He feared some accident might befall him one day, so he made every contingency plan he could, ensuring his no-good little sister could at least hold things together for a while if disaster struck.
~~~
The clamor outside faded back to quiet. Qiu Siyuan watched the crew wrap up, glanced at the bamboo window screens, and left with a smile.
Leaving Yan Muyu alone, facing Qiu Chao, who had her arms wrapped around Yan Muyu’s waist. Her own hands hung awkwardly at her sides. It took ages—long enough for her arms to ache—before she finally hugged the other woman back.
It was an embrace they’d been denied for years.
In that moment, all the noise receded. Their heartbeats matched the churning boil of water on the stove. Yan Muyu tilted her head slightly, responding to Qiu Chao’s vulnerability.
Qiu Chao choked out, “I miss my mom so much.”
There, in this mountain village, in the kitchen by the earth stove.
What she truly feared wasn’t the old house. It was the flood of memories strong enough to shatter all her defenses.
Too painful to revisit.
That pain fused completely with all her longing, so that even thinking of it hurt.
Breathing hurt, too.
~~~
It hurt so much that years ago, Qiu Chao had tossed and turned sleeplessly, leaning on the balcony railing late at night, smoking—only to lock eyes from afar with Yan Muyu, who had stumbled home reeking of booze and club lights.
Standing under the flower bed in the moonlight, Yan Muyu sized up Qiu Chao and asked, “What’s up with you?”
“Not wrapped yet? Money not come through?”
Qiu Chao: “No.”
Yan Muyu: “Some actress trying to outshine you?”
Qiu Chao: “They can’t compete.”
Yan Muyu laughed again. The moonlight was cool and crisp, yet her features seemed hazy.
“Missing my brother?”
Qiu Chao shot back without thinking, “No way.”
Yan Muyu teased her with a grin. “Cut back on the smokes. You’ve got such a beautiful voice—don’t ruin it.”
Qiu Chao: “I miss my mom.”
Yan Muyu’s teasing faded. She didn’t reply, just turned and walked away.
Dozens of seconds later, Qiu Chao heard heavy footsteps. Then the door swung open.
Yan Muyu’s scent, mingled with booze, washed over her. Qiu Chao was pulled into the bedroom, where Yan Muyu rummaged in her bag and pulled out her latest find.
A phonograph.
Qiu Chao thought: No wonder she’s lugging around such a huge bag.
Qiu Chao: “Weren’t you hitting the bars?”
Yan Muyu shrugged with a smile. “Saw the ghost market open on the way back. Picked it up on impulse.”
The ghost market was just a row of secondhand stalls on some midnight street. Folks from the artist’s studio loved it, calling it full of urban ghost-story vibes.
Yan Muyu’s bag seemed to hold more.
Qiu Chao glanced inside and spotted some eighties little yellow books—gaudy covers, even older than the romance mags.
The owner of them was utterly shameless. “The covers back then had real artistic flair.”
Qiu Chao’s bedroom table now hosted the little phonograph. Yan Muyu crouched, fiddling with it until it finally played.
Some bootleg disc from who-knows-when, and “The Moon Represents My Heart” crackled with static—like a moon edged with fuzz, robbed of its perfect roundness.
Yan Muyu patted the other end of the sofa. “Not sleepy? I’ll keep you company and chat.”
The bedroom light glowed dim and yellow. This place was nothing like the nightmare audio store in Qiu Chao’s dreams. It was her brief, fleeting home.
A fake sister-in-law, treating her like the real thing.
My first love.
Maybe that night Qiu Chao was so exhausted her mind was fogged, yet sleep stubbornly wouldn’t come.
Maybe Yan Muyu’s offer was impossible to refuse.
Qiu Chao even felt like she’d been lonely for eons, just waiting to blossom on Yan Muyu.
Yan Muyu’s bag even held booze swiped from the bar.
No candlelight, no fine wine—just the two of them swigging from bottles amid the scratchy “The Moon Represents My Heart.” Yan Muyu asked, “If you miss your mom, wanna talk about her?”
“This house is basically just me now. But I can read you a bedtime story.”
She rambled on, even looking ahead to when Qiu Chao and Yan Kai had a daughter: “I’d be great to my niece, for sure.”
Qiu Chao clapped a hand over her mouth. She couldn’t tell if she was going with the flow or truly drunk as she leaned on Yan Muyu’s shoulder and spilled about her family.
Her father, dead too young. Her beautiful, pitiable mother.
The repulsive stepfather. That Northwest Little Sister, pregnant way too early.
She had no idea how much Yan Muyu heard before she herself passed out.
When she woke, she was sprawled on the bed, Yan Muyu slumped on the sofa—clothes unchanged, from the look of it.
The floor was littered with several pulp paperbacks.
The Story I Have to Tell with My Tenant.
Sister-in-Law Loves Me.
A Stranger Woman’s Panties.
100 Phrases to Make Women Fall Head Over Heels for You.
…
The ghost market haul made Qiu Chao burst out laughing.
Yan Muyu seemed half-awake, half-not. She touched Qiu Chao’s cheek and murmured, “Still missing your mom?”
Qiu Chao caught her hand and nuzzled obediently into her palm.
“Very much.”
But I want you more.
Just like right now.
~~~
Yan Muyu thought Qiu Chao was just missing her mom, plain and simple.
She remembered that night years ago, Qiu Chao out on the balcony railing past midnight, smoking. Yan Muyu came home to see a graceful beauty on the high balcony under the moonlight.
The tabloids plastered female stars everywhere, ambition written on their faces. They never backed down from sharp questions thrust at them by microphones.
But in that empty moment, with dew tracing the roses in the flower bed, Yan Muyu had seen the tears twisting in Qiu Chao’s eyes by moonlight.
Pushing open the door confirmed it. She hadn’t been wrong.
She comforted her.
It had been genuine heartache back then.
And now, as Yan Muyu comforted Qiu Chao, the heartache remained.
Inevitable memories stirring, unavoidable shivers running through her body.
It even planted an absurd thought in Yan Muyu’s mind: Qiu Chao had been placed deliberately at her side.
Why else would their embrace fit so perfectly?
Like some force drawing their souls together, trembling the world into a spin, nearly overwhelming Yan Muyu with the urge to throw caution to the wind.
Never before.
Was it this embrace, growing tighter until Yan Muyu could barely breathe?
Qiu Chao: “I haven’t slept all night, and I’m still not tired.”
She looked up at Yan Muyu, eyes on her tightly pressed lips, then tentatively kissed the corner of her mouth. “Yan Muyu, you’re just like Grandma said.”
“All heart, no matter what they say.”
Her voice sounded pieced together from fragments, that fleeting kiss a far cry from the earlier surge.
Like a girl’s shy experiment, laced with self-loathing vast as an ocean.
Qiu Chao: “Feel my heart. Is it really that hard?”
But Yan Muyu gripped her hand. “Feeling better now?”
Her perceptiveness was almost scary. The tenderness from moments ago vanished as she exhaled. “It’s late. Go to bed.”
“Didn’t you say you hadn’t slept?”
She knew Qiu Chao had a habit of taking meds but wasn’t sure if it had continued all these years.
Yan Muyu: “If you can’t sleep, I’ll go buy you some.”
But Qiu Chao kept pressing her hand to her own body.
Yan Muyu: “You…”
Before she could scold Qiu Chao, the kitchen curtain flew open.
“Why’s the light still on… Holy shit!”
Ding Yingxue stood there, dumbstruck. She felt like she was dreaming.
Otherwise, how could she see Yan Muyu’s hand on her own artist?
The light was warm and golden. Neither woman was anything less than stunning. The scene was hardly scandalous—even poetic, really. Yet it still made Ding Yingxue’s scalp tingle.
First, the move was way too intimate.
Second, Sister Qiu, you’re smiling like you’re half-playing hard to get.
Third, Young Boss Yan, your hand’s model-worthy—like, go do OnlyFans level.
Fourth…
Damn it, they actually look good together. Am I losing it?
Qiu Chao pulled away fast, even shoving Yan Muyu, who staggered again.
Then the senior strolled forward with a smile, patting Ding Yingxue’s shoulder gently as she passed. “Yingxue, the bathroom’s not here.”
“My manager didn’t chew me out much earlier, you know?”
Qiu Chao looked like she’d been crying, her voice laced with feigned composure and pitiful fragility. It flipped Ding Yingxue’s thoughts from “perfect match” to—
Holy crap! Young Boss Yan won’t even spare her own artist!
This kind of person topping is straight-up forcing the innocent into vice! Harming the loyal!!
Qiu Chao walked off after that.
Leaving Yan Muyu, nursing a sore waist from the shove, utterly furious with her.
How could there be such a woman who flipped the script so shamelessly? She’d just comforted her a moment ago! It was like a weasel paying New Year’s greetings to the hen—pure ulterior motives!
But Ding Yingxue, that fool, clearly bought it. She whipped her head around and glared at Yan Muyu with pure fury, as if Yan Muyu had committed some unforgivable atrocity.
“I didn’t. That’s not what happened,” Yan Muyu protested.
Ding Yingxue let out a heavy sigh. She was quite a bit younger than Yan Muyu, yet she put on the air of a jaded senior bearing deep grudges.
“Young Boss Yan, even if we’re recording here, off-camera time is still work hours. How could you do something like that?”
“I already told you, it’s not what it looked like,” Yan Muyu insisted.
Ding Yingxue lifted her chin, gesturing toward the floor.
Yan Muyu glanced down in bewilderment. There on the ground lay two mysterious petal-shaped objects.
They were milk tea foil tops that Qiu Chao had dropped.
“It wasn’t me who dropped them,” Yan Muyu said.
“You…” Ding Yingxue trailed off, her face flushing beet red as the earlier scene replayed in her mind.
The height difference between the two was glaringly obvious. Yan Muyu had a model’s lithe figure, while Qiu Chao was all fiery curves. Together, they looked like a match made in heaven.
And yet…
The rumors were true after all! Young Boss Yan really was debauched, no better than a beast!
She’d even make a move on her own ex-sister-in-law!
Utterly heartless!
Ding Yingxue huffed. “You’re scum!”
With that, she spun on her heel and stormed off.
Yan Muyu: …
She drew in a deep breath, rubbing her waist where it had bumped against the edge of the stove.
Qiu Chao, that venomous witch!
Pretending to be all innocent!
And was Ding Yingxue an idiot or what? They were actors—couldn’t she tell it was all an act?
No wonder she kept getting nominations but never the award.
She had zero discernment. Yan Muyu had no idea how Pei Wan could hype her little sister as the best in the world.
The kitchen was still a total mess right now, and the one who’d made the powder was only responsible for cooking, not cleaning up.
Yan Muyu resigned herself to tidying it all up.
She slid open the bamboo window and peered out at the starry sky, only to spot Qiu Siyuan sitting alone in the courtyard, sipping tea.
Yan Muyu let out a hey.
Her old friend sauntered over with a teasing grin. “So, what’s six minutes flat in the kitchen feel like?”
“Scram—” Yan Muyu shot back.
