When Yan Muyu returned to the room, Qiu Chao was playing on her phone.
She climbed into bed without so much as a sideways glance and pulled a steam eye mask from beside her pillow.
“You aren’t going to yell at me?” Qiu Chao asked.
Yan Muyu snorted. “How could I dare?”
The bedroom held only the faint glow of a single bedside lamp, its reach pitifully small.
Yan Muyu had no idea what kind of setup the team had scouted ahead of time. At least to her, the room’s decor felt half-hearted at best.
If they had to install cameras for the show, did it really need to feel this authentic?
She had even spotted a line of ants marching slowly across the floor when she first walked in.
Qiu Chao rolled over to face her, gaze fixed on Yan Muyu.
With the eye mask already in place, it made it all the easier for Qiu Chao to stare without restraint.
Yan Muyu’s disposable steam eye mask must have come from somewhere quirky—the cartoonish pattern on it bordered on absurd.
It was probably a touch too big; she tugged at the edges to adjust it.
Qiu Chao watched shamelessly, wishing she had x-ray vision so she could reach right through the thin blanket and touch the other woman’s body.
To her surprise, Yan Muyu called her out. “Quit staring at me like that.”
“How do you even know I’m looking?” Qiu Chao shot back.
“I just know.”
Yan Muyu let out a sigh, closing her eyes to savor the gentle heat seeping through her eyelids. The fury that had left her stamping her feet earlier faded away, replaced by a helpless buzz ringing in her ears.
“Qiu Chao.”
“Could you just stop provoking me?”
It was rare for Yan Muyu to speak so evenly, so calmly.
If Ding Yingxue had overheard, she would have been stunned that Yan Muyu even possessed a soft, gentle tone.
Summer nights in the mountain village’s little mud house were profoundly still.
City dwellers drifted off amid the chill blast of air conditioning, but this bedroom didn’t even call for a fan. Without a light blanket, you’d catch a chill.
“I’m not provoking you,” Qiu Chao said.
Even through the pitch blackness of the steam eye mask, Yan Muyu could picture Qiu Chao’s expression perfectly.
She’s got to be looking at me with those eyes.
Like she wants to drag me off entirely into her world.
But why?
“What’s your endgame here, exactly?” Yan Muyu asked.
The mountain village night amplified every sound in the overwhelming quiet.
Crickets chirped outside the window. In the cramped bedroom—barely wide enough for two single beds, with just a handspan of space between them—Yan Muyu could even make out the rhythm of her own breathing mingling with Qiu Chao’s.
Qiu Chao lay on her side, head pillowed on her arm.
Truth be told, she hadn’t crossed any major lines yet. Otherwise, she would have crawled straight into Yan Muyu’s bed by now.
Yan Muyu was soft-hearted at her core.
Qiu Chao had confirmed that beyond doubt during those four years together—especially once that model girlfriend entered the picture.
If anything, the real warning wasn’t about falling for Yan Muyu. It was about not getting bewitched by her.
No one could resist something soft. And yet the softest things were always the hardest to break.
Yan Muyu lived by a “seize the day” philosophy when it came to love, but she always left the ones she discarded nursing a quiet, lingering gloom from that brief spark of joy.
Qiu Chao didn’t care for fleeting pleasures.
Everything she had ever gained before had slipped away far too quickly.
Yan Muyu was the first true wish on her life’s list. Even after crossing off the second, the third… so many more from that checklist, Yan Muyu still held the top spot.
It left Qiu Chao restless and aching, equal parts masochistic and sentimental.
“Don’t you know?” Qiu Chao murmured.
She swallowed the words “You know exactly what” and lobbed the question back instead.
Sharing a roof as nominal sister-in-law and… well, whatever they were—for what amounted to little more than a month back then—remained, even now, the happiest stretch of days in Qiu Chao’s memory.
Yan Muyu could be excused for not knowing, back in those days.
Later, Qiu Chao had chosen to drown it all in sleep and booze, deliberately earning Yan Muyu’s disdain just to stand out from the crowd.
But Yan Muyu was anything but dense.
Years of plunging into the depths of nightlife had honed her greatest skill: striking at the perfect moment of ambiguity, weaving atmospheres out of thin air.
When she loved you, she pulled you under into an ocean that drowned your heart. When she didn’t, the seafloor froze over. Icebergs rose, and it was always the first to love who shattered on the reefs and sank.
Yan Muyu fell silent for a long stretch—so long that Qiu Chao wondered if she had drifted off.
Minutes passed before she finally spoke. “I don’t want to know.”
“Because of your ex?” Qiu Chao pressed.
She kept any real inflection out of her voice.
Their dynamic now was murky at best. Manager and client? Not quite. Too ill-defined.
Yan Muyu still carried that CEO title, after all, which lent her an unmistakable air of authority.
Qiu Chao leaving it unmentioned might have let Yan Muyu stay hazy on it, but raising the point sharpened everything to a fine edge.
At least the eye mask spared her any awkward eye contact.
Qiu Chao didn’t mince words. “I know she hates me.”
“She’s dead,” Yan Muyu said flatly.
Another heavy silence settled in. Any normal person would have let it drop there, but Qiu Chao defied norms whether she was baring her soul or hiding behind a mask.
She set aside all her industry-honed polish for this moment—not that she cared about the camera mounted in the ceiling, either.
Mai Chen would have fussed endlessly, drilling vigilance even if the feed went dark.
In some ways, Qiu Chao truly had lost her mind.
“If she hadn’t died, would you have married her?” she asked.
Same-sex marriage wasn’t an option domestically, but Yan Muyu could always tie the knot abroad.
That fear had gnawed at Qiu Chao for years.
She had told Mai Chen a hundred times: nail down your career first, sort love later. Adults knew better, though—nothing ever fell neatly into place.
Least of all love, which ignored precedence and spat on logic.
The mixed-race girl who went by Xu Xue in Chinese— she was the specter that truly haunted Qiu Chao.
Their first encounter on set had started innocently enough: a greeting, then a glimpse of Xu Xue’s lock screen photo.
The jolt of it spilled Qiu Chao’s coffee before she could even register.
Feigning composure amid her assistant’s flustered apologies, she slipped off to change. Inside, her thoughts spun in chaos; focus eluded her entirely.
Someone nearby piped up about the photo.
The golden-haired model flushed with sudden shyness, her face alight with unmistakable bliss. “That’s my lover,” she said. “My goddess.”
Xia Yuanyuan had only recently joined Qiu Chao’s team, still finishing college. She let out an “oh” and muttered in Chinese, “That’s over the top.”
“Goddess? She’s head over heels.”
Qiu Chao’s hand clenched under the table, nearly shredding the hem of her skirt.
Jealousy twisted sharp inside her, dragging up those old childhood premonitions—like sniffing out the first signs that Yan Muyu might finally settle down.
Her hunches only solidified during breaks in the days that followed.
Xu Xue wasn’t the bubbly type, and her role was minor. But she worked hard, always perched on the sidelines watching the others perform.
Even Xia Yuanyuan remarked that the beauty had this unexpectedly earnest air, totally at odds with her looks.
Mai Chen told her to quit gossiping, but word trickled out anyway: Xu Xue’s girlfriend was a study-abroad student.
“Rich kid, probably. That watch? A gift from her.”
Mai Chen couldn’t help gossiping herself. “Dropped off a coffee for her earlier; we chatted. Turns out her girl’s a photographer too.”
“Finishing her grad show soon, then heading home. The kid was torn about tagging along to China.”
Old habits died hard. Mai Chen started crunching the odds of someone like Xu Xue breaking into China’s entertainment scene—net influencer might suit her better than acting, she figured.
She kept muttering on while Qiu Chao sat stone-silent, her gaze dim as she stared across at Xu Xue amid the bustling set.
Follow her back to China.
Did that mean Yan Muyu planned to keep things going?
Marriage talk after just two months? That sounded nothing like Yan Muyu.
“I’ve seen everyone else get family visits on set,” Qiu Chao remarked. “How come her girlfriend never shows?”
Half a year had passed since Qiu Chao’s formal split from Whale Entertainment. She was fighting to plant roots overseas—a new team, a new path ahead.
Everything felt fresh. Except her feelings, which ran achingly, stubbornly old.
“Didn’t she say graduation? Probably slammed,” Mai Chen replied.
Qiu Chao managed an “oh.” “There’s this period drama back home. They want you for a cameo. Won’t take long—the project’s barely off the ground, not till end of next year maybe… Lead’s some girl group member pivoting to acting. From Teng Huang New Star, I think…”
Qiu Chao barely registered it. Her eyes stayed locked on Xu Xue.
The girl was on a call, earbuds in, laughing softly—shyly—at whatever was said on the other end.
That year, Qiu Chao missed Yan Muyu with a fierce ache, her mind drifting back to the night she got her drunk.
Waking in the dead of night, Yan Muyu had been a snarling storm of irritability—nothing like her usual tenderness.
She never called Qiu Chao “Sister-in-Law” again after that.
Those lips of hers, made for honeyed words, simply couldn’t spit venom at a woman. So Yan Muyu had gone quiet instead.
It left Qiu Chao’s mind blank, reeling.
Her body felt scourged by lashes of ecstasy and agony intertwined. Tears blurred her vision as she chased kisses in a haze, but Yan Muyu denied her even that.
Her voice came out hoarse. “Satisfied now?”
Yan Muyu had cried.
Yan Muyu—crying.
Would this new girlfriend ever witness that side of her? Sensual and icy, fragile and utterly alien.
But Qiu Chao had never meant to act on it.
Her jealousy simmered only off the clock. Once filming started, she shoved all emotional demons aside—and that iron discipline was precisely why Gold Medal Manager Mai Chen had stuck with her as a solo act.
Then came the accident.
Qiu Chao never saw it coming: a massive blast on set, flames roaring into the sky.
The heat wave choked the air from your lungs. Debris rained down—if it struck true, the survivors were left clinging to half a life at best.
Xu Xue and she had only a simple greeting in the play.
In the instant danger struck, everyone wanted to flee. Debris and dust shrouded the world. Qiu Chao wanted to run but Xu Xue blocked her path.
She couldn’t break free and could only shield her face. In that moment, she thought of everything she had never obtained, and of her little sister Qiu Yuan’s face, torn apart in childhood.
She still had so much to do.
But it was so hot, so scorching that she nearly fainted.
Then came another deafening boom.
Xu Xue collapsed, and Qiu Chao struggled to crawl to the other side.
When Qiu Chao was loaded into the ambulance, a secondary explosion rocked the scene. Mai Chen nearly fainted.
