Lady By The Pillow - Chapter 65
Chapter 65: Bathing (2)
The black Audi A8L quickly arrived at the crew’s hotel. Before getting out of the car, Fang Fei leaned forward:
“Wei-laoshi, thank you for the ride. Otherwise, we’d still be in line for a taxi. Um, hehe, could we take a picture to remember this, all five of us together?”
Wei Jiuyu didn’t agree or refuse immediately. Instead, she turned to look at Shi Qing.
“Shi-laoshi, do you want to take a picture?”
Shi Qing usually didn’t refuse to take group photos.
“Sure, I’m fine with it.”
So Wei Jiuyu readily took the Polaroid camera Fang Fei handed her and held it up above her head.
“Everyone, huddle up.”
The three people in the back immediately squeezed to the right, so the diagonal shot could fit all five of them.
Wei Jiuyu looked at Shi Qing in the camera, making sure she was fully in the frame with two fingers’ worth of space on the edges so her face wouldn’t be distorted. Only then did she say:
“Ready? I’ll count 3-2-1?”
Zhang Yu hastily swept her bangs forward, Li Shushu tried to squeeze into the frame, and Fang Fei, squeezed in the middle, flashed a peace sign.
“Ready, ready, you can count.”
Wei Jiuyu stared at the slightly smiling Shi Qing on the screen.
“Then 3—2—1—”
Click!
The shutter clicked, capturing a warm moment brought on by the heavy rain.
“Okay, Wei-laoshi, Shi-laoshi, we’ll head up now! Thank you so much!”
“Yes, yes. Shi-laoshi’s back is just healed, you should apply a hot compress later.”
“The rain is still pretty heavy. Be careful on the road.”
The three of them politely got out of the car, thanking them and giving reminders, afraid that taking a ride had delayed Wei Jiuyu and Shi Qing from going back to rest. Only after the low-key black car drove out of their rain-soaked sight did Li Shushu realize.
“Sister Fei, isn’t Shi-laoshi’s new address pretty far?”
Fang Fei looked blank. “I don’t know, I’ve never been there.”
Li Shushu asked, “Then Wei-laoshi has to come back to the hotel after dropping her off?”
Fang Fei nodded. “Yeah, it’s not like she’s going to stay at Shi-laoshi’s place, is it?”
Li Shushu hit the key point. “No, I mean, why didn’t Wei-laoshi drop us off at the hotel first and then take Shi-laoshi back?”
The words were a wake-up call. Fang Fei suddenly came to her senses.
“Hmm… you’re right.”
Zhang Yu, who had been zoned out the whole time, her eyes fixed on the private kitchen advertisement on the hotel’s big screen, was completely lost.
“Huh? What are you guys talking about? What about going back to the hotel?”
Zhang Yu: “…”
Fang Fei: “…”
Two kilometers away, Wei Jiuyu, who was driving, suddenly sneezed.
“Achoo!”
Shi Qing became alert. “Did you catch a cold?”
Wei Jiuyu didn’t seem to mind. “It’s nothing. My physical condition is top-notch.”
Shi Qing looked at the curtain of rain ahead. Even with the wipers on their highest setting, visibility was only about fifty to sixty meters. At this rate, it probably wouldn’t stop anytime soon.
“It’ll take another 20 minutes from here to my place.”
Wei Jiuyu teased, “What, are you worried about my driving skills? That I can’t get you there on time?”
Shi Qing was annoyed by her flippant attitude. “That’s 40 minutes round trip.”
Wei Jiuyu added fuel to the fire. “It’s okay. Maybe my hair will be dry by the time I get back.”
It was better she hadn’t said anything. Now, with her words, Shi Qing’s heart was in her throat.
Wei Jiuyu was taking her back out of kindness, afraid she’d catch a cold or that her back injury would relapse. But if this led to Wei Jiuyu catching a cold and delaying the filming schedule, it would be more harm than good.
Her gaze was unfocused, looking at the vague white curtain of rain ahead. Water streamed down from the top of the car window, and the smooth columns of water were sliced by the fast-moving wipers, as if the car had some kind of signal blocker that was cutting off Shi Qing’s thoughts as well.
“You should come to my place, take a hot shower, and then go.”
As she said it, a voice inside Shi Qing’s mind said, You’re crazy.
But that voice was so faint it was quickly overwhelmed by a roaring, “Do you want her to catch a cold?!”
Wei Jiuyu thought she had heard wrong. She secretly pinched her index finger with her thumb, and it hurt. She tried hard to tell herself to stay composed, but her mouth seemed to have a mind of its own and began to curl up into a smile.
“A shower. I can’t change clothes, so I’d have to wear these wet clothes back.”
As she spoke, she used her peripheral vision to try and gauge Shi Qing’s reaction. Her mind was screaming:
Say it, say you’ll lend me your clothes~
Say you don’t mind me wearing your clothes~
Even invite me to stay the night~
Shi Qing turned her head and glanced at her. She swore that when she saw the frivolous, upturned corners of Wei Jiuyu’s eyes and the slight grin on her face, she wanted to find a reason to take back what she had just said.
But as she withdrew her gaze, she noticed Wei Jiuyu’s lips, which were already turning a little purple.
Wei Jiuyu was truly cold.
“I have new clothes, they haven’t been worn.”
She said.
Wei Jiuyu didn’t know about Shi Qing’s internal shift from being firm to soft-hearted. She only thought Shi Qing was genuinely inviting her, so she grew even happier.
“What about underwear?”
“Yes, there are disposable underwear and briefs.”
“Good.”
“Mhm.”
“I haven’t played any music, have I? Wait, let me put on a song.”
Just then, they arrived at the next intersection, and the red light showed over 40 seconds left. Wei Jiuyu switched from navigation, opened the music app, and the system automatically played the song she had left unfinished last time.
Angkor Wat.
“I can hear the wind in my ears, but I can’t escape your face. The more I try to leave, the closer I move to your life.”
Wei Jiuyu froze and quickly hit the skip button.
Shi Qing noticed her tension and asked, “What’s wrong with that song?”
Wei Jiuyu gripped the leather steering wheel cover tightly.
What’s wrong?
Because my intentions were impure when I listened to this song. I listened to it when Fei Ying was pursuing you, and I also listened to it after we fought and I went home. I was even listening to it the day I watched Fei Ying kiss you in the car.
But this was a vile secret that belonged only to her, like a thief painstakingly hiding stolen goods, digging deep to hide them somewhere no one would ever find them.
“I don’t like listening to Cantonese songs,” she said, giving a plausible excuse.
“You used to love them,” Shi Qing confirmed that she hadn’t remembered incorrectly.
“I don’t anymore. I like songs with an ancient Chinese style now,” Wei Jiuyu said without a change in expression.
The network, disturbed by the heavy rain, finished buffering the second song after about ten seconds. The moment the prelude’s melody began, Shi Qing accurately identified it.
“This one sounds like Thousand and Thousand Songs.”
Wei Jiuyu’s eyelids twitched as she remembered that she had been listening to Cantonese songs so obsessively during that period that the second song, or even the twentieth, would have still been one of them.
She glanced at the lightning slashing across the sky and found a new excuse.
“It’s probably just a Cantonese playlist I clicked on. Just bear with it. The internet’s bad now, it takes over ten seconds to switch songs.”
Shi Qing looked at her, her eyes lingering on her face for a second. Based on their year together in the past, she faintly sensed that Wei Jiuyu was hiding something. But that one year was not enough to figure out what that hidden reason was.
Stepping back, since Wei Jiuyu chose to keep it a secret, she should be tactful and not ask again.
“Okay. This song is nice, too. We sang this one at our graduation party.”
Shi Qing gently helped her find a way out of the topic.
Wei Jiuyu followed her lead and changed the subject.
“This was your graduation song? Were you the lead singer?”
Shi Qing’s eyes paused, a flicker of pain crossing them, which was then masked by a practiced smile.
“I didn’t go.”
The car stopped at a three-way intersection. A large truck turning left drove through a puddle in front of them, and a spray of dirty water splashed onto the windshield with a splat. The muddy slush instantly blocked their view, and even after being washed by the pouring rain, it left streaks of black mud on the corners of the window.
Wei Jiuyu looked at Shi Qing. In the air that had momentarily frozen, neither of them spoke, yet they both understood each other’s feelings.
Of course, Shi Qing didn’t go.
The day she went to report to the theater troupe, she fell and broke her lumbar vertebra when a wire snapped during her first performance as a rookie. She was bedridden for half a year. How could she have had a chance to attend the graduation party?
Suddenly, she remembered the day Fei Ying left and the words that had been lost in the car’s interior.
“You don’t know what a back injury means to her. Every time she sees you, she’ll be reminded of falling off the horse, of the nightmare of falling from the stage back then.”
That was, of course, Fei Ying’s dying struggle after her failure, just nonsense she spouted. But nonsense wasn’t necessarily false.
Wei Jiuyu didn’t want to become the fuse that ignited Shi Qing’s nightmare, nor did she want to be the on/off switch for Shi Qing’s lifelong trauma.
As the music reached the chorus, Wei Jiuyu began to sing along.
“Even if in the future there are a thousand, thousand songs floating on my distant road. Even if in the future there are a thousand, thousand stars shining brighter than tonight’s moon. They still can’t compare to the beauty of this evening, nor can they make me admire it more.”
When she reached the light humming of “ah ha,” she turned her head to look at Shi Qing, her eyes full of rippling water.
Shi Qing’s heart stirred, and she spoke on an impulse, harmonizing with Wei Jiuyu.
“Because you’re singing with me tonight.”
If the melody of this song would remind Shi Qing of that missed graduation party, then she would create more memories about this song. So in the future, when she heard the same lyrics, there would no longer be only regret, only disappointment, only pain, but also the night of the pouring rain, the gentle murmur of two people as their eyes met while waiting for the traffic light.
The heavy rain washed away the mud splattered on the corner of the car window. The glass became clear, and the bright yellow streetlights refracted into the car through the rolling curtain of water and the glass. Two graceful silhouettes were gilded in a faint outline.
In the depths of their eyes, light shimmered.
In the firefly-like glow, Shi Qing smiled, her beautiful eyes curving, the corners of her eyes rippling like a spring lake.
Wei Jiuyu also smiled. She smiled because she saw Shi Qing was happy. Shi Qing smiled because she saw Wei Jiuyu working hard to make her happy.
A moment of cowardice can lead to a lifetime of regret.
But what if neither of them was cowardly?
The property management of the apartment complex was very strict. Only after Shi Qing showed her resident access card did the security guard allow Wei Jiuyu’s car, which was not registered in the building’s system, to enter.
The two walked upstairs with their soaked hair. After they entered the apartment, Shi Qing got a pair of clean slippers for Wei Jiuyu.
She said, “These slippers are clean. Xiao Ya just washed them the day before yesterday.”
She said, “Have a seat for a moment, I’ll get you some clothes.”
She said:
“We can wash together.”
Ding!
The invisible microwave in Wei Jiuyu’s mind made a sound as if its timer had ended. She tried her best to tell herself it was a hallucination, but her head had already turned, her eyes fixed on Shi Qing.