Shao Yu had worn makeup, a rare occurrence, for the evening’s gala. The look was light, the colors sheer, doing nothing but sharpen features that were already exceptional, without a trace of vulgarity.
She looked over at Song Yingqiu, her expression carrying an almost stubborn earnestness.
However lightly she’d phrased the question, being the one on the receiving end, Song Yingqiu couldn’t help taking her answer a little more seriously.
She carefully replayed the evening’s events while Shao Yu waited without hurrying her, leaving her to speak in her own time.
Song Yingqiu’s thoughts finally settled on the moment she’d felt cheated on by the two of them in cahoots.
Then, looking at the dearest person before her, she couldn’t help laughing at herself for letting her mind run wild for once.
The amusement spread to her face, and she laughed outright. “Jealous? How could I be? I know perfectly well you don’t like girls.”
Shao Yu couldn’t have described what she was feeling. She heard herself repeat it in her usual flat tone:
“I don’t like girls…”
She gazed quietly at Song Yingqiu.
The strongest, indeed the only, evidence against that sentence was standing right in front of her, yet she could never present it.
The words she couldn’t say hovered at her lips, chewed over and over until a soft, persistent bitterness seeped out, filling every crack.
The longer she looked at the woman before her, the heavier that bitterness weighed. Her heart was like cotton wool soaked through with water, damp and suffocating.
Song Yingqiu, utterly oblivious, laughed with delight, like a deep red rose swaying with hidden fragrance.
Mature. Enticing. And utterly heartless.
Shao Yu looked at her and said slowly:
“Go on, then.”
Wagging her head lightly, Song Yingqiu said, “Big sister was just afraid she’d be a bad influence on you. If you’re curious about her, why not invite her out again in the next couple of days? She’s quite fun…”
Her voice carried a distinctly relishing note.
Quite. Fun.
Shao Yu drew a deep breath and stood up.
Song Yingqiu blinked in surprise. “Huh?”
Shao Yu’s voice was stripped of all emotion. “I forgot to reply to an email. I’m going to my room.”
Any longer in this room, and Song Yingqiu’s effortlessly natural heartbreaker act would have sent her blood pressure through the roof.
Shao Yu left quickly, her back hurried.
But Song Yingqiu read the little fish’s desperate attempt to flee the siren’s waters as mere haste.
Must really be something urgent.
With that thought, she didn’t call her back and let her go.
The living room felt much emptier without Shao Yu in it. She had just picked up her phone, about to head to her own room, when Wen Xinxian’s call came in.
Song Yingqiu answered, her voice lazy. “What is it?”
Wen Xinxian’s voice barged right in. “Sister Yingqiu, did you go to Chao Yushan’s movie premiere?”
“Mm.”
“Do you know she’s been asking around everywhere about some person?”
At first Song Yingqiu only half-listened, idly humoring her friend’s chatter.
Until that line made her stop mid-step, her voice going soft. “Is she asking about Shao Yu?”
Wen Xinxian slapped her thigh and launched into her complaint.
“Isn’t she just! Clever thing never asked me directly, just kept circling around and around trying to fish for Doctor Shao’s WeChat…”
Against an ordinary person, Chao Yushan’s tactics might have worked.
But how could she know that within Song Yingqiu’s circle, Doctor Shao was a treasure kept under lock and key? Even the likes of Wen Xinxian and Zong Qiang had never managed to pry so much as a glance loose, let alone an outsider.
Not only did no contact information surface, word got out instead.
Wen Xinxian wailed, “Sister, how can you only take Doctor Shao out to make the rest of us drool? When do we get to see her again?”
Song Yingqiu: “…”
For a moment she had no words. “You all like her that much? You’ve met her once.”
Wen Xinxian giggled. “Doctor Shao’s aura is just so special, I can’t even put it into words… she’s simply got that flavor. Gorgeous enough for men and women alike.”
Sitting down at her vanity, Song Yingqiu scoffed lightly. “Hopeless, the lot of you.”
Wen Xinxian: “Even setting her face aside, we genuinely like her.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll host a gathering someday and let you all meet her.”
With that, amid Wen Xinxian’s cheering, Song Yingqiu said goodnight and hung up.
Halfway through removing her makeup, she found herself staring into the mirror, lost in thought.
Chao Yushan falling for Shao Yu was only natural.
Who wouldn’t be moved by that face? Chao Yushan was never a picky person.
Wen Xinxian and the others liking Shao Yu was equally normal.
Beyond Shao Yu’s personal charm, Song Yingqiu suspected there was another reason: because she and Shao Yu swapped bodies so often, her friends had long since grown familiar with Shao Yu’s presence without realizing it, and felt they’d known her all their lives.
Armed with this calm, rational analysis, Song Yingqiu washed up, did her skincare, and went to bed in perfect serenity.
Lights off, eyes closed, silk sleep mask on, resting right on schedule.
She then spent the next half hour tossing and turning, her usual drowsiness nowhere to be found, her mind reduced to one exasperated, endeared refrain:
How is Shao Yu this likable?
Song Yingqiu didn’t consider herself a petty person, but for reasons she couldn’t name, she slept poorly that night.
In the morning, she dragged herself up with her beauty wand to de-puff her face, shuffled into the living room in her slippers, and flopped down, exhaustion written all over her.
That night’s sleep had cost her more than a whole night of clubbing.
Normally whoever woke first made breakfast, but today Song Yingqiu truly couldn’t be bothered. Lying flat on her back with her phone held above her face, she opened a delivery app.
She ordered their shared favorites, pan-fried buns and multigrain congee, plus two tea eggs.
She waited for the delivery while skimming financial news, then went and knocked on Shao Yu’s door.
“Shao Yu? Breakfast.”
No answer after several knocks. Frowning, Song Yingqiu gently turned the handle.
“Coming in?”
The room lay open before her eyes. Shao Yu wasn’t there.
It took a beat for it to register, and only then did she remember to check WeChat.
Pinned at the top, two unread messages, sure enough.
Shao Yu: I’m heading out
Shao Yu: Not back for lunch
Song Yingqiu slapped her forehead.
Great. Now I’ve over-ordered.
That morning, Song Yingqiu had no idea this was about far more than half a wasted takeout order.
From that day on, Shao Yu became busier than ever.
Out at dawn, home at midnight, a shadow barely glimpsed.
With their schedules offset, the apartment might as well have never had a second person in it; the two of them kept in touch almost entirely by WeChat.
The only time Song Yingqiu saw her was late last night.
Having woken with a dry throat, she’d gone to the kitchen for water and heard a noise at the entryway.
She turned and saw Shao Yu.
A dripping umbrella sat on the floor by her leg. Her black shirt and trousers were stippled with scattered water stains, her loose black hair damp against her shoulders, her clothes soaked through, the fabric clinging in blurred, dark patches.
Under the cold white light of the entryway, her exposed face and skin were startlingly pale, her whole figure like a stark black-and-white portrait, the shirt plastered to her body with a disheveled, accidental sort of beauty.
Song Yingqiu remembered: the wind and rain tonight had been ferocious. The slanting rain driving in under the umbrella couldn’t be dodged, couldn’t be blocked.
She asked at once, “Did you get caught in the rain? Where are you coming from? Why didn’t you take a car?”
Shao Yu didn’t answer.
Song Yingqiu hurried to the bathroom for a dry towel, meaning to dry Shao Yu’s hair.
Her wrist was caught before she could move.
Through the towel, none of Shao Yu’s warmth came through, but all of her strength did.
Song Yingqiu scolded softly, “Stop squirming. Let me dry it. Your hair is dripping.”
Her mood was already sour.
Like a parent whose child had been running wild outside every night, she’d been nursing a sullen resentment for days.
Then to see the child so careless of her own wellbeing, the anger came right up her throat.
She pulled harder, trying to free her wrist. To her surprise, Shao Yu only tightened her grip and pressed her hand back down.
Song Yingqiu’s temper flared; she lifted her head, ready to lecture.
But the instant their eyes met, Shao Yu spoke first.
“I can do it myself.”
Perhaps the chill outside had seeped into her bones; even that one sentence was steeped in cold.
Song Yingqiu suppressed her temper. “But you can’t reach your own back…”
“I can do it myself,” Shao Yu repeated.
Every inch of her radiated refusal.
Is she rejecting my closeness?
The realization froze Song Yingqiu mid-motion.
Neither of them spoke.
A single drop fell from the tip of Shao Yu’s hair, landing with a soft tap on the back of Song Yingqiu’s hand, blooming into a cold splash.
Stung, Song Yingqiu snatched her hand back and opened her mouth.
“…Fine. I’ll go pour you some hot water.”
She managed a smile. “And mix you a cold-remedy packet. Just to be safe.”
Afterward, all was calm.
Shao Yu changed out of her wet clothes, drank the cold remedy Song Yingqiu set before her, and they exchanged goodnights before retiring. Everything was as it had been these past days, except that a faint strangeness lingered and would not lift.
It wasn’t serious, exactly. By Song Yingqiu’s read, it felt like friends sulking over some small spat.
But why?
They hadn’t so much as laid eyes on each other these past few days. Where would friction have come from?
And Shao Yu was not the type to lash out over nothing, nor was it often that anything angered her to the point of losing control.
Lying in bed, Song Yingqiu’s thoughts scattered like raindrops slapping against glass.
Turning it over and over, she could settle on only one possibility:
Shao Yu disliked being treated like a child?
She had always been exquisitely attuned to emotion. No doubt she’d sensed Song Yingqiu fretting over her like a parent, and had pushed back firmly to warn her against crossing the line.
Yes. That must be it.
It was, after all, a matter too trivial for words. Had it been anyone else, Song Yingqiu would never have spent a single second on self-examination.
Having located the root of the problem, Song Yingqiu drifted into a sound sleep.
The next day she got up deliberately early and, eyes still foggy with sleep, shuffled out to intercept Shao Yu before she left.
“What’s on today?”
“My advisor flies in this morning. I’m picking her up at the airport.”
“Director Lu is here… so you start soon?”
“Today I’m helping her and a few of my fellow disciples get settled. The hospital leadership is hosting a welcome dinner, then the day after.”
“That’s quick.”
Song Yingqiu murmured, thinking it was only natural. Doctors, after all.
Once she’d pinned down the timing, she tugged her silk nightgown closer and offered, “You’ll be swamped today. Dinner together tomorrow night, then? Let’s have some fun with Wen Xinxian and the others.”
Shao Yu’s lips parted, and the emotion settled between her brows suggested anything but willingness.
Sleepy as she was, Song Yingqiu stayed sharply alert, rushing in before any refusal could land.
“Your department only just arrived. Who knows how buried you’ll be once work starts. Won’t you keep me company while there’s still time?”
The trailing note of her voice carried a spoiled, complaining charm, a woman utterly unaware of her own devastating effect, alluring in a way that was open, guileless, and clean.
Shao Yu’s brow twitched.
Song Yingqiu pressed on blithely, “Then it’s settled.”
With that, she turned and left mid-yawn, mist-soft hair spilling down her back, every line of her languid.
Shao Yu pressed her lips together as the old familiar helplessness welled up slowly in her chest, threaded through with a strand of confusion.
As always, she could not refuse Song Yingqiu.
Then again, who could?
