Celebrities were people too—celebrities gossiped as well.
Zhu Wenshu didn’t press further, just gazed out the window at the passing crowds, the corners of her mouth curving up.
She wondered whether someone like Ling Chen ever searched his own name online, to see what people said about him.
Her thoughts drifted, and she couldn’t quite reel them back in.
The other person in the car seemed lost in his own thoughts too, staying silent.
After a long while, a car horn blared sharply outside, jolting Zhu Wenshu back to reality.
She turned her head to glance at Ling Chen.
“You… weren’t you here to apologize?”
Ling Chen’s attention had returned to the car, but he was still staring straight ahead, his lips pressed into a thin line.
After a good while, he slowly turned his head, looking at Zhu Wenshu with a hint of helplessness.
Just as he opened his mouth, a ringtone suddenly sounded in the car.
Ling Chen glanced around before picking up his phone from the center console to answer.
“I’m not home.”
“Mm, I’m out, something came up.”
“An urgent matter—when will it be handled…” Ling Chen glanced sideways at Zhu Wenshu. “Depends how it goes.”
Zhu Wenshu: “…”
She turned away to look out the window.
“Mm, come find me at the practice room later.”
After saying that last line, he hung up.
Zhu Wenshu wanted to ask if he had something urgent to attend to, but before she could, he spoke first: “How would you like me to apologize? Care to teach me, Teacher Zhu?”
For some reason, that phrase “Teacher Zhu,” which she’d heard countless times before, carried a certain indescribable nuance coming from Ling Chen’s mouth—different from anyone else who said it.
Zhu Wenshu slowly turned her chin back, staring at the windshield.
“Even this needs Teacher Zhu to teach you… Are you a grade schooler?”
Hearing no response from beside her, Zhu Wenshu, remembering that pledge letter, added in a low voice, “You’re worse than a grade schooler. Even they know how to handle things properly.”
A rustling sound suddenly filled the car.
Zhu Wenshu turned to see Ling Chen had undone his seatbelt and opened the car door, one leg already stepping out, while his other hand pulled a black face mask from the center console and put it on.
“Wait here for me for a bit.”
A gust of cold air blew in.
After the door closed, Zhu Wenshu slowly turned her head, her gaze following Ling Chen as she watched him, wide-eyed, walk into a convenience store by the roadside.
This block wasn’t exactly bustling, but there was still a fair share of foot traffic passing through.
Every time she saw a passerby walk into that convenience store, Zhu Wenshu’s nerves tensed for a moment.
Seeing them come out looking perfectly normal, she’d quietly relax again.
Those seven or eight minutes felt unusually long. Only when she saw Ling Chen come out carrying a bag did Zhu Wenshu finally feel at ease.
“What did you go to the convenience store for?”
When Ling Chen opened the door and settled back into the car, Zhu Wenshu said, “There are a lot of people there—”
Something suddenly landed heavy on her lap, and Zhu Wenshu’s voice trailed off. She looked down to see a large bag Ling Chen had shoved at her—full of… snacks.
“What is this for?”
Ling Chen: “What do you think?”
Seeing her blink in confusion, Ling Chen let out a soft sigh, took hold of Zhu Wenshu’s wrist, pried open her slightly curled fingers, and pressed two fruit candies into her palm, then looked up at her.
“Don’t be mad anymore, Teacher Zhu?”
The car’s heater wasn’t on, yet there seemed to be a faint, drifting warmth in the air.
Perhaps because he’d just come in from outside, Ling Chen’s fingers were slightly cool, and the calluses on his fingertips—from playing instruments—brushed against the back of Zhu Wenshu’s hand, leaving a faint, itching sensation.
She stared blankly at Ling Chen, her mind seeming to short-circuit, unsure of what to say.
She’d really just been joking. She hadn’t actually meant for him to apologize in any real way, and had assumed Ling Chen was just saying it offhandedly too.
She never expected he’d actually go and buy a whole pile of snacks, like a student coaxing a little kid.
After a moment, Zhu Wenshu snapped back to herself with an “oh.”
“I was just saying that.” She turned away, looking out the car window, her gaze drifting for a moment before she suddenly gripped the door handle. “Well, nothing else going on, so I’ll head home now.”
—
In the elevator.
All around was silent, and Zhu Wenshu stood motionless, staring at the floor.
She didn’t know how much time had passed when the elevator doors slowly slid open.
Zhu Wenshu came back to herself, looked up, ready to head home.
The moment she stepped forward, though, she realized—she was still on the ground floor.
She hadn’t pressed the button.
“…”
Zhu Wenshu withdrew her foot, exhaled softly, and reached over to press the floor button.
When she got home, Ying Fei was in the kitchen.
Hearing the door, she didn’t turn around. “You’re back?”
Zhu Wenshu said “mm,” changed her shoes, and walked further in. Seeing Ying Fei rummaging through the fridge, she asked, “Haven’t had dinner yet?”
“I ate, got hungry again.”
The fridge only had fruit and a few pieces of bread, which Ying Fei wasn’t too fond of. She sighed and shut the fridge door. “Time to restock.”
Turning around, she caught sight of the convenience store bag in Zhu Wenshu’s hand.
She didn’t mean anything by it, just gave it a glance.
But Zhu Wenshu stopped in her tracks and asked, “I’ve got food here, want some?”
The two of them had been roommates for so long, often sharing food, so Ying Fei didn’t stand on ceremony.
“Sure.”
She took the bag Zhu Wenshu handed over, set it on the dining table, and reached in to look through it. “Wow, that’s a lot. Don’t you usually not eat snacks much?”
Zhu Wenshu sat down beside her, saying quietly, “A friend bought it.”
“Oh, then I—”
Ying Fei had been about to say something else, but the words that reached her lips turned into a teasing smile instead. “A friend, huh…”
Zhu Wenshu looked at the two fruit candies in her palm and said, “Mm.”
“Not bad.”
Ying Fei said, lips curled in a smile, “Wears high-end tailored suits, sends ordinary snacks—can’t tell if he’s stingy, or he just really knows how to win a woman’s heart.”
“…Huh?”
Zhu Wenshu looked up, saw Ying Fei’s expression, and belatedly caught on to what she meant.
“No, no, you’ve got the wrong idea, just an ordinary friend.”
Ying Fei hadn’t expected that she’d actually guessed correctly.
So it really was the same person who’d given Zhu Wenshu his jacket the other day.
Well, in that case, she shouldn’t help herself to too much. She only picked out a bag of jelly.
“Mm-hmm-hmm.”
Ying Fei waved the jelly at her. “Thanks to your ordinary friend, then.”
“…”
After Ying Fei returned to her room, Zhu Wenshu finally got up and put the bag of snacks away in the storage cabinet.
It wasn’t that she didn’t have a habit of eating snacks—back in school, whenever she had free time between classes, she’d go with classmates to the corner shop.
It was just that after starting work, she rarely had the mind to buy any specifically.
She wasn’t hungry right now either, just peeled open one candy.
The candy dissolved, an orangey sweet-and-sour flavor spreading in her mouth.
Zhu Wenshu took off her coat and went to shower.
She’d had barbecue that evening, and the smell had inevitably clung to her hair. Zhu Wenshu had a lot of hair, so by the time she finished blow-drying it, nearly an hour had passed.
Usually, this was around the time parents would start messaging. Zhu Wenshu didn’t waste time, going to habitually look for her phone—but it wasn’t on her desk, where she usually kept it.
She searched her nightstand and her bag too, but couldn’t find it anywhere.
She’d only been in the dining room earlier. Zhu Wenshu walked out to check and saw the table clean, with only a water glass on it.
She looked around once more, and finally went to knock on Ying Fei’s door to borrow her phone and call herself.
Because she was afraid of missing a parent’s call, Zhu Wenshu kept her ringtone on 24 hours a day.
But this time, when the call connected, there was no sound in the house.
“Did you maybe leave it at the restaurant?”
Ying Fei asked.
“That can’t be right, I remember getting it back…”
Zhu Wenshu suddenly froze, remembering the last place she’d used her phone that day.
Could it be…
She said hurriedly, “Try calling again?”
Ying Fei called again as told, but the result was the same.
The call went through, which meant it hadn’t been stolen; but no one answered, which meant there was no one near the phone either.
It looked like it really had been left in Ling Chen’s car, and he was probably not in the car anymore by now.
Zhu Wenshu frowned and sighed deeply.
Why did she have to slip away so fast!
As a result, she’d panicked and even forgotten to take her phone.
She patted her forehead and said, “I know where it is. Ugh, I’ll go get it now.”
“Where?” Ying Fei asked. “How will you get there? It’s tough without a phone—want me to come with you?”
Touched by her roommate’s concern, Zhu Wenshu still didn’t dare let Ying Fei actually come along to see Ling Chen.
“It’s fine, I’ll go myself. It’s probably at a friend’s place, in their car. It’s not convenient for you to go out this late anyway.”
Hearing this, Ying Fei suddenly laughed.
“Oh… it really wouldn’t be convenient for me to go.”
Rushing to get her phone back, Zhu Wenshu had already hurried to her room to change clothes and didn’t notice Ying Fei’s expression.
After putting on her socks, Zhu Wenshu glanced at her computer and suddenly paused.
Without her phone, she had no way to reach Ling Chen on WeChat.
But on QQ—didn’t she have Ling Chen added there?
Clinging to a sliver of hope, she opened her computer and logged into a QQ account she hadn’t used in a long time.
She typed in “Ling Chen,” and it showed “No local search results.”
Recalling Ling Chen’s WeChat display name, she typed “c” instead, and sure enough, a contact popped up, even with an unset default avatar.
She opened the chat window—the history was completely blank.
Having not used this app for so many years, Zhu Wenshu wasn’t entirely sure it was really Ling Chen. She opened the contact’s profile page, but there was no information there to confirm identity either.
She thought about it for a long while before finally typing out a message.
“This is Zhu Wenshu, did I leave my phone in your car?”
Ten minutes later.
No response in the chat window.
It seemed that whether or not this person was really Ling Chen, either way, he probably wasn’t going to see this message.
Zhu Wenshu sighed, dug out some cash she kept for emergencies from a drawer, grabbed a coat, and hurried out the door—
—
Fortunately, Ling Chen had taken a phone call in the car earlier, so Zhu Wenshu knew roughly where he’d be headed. She flagged down a taxi and headed to the district where his practice room was located.
Traffic wasn’t bad at this hour anymore, so Zhu Wenshu didn’t take long to reach her destination.
Without her phone for navigation, though, she didn’t quite remember the exact route and had to rely on memory to find her way.
After taking a few wrong turns, she finally arrived at the building.
The second floor had its lights on, meaning someone was there, and Zhu Wenshu let out a breath of relief.
But at the same time, the ground floor was cold and empty, the door locked, with no doorbell or anything of the sort.
She looked up and called toward the second floor: “Anyone there?”
The only answer was the echo in the empty air.
Remembering the soundproofing equipment inside, Zhu Wenshu sighed and resigned herself to waiting.
A late-autumn night wasn’t much better than deep winter.
Gusts of night wind blew in one after another. Zhu Wenshu tightened her coat around herself, but found it wasn’t doing much good—her exposed neck kept getting sliced by the cold, over and over.
Ugh…
What if they never came out?
Ling Chen’s assistant had once mentioned that people in the music industry always had their days and nights flipped.
Just five more falling leaves, she thought to herself.
If the tree beside her dropped a sixth leaf before anyone came out, she’d just have to head home.
She watched, gazing up for a long while.
As the sixth withered leaf wobbled its way down, Zhu Wenshu wrapped her arms around herself, ready to leave.
Only, before turning, she still couldn’t help but glance once more toward the ground floor, a bit unwilling to give up.
Just then, a blurry figure appeared inside the glass door on the first floor.
“Eh?”
Lu Manman spotted someone peering in from outside, looking rather sneaky, and thought at first she’d been staked out by a reporter.
Looking closer, though, she realized the person looked somewhat familiar.
“What are you doing here?”
She pushed the door open, poking her head out. “You—”
“Finally, someone came out!”
Zhu Wenshu hurried up the steps. “Is Ling Chen here? I left my phone in his car.”
“Huh?”
Lu Manman’s eyes swept up and down, sizing up Zhu Wenshu for a long moment before nodding, still a bit dazed. “He’s here, come in with me.”
The two of them went up to the second floor.
It was the same room as before. Lu Manman knocked, and when no one answered, she pushed the door open directly—
What came out wasn’t the sound of a piano she’d imagined, but music, intense and forceful, spilling into the hallway.
Zhu Wenshu stood behind Lu Manman, looking inside.
The thundering music came from an electric keyboard, a drum kit, a bass—and, standing in the middle, playing electric guitar, Ling Chen.
Unlike the drummer, who was headbanging along, he simply stood with his eyes closed, head tilted, and Zhu Wenshu saw in him a kind of untamed fierceness she’d never witnessed before.
A stark contrast to the person who, not long ago, had pressed two candies into her palm.
As she stared, entranced, the bassist A Zhe suddenly spotted Lu Manman and raised an eyebrow knowingly, without pausing his playing.
Around the same time, Ling Chen also sensed the outsider who’d broken the immersive atmosphere.
He opened his eyes, turning his head to look over.
His gaze passed through Lu Manman, settling distantly, and his fingers suddenly stopped, plucking out one low, deep chord.
As the electric guitar cut off abruptly, the other instruments gradually came to a stop as well.
Then, every gaze in the room turned toward the door.
“Why are you here?”
Ling Chen asked.
Only then did everyone notice there was another person standing behind Lu Manman.
“Sorry to interrupt.”
Zhu Wenshu looked at Ling Chen. “I think I left my phone in your car, I came to get it.”
The already-quiet practice room grew even quieter after Zhu Wenshu’s words.
The band members’ gazes gradually shifted from Zhu Wenshu to Ling Chen, lingered there for a moment, then all turned back to Zhu Wenshu in unison, staring at her in disbelief.
Her phone… in his… car?
Oblivious to the curiosity in those looks, Ling Chen lowered his eyes with an “oh,” and set the electric guitar aside.
“I didn’t notice.”
Zhu Wenshu asked, “So…?”
Ling Chen turned to look at A Zhe: “Keys.”
“Huh?”
A Zhe caught on that Ling Chen was asking for his car keys and turned to fetch his bag from the corner.
The moment he pulled out the keys, he suddenly paused.
Wait.
He’d borrowed Ling Chen’s car earlier today, said he had something to do, and that was… this?
He bent over, turning to look at Zhu Wenshu.
Before he could work out any conclusions, the keys were plucked from his hand.
“Let’s go.”
Ling Chen said. “The parking lot’s a bit far.”
—
The path to the parking lot was even more deserted than the rest of the area—aside from the streetlights, there was no other illumination.
The two of them walked side by side, their shadows stretching long across the ground.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
After a long stretch of silence, Ling Chen suddenly spoke.
“I don’t have your number.”
Zhu Wenshu said, “And even if I did, there’s no way I’d memorize your number by heart.”
Ling Chen looked ahead, saying nothing.
“Oh, but I did message you on QQ.”
Zhu Wenshu said, “Just wasn’t sure if that was really you.”
“That thing hasn’t been used in ages.”
Even so, Ling Chen still pulled out his phone and opened QQ.
The network here wasn’t great. After he logged in and refreshed a couple of times, a message did pop up, sure enough.
[Classmate Little Silkworm: This is Zhu Wenshu, did I leave my…]
Seeing the person beside her fiddling with their phone, Zhu Wenshu looked over.
Her gaze happened to sweep across his screen, and she only caught a glimpse of what looked like the QQ interface before Ling Chen immediately locked the screen.