Best Actress A and Her White Moonlight - Chapter 5

In a fleeting instant, all sorts of chaotic information flashed through Gu Chenxing’s mind.

This included, but was not limited to: her biology teacher’s lectures on how Alphas lose their sanity and turn into beasts during pheromone riots; social news reports of Alphas committing crimes of passion or slaughtering pedestrians; and the infamous Omega disappearance cases…

Gu Chenxing couldn’t stop herself from shivering. The look she cast toward Lin Wanchun became increasingly terrified. Whether it was psychological or for some other reason, in her eyes, Lin Wanchun’s aura was becoming more and more like the twisted, “refined scum” villains seen in TV dramas.

“What… what are you talking about?” Gu Chenxing struggled to maintain a facade of calm, but her voice stumbled the moment she opened her mouth, her trembling tone betraying her fear completely.

“Oh?” Lin Wanchun tilted her head, smiling gently, which only made the light swirling in her eyes look more sinister. “Isn’t it a bit late to play dumb now?”

Gu Chenxing staggered backward, her legs feeling like jelly. If it weren’t for the fact that her eyes were so dry she couldn’t squeeze out a single tear, she probably would have been bawling by now.

Gu Chenxing watched helplessly as Lin Wanchun approached at an unhurried pace. She wanted to run, but her back was already against the wall; there was no escape.

“Don’t… don’t come any closer! Do you know that the Law on the Protection of Minors stipulates—”

Stipulates what? Gu Chenxing found herself drawing a total blank.

“Stipulates that for the same crime, criminals who target minors receive double the punishment.” Lin Wanchun leisurely finished the legal clause Gu Chenxing had forgotten, her lips still curved in a nonchalant, shallow smile. “Do you think I’m afraid?”

Seeing the distance between herself and Lin Wanchun closing, Gu Chenxing wished she could merge into the wall. She stared at the woman before her, wanting to cry but having no tears, and pleaded in a low voice:

“Is this a question of whether you’re afraid? It’s just not worth it! Look at me—I have no money, no looks, and even if I run away, my parents won’t come looking for me. It’s so not worth it for you to go to jail for someone like me…”

As she spoke, a wave of sorrow hit her, and she suddenly felt her life was utterly meaningless. Steeling her heart, she closed her eyes tight and stretched out her neck. “Forget it, just do it. Living as someone like me isn’t interesting anyway…”

“Heh.” Watching Gu Chenxing’s “martyr” act, Lin Wanchun broke character and let out a snort. She reached out and lightly patted Gu Chenxing’s cheek. “First of all, I’m not interested in little brats who are still wet behind the ears.”

“Secondly,”

Gu Chenxing slowly opened her eyes during the long-drawn-out pause, catching Lin Wanchun’s teasing gaze. “If I wanted to do anything to you, with your level of vigilance, you’d have died eight hundred times over. Realizing I might be a ‘bad person’ only now? Your reflex arc is a bit too long, don’t you think?”

This was blatant toying!

Lin Wanchun ignored the indignation in Gu Chenxing’s eyes and took two steps back to open up space between them. “Alright, stay here. I’m going out for a bit.”

Gu Chenxing was furious but didn’t dare speak up, so she could only nod submissively.

Lin Wanchun walked to the door but suddenly turned around. Gu Chenxing, who was still plastered to the wall, tensed up again like a startled rabbit.

Lin Wanchun sneered inwardly but didn’t push her luck with more mockery.

“I’ve left the keys here.” Lin Wanchun pulled a set of keys from her pocket and placed them on the shoe cabinet by the door, then pointed behind Gu Chenxing. “That way is the room I left for you. There’s a phone in the nightstand with my number saved. If anything happens, call me.”

Without waiting for a reaction, she turned and walked out.

As the security door closed, Lin Wanchun caught a glimpse of Gu Chenxing’s eyes—pretending to be calm but actually full of unease. Her heart eventually softened, and her voice turned gentle: “Get a good night’s sleep. When you wake up tomorrow, it’ll be a beautiful day again.”

Before the sentence fully landed, the door clicked shut.

Gu Chenxing stared blankly at the grayish-brown security door, unable to describe the feeling in her heart.

Those words… just two days ago, she had said them to Lin Wanchun. At the time, she thought Lin Wanchun was a pitiful soul who had suffered a sudden, major life tragedy. She never expected that only one day later, the roles of comforter and comforted would be reversed.

Once the footsteps outside vanished completely, Gu Chenxing could no longer support her weakened body. She slid down the wall and slumped onto the floor.

She glanced at her watch—midnight. At this hour, what could Lin Wanchun possibly be going out to do?

Gu Chenxing wasn’t stupid; she knew this was likely just a white lie told by Lin Wanchun to make her feel at ease staying here.

When even her own flesh-and-blood parents didn’t want her, she didn’t dare fully trust a “best friend” from seventeen years in the future.

The light in the far left unit on the sixth floor finally went out at 12:30 AM. Lin Wanchun stamped her frozen, stiff feet and bent over to get into her car.

The light going out didn’t mean the person was asleep. She guessed that, given Gu Chenxing’s current personality, she was probably shedding “little pearls” under the covers.

At that thought, the corners of Lin Wanchun’s stiff lips twitched. She wondered if Gu Chenxing would be up all night.

[Since you care so much, why not go up and keep her company? Oh~ wait, she’s afraid of you, isn’t she?]

As Lin Wanchun turned on the car’s heater, the System began its sarcastic commentary. She remained unmoved, instead opening her phone to find a fresh milk advertisement she had seen during the day.

[Lin Wanchun…]

“You seem to be in a hurry?” Lin Wanchun took a sip of cold water and asked out of the blue.

[What?]

Lin Wanchun finished ordering tomorrow morning’s milk. Setting her phone down, she stared at her own cold eyes in the rearview mirror and added slowly: “You’re always rushing me, telling me to hurry up and kill the ‘me’ of this timeline.”

“What’s in it for you?”

[…]

The System didn’t answer, and Lin Wanchun didn’t care. To her, it didn’t matter if the System had a conspiracy or what price this “gift of fate” would eventually demand.

If the System hadn’t been pestering her relentlessly, she wouldn’t have bothered wasting words on it.

She started the car but didn’t let it off the hook. “Aren’t you a self-proclaimed Time Administrator? How are you so idle?”

[I’m not idle—]

“No wonder,” Lin Wanchun cut it off, talking to herself. “No wonder an error occurred that let someone from 3220 return to 3203.”

[?!]

Lin Wanchun curled her lips into her most brilliant and sincere smile of the last two days. “But I should thank you. Otherwise, how would I have the chance to return to the past and change the destiny of both myself and Gu Chenxing?”

The System was silent for a long time. Just as Lin Wanchun thought it had finally shut up and prepared to focus on driving, it asked in a bewildered tone:

[Are you… insulting me?]

What else would I be doing?

Lin Wanchun raised an eyebrow, somewhat surprised. She thought her sarcasm was at maximum capacity, yet this thing calling itself a System couldn’t even understand it?

“You misheard,” she denied with a straight face. “I’m thanking you.”

“If not for you, how could I have returned to seventeen years ago and met the sixteen-year-old Gu Chenxing?”

[Really?]

The System still felt something was off, but Lin Wanchun had stopped paying it any attention. It could only go back to quietly studying its own rudimentary linguistic database.

Gu Chenxing didn’t know when she had finally fallen asleep last night. When she woke up, it was already noon.

Luckily it was Saturday, otherwise she couldn’t imagine what her homeroom teacher’s face would look like upon discovering she’d skipped half a day of school.

Both her eyes were swollen as if they’d been punched twice, and her face was pitifully pale. In this state, if she went to a haunted house to play a ghost, she probably wouldn’t even need makeup.

Gu Chenxing sighed gloomily and fished the phone Lin Wanchun had mentioned out of the nightstand. The moment she turned it on, she saw a message sent at 8:00 AM:

[The fresh milk I ordered has arrived; remember to drink it when you wake up. There are ice packs in the kitchen freezer for your eyes.]

Stung by some specific emotion in those words, Gu Chenxing felt her nose twitch. Her eyes began to moisten again.

Thinking about how Lin Wanchun had to leave in the middle of the night to find another place to stay because of her, Gu Chenxing felt a wave of guilt. If not for Lin Wanchun, she wouldn’t have known which overpass to sleep under last night.

She lit up the screen again. After much hesitating, deleting, and editing, she finally typed out a sentence:

[I’m awake. Where are you? Can we talk?]

After hitting send, she put the phone in her pocket and prepared to go outside to get the milk. Just then, the phone in her pocket buzzed twice.

Lin Wanchun had replied.

This realization made her inexplicably happy, instantly dispelling much of the hollow feeling she’d felt upon waking.

Lin Wanchun: [Open the door.]

Gu Chenxing’s eyes widened. She quickly trotted out of the bedroom and opened the front door.

There stood Lin Wanchun. One hand held a transparent takeout bag, the other held a bottle of milk taken from the delivery box.

Recalling the message from the morning, Gu Chenxing suddenly felt embarrassed, muttering an explanation: “I just woke up…”

“Mhm.” Lin Wanchun didn’t say much, giving a soft hum of acknowledgement. “Hungry?”

Gu Chenxing nodded. Having slept until noon, how could she not be hungry?

Seeing Gu Chenxing standing motionless, blocking the doorway, Lin Wanchun reminded her gently: “Shall we go in and eat before we talk? Or do you want to talk standing right here?”

“Oh, right!” Gu Chenxing snapped out of her daze and stepped aside to make way, her ears hidden under her hair turning hot.

Once Lin Wanchun was inside, Gu Chenxing obediently closed the door and followed her. Her eyes, however, weren’t behaving, repeatedly scanning the woman.

She remembered Lin Wanchun wearing an ankle-length wool coat yesterday, but today she wore a light gray tweed jacket.

It seemed that after Lin Wanchun left last night, she wasn’t actually homeless. At this thought, the guilt in Gu Chenxing’s heart lessened considerably.

While Gu Chenxing was spacing out, Lin Wanchun had already opened the white plastic bag and removed three dishes and a soup from a silver thermal bag.

She broke apart a pair of disposable chopsticks and placed them in front of Gu Chenxing. “Eat first. We’ll talk after.”

Faced with this, Gu Chenxing could only swallow her bellyful of words once more.

The silent meal made the atmosphere in the dining room feel exceptionally quiet and awkward. Lin Wanchun didn’t have much of an appetite; her subtle gaze occasionally landed on Gu Chenxing’s face.

A sixteen-year-old girl couldn’t hide anything. Her unhappiness and worries were written all over her face, easy to read at a single glance.