Mistakenly Marked – Chapter 22
by Little PandaMarking
‘…I am willing.’
Her sweat-damp cheek pressed against the phone screen, a moist haze blooming across the glass.
Xu Jialuo breathed in ragged confusion, unable to shape a single word — all she could do was press her ear to the phone’s speaker.
“…”
After a few seconds of silence, a voice finally came through.
—”Hello?”
Very soft. Close as a whisper at her ear, and distant as the far edge of the sky.
Falling into Xu Jialuo’s ears, it was a straw thrown to the drowning.
“…I’ve… differentiated… into an Alpha…”
Her finger bones tightened; the sound Xu Jialuo produced barely held together.
She fought to organize the words, but they still came out in tangles. “Think… I’m in heat… help me…
“The door code… 15… 59…”
The line went quiet again. She could faintly hear ambient noise on the other end — but no reply.
Not knowing why her friend wasn’t answering, Xu Jialuo forced out a cry: “…Liang Xiao…”
At the event venue.
Having packed up with her colleagues and on her way out, Liang Xiao passed by a cluster of people.
She stopped mid-stride and turned toward the crowd.
…Just now — had she somehow heard someone call her name?
From roughly two meters away, Liang Xiao’s gaze met Bo Suiqing’s.
The actress stood at the crowd’s edge, still in the pink mermaid gown from the shoot.
Porcelain-white skin; curls cascading like a waterfall.
Sunlight scattered across the scale-patterned crystal dust at the skirt’s hem — dazzlingly beautiful, like a mermaid princess swum up from the deep sea.
Phone held to her ear with one hand, her eyes interlacing with Liang Xiao’s, the pale silver, snow-like pupils flickering faintly, Bo Suiqing said:
“Let’s discuss it in person.”
The tone was airy — and utterly cold.
Then, expression chill and remote, she hung up.
It looked like whoever was on the other end was just some partner or vendor come knocking.
Then… she’d probably misheard.
Doubt dismissed, Liang Xiao nodded a greeting to Bo Suiqing, gathered her things, and got in the car to leave.
Assistant Xiao Nan, still standing nearby, blinked, a little puzzled.
She’d caught it too — Bo Suiqing’s words sounded like arranging some collaboration. But in that case, the other party should have contacted her manager, not called straight through to Bo Suiqing, who was famously protective of her privacy.
So she asked quietly: “Suiqing-jiejie, whose call was th—”
The question had barely begun when the woman beside her spun around. “Have the driver take you home.”
The words came so fast they were nearly unintelligible; the figure was already gone, sweeping out like a gust of wind.
“What’s the matter with Miss Bo? Where’s she rushing off to? Won’t she join us for dinner?”
Having just watched the star of the show abruptly exit, the brand representative who’d proposed the group dinner turned to the assistant left standing there.
“Suiqing-jiejie…” Xiao Nan explained, “something came up at home suddenly.”
“Home?” The brand rep’s faintly displeased expression transformed at once, and they asked with a smile, “Don’t tell me that was President Bo calling just now?”
Xiao Nan agreed offhandedly: “…Yes.”
“Ah, then it must be something urgent. Well then — let’s start without her; there’ll be another chance to dine with Miss Bo. And please pass my regards to President Bo.”
“…Okay.”
Even as she answered, the silver-gray Maybach was already pulling onto the road ahead, flying off like an arrow loosed from the bow.
It was as if a mass of magma had been embedded into the back of her neck.
From that single point it spread — down her whole spine, then through her entire body.
Hot to the point of scorching pain.
And the pain kept deepening.
Xu Jialuo had never imagined that a so-called heat could hurt like this.
The lean muscle she’d honed through constant exercise had slipped entirely beyond her control — not an ounce of strength would answer.
The suppressant she’d brought back from the hospital sat on the living room table. And she couldn’t even get up.
The phone slipped from her fingers to the pillow. In a daze, Xu Jialuo thought: from Nanshan to her apartment, you had to cross nearly half the city.
Liang Xiao would take about half an hour to get here.
Half an hour…
Brow knotted tight, Xu Jialuo curled in on herself, one hand clapped over the burning nape of her neck.
Then, faintly, she caught a scent of wine.
It didn’t come from the air. It came from inside her.
Her body had become some sealed, unbreakable vessel, locking that aroma in with no release.
Clearer and clearer. Stronger and stronger.
The phone screen was still lit.
The auto-lock was set to ten minutes. Which meant not even ten minutes had passed.
In her entire life, Xu Jialuo had never known ten minutes to be so long.
The wine inside her seemed to turn liquid, pouring out from her nape, drowning her inch by inch, dragging her down into a bottomless whirlpool.
Until a sound came from the living room — the door opening.
Xu Jialuo’s lashes trembled. Through the haze of her dissolving consciousness, she heard footsteps drawing near.
Someone turned the bedroom’s door handle — but the lock stuck, and for a moment it wouldn’t give.
Xu Jialuo struggled up, trying to reach the door herself, but the smallest movement collapsed her back onto the mattress. All she could do was force her arm out—
The wine-scent swallowed her whole.
Beside her pillow, the phone screen dimmed slowly, then went dark.
The instant before suffocation—
Bang—!
The door was kicked open.
After a rush of frantic footsteps, Xu Jialuo’s strengthless, falling hand was caught in someone else’s.
…
…So cool.
…It felt so good.
As if the magma-scorched heat had finally met a thread of sweet rain.
Eyes closed, Xu Jialuo turned her palm on pure instinct, tightened her shaking fingers, and clasped those slim, cool fingertips inside it.
A soft hiss sounded by her ear — the hand’s owner, perhaps, hurt by her grip.
But there was no struggle at all. No attempt to pull away.
Xu Jialuo was far past caring.
She only bowed her head, unthinking, and pressed her burning face into that ice-cool palm.
The kicked-in bedroom door hung half open.
Light entered through the living room’s floor-to-ceiling windows and spilled inward through the half-open door.
Across the curtained room it pooled, a stretch of hazy glow.
In that faint light, Bo Suiqing looked at the figure curled in the bedding.
Satin-black hair lay scattered across the pale gray sheets, coiling like spilled ink.
And the face amid all that ink was no longer cool and white. A dawn-cloud red spread from her cheek down her neck, over her shoulder, sinking beneath the edge of what her sleepwear still covered.
It was an Xu Jialuo Bo Suiqing had never seen.
No longer a distant, coolly delineated ink-wash landscape1 that could only be viewed from afar.
But a colored-ink painting, dyed stroke by stroke in lush red — dragged down into the mortal world and soaked through with it.
With Xu Jialuo dragging her hand against that burning palm, Bo Suiqing’s breath went tight. She held perfectly still.
As if afraid to disturb the rare and precious scroll before her.
For one brief moment, something unexpected: relief.
Relief that it was she who had come — that the one seeing all of this was her.
Steadying her breathing, Bo Suiqing held her bent posture and gently cradled Xu Jialuo’s fever-hot face.
What she couldn’t control: the Snow-Chilled Cherry scent spilled out almost the instant she touched her.
Eagerly it wound around the woman before her, wrapping her in.
A crisp sweetness laced with the breath of crushed snow filled the room.
…It smelled so good.
…It smelled familiar.
In an instant, last night in the car — those fragmentary memories fused; the scent in her memory overlapped with the one in the present.
Xu Jialuo abruptly released Bo Suiqing’s reddened fingers.
The next second, she climbed up along Bo Suiqing’s arm and seized her shoulders.
Powerful finger bones clamped down, staining that porcelain skin with red marks.
Bo Suiqing flinched, one hand braced against the edge of the bed so Xu Jialuo’s pull wouldn’t drag her down.
She’d just started to push herself up when her pupils contracted and her whole body went rigid.
As if several bottles of red wine had shattered in the room at once — a dense, heady wine-scent laced with violet flooded the air.
“Mm!”
The strength drained from her hand all at once. Bo Suiqing’s upper body folded onto the mattress, trembling faintly all over.
This time it was no longer faint, no longer a blur of scent.
At last she was feeling it, real and unmistakable: Xu Jialuo’s pheromones.
It wasn’t that she’d never wondered what Xu Jialuo’s pheromones would smell like, if she had any.
She’d simply never imagined that someone like clarified moonlight, cool and self-possessed, would carry pheromones like this—
Intoxicating. Mellow. Fervent to the point of danger.
Her strength gone entirely, Bo Suiqing sagged downward under Xu Jialuo’s grip on her shoulders, knees hitting the floor, the crystal beading of her skirt grinding into them with a raw ache. She couldn’t get up.
Bo Suiqing dropped her head and bit down on her lower lip, out of habit, meaning to endure the pain.
But a hand came reaching over.
A long, powerful arm slid beneath her arm and around the small of her back, lifting and gathering her up with one limb alone.
The ache in her knees vanished; her back sank into the soft, sleek bedding. Then the woman who’d carried her to the bed flipped over her abruptly, knees parting to straddle her waist.
Bo Suiqing’s eyes flew wide, staring up at Xu Jialuo as she slowly bent over her.
The room was dim. Sleek, straight black hair fell past the side of Xu Jialuo’s face. Her face was flushed a deep, warm red, the color spreading all the way to the small pale mole at the corner of her eye.
And yet her eyes were still cold.
Beneath wet lashes, those pitch-dark eyes seemed unable to take in light at all — hollow, fixed rigidly on Bo Suiqing beneath her.
One hand braced on the mattress; the other pressed down on Bo Suiqing’s shoulder.
Head lowered, Xu Jialuo spoke — that superb voice gone a bewitching rasp, and yet cold to the extreme: “You… aren’t Liang Xiao.”
Long fingers groped, found the mask on Bo Suiqing’s face, tore it off, and dropped it on the floor.
Her unfocused gaze stayed fixed on Bo Suiqing, seeing nothing clearly — so Xu Jialuo slid her fingers down from Bo Suiqing’s shoulder, feeling out the length of her hair.
“…And not… Miss Zhang, either.”
“…”
Found out.
Bo Suiqing bit her lip hard. The body just stirred into surging heat felt as if a gash had been torn open in it, and a cold wind came pouring in.
Xu Jialuo bent lower — close enough that their noses nearly touched.
As if straining to study Bo Suiqing’s face, to see who she really was.
But her vision was a blur, and a mind one breath from snapping couldn’t think at all.
All she could do was grind out the question: “…Who… are you?”
“…”
Bo Suiqing didn’t answer. Her teeth sank into the flesh of her lip, nearly grinding it to blood.
Everyone says those pretty things.
Things like: be sincere with people; sincerity is a beautiful virtue.
But it had never been like that—
…
“Do you know what this is, Suisui?”
The dead-drunk woman held up a wineglass in one hand and thrust a stack of documents before her face. “Company share transfer agreements. A full fifty percent…”
The woman’s hand shook, halos of chandelier light bouncing off the pale paper. “Your little mama2 — it was for this worthless trash that she lied to me for ten years.”
“If only she’d said so earlier, said it sooner…”
The woman lowered her head, a smile of breathtaking, soul-seizing cruelty cutting across that incomparably beautiful face. “I’d have sent her to her death that much sooner.”
“Well. Now I’ve finally gotten my wish.”
The papers spun up into the air. The woman hauled her to her feet. “Come on — glasses up! Celebrate with me. Smile. Let me see it!”
Ice-cold wine was poured down her throat; on her face there was no telling spilled wine from tears.
Only, through violent coughing, she heard the words the woman sobbed out.
“Burn this into your memory, Suisui. You will be strong. You will endure. You will let no one see a single crack in you, catch hold of a single soft place.”
The fingers clamped on her arm tightened and tightened, as if to twist the bone to splinters.
The voice at her ear came word by word — like weeping blood, like an incantation.
“Because in this world, the cheapest, most laughable things there are — are sincerity, and true hearts.”
“Whoever lays theirs out first dies without a whole corpse.”
…
Bo Suiqing slowly closed her eyes.
In her mind rose the name that had appeared, over and over, down a string of call records.
So — the fiancée.
If she used that name, then… it could go on, couldn’t it.
“I’m—”
Before the “Lin” could leave Bo Suiqing’s lips, Xu Jialuo’s head dropped fully into the crook of her shoulder.
“Can… can you…” The voice was muffled and shaking, almost inaudible.
Bo Suiqing stilled, then opened her eyes. “…What?”
Alpha pheromones, with no idea how to govern themselves, rolled over everything — they had long since stripped away any possibility of resistance.
They stoked heat, triggered shivers; physiological tears brimmed to the rims of her eyes.
But nothing more came.
Xu Jialuo’s voice was raw and quaking, but she insisted on finishing: “Do you…”
She was an Alpha.
A suppressor. A predator. The absolute one on top.
And now she bowed her head into Bo Suiqing’s shoulder — like a prayer, like a plea, like the cherished murmur of a lover.
In a hoarse voice, Xu Jialuo asked: “Are you… willing?”
Bo Suiqing froze, stunned.
After the question, no answer came right away.
Xu Jialuo couldn’t see the face beneath her; her chaos of a mind couldn’t read the other’s state.
All she could do was keep her head bowed, breathing in the pheromones that poured off the other woman, seduction sharpened to its very point.
Nails digging deep into her palm, brow furrowed, Xu Jialuo forcibly crushed the urge — alien to her, near-terrifying — forcing herself to stop inside the pain. To go no further.
Seconds later, the ear pressed to the other’s cheek was wetted — by tears, cool-warm against it.
…She was crying.
Which meant: unwilling.
Before the last fragile thread of reason snapped clean through, Xu Jialuo twisted her brow and bore down — the scorch and the ache that seemed to have seeped into the seams of her bones.
She pressed her hand to the mattress; sweat bloomed beneath it in an instant, a dark patch spreading.
She struggled to push herself up — and then stopped short—
A slender arm, trembling faintly, wound around her from the side.
Light, but unyielding, it tightened little by little around her back.
“…I’m willing.”
The woman beneath her said it again, low: “…I am willing.”
Catching the Omega’s permission in those few broken words, Xu Jialuo dropped her head. Following instinct, she turned the face beneath her to one side and bent close to the nape.
“Mm…!”
Bo Suiqing’s eyes flew wide; the tears surged out almost at once.
Pleasure at its utmost — and pain, their exact equals.
The halfway-converted3 Alpha was utterly without method.
No instinct for soothing; no gradual approach.
Sharp tiger teeth pierced the gland’s thin skin; the drawing and the injecting of pheromones were both frenzied.
When she’d wrenched her wrist not long ago, Bo Suiqing hadn’t stayed silent because it didn’t hurt.
On the contrary — she was especially afraid of pain.
She simply believed she ought to endure it. She was used to enduring.
…But…
Right now, she couldn’t endure it at all.
The sounds in her throat spilled past all restraint, breaking at her lips into a quivering cry.
It really hurt…
Or perhaps it wasn’t pain at all — only a fear she had never tasted: an Omega’s primal dread at the invasion of a foreign pheromone.
In all the memory she had, Bo Suiqing had never cried like this.
From choking sobs, to heaving ones.
Until she couldn’t even spare breath to gasp.
Until Xu Jialuo abruptly stopped. Shaking finger bones gathered up her tear-soaked face and turned it straight.
“…Does it hurt?”
Her chin was caught in that still-fever-hot grip of a hand. Eyes wet, lashes damp, Bo Suiqing looked up through the dim light at Xu Jialuo’s tightly knitted brow.
She shook her head.
And so the newly minted Alpha, still unsatisfied, lowered her head again.
Bo Suiqing closed her eyes, fought to steady her ragged breathing, bit her lip again, and swallowed the sobs.
She waited for the next round of tearing.
The pain she imagined never came.
Callused fingertips pressed and rolled against her lower lip, coaxing her teeth to release it.
An arm wrapped around her lower back, pressing her strengthless, trembling body into that scorching embrace.
Then a kiss, carrying the scent of wine, printed itself gently on her lips.
“Mm…”
Bo Suiqing arched off the bed, a whimper escaping her.
Through the base of those pale silver eyes, a slow tide of radiant, dreamlike peach-blossom pink4.
The pain vanished as if by magic.
The discomfort of a first marking, the dread of the unknown — all of it gone.
The wine-scent brimming in the air, thickening by the moment, no longer felt like an attack.
Slow and soft, it enfolded the Omega, leaving only a lingering warmth — tender, and luring her down into it.
“But is there any good in becoming an Alpha?”
“Hm? The good?” Under the green shade of a tree, Jiang Yi sat on a wooden bench, chin propped on her hand, and seemed to give it careful thought.
“If Ah Wen becomes an Alpha, then Ah Wen can mark her very own Omega.”
“Marking… what’s the use of that?”
“Oh, the use is enormous.” Jiang Yi smiled gently, a palm-leaf fan swaying in one hand. “Once the marking is complete, your Omega will carry Ah Wen’s scent — become an Omega who belongs to Ah Wen and no one else.”
After a long silence, the girl with the child-soft face frowned and asked: “Isn’t that terribly unfair to the Omega?”
“If an Omega isn’t willing, but an Alpha marks her anyway — what happens to that Omega?”
“Ah… our Ah Wen is such a good child.”
Laughing, Jiang Yi gathered Xu Jialuo into her arms and pinched that solemn little face. “So before any marking, Ah Wen will ask first, won’t she? Ask properly — and if the Omega says she’s willing, then it’s allowed.”
…
Xu Jialuo opened her eyes.
She stared quietly at the ceiling.
Last night, it seemed, she’d had… a very different kind of dream.
A long breath eased out of her. Xu Jialuo turned her head.
Daylight already.
The curtains that blocked no light sifted it soft, the way they did every familiar morning.
Morning light lay gently on the floor, on the rumpled sheets, and on a mermaid gown torn out of shape—
Xu Jialuo’s gaze slammed to a stop.
Not a dream.
Her eyes crawled upward inch by inch, as if stuttering.
An ankle of lustrous white, faintly pinkened. Calves slim as jade. A duvet drawn from the bend of those legs up to the waist.
Until, at last, they rested on a pair of butterfly bones, fine as polished jade.
And Xu Jialuo knew, beyond all doubt, who it was.
She had seen them before.
On a lounge sofa, cradled in a chiffon dress scattered with flowers.
And now, above those butterfly bones, on the shoulder half hidden by cool-brown curls, the porcelain skin was no longer flawless — it carried several red marks.
…
Scorching heat. A crisp, sweet scent. Cool skin against hers…
Fragmentary, incomplete memories poured in — and Xu Jialuo shot upright.
So fast the bed frame rocked heavily beneath her.
The figure lying beside her stirred and rolled onto her back.
Long cool-brown hair spilled across the sheets and her shoulders. The duvet tucked below her collarbones, she lay lax and languid, that excessively beautiful face wearing a calm woven of weariness and satiation.
Her lashes trembled lightly. She opened her eyes.
After a slow blink, those pale silver eyes — still edged with sleep — drifted up toward Xu Jialuo.
A moment later, her gaze dropped — to below Xu Jialuo’s collarbones — and her pupils shivered.
The sleepwear buttons that should have been fastened to the very top had all come undone — last night, when the Alpha, greedy for that cool body temperature, had torn away the mermaid gown and pressed closer, and closer, to hold her.
Now the shirt hung faintly open. Over cool-white skin, the lines rose and fell — from the softness below the collarbone down to the clean, tight cut of her abs.
Bo Suiqing caught herself picturing what came next: Xu Jialuo hastily rebuttoning, putting herself in order.
But — unexpectedly — Xu Jialuo covered nothing at all. She leaned in quickly and reached out, sweeping aside the curls veiling her neck.
Too fast: a strand of hair scraped across the gland, and Bo Suiqing shuddered head to toe. “Mm…”
Xu Jialuo’s hand stopped dead.
Bo Suiqing couldn’t see her face — only that the movement had ceased entirely.
…What was wrong?
Because she’d seen the bitten gland?
Bo Suiqing lowered her eyes, teeth catching the inside of her lip without meaning to.
She could guess how it must look. Frightening.
Because last night, apart from the holding and that one sudden kiss, there had been nothing else. Only the marking.
The gland, worried over and over in her teeth — the Alpha, lost in chaos, had gathered her close this way and that, and bitten down again, and again.
…So what did Xu Jialuo’s silence mean?
…
…Did she find it ugly?
…Did it disgust her?
Between unease and humiliation, Bo Suiqing abruptly began to struggle away.
Xu Jialuo’s hand shook with her. Then came her first words of the morning, low and crushed, as if forced out through the gap of her teeth: “…Does it hurt?”
Bo Suiqing’s struggle stopped.
She’d heard the same words last night.
Scene after scene flashed through her mind — and the great actress who had played countless roles without a flicker of expression felt her ears and cheeks flare hot.
Not wanting to be seen, Bo Suiqing turned her head aside, letting her loose hair veil the climbing flush, and only then answered: “A little…”
Her voice — somewhat overused — came out too hoarse. She cleared her throat and tried again. “A bit.”
Then she waited quietly for Xu Jialuo’s response.
…What would Xu Jialuo do?
Xu Jialuo, as an Alpha — how would she soothe an Omega? How would she comfort her?
Seconds later came Xu Jialuo’s shaking voice: “I… why?”
She was asking why it had been her who came.
There didn’t seem to be the slightest intention of soothing.
Was it because she loathed her — so her pain didn’t matter?
Bo Suiqing lowered her eyes. “You called me. You told me to come.”
Xu Jialuo’s gaze stayed on Bo Suiqing’s gland. She murmured, “Didn’t I… call Liang Xiao?”
“I don’t know.”
Bo Suiqing pressed her lips tight. Under question after question, her eyes sank — and she paid them back with a lie. “I thought you were looking for me.”
“…”
Eyes locked on that place — mangled almost past recognition, flesh and blood blurred together — Xu Jialuo’s finger bones clenched.
Always the prize student, Xu Jialuo had listened with full attention in physiology class, even without ever differentiating.
An Omega’s gland is a very soft place. A very fragile place. A very private one.
And she had bitten it into this.
Skin once porcelain and flawless was swollen a deep red, the tooth marks in disarray — bitten, plainly, over and over again.
…How much must it have hurt?
Breath going tight, Xu Jialuo clawed through her memories of the night before.
She had taken it for a dream. Had taken it for granted that in the dream she’d asked — and the other had said yes.
But.
Had she truly asked Bo Suiqing whether she was willing?
…
Impossible.
Because Bo Suiqing would never have been willing.
Xu Jialuo’s hands went slack.
So she—
Had forced Bo Suiqing. Had torn her gland apart like this.
…
Screams of terror. Shrieks of despair. A chaos of sound poured into her skull with the ringing in her ears.
As if she’d been thrown back, in an instant, to that basement hidden deep in a narrow alley.
She was exactly — exactly like those thugs—
The silence had gone on far too long.
Head turned aside, Bo Suiqing stared blankly at the doorway, her gaze resting on the edge of the wooden door she’d kicked open last night.
In those silver-glass eyes, the shimmering light drained away, little by little.
After several deep breaths — enough to confirm she wouldn’t cry — Bo Suiqing turned back.
“Xu Jialuo, if you don’t want to take responsibility—”
“…I’m sorry. I’m sorry… I’m sorry.”
The two voices overlapped.
The apologies came one after another, helpless and unsteady, and the rest of Bo Suiqing’s words jammed in her throat as she watched great tears tumble suddenly down along Xu Jialuo’s jaw.
On that habitually cool, detached face, the calm shattered.
“…”
…Why?
It wasn’t that Bo Suiqing hadn’t considered it — that Xu Jialuo, once clear-headed, might regret it.
But to regret it… enough to cry like this?
Apologizing like this — as if everything last night had been some irreversible, terrible mistake.
…Was she that repulsed by her?
Her heart felt pierced by a needle; anger rose in the mix with the hurt, and Bo Suiqing shut her mouth.
But her eyes reddened beyond her control. Wordless, Bo Suiqing tried to rise.
She wanted to leave.
One night’s absurd, beautiful dream had ended completely.
She had to get out of this humiliating scene at once—
“I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have forced you.”
Bo Suiqing’s movement stalled.
“…What did you say?”
Xu Jialuo’s brow twisted, her word order crumbling. “The doctor said I’d differentiated… that I’d suddenly become an Alpha. I didn’t know — I had no experience… I didn’t know that when an Alpha goes into heat, she’d lose her mind completely like that…”
“Xu Jialuo. You’re crying because you think you forced me?”
“Yes…”
Xu Jialuo said it again: “I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t that she thought it had been a mistake.
She was apologizing because she believed she’d hurt Bo Suiqing.
Xu Jialuo lifted her head slightly and met Bo Suiqing’s eyes.
On Xu Jialuo’s cool-white face, last night’s bewitching color had already faded.
But the rims of her eyes and the tip of her nose were red from crying.
Her mist-dark eyes, washed by tears, were very bright — and utterly at a loss.
…It was that look exactly.
Bo Suiqing thought.
Stubborn, proud to the bone — and yet fragile, and lost.
The girl she’d first met, standing at the edge of the crowd.
Like a puppy someone had once thrown away. Brought into new surroundings, she’d kept her teeth and claws drawn in, wound tight — afraid of being seen as pitiable.
The scattered stars at the bottom of her eyes lit, slowly. Bo Suiqing asked: “What actually happened last night — you don’t remember?”
A fresh tear rolled down. “…I don’t.”
Bo Suiqing’s lashes stirred. She reached out a trembling hand and laid it against Xu Jialuo’s face.
She was silent for a few seconds.
Between the truth and the lie.
“Stop crying, Xu Jialuo.”
“Since you’ve already done a bad thing.”
Bo Suiqing’s voice was very cold — but the hand wiping the tears from Xu Jialuo’s cheek moved with a gentleness she’d never have admitted to.
Riding the current, she carried the lie through to the end: “You might as well think about how you’re going to take responsibility for me.”
“…”
Xu Jialuo’s lashes flinched.
“Xu Jialuo, I don’t have an ounce of strength in my body right now.”
That part was true.
Bo Suiqing drew her hand back and tilted her face up at Xu Jialuo. “Right now — carry me to the bathroom.”
“What is going on? Still can’t reach her?”
Work-group messages were erupting nonstop. The manager reached up and pulled shut the office blinds, screening out the prying eyes of the staff outside.
She turned to her assistant. “Xiao Nan — you don’t even know where your own artist is?”
“Suiqing-jiejie didn’t tell me…”
“And the phone’s still off? Can’t get through?”
“…Mm.”
“What kind of emergency is this? Look at this log — she ran all those red lights in a row. Nothing happened to her — honestly, we should be burning high incense5 in thanks!”
The little assistant didn’t dare make a sound, head still bent, trying the call again.
Still switched off.
“Maybe… Suiqing-jiejie had some private matter to deal with…”
“Private matter? Funny you should say that — I’d nearly forgotten!” Manager Song Zhezhi dug a few photographs out of the papers on her desk. “Look at these. That is Suiqing, isn’t it?”
Xiao Nan leaned over to look.
The photos showed a nightscape. High-rises, a street washed in neon light, crowds coming and going.
At a glance she recognized the area around the 813 Building. Xiao Nan looked more carefully before she found the photo’s subject.
A woman in a face mask, flats, a pale knit top and a plaid long skirt — dressed simply, keeping a low profile.
Exactly what her artist had been wearing last night.
That knit top was the one she’d borrowed from Xiao Nan herself before getting out of the car.
“…Hm?”
Xiao Nan’s eyes widened; she peered closer.
In the blurry photo, the woman could just be made out bending forward, one hand reaching out, opening the door of a black car.
But not to get in.
It looked more like she was pulling someone out of the car.
She flipped past that one to the next.
Her already-wide eyes went wider still.
The person in the car had been helped out — drunk or something, head bowed, leaning against Bo Suiqing.
The image was badly blurred. The intimacy was obvious all the same.
Manager Song Zhezhi asked: “The person in these photos — do you know who it is?”
Xiao Nan looked again at the figure leaning on Bo Suiqing — too blurred to show a face at all, only a frame as fine as a model’s.
Xiao Nan shook her head, dazed.
She truly didn’t know.
“That night… Suiqing-jiejie had the driver take me home first.”
Song Zhezhi’s gaze raked over her, sharp — and found no lie in the girl.
“Go on, then. Keep trying to reach her. The moment you get through, tell me at once — or tell Suiqing to contact me herself.”
“Understood.”
The bedroom.
After “carry me to the bathroom” fell, the room went completely still.
Several seconds later, Xu Jialuo raised her arm, slid it past Bo Suiqing’s side, and tightened it with firm strength — gathering her up, quilt and all.
Bo Suiqing paused, then wound her arms around Xu Jialuo’s shoulders.
She studied that expressionless profile — which, apart from the lingering red at the corners of Xu Jialuo’s eyes and the tip of her nose, seemed to have returned entirely to composure.
She said nothing more, letting herself be moved in silence.
Until she realized Xu Jialuo genuinely intended to carry her over wrapped in the quilt.
“Xu Jialuo.”
A little puzzled, Bo Suiqing caught Xu Jialuo’s collar. “The quilt’s going to fall. It’ll get dirty.”
Xu Jialuo’s movement slowed — as if just surfacing — and stopped.
She hadn’t recovered her composure at all.
She’d slipped into a kind of trance, awaiting commands.
One bare foot was already planted on the rug beside the bed. At Bo Suiqing’s words, still holding her, she lifted one hand without thinking and lifted the quilt away.
“Don’t—”
A beat too late. The sheet slid from her body entirely.
Skin like porcelain, like jade. Nothing veiled at all.
Both her arms were looped around Xu Jialuo’s shoulders — afraid of falling, she couldn’t spare a hand for the quilt.
Bo Suiqing’s arms clamped tight in an instant, and she burrowed into Xu Jialuo’s embrace.
The moment they pressed flush, Xu Jialuo’s breath caught, and she went absolutely still.
An embrace with nothing between them.
There had been far too many of those last night, in truth.
But unconscious was one thing. Fully awake was another thing entirely.
Butterfly-wing lashes trembling, Bo Suiqing buried her face in Xu Jialuo’s shoulder — the flush ran from her face down her neck, tinting even her collarbones and shoulders a faint crimson.
Seconds later, the red deepened by another shade.
Because Xu Jialuo drew her arms back in — and simply gathered her up again, bare as she was.
The actress who had played countless roles, once hailed by fans as a born genius of her craft, was for the first time in a scene wooden from head to toe.
And Xu Jialuo, chin up, eyes fixed dead ahead, carried her into the bathroom.
Stopping inside, she said in a low voice: “Your hands. Hold tighter.”
There had been words like these once before.
Head bowed, Bo Suiqing tightened her arms as instructed.
Xu Jialuo steadied the bend of her knees with one hand, reached for a clean bath towel, and spread it over the chair.
Then she set Bo Suiqing down on it.
She turned away and began filling the tub.
Not one word the whole time — her concentration that of someone handling work of the highest precision.
When the water was ready, tested against the back of her hand, Xu Jialuo rose, gathered Bo Suiqing up again, and lowered her into the tub.
“Clothes. I’ll bring them in a while.”
Without a second’s unnecessary glance, Xu Jialuo turned, adding evenly as she walked out: “Call me if you need anything.”
“…”
Bo Suiqing leaned against the warm side of the tub, watching that cool, unruffled profile.
She closed her eyes. “I know.”
Then came footsteps leaving without a backward pause — and the quick sound of the door shutting.
A knot lodged in her chest. Bo Suiqing gave the edge of the tub a small, petulant kick, and the water sloshed.
But the water had been adjusted with careful tenderness — warm to exactly the right degree.
Bo Suiqing drew her foot back and settled limply into the tub.
Eyes lowered, she recalled Xu Jialuo crouched at the tub’s edge, testing the water so carefully.
And the small resentment in her heart warmed, and slowly, melted away.
Standing outside the closed bathroom door, Xu Jialuo was still for a few seconds. Then, spine perfectly straight, she walked into the living room.
Head lowered, unhurried, it seemed, she fastened her sleepwear buttons one by one.
Then slowly, she crouched down.
Long lashes trembling, she reached up and covered the tips of her ears — already burning hot beneath the veil of her hair.
Footnotes
- 水墨山水 | shuimo shanshui | Chinese ink-wash landscape painting, executed solely in water-diluted black ink graded from jet black to pale wash; the literati's most exalted art form since the Tang dynasty.
- 小妈妈 | xiao mama | Kinship term used by a father's children for his mistress or second wife; the 'little' marks her junior position relative to the legal wife.
- 半路出家 | banlu chujia | Literally 'leaving home for the priesthood halfway along the road'; a Buddhist-origin idiom for taking up a calling late in life, without early training or apprenticeship.
- 桃夭粉 | taoyao fen | A poetic color name from 'Taoyao' in the Book of Songs, China's oldest poetry anthology; its 'blazing bright' peach blossoms are a canonical image of bridal radiance.
- 烧高香 | shao gaoxiang | Burning the tallest, most fragrant incense sticks at a temple, the grandest offering of thanks to deities in Chinese folk religion; idiomatically, to feel immense relief or gratitude.
0 Comments