The Villainous Film Empress (9)
A little rich girl dedicated to saving the world X A paranoid, dark, and vengeful film empress
After the three-day holiday, Zhao Qingyu returned to the film set.
Everyone knew that Zhao Qingyu had blown up. Her name had appeared in dozens of Weibo trending topics, countless people had begun to praise her acting, and her fanbase was visibly growing by hundreds of thousands each day.
Zhao Qingyu’s beauty was distinctive, and with acting skills like hers before even turning twenty-two, one could imagine the brilliant future she would have if she continued firmly down this path.
And Zhao Qingyu herself was extremely low-key and pragmatic. Aside from cooperating with the film crew’s promotional activities, she remained stationed on set at all other times.
As for Song Xuyi, her life was equally busy. After the First Day of the New Year, she buried herself in the old doctor’s apothecary, which was followed by the hectic coursework of the new semester…
For the next few months, until Song Xuyi’s midterm exams, the two didn’t meet again. Song Xuyi only saw Zhao Qingyu on trending topics and in her Super Topic.
Every time she saw Zhao Qingyu on screen, Song Xuyi felt a sense of unreality, because they were in contact almost every day.
Unlike Song Xuyi’s previous one-sided check-ins, Zhao Qingyu would occasionally reply to her after New Year’s Eve. It was just that their schedules didn’t line up. Often, Song Xuyi would send a message in the morning, and Zhao Qingyu wouldn’t reply until the middle of the night, sometimes even delaying until the next day. What Song Xuyi found even stranger was that she and Zhao Qingyu had actually continued chatting like this, off and on…
Zhao Qingyu’s replies gave Song Xuyi a sliver of baseless confidence, making her feel that it might still be possible to try and resolve Zhao Qingyu’s inner turmoil. So, Song Xuyi started thinking of ways to send Zhao Qingyu chicken soup for the soul1 or various philosophical short stories, hoping to enlighten her.
Whenever she did this, Zhao Qingyu’s replies would become particularly brief.
But just when Song Xuyi felt that ‘Zhao Qingyu’s heart is like a needle in the deep sea’ and wanted to find an excuse to give up on her daily check-ins, Zhao Qingyu would say something like, “Kindness is a beautiful virtue,” or show Song Xuyi a donation record. This would reignite Song Xuyi’s delusional thought that ‘the villain isn’t completely hopeless, maybe I should try a little harder.’
After this happened time and again, Song Xuyi slowly realized: this detestable villain Zhao Qingyu seemed to be stringing her along for fun!
It wasn’t that she was sad—she had long been prepared for failure—but Song Xuyi still felt a sense of defeat. Zhao Qingyu was truly too difficult to get close to. She had probably sensed long ago that Song Xuyi wanted her to give up her hatred, which was why she was toying with her like this.
Feeling defeated and with midterm exams approaching, Song Xuyi simply stopped her daily check-ins on her own and threw herself wholeheartedly into studying.
The temperature in May had already begun to rise. Song Xuyi was in a coastal city, where it was already warm enough to wear short sleeves.
In a few days, Song Xuyi would be turning nineteen. Mother Song really couldn’t stand her daughter’s lack of interest in dressing up and had forcibly stuffed her wardrobe with many new clothes. Today, she was wearing a long white dress, her black hair falling to her waist. With her pretty face, she attracted countless gazes as she walked across campus.
This exam wasn’t difficult. Song Xuyi and Huang Juanjuan were the first to leave the examination hall. Huang Juanjuan had to go to the restroom and wheedled Song Xuyi into holding her books for her. Song Xuyi watched with a smile as Huang Juanjuan rushed into the restroom in a frantic hurry. Then, out of the blue, someone tapped her on the shoulder—
“Xuyi.”
The person was wearing a baggy T-shirt that obscured their figure, a duck-tongue cap2, and a face mask, carrying a shopping bag. Song Xuyi could only see a pair of smiling eyes below the brim of the cap.
However, based on the red mole at the corner of her eye and her voice, Song Xuyi recognized her instantly—
Zhao Qingyu… Is she insane?
She was at the height of her popularity right now, with countless fans. Even several of her own roommates were her fangirls. How dare she swagger into a university campus so brazenly?!
Song Xuyi was so startled that she quickly grabbed Zhao Qingyu, intending to drag her off campus—
But although Zhao Qingyu looked thin, Song Xuyi couldn’t budge her at all…
“I want to try your school’s lemon chicken feet,” Zhao Qingyu’s voice came, muffled from under the mask. Her gaze fell on their clasped hands, and her eyes curved into crescents again. “Ever since you mentioned them a few times, I’ve been wanting to come and have a taste…”
Song Xuyi froze, not expecting this to be the reason for Zhao Qingyu’s risky visit.
But what she expected even less was that Zhao Qingyu, as if afraid she would refuse, immediately grabbed her arm and shook it, calling out coaxingly, “Xuyi…”
Meeting Zhao Qingyu’s deliberately pitiful eyes, Song Xuyi’s heart melted, and she was utterly defeated.
She knew Zhao Qingyu had probably seen Huang Juanjuan acting cute with her and was now copying the move, but… there was probably no one in the world who could resist Zhao Qingyu’s coaxing…
Song Xuyi gritted her teeth. Seeing her classmates starting to come out of the exam hall in twos and threes, she handed Huang Juanjuan’s books to another classmate and, making a swift decision, pulled Zhao Qingyu by the hand and hurried into the dormitory building.
Only after locking the dormitory room door behind them did Song Xuyi let out a breath of relief. Gnashing her teeth, she called the campus errand service to order a portion of lemon chicken feet and some other snacks. Then, she turned to glare menacingly at Zhao Qingyu. “Qingyu-jie, you…”
“I was wrong. I shouldn’t have lied to you!”
However, before Song Xuyi could finish her sentence, the female villain opposite her readily apologized. “Actually, I wanted to see you more…”
“You haven’t been paying attention to me lately, which made me think you were planning to wall-climb,”3 Zhao Qingyu said, taking off her mask. Her voice sounded completely serious, if one ignored the smile in her eyes. “I figured it was time for me to solidify my fanbase.4 So after we wrapped up filming last night, I rushed over through the night…”
“Xuyi, are you happy to see me?”
…
Happy?
Song Xuyi’s lips twitched into a stiff smile. She had never met someone as shameless as Zhao Qingyu!
What kind of shenanigans was she trying to pull now?
Song Xuyi watched Zhao Qingyu warily, but Zhao Qingyu just smiled at her. Song Xuyi didn’t understand why she was smiling so happily at her, but her face couldn’t help but turn red anyway.
In that instant, Song Xuyi truly hated her “face dog”5 tendencies.
“I didn’t wall-climb.” Song Xuyi was the first to back down and surrender, trying to get the cunning female villain to let her off the hook. However, Zhao Qingyu didn’t seem satisfied and continued to stare at her with a smile, offering a ‘kind’ reminder, “Your roommates will be back soon, right?”
Song Xuyi closed her eyes, her face flushing a deep red.
“I promise I didn’t wall-climb. I’ll definitely send you WeChat messages on time from now on.”
Song Xuyi ceded territory and paid indemnities,6 feeling as if uttering those few words had taken all the strength she had in her life.
“Then I’ll have to trouble Xuyi!” Having received a satisfactory answer, Zhao Qingyu’s smiling voice finally came. “I’m so happy.”
Song Xuyi let out a relieved, bitter smile, once again cursing the version of herself who made mistakes while drunk a hundred times over in her mind.
She and the System in her head were in agreement that Zhao Qingyu had another motive for coming, and they remained on high alert. However, after waiting for more than ten minutes, until the delivery guy brought the food, Zhao Qingyu made no further moves.
She just sat quietly on a stool in Song Xuyi’s dorm room, looking around as if curious. Occasionally, her eyes would meet Song Xuyi’s, and she would beam, her eyes curving in a way that showed extreme delight. This smile was different from her usual gentle, fake smile. Song Xuyi couldn’t describe the feeling, but whenever she met Zhao Qingyu’s gaze, she felt a tingling numbness in her chest…
It was the System that hit the nail on the head. “How did Zhao Qingyu get more and more beautiful after joining the entertainment industry? She’s like one of those fox spirits7 from the books that seduce people…”
Song Xuyi deeply agreed.
The fox spirit Zhao Qingyu stayed for less than half an hour in total.
After the delivery guy arrived, Zhao Qingyu didn’t cause any of the trouble Song Xuyi had imagined. She patted Song Xuyi’s head, retracting her hand before Song Xuyi could react, and went downstairs with the lemon chicken feet, a smile on her face. She actually left the campus…
Song Xuyi and the System looked at each other in dismay. “Don’t tell me she made a special trip here… just to solidify her fanbase?”
Song Xuyi had always been rather open-minded. If she couldn’t figure something out, she wouldn’t dwell on it. She threw herself fully into studying for her afternoon exam. It wasn’t until after the exam was over that Song Xuyi saw the WeChat message Zhao Qingyu had sent her.
“Do you like the gift?”
Gift?
…Zhao Qingyu seemed to have left a bag on her desk in the dorm room.
It was only then that Song Xuyi remembered that her birthday was in a few days.
Could it be that Zhao Qingyu came all this way just to give her a gift?
Song Xuyi subconsciously denied this possibility, but her heart still couldn’t help but beat a couple of times faster…
She returned to her dorm room, found the bag, and opened the package. Inside the box was an exquisite small cat doll: amber eyes, pointed ears, a fluffy tail, and a remarkably lifelike little expression.
Song Xuyi had to admit, the small cat doll looked incredibly cute. She was just about to reply to Zhao Qingyu with “I like it,” when she suddenly noticed something and her eyes widened in shock.
Around the little cat’s neck hung a delicate little card. On the card, two words were written in an elegant script:
—“like you~”
?!
Just like you?
The author has something to say:
Everyone knows the other meaning of “like you,” hehe.
LP: Re-translated on December 12, 2023
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