When she woke up, Mu Xuefei found her face feeling a bit dry. Raising a hand to touch it, she discovered there were actually tear tracks left behind. What did she dream about last night? She thought about it for a moment, but still couldn’t remember what her dream was actually about.
She gave up on trying to remember, looked around, and saw that the sky had already grown dark, with the surroundings lit up instead by various artificial lights. Pulling back the curtains, Mu Xuefei stood by the window with her mind blank. The neon lights reflected against her side profile, making her look somewhat lonely.
She only snapped back to reality when she felt her phone vibrate.
“Feifei, I have things to take care of tonight and won’t be coming back. — By Yun Yongjun” She stared at those few simple words for a long time, as if some profound meaning was hidden within the sentence.
Hesitating for a moment, she quickly typed out a text: “Yongjun, who is that person?” However, after editing it, she never ended up sending it. In the end, she slowly deleted it character by character.
After thinking it over, she opened her contacts and called Director Mo instead.
“Hello?”
Hearing the voice from the other end, Mu Xuefei voiced her request. “Director Mo, I have an urgent matter coming up in a few days. Is it possible to move my scenes up and finish filming them all together?”
“Alright, sorry for the trouble, I’ll get everything ready.” Hanging up the phone, she raised a hand to cover her eyes, tilting her head up at a forty-degree angle toward the starlit sky, only to find her neck still catching the warm tears sliding down.
“It’s all fake,” Mu Xuefei muttered to herself.
It was two days later by the time Yun Yongjun finally shook off her Eldest Sister’s endless entanglement. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to call Feifei, but every time she dialed, her Eldest Sister would appear by her side like a ghost.
“You make your phone call, you can just ignore me.”
“I promise I won’t eavesdrop, I swear on four fingers!”
Looking at Yun Xi, who was holding up three fingers and swearing to the heavens, Yun Yongjun silently put her phone away and composed a text message to send out. Unsurprisingly, this text met the exact same fate as the ones from the previous few days and went unanswered.
Yun Yongjun sighed silently, though she couldn’t figure out why Feifei had suddenly started acting up. Was it because she hadn’t accompanied her for the past two days? Thinking about it, that possibility was quite high.
“What’s the matter? Is your little girlfriend angry with you now?” Yun Xi leaned against the wall, expertly lighting a cigarette with a nonchalant slouch.
“She’s probably mad.” Yun Yongjun snatched the cigarette straight out of the other woman’s hand and quickly crushed the ember. “Don’t smoke around me.”
“You’re going to police my smoking too?” Yun Xi exhaled a puff of smoke before complaining, “Maybe your little girlfriend is ignoring you precisely because you control her too much.”
“Nobody said you were mute.” Thinking of Feifei’s abnormal expression lately, Yun Yongjun felt even more irritated. Glancing back at her troublemaking Eldest Sister, the corners of her mouth twitched into a smile.
Seeing Yun Yongjun look like that made Yun Xi feel a sudden chill down her spine. “Er Ya, I haven’t offended you lately, have I?”
“What do you think?” Yun Yongjun shot her a meaningful glance before leisurely strolling back toward her own room.
“Hey, wait, Er Ya, I…” Bam. Yun Xi hurried to follow her, but the moment she tried to speak, the door slammed right in her face.
Confirming that Yun Xi had no way of getting in, Yun Yongjun quickly pulled out her phone, found a contact she rarely used, and hastily drafted a text message: “My sister is with me, Room 8805, Hotel, City H.”
“Thanks.”
Looking at the text that was replied to in practically a second, the corners of Yun Yongjun’s mouth curved upward. If Yun Xi hadn’t been clinging to her so tightly, she wouldn’t have resorted to selling her sister’s whereabouts. After thinking for a moment, she added one more line: “Yun Xi’s flight is at 10 AM tomorrow.”
“I’m on my way.”
With the guarantee secured, Yun Yongjun went to sleep looking quite pleased, though she ended up dreaming of some rather unpleasant things while she slept.
“Sob, sob, sob—”
Watching the person crouched in the corner crying heartbrokenly, Yun Yongjun felt a sharp, continuous pain in her chest. She wanted to step forward to comfort her, but her feet felt as though they were glued tightly to the floor by glue, unable to budge. All she could do was spread her arms and say, “Feifei, don’t cry, come here.”
No matter what she said, the other’s crying didn’t subside; if anything, it grew louder and louder.
Finally, when she managed to get the other person to stop, she watched as she raised her head, looked at her expressionlessly, and said, “I hate Yongjun the most.”
“I hate Yongjun the most.”
“I hate Yongjun the most.”
“I hate Yongjun the most.”
Mu Xuefei’s resentful words echoed endlessly in Yun Yongjun’s ears, dragging her heart down into the darkest abyss and filling her with boundless desolation.
“Gasp—”
Yun Yongjun sat up abruptly in bed, still feeling a lingering sense of dread from the dream she had just experienced. Raising a hand to massage her temples and recalling the scene from the dream, she quickly kicked off the blanket to wash up. She needed to go find Feifei and get things cleared up right now.
“Click—” As she opened her bedroom door, she happened to catch sight of her Eldest Sister being scooped up and held tightly in someone’s arms.
“Er Ya, you traitor! Mmph, mmph—” Yun Xi barely started speaking before the tall man holding her clapped a hand over her mouth, leaving her to glare resentfully at Yun Yongjun.
“Please take good care of my sister.” Yun Yongjun offered a polite bow. “My eldest sister has a difficult personality, so I hope you can bear with her.”
“I will naturally take good care of the person I love.” The tall man paused, pulled out a handkerchief, and pressed it over Yun Xi’s face. Yun Xi’s struggling movements instantly went limp.
“If you have time, you can bring Eldest Sister home for dinner sometime in the next week or two. My mother will probably be very happy to see you.” Yun Yongjun let her gaze sweep over that handkerchief, silently shedding a tiny tear for her Eldest Sister in her heart before adding, “My mother likes jade ornaments.”
“Thank you for the guidance, Second Sister. I will bring Xi’er over to pay a visit very soon.”
Yun Yongjun nodded and watched the two of them leave. Just as she was about to close the hotel door and go look for Feifei, her phone rang.
“Are you a friend of the phone’s owner? The owner of this phone is currently drunk and refuses to leave, so we had no choice but to contact an acquaintance. Everyone else we called wouldn’t pick up.”
“Send me the address, I’m heading over right now.”
Drunk?
Thinking of the chaotic and mixed crowd at bars, Yun Yongjun frowned deeply and hurried toward the location provided in the message.
About half an hour later.
Looking up to confirm it was the bar mentioned by the caller, Yun Yongjun quickly stepped inside. Almost the moment she walked through the doors, she spotted Feifei slumped over the bar counter drinking, with a bartender trying to persuade her to stop.
Noticing that Feifei was about to toss back yet another drink, she rushed forward to snatch the glass away and gestured for the bartender to clear it.
“Don’t take my drink, I want to drink.” Deprived of her glass, Mu Xuefei instantly glared discontentedly at Yun Yongjun and started trying to grab another glass from the bartender.
“Be good, Feifei, stop making a fuss.” Yun Yongjun pulled Mu Xuefei directly into her arms, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. Once the other’s struggling subsided, she released her slightly, half-bended down to meet her gaze, and murmured, “Feifei is the best.”
Yet, no sooner had those words left her mouth than Mu Xuefei suddenly burst into tears. She wasn’t throwing a tantrum or making a scene; instead, she just stared up at her quietly, shedding tears in complete silence, which inexplicably pierced Yun Yongjun’s heart with ache and tenderness.
“Why is Feifei crying again?” Yun Yongjun wiped the tears from the corners of the other’s eyes with a heart full of distress, only to find that the tears kept flowing endlessly like an opened floodgate.
Dazedly staring at Yun Yongjun, Mu Xuefei’s alcohol-fogged mind was an utter blur. The gentler the other person was, the more aggrieved she felt, and the words simply spilled out naturally.
“Junjun is a big bad villain.”
Huh? Yun Yongjun snapped her head up in surprise, catching the deep grievance in Mu Xuefei’s eyes. Before she could react, she heard the other person speak again.
“But I still love Junjun the most.”
Yun Yongjun’s pupils contracted slightly. She felt as though an invisible hand had gripped her heart, while fireworks bloomed across her mind, stirring up a flurry of inexplicable emotions. Even though it was just a fleeting moment, it felt as though an eternity had passed, with those words echoing endlessly in her ears:
“But I still love Junjun the most.”
“But I still love Junjun the most.”
“But I still love Junjun the most.”