Inside the high-speed railway station’s arrival hall, people bustled back and forth. Lu Yufei dragged her old canvas bag as she stood near the exit, her baseball cap pulled down low.
A production crew member was holding up a piece of hard paper with “Leisurely Inn” written in marker. The person holding the sign was a young woman in a ponytail and a crew t-shirt. She was startled for a second upon seeing Lu Yufei, then hurried over.
“Teacher Lu? Did you come alone?”
“Mm.”
“Teacher Su Wan hasn’t arrived yet. Would you like to go wait in the car—”
Before she could finish, a voice came from behind.
“Excuse me, am I late?”
Lu Yufei turned her head.
Su Wan was standing three meters away, dragging a suitcase with one hand and holding her phone with the other. She wore no makeup, her hair casually tied into a low ponytail, and a light-gray ramie shirt. Sunlight poured down through the arrival hall’s glass dome, shining on her face and making her skin look almost transparently clean.
She looked even better in person than on her poster.
Su Wan walked briskly right up to her and extended a hand.
“Hello, Teacher Lu, I’m Su Wan. Let’s take good care of each other during the show this time.”
Her voice was soft and gentle, looking directly into the other person’s eyes while she spoke.
Lu Yufei nodded and gave her hand a light shake. Su Wan’s gaze naturally swept over her belly, neither lingering nor deliberately avoiding it, as if simply confirming a known fact.
“Hello,” Lu Yufei said. Finding it a bit dry, she added, “I just got here too.”
The staff guided them toward the parking lot.
The production crew’s van was parked on the basement level. The driver was a quiet middle-aged man who helped them load their luggage and opened the back row door. The air conditioning was on in the van, and a young woman was already sitting in the passenger seat. Her skin was very white, her eye makeup was exquisitely applied, and she was wearing wired earphones while scrolling through her phone. Hearing the car door open, she pulled out one earphone, turned back, and smiled, revealing a standard set of eight teeth.
“Hello, hello, nice to meet you both! My name is Qiao Qiao.”
Lu Yufei matched the name in her mind—Qiao Qiao, a beauty-track female internet celebrity with millions of followers. Her videos always showcased her profile to the camera, earning her the internet moniker “profile killer.” In person, she was even thinner than in her videos, her chin unrealistically sharp, but she was undeniably pretty.
Su Wan got into the car first, scooting over a seat. Lu Yufei used the door handle for leverage and sat in the middle of the back row, with Su Wan sitting to her left by the window. Qiao Qiao turned back from the passenger seat, her gaze lingering on Lu Yufei’s belly for less than a second before casually shifting away.
“Teacher Lu, you look so much prettier than in your photos!” Qiao Qiao spoke with a natural, wavy cadence. “Whenever I scrolled past your Weibo before, I thought your facial features were super striking, and seeing you in person today proves it—all those black-material photos online must be photoshopped!”
“Thank you.” Lu Yufei fastened her seatbelt. “You’re very pretty too.”
Before the van started, the production crew’s field director knocked on the car window.
“Teachers, we are starting recording now. The microphones are already on.”
Lu Yufei instinctively lowered her head to look at the small square box clipped to her collar—which the staff had put on her before she got in the car. Qiao Qiao turned around from the passenger seat, pointed to the matching small black box on her own collar, and blinked at her.
“Teacher Lu, this mic picks up sound really well. It can even pick up whispering, you know.”
Lu Yufei immediately shut her mouth.
Su Wan sat quietly by the window, her mic already attached, looking down at her phone. Her profile was reflected in the car window glass, her eyelashes slightly curled upward.
With the female lead looking like this, Lu Yufei thought, it’d be a miracle if Fu Qing didn’t fall for her later.
Qiao Qiao suddenly raised her phone, pointing the front camera at the back row.
“Teacher Lu, look at the camera! Checking in for the trip!”
Before Lu Yufei could react, Qiao Qiao had already pressed the shutter. In the photo, Lu Yufei looked bewildered, Su Wan smiled beside her, and Qiao Qiao occupied a third of the frame, flashing a peace sign.
“Qiao Qiao, did you turn on the beauty filter?” Lu Yufei asked.
“Teacher Lu, with a face like yours, using a beauty filter on top of that is just leaving us no way to survive!”
Not quite used to being praised so directly to her face, Lu Yufei twitched the corner of her mouth. “…Should I not use it from now on?”
Qiao Qiao laughed out loud, swiped around on her phone a few times, and sent the photo to the production crew’s guest group chat.
The drive took about two hours. The scenery on both sides of the highway changed from factories to farmland, and then from farmland to mountain forests. The second half was all winding mountain roads, twisting and turning so much that Qiao Qiao got horribly carsick. She took off her earphones and closed her eyes, leaning back against the passenger seat.
Su Wan took a box of mints out of her bag, handed one to Qiao Qiao, and turned to ask Lu Yufei if she wanted one.
“No thanks, I’m good.”
Su Wan nodded and put the box away. After a moment, she dug an inflatable neck pillow out of her bag—the kind that hadn’t been unsealed yet.
She glanced at Lu Yufei and hesitated. “Teacher Lu, would you like to lean on this? The mountain roads are bumpy, your back might get sore.”
“You carry this around with you?”
“I bought it when waiting for scenes back when I was filming, and later I just got used to keeping it in my bag.”
After thanking her, Lu Yufei accepted the neck pillow and placed it behind her lower back. It really did make a noticeable difference in comfort.
She turned her head to glance at Su Wan. How was this person exactly like the one written in the novel? Gentle, considerate, and nice to everyone.
The car took a few more turns, and Qiao Qiao finally recovered a bit. After chugging half a bottle of water, she was back to full health and started filming the bamboo groves outside the window with her phone again. After filming the bamboo groves, she turned around to film the back row, aiming the lens at Lu Yufei.
“Family, we’re currently on our way to Leisurely Inn. Let me show you the two great beauties next to me—Teacher Lu Yufei and Teacher Su Wan! Aren’t they super pretty?”
Lu Yufei instinctively raised a hand to block half her face.
“Don’t block it, don’t block it, you really are pretty! Look at this bare face, this skin—” Qiao Qiao pushed the camera even closer. “Teacher Lu, say hi to the fans.”
Lu Yufei paused for a second, lowered her hand, and nodded toward the camera. “Hello, everyone.”
“Just ‘hello, everyone’?” Qiao Qiao was unsatisfied. “Say a bit more, anything at all.”
“…Remember to eat on time.”
Qiao Qiao burst out laughing and stopped the recording. “I’m saving this clip for Douyin; you’re way too cute.”
Lu Yufei turned her head to look out the window as the bamboo trees retreated one by one. Her face was reflected in the car window glass, the corners of her lips still slightly pursed, with only the tips of her ears showing a touch of red.
The car turned onto a concrete road, passed through a bamboo forest, and stopped in front of a guesthouse. White walls and black tiles, a three-story building, with a large courtyard planted with several ginkgo trees. Tables, chairs, and a sun umbrella were set up underneath the trees.
Three people were already standing at the entrance of the guesthouse. Next to them stood two cameras, with a field director squatting behind a monitor eating bread.
The three people stood in a row, looking over in unison as the car door opened.
The first to greet them was the has-been male singer, Zhou Ming. In his early forties with very short cropped hair, he wore a washed-white denim shirt. Ten years ago, his ringtone hit song was so popular that square-dancing grandmas could hum it. Nowadays, nobody remembered what he looked like, but he seemed completely unbothered by it, crinkles covering the corners of his eyes as he smiled.
“Teacher Lu, long admired, long admired,” he took the initiative to reach out. “Zhou Ming, singer.”
“Hello, Teacher Zhou, I’m Lu Yufei.” She shook his hand, noticing his palms were covered in calluses.
The two young idol contestants crowded over next.
The guy spoke first, his voice even milkier than his looks: “Hello, Teacher Lu, I’m Lin Yuzhou. I’ve watched your shows before, you’re amazing.”
The other girl was petite with dimples when she smiled, her voice sweet: “Hello, Teacher Lu, I’m Meng Xiaoxuan. You look so full of vitality today.”
The third guy stood at the very back. His name was Song Yiran. He didn’t talk much, only saying “Hello, Teacher Lu,” but bowed very properly.
Lu Yufei was a bit bewildered by this setup. Everyone came over to greet her, and it didn’t feel like just going through the motions. Even a senior who had debuted twenty years ago like Zhou Ming bowed his waist slightly when shaking hands.
She suddenly realized that here, in the eyes of these people, she wasn’t the “infamous Lu Yufei wrapped in black material.” She was the most famous person in this group.
Negative publicity was still traffic, and everyone was equal in front of a fading star.
The sun began to dip, casting a golden glow over the courtyard. Lu Yufei sat in a chair under the ginkgo tree, pulling her feet halfway out of her shoes. The temperature was at least five degrees cooler than in the city. The sound of cicadas surged in waves from the depths of the bamboo forest.
Lu Yufei posted a photo on her Weibo. It was the guesthouse terrace Qiao Qiao had helped her take; dusk’s string lights hung half-bright and half-dim from the ceiling, the distant mountains were pitch black, and pork belly and chicken wings lay ready for grilling by her feet.
The caption read: No mosquitoes in the mountains.
After posting, she tucked her phone back into her pocket. Someone chuckled behind her. She turned around to see Qiao Qiao holding up her phone, the screen displaying her Douyin homepage where a new video had just finished uploading. In the frame, Lu Yufei sat in the back row of the van, telling the camera to “remember to eat on time,” with an expression that was three parts helpless and four parts sincere, the rest being the swelling unique to pregnancy.
“Two thousand likes in ten minutes,” Qiao Qiao flashed the screen to show her. “Do you believe this clip is going to break a million?”
Lu Yufei looked down at that video. The comments section was popping up faster than her heartbeat.
So pretty, sister!!!
Ahhh she’s so cute!
Is it even reasonable to look this good while pregnant?
Followed, I’m coming back for the variety show behind-the-scenes
She handed the phone back to Qiao Qiao. “If people start cursing at me…”
She wondered if the people cursing her on Weibo would follow the internet cables straight over to Douyin now that this video was out. “…If it affects your comment section, remember to delete the comments.”
“Don’t worry! If anyone dares to trash you in my comment section, I’ll definitely curse them right back!”