He typed the name “Officer Bunny,” deleted it, and typed it again. After doing this twice, he typed it a third time and opened her profile.
Her latest post was from fifty-two minutes ago. In the photo, she looked straight at the camera. One hand pressed against herself in a way that suggested she was very aware of exactly what the camera was catching, a gesture that landed somewhere between self-conscious and entirely deliberate. Her expression was confident but subtle. He had touched that exact spot on her body earlier, and he remembered precisely how it felt.
He stopped on a photo of her eating ice cream. A generous scoop was balanced on the tip of her nose. She had apparently decided this was insufficient and had scooped a small portion onto her fingertip, which she was in the process of licking it off. Her eyes looked soft and happy and a little unfocused with the straightforward pleasure of it.
The comments below were not something he was going to repeat internally.
[Still hungry, little officer? Big brother has more for you right here.]
[You’re so sweet, baby, eat less ice cream or your tummy will hurt. Here, I’ll take care of what’s on your fingers for you.]
[My nose is bleeding. She is so sexy, so pretty. I want to be that ice cream.]
This was not an unusual story in the industry. No connections, no capital, no established name to leverage, and Which brought him to a question he had not intended to ask himself.
How long had Rong Shu been doing this kind of work? Taking bed scene stand-in roles, spending hours in close physical contact with male actors she had just met, and then walking away at the end of the shoot with professional composure intact. Was tonight typical for her?
He put the phone down. The bathroom door closed behind him. The sounds that followed were muffled by the dense, humid air and the rush of the shower.
He emerged with a white towel wrapped at his waist, his fingers carrying a faint, residual tremor. Whether by accident or something less accidental that he was not prepared to examine, his thumb came down on the follow button for Officer Bunny’s account.
He understood immediately what this would cost him. Rong Shu had never given him her personal information, which meant if anyone connected the account to the stand-in currently on his production, the headlines would be spectacular. His follow list was monitored constantly. By morning the entertainment accounts would be running some variation of: Shen Baizhu dissatisfied on set, seeks out bed stand-in for private…
He reached to undo it, but a message notification popped up.
Shen Baizhu filled in what she had left unwritten without any difficulty.
Direct messages on this platform required mutual follows to send. Which meant Rong Shu had been following his account already, quietly, before any of tonight had happened. In the middle of his concern, something small and unexpectedly warm registered in his chest.
Come to 1602. Don’t panic.
He set the phone down and moved toward his luggage to find something to put on. Before he reached it, the doorbell rang.
The timing was too short for it to be her. He assumed it was his assistant, who had almost certainly already noticed the follow and was arriving in a state of emergency. Since it was just his assistant, Shen Baizhu did not worry about being half-dressed and opened the door.
A girl in a bathrobe stood in the hallway.
She was breathing heavily evidently she had been running as if her life was on line. She was breathing hard, visibly, the kind that came from running an actual distance at actual speed. Her skin was flushed with exertion, a healthy, unstudied pink. Her eyes were bright with the particular brightness that sat just adjacent to tears. Her hair was still wet, droplets clinging to individual strands, each one tracing its own path, down to the tip of her nose, across the line of her collarbone, disappearing into the soft pale skin below.
Everything about her was wet.
She was still processing the fact that the door had opened. He was still processing the fact that she was standing there in a bathrobe looking like that.
Then she grabbed his arm with both hands and held on.
t/n: the green tea is officially at play. 😏 let’s see what will happen when our “stoic and a principled” male lead meets the master.