Chapter 16

As expected, Bai Muxi had not slept well. She was so sleepy that only after boarding the plane did she dare let out a yawn in peace.

There were quite a lot of fans at the airport seeing her off, and she did not know whether it was her imagination, but she kept feeling that the looks everyone cast at her carried a complicated hesitation, as if they wanted to say something but stopped themselves.

“After all, you and Shen Zhong hung on the hot search for an entire night.” Her manager, Li Mingyu, seemed quite happy. “Although it’s dropped now, the popularity was very real.”

Wasn’t it just? Bai Muxi thought listlessly. Even her parents had seen it.

Last night, after ending the call with Shen Zhong, she had been busy replying to all sorts of messages and had not managed to go to sleep quickly. And so, at a completely unhealthy hour, she had suddenly received messages from the family group chat.

Dad: We saw you on the hot search.

Dad: Why did you ignore Shen Zhong on the show?

Bai Muxi looked at the messages and felt her head ache. Gritting her teeth, she changed the topic.

Bai Muxi: …Why are you still awake, Dad? What time is it already? Stop playing with your phone.

She had originally wanted to add, Otherwise, be careful or Mom will scold you, but very quickly, another message drifted faintly into the group chat.

Mom: We’re watching that variety show of yours together.

The two of you should hurry up and go to sleep!

Bai Muxi was thoroughly blocked. Half giving up, she put down her phone and covered her face, feeling so embarrassed steam was about to come out of her ears.

…To be honest, it was not as if she had never expected this kind of situation at all. After all, her parents had always paid great attention to her entering the entertainment industry. During the competition, they had even voted for her, and they would watch every program she participated in. Not to mention that this time, it was a show she participated in together with Shen Zhong.

In the past, Shen Zhong had stayed over at Bai Muxi’s home every few days. During her entire high school life, she had probably spent more than half her time at Bai Muxi’s house. Even after she later entered a university in the same city, she had still come back often.

Bai Muxi’s parents had liked Shen Zhong from the beginning, practically treating her like their own daughter. Even Shen Zhong choosing the path of acting probably had something to do with the influence of Bai Muxi’s mother, who was a stage actress.

Unlike Shen Zhong’s family, which had strict discipline, Bai Muxi’s family had always been exceptionally relaxed when it came to educating their child. When Bai Muxi said she wanted to study music, they had also been very supportive, especially her father. The somewhat famous pianist had said cheerfully, “Shen Zhong is studying acting, and you’re studying music. Isn’t this almost the same setup as your mother and me?”

Honestly, it was very different.

And Bai Muxi really had no way to tell her smiling, utterly innocent father that when she heard those words, she had produced some associations she should not have had—after all, back then, even her reason for wanting to learn guitar had been for Shen Zhong. It had not been pure at all.

Because of this layer of connection, Bai Muxi had actually had no way to completely cut off news of Shen Zhong while studying abroad. After all, Shen Zhong had always been someone who separated matters very clearly. The fact that Bai Muxi had confessed to her clearly did not affect Shen Zhong’s respect for unauthorized copy Bai Muxi’s parents. During Bai Muxi’s time abroad, she would frequently hear from her parents that Shen Zhong had visited them and things like that. In order not to let them notice anything strange, Bai Muxi could only awkwardly chat along every time, exhausting herself badly each time.

Her parents did not know about what had happened between the two of them, but they could probably still sense that their daughter seemed to be avoiding Shen Zhong. They had not rashly interfered, but they had always been rather worried. Now that they had abruptly seen Bai Muxi and Shen Zhong participating in the same variety show, how could they not be overjoyed? They were probably happily opening a bottle of wine at home under the name of “the children have made up” while drinking and watching.

Great. Now, after seeing a little sign of reconciliation, they dared boldly come to interrogate her. Bai Muxi did not know whether to laugh or cry. She thought, if you two knew the whole story, would you really be asking why I ignored Shen Zhong? Clearly, you should be asking Shen Zhong why she paid attention to me.

Although quite a few days had already passed, indeed… why?

Bai Muxi, who had still been full of worries before falling asleep, had a poor-quality nap on the plane. She forced herself to stay alert and professionally did idol business for the fans who came to pick her up. On the way to collect her luggage, she smiled gently and sunnily. But when she heard a sentence floating from the layers of people behind her—“Baibai, what do you think of Teacher Shen Zhong?”—she was so startled she nearly tripped, frightening the fans too.

Her solo stans quickly glared coldly and squeezed the CP fan who had taken the chance to bring it up to her face toward the back row. This allowed Bai Muxi to escape. When she sat in the car that had come to pick them up, she only felt her spirit was extremely withered.

“…There are already CP fans. That was fast.”

“?!”

Startled again by the sudden human voice beside her, Bai Muxi shrank toward the car door. Only then did she see Qu Yangyang, who had been sitting in the car long before her and seemed rather unhappy.

“What are you hiding for?”

“I didn’t notice you when I got in…” Only then did Bai Muxi [Read on BaiLianTales]relax. She sighed and sat back in her original spot. “Why are you in the car?”

“We’re both going back to the dorm! Didn’t we already say ages ago that we’d be going back in the same car!” Qu Yangyang became even angrier, her perfectly cute face wrinkling up. “One look and I can tell you’re distracted!”

A little bit of related information slowly surfaced in Bai Muxi’s sluggish mind. She patted her forehead and sighed. “…Forgive me. Too much has happened.”

…To be honest, she did not really want to be alone with Qu Yangyang right now. After all, this person seemed to be a toxic solo stan of Shen Zhong. No matter how one thought about the current situation, Qu Yangyang would not have a good expression for her.

Sure enough, Qu Yangyang snorted softly, glared at her with deep bitterness and hatred, and spoke in an extremely fierce tone. “Exactly. I looked just now. You and Shen Zhong already have a CP supertopic. I’ve truly never seen anything grow this fast.”

“…”

Bai Muxi silently closed her eyes and could not help asking, “…What’s the CP name?”

Qu Yangyang fiddled with her phone a few times, then expressionlessly handed it over and said, “Zhong-Xi Jiehe.”

Looking at the supertopic that already had thousands of followers, Bai Muxi was speechless for a while, then dryly squeezed out, “…What a strange name.”

“Your names couldn’t really be combined into anything fancy anyway.” Qu Yangyang took back her phone. The finger she used to poke the screen looked quite forceful. “Our CP name is Xi-Yang. That’s a little better, I guess.”

Bai Muxi actually did not think it was much better, but she [unauthorized copy]did not plan to raise objections over such minor details.

Only now, looking at Qu Yangyang, did Bai Muxi remember that she had originally planned to tell Qu Yangyang during this outside work trip that she and Shen Zhong knew each other. In the end, because of work and then the hot search, she had dragged it out until now without saying anything. Although no matter how one looked at it, this was a terrible time, Bai Muxi still decided not to keep delaying. Somewhat nervously, she licked her lips and opened her mouth.

“…Yangyang, there’s something I want to tell you.”

“Hm?” Her attitude was quite solemn, making Qu Yangyang nervous too. “Wh-what is it? You aren’t really interested in Shen Zhong, are you?”

“What?!”

Bai Muxi was so startled she bounced in the back seat and nearly hit the roof of the car. She hurriedly denied it. “What I wanted to say is, I actually knew Shen Zhong a very long time ago, but I never told you. I’m sorry.”

Qu Yangyang’s expression was extremely blank. Her mouth was half-open as she reacted for a while before slowly saying, “What you mean is… Shen Zhong was like that on the show because she knows you?”

The point she was focusing on was subtly a little off. Bai Muxi hesitantly nodded. “That should… count, I guess.”

“…” Qu Yangyang’s expression changed and changed, finally stopping in an extremely strange state. “When you say you knew each other very early, how early?”

Bai Muxi answered vaguely, “…When I was a teenager.”

Qu Yangyang, currently eighteen, went blank for several seconds. She was clearly calculating the length of time they had known each other in her heart. Then she sucked in a ​stolen content​cold breath and weakly said, “…You and Shen Zhong aren’t real, are you?”

What on earth was this person talking about?!

Rendered speechless by all the true-or-false CP thoughts inside this newly adult girl’s head, Bai Muxi closed her eyes with a headache. Just as she was about to refute it, her phone suddenly rang, startling both people in the car.

Bai Muxi took out her phone and saw that it was Li Mingyu calling. A bad premonition immediately rose in her heart. After making an apologetic gesture to Qu Yangyang, she uneasily answered the call.

Then Bai Muxi was so frightened by the first sentence on the phone that she sat up straight, and with the car’s perfectly timed bump, she successfully hit the top of her head.

“Muxi? Sorry, you’ll still have to come back to the company first in a while. It’s about yesterday’s hot search…”

“…Even I think this sounds bizarre saying it, but Shen Zhong’s manager just brought up that… they want to form a fixed CP with us.”

At seven fifty in the evening, in front of a restaurant that looked rather high-end, Bai Muxi secretly tugged miserably at the tie she had never worn before. She felt as if she was about to be strangled until she could not breathe.

Her small movement was quickly stopped by Li Mingyu. Her manager looked stern. “We’re here to discuss serious business. Don’t ruin the styling!”

…If her eyes were not shining with a strange light when she spoke, she would look even more like a reliable manager. Bai Muxi kept feeling that this person’s entire face was written with the words I want to make this happen.

Also, why did discussing serious business require doing two hours of styling for the artist first—and this kind of formal styling she had never done before? No matter how she thought about it, it felt like they were packaging her up nicely to sell her off.

…They couldn’t have already signed some contract behind her back, right?

Although making such baseless guesses was not very good, facing the situation that had advanced by leaps and bounds in just this short afternoon, Bai Muxi sincerely began to worry.

After receiving that phone call, she had been badly frightened. She had had no energy to care about Qu Yangyang beside her, whose eyes became increasingly inscrutable after hearing the news from Bai Muxi. Once the driver sent Qu Yangyang back to the dorm, he immediately turned around and brought Bai Muxi back to the company.

Bai Muxi rushed all the way to find Li Mingyu. Her first sentence was, “You haven’t agreed yet, right?!”

She could not be blamed for being so vigilant. On the phone, Li Mingyu had clearly been quite moved by the proposal. Fortunately, she still remembered to give her own artist a bit of right to speak, so she had not immediately decided. But after seeing Bai Muxi, she still earnestly explained the benefits this plan would bring them.

“That’s Shen Zhong. Other people couldn’t get this even if they begged for it. And now she’s asking to form a CP with you!”

…That was truly a completely unprofessional subjective impression.

Fortunately, Li Mingyu quickly saw the distrust on Bai Muxi’s face, so she shifted to a more professional angle and explained item by item the benefits of “CPs easily attracting fans at low cost,” “good chemistry being something one could only encounter by chance,” and “if you form a CP with Shen Zhong, you should have a very good chance of being the top one,” and so on—the last one, Bai Muxi had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. It was pure nonsense.

After listening coldly to a whole series of words, Bai Muxi’s attitude still did not waver. “I don’t mean it that way.”

Li Mingyu’s attitude did not waver either. bailiantales.com “I know, but right now, netizens and Shen Zhong seem to mean it very much.”

This conversation felt strangely familiar. There was only an added Shen Zhong in the words.

…Shen Zhong.

To be honest, ever since receiving Li Mingyu’s call, Bai Muxi had probably thought eight hundred times about going to Shen Zhong and asking what was going on. But all eight hundred times, when she opened the chat with Shen Zhong, she gave up. She herself did not know what she was hesitating over. Perhaps it was because she felt awkward.

After all, Shen Zhong had not sent her a message either. Maybe it was only Shen Zhong’s manager making decisions on her own.

Originally, Bai Muxi had thought this quite firmly, so this was also what she told Li Mingyu. Who knew that Li Mingyu would narrow her eyes and say in a tone of since that’s the case, let’s go see: “It just so happens that their side asked us to meet tonight and discuss in detail.”

—And so, after letting the stylist knead her like a doll for a while, Bai Muxi came here.

The agreed time was eight in the evening. They arrived at the entrance ten minutes early. While following the waiter inside, Bai Muxi secretly glanced at her phone. Just like during the day, she still had not received any message from Shen Zhong.

Even now, she still had a floating feeling. Everything that had happened since last night seemed unreal. What she meant was, it was only seeing that tiny bit of footage from the show, so why had the internet reacted so strongly? Even Shen Zhong’s manager—

…This was a decision made by Shen Zhong’s manager, right?

She felt that the spot on her head that she had hit in the [stolen content]car that afternoon was faintly aching again. Bai Muxi watched as her manager pushed open the private room door. The unease in her chest slowly rose to its peak along with the silent turn of the door. Then she saw—

The woman with black hair and snow-white skin lifted her head at the sound and looked toward her. Her cool gaze softened abruptly the moment she saw Bai Muxi, as if gathering a fine, fragmented light in her eyes, bright as moonlight and moving.

Just like every time in the past, Shen Zhong called to her gently.

“Muxi, you’re here.”