Mistakenly Marked – Chapter 29
by Little PandaResponse
IP: Binxi
Half an hour later, Xu Jialuo drove back to the building that housed her studio.
Zhou Fu had leased the entire seventeenth floor, because Jialuo occasionally pulled all-nighters writing songs. Besides the recording studio, there was a shower room and a room for Jialuo to rest in.
It was past quitting time, and with no mandatory office attendance — everyone free to work wherever they chose — the staff had all left.
The floor stood empty.
Jialuo walked into the room, gathered a change of clothes, and went into the shower room.
The instant she shed her clothes and peeled off the barrier patch, the lingering sweetness of cherry flooded into her mind.
The back of her neck heated at once.
Her movements stopped, abruptly. Jialuo breathed slowly, deeply, several times, and pressed the ventilation button beside her before turning on the showerhead.
When she came out after her shower, she found several missed calls and a few new messages waiting on the phone she’d left in the outer room.
She was about to check them when she heard a voice—
“Here to record again?”
Jialuo looked up and saw Zhou Fu standing there with her bag. “Mm.”
“No wonder! I called and called and you didn’t pick up. I was passing by anyway, so I figured I’d come up and take a look.”
Zhou Fu’s gaze swept across Jialuo’s still-damp hair. “Why’s your hair wet?”
“After recording—” Too much had happened in a single day; a few words couldn’t cover it. Jialuo said only, vaguely, “Took a shower.”
“Eh?” Zhou Fu blinked.
The recording studio wasn’t a gym. Why shower afterward?
She remembered that Jialuo only ever used the shower room on those nights she stayed writing songs instead of going home.
Jialuo turned her head away, sidestepping the subject. “Did you need me for something?”
“Ah, right.” Zhou Fu remembered, her eyes curving with a smile.
“There’s a variety show that wants to invite you on. Twelve episodes planned in total—”
“Is it a music show?”
“Nope. But it looked pretty fun to me. I thought, if you’re interested, you could go play around a little.”
Zhou Fu’s voice was gentle.
“Jialuo, you’ve been too wound up lately. You’ve certainly written a lot of good songs, but if you keep working at this intensity, I’ll worry about you.”
“I’m fine. I don’t feel that tired.”
Jialuo turned and took the hair dryer from the cabinet. “If it’s not a music show, I’m not interested.”
“Want to at least look over the proposal they sent me first?”
“No need.”
“Alright then.” Zhou Fu always knew exactly where to stop.
But then—”There’s one more thing.”
“What is it?”
Zhou Fu lowered her head, took an envelope from her bag, and handed it to Jialuo.
Jialuo took it. Her fingertips pinched the flap; the texture and thickness inside felt like photographs.
She opened the envelope and drew it out. Sure enough — a photo.
“Someone passed this to me. I knew it was you at a glance, of course, but I thought I should confirm with you anyway.”
Zhou Fu reached out a fingertip and tapped one corner of the photo. “This is you, right?”
Jialuo’s gaze followed the gesture downward and stopped at the black Bentley in the photograph.
What met her eyes was a tall figure being held up by someone.
A few seconds passed before Jialuo answered. “Yes.”
Zhou Fu watched her seemingly unruffled expression and shifted her fingertip slightly. “And the person supporting you — who’s that?”
In the blurry photo, the person more than half a head shorter than Jialuo had her arm hooked over Jialuo’s shoulder, one arm wrapped around her waist and back, the other hand braced against the car, seemingly struggling to keep her balance and shuffle forward.
Jialuo looked down at it, a flicker passing through her eyes.
So it really was Bo Suiqing who had taken her to the hospital.
“Jialuo.” Seeing her silent, Zhou Fu asked again, plainly. “This is… Bo Suiqing, isn’t it?”
“…”
“Yes.”
Zhou Fu lifted an eyebrow. “So the two of you—”
“We ran into each other by chance. She took me to the hospital.”
“The hospital? Were you feeling unwell?”
It couldn’t be hidden any longer. Jialuo told Zhou Fu briefly about her second differentiation — stopping at Bo Suiqing taking her to the hospital.
She left out the marking that came after.
Zhou Fu was startled into several seconds of silence. “So that’s how it was… then we truly do owe Bo Suiqing.”
After a few concerned questions about Jialuo’s condition, Zhou Fu let out a breath of relief.
“These photos were taken by a paparazzo on a tail job. He didn’t recognize you — only Bo Suiqing.
“But don’t worry. Bo Suiqing’s team has already bought out the entire series. They won’t see the light of day.”
Jialuo’s lashes lowered, glancing over the photo.
As expected.
A megastar riding the crest of her fame would naturally never want photos like this hung up on the internet.
Especially when the other party in the photo was her.
The image flashed through her mind once more.
The woman tilting her face up to look at her, lips parting: “We can keep this arrangement — a temporary mark.”
…
Which meant a relationship that couldn’t see the light. One that had to be hidden at every moment.
Her brow creased, all but imperceptibly. Jialuo lifted a hand and raked it through her wet hair, giving no answer to Zhou Fu.
Zhou Fu sensed, keenly, that something was off — but she couldn’t make out the expression on the face half-veiled by black hair.
In the brief quiet, the phone on the table rang again.
It was Jiang Yi.
“Luoluo!”
The woman’s gentle voice brimmed with delight. “I just saw the message you sent me. Is it true? You really differentiated into an Alpha?”
Hearing Jiang Yi’s voice, Zhou Fu didn’t linger — she waved goodbye, bag in hand, and left.
Jialuo set down the hair dryer and toweled the water dripping from the ends of her hair one-handed.
“Mm. The doctor said that perhaps after all these years, the gland healed over on its own. Or perhaps something stimulated it. Either way — the differentiation is complete.”
“This is wonderful!” Jiang Yi’s voice nearly trembled with joy — and then she pressed on at once. “How was the differentiation itself? Was it very hard? Are you still uncomfortable anywhere?”
“No.” The nameless restlessness in her chest gradually dispersed. Jialuo’s voice was warm. “Don’t worry. Everything about me is normal.”
Except—
That she had accidentally marked the wrong person.
But there was no need to make Jiang Yi fret. Like the gland overload, Jialuo said nothing of it.
After all, it was only a temporary mark.
Given a few days, it would fade on its own.
“Good.”
Jiang Yi sounded relieved — and then her laughing voice came threaded with wind, the phone held up to the window.
“Luoluo, listen. There’s a typhoon over the island lately — such heavy rain. When it clears, I’ll buy my ticket home.”
She added, “I bought you souvenirs.”
Jialuo answered, unsurprised. “Mm.”
Over the years, beyond buying her every manner of thing, Jiang Yi was devoted to travel; she had been nearly everywhere in the world.
And every time she came back, she brought a pile of souvenirs with her.
“Tell me once your dates are set. I’ll come pick you up at the airport.”
“Okay.”
She hung up and tapped into the phone icon with its red badge dot.
Besides the missed calls from Zhou Fu and Jiang Yi, there was a string of numbers beneath them — Xu Shangning’s.
Probably finding them unreachable, her sister had finally sent two messages a dozen-odd minutes ago.
—”Couldn’t get through. Recording again?”
—”Big sister’s back! Tomorrow, 7 PM, dinner at the Old Residence. Keep the evening free. Waiting for you!”
Her gaze rested on the two messages, holding there a few seconds.
Jialuo pressed the screen dark and tossed the phone onto the table.
She switched on the hair dryer and started drying her hair.
A dozen-odd minutes later, Jialuo walked out of the building, slipped sideways into the little alley beside it, and stepped into a small convenience store.
“Ah, there you are.”
The proprietress saw it was her and greeted her with easy familiarity, turning to grab a bottle of sparkling water as always. “The usual today too?”
“Mm.” Jialuo took the water. Before paying, her gaze fell on the glass counter; a few seconds later, her fingertip tapped a spot, and she said flatly,
“A pack of these.”
The proprietress looked over, shot Jialuo a slightly startled glance — but took them out anyway, fished a lighter from the side, and handed both across:
“No light on you, right? It’s on the house.”
A few steps away, the alley lay utterly silent, as if severed from the bustling street beyond.
Jialuo reached up and combed back the strands clinging to her nape. She didn’t lean against the wall — she simply stood beneath the eaves at the side of the little shop, head bowed, and lit the cigarette.
She dropped the lighter and the remaining cigarettes into her hoodie pocket, the lit one pinched between her fingertips.
Only lit.
Her composed face was brightened by the flame — like a flawless ink-wash painting seared open with one small notch of burn.
White smoke curled upward, little by little, melting into the night.
Like a wisp of hearth smoke.
“Rice cooked over our own firewood is nothing like what comes out of those electric rice-cooker contraptions.”
In Jialuo’s memory, her aunt often said exactly this.
Usually while ordering her out to gather firewood — or sitting on a wooden stool to one side, watching her crouch on the ground and feed the flames — her aunt would emphasize,
“Don’t you go feeling tired now. What we eat is first-rate, healthy food. Your mom in the city couldn’t get it even if she craved it.”
And seeing her only nod in silence, she’d press on,
“Your mother, Jiang Yi — she’s been a junk-picker since she was small. Picked you up from outside, and before she’d even raised you she up and left, telling me to keep doing her good deed for her.
“Well, now that you’re living under our roof, you’ve got to pull your own weight for this household.
“Go fetch more firewood. I’ll make you tomato and scrambled eggs in a bit.”
Little Jialuo found these words very reasonable.
She liked helping with the work. A nose peeling from the sun while picking corn, calves scratched open by wild grass while digging sweet potatoes — none of it counted as anything. Because she could always hold her chest high, wearing those marks like medals, proof that she was no rice worm fattening herself in someone else’s home.
Only occasionally, at night, would she wonder whether her mother might come back tomorrow. Or maybe next month.
The dream came true the year she turned fifteen.
It was early spring, and every household had picked huai flowers1 for food — huai-flower dumplings, huai-flower steamed buns, huai-flower fried rice.
The delicate fragrance spread from the dirt road starred with tiny blossoms all the way into every family’s courtyard.
That evening, Jialuo came running home dusty-faced, arms heaped with huai branches and leaves — and suddenly caught, faintly, a fragrance that was not the flowers at all.
A fragrance that came from food. The smell of Jiang Yi’s signature dish, sweet-and-sour ribs.
The branches she’d struggled so hard to break off, meaning to please her aunt, dropped to the ground. Jialuo rushed inside — and there, indeed, was the Jiang Yi she hadn’t seen in half a year.
“Ah Wen!”
Jiang Yi bent down and hugged tight the girl who was then a full head shorter than herself, laughing with joy, her bright, lovely features radiant, and said the words Jialuo would never forget as long as she lived:
“Ah Wen, Mama has found you another mama. Mama’s taking you away with her now — we’ll go live together, all right?”
All right?
Held in that soft embrace, Jialuo lifted her head and glanced at her aunt standing not far off — at the expression shifting across her face, like someone finally rid of a burden, relief loosening her shoulders with a long exhale.
“…All right.”
Hearing it, Jiang Yi raised her head and pinched her cheek, smiling. “Ah Wen’s such a good girl.”
One day later, Jiang Yi walked her through the gates of the Xu family for the first time. Standing in the grand, luxurious hall of the villa, she was informed that from this day forward she would be Xu Jialuo.
“The Old Madame says the character Wen sounds like the plague — inauspicious. It’s not to be used again, not in your formal name, not in your childhood name.”
“From now on, the Third Miss takes the Xu surname. The Family Head has already made all the arrangements. She’ll study alongside the Eldest Miss and the Second Miss — and that is the finest middle school in our Binxi.”
The steward who spoke wore the household’s standard uniform, and his tone was less an announcement than a bestowal of grace.
“Tomorrow is the wedding. Madam, do settle the Third Miss in properly. Only people of real standing will be in attendance — she must be sensible, mustn’t do anything that shames the Xu family— Eldest Miss!”
The tone from on high turned on a dime, taking on an affable smile. “You’re home.”
The girl walking in from the door wore a school uniform. She came forward, step by step, and stopped directly in front of Jialuo.
Then, in a voice only Jialuo could hear: “Get lost. Murderer.”
“Mom, a little shop! Snacks! Buy snacks!”
A child’s voice rang out at the mouth of the alley, and he came bouncing and skipping toward her.
The thoughts drew back in. Jialuo lifted a finger and pinched out the still-burning cigarette, her cool, clear gaze withdrawing into the dark.
A chill wind threaded through the alley, and before the child could reach her it swiftly swept the last trace of smoke away.
Jialuo straightened and turned toward the mouth of the alley.
But before she’d gone a few steps, there came the sound of the child falling behind her.
She stopped at once, turned back, and bent to help him up.
“Wah… WAAAH!”
A beat before her hand could arrive, a heart-rending wail tore loose.
The motion about to touch the child’s arm froze midair, her joints as if jammed, stiffening in an instant.
The dark alley.
A child’s screaming.
The broken, blurred sounds from the depths of memory surged up without warning, swelling into a ringing in her ears.
“Hey!” A woman came rushing over in quick strides, hauled the child up into her arms, and twisted her head to glare at Jialuo.
“Standing at the roadside in the middle of the night — you scared him into falling, and you can’t even lend a hand?”
“…”
Her throat felt gripped shut; no sound would come. Jialuo stepped back half a pace, concealing the wreckage of her breathing.
“Young people these days—” Seeing her retreat, the woman pressed in aggressively, even reaching out to grab at her clothes. “Absolutely shameless! My child’s scraped up — you’re paying for it!”
Getting no comfort, hearing only her mother’s vicious tone, the child in her arms wailed louder still.
Jialuo pushed off the woman’s clawing hand and staggered around to leave.
The woman refused to let it go, yanking at her — long nails scraping across the back of her hand, opening several lines of blood.
The pain dragged the memory back whole.
The sounds at her ear turned, in an instant, into a sharp, stabbing roar.
Beyond her control, Jialuo’s legs gave way, and she went down on her knees.
“You— what are you doing? Don’t you try that pengci2 stunt on me!”
The woman blurted it in a panic, gave up on her, gathered the child in her arms, and hurried off.
The dark alley returned to stillness.
The night wind drifted past, cool and easy.
The one kneeling at the alley’s mouth was drenched in sweat.
One hand braced against the ground, long past caring about the filth, Jialuo tore her mask down, trying to pull in more oxygen.
And still she was dragged under by the ever-sharper, dreadful tide in her ears.
The phone slipped from her pocket and cracked against the ground.
She had nothing to spare for it.
The picture before her eyes blurred by degrees, as if the night were about to swallow it whole.
Until—
“Ding.”
With the notification chime, the phone screen lit all at once, like a blade of light slitting a small opening through the dark.
Beneath the little whale icon, a reply long in coming popped onto the screen—
—”Richer in layers than before. I loved the drum passage you added around the ten-second mark. It’s really, truly good.”
The night lay heavy. The car drove on, all the way into the Southern Suburbs villa district, and stopped before a detached villa fronting the lake.
The driver glanced at the rearview mirror — at the person who had just played the same passage of music over and over, and then started typing out some message. “Miss, we’re here.”
One last look at the unanswered screen, and Bo Suiqing said “Mm,” opened the door, and stepped out.
The doors of the villa hall were drawn open by a servant, and extravagant European-style décor unfurled before her eyes.
Bo Suiqing walked in and went up the stairs to the second floor.
“Song Zhezhi said eight o’clock. Why three minutes late?”
“…”
Bo Suiqing lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ll be on time next time.”
“Why apologize? Punctuality is a virtue of the weak. You don’t need it.
“Come here.”
A hand reached out from before the sofa, lazily — yet with absolute control — hooking its fingers. “Let me look at you.”
Bo Suiqing walked over, treading across the soft carpet, rounded the sofa, and turned.
At last she saw the person on the sofa in full.
One elbow propped against the sofa’s finely carved armrest, the woman in a full haute-couture suit reclined loosely against the backrest.
Long legs crossed, her handmade leather shoes catching the shattered glitter of the crystal chandelier overhead.
Her hair was unbound — silver-white as snow, spilling over her shoulders like soft moonlight pouring down.
And yet that “soft” was utterly negated by the face between the falls of moonlight — a face of sharp lines and raw aggression.
It was a face that seemed to have escaped the baptism of the years: time had passed over it and left nothing behind but the ever-deepening light in the bottoms of its silver-gray eyes.
It belonged to a rarely seen apex Alpha — and to the Bo family’s helmswoman, whom all revered and all feared.
Bo Suiqing lowered her eyes and said quietly, “Mother.”
Chin propped on one hand, Bo Shisong gave no answer, her gaze pale and unhurried as it traveled the person before her from head to foot.
It came to rest at last — on Bo Suiqing’s face.
Slowly, lightly, that gaze settled over her face like a veil of gauze, as though through it she were gazing at some unreachable picture far away.
Accustomed to this, Bo Suiqing stood in place, utterly still.
Letting herself be looked at.
Because she knew: it wasn’t her being looked at.
It was only a way of mourning someone who ought not to be mourned.
Bo Shisong said, “Thinner again.”
Bo Suiqing answered, “Mm.”
Compared with their meeting three months ago, she did look a little thinner.
In truth, at that last meeting she had just come off several days of back-to-back night shoots, and had been somewhat puffy.
Her weight was perfectly kept — it hadn’t shifted by more than a kilo in years.
But these things weren’t worth saying aloud.
To someone who didn’t see her for months at a stretch, for whom a single minute was worth tens of millions, they were pure noise.
Watching Bo Suiqing stand there with lowered eyes and silent lips, Bo Shisong narrowed her long eyes slightly, folding away the emotion that flickered through their depths, and rose. “Dinner first.”
The table was swiftly laid with dish after dish.
Bo Suiqing waited until Bo Shisong had taken her seat before sitting down herself.
As she raised her eyes, they swept across the photograph on the wall, hung in a great gold-openwork frame.
Two women stood shoulder to shoulder, faces young, fingers interlaced, smiles brimming over.
As Bo Shisong’s only daughter, Bo Suiqing had inherited the apex Alpha’s noble, rare eye color.
Everything else was the very image of the other woman in the photograph.
Her Omega mother.
Who had also betrayed her Alpha mother, Bo Shisong — and atoned for it with her death.
—”This photograph stays here.”
—”Suisui, every time you look at it, you must remember: the mistake I made, you are never to make.”
Bo Suiqing dropped her eyes at once, pressing down a breath that had gone slightly tight.
And still the discomfort remained.
Bo Suiqing closed her eyes.
She didn’t want to eat. She wanted to leave the table.
Across from her, Bo Shisong watched, long fingers gathering knife and fork, taking in every one of her minute reactions.
Catching the intent to leave, the silver-gray eyes cooled by degrees.
Just as Bo Suiqing opened her mouth to say “I’m not hungry yet — I’ll skip dinner,” the phone screen lit.
The earlier message had received its reply.
—”Mm. Thank you.”
—”Thank you, for always answering me, all these years.”
As if a hand had passed gently over her heart, slowly smoothing out the creases of discomfort.
Her breathing eased. Bo Suiqing picked up her chopsticks and began to eat.
She lifted a bite of food, lowered her head, and ate.
Across the table, Bo Shisong’s brow eased; she gathered in her concern, and her gaze softened in step.
The alley.
Jialuo crouched on the ground, her gaze fixed hard on the phone in her palm.
The ringing in her ears had at last receded, little by little.
Having sent her two messages, her still-trembling fingertips slipped — and accidentally tapped the ghost-doll avatar on the screen.
It jumped to the profile page.
Jialuo glanced over it, about to back out, when her gaze snagged — abruptly.
Over these years, the Whale Fall app had gone through many updates.
One of them — the most recent — had added the user’s IP address to the profile page.
And right now, beneath the ghost doll’s blank nickname, Jialuo saw a line appended after it:
IP: Binxi
The very same city as hers.
Footnotes
- 槐花 | huai hua | Blossoms of the Chinese scholar tree, Robinia pseudoacacia, harvested in rural northern China each early spring and eaten as a seasonal delicacy — folded into dumplings, steamed buns, and fried rice, with a light, sweet fragrance.
- 碰瓷 | peng ci | Literally 'bumping the porcelain' — a scam dating to the Qing dynasty, when tricksters staged collisions with expensive porcelain to extort compensation. Now slang for faking an injury or accident to shake down a passerby.
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