The Martial Arts Stunt Double of the Entertainment Circle – Chapter 22
by Little PandaChen Wanwan had originally planned to take her new friend out to paint the town red, but one look at Tuoba Yan — usually so confident, so sunny — sitting there listless with her head hanging, and she decided the girl needed a good rest far more. So she had Zhao Mi drive while she personally saw Tuoba Yan home. It would help her learn the address, too — all the better to turn up on her doorstep and pester her in the future.
Following the directions Tuoba Yan gave, the car rolled on through streets that grew steadily more desolate and run-down, until at last they entered the old city district. After winding through turn after turn, they finally found the old residential compound1 where she lived.
Chen Wanwan could only conclude that Tuoba Yan’s father was an absolute scumbag. She knew the prices at Lin Huai’s restaurant better than anyone. A man who could afford to eat there — and he let his ex-wife and daughter live in a place like this. Truly heartless.
Once the car was parked, Chen Wanwan gathered up the pricey imported drinks Zhao Mi had cadged off Lin Huai, along with the big boxed set of dipping sauces Lin Huai had thrown in, and let a wilted, mopey Tuoba Yan lead the way up.
Tuoba Yan dug out her key and opened the door. “Mom, I’m back.”
“Back so early? Done with the shoot?” Qiao Chunyi was in the middle of the laundry. She poked her head around — besides her daughter, there stood two glamorous, polished young women, one of them strikingly beautiful, with real presence, and faintly familiar at that. “And these are?”
“Mom, these are friends I made on the crew. This is Chen Wanwan, and this is her assistant, Zhao Mi,” Tuoba Yan introduced.
The two of them stood there with goofy grins. “Hello, Auntie.”
“Aiyah!” The clothes dropped right out of Mama Qiao’s hands. Her eyes lit up as she stared at Chen Wanwan, practically about to bounce off the floor. “You’re… Xiao Qianwei? Second Miss Yuan? Chen Wanwan?”
Qiao Chunyi was, of all things, a Chen Wanwan fan!
Chen Wanwan received Mama Qiao’s most lavish hospitality. The woman was all for hauling the entire refrigerator over so Chen Wanwan could take her pick; she wiped the table in front of her again and again and piled it high with fruit and snacks. Clearly, even a fangirl of auntie vintage went just as crazy as any teenager when she met her idol in the flesh.
Tuoba Yan sat off to one side, with no attention left to spare for moping about her scumbag father. Honestly — who was the bona fide daughter in this household?
Qiao Chunyi happily borrowed Tuoba Yan’s phone for a photo with Chen Wanwan and got her autograph. She urged Chen Wanwan to come by often, confiding that Tuoba Yan forever acted the grown-up but was really still a child, and she hoped Chen Wanwan would bear with her. Then the conversation swerved, and she was off gushing from the top about every role Chen Wanwan had ever played — how adorable Xiao Qianwei was, how brilliantly Second Miss Yuan had carried that whole sequence in men’s clothing… By the end, Tuoba Yan was about to die of sour envy, okay…
By the time Chen Wanwan and Zhao Mi finally made it back to the car, the two sat staring at each other, lost for words — then burst out laughing at the same time. That little face Tuoba Yan had just made was far too good. For that alone, it was worth coming around to her place more often to stir up trouble.
Qiao Chunyi cradled the phone with a look of pure bliss, head tilted as if she were in a dream. Tuoba Yan found she couldn’t summon back the mood her run-in with Tuoba Xiu had left her in, try as she might. “Mom, I went out to eat with Wanwan today, and I ran into Tuoba Xiu.”
“What?” Qiao Chunyi bolted upright, the phone nearly flying out of her hands. “How did you run into him?”
Tuoba Yan shook her head. “Maybe he was there to eat too. Mom, the sight of him made me so sick I nearly threw up.”
Qiao Chunyi set the phone down on the coffee table. “What did he say to you?”
“He said, ‘I’m your father,'” Tuoba Yan said. “And I said, ‘Fuck your mother.'”
Qiao Chunyi blanked for a second, then her willow brows shot upright2. “You little rascal — daring to pull one over on me. At your age, don’t go picking up filthy words. How ugly they sound.”
Tuoba Yan snickered. “I was scared you’d get mad.”
“What is there for me to get mad about? A man like that isn’t worth it.” Qiao Chunyi picked her phone back up. “Did he start in on the old days again, feeding you those laughable ‘words from the bottom of his heart’?”
“Looked like he meant to. I didn’t stay for the soul-baring — I just turned and walked.”
“I know him better than anyone,” Qiao Chunyi said. “He ran that same trick on me every single time back then. But too bad for him — we’ve heard ‘the wolf is coming’ enough times that the pair of us, mother and daughter, don’t believe one word out of him anymore. Let him be. He can thrash around however he pleases — we’ll live our own lives.”
That night, Tuoba Xiu didn’t make it home until past one.
Tuoba Yan’s line that day — that everything between them canceled out, that they were square — had tormented him into utter misery. First he’d raged at her for being so unfilial as to refuse her own father; then he’d turned around and decided that he, in all honesty, hadn’t done enough.
Perhaps he’d finally had his fill of these years of hollow pleasantries and dutiful social rounds. Tuoba Xiu, of all things, had begun to miss the old life — a gentle wife, an adorable child. There might have been quarrels, but a home without all that was no complete home at all.
If Qiao Chunyi had made scenes with him, wasn’t that exactly because she loved him? If she’d really been what Jiang Guilan claimed — in it for the money, the divorce nothing but a coy push-pull to keep him hooked — why would she have taken a mere scrap of child support and walked away with the child?
He had broken her heart.
Tuoba Xiu parked the car outside and smoked one cigarette after another. Before long, both packs in the car were gone, and he moved on to drinking. Bleary with drink, he stared at the villa a little way off — cold, sumptuous, and without a shred of warmth. That place was no longer his home.
Tuoba Xiu came swaying through the residence’s front door, and the butler, Uncle Gu, hurried to steady him. “Eldest Young Master, how did you get this drunk?”
“I’m fine…” Tuoba Xiu mumbled. “Where’s Chunyi? Is Chunyi waiting up for me? Is Yanyan asleep? I didn’t come home — she must be angry, right? Let me go see her… my Little Princess… Daddy’s Little Princess…”
“What are you howling about!” Jiang Guilan stood there in a silk nightgown, so furious her hands were shaking. “That scourge has been gone all these years — who exactly are you putting this show on for?”
Tuoba Xiu’s eyes were streaked with red. He fixed his mother with a hard stare. “Mom, that money I had you send Little Princess every month — did you send it?”
Jiang Guilan’s breath caught. “…Why wouldn’t I have?”
Tuoba Xiu burst out laughing, then asked, “Then where is Little Princess right now?”
“How should I know where she is?!” Jiang Guilan was beside herself. “Is that any way to talk to me? I’m your mother!”
“You — you’re my mother.” Tuoba Xiu nodded and flung off Uncle Gu’s hand. “You really are my own dear mother. My daughter — isn’t she your granddaughter? You’re her grandmother; how do you not know where your granddaughter is? How do you not know your granddaughter nearly died!”
Jiang Guilan clutched at her chest. “Tuoba Xiu — I scraped and struggled to raise you, and this is how you repay your mother, huh? Talking back to your own mother for the sake of a wild brat whelped by a home-wrecking demoness3? Aren’t you just full of conscience?”
Tuoba Xiu seemed to recover a sliver of reason. “My wife is no home-wrecking demoness. My daughter is no wild brat. You scraped and struggled to raise me because I was the only hope you had. If you’d had any other son who made something of himself, I’d have died who knows where long ago. And don’t call me heartless — Mom, you don’t even have a heart. Hahaha!”
“Tuoba Xiu! You—”
Tuoba Xiu abruptly shoved past the hysterical Jiang Guilan. He looked at the thin, haggard woman standing in the doorway, and his voice dropped so low that even Jiang Guilan, right beside him, couldn’t make it out:
“Gu Min. It’s all you… it’s all because of you… you bitch…”
The author has something to say:
The Tuoba family’s mother and son tear into each other4~~
Thank you all for putting up with me for breaking my word and missing this afternoon’s update. The third make-up chapter is delivered — thank you, everyone. I love you (づ￣ 3￣)づ
Footnotes
- 家属院 | jiāshǔyuàn | 'Family-dependents compound' — apartment blocks built by state work-units during the planned-economy decades to house employees and their families.
- 柳眉倒竖 | liǔméi dàoshù | Literally 'willow brows bristling erect.' Classical Chinese poetics prized eyebrows arched like slender willow leaves as the epitome of feminine beauty.
- 搅家精 | jiǎojiājīng | Literally 'family-churning demoness.' A slur for a woman blamed for stirring up strife and wrecking a household from within.
- 撕逼 | sībī | Crude internet slang for a vicious catfight or flame war. The second character is vulgar slang for female genitalia, so the term literally evokes two women clawing each other apart.
0 Comments