one second, two, three…
Then, cautiously, she parted her red lips just a sliver, like a goldfish gulping with its gills. Finally, she mumbled,
“Well then, looks like that lady ghost bit pretty damn accurately.”
