Lady By The Pillow - Chapter 10
Chapter 10: The Phone Call (Part 1)
Teacher Shi, are you asleep?
“What you’re thinking inside, no one can see it.”
If line delivery was the first lesson Wei Jiuqi learned from Lu Zhen, then learning to hide her feelings was the second.
Unrequited love is like a corpse hidden in a refrigerator; anyone who passes by the fridge will feel a jolt of fear.
Wei Jiuqi pressed her lips together tightly, holding them between her teeth until they felt numb.
Did she like Shi Qing?
She used to.
She would only admit to “used to.”
The day they broke up, she cried so hard.
To be precise, it wasn’t a “breakup,” but Shi Qing’s unilateral announcement that their relationship was over.
Wei Jiuqi forced herself to hold back and shed only a single tear in front of her.
The moment she got downstairs, she couldn’t stop herself from trembling. Her tears were more torrential than a midsummer downpour.
She sat on a bench in the neighborhood’s green space, hugging her suitcase and crying her eyes out.
Shi Qing had helped her pack the suitcase, so thoughtfully.
She thought, Shi Qing helped me pack and even booked a hotel for me tonight because she was worried I couldn’t take care of myself outside.
She still cares about me.
If she cares, maybe she won’t be able to bear to let me go.
So she waited in the green space, hoping that if Shi Qing regretted her decision and came running down from her apartment, she would see her at a glance. Then she would rush over, crying and accusing her, while also saying she would never forgive her and then kissing her.
But Shi Qing never came down.
She waited from noon until night, a full eight hours—the hellish eight hours that laborers trade their happiness for money. Shi Qing still didn’t come down.
And then, her love died.
Of course it did.
Wei Jiuqi was a mature college graduate. If someone didn’t want her anymore, what was the difference between her being shameless and those people who constantly harassed their exes after a breakup?
She had already turned a new page, she was on the next level, she had moved on.
Yes, she definitely, absolutely, for sure, did not still like Shi Qing.
Not one bit.
That night, Shi Qing got back after her English lesson. It was only 10 o’clock, a bit early.
Dong Ya volunteered to teach her how to play a game, but Shi Qing politely declined. Her hands were more unruly inside a game than if she had arthritis.
“You play, I’ll just scroll on my phone for a bit.”
Dong Ya pouted disappointedly. “Alright. Oh, by the way, Sister, are you coming back for lunch tomorrow?”
Shi Qing asked, “Coming back to eat? What’s going on?”
“Heh, well, our family’s crabs are all grown, and my mom sent me a box. I was thinking, maybe we can cook up a little feast for ourselves tomorrow?”
“That’s a great idea,” Shi Qing replied cheerfully. “Is it still that online store?”
“Yep. They even got an extra star since last year.”
“That’s impressive. I’ll place two orders and send some to a few friends to try.”
She said, pulling out her phone, but Dong Ya quickly stopped her.
“No, no, Sister, just send me the address. I’ll have my mom ship it directly. Crabs aren’t worth much anyway.”
Shi Qing playfully tapped her head. “That’s your family’s hard-earned money. A box of crabs is 6 kilograms; that’s not cheap.”
“But you already give me an extra 2,000 yuan in salary every month. You’re already taking such good care of me. If my mom finds out you’re spending money to buy crabs, she’ll scold me to death.”
“You said it yourself, that’s your ‘salary.’ You’re my only assistant, and you do everything for me. You deserve that 2,000 yuan.”
Dong Ya’s salary was 6,000 yuan, and in this day and age, it was hard to find a job. For a fresh graduate, this was already a good salary.
But for most assistants, the pay wasn’t proportional to the labor. The work was exhausting, often requiring them to work from dawn till dusk, with an extremely irregular schedule. They had to take care of the artist’s diet and daily life, as well as manage their emotions. If they encountered an artist with a bad temper, getting yelled at was a regular occurrence.
The talent agency, Shining Charm Entertainment, was a medium-sized company. Its assistant team had about 20 people, and almost every month someone would quit. The turnover rate was very high, mostly because of the demanding work and low pay. After deducting the five social insurances and one housing fund, 6,000 yuan didn’t leave much. Overtime was unpaid labor, with no performance bonuses.
Shi Qing gave Dong Ya an extra 2,000 yuan from her own account every month. During the Lunar New Year, she would also give her a four-figure red envelope, which was much better than the company’s symbolic 200 yuan.
Shi Qing was very good to the people around her and generous.
After all, a person’s social network largely determined their future trajectory.
Take Empress, for example. It was her manager, Dou Qinwen, who helped her secure the audition.
Without Dou Qinwen, she would be a genius with no roles to play.
Besides, she wasn’t a genius.
After much persuasion, Dong Ya finally agreed to let Shi Qing order the crabs herself. Back in her own room, she immediately searched on Xiaohongshu for various crab recipes, vowing to cook a feast for Shi Qing the next day.
Shi Qing lay in bed. She had placed her order, and it wasn’t even 10:30 PM. She couldn’t sleep.
Thinking about what happened at the cafeteria today, she couldn’t help but let out a soft sigh.
When Wei Jiuqi invited her to take a photo, she felt a familiar and bold warmth from her, a feeling she hadn’t felt in a long time.
She had rejected her.
On one hand, she didn’t want to give Wei Jiuqi the wrong idea. On the other hand, the cast of Empress hadn’t been officially announced yet. If a fan posted the photo, it would be a premature reveal, which could cause problems for the crew and for herself.
She tapped on the #WeiJiuqi# supertopic. The top post was from the fan she met earlier that day.
[@WillStayWithYou (Qiqi Photo Version): I went to the studio cafeteria just to try my luck and actually ran into Qiqi!]
The post’s first image was the two-person photo she had taken. The second image was the signed photo, with the golden signature looking wild and free, showing a hint of youthful swagger.
Below were a series of envious comments, with the comment count quickly breaking a thousand.
[@ForeverAndAlways: You little brat, you have such good luck! I’ve been to the cafeteria so many times and never saw her!]
[@BestActress’s Loyal Servant: Does Qiqi have a new show? Who are the actors she’s working with?]
[@WillStayWithYou (Qiqi Photo Version): There are a lot of crews in the area now, so I didn’t ask, but it must be a big project. I don’t know the actors QAQ. One of them is a big beauty, and she’s the one who helped me take this photo. She looks familiar, but I don’t know her name, so I just kept calling her ‘Teacher’.]
Reading this, Shi Qing’s thumb twitched and she accidentally liked the post. She quickly un-liked it.
Being obscure had its benefits.
Like now, if she accidentally slipped her finger and liked a post, no one would notice even if she didn’t un-like it for ten minutes. But if she were a top celebrity, that one slip could land her on the trending topics list with a headline like—Shi Qing secretly follows Wei Jiuqi’s supertopic.
In her nine years since her debut, she had only been nominated once for Best Supporting Actress. The projects she starred in had a consistently low buzz. It was a given that she wasn’t well-known.
Before she could make a bigger blunder, Shi Qing exited the supertopic. Her fingers scrolled meaninglessly on the screen for a few moments before she opened her private messages and found the film review she had pinned to the top.
The review even had a title: May You Forever Be a Dandelion, Moving Forward With the Wind.
Actually, she had fans too.
Not many, but they were high-quality. Even the A-list celebrities might not have fans as sincere as hers, who could write such good essays.
She remembered an event where her dress was the same as someone else’s. She suddenly became a target for a group of idle people who vented their anger at her. She received a lot of insults.
Some didn’t even know her name.
A minor incident like that wasn’t enough for the company to mobilize its public relations team. Only Dong Ya stayed with her, telling her to turn off her private messages and not look at her phone.
She did.
Then, after Dong Ya left, she turned it back on.
Because she checked her private messages every night to see if any new fans had sent her a film review.
She scrolled until 2 AM, and then she saw the review: May You Forever Be a Dandelion, Moving Forward With the Wind.
It defeated the thousand pointing fingers and the ten thousand insults.
She replied to the fan, saying:
Thank you for your support. I will continue to work hard.
The other person only replied with a “You can do it,” and nothing else.
That was enough.
Shi Qing sometimes wondered what her fans were like in real life. They could be a teacher, or a student still in school, or a hard-working person who could only spare time on the weekends to watch her work.
It was probably a teacher, she thought. The article was beautifully written and well-structured. Maybe it wasn’t even a science teacher, but a literature teacher.
She didn’t like people calling her “Teacher.”
Because she wasn’t a teacher. A teacher was a noble and sacred profession, dedicated to educating and nurturing others. Who was she, an actor who came to the profession halfway through, to be called “Teacher?”
Just as she was thinking this, her phone vibrated. It was a WeChat message.
[Little Cat]: Teacher Shi, are you asleep?