CH 6

Yu Zhou paused for a moment and absentmindedly swiped the screen twice with her thumb.

Instead of immediately checking her new followers, she closed the direct message and continued to read the next one.

As if on cue, several new direct messages popped up on her screen.

A Sherlock Holmes-type message: “Is it ‘Shrine’? Chai Chai, Chang is the lead CV in ‘Shrine’, right?”

An all-seeing type message: “Chai Chai, I get it. [Push up glasses.jpg].

Yu Zhou’s pen name is Ba Da Qin Chai, which was common amongst male-oriented novels. Interestingly, what she wrote were all baihe novels. Her longtime readers call her “Chai Chai”#1, but it was often mispronounced as “Cha Cha”. This eventually evolved to “Chai Chai.”#2

She laughed and thought, you don’t understand anything.

Then she closed the direct message interface?, went to her profile, and opened her follower? list.

The pure blue avatar was very eye-catching, and Su Chang didn’t have a nickname. The name of her Weibo was just her real name Su Chang.

“One’s name and surname are unalterable, just as one’s character should be unchanging.” Su Chang was the most straightforward person Yu Zhou had ever met, at least in this regard.

Under her name were the words “No Bio” and below that was “Follow from Profile Homepage”.

From the way Su Chang followed her, Yu Zhou could infer that Su Chang had first searched for her ID, browsed her Weibo account, and then followed her.

Yu Zhou was actually smart and meticulous, but her intelligence and attention to detail were often used in boring aspects like this.

She absentmindedly swiped her thumb a few more times and added a few fake actions, which made her seem very casual and effortless as if she just accidentally hit the wrong button when she finally clicked “follow” on the right side.

She watched as the gray words “mutual following” appeared, and then she naturally entered Su Chang’s homepage.

Wow, Su Chang had over a million followers, but there was no pinned post. As she scrolled down, she saw that the last three or four posts were all advertisements about her work. She only posted once every two or three days, and even those drama-related posts were reposted later than others.

Looking at her following list, Su Chang only followed 49 people. The top one of the list was “Ba Da Qin Chai,” which had just over 2,000 followers and wasn’t even a Weibo VIP.

It was completely different from the other users of the list, whose introductions were “Actor”, “Director”, or “Three Sounds Studio”.

Yu Zhou felt embarrassed and wanted to buy some followers for herself.

In fact, before she could even ask how to do so, the first figure of her follower numbers jumped from two to three. Thanks to Su Chang’s follow, the rising speed of Yu Zhou’s followers was faster than buying followers.

Yu Zhou’s mood was complicated. After sorting through it, she finally realized that this unfamiliar emotion was called irony.

When she and Su Chang slept in the same bed years ago, they seemed strangers on all social media platforms, and she didn’t even dare use Su Chang’s account to listen to music.

And now they finally followed each other, after they had broken up.

She unconsciously pressed and pulled down on the screen, and then tapped again. She thought she would see some news, but she suddenly saw that the pure blue avatar, representing Su Chang’s account, had posted a new Weibo.

“The weather is nice.”

Four words and a period, posted just a minute ago, but already had nearly a thousand comments.

Clicking on the comment section.

A just-for-speed comment: “1.”

A full-of-incredulous comment: “Am I really the first one to comment??”

A polite comment: “Hello, Ms.Su. [hug with love.jpg].

A joking comment: “Oh, so Chang Chang can write original Weibo posts. [Hilarious.jpg].

A coming-into-heat comment, “Ahh, my baby! You finally showed up. Did you want to make your mom anxious? Waaah.”

There were also a few scattered comments mentioning Yu Zhou.

“Hehehe, Ms.Su, I noticed your newly followed user. Does that mean…?”

Yu Zhou’s hair stood on end in an instant. She didn’t know why, but she just got this creepy feeling.

Luckily, that comment was quickly drowned out and went unnoticed.

Yu Zhou quit Su Chang’s homepage and scrolled down to her “Good morning” post from a few hours ago, which only had 15 comments, and could be considered a large number for her.

She scrolled back up, but Su Chang didn’t post anything else, nor had she replied to any of the comments.

As for following Yu Zhou, Su Chang hadn’t offered any explanation. Of course, it was unnecessary for Su Chang.

That’s just the way Su Chang was, always mysterious, always hard to read.

She would give you a piece of candy, and then that was it, just one piece.

There’s no reason, no motive, no discernible pattern, and she never shared her thoughts.

No matter what you tasted in that candy, sweet or sour, she didn’t expect any feedback from you.

It was no wonder people looked up to her.

“You seem a bit upset,” a soft voice broke Yu Zhou out of her thoughts and back to reality.

She turned her head to see Xiang Wan, who looked concerned, sitting gracefully like a forever elegant little cat, with sunlight shining through her hair.

Even her watery eyes looked similar to cats’, with large pupils like black diamonds.

Yu Zhou thought that it’s rare to see such eyes nowadays, perhaps because there were no electronic devices in ancient times, so their eyes were well-protected, clear and clean, and never deformed.

“Yeah, I’m so sad,” Yu Zhou leaned on the armrest, “I feel very sad for I’m ‘Hu'”.

“What does ‘Hu’ mean?”

“It means nobody cares. It means no matter what you do, even if you run naked on the street, there won’t be anyone who cares about you.

“Naked…”

“Running without clothes.”

“Miss Yu, you have such a hobby.” Xiang Wan said, with a complex expression on her face.

“I don’t!” Yu Zhou sat up straight and stared at her, “It’s a metaphor, do you understand?”

“It means you worked hard to write something, but no one reads it. You refresh the website from morning till night, and three comments are already impressive. Can you understand that kind of loneliness and emptiness? It’s like being in a cold palace.”

Xiang Wan thought for a moment and said, “The works my sisters and I wrote were popular and each one was worth a fortune.””

“You’re awesome. Yu Zhou laughed with anger.

She leaned on the armrest again, “You’re all awesome, but I’m just a noob, ok?”

“Noo…”

……

……

Yu Zhou squinted at her and found that she only said one word, then dragged her voice for a while, but had nothing else to say.

So Yu Zhou said, “Xiang Wan, I found out that you’re pretty naughty too.”

“Hmm?”

“You’re used to that every time you say only one word, and I will explain it to you. So now you’re being lazy and only saying one word.”

Xiang Wan smiled awkwardly, gracefully lowering her head.

“In fact, Miss Yu is very powerful.”

“Oh? Please elaborate.”

Xiang Wan explained, “You can command the wind and rain, boil eggs with your bare hands, capture souls and voices, and shift your position all of a sudden.

Hmmm…

“Don’t make it sound so mysterious. Modern people all know these things.” Yu Zhou felt a little embarrassed.

“I have not met other people, but in this scorching summer, the coolness in this room is brought by you. Therefore, Ah Wan is so grateful,” Xiang Wan smiled.

Is Xiang Wan… comforting her?

Yu Zhou blinked. What was there to be grateful for? She had been teasing this young lady like a monkey and always wanted to scare her.

Ah Wan, Ah Wan, this self-proclaimed name was a bit affected, but when spoken from Xiang Wan’s mouth, it was very pleasant to hear.

Yu Zhou felt a little guilty and decided to treat her better.

She asked Xiang Wan, “I forgot to ask, do you want to go back?”

“Of course I do.” Xiang Wan’s eyes dimmed. It was a foreign land for her and not suitable to stay for too long.

“Then…”

“But I’ve been thinking all night and watching this theater all day, and I understand a lot. All things in the world have their own destiny. Since I’ve come, I’ll just accept it. I’ll just wait.”

“Wait for what?”

Xiang Wan was not sure, but she still smiled peacefully, “Waiting for the next thunderstorm. Maybe I’ll go back then. At that time, I will leave my hairpin as… a food expense.”

“It’s too, too precious,” Yu Zhou said.

“It’s not precious. It’s a gift to a kind, warm, low-key, righteous, and upright person.”

Xiang Wan said.

1. The character “差” here is a polyphonic character and can be pronounced as “cha”.

2. They used another character “柴” instead, which is also pronounced as “chai”.