“It’s all my mom’s fault—she keeps nagging me about blind dates, and I’m so sick of it!”
“Today she tricked me into going out by saying she wanted me to have dinner with her, and the moment I sat down, some strange man showed up across from me, saying he was the son of my mom’s friend!”
“And at that point, I couldn’t exactly just bolt, could I?”
“Well, guess what—after that whole meal, I didn’t get to eat a single bite!”
Jiang Li raised an eyebrow. “What, the forced blind date made you so mad you couldn’t even eat?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “No, it’s purely because the guy was too ugly.”
Jiang Li hadn’t expected that reason, and she burst out laughing.
“Hey, don’t laugh!” Shen Luojia was getting worked up, trying desperately to make Jiang Li feel her pain through words alone.
“You have no idea how ugly he was! His nose wasn’t a nose, his eyes weren’t eyes—his skin was all pockmarked like the surface of the moon. And that’s not even the worst part—after dinner, when he stood up, holy crap! He was even shorter than me!”
“And how tall am I? I’m only 162, girl!!”
“Tell me, isn’t my mom going way too far? Isn’t she just throwing her own daughter into a pit of fire?”
Probably unable to think of a fitting comparison in the moment, Shen Luojia declared indignantly, “It’s not like I’m asking for someone as handsome as Shang Chi—but if he’d even been half as good-looking, I wouldn’t be this furious!”
Hearing Shang Chi’s name mentioned out of nowhere, Jiang Li paused for a moment before saying, “Well, maybe the photo didn’t do him justice, and your mom just misjudged?”
“Ha.”
A cold laugh came through the line. “Speaking of which, that gets me even more worked up.”
“I finally managed to slip away when the dinner was over, and when I called my mom, she actually said, ‘Well, I had no idea he’d grown up to look like that—he was still very handsome when he was little.'”
“Little! Does that sound reasonable to you?! She set me up on a blind date without even looking at a current photo of the guy! Can a real mother do that?!”
Jiang Li was momentarily at a loss for words, and Shen Luojia was already yelling, “Anyway, I can’t stand being in this house for one more second! My darling Li Li, save half the bed for me tonight—I’m coming over to sleep at your place!”
“That’s fine, I guess,” Jiang Li paused, “but I’m going on that variety show in a couple of days, so you—”
Before Jiang Li could finish, Shen Luojia waved it off carelessly. “No worries, I’m only running away from home for one day. I’ll crawl back tomorrow night. Won’t get in the way.”
Jiang Li: “…”
…
By the time Jiang Li got home, Shen Luojia was already waiting at the door.
“You’re finally back,” she said, spotting Jiang Li and sprinting over to give her a big hug, her face full of grievance.
“If you’d been any later, I’d have turned into a latchkey kid.”
Jiang Li unlocked the door with her fingerprint.
“Beep”—
The door swung open.
“That’s a bit of a stretch.”
“Latchkey kids at least get to stay inside a house. You’re more like a stray cat at best.”
Glancing at the smudged, tragic-looking makeup on Shen Luojia’s face, Jiang Li said with amusement, “And a scruffy-faced one at that.”
The moment she heard the words “stray cat,” Shen Luojia, who had been all worked up just a second ago, suddenly perked right up.
Following Jiang Li inside, she giggled to herself.
Drawing out her words in a singsong tone: “Oh~ a stray cat~ isn’t there one right in front of me~ and she’s just adorable~”
Shen Luojia deliberately circled around to face Jiang Li, looked at her bare-faced complexion, and clicked her tongue twice. “If you ask me, Shang Chi must be blind. What’s so adorable about this—”
“She’s absolutely stunning!”
Jiang Li coughed.
She directly swatted away Shen Luojia’s face that had gotten too close, feigning disgust. “Go wash your face, please.”
“Little missy, trying to change the subject, are we?” Shen Luojia shot her a sidelong glance. “Wait until sister here washes her face, then I’ll come out and have a nice ‘heart-to-heart’ with you.”
With that, she tossed her hair, threw a flirtatious wink at Jiang Li with exaggerated charm, and turned toward the bathroom.
A minute later, a scream came from inside.
“Damn! Was I walking around with a face like this the whole way?!”
Right after the words left her mouth, there was a sound of rummaging and banging from inside.
Jiang Li didn’t bother with her. She sat down on the sofa and pulled out her phone, intending to order takeout for the two of them.
But the moment she unlocked it, she was on the WeChat page.
Looking at the account she’d added not long ago, Jiang Li, out of curiosity, tapped into his Moments to take a look.
It was almost all about music—a few swipes and she hit the bottom.
There were barely any posts about daily life.
Just as she was about to exit, she noticed his profile picture and couldn’t help but tap on it.
The photo was pitch black, with only a yellow blob of something in the top right corner.
The moon?
Puzzled, Jiang Li zoomed in on the image. It looked hand-drawn, but she couldn’t quite tell what it was. Either way, it was pretty ugly.
Shang Chi was a guy with a distinctly bold personal style—picky, with extremely high standards.
But this profile picture…
No matter how she looked at it, she couldn’t see any aesthetic value in it.
Tsk. Did people in the music industry these days all have such unconventional taste?
Just as she was thinking this, a sudden “Huh?” came from behind her.
Jiang Li was so startled she nearly threw her phone.
She turned around and said irritably, “Shen Luojia, can you make some noise when you walk? Scaring people half to death is a real thing, you know.”
But Shen Luojia didn’t take the bait.
She just frowned at the image on Jiang Li’s screen. “What the hell is that?”
Jiang Li backed out of the image and showed her the account. “Shang Chi’s WeChat profile picture. That bastard said his precious jacket is still at my place and he needs to find time to come pick it up in person.”
Shen Luojia furrowed her brow, then suddenly thought of something. “Wait, no—that image you just had, let me see it again.”
Jiang Li handed over her phone, and Shen Luojia looked at it carefully.
“I feel like this image is so familiar, but I just can’t remember where I’ve seen it…”
“Come on, maybe you’ve seen it online before,” Jiang Li said, taking her phone back. “Shang Chi’s too lazy to bother—he probably just grabbed some random image off the internet for his profile picture.”
Shen Luojia thought about it for a moment but couldn’t come up with anything either, so she decided not to dwell on it.
She nodded. “Yeah, maybe. It’s possible someone in my WeChat contacts uses a similar image as their profile picture, so it feels familiar.”
Just then, the takeout arrived, and the two of them dropped the topic.
But halfway through the meal—
“What?! Shang Chi is going to be on the same variety show as you?!”
Shen Luojia’s eyes went wide. “He’s been in the industry this long, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him on a variety show! With that arrogant attitude of his, what’s there to watch on a show?”
Jiang Li said in defeat, “How should I know? With all the variety shows out there, why does he have to pick the same one as me?”
Shen Luojia’s eyes rolled around for a moment. “Could it be that he knew you were going on this show, so that’s why he’s going?”
Jiang Li looked at her like she was an idiot. “How is that possible? The guest lineup this time is completely confidential—none of us know who else is participating.”
“Besides,” Jiang Li scoffed, recalling how that dog had looked at her today with that meaningful expression, as if she were the one lusting after his body, “if he actually knew I was going, he wouldn’t show up even if his life depended on it.”
“Is that so?” Shen Luojia propped her chin on her hand and gave Jiang Li a thoughtful look.
Who knew, really.