The Moon Shines on Me (GL) - Chapter 27

Shen Yuan’s physical health was never great, and after falling into the water and being frightened, she naturally fell ill the next day.

Gu Shiwei stood stiffly by the bed, frowning as she called the doctor.

After hanging up, she kept her eyes lowered, watching the delirious Shen Yuan.

Perhaps because Shen Yuan had given her two cold pills the day before, Gu Shiwei was mostly fine, apart from a slight stuffy nose.

While the doctor and nurse in white coats were setting up the IV for Shen Yuan, Gu Shiwei, taking advantage of a moment when she couldn’t squeeze in, swallowed two more pills.

After a flurry of activity, the doctor and nurse left, and the room suddenly returned to its original silence.

Gu Shiwei’s heart remained tightly clenched. She moved a stool to the bedside, leaned in, and grasped Shen Yuan’s hand.

Shen Yuan’s body temperature was much higher than usual; she had noticed it that morning.

When Gu Shiwei woke up, she saw the feverish and confused Shen Yuan burrowing into her arms, as if enduring immense suffering.

When Shen Yuan was awake, she rarely smiled and her expression was cold. When she slept, with her eyes lowered, she looked a little more docile, but her face was so pale that she appeared very fragile, like a porcelain doll that could shatter at a touch.

She was very different from the image of the spirited Bright Moon that Gu Shiwei had imagined.

Bright Moon had a lovely voice, but because it was transmitted over the internet, it was somewhat distorted. Coupled with the passage of time, Gu Shiwei’s memory of the voice had become blurry, so much so that when she met Shen Yuan, she failed to recognize Bright Moon by her voice.

Gu Shiwei requested a week of sick leave for Shen Yuan.

Shen Yuan slept soundly all morning, and her temperature only gradually returned to normal around noon.

After the fever subsided, Shen Yuan became less restful, tossing and turning in bed, occasionally humming with a furrowed brow, looking extremely uncomfortable.

The doctor happened to come in to change the IV fluid and, after examining Shen Yuan, gave a few more instructions. Gu Shiwei listened quietly, nodding occasionally.

After the doctor left, Gu Shiwei lifted a corner of the quilt and got into bed. She pulled Shen Yuan completely into her arms, using her own body heat to warm her.

They slept like that all afternoon. As dusk set in, Ms. Gu Qingfeng returned to the old house. She knocked on the door a few times, startling the two people embracing in bed.

Although Shen Yuan was woken up, her head was still foggy. Her memory was stuck on the previous night. She only remembered playfully kissing Gu Shiwei in bed for a while, and then everything went blank.

“Gu Shiwei?”

“Stay put, you’re sick.” Gu Shiwei gently pressed Shen Yuan, who had just tried to sit up, back down.

She got out of bed, opened the door, exchanged a few words with Ms. Gu Qingfeng outside, and then returned with a bowl of porridge.

Shen Yuan was hungry but didn’t have much appetite. When Gu Shiwei fed her the porridge, she reluctantly frowned and drank a few spoonfuls, but her sense of taste was impaired by the cold, so she couldn’t taste anything.

After eating, Gu Shiwei helped Shen Yuan do a simple wash-up. Shen Yuan had been lying down all day and felt a dull ache in her bones. She absolutely refused to go back to bed. Gu Shiwei had no choice but to let her sit on a chair.

Shen Yuan looked at Gu Shiwei’s computer in front of her and, on a whim, logged into “Sword Quest” (Wèn Jiàn).

After logging in, she found that her account was still in a dungeon map from the last time the three of them played together.

Shen Yuan clicked on her friends list and found that all their avatars were greyed out. A few years had passed, and the entire game interface of “Sword Quest” had been renewed, with the UI updated to an unfamiliar look Shen Yuan hadn’t seen before.

At one point, when Shen Yuan was short on cash, she considered selling the account. She had invested a lot into it, and selling it would have been profitable, but for some reason, every time the thought surfaced, it was inexplicably squashed.

Perhaps this account recorded the last period of happiness she had before leaving the Shen family, as if keeping it could prove that period of time had indeed existed.

Shen Yuan was staring at the screen, lost in her own sorrow, and didn’t notice when Gu Shiwei came up behind her.

Gu Shiwei leaned down, one hand resting on Shen Yuan’s shoulder, the other covering Shen Yuan’s right hand gripping the mouse. Then, Shen Yuan felt the mouse move. Gu Shiwei found her own name in the friends list, pressed Shen Yuan’s index finger, and clicked a few times to create a private group.

Gu Shiwei only smiled contentedly when she saw her own ID become the only name in the newly created group.

Shen Yuan was noncommittal about her childish behavior. Just as she was about to pull her hand away, Gu Shiwei tightened her grip on Shen Yuan’s wrist.

Shen Yuan’s back was against a source of heat, Gu Shiwei’s breath fell on the top of her head, and one of her hands was tightly held by Gu Shiwei. In this position, it felt as if Gu Shiwei had completely enveloped her.

Shen Yuan tilted her head up for a look. At that exact moment, Gu Shiwei also lowered her head. As their eyes met, both of their lips curved into a smile.

If she weren’t still sick, Gu Shiwei would have wanted to kiss her.

Coincidentally, Shen Yuan was thinking the same thing. Although Gu Shiwei looked like a sharp, sophisticated young miss, getting along with her revealed that she was actually quite cute.

“To be fair, I’ll log in too.”

After Gu Shiwei said that, she opened another client on the computer. She entered her account and password and pressed Enter. What Gu Shiwei hadn’t expected was that Shen Yuan was already in a private group. She froze for a moment, then clicked the “Bond” (Jié Yuán) button.

In that instant, Gu Shiwei could distinctly feel Shen Yuan’s breath hitch. She brought the other client over and placed it side-by-side, then let go of Shen Yuan’s hand.

She looked utterly unconcerned.

Shen Yuan: “…”

After a minute of silence, Shen Yuan, her ears red, clicked “Agree.”

After that night, Shen Yuan’s illness gradually improved. Although Gu Shiwei had requested a full week of leave for her, Shen Yuan returned to the company immediately after recovering. Firstly, because she had only recently been made a full-time employee and taking too much time off wasn’t good, and secondly, because Ms. Gu Qingfeng was too enthusiastic. Whenever she caught Shen Yuan downstairs, she would grab her hand and launch into an endless barrage of questions.

Shen Yuan had thought it would take some time for Ms. Gu Qingfeng to accept her relationship with Gu Shiwei, but to her surprise, the lady was very open-minded, practically wanting them to get their marriage certificate tomorrow.

Shen Yuan only found out after asking Gu Shiwei that Ms. Gu Qingfeng was exceptionally rebellious in her youth. While still in school, she brought a foreign boyfriend home, saying she was going to drop out and marry him. Gu Shiwei’s maternal grandparents almost knelt down to her, using both gentle and firm methods to make her abandon the idea of dropping out and marrying.

Since Ms. Gu Qingfeng lived so unrestrainedly herself, she naturally wouldn’t demand that Gu Shiwei be cautious. Gu Shiwei’s foreign father was even less concerned. His focus was solely on research and his wife. If it weren’t for the fact that Gu Shiwei’s eyes looked so much like his, she would have doubted if she was his biological daughter.

“Sister Yuan Yuan, why didn’t you and President Gu come to the office these past few days? What were you two up to?”

Lu Qingwan suddenly sat down next to Shen Yuan, her face full of gossip, practically ready to pull out a bag of melon seeds and start crunching.

“Don’t overthink it, we were just sick.” Shen Yuan opened her computer and started looking through the three days of neglected group messages.

“Are you better now? Should I turn up the air conditioning?”

“No need, this temperature is fine.”

Just as they were speaking, Shen Yuan suddenly received a notification asking her to design the original artwork for a free in-game costume to be given away over the next few days.

Shen Yuan frowned slightly upon seeing the design requirements.

“What’s wrong?” Lu Qingwan quickly noticed Shen Yuan’s unusual reaction. She leaned over to look at the screen and, upon seeing the costume requirements, she scratched her head too. “Why did they ask you? That’s not the style of original art you’re good at.”

Everyone in the office knew that Shen Yuan excelled at the ink-wash style. Asking her to draw something in a bright, light, and colorful Korean-Japanese style—wasn’t that just setting her up for a challenge?

Lu Qingwan was about to see who was being so thoughtless, when her peripheral vision caught the name Bai Yu.

She turned around, picked up her phone, opened WeChat, and fired off a long paragraph of text.

Before long, Bai Yu replied with a message. Lu Qingwan lit up her screen and saw that Bai Yu had only replied with four words:

“Come here a moment.”

Lu Qingwan walked off with an expression of ‘I’m going to speak up for the people,’ and then returned looking wilted.

Shen Yuan found her appearance a bit funny and couldn’t help but ask, “What’s wrong? What did Sister Bai tell you?”

“It’s a huge problem, Sister Yuan Yuan. Remember the Sun and Moon company (Ri Yuè) I told you about last time?” Lu Qingwan had a distressed look, looking even more deflated.

Shen Yuan’s smile faded. “I remember. What about them?”

“The Sun and Moon company is playing a business war with us… Tsk, well, it should count as a business war. Anyway, Zhaoyang’s (Zhāoyáng) game ‘Sword Quest Rivers and Lakes’ (Wèn Jiàn Jiāng Hú) is now clashing with Sun and Moon’s game ‘Bright Moon Share This Time’ (Míng Yuè Gòng Cǐ Shí). Players from both sides have been tearing into each other on Weibo these past few days. Besides that, ‘Bright Moon Share This Time’ recently released a new faction to attract new players.” Lu Qingwan was so angry at this point that she clicked the ‘dislike’ button on the Weibo post released by the Sun and Moon company’s operations.

Shen Yuan: “And?”

“And then, the new faction released by ‘Bright Moon Share This Time’ has an extremely high degree of overlap with the new faction Zhaoyang released last month. It clearly looks like they copied ours, but those shameless people are counter-claiming that we copied one of their older factions! They’re also buying negative press, restricting the flow of our official Weibo account—it’s just absolutely disgusting.”

Shen Yuan roughly understood. She relit her screen and saw that the original artwork she was responsible for was the compensation that the official “Sword Quest” team had promised to players. To avoid the controversial ink-wash style, they had specially chosen another style this time.

Since most people in the office already had tasks, and only Shen Yuan, who had just returned from sick leave, had nothing immediately on hand, this task was naturally assigned to her.

In fact, Shen Yuan used to be good at drawing brightly colored art, but after the plagiarism scandal three years ago, she developed a trauma regarding drawing such vibrant, polished artwork. She had tried many ways to overcome it, but she just couldn’t.

“Even though it’s a free giveaway, you can’t be careless. Should I help you talk to the director?”

“No need, I’ll go talk to her myself.”