At seven o’clock the next morning, Bai Jianjia was awakened by the continuous vibration of her phone.
Drowsily fumbling for the phone on the bedside table, the moment the screen lit up, she saw more than a dozen unread messages from her best friend, Wen Miao. The latest one was three exclamation marks followed by a link: “Jianjia!! Look at this right now!!!”
She tapped on the link.
The number one trending search: #GuBaiDateConfirmedWithProof#
The accompanying pictures were a grid of nine photos.
The very first one was the exact moment on the concert hall terrace when Gu Yuzhou draped his coat over her shoulders.
The shooting angle was quite tricky, captured from the side. In the frame, she turned slightly while his fingers hovered right around her collarbone.
The night, the river view, and the blurred lights made this originally accidental touch look intimately ambiguous.
The following pictures showed their profiles entering and exiting the concert hall, their figures getting into the car one after another, and finally, the scene of her stepping out of the car resting her hand on his at the entrance of the old Bai family residence.
Every single photo had high clarity, obviously taken secretly with professional equipment.
Bai Jianjia sat up in bed, all sleepiness instantly gone.
She scrolled down to the comments, and the most popular one already had over fifty thousand likes: “Commercial marriage confirmed. The staging is way too obvious [eating melon]”
Thousands of replies followed underneath, saying all sorts of things: “What are you sour about upstairs? They are a talented man and a gorgeous woman, when is it your turn to object?” “Gu Yuzhou actually knows how to smile? This is the first time I’ve seen him smile in all the years I’ve followed him.” “The Bai family heiress’s aura is truly stunning, isn’t that pearl-gray evening gown a C-brand haute couture?” “Is it only me who noticed President Gu’s hands? That finger arc when draping the coat, ah, I’m going to die of swooning.” “Equal social standing and a powerful alliance, stop worrying on their behalf, some people.” “Wait, doesn’t anyone else think they actually match pretty well?”
Sliding her finger across the screen, Bai Jianjia looked on somewhat dazed.
Some malicious speculations didn’t surprise her, and she even found them somewhat amusing—these people, separated by a screen, dared to assert the essence of a relationship based purely on a few photos.
Her bedroom door was gently knocked on, and Lin Shuying walked in. Seeing her daughter staring blankly at the phone, she asked gently, “Have you seen it?”
“Mm.” Bai Jianjia put down her phone. “They turned out pretty clear.”
Lin Shuying sat down on the edge of the bed, carefully examining her daughter’s expression. “Are you upset?”
“Not upset,” Bai Jianjia shook her head. “Just feel… a bit noisy.”
It really was noisy.
Those overwhelming comments—well-intentioned, malicious, neutral—were like a sudden downpour clattering down into her originally peaceful life.
With the Gu Group owning an entertainment company, coupled with their influence in Jinling, he frequently appeared in the public eye, but she wasn’t a public figure after all…
Yet despite this, her heart was unusually calm, and she even had the leisure to notice the comment about Gu Yuzhou’s hands—well, she thought his hands looked very nice too.
The phone vibrated again.
This time it was a message from Gu Yuzhou, containing only a few brief words: “Call me when you wake up.”
“Give Yuzhou a call back, communicate more if anything comes up, Mom will head out first.”
Watching her mother’s retreating figure, Bai Jianjia thought for a moment and directly dialed his number.
The call was answered almost immediately.
“Awake?” Gu Yuzhou’s voice came through the receiver, lower than usual, with the faint sound of typing keyboards in the background—he must have been in the office.
“Mm. I’ve already seen the trending search.”
The other side fell silent for two seconds. “I’m sorry, it was my oversight. I’ve already had people handle it, it will be taken down soon.”
There was an suppressed emotion in his voice, like… self-blame?
Bai Jianjia held the phone, her fingertips absentmindedly rubbing against the cup rim. “Why apologize? You didn’t arrange for anyone to take pictures.”
“But I should have been more careful,” Gu Yuzhou paused. “I shouldn’t have exposed you to the camera.”
“We went to a concert, not doing anything shady,” her voice was very calm. “It’s no big deal to be photographed.”
Quiet fell on the other end of the line once more for a moment. Bai Jianjia heard the sound of turning pages, followed by his lower, more resolute sentence: “Those comments… don’t look at them.”
She suddenly understood what he cared about.
“Ge-ge Yuzhou,” she softly called out to him, this address having grown much more natural by now. “Are you worried I’ll see those nasty comments?”
Gu Yuzhou didn’t answer right away. After another few seconds passed, he said, “I’ve already asked my assistant to collect evidence, and any malicious slanderous comments will be kept on record. The Gu Group’s legal team can handle it.”
Classic Gu Yuzhou style—rational, efficient, solving problems in the most direct way.
Yet behind this rationality, Bai Jianjia caught a hint of rare tension.
He was angry.
Not because they were photographed secretly, but because those comments might hurt her.
This realization made a certain place in her heart soften gently.
“Actually,” she softened her tone, “I read the comments, and they aren’t all bad.”
“What?”
“One of them said we match quite well,” Bai Jianjia said, laughing lightly first. “The like count is pretty high too.”
The other end of the line went completely quiet. For so long she thought the signal had cut out, before hearing Gu Yuzhou slowly repeat: “Match… quite well?”
“Mhm.” She flipped to that comment and read it out to him: “Gu Yuzhou and Bai Jianjia, a business tycoon and a scholarly heiress, even their profile arcs are inexplicably harmonious. If this were a script, I’d totally chase it.”
After reading it, her face blushed first.
Clearly she was just paraphrasing netizen words, why did it sound so… strange when she said it out loud?
Gu Yuzhou gave a light cough on the other end.
“And this one,” Bai Jianjia continued scrolling down, “Is it only me who noticed President Gu’s hands? That finger arc when draping the coat, ah, I’m going to die of swooning—I agree with this one too.”
This time Gu Yuzhou’s cough was even more obvious.
Bai Jianjia held back her smile, but heard Gu Yuzhou’s voice suddenly drop lower. His tone carried a slight, helpless amusement, as if tripped lightly by something soft, revealing a rare trace of embarrassment: “…Jianjia.”
He paused before speaking again, his voice deeper than before, sounding like he was coaxing someone or admitting defeat: “I’m talking to you about serious business… behave yourself.”
“I am behaving myself.” She walked over to the window, watching the gardener sweeping fallen leaves in the courtyard. “Those malicious comments can’t hurt me; I’ve known since I was little that standing in a certain position means facing certain gazes. But…”
She paused, her voice dropping lower: “But I can choose to only look at the good ones. Those comments saying we match, reading them makes me genuinely happy.”
Silence fell on the other end of the line once more.
Yet this silence was different from before, feeling gently filled with something warm.
After a long while, Gu Yuzhou asked, “Are you still coming to the art center this afternoon?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
“—Alright. I’ll come pick you up.”
Hanging up the phone, Bai Jianjia faced the breeze, the corners of her lips unable to stop lifting. Her smiling face was reflected on the window glass, with shallow dimples beside her cheeks.
On the other side of the city, in the top-floor office of the Gu Group building, Gu Yuzhou put down his phone, his gaze falling upon the public opinion report sent by his assistant on the computer screen.
Those highlighted malicious comments lined up glaringly, but what he thought of at that moment was her brisk tone while reading the comments just now.
—”Match quite well.” —”I agree with this one too.”
He took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and when he raised his eyes again, his gaze landed upon his own hands.
Draping the coat… that action was purely an instinctive reaction; he didn’t even remember where his fingers touched specifically, only that patch of skin shining dazzlingly white against the night.
And the sight of her ear tips blushing.
The assistant knocked and walked in, asking cautiously, “President Gu, the trending search has been taken down, and the evidence for those malicious comments has also been gathered. Does the legal department need to issue a lawyer’s letter?”
Gu Yuzhou put his glasses back on, returning to his usual calm and self-possessed demeanor. “Wait a moment.”
“Wait?” The assistant looked somewhat surprised.
Given President Gu’s style, things were usually handled swiftly and decisively.
“Mm.” Gu Yuzhou looked out the window, morning light spilling across the river surface. “Until I ask for her opinion.”
After the assistant left, the office grew quiet again.
Gu Yuzhou clicked on that trending search on his phone and saved the photo of him “draping the coat.”
In the frame, her profile outline was gentle, his fingers hovered above her collarbone, and the night blurred into indistinct spots of light around them.
Indeed… it was shot quite well.
He removed the watermark and saved the photo into his private album.