Chapter 19: The Future Movie Queen About to Be Abandoned (19)
Yu Yinglan unilaterally reconciled with Su Mingxiu.
She no longer demanded an explanation from Su Mingxiu like she did the night she returned to the villa, wanting to know why the other party had given her that script and that gift together.
For Yu Yinglan, as long as Su Mingxiu stayed by her side like this every day from now on, it was enough.
With this thought in mind, she spent a month with Su Mingxiu, like lovers.
When Su Mingxiu painted, she watched from the side. But somehow, the paint would always end up on her. When Su Mingxiu practiced calligraphy, she would hide the paperweight. When it was found, the redness on her palm would be even more pronounced, and there would be indescribable marks hidden beneath her clothes…
Occasionally, Yu Yinglan would go to the kitchen and learn some cooking skills from the Ying family’s maids. But she immediately set her sights on the difficult Su-style pastries. It was spring, and after spending an afternoon in the kitchen, she declared that she would make Su Mingxiu realize her talent in every aspect.
Su Mingxiu believed her and went to the courtyard to soak in the hot spring while waiting.
When the mist parted and Yu Yinglan arrived with a plate and fruit tea, Su Mingxiu stared at the cracked, multi-colored flatbread on the plate and asked seriously: “What is this?”
Yu Yinglan replied with a straight face: “Lotus flower cake.” Then, she paused for a moment and added, “Abstract style.”
As she wiped her hands, Su Mingxiu recalled the appearance of the lotus flower cakes she had eaten before. She concluded that the color scheme of the cake in front of her did have some similarities with the beautiful, multi-layered pastries in her memory. So she took a bite politely.
As a consequence of eating too many sweets, Yu Yinglan was later pulled into the hot spring by Su Mingxiu and forced to do some exercises that helped with digestion.
They even went shopping together.
When they entered a brand store, they happened to run into Song Yiran, who was buying a bag for his lover. Yu Yinglan noticed that the person standing beside him didn’t seem to be the one who had starred with her in “Celebrating the Mountains and Rivers.” Meeting her gaze, Song Yiran felt inexplicably flustered. As he approached them, he said subconsciously: “Uh, it’s not what you think, this is—”
Yu Yinglan looked away with disinterest, cutting him off. Following her gaze to a figure not far away, Song Yiran was clearly shocked, as if witnessing a miracle in the entertainment industry. He even gasped and looked back at Yu Yinglan, as if he couldn’t understand how she had become the first person in history to be discarded and then return to Su Mingxiu’s side.
“You two…”
Originally, Yu Yinglan didn’t want to pay attention to him, but now, noticing his gaze, she suddenly felt like staying there for two more seconds. She cleared her throat and said to Song Yiran in a low voice: “That’s—”
“My girlfriend.”
Without caring about Song Yiran’s reaction, she quickly returned to Su Mingxiu’s side and had the sales assistant bring over all the bags she had looked at earlier, ready to pay.
Su Mingxiu rarely took her eyes off Yu Yinglan. She turned to look at the CEO of Baiyao Media, Song Yiran. He had handsome features and a decent appearance, but judging from his face, he was surrounded by a lot of romantic entanglements.
She couldn’t help but ask: “What were you talking about just now?”
Yu Yinglan rarely saw her inquire about her affairs. So she imitated Su Mingxiu’s usual demeanor and decided to keep her in suspense, drawing out her words: “Oh, he asked me what my relationship with you is now.”
Seeing Su Mingxiu raise an eyebrow, Yu Yinglan replied slowly: “I said I’m your… creditor.”
“Is that so?” Su Mingxiu asked with a smile.
Yu Yinglan looked left and right, avoiding her gaze: “You don’t believe me?”
“It’s up to you.”
Su Mingxiu shook her head helplessly, as if she didn’t care about her position in Yu Yinglan’s eyes.
But her indifference made Yu Yinglan unhappy. She locked her gaze on Su Mingxiu and pressed: “Anything I say goes?”
As soon as she finished speaking, Su Mingxiu’s expression suddenly changed.
Seeing her change, Yu Yinglan thought she had some objection. But in the next second, she saw Su Mingxiu quickly walk out of the store. Yu Yinglan could only wave to the sales assistant and chase after her: “Su Su!”
As they reached a secluded spot, she saw Su Mingxiu leaning against the wall with one hand, coughing up a mouthful of blood.
Yu Yinglan’s expression immediately turned grim. As she took out her phone to call the nearest hospital, she misdialed several times before finally connecting the call. Halfway through giving the address, her wrist was grabbed.
Su Mingxiu shook her head at her. “No need.”
But the usually obedient woman raised her voice, saying sternly: “You have to listen to me this time!”
After a long silence, Su Mingxiu sighed and let go of her wrist in resignation.
But the results of the hospital examination only made Yu Yinglan’s mood worse.
Looking at the report, she couldn’t understand how someone who was so healthy before could suddenly be diagnosed with a serious illness, a late-stage illness with a very low cure rate.
Su Mingxiu was standing behind her, also seeing the results of the report.
It turned out that even the system’s arrangements had to follow the objective laws of the world. It wasn’t like in those fantasy novels where spirits could claim a person’s soul in an instant.
Looking at Yu Yinglan’s back, she regretted for the first time, wondering if she should have driven her away completely the day she returned to the villa. Perhaps not starting anything from the beginning was the right choice.
She turned Yu Yinglan around, but it was the other party who spoke first. Even though her voice was hoarse and her eyes were red-rimmed, she was trying her best to comfort her: “It’s okay, we have money, we can find the best doctors, the best—”
Su Mingxiu placed her hands on Yu Yinglan’s shoulders, leaned in, and looked into her eyes, saying gently: “It’s no use.”
She said: “There are fifty days left.”
Her tone was so certain, without a hint of sadness for her own fate, that Yu Yinglan inexplicably realized there was more to this than met the eye.
“What do you mean?”
Yu Yinglan grabbed her wrist. “Why fifty days?”
Su Mingxiu opened her mouth, but she couldn’t utter a single word of truth. She glanced at the sky outside the window. After a long silence, for the first time, she risked going OOC and asked the person standing before her: “I’ve always wanted to ask you, would you rather have ‘never had’ or ‘once had’?”
The person who understood her implication stood silently in the corridor.
Their shadows stretched long on the white wall.
After a long silence, Yu Yinglan suddenly laughed. The grievances that she thought could be healed by time, the ones she had been suppressing in her heart, had actually been between them all along, an obstacle she couldn’t avoid.
[OOC level: 1.](Out of Character)
The system’s voice broke through the barrier and reached Su Mingxiu’s mind.
But she just looked at the person in front of her. Until Yu Yinglan’s laughter subsided and she looked at her with exhaustion in her eyes: “All this time, it’s always been up to you.”
“You chose to give me a chance, and I reached the top; you chose to discard me, and I fell into the abyss in the next second.”
“A few hours ago, I thought the decision was finally in my hands—but now you’re telling me it was all a joke, that our positions have never changed from the beginning.”
Su Mingxiu met her gaze and said softly: “I keep my word. This time, the choice is indeed in your hands.”
The always domineering queen, the one who always had the final say, stepped down from her throne.
[OOC level: 5! Warning! Please cease OOC behavior, host!]
“Is that so?”
Yu Yinglan nodded as if she understood, then turned around, her back to Su Mingxiu: “Then this time, I choose to leave.”
Su Mingxiu, this time, it’s my turn to leave you.
[Time remaining before extraction from this world: 35 days.]
Another sleepless night.
Su Mingxiu heard the system, in the space she had blocked, mocking her in various ways, saying things like “Those who do not listen to the elders will suffer the consequences,” making her ears numb.
She held a glass of red wine, standing on the balcony, looking at the blurred stars in the city sky, treating the system’s mockery as a bedtime show, until the night wind chilled her to the bone.
Su Mingxiu tightened her clothes, about to turn back to the bedroom, when her gaze inadvertently swept over the area below—
The next moment, her eyes froze.
A figure, almost blending into the night, stood under a tree in the courtyard. She didn’t know how long she had been watching her while she was looking at the night sky. They were separated by a distance, their eyes meeting from afar.
The person downstairs spoke first: “I want to ask you a question, and I hope you can answer me honestly.”
Su Mingxiu’s lips curved into a smile.
She saw the bright light in the other party’s eyes, brighter than all the stars she had spent the entire night looking at in the sky. Then, she heard her ask: “Was my appearance here tonight within your expectations?”
Su Mingxiu shook her head.
She thought Yu Yinglan wouldn’t come back.
But in the next second, the person who received the answer said to herself, “It seems this time, it was also my own choice.”
She took two steps forward, her gaze falling on the wine glass in Su Mingxiu’s hand, and began to lecture her: “You shouldn’t be drinking in your current state.”
The woman leaning against the balcony railing looked down at her, even the tear mole under her eye becoming gentle: “Are you starting to control me now?”
“I think, as your girlfriend, I have that right, don’t I?”
Yu Yinglan stepped out of the shadows and looked up at her.
“If you’re my girlfriend—”
“Of course you can.”
The night wind, which had been cold all along, finally softened.
Su Mingxiu had found her sleeping pill again and was about to embrace the person in her arms and fall asleep, but a book was placed in her hands. “You didn’t finish the bedtime story last time, girlfriend.”
She had no choice but to pick up the book. With her excellent memory, she continued from where Yu Yinglan had left off after struggling for an entire night. The next part was the passage about taming from The Little Prince, where the fox said:
“To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world.”
Yu Yinglan lay with her back to Su Mingxiu, pretending to be asleep.
A sound, audible only to her, echoed in her ears.
Drip. Drip.
It was the faint sound of water droplets falling onto the pillow and being quickly absorbed by the fabric.
She casually reached back and grabbed Su Mingxiu’s wrist. “That’s enough, you should rest. Good night.”
Yu Yinglan didn’t want to listen anymore.
She knew that the next part was about the little prince realizing, from the fox’s words, that the rose he loved most, the one he kept thinking about, was still the one on his planet.
Yu Yinglan was the fox who had stumbled into Su Mingxiu’s life.
Su Mingxiu had tamed her.
If she could—
She didn’t want to be the fox. She wanted to be the rose, the rose that the little prince had carefully tended to, removing its caterpillars and covering it with a glass globe… the rose that, despite its pride and stubbornness, could still wait for the little prince to return.
But she could only be the fox. She couldn’t keep Su Mingxiu.
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