CH 52

The news of Three Sounds Studio’s signing was announced, and as expected, they didn’t choose Xiang Wan.

Xiang Wan was prepared for this so didn’t feel too disappointed, but Yu Zhou was a little worried about her. So, she bought some groceries and cooked a meal for Xiang Wan.

Ms. Zhao hadn’t been gone for long, but the house was so quiet it was as if they had just cleared out 300 ducks.

They both sat at the dining table, feeling like even the sound of eating was too loud.

After lunch, Yu Zhou started to scroll Weibo. Xiang Wan had gained a few roles and was accumulating fans because of her beauty. But there were still some negative comments in her comment section, some of which were even sent privately.

Xiang Wan wasn’t good at telling between positive and negative comments, so Yu Zhou helped her by blocking those users in advance.

Blocking users wasn’t a good solution, though. Some people took screenshots of Xiang Wan’s Weibo page with the message “The number of users blocked by this blogger is greater than 3 this month. Please be careful in your comments,” and laughed at her for having a glass heart.

Xiang Wan asked Yu Zhou, “What does ‘glass heart’ mean?”

Yu Zhou said, “It means your heart is like glass.”

“That’s a compliment,” Xiang Wan said with a smile. She knew glass was crystal clear, pure and beautiful.

“No, it’s not,” Yu Zhou suddenly felt sad as she watched Xiang Wan smile. “It means you’re fragile and can’t handle criticism. Like glass, your heart can easily break.”

Xiang Wan thought for a moment before shaking her head, “I’ve never been heartbroken before.”

It was true. She had never been hurt before, had never experienced an emotional breakdown and had never done anything wrong. But some people thought she had. Or rather, some people thought that the girl who posted a sleepwear photo online, wearing clothes allegedly bought by Su Chang, looking innocent but actually has a wicked look in their eyes, had done these things.

Xiang Wan didn’t like to post on Weibo, so she, like Su Chang, had lived a thousand lives in other people’s imaginations and rumors. But unlike Su Chang, she wasn’t living as well as Su Chang was.

But perhaps only Yu Zhou knew that she was still fighting to survive.

Yu Zhou put down her phone before saying, “The short story I wrote when I first signed with Changpei has been published. It’s doing well so I can make some money from it. Heehee, I’m thinking of starting a long novel after this.”

“The script that your club asked me to write, I’ve finished the first draft. Can you take a look and tell me if it’s the kind of style they like?”

“For example, I usually put introductions in the second or third act, while others prefer to put them at the beginning.”

“Okay,” Wan stood up to oblige.

Yu Zhou headed down, realizing she had forgotten something, when she headed up again, Xiang Wan was still standing there.

She swayed for a moment as her face turned pale.

Yu Zhou’s heart skipped a beat as she asked, “What… what’s wrong with you?”

Xiang Wan frowned, holding her cramping stomach as she took a step forward. Yu Zhou looked down, seeing a big red stain soaked into her pajamas, coming on strong.

Xiang Wan was now having her period with an unusually heavy amount. Yu Zhou had taught her to wear sanitary shorts, but she changed three in one hour.

Seeing her face growing paler and paler, Yu Zhou was afraid she couldn’t bear it. She told Xiang Wan to lie down on the bed and rummaged through the cabinets to find brown sugar, making brown sugar water for her.

Suddenly, she remembered when she had made ginger soup before. At that time, she thought Xiang Wan would go back, but unconsciously it had been a few months and the weather had turned colder.

There was no big rainstorm like that ever again and Xiang Wan’s menstrual cycle proved that she had adapted to the modern ebb and flow. Now that she was a modern person through and through.

This fact was more poignant than the notice she had received two days ago to collect Xiang Wan’s residence permit.

Yu Zhou brought the brown sugar water to the second bedroom. Xiang Wan sat on the bed, leaning against the headboard while replying to messages on her phone.

She typed slowly as she used handwriting like an old lady. But she had heard that many people didn’t like to listen to voice messages, so she tried to communicate with the members of her club through text as much as possible.

Some people thought she was arrogant since she took a long time to reply, so she learned to use voice to text.

Yu Zhou put the brown sugar water on the bedside table before saying, “It’s still hot, drink it later. Don’t play with your phone, rest well. I’m afraid you will lose too much blood and faint later.”

“If you feel dizzy, be sure to tell me, we’ll go to the hospital right away to stop the bleeding.”

“It’s been a few months since you last had your period, since it suddenly comes, the flow will definitely be a bit heavy. But don’t worry, our sanitary pads now have strong water absorption and won’t make a mess.”

She talked nonsense, trying to make Xiang Wang feel more relaxed.

Xiang Wan smiled at her, looking very weak from her illness. Her face was flat, like a white sheet of paper. Her nose was particularly attractive, delicate yet not overly upturned, a beautiful Eastern woman’s nose.

No, she should say that Xiang Wan’s eyes, nose, mouth and face shape were all very attractive, none of them were subpar.

Now she was wearing a newly changed milk-white pajama, with silky black hair hanging on both sides, which made her small, peaceful and gentle face stand out.

She said, “Don’t be busy, rest for a while and chat with me.”

Her slightly hoarse voice was charming, with a hint of sweetness seeping out in the coquettish second half of her sentence.

Yu Zhou sat down next to Xiang Wan as she smoothed out her blanket. “Congratulations, Xiang Wan, you’ve officially become an adult now that you’ve started menstruating for the first time while living here. You’ve also settled down and received your household registration, so I’ll buy you a small cake tomorrow to celebrate your birthday. How does that sound?”

Xiang Wan loved sweets, so her eyes lit up with joy when she heard this.

But she didn’t cheer or anything, just grinned and said, “It’s a tough decision.”

“What’s tough?” Yu Zhou asked.

“I can’t decide if I want matcha or red bean flavor. I need to think about it all night.”

Yu Zhou chuckled. “Do you always struggle with ordering desserts?”

“Not at all,” Xiang Wan replied with a smile. “A birthday celebration should be special.”

She rarely used such an archaic tone now, so it seemed like something from a historical drama, complete with a natural echo.

Yu Zhou couldn’t quite understand, but she didn’t want to dampen the girl’s spirits, so she just said, “Oh, I see.”

Xiang Wan then said, “I have something to tell you too.”

“Please say,” Yu Zhou replied, mimicking Xiang Wan’s tone.

“I’ve been cast as the lead in a commercial audio drama. It’s a short series, each episode is only five minutes and the themes are standalone stories, so there’s no set number of episodes.”

“The genre is no romance and it’s a female protagonist adventure. Besides me, each episode will have a different co-star.”

“Okay,” Yu Zhou listened intently.

“I’m not sure when this drama will end. It will depend on the audience’s response. If the feedback is good, more episodes will be produced. The crew originally told me that they would pay me according to the actual number of episodes when everything is finished, but they haven’t specified when that would be and we haven’t signed any contract yet.”

“I thought that I needed a stable income, so I spoke to the crew and suggested that I receive a share of the weekly earnings from the audio drama. My share is not significant, but I am investing my voice as an asset instead of money, so this would also save the crew from some of the initial investment costs.”

“Wow,” Yu Zhou was stunned. “Where’d you come up with all that?”

“I read some books and thought it over myself. I wasn’t sure if it would work out, but…”

She looked at Yu Zhou with curved eyebrows and eyes and said softly, “The crew agreed.”

“Wow!” Yu Zhou couldn’t help but be impressed. Xiang Wan was truly amazing, far beyond what she herself could achieve.

She wanted to hug Xiang Wan and spin her around in circles, to declare that Xiang Wan was the best in the universe. Her sense of achievement shot through the ceiling again as her inner chūnibyō soul had been ignited.

But Xiang Wan just looked at her and smiled without any further action. After a moment, she reached out and took Yu Zhou’s hand, which was dangling off the edge of the bed, and placed it on the blanket in front of her. She then lightly touched her fingertips and played with her fingers in a semi-grip motion.

Then she scratched the palm of her hand.

“What are you doing?” Yu Zhou felt itchy and wanted to withdraw her hand.

Xiangwan said softly, “You told me, if I ever feel like kissing you, I can switch to a handshake.”

Yu Zhou was stunned. She quickly calculated in her mind. Did that mean that by pulling her hand gently like that, Xiang Wan had a slight desire to kiss her just now?

She suddenly felt embarrassed and didn’t move her hand, unsure of what expression to use while looking at Xiang Wan.

Then the innocent girl pursed her lips and smiled while staring at her. She held Yu Zhou’s finger and gently rotated her wrist, then squeezed it tightly.

She held it tightly with great force, then let go.

Xiang Wan still looked at her and, using the hand that just held hers, brushed the hair behind her ear.

Yu Zhou felt like her ears and eyes were blocked as she couldn’t speak.

“It’s not what I meant when I said that to you earlier,” Yu Zhou stuttered.

“What did you mean?” Xiang Wan asked gently.

In fact, there were a few times when she wanted to hold hands like this, such as one morning when she saw Yu Zhou walking from the bathroom to the living room while tying up her hair. The morning light shone through the cotton fabric of her clothes as the beautiful lines of her back were faintly visible in the halo.

But at that time, she didn’t have the opportunity to reach out.

Yu Zhou looked at Xiang Wan with her lips seriously pursed. She thought about whether it was called the “birdling complex” or the “imprint behavior”. The theory was that newborn birds would treat the first being they saw as their closest companion, following and liking them, but this was not necessarily love.

She wasn’t sure about this theory and she needed to look it up.

There was also something more important: she felt that if Xiang Wan could indeed make a sustainable income from voice acting, then it was necessary for her to move out.

Meet more people, and then clear up some misconceptions.