“Alright.” Yu Zhou picked up Su Chang’s phone from the center armrest box, unlocked it before proceeding to pay the parking fee.
Three seconds later, Peng Xiangzhi leaned forward, hugging the back of Su Chang’s seat and exclaimed, “You two are together, aren’t you?”
“Ah?” Yu Zhou subconsciously wanted to deny it.
Su Chang rubbed the steering wheel.
“Do you mean, unlocking?” Yu Zhou said awkwardly, “Um, because her password has always been that one, I just tried it.”
Su Chang glanced at her.
What does this look mean? How could I know whether you want to make it public or not?
Yu Zhou touched her eyebrows as she flipped down the sun visor, “The sun is really so bright at noon…”
“We’re together now,” Su Chang whispered.
“Hahahahaha.” Peng Xiangzhi slapped the back of Yu Zhou’s seat, “You still want to pretend!”
“No, we just got together recently and it hasn’t been long,” Yu Zhou said, feeling her ears getting hot.
Because she hadn’t really taken the step of sharing their relationship with their friends. To be precise, she had never taken this step with anyone.
She was a little shy, a little apprehensive about her friends’ teasing, especially from those unscrupulous ones like Peng Xiangzhi.
“How did you get back together? Did you just go to her and she agreed?” Peng Xiangzhi leaned closer to Yu Zhou, gossiping.
“You went to her just yesterday, right? Was it yesterday that you called me? You’re already together now?”
She couldn’t believe it, screaming at Su Chang in frustration, “Why were you so easy to pursue!”
With a face that looked cold and emotionless, Su Chang just gave in within one night.
“Hey, hey, hey, who was it that told me a few months ago, ‘Oh, she would bow down to me’, the grievance in her heart, oh my god.'” Peng Xiangzhi was both angry and amused. “I thought at the time, she wouldn’t really cry in front of me, would she? Oh, it scared me so much that I almost started shaking. It was Su Chang, oh, that felt so wronged in front of me.”
“Can you imagine?” She patted the back of Yu Zhou’s seat again.
“Uh…” Yu Zhou looked at Su Chang awkwardly.
“You can, you definitely can. She even came to me to vent, who knows how much she’s been tortured by you in private.” Peng Xiangzhi sneered.
“Are you out of your mind?” She leaned closer to Su Chang again, whispering earnestly, “My sister, what a great opportunity to let her pursue you, why not enjoy it for three to five months? There’s no such good chance anymore once you let it go.”
She had already tried her best over the phone to make Su Chang’s situation sound miserable and to frighten Yu Zhou, but Su Chang didn’t play along.
Su Chang neither acknowledged nor denied it.
“If you do this, people will think you’re cheap when you get married. Do you understand?”
Peng Xiangzhi advised her with a tone of persuading a friend not to get pregnant before marriage.
“Pfft.” Yu Zhou couldn’t help but laugh.
Su Chang, too, couldn’t help but smile as she turned the steering wheel.
“Do you not care about what we have for lunch? ” She asked with a cold voice.
“Huh? Who said that? ” Peng Xiangzhi squinted.
“You’ll eat the table, won’t you?”
“Hey!”
You little heartless one!
Of course, Su Chang didn’t actually make Peng Xiangzhi eat the table. They went to have a mushroom hot pot. Xiang Wan wasn’t there because she was having lunch with the crew. Yu Zhou dipped her food in the sauce while lamenting, “Wanwan has been so busy lately. What’s going on? Why did you arrange so many tasks for her?”
There was a hint of complaint in her tone.
Su Chang picked up a king oyster mushroom without saying anything. Peng Xiangzhi, on the other hand, chimed in first, lifting her chopsticks, “You don’t know. It’s hard for female CVs in our circle to become popular. We get fewer roles and less pay than men and we receive less attention. The competition is fierce. She’s having a good rise right now. If she doesn’t seize the opportunity to work on more projects, it will be harder later.”
“There are only so many roles available and it’s all about connections. You push away two today, then tomorrow three less people will want to work with you, and the day after, they won’t even remember you. That’s how it works in this circle. People tend to work with familiar faces and vice versa. The same goes for investors. The more popular you are, the more you get used, and the more you get used, the more popular you become.”
“It’s just like the film and television industry. You might see audiences complaining about seeing the same familiar faces all the time, but the investors know better. It’s those familiar faces that can sell the drama.”
“Having roles right now is a good thing. Work hard now and maybe next year she can make a breakthrough, becoming really well-known. After that, she can choose roles to work on and projects will be waiting for her.”
“So…” Yu Zhou put down her chopsticks, “Did you all go through this too?”
“Haha, of course,” Peng Xiangzhi took a bite of beef, “She’s much better now. Back in our days, we even had to go to studio recordings ourselves. Do you know what that means? It’s when you don’t know if there are any roles available, but you go there anyway, hoping to find something. If not, you just listen and learn.”
“Sometimes, if you encounter a talented director or a good audio drama, but you don’t have the opportunity, or you just want to try for a supporting role. You just tell them, ‘Teacher, I want to learn in the studio,’ and if they let you, it’s already considered a favor.”
“But there are fewer young people running for roles now, right?” Peng Xiangzhi asked Su Chang.
Many of them had signed with studios and had someone to guide them.
“It was more difficult when we started at that time. That was over a decade ago,” Peng Xiangzhi laughed at herself, “At that time, we had thicker skins than the kids nowadays.”
“Moreover, we didn’t do many audio dramas back then. We mainly worked in film and television studios.”
Yu Zhou guessed that in the film and television industry, voice acting work belonged more to the background, so the spotlight would not shine too much on them. They had to use their own voices and emotions to match the actors’ lip movements and performances. However, it was different for audio dramas. They were the real protagonists and they could perform at their own pace with their own voices.
With this thought, she began to like audio dramas even more.
After talking about work, Peng Xiangzhi put down her chopsticks and crossed her arms on the table, asking the two of them, “How are you planning to tell Wanwan about your relationship?”
Yu Zhou was momentarily stunned, as she had also been thinking about the same issue.
She said, “I feel a little embarrassed.”
Peng Xiangzhi took a sip of sour plum drink and swallowed it, “I guessed so. Although everyone knew that both of you would end up together sooner or later, it’s indeed a bit sudden. As far as I think, we are all friends and Wanwan is very close to you, so hiding it from her is not appropriate and disrespectful. It also makes you two seem like you have something to hide.”
Yu Zhou nodded in agreement.
“But if you go and tell her right away, it’s also a bit awkward, as she is only eighteen, such a young girl, right? Her personality is really good, but I think it would be quite cruel if you couldn’t wait to tell her the moment you two got together. I’m just being frank here, don’t mind me. Naturally, she would feel a bit uncomfortable.”
Yu Zhou lowered her head, looking at her bowl and chopsticks. Su Chang also pursed her lips.
“So I suggest this,” Peng Xiangzhi turned to Su Chang, “Didn’t you tell me last time that you want to make her schedule a little busier for these two months before giving her a break next week? I’ll take her out for a trip since I’ve been wanting to go to Qianbei. Meanwhile, you two can try to stabilize your relationship, and after a while, when we come back, either I can tell her, or Yu Zhou can tell her.”
“After all, since you two just started dating, what if you break up in a few days?”
Ah, this…
Yu Zhou showed a mixed expression, while Su Chang glanced at Peng Xiangzhi.
Peng Xiangzhi stared back at Su Chang, blaming her for being so unconfident and making herself so unprepared.
Yu Zhou hesitated and asked Peng Xiangzhi, “So, only you two are going?”
“Ah.” Peng Xiangzhi nodded.
Yu Zhou bit her lip, not saying anything.
She exchanged glances with Su Chang.
Peng Xiangzhi understood the doubts written in both of their eyes.
“What are you thinking!” Peng Xiangzhi exploded, “I really want to go on a trip!”
“Really?” Su Chang snorted lightly.
“How many times do I have to say that I am straight!” Peng Xiangzhi raised her voice.
“Oh.” Yu Zhou looked at her sympathetically.
“You!”
…These two ungrateful ones!
After eating, the three of them headed to the SC Studio, where Xiang Wan was working outside with her team. Since Yu Zhou didn’t know anyone there, she didn’t want to go in. Plus, she hadn’t slept well the night before and felt stuffy inside the building. So, she borrowed Su Chang’s laptop, sat down at an outdoor café downstairs and began revising the script before discussing it with the screenwriter teacher from the studio.
Her previous work for the first episode was almost too embarrassing to look at.
The phrase “unlucky in love but lucky in gambling” wasn’t quite fitting for Yu Zhou. She was the type of person who had everything go smoothly when her luck was good, but when her luck was bad, she was stuck in every aspect of her life. For example, now that she had resolved the issues with Su Chang, her writing suddenly became effortless. She managed to complete three episodes in one afternoon.
How wonderful it felt to be brimming with ideas.
With a satisfied smile, she snapped a photo of the café scene and posted it on Weibo with this sentence as the caption.
Not long after she finished her iced latte, Su Chang came downstairs.
Yu Zhou held her latte, observing as Su Chang answered a phone call and approached her from the revolving door of the building. Su Chang smiled when she saw Yu Zhou, continuing her discussion about work matter on the phone.
Suddenly, Yu Zhou felt a sense of happiness.
It was because we always sought favoritism, yearned for exceptions and desired for the tiny ripples of serendipity in our otherwise calm hearts. If this feeling were to be portrayed more concretely, it would be the moment when someone sees you while on the phone, smiles for just two or three seconds and nothing more.
After meeting up with Yu Zhou, Su Chang drove Peng Xiangzhi home before the two of them returned to Zhujiang Villa.
Perhaps due to the afternoon coffee, Yu Zhou wasn’t hungry at all and neither was Su Chang. By around seven or eight in the evening, they were still in the living room, Su Chang working on a project schedule on her laptop, while Yu Zhou lay on another sofa, browsing short videos on Weibo.
Suddenly, she received a text notification. Upon closer inspection, it showed that Su Chang had commented on her Weibo post.
She glanced at Su Chang, who had put down her laptop at some point and was now on her phone.
Yu Zhou checked her Weibo and saw a comment with a blue profile picture: kiss.jpg
???
Her pupils shook, ignoring the surge of comments flooding in. Yu Zhou looked at Su Chang and asked, “What are you doing?”
Su Chang glanced at her, a hint of a smile in her eyes but remained silent.
Yu Zhou frowned, puzzled as she stared at Su Chang. Then, her gaze returned to her phone’s screen. With a polite, indifferent smile, Yu Zhou typed: “Wow, it’s Miss Su! Good evening, Miss Su~ Kiss.jpg”
This response was calculated: the first half expressed surprise and unfamiliarity, while the second half neutralized Su Chang’s kiss emoticon as a polite greeting.
Ahahaha, Yu Zhou thought to herself, she was really smart.
Su Chang’s eyes flickered, apparently seeing her reply before she expressionlessly put down her phone, unsure of what she was thinking.
“What’s wrong?” Yu Zhou walked over barefoot and leaned against her.
Su Chang reached out, gently stroking Yu Zhou’s hair hanging over her chest while asking softly, “Don’t you want to go public?”
“I don’t want to now.”
Yu Zhou blinked, speaking leisurely, “I didn’t understand the online and offline world before, always thinking that people should be the same in both places, hiding nothing and being straightforward. I thought any evasion or dishonesty might be due to a lack of commitment.”
“Now, I don’t feel that way. I even have some ‘cyber friends’ now.” She laughed, “I can understand that being true to oneself doesn’t mean exposing everything. Sometimes, keeping certain things hidden could be a way to protect what we value most.”
She didn’t think it was deceptive, because for both her and Su Chang, the main mode of communication with listeners and readers was through their work, not sharing their personal lives. Their fans respected their privacy and were very understanding.
But Su Chang said softly, “So, nobody knows we’re together.”
Yu Zhou blinked, not understanding why Su Chang would say such a thing.
It took her three seconds to realize that Su Chang might be… feeling insecure about their relationship? Or was it Peng Xiangzhi’s offhand remark about “breaking up someday” that made her overthink?
Wow… Her heart was pounding.
Yu Zhou stood up, walked to the opposite side of Su Chang, straddled her and hugged her neck before asking, “Are you worried?”
Her tone was teasing.
Su Chang looked up at her, asking with her eyes, what kind of expression was this?
“I think it feels great.” Yu Zhou laughed, “Though it’s a bit mean, but it’s really great.”
“When I think about how you’re worried because of me, I feel incredibly great. Hahahaha.”
Su Chang placed her hand on Yu Zhou’s waist, looking a little helpless.
“But Peng Xiangzhi knows, and we know, too.” Yu Zhou said.
“Is that all?” Su Chang asked softly.
“There’s more.” Yu Zhou raised her hand, moving it to Su Chang’s chest and gently poked.
Then, blushing, she said shyly, “Let you touch.”
Su Chang didn’t move.
“Why don’t you try it? It’s really soft,” Yu Zhou said, snuggling against her.
Su Chang’s hand reached up, covering her chest.
“Really? It’s so soft…” Yu Zhou laughed softly and whispered.
Her tone was a bit flirtatious and smug.
“See,” she tilted her head, letting her long hair slide down from her shoulders, “only you can touch it.”
Not only could she touch the softest part of Yu Zhou, but also feel her lively heartbeat, as well as her wild and shy appearance, all of which could only be seen by one person.
The hand she placed on Su Chang’s neck wrapped around her long hair. Pondering for a few seconds, she looked into Su Chang’s eyes and said seriously: “Although it pleases me that you’re nervous because of me, I don’t want you to be like this all the time. I’ve experienced this kind of feeling before, and I know if it keeps happening, we might get sick and won’t be able to keep going.”
“Although I’ve told you that I haven’t thought it through, I have been gradually figuring it out. Also, even though I can’t guarantee that I’ll be with you for the rest of my life… Well, it’s hard to guarantee, right? No one can predict the future.”
Su Chang seemed to want to say something but stopped.
Not giving Su Chang a chance to speak, Yu Zhou continued: “But I can promise you that if I waver even a little, I will immediately, without any delay, tell you. Is that okay?”
“So before I say anything, stop worrying about us parting. Of course, unless you don’t want to.”
“If you don’t want to, just let me know right away, so neither of us has to guess.”
She knew Su Chang was afraid that she would suffer once again in a relationship, unable to bear leaving abruptly once again. She understood this feeling, but she couldn’t provide any reassurance. This coping strategy came to Yu Zhou’s mind when she was writing the script today. It was clumsy, but might be the best solution for both of them.
“Alright?” Yu Zhou shifted her chest, hinting Su Chang to come back to reality.
Su Chang raised her eyelashes as her hand moved downward from Yu Zhou’s softness, trying to reach into her pants.
Yu Zhou grabbed her wrist, pulled it out and placed it on her waist: “I don’t allow you to touch that part.”
Su Chang laughed and looked at her for a couple of seconds before speaking softly, “You’re so bad.” Her voice was misty and almost elusive.
“Wow, what you just said…”
“What?”
“It’s so flirtatious. I love hearing it. Give me more.” Yu Zhou was very excited and laughed out loud.
Su Chang patted her lower back, a faint blush appearing behind her ear.
CNYuriTranslation 