Lady By The Pillow - Chapter 17

Chapter 17: Fingers (2)

“What do you think, Little Cat?”

“It seemed like you were having a good time talking with Fang Fei earlier,” Wei Jiuyi said, skillfully wiping her face with a makeup remover pad. She seemed to be asking Shi Qing in passing, as if it were a casual conversation.

Shi Qing’s eyes moved slightly. “Yes, she’s very enthusiastic.”

“So? You want to be friends with her?” Wei Jiuyi continued to remove her makeup, looking busy.

“The more friends, the better.”

“That’s rare.”

“What’s wrong?”

Wei Jiuyi tossed the pad covered in eye makeup into the trash, took out a new one, and put some makeup remover on it. Her tone became sharp. “The Shi Qing I used to know had a strict standard for friends. She said she could count her true friends on one hand after all these years. Why would you give up on your principles for someone like Fang Fei?”

Shi Qing’s makeup was completely off, and she was on her phone accepting Fang Fei’s friend request. Hearing Wei Jiuyi’s words, she held up her work phone. “She’s a work friend.”

Shi Qing had two phones: one for work and one for personal use. She added all her colleagues from the set to her work phone, including the head writer Guo Xi, who had bought her bubble tea.

Wei Jiuyi’s movements slowed. She looked at Shi Qing in the mirror. Shi Qing’s makeup was gone, and she was waiting for the stylist to come and take out her hairpins. Her face was bare, with traces of water on her skin, revealing its natural cleanliness.

For a moment, Wei Jiuyi was lost in a memory of the past, of Shi Qing smiling at her after taking off her makeup.

A work friend.

Shi Qing was indeed not picky about her work friends.

“A work friend is still a friend. You might see her as a friend, but she might not see you that way,” Wei Jiuyi warned.

“Is that so?” Shi Qing asked.

“You should be careful whether she’s genuinely making friends or has an ulterior motive.”

“But I think she’s sincere.”

“Do you want me to spell it out for you?”

“What do you want to say?”

Wei Jiuyi finished removing her eye makeup and turned her wheeled chair to face Shi Qing, her voice hardening. “Fang Fei is an artist with Four Seasons Entertainment. Their company is struggling this year, so they’re desperate to create a fake couple for their artists to get some buzz. That’s what she was trying to do with me last night. I turned her down, so she’s trying to get you instead.”

Shi Qing’s typing hand paused for a moment, but only for a moment. She continued to reply to Fang Fei’s message.

“If I enjoy talking to her, I will. As for the rest, I can’t control it.”

This made Wei Jiuyi uncomfortable. Her brows furrowed, but then she remembered something and her face relaxed, with a hint of a bitter, self-deprecating smile. “Right. A fake couple can bring more popularity and attention. If Fang Fei wants to do that, your agent must be thrilled. And she’s good at making you happy and providing emotional value, isn’t she? It’s not that you’re not picky; it’s that you treat others as tools to please yourself.”

Shi Qing remained silent.

Wei Jiuyi’s anger intensified, her throat felt dry and tight. She challenged, “I really want to know, if I could still please you today, would you accept me without question and sleep with me?”

At that, Shi Qing finally looked up. Her clear, beautiful eyes slowly rose, and her demeanor was captivating. Wei Jiuyi expected her to be upset, especially after what she said.

But Shi Qing wasn’t.

Instead, she had a serene, worldly expression, almost like she was smiling. The slight curve of her lips was like a reflective hook, ready to pierce through a person’s emotions.

“What do you think, Little Cat?” Shi Qing didn’t answer her question, instead throwing it back at Wei Jiuyi. Just like in Empress, no matter how much the princess won in the end, she couldn’t get the empress to submit. The empress would simply smile lightly, completely in control of the princess’s emotions: You’re not good enough to mess with me.

The tense conversation was interrupted by the sound of the door opening. It was the stylist, who had finished at the set and returned to take out their hairpins.

“Xiao Zhang, why are you standing at the door?”

Xiao Zhang, Zhang Yulan, was Wei Jiuyi’s assistant.

She had heard the entire conversation from outside the door, including the question, “If I could still please you today, would you accept me without question and sleep with me?” The key word wasn’t “sleep,” but “still.” In other words, they had already slept together before.

On the way back in the van, Zhang Yulan gripped the steering wheel, sitting up straight. She glanced at the rearview mirror, then again. The third time, Wei Jiuyi broke the silence.

“Just ask what you want to ask.”

Zhang Yulan forced an awkward smile. “Hehe… Qi-jie, I’m not trying to gossip, it’s just… how do I put this… I’m worried about you. What if someone else finds out? You know, the last artist I worked with was blacklisted because of their private life getting exposed.”

Oh my god, why would my innocent-looking boss have a bad habit of sleeping with people she just met? She hasn’t done anything like that in the months I’ve worked with her.

Wei Jiuyi was in a bad mood after her argument with Shi Qing. “So, did those two stylists hear everything?”

“No, no,” Zhang Yulan quickly said. “The door was closed. I was the only one there. They came back after you guys were done talking.”

“Good.”

“So… does the company know about this?” Zhang Yulan had to know. If she gave a bad report to her boss, she could ruin both Wei Jiuyi’s career and her own.

Wei Jiuyi threw her phone to the side and lay down on the sofa, one arm under her head, staring at the unchanging ceiling. “The company doesn’t know. It happened before I debuted. I don’t want them to know.”

So, they were exes, not just a casual fling. Zhang Yulan immediately came to this conclusion. That makes sense. Wei Jiuyi had been focused on her career for the past few months. There was no way she’d be desperate enough for a casual relationship.

“Okay, I get it now, Qi-jie. Don’t worry, I’ll keep my mouth shut. Just like I said yesterday, I’m always on your side.”

She smiled, but her mind was racing, a garden of gossip sprouting up around her. They were so good at acting, she thought. On the surface, they were perfect strangers. If she hadn’t overheard their conversation, she would have thought they were just colleagues. Now, everything made sense, even Wei Jiuyi leaving Shi Qing’s room yesterday.

She remembered the first time she met Shi Qing. She had just come to drop off a coat, and Wei Jiuyi walked out of the bathroom with only a towel on, saying, “Teacher Shi isn’t an outsider.” That one sentence said so much.

Teacher Shi isn’t an outsider, but I, Zhang Yulan, am.

Forgive me, Buddha, for my sins.

The more she thought about it, the more embarrassed she felt. She pressed the gas pedal harder, not only because she had made a fool of herself but also because she realized her boss had been the one who was dumped. The phrase “if I could still please you” was a dead giveaway.

Hmph, that despicable Shi Qing, dumping her boss, the famous actress who won an award for her debut film!

Wei Jiuyi, you have to get famous! Let’s make her regret it!

The day after the photoshoot, the cast held a ceremony to mark the official start of filming. Everyone wore dark jackets and took turns lighting incense.

The production team for Empress was huge. Even without the extras, there were hundreds of people. The first film a new award-winning actress joined was always a hot topic for the media. On the first day of filming, several news outlets came to interview the cast. To generate buzz, the production team had already set up a social media account, filmed behind-the-scenes content, and announced the cast.

The ceremony’s official Weibo post had nine photos. The main photo was a group shot, and the others were close-ups of the main cast members lighting incense.

Wei Jiuyi was a rising star, and the post quickly gained a lot of attention. The number of shares and comments reached the thousands within seconds.

[@7788: AHHH WE’RE FILMING! I HAVE NEW CONTENT TO WATCH!] [@NationalLevelWaste: Empress is my favorite book! I’m telling you, 77 was born to play the role of Ji Lan.] [@WifeLover97: My baby is so talented. The director is Fan Erhua, who won an award at the Tokyo Film Festival. The career fans are going crazy.] [@DetectiveKebei: The original book fan here. Who’s playing the empress? Is it Teacher Lü Zhen?] [@UnemployedBeauty: I don’t think so. From the photos, it looks like the beautiful actress in the second photo (she looks familiar, but I don’t know her name, sorry).] [@77Guardian1: The beautiful actress is Shi Qing. We’ll have to wait for the official cast announcement. As long as my 77 is the female lead, I’m just gonna focus on my girl.]

Yes, they would focus on their own. But sometimes, a certain photo angle made it impossible to do that.

[@WifeLover97: I don’t know, but I feel like 77’s gaze toward Shi Qing is a little… off.] [@SmoothSailing: Finally, someone said it! I noticed it, too. In two photos, her eyes are glued to Shi Qing.] [@Feb30th: 77’s eyes are always so expressive. She looks at everyone like that, like she wants to possess them. Did you forget her acceptance speech when she won the award? She said she had ambitious eyes.] [@MyGrandmaHitsZhaoZilong: Yes, she even looks at a lamppost like that. Does she want to own the whole grid?]

As she scrolled through the comments, Zhang Yulan felt a wave of sadness. “What if… maybe… she does have a possessive streak?”