Jia He walked closer to the car, only then hearing the sound of someone playing the guitar and singing inside. The voice was quite good, with two or three female voices harmonizing. She easily recognized Qiao Qiao’s off-key voice and was just feeling smug, when Yi Wenze, walking ahead of her, suddenly stopped and turned around. She nearly bumped into him in surprise.
“Thank you,” Yi Wenze finally spoke, “the hot pot was very tasty.”
“Oh, that,” Jia He smiled slightly, “Don’t mention it.”
She looked at Yi Wenze, hesitated for a moment, but still didn’t say anything comforting. The not-too-close, not-too-distant distance was already good enough to be able to eat at the same table. His feelings and life were still better left for her to secretly snark about when reading entertainment news.
“Next song, next song,” Qiao Qiao’s voice came from the car. “Who drew the 2?”
It seemed Cheng Hao admitted it was him, while also defending that he really was tone deaf, which elicited a torrent of scolding from Qiao Qiao, saying with herself as the benchmark here, who still dared to say they were tone deaf…
Yi Wenze leaned against the back of the car. “You go in first. I’ll get in the car in a bit.”
Jia He understood what he meant. She got in the car first while the playing cards were tossed aside and empty beer cans were strewn everywhere. Everyone seemed to be in high spirits, completely unconcerned about having to get up early tomorrow morning to start working. Right then, Cheng Hao was already forced by Qiao Qiao to clear his throat. Qiao Qiao hugged her guitar and casually strummed a couple notes. “What do you want to sing?”
Cheng Hao sighed deeply as he rubbed his forehead, resigning himself to his fate. “I’m old. I’ll just pick a song that left a deep impression on me. Chun Ni [Spring Mud].”
Qiao Qiao looked at him askance. “Isn’t that song written about him and his wife’s love? And now they’ve gotten divorced. How unlucky.” Despite her words, she still dutifully helped him find the key. Cheng Hao’s voice actually had a lot of potential. The familiar words and melody of “Chun Ni” flowed out. “Endless words fluttering past my ears, you and I not responding in silence. I hold your hand, yet you cry until your eyes turn red…”
She still remembered the online gossip that had recorded the story of how this musically-gifted man met his wife. It was very dream-like. Love at first sight on a talent show program, decades of romance… In the end, it still ended with exposed extramarital affairs and faded away ingloriously. For some reason, this made her think of Yi Wenze again.
When the song was nearing the end, Yi Wenze finally got on the car and accepted the beer handed to him by Xiao Ou. The lively atmosphere inside did not diminish due to his appearance. On the contrary, it became even more high-spirited.
Qiao Qiao slyly glanced at Jia He and handed her guitar over to Yi Wenze, smiling as she said, “Teacher Yi, you’re going to be our finale.” As soon as she spoke, everyone else cleared a space. Yi Wenze smiled and did not decline. He accepted the guitar, tried a few notes, then slowly started playing a low, gloomy song.
Sitting down next to Qiao Qiao, Jia He very quickly recognized it as “Don’t Cry.”
An old song.
The hoarse, deep crooning easily brought to mind many things. Everyone tacitly thought about his sensational marriage from before and quieted down on their own accord. This song had become famous because of the guitarist’s powerful accompaniment and the lead singer’s vocals. And the Yi Wenze before them now easily blended those two elements together as he leaned against the seat, hugging the guitar, with a demeanor as if no one else was around while his fingers moved up and down the guitar strings.
Jia He looked at his side profile, at the way he held the guitar, and the fingers that plucked the strings. A song like this, with this type of lyrics, really could make one think of many things.
She did not have a clear memory of how they returned to the hotel afterwards or how Qiao Qiao used every means possible to interrogate what they did under the car. After washing up, she immediately threw herself onto the bed and randomly surfed the Internet on her phone. Before she knew it, she had habitually gone onto Yi Wenze’s Weibo page.
He had updated with a photo, one of a line of footprints in the snowy night.
Her heart thumped loudly in her ears. She tossed her phone aside, got off the bed to fill up the electric kettle, then brought it back to turn it on.
The kettle immediately started making noise, agitating her even more.
Staring at the mirror on the little bar counter, she inexplicably started paying attention to her own face. Hmm, there were tiny little brown spots under her eyes now. She should start using skin care products… Just as she was thinking this, her phone rang with an incoming text message alert.
She picked it up. It was a text from Gu Yu: After five years, is it still not enough for you to forgive me?
…
The electric kettle switch flipped itself off with a snap. The water had finished boiling.
She was so startled she immediately reached for the kettle, but burned her hand in the process. Hissing in pain with her phone in hand, she ran into the bathroom to rinse her hand under cold water, and then… her iPhone very smoothly got a bath and turned off with a black screen. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as she looked at her phone. Before she even had a chance to reply to the text and clarify matters, her phone was already wrecked like this.
In the year or two after they broke up, she had thought about what kind of dismissive tone she would use to reject Gu Yu if he came looking for her again, and then give him a hard slap. But as time passed, looking back now, she only felt she had been silly. She merely hoped that he would never appear again to remind her of her foolishness back then and how worthless it was.
Because she had received too big of a shock tonight, she burrowed into her blanket early and fell asleep. She didn’t know what time it was when she was woken up by the sound of urgent knocking on her door. Still groggy, she crawled out of bed and shuffled to open the door. Qiao Qiao barged in. “Screenwriter-dàrén, why is your phone turned off?”
“It broke.” Jia He squinted at her, not having adjusted to being woken up yet.
“It broke at just the right time,” Qiao Qiao said as she shook her phone to show Jia He. “Do you know what time it is now? After twelve.”
“We didn’t have anything scheduled today anyway. I was thinking I may as well go back to Shanghai. If there are any script revisions needed, I can handle them over email.” As Jia He rambled on, she turned and crawled back into bed to warm herself up.
She may as well go back. No surprises nor frights that way.
Qiao Qiao looked at her in bewilderment. “You can still go back to Shanghai in this kind of situation?”
Jia He blankly stared back. “What situation?”
Qiao Qiao clambered onto the bed and looked down at her. “Let me tell you something. You have to stay calm, perfectly calm.”
Jia He was startled by her. “What’s with trying to scare someone this early in the morning? Just say it if you’ve got something to say…”
“Something happened this morning. Your idol got sent to the hospital,” Qiao Qiao completely broke it down for her. Obviously that was useless. Jia He immediately bolted up from under the blankets. “What happened? Is it serious?”
“This morning, the horse suddenly went mad. He got thrown off and trampled by the horse twice. His leg is fractured,” Qiao Qiao put it in simple, clear terms. “He’s at the Dongyang Center Hospital now. I’ve been busy since this morning and am finally taking a break now. I tried calling you but your phone was off. I was so annoyed I nearly died! Do you want to go or not? Answer quickly!”
Jia He nodded, but she also shook her head in confusion. “I won’t be of any use if I go. It’ll be awkward.”
“Why won’t you go?” Qiao Qiao looked at her in bafflement. “Have you lost your mind? Even someone like Liao Jing will go. What’s wrong with you going? Just go as a friend to visit. Don’t tell me you’re not willing!”
The final consensus was still to go. Qiao Qiao did not give her any opportunity to refute.
She had collaborated many times with this filming crew but had never gone to visit injured actors on set. The main reason was she couldn’t even remember most of those actors’ names and had no connection with them whatsoever, so she didn’t want to go and add to the chaos. Now, standing outside the entrance to the hospital, she still hesitated for a very long time before stepping into the lobby that reeked of disinfectant. Xiao Ou, not far away, immediately waved her over when he saw her. “Screenwriter, over here.”
By the time they reached the floor with the hospital rooms, there were already quite a few people gathered outside. Ah Qing was crouched in a corner calling someone, her eyes red like she didn’t know what she was saying. Xiao Ou patted Jia He and told her he was going back down to wait for some people before running off again.
She retreated to the stairwell entrance and started hesitating again, not moving for a long time.
After a while, a bunch of reporters suddenly charged up the stairs. Someone also walked out of one of the hospital rooms. Wearing sunglasses and a face mask, with head lowered, Yi Wenze was escorted out by his assistant. They could barely squeeze through the reporters crowded around them as they headed for the elevators. When Zai Zai got to the elevator hall, she finally removed her mask and smiled at the reporters, “Wenze’s injury is not serious. Thank you everyone for your concern.”
This one sentence was like a rock creating thousands of ripples, immediately eliciting even more clamorous questions. “May I ask if you came today specifically to visit him?” “Is there any indication you two want to get back together?” “We heard that the drama you’re filming this time was also arranged by Yi Wenze. Does this count as an invitation to reconcile?”…
Tian Chu turned silent again and left with her assistant into the elevator.
It was as if the reporters had agreed beforehand to split into two groups, one half chasing after Tian Chu and the other half standing guard in the stairwell on this floor, softly exchanging amongst themselves any information they had obtained. Seeing so many reporters crowding the doorway, Jia He figured she shouldn’t get involved. She may as well go back downstairs for a bit and come back up after things died down. Since the elevator was blocked off, she simply walked back down the stairs. But when she was turning the corner on the second floor, she saw Tian Chu.
“Jia He.” It seemed Tian Chu was waiting for her. “Do you have time to talk for a couple minutes?”
Jia He walked over. “Sure.”
Tian Chu’s assistant stood some distance away at the stairwell entrance to intentionally give them space. Tian Chu took out her phone and showed it to Jia He. “A friend sent this to me a few days ago.”
Jia He looked at her blankly, not understanding. Tian Chu pointed at the screen with her index finger, signaling Jia He to take a look herself. The opened web page showed an entertainment news article, with a photo visible of Yi Wenze starting a car seen through the white sedan’s side window. His right hand was casually draped over the steering wheel while the person in the passenger seat… was herself.
“Not only have I seen this. Manager Mai has seen it, too,” Tian Chu smiled brightly at her, eyes glinting harmlessly. “So, I believe Manager Mai has already shown this to Wenze. I don’t mean anything else by this,” Tian Chu put her phone away. “Judging from your expression, looks like Wenze didn’t tell you about this. I believe that, in this industry, you also know it’s not very appropriate for photos like these to appear at this time.”
A bolt from the blue…
That was the only thought that popped into Jia He’s mind.
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