Mistakenly Marked – Chapter 11

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“She’s wicked, yet her luck is ridiculously good.”

Chunshu Residence. A private room.

            

The woman seated against the wall wore business attire, silver-rimmed glasses settled on a high, straight nose, arms crossed, spine impeccably vertical.

Seeing who’d come in, she lifted her chin a fraction. “You’re here.”

She pulled out the chair at her side for Xu Jialuo, then held the menu out to hover in front of Zou Wan’s face — in a hand fresh off a scalpel. “Order.”

            

“Aren’t you gracious, Doctor Liang — actually waiting for us to arrive.”

Liang Xiao tapped the menu. “President Zou is treating. Naturally one waits for the money to show up.”

“Fine, fine, fine. Today I’m nothing but a heartless apology-payment machine.”

            

Zou Wan turned to consult the waitress and put in several signature dishes.

Xu Jialuo’s elbow rested against the table, fingertips plucking once at the fabric over her nape.

Liang Xiao’s gaze cut to her, physician-sharp. “Not feeling well?”

            

“Mm. A bit.” Xu Jialuo let her hand drop. “It’s nothing. Probably caught a chill.”

Liang Xiao would have pressed further, but her phone rang. She made a sign, rose, and stepped onto the private room’s balcony to take a patient’s call.

Xu Jialuo took off her dark-gray baseball cap and black face mask, slender fingers sliding into her hair to comb it back.

            

The face they’d just been hiding stood fully revealed.

Bare of makeup, it looked even more coolly limpid.

Her skin was a flawless cold white; brows and lashes dark in exactly the right measure, setting off a pair of eyes — the right one flecked at its outer corner with a star of ink.

            

When her glance turned, it was as if the fierce brushstrokes of an ink-wash painting had abruptly begun to flow, every stroke arresting.

Unlike Zou Wan, whose outfit was throwing a rainbow party in every color at once, she wore a hooded sweatshirt the same gray as her cap, black pants, black boots, the high collar cinched to the middle of that cold-white neck.

Not a shred of interest in drawing attention.

            

And yet, worn on that natural clothes-rack of a figure, it still stood out everywhere, hopelessly.

The waitress who came in to pour tea couldn’t help letting her gaze wander between two beautiful faces with completely different auras.

One of them struck her as vaguely familiar.

            

A moment’s carelessness, a tremor of the wrist — tea splashed over the cup’s rim.

“Ah! I’m so sorry!”

“Uh-oh—” Hot water slid off the edge of the table. Zou Wan had already leapt up ahead of it — and promptly snagged her foot on a table leg.

            

Xu Jialuo stayed in her seat, one hand rising to steady Zou Wan, the other tipping the leaning teapot back into balance; then, smoothly, she relieved the panicked waitress of it and set it down, level and secure, on the table.

A small crisis, defused with zero effort.

Once she’d confirmed Zou Wan hadn’t been scalded, Xu Jialuo took a napkin to the water on the table. “It’s fine.”

            

She did it all naturally, unhurriedly — instinct simply putting everything in order — and noticed not at all the waitress’s steadily reddening face, her brightening eyes.

Zou Wan saw every bit of it. Catching, on the air, the candy-scented pheromones quietly drifting toward Xu Jialuo, she raised a hand to her forehead in silence.

Expressionless, eyes lowered, Xu Jialuo devoted herself to wiping up the spill.

            

When the warm wetness soaked into her fingertips, she stiffened — so slightly it barely registered.

Damp heat spread along the bones of her fingers and, catching her unguarded, opened a direct line to memory.

Soft. Fragile.

            

On her forearm there still seemed to linger, from not long ago, the tangled feel of icy rain threaded through someone’s scalding warmth.

Having discovered that Xu Jialuo showed no reaction whatsoever to her pheromones, the waitress withdrew with a mournful face, reluctant to go.

Only then did Zou Wan remark, with feeling, “You know, some things really are talents you’re born carrying.”

            

Xu Jialuo gave her a look. “Does the business administration curriculum abroad include fortune-telling?”

“Not that one. Entirely self-taught.”

Zou Wan’s eyes bent with her smile as she pitched her voice up to tease: “What was that slogan again — ‘an aloof siren who charms without realizing.’ Baby, those little fan girls of yours truly know how to summarize a person.”

            

The person in question hadn’t a trace of intent to hook anyone.

And yet it was exactly this quality — polite, restrained, remote — that made people feel safe, nothing studied in it, nothing to take offense at; and that, all unawares, was powerfully alluring.

Xu Jialuo raised her eyelids and lobbed the damp napkin over.

            

Zou Wan caught it with a grin and dropped it in the bin. “I saw it scrolling online, that’s all.”

“Also — were you up late writing songs again last night?”

“For a little while.”

            

“A little while? Your face is about one shade off from paper. You’re young, but you can’t keep overdrawing the account like this. Early to bed, early to rise.”

“Am I hearing things?”

Liang Xiao, call finished, pushed the balcony door open. “Listen to the nightclub princess, talking like that. Time truly spares no one.”

            

“Ha?” Zou Wan tossed back her berry-colored curls, tugged the V of her neckline toward Liang Xiao, and lobbed a rapid-fire volley of bedroom eyes, a sliver of honey-toned skin showing. “Sparing anyone or not — care to verify personally, Doctor Liang?”

Liang Xiao didn’t answer. She lifted a hand and took off her glasses.

By way of declaring the sight unwatchable.

            

Zou Wan swiveled to appeal to Xu Jialuo. “Luoluo baby, look at her.”

Xu Jialuo’s expression stayed level. “I can’t look.”

“Why not?”

            

“Because I’ve been blind for a while now.”

“…”

Liang Xiao laughed out loud.

            

Before the two of them could ramp up into another round, Xu Jialuo poured two cups of tea and, with practiced ease, deployed one before each of them — a muzzle apiece.

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As the meal drew toward its end, Xu Jialuo asked, “Staying this time, or leaving again?”

“Not leaving.” Zou Wan answered her while scrolling her phone one-handed. “I’m in the country for a good stretch now—huh? Ahem!”

            

Liang Xiao handed her a napkin. “Jumping at every little thing — as if terrified the food wouldn’t find its way into your windpipe.”

“…No, hang on—” Zou Wan swiped her mouth quickly and turned the screen toward Xu Jialuo. “You and… you’re on the trending searches!”

Xu Jialuo’s chopsticks had just closed on a shrimp. She glanced sideways at the trending phrase under Zou Wan’s fingertip.

            

After the name “Xu Jialuo” came a space — and then another name.

— Bo Suiqing.

Her brow furrowed. The pink-white shrimp dropped back onto the plate.

            

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“Witnessing evil get its comeuppance, live and in person.”

“So grateful to the Nanfeng crew for the kindness of turning her down, truly.”

“Pressured the production into canceling the theme song — must have felt so clever at the time. And now? Who’d have thought the drama your own family’s company poured money into would get buried outright.”

            

“Would genuinely love to interview Big Star Bo about what she’s thinking right now.”

…

Comment after comment scrolled past, refreshing fast.

            

Zou Wan: “It’s something about… the theme song collaboration getting axed. And some drama called 《Nanfeng》 that can’t air anymore.”

“They’re saying the male lead hit someone and fled the scene.”

Phone raised, Zou Wan swiped, opened another trending topic, and held it up before Xu Jialuo and Liang Xiao.

            

“Look at this. Supposedly they paid to bury it the first time, and now someone in the know has blown it wide open again. Because of this, that drama’s finished — it’ll never air.

“And then… plenty of people are saying how satisfying it is. Saying Luoluo baby was lucky she never sold them the song.”

Liang Xiao gave the screen a glance and snorted coldly. “The wheel of feng shui turns.¹“

            

Xu Jialuo’s lashes lowered, listless. She picked the shrimp back up and put it in her mouth.

A few chews, a swallow — and Zhou Fu’s call came through.

Her manager’s voice brimmed with its usual energy. “Jialuo! What are you up to?”

            

“Out for a meal. Just about done.”

Xu Jialuo set down her chopsticks. “Zhou Fu-jie, what’s up?”

“No rush — finish eating first. Then, if it’s convenient, come by the studio, all right?”

            

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“No, seriously, I don’t follow.”

The private room was down to two. Zou Wan frowned in bewilderment. “So from what those comments are saying, that Bo Suiqing… has been giving Luoluo baby trouble all the way up to now?”

“You were abroad the whole time and never once checked the news from home?”

            

“I never read entertainment news. I only downloaded a social app this time to catch up on what I’d missed… So what actually happened?”

“They didn’t see each other for a few years after high school. A few quiet years. Then they crossed paths in the industry again.”

Liang Xiao leaned back against the chair.

            

“Same as before, more or less. Whenever they met, the hostility was naked.

“A while back she caught an opening and sank the theme song Xu Jialuo had already settled with the 《Nanfeng》 crew.”

“How can she be like that?!”

            

Zou Wan knocked her phone against the table.

“It’s been how many years, and she’s still pulling this kind of thing?”

She smacked the table, fuming. “If I’d known it would come to this — back when I first transferred to No. 1 High School and she led the pack bullying Luoluo baby, senior or not, I should’ve given her a proper thrashing before she graduated!”

            

Liang Xiao took Zou Wan’s empty cup, refilled the tea, and set it back. “You never did hit her. But you didn’t exactly sit idle, either.”

“Hid her textbooks. Threw out her things. Even tried to lock her in the equipment room.”

“Hehe…”

            

Zou Wan smiled slyly. “Exactly. Lucky thing she had me around back then to let off some of that steam for her — otherwise wouldn’t Luoluo baby have choked on all of it?”

Then she muttered under her breath, “But it really is uncanny. That Bo Suiqing — she’s wicked, yet her luck is ridiculously good. Every single time, she somehow muddles through safe and sound.”

Liang Xiao didn’t respond. She nudged the dish with the most left in it toward Zou Wan. “Eat some more.”

            

“What for? I’m about to burst. My stomach is completely full.”

“That’s fine. From what I can see, there’s still plenty of room in your head.”

“…”

            

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