Chapter 18

When Chu Ying returned to the car, his phone screen was lit, displaying a few unanswered calls.

He picked it up and looked at the caller’s name. Then he fired up the engine, but was in no hurry to leave. Instead, he called back.

“Why did you only just pick up my phone!” The girl on the other end was fierce and delicate all at once.

Chu Ying said, “What is it?”

“I heard from Ma that a while ago you went somewhere for a conference.” The girl giggled. “Did you bring me back any presents?”

“No.”

“Alright, then let me inform you, you have just lost a cute and sprightly little sister.”

Chu Ying’s mien remained unchanged. “That’s great.”

“…” Chu Xi found it rather boring. “Ma wants me to let you know, come home for dinner tomorrow.”

After hanging up, Chu Ying flipped through his contacts until he reached the recently added number. He did not need to look too deeply, all he had to do was to scroll down to see that long string of words.

A rabbit waiting for you to contact her every day.

The guy’s lips quirked up almost imperceptibly. After closing his phone, he drove out of the parking lot.

…

The second day, Chu Ying returned to the old house.

When he reached home, the two ladies were sitting on the sofa, sharing some melon seeds, discussing something.

Father Chu sat on the side sofa reading the newspaper.

Chu Xi saw him, and in a rather unconcerned, stand-offish way, greeted. “Brother.”

At that, Mother Chu turned around.

“You’re back? Wait a moment, sit down, the food’s not ready yet.”

Chu Ying sat down on the sofa opposite his father, picking up a newspaper as he did so.

The duo’s old-fashioned actions were almost identical – no one would believe they were not father and son.

After some commercials, the TV show the mother and daughter were waiting for, finally aired.

Chu Ying’s habit of reading the papers had been put aside for so long that, when faced with this bunch of words all squished together, he did not want to see them anymore.

“I’m okay, you don’t need to care about me…” The female voice from the TV was low, hiding a little whimper. “She must have mistaken us, I’ll go apologise to her tomorrow.”

The voice was very familiar. Yesterday, it was right beside him, asking to exchange phone numbers with him.

As he out down the newspaper, Su Yi’s face appeared in front of his eyes.

Her long black hair was obediently, loosely set on her shoulders, the soft words admitting to her mistakes coming out of her mouth. On her soft white cheeks, there was a clear handprint. With the pink showing on the corners of her eyes, she really was the very pinnacle of ‘pitiful’.

“You must treat her well, just looking at you from afar is enough for me to feel joy.” When she finished speaking, she raised her head suddenly, her beautiful red lips formed a forced smile. “We’re still friends, it’s enough.”

As Chu Ying watched with interest, a pillow landed on the screen, almost knocking it over.

“Aaaaahhhh!!!” Chu Xi screeched. “Why must she be so horrible! I hate her! That dirty mistress!”

“Be careful, don’t knock the television over.” Mother Chu shot her daughter a disapproving look before she said, approvingly, “This person is too horrible. Yesterday she was on some other channel giving a person poisoned wine, today she’s on this channel being a mistress.”

A short laugh sounded.

“Brother, what are you laughing about.” Chu Xi pouted, pointing at Su Yi and asking, “Don’t you guys love these sort of sluts?”

“What are you saying?” Mother Chu cut her off. “A proper lady shouldn’t be saying these sort of things.”

Chu Ying didn’t even turn around. “You’ve just fallen out of love?”

That hit dead centre, and Chu Xi deflated. “Don’t mention it, it’s annoying!”

When she finished speaking, she held up her phone and poked it a few times harshly.

“Aaaahhhh, I just saw her on Weibo’s hourly trending list. See, Mum, she’s a cheat in real life too!” Chu Xi handed the phone over to her mum.

Mother Chu took it over to check. “Hey, hey, she really is…”

Chu Ying raised an eyebrow, opened the Weibo he had not bothered with ever since installing it.

It took him awhile to see that trending list Chu Xi was talking about. Su Yi’s news was right there at the top, with nine photos.

The first was a picture from her livestream with the words ‘he’s not from the industry’, and Liang Bo at the top of the list of gifters.

The next eight photos… was Su Yi at a parking lot.

In the photo, she was wearing a blue and white blouse, half leaning on a tall and strong guy with broad shoulders and long legs. The only thing was that his face was blurred out, with an arrow pointing to him saying – “A big player in the business world”.

“A big player?” Chu Xi ridiculed. “This guy isn’t something, I bet that he has a bunch of wrinkles once that blur is erased. And that title, does the media still think this is the 80s, that it’s still in fashion to marry into some rich family?”

Chu Ying suddenly said, “A while ago you said you wanted to open a bar?”

Chu Xi’s eyes brightened immediately, and she adjusted her voice to speak rather girlishly. “Yes, brother, would you fund me? I would brave the infernos for you.”

Chu Ying said, “Don’t even think about it.”

Chu Xi was confused. “???”

Regardless of what Chu Xi said, Chu Ying got up, walked outside and gave his assistant a call.

His assistant picked up rather fast. “Director Chu.”

“Is that Weibo account ready?”

“It is, I will send the account number and password to your phone immediately.”

“And,” Chu Ying said, calmly, “Get rid of those photos on Weibo.”

….

Su Yi swallowed that bitter vegetable. It was so disgusting she wanted to throw up.

“Little Xue Xue, I think I might faint.”

“Don’t!” Wu Xue had changed into workout clothes. “Stay in the gym for two hours before you faint.”

Su Yi felt that she had brought this upon herself.

Yesterday, she had to promise again and again about not saying anything on Weibo, just short of swearing on her life and everything she treasured, before she finally got her Weibo back.

Then Wu Xue had said, “It’s just nice that you haven’t posted anything in a while, how about posting something now?”

And so Su Yi opened her album and looked for a selfie.

Almost without hesitation she chose that picture of her holding the cornetto, and added a caption ‘Growing up on Cornetto [/panda]’. When Wu Xue saw that, she lectured her for almost half an hour before putting her on a diet and exercise regimen again.

If she were to think about it carefully, for someone about to start filming, she had really been quite unrestrained recently. Ice cream and Mala soup, was that really what a female celebrity should be eating?

Thus, she obediently ate her vegetables, and after a while of digesting it, went with Wu Xue to the gym.

The gym was one of the condominium’s facilities. As there were many celebrities in this neighbourhood, the security was tighter; aside from those living in the area, no one was allowed to enter, no matter how much they paid. Thus, when they went in, there were only a few people in there.

Even after running for about half an hour on the treadmill, she was not sweating too much. Wu Xue draped another towel around her neck.

“Tired? Why do you look so unenthusiastic?”

Su Yi shook her head. She was not really tired, but her mood really was not quite good today.

She had seen those comments just now. It was alright if they scolded her, but they’d included Chu Ying too. Of course, none of them knew the guy’s actual identity, but not a single one used words other than ‘blind’, ‘old guy’ and ‘sugar daddy’. She was extremely agitated by these words for Chu Ying.

Only the heavens knew how many times she had recited the Three Character Classic [1] in her head to refrain from responding.

Wu Xue was sitting on the floor browsing through her phone when something caught her attention. She instantly stood up and patted the armrest of the treadmill. “Hey, stop running, pause for a while.”

Su Yi pressed the pause button and wiped some sweat off. “What is it?”

“Open your Weibo.” Wu Xue urged. “Follow Chu Ying back.”

Su Yi paused, and asked, “He has a Weibo?” She remembered that when she had searched before, she’d never found it.

Wu Xue said, “Yeah, it looks like it’s new.”

Su Yi suddenly lost interest in exercising. She hurriedly opened her Weibo and keyed ‘Chu Ying’ in the search bar.

The first result that popped up had no photo, just a small yellow V on the bottom right corner of the default avatar. When she clicked in, the simple introduction underneath that avatar was: CEO of Chu Corporation.

Following: 1.

That only person was her.

On the main page there was a post to get the V[2] certification, and one notification of a like.

27 minutes ago, he’d liked a post: [Su Yi v: Growing up on cornetto/panda]

After she’d happily clicked follow, she went into the private messaging function to send Chu Ying a whole bunch of panda emojis.

She did not expect the other to reply so quickly.

[Chu Ying v: Hmm?]

She could almost picture Chu Ying’s voice.

Low, almost like a shockwave that could stop her heart.

A complete gone case, she was.

“Little Xue.” She weakly extended a hand to Wu Xue.

Wu Xue caught it. “What?”

“Pull me up,” she said. “I think I can run for ten more hours.”

“…”

Su Yi stayed in that gym for the whole afternoon.

When she went back, Wu Xue remarked as she wiped her sweat off for her, “That Chu guy really makes a difference.”

Su Yi, who was originally too tired to speak, managed to squeeze out, “What is it?”

Wu Xue tsked. “The company’s PR team couldn’t manage to do anything about the news for more than half a day, just a few phone calls from that Chu guy, all the photos are gone!”

After returning home, Su Yi relaxed in the bathtub, enjoying the water jet spa with her phone placed just by her ear, giving the new script a quick go through.

Li Min did not lie to her. Qiu Ji’s character had barely changed, but that new character really had many parts.

In the scenes with Qiu Ji, she was there at least half the time; although most of the time she was just a background character, there was always at least one or two lines of unimportant conversation.

What a bother!

When Li Min sent the script over, the two of them had chatted for awhile. This was not on her. The new character was either the scriptwriter’s or the investor’s idea. Whichever way you looked at it it was not Li Min’s fault.

Her phone ‘dinged’. Almost at once Su Yi lost the mood for script reading. She tossed the script aside and picked up her phone.

[Chu Ying: Outside.]n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Su Yi glanced at the clock. It was already 10.30 at night. She had yet to reply when the bathroom door opened.

A smartly dressed Wu Xue stood outside, holding the door handle. “I’m going out for a while.”

Su Yi asked, “It’s already so late, where are you going?”

Wu Xue said, “Liu Minghao is drunk, he’s at a bar at the moment, I need to go take a look.”

Su Yi did not hesitate as she said, “I’ll go with you.”

Wu Xue waved her hand. “There’s no need for that, it’s no big deal. Besides, you’ve already ran for a whole day, aren’t you tired?”

“No, it’s too late, I’ll be worried.” When Su Yi finished speaking, she got up. After patting herself dry, she changed into some outdoor wear.

She put on her mask, sunglasses and cap before coming out.

“Let’s go.”

[notes]

[1] the three character classic is one of the ancient chinese scripts they use to educate children with, and as the name suggests it’s all three characters, teaching people of morals and such.

[2] v for verified (like on instagram & twitter), as in when the account is ascribed to a real person and it had been checked by the platform (so it’s been tied to an IC / passport number)

[3] as in above, this v tagged onto the end of an account name indicates that this account is verified, differentiating it from the accounts opened by anonymous people or by gossip accounts, etcetera

this chapter was edited by Larkspur!

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