Chapter 4

The moment they left TONIGHT, the noise hit them again. Mu Xia frowned.

Han Qingshi noticed and slowed her pace, walking alongside her. “First time here?”

“Yeah.” Mu Xia immediately flashed a bright smile. “I came here specifically to find you. Oh, I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Mu Xia. Xia as in summer. I like beautiful, mature big sisters.”

The girl’s clear, bright voice sounded completely out of place amid the racket.

“I know,” Han Qingshi said, looking past Mu Xia’s clear eyes. Her voice held no inflection. “Don’t come here again.”

“Oh.”

The Top Hostess is so cold. Is she mad? But why?

And I just introduced myself. She said she knows me? How would she know?

Mu Xia licked her dry lips and cautiously studied the tall, slender woman beside her.

Close up, she was like a bamboo stalk: supple, but resilient. From a distance, she was like a mountain landscape: quiet and imposing.

No matter how Mu Xia looked at her, she couldn’t find a trace of anything tawdry about her. The title Top Hostess didn’t suit her at all.

Weird.

The fourth time Mu Xia glanced over to study her, Han Qingshi caught her looking. Mu Xia was so embarrassed she wanted to disappear into the ground.

Han Qingshi only gave a quiet laugh. “If you want to look, look properly. There’s no one else here.”

Mu Xia let out an awkward laugh and stopped looking.

Then she remembered what had brought her to this point and suddenly stopped walking.

Han Qingshi turned back. “Why did you stop? Are you tired?”

“No.” Mu Xia’s hand clenched at her side.

After more than ten seconds, as if she’d finally made up her mind, she asked, “Can I really go with you tonight?”

Han Qingshi smiled and asked, “Didn’t you already?”

“Not like that!” Mu Xia blurted out. “I mean, well…”

Mu Xia was too shy to say it. Han Qingshi, however, read the meaning in her awkward expression.

Her smile faded. She asked bluntly, “You want to sleep with me?”

“!” Mu Xia’s face turned scarlet.

Her reaction confirmed Han Qingshi’s guess. Anger flashed in her eyes, and her voice dropped low. “Mu Xia, are you serious?”

Mu Xia was afraid of this side of Han Qingshi, but she gritted her teeth and refused to back down. “Yes!”

The last trace of a smile disappeared from Han Qingshi’s face. She turned back and stopped in front of Mu Xia, looking down at her flushed, emotional eyes. “You said you came specifically to find me, but look at the way you’re acting. If I hadn’t come tonight, would you still have taken some other woman home and spent the night with her?”

Caught out, Mu Xia guiltily turned her head away. “I was in a bad mood.”

Han Qingshi knitted her brows, her voice edged with anger. “That’s a reason to treat yourself like a joke? Do you know what kind of place this is? Forget the rest of the bar district. At the place you just left, anyone could have chewed you up and spit you out.”

Han Qingshi’s harsh words broke through the calm Mu Xia had been pretending to keep all day. Her lips pressed together. “Don’t scold me. My teacher already did that this afternoon, in front of the whole lab. It was awful. But I didn’t even make the mistake! I’d already fixed the bug. She deliberately deleted my code, then pretended to be a good person by offering to fix it. She stole my method.”

By the end, Mu Xia’s composure had completely fallen apart. She sniffed, her eyes brimming with tears. “I’m not just anyone, you know. You’re my type. I had to like you.”

“Mu Xia!” Han Qingshi laughed in exasperation. Was she supposed to be flattered that she happened to look exactly like Mu Xia’s type?

Then she saw Mu Xia’s reddened eyes and thought of the tear she’d found on her shoe, which had taken so long to dry.

The fire in her chest quietly went out. She raised a hand and tapped Mu Xia on the forehead. “Mu Xia, don’t provoke me.”

Mu Xia wasn’t sure if she’d imagined it, but the Top Hostess’s voice seemed to carry a hint of frustration. She hadn’t done anything, had she?

“Big sister,” Mu Xia murmured. “Do you not like girls like me?”

Han Qingshi was at a loss for words. She looked at Mu Xia, her gaze growing deep.

After a long moment, Han Qingshi slowly let out a breath. “Have you made up your mind?” This was her last chance to make sure. If—

“I have!” Mu Xia said firmly.

Han Qingshi studied her in silence for a few seconds. “There’s a new hotel not far from here. It’s clean enough.”

The subject changed so quickly that Mu Xia didn’t react at first. When she finally understood, she tried to hide her embarrassment by tugging at her hot earlobe. “That’s fine.”

Meanwhile, Yue Qian’s phone call had lasted only a few dozen seconds. Including the time she spent going in and out, she’d been gone for less than five minutes. And yet Mu Xia had vanished, and her phone wasn’t answering. In a panic, Yue Qian grabbed a server. “Where’s the girl who was sitting here?”

The server answered without hesitation. “She left with the woman at the bar in white.”

Yue Qian: “…………” Had she heard wrong, or had the Top Hostess gone blind?

Should she call the police?

No.

If word got back to the school, they’d both be in trouble.

Mu Xia’s chance at a recommendation for grad school had already been cut in half because of the project. She couldn’t afford another impulsive stunt.

Yue Qian hurriedly paid the bill and left. She called Mu Xia again and again on the way, until her phone was nearly dead. At last, someone answered.

Before Yue Qian could speak, a woman’s unfamiliar voice came through the phone, low and impossibly gentle.

“Mu Xia, I told you not to provoke me.”

After a night of passion, Mu Xia struggled to open her eyes in the sharp morning sunlight.

The unfamiliar surroundings left her mind blank for a moment.

She seemed to have spent the night in a hotel with that beautiful big sister. Now she was lying on her side with her back to the woman, tucked into her arms. A conspicuous ring of purple bruising circled the slender wrist stretched across her.

Mu Xia’s memories returned. She recalled what they’d done the night before, and her face burned scarlet.

She lay completely still, as if floating above the bed, afraid to move.

Bzzzz—

The phone on the bedside table rang abruptly.

The woman behind her seemed annoyed by the interruption. Her breathing deepened, but she quickly raised herself to reach for the phone.

At such close quarters, Mu Xia could clearly feel the faint warmth radiating from her. Then that soft body, which Mu Xia had kissed countless times the night before, brushed against the tip of her ear, and her reason nearly shattered.

Mu Xia was sure that if it lasted even one second longer, she’d scream and leap out of bed to run away.

Fortunately, the woman answered the phone.

She kept her voice low as she slipped out of bed and got dressed, moving so quietly that it seemed she was afraid to wake Mu Xia.

Once the woman had gone, Mu Xia scrambled up, threw on her clothes, and fled the room.

Before she left, she placed her bank card on the pillow.

It held all the scholarship money she had: the twenty thousand yuan from GN, her top academic scholarship, her model-student award, her project stipend, and a handful of other grants. It added up to quite a lot.

Qianqian had told her the woman had been through a hard time.

This was all Mu Xia could do to help.

A little while later, Han Qingshi returned to the bedroom.

Her assistant was still on the phone, diligently reporting on work. When Han Qingshi didn’t answer for a long time, the assistant raised their voice. “CEO Han?”

Han Qingshi tore her gaze away from the empty bed. Her voice was low. “You chair today’s meeting. I’ll get there later.”

After hanging up, she went to the bed and sat down. Turning sideways, she ran her palm slowly over the spot that still held a little warmth.

Then she saw the bank card on the pillow. Han Qingshi’s calm eyes narrowed.

Without a word to guide her, instinct supplied the obvious explanation: Mu Xia thought she was the kind of woman you could pay to sleep with.

Well, that’s something.

When Mu Xia returned to the dorm, her back and legs ached, and her hands were still trembling. None of her roommates were there.

Han Shuyan’s bed was empty. A necklace lay in the trash can beside the desk.

It was the Cartier necklace Mu Xia had given Han Shuyan for Valentine’s Day. She’d taken freelance work on the side and worked overtime for more than a month to save enough to buy it. Now someone had thrown it away like garbage.

Mu Xia stood in front of the trash can for a while. Then, expressionless, she gathered up the snack wrappers scattered across Yue Qian’s desk, crumpled them together, and stuffed them on top. She tied the garbage bag shut and set it outside the door.

As she turned back, Yue Qian came hurrying over. She’d only just gotten back after being up all night. “Mumu, where did you go last night? Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

Mu Xia gripped the doorknob and stammered, “Come in first. I’ll tell you in a minute.”

Yue Qian was faster. She slipped inside, shut the door, and got straight to the point. “You went with the Top Hostess last night, didn’t you?”

Mu Xia hugged the yellow duck cushion and looked away. “Oh, you found out.”

“Of course I did! I heard her answer your phone with my own ears!”

“She answered my phone?” Mu Xia looked baffled. “I don’t remember that.”

“You were probably seeing stars and had no idea which way was up by then!” Remembering Han Qingshi’s tone, Yue Qian quickly imagined an entire scene and blushed. “Mumu, did you two…?”

As soon as she asked, the two women—full of theoretical knowledge but completely inexperienced—fell silent.

The balcony window stood wide open.

Mu Xia and Yue Qian sat side by side on separate chairs, their backs perfectly straight. Every time their eyes met, they immediately blushed and looked away, staring fixedly at the wasteland behind the dorm.

“I wasn’t deliberately avoiding you,” Yue Qian explained. “My dad got sideswiped by someone trying to scam him yesterday. It took until late at night to sort out. And you know my mom—she’s got a heart as small as a needle’s eye. I spent ages calming her down. I didn’t get a chance to come over until today.”

“Mm. Is everything okay now?” Mu Xia asked.

“It’s fine. Dad wasn’t at fault, so he doesn’t have to pay anything.”

“That’s good.”

Their stiff little conversation ended, and silence settled between them.

Yue Qian couldn’t hold back her curiosity. She smacked her lips and asked, “What did you say to the Top Hostess last night? Isn’t she impossible to approach? How’d you get her to leave with you?”

Mu Xia lowered her head, her ears bright red. “…I didn’t say much.”

Mu Xia gave her the short version.

Yue Qian listened, then asked in disbelief, “That’s it?”

That was it. It had been so simple that Mu Xia still hadn’t figured out why the Top Hostess, who’d rejected so many people, had gone with her just because she said she liked her.

It made no sense.

Yue Qian, sure that an outsider could see things more clearly, thought it over. “Maybe she’s had too much rich food all these years and wants to try something lighter?”

“I don’t think so.” Mu Xia’s ears burned even brighter. She planted both feet on the chair’s crossbar, hunched over, and braced her elbows on her knees. “She’s a first-timer too. Same as me.”

“…” Yue Qian couldn’t believe it. With the Top Hostess’s figure, looks, and air about her, she must have had people lining up to get close. And yet she’d stayed chaste all these years. What incredible self-control!

“Qianqian.” Mu Xia rubbed her face. Her voice was thick with sorrow. “After last night, I realized something. I might be a sadist.”

Yue Qian’s mouth opened wide enough to fit an egg. She asked in a trembling voice, “What did you do to the Top Hostess?”

Mu Xia couldn’t bear to remember.

She’d thought the woman looked so assertive, with such cool, sharp eyes when she wasn’t smiling, that she’d be hard to handle. Who could have guessed she’d be so accommodating in bed? When Mu Xia told her not to move, she obediently lay still, letting Mu Xia tie her hands with her blouse and awkwardly meet her clumsy attempts.

That expression had hooked Mu Xia the moment she saw it. After that, she’d… well, she hadn’t held back at all.

Mu Xia didn’t answer for so long that Yue Qian was beside herself. “Say something! What did you do to her?”

“Nothing.” Mu Xia couldn’t bring herself to explain, so in a panic she offered a vague excuse. “I didn’t know what I was doing, so I got really anxious. Then the more anxious I got, the more of a mess I made. And then I… I…”

Mu Xia kept saying then I without ever getting to the point.

Yue Qian’s curiosity was left dangling higher and higher until she slumped against the back of her chair.

At last, just before she was sent into an early grave by her best friend, she got the answer.

“I told her…” Mu Xia lowered her head until it rested against her knees. “Big sister, I can’t find it.”

Yue Qian choked and coughed so violently it sounded like an earthquake.

Mu Xia couldn’t even lift her head to get her a glass of water. She buried her face against her knees, burning with embarrassment.

Once she’d finally caught her breath, Yue Qian asked in a trembling voice, “And the Top Hostess? Did she just do it herself?”

Mu Xia pulled one arm free and pressed her palm to the back of her head, hiding herself completely. “No. She comforted me afterward. She said, ‘Don’t rush. It’s all yours.’”