Ran Dongyang dropped the smile and sat up straight, propping his hand on the table. “Don’t look at me like that. Back then…”
Nan Chu suddenly smiled at him — a slow, deliberate curl of her lips. She beckoned with one finger. Her fingers were slender, pale as jade.
A summer night, deep and dark. The studio was gradually winding down. The faint white moonlight spilled over her, and Nan Chu’s skin was so fair it seemed to glow from within.
Ran Dongyang’s feelings twisted into something complicated and unbearable.
And yet, as if compelled by some force beyond himself, he leaned in.
The next second — bang — his head was seized from behind, and his forehead slammed hard into the edge of the table.
“Son of a—!”
When he lifted his head again, a bump was already rising above his brow, shaped like a horn.
Ran Dongyang hissed and winced. By now, Nan Chu had already gathered her things and stood up. With her script tucked against her chest and a long black dress tracing her graceful figure, the way she looked down at him was as cool and aloof as a black swan.
She bent toward him. In the darkness, a man’s presence tends to hold sway — but the darkness seemed only to make the woman in front of him more formidable.
Nan Chu was slight — small-boned, narrow figure, long tapered eyes, light brows, a quiet mouth. She almost never lost her temper, and there was very little that could stir her emotions.
But when she truly did lose her temper, the sharpness in her cut through everything.
Like now.
Those brows and eyes especially.
“If you ever bring up the past again — I’ll make you regret ever knowing me.”
---
Back at the hotel, Nan Chu came out of the shower wrapped in a towel, and the phone on the bed buzzed.
An unread WeChat notification lay on the screen.
She glanced at it, then dropped the towel without ceremony. The girl’s pale, slender body was fully exposed, her silhouette reflected in the wide floor-length mirror.
Nan Chu was fair-skinned — slender arms, a pair of evenly proportioned, straight legs — alabaster skin, a figure so delicate it could be gathered in one palm.
As the verse went: Snow-white skin gleaming in the bronze mirror, poised like a jade tree before a phoenix tower.
She changed into a dark-colored dress, then picked up her phone and opened the screen. The WeChat notification expanded.
From someone named Lin Qi.
Lin Qi was a prodigious young violinist Nan Chu had met while modeling in Milan. Nineteen years old.
“I have a violin recital on Saturday. You have to come.”
A moment later, another message: “You HAVE to come. I’ll have someone bring the tickets to you tomorrow!”
Nan Chu replied: “I’ll be there late.”
---
The next day, Nan Chu finished her morning scenes and sat under the canopy wielding a small handheld fan, a Buddhist sutra open on her lap.
One look at her like that and Shen Guanzong arrived steaming, ready for a confrontation. “Was the bump on Ran Dongyang’s head your doing?”
Nan Chu admitted it freely. “Yep.”
Shen Guanzong had known it. He was furious, nostrils flaring skyward. “If you really can’t stand him, can’t you just put up with it?”
Nan Chu shook her head. “He talked filth at me. I couldn’t.”
“……Hey, you can put up with everything else just fine — how is it the one thing you can’t put up with is this?” Shen Guanzong crossed his arms, eyes blazing, stabbing a finger at her. “I’ll cover for you on this one, but don’t go stirring up more trouble. You already know you’re a target — don’t give people ammunition.”
Fair enough. When Nan Chu was fifteen or sixteen she’d acted in a production, and the criticism of her acting alone had followed her for years. On top of that, her previous management team had zero PR sense and loved manufacturing romance rumors. It hadn’t been easy for Nan Chu to get to where she was today. She posted something on social media and there wasn’t a single decent comment to be found, so Shen Guanzong had eventually disabled her comment section altogether.
Her detractors promptly migrated to Shen Guanzong’s own social media accounts and took it out on him there.
“Nan Chu, get out of the entertainment industry.”
“Nan Chu, you filthy woman, used-up trash.”
“Your whole family should drop dead.”
……
Sometimes Shen Guanzong looked at Nan Chu and felt sorry for her. She’d started working so young, shouldering so much — yet you almost never heard her complain. Work that was assigned to her she carried out with full effort, never looking for credit or asking for compensation.
But she wasn’t submissive either.
She had a pride that belonged to her alone. She didn’t bow her head — not to the world, not to convention. The director had said she reminded him of a black swan: noble and independent.
Though Shen Guanzong had missed the second half of that comment.
The director had added: a black swan that arrives riding a Thomas the Tank Engine.
The sunlight draped itself over her slight figure.
Shen Guanzong sighed and sat down beside her, glancing at the sutra in her hands. “Hey — did the Buddha tell you when you’re going to get famous?”
Nan Chu didn’t look up. “All phenomena are but illusions.”
“Illusions, my backside.” Shen Guanzong rolled his eyes. “Your reputation is already a complete disaster, and you’ve got the nerve to sit here reading this. You might as well just shave your head and enter a monastery.”
Nan Chu turned a page, tilted her head in thought for a moment, then said: “Good idea.”
“Hopeless.” Shen Guanzong walked away shaking his head.
---
That evening, Xi Gu came in carrying an envelope. “Nan Chu, someone just dropped this off for you.”
Nan Chu glanced at it and nodded. “Mm. Thanks.”
The sun was vicious. Xi Gu was standing directly under it, dabbing at her sweat with a tissue. “He was really handsome — wearing a military uniform, so cool-looking, but way too cold. Made me shiver.”
She gave a little demonstrative shudder for good measure.
Nan Chu set down her book and looked up. “Military uniform?”
Xi Gu nodded. “Really handsome. I asked him to wait a moment, but he wouldn’t — just turned and left.”
“Is he still around?”
“I just saw him heading toward the little convenience store.”
Sometimes a face will suddenly surface in your mind, and even though you know it’s impossible, you can’t stop yourself from going to check. And as experience proves, a woman’s sixth sense is right ninety-nine times out of a hundred.
Sure enough — when she pushed out through the studio gates, she spotted a familiar, straight-backed figure in the distance. In her memory: those peach-blossom eyes with their upturned corners that always seemed on the verge of a smile; deep-set brows and eyes that, when serious, could make anyone’s blood run cold; while that strong, angular profile — in the sunlight — was softened to something rarely seen.
The lines of his body were clean and fluid. Not a fraction too much, not a fraction too little.
He held a bottle of water he’d just finished, screwed the cap back on, and casually tossed it through the open window of the car behind him. He’d just pulled open the driver’s door when —
As if pushed by some unseen force, it slammed back shut.
The man had a habitual frown. His brows drew together into a hard furrow — suppressed impatience and irritation written across his face.
Then a voice came from behind him: “Lin Luxiao, where do you think you’re going?”
---