As long as she’s also this concerned, it’s good
When Qiao Yu awoke, it was already well into the morning.
She sat up in bed, cradling her head, which was faintly throbbing, trying to recall what had happened.
“To put it simply.”
At such a moment, the handy and useful system spoke up to clarify her confusion.
“You, the host, got drunk at karaoke last night.”
“…”
…Really? She had absolutely no recollection, and after all, where did the alcohol come from? She was clearly drinking—
“What the host thought was a soft drink actually contained alcohol.”
“Who would give that kind of stuff to a minor?!”
So, the system explained to Qiao Yu the whole story, and at first, Qiao Yu was indignant, wondering if Cong Ye was an idiot to talk about it, but as she heard about her own drunken antics, she became more and more silent, until finally she fell completely silent.
“—And that’s what happened. In the end, it was the female lead who sent the host home. I suggest the host take a bath now.”
“…Makes sense.”
After coming home last night, Qiao Yu refused to let anyone touch her, insisting on cleaning up herself. She ended up falling asleep while wiping her face and nearly suffocated under a wet towel. Father Qiao and Mother Qiao were at their wits’ end with her and could only wipe her face before moving her to bed to let her get a good night’s sleep.
As a result, Qiao Yu is still wearing the same clothes from yesterday, all wrinkled.
She sniffed her collar and could still faintly smell the alcohol.
Qiao Yu, though never particular about dressing up, always loved cleanliness. Feeling uncomfortable all over, she quickly grabbed her pajamas and dashed into the bathroom.
The shower’s pouring water made her completely sober up. She wiped her face, but the gloom in her heart refused to be dispelled.
While she showered, the system would gentlemanly go into sleep mode to protect her privacy. So now, Qiao Yu didn’t even have someone to talk to, left alone to reflect on her “good deeds.”
…So she accidentally kissed Lin Qing during the pocky game yesterday, then clung to her drunkenly and wouldn’t let go. When Lin Qing kindly sent her home, she even touched her—Oh my! Where did this stinky rascal come from?
With a wail, she covered her face, sinking into profound self-loathing.
Darn it, if Cong Ye hadn’t messed up the drink order… No, no, no, one shouldn’t blame their problems on someone else. If there’s anyone to blame, it’s only herself for not being able to hold her liquor, having such terrible taste, and even more so for forgetting everything about her drunken antics so cleanly by the next day. How she thinks about it, she feels like she’s got a really sorry constitution… To open her eyes and see that it’s her own room is really such a relief…
If it weren’t for the system, she couldn’t have even begun to recall all that she did. All she could remember was the incident of her kissing Lin Qing, like how soft Lin Qing’s lips were, how good she smelled, and how super cute her reactions were—
“Wahhhh, stop thinking about it, no more, no more!!”
Qiao Yu screamed in horror, hugging her overheated head trying to cool herself down, but she moved too violently, accidentally hitting the temperature control knob to the highest setting. The screams in the bathroom immediately rose by eight degrees.
“It’s scalding————!!”
“……Yuyu, are you alright? There was quite a noise upstairs just now.”
At the dining table, Mother Qiao looked at Qiao Yu with concern, feeling that her child didn’t seem to be in the best spirits.
“I’m fine… it’s just that the water was too hot…”
After the bath, not only did she not feel refreshed, but she was even more exhausted. Qiao Yu sorrowfully touched the top of her head, praying that the accident just now wouldn’t lead to hair loss from scalding.
“No worries, the host’s hair roots are still very strong, but why did the host scald herself with hot water?”
Enough, that’s enough, thank you for the information which is very reassuring, but now shut up and don’t remind me anymore.
Having been strictly instructed by Qiao Yu, the system obediently closed its mouth, thinking to itself how strange humans are.
“It seems like you weren’t completely sober when you were taking a bath.”
Father Qiao put down his chopsticks, sharply pinpointing the crux of the issue, and imparted his wisdom to Qiao Yu.
“Yuyu, you’re young and still don’t know, when you haven’t sobered up from alcohol, you should take a bath with cold water, a chill and you’ll immediately be clear-headed——”
“Stop talking nonsense to the child, how can Yuyu withstand such a rough method of sobering up?”
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Before he could finish, Father Qiao was fixed with a glare by Mother Qiao and he smoothly changed the subject.
“…Speaking of which, Yuyu has grown up so much and hasn’t really drunk much. Now it seems that her tolerance for alcohol is not too good, is it?”
Not just ‘not too good’, considering her situation, she basically had to bid farewell to the drinking table.
But as the only daughter of the Qiao family, Qiao Yu found it difficult to voice this fact and could only silently eat her rice, listening as Father Qiao designed an exercise regimen for her.
“Hmm, alcohol tolerance is something you can build up with practice! Why not start from today, and have a small drink with Dad every day?”
“And then the two of you can get drunk together, right? I surely can’t take care of both of you.”
Mother Qiao looked displeased, ignoring Father Qiao who had promptly quieted down, and turned to show Qiao Yu a gentle smile.
“Yuyu, don’t listen to your dad’s nonsense; he himself is a ‘one cup and down’.”
…This must be hereditary! Her hopes for a good alcohol tolerance are doomed!
Having grasped the underlying truth, Qiao Yu chewed her rice in pensive regret, thinking that she needed to be more careful to abstain from alcohol in the future. She was contemplating this when she heard Mother Qiao continue to reassure her: “It’s fine, since your father can’t really drink either, for your birthday party in a couple of days we didn’t order much alcohol—”
“…Hmm?”
Qiao Yu perked up her ears, lifting her head from her bowl of rice in confusion.
“My… birthday party?”
“Yes,” Mother Qiao said, unaware of anything amiss, “You really must have been quite drunk, October 6th, that’s your birthday.”
It seems indeed there was such a matter!
On the very day she had transmigrated, she had confirmed that the original owner of the body and her own birthday were on the same day— using a minor character without any backstory was certainly convenient, since she adapted to the role neatly and seamlessly. But this month, truly a multitude of events had occurred, and Qiao Yu, dizzy with busyness, had actually forgotten her own birthday.
But a birthday party? That was the first she’d heard of it!
Suddenly, even the rice in her bowl seemed to lose its flavor. Qiao Yu looked at Mother Qiao in alarmed bewilderment, clutching at a strand of hope as she asked.
“A b-birthday party is just… us having a meal together?”
“Yes, yes.”
Mother Qiao nodded with a smile, her following words brutally shattering her illusion without the slightest reservation.
“It’s okay, we didn’t invite many people this year, it won’t be too crowded in the hotel.”
They actually booked a hotel to hold a birthday party for their child! Look at this, this is what rich people do!
“We only invited some close old friends, and it just so happens our family and the Cong family have a big cooperation coming up. We are using your birthday party as an opportunity to make the announcement to everyone—”
Qiao Yu could no longer pay attention to what was being said. She pictured the scene that might unfold on that day — as the birthday party’s main character, she would inevitably have to exchange pleasantries and chat with all sorts of elders and her parents’ business partners, whom she didn’t know at all. Perhaps she might even have to go on stage to cut a cake, make a speech, and maybe even make a wish or something.
Qiao Yu couldn’t help but shiver at the thought, feeling completely overwhelmed, as it seemed to be more than her slight social anxiety could handle.
…How could it be like this? It seems being a child of a wealthy family might be more taxing than she had imagined. If she really had to celebrate her birthday, she truly just wanted to keep it ordinary, alas.
Qiao Yu felt a kind of bitterness that comes with “disliking the very thing one does for a living”, and with a sorrowful expression, she took a couple of big bites of her rice.
This is really like “it never rains but it pours”.
Qiao Yu returned to her room, looking seriously at the smartphone in her hand.
First, she had to apologize to Lin Qing.
With a calm mind, she pondered the proper procedure. Essentially, she had to apologize first: sincerely, with a low profile, and if necessary, even write a daily apology letter to Lin Qing until she was sick of seeing them.
After all, everything had to be based on the hope that Lin Qing didn’t dislike her. Ah, but surely she had stolen Lin Qing’s first kiss—no, no, no, it was just a brush, that shouldn’t count. Besides, she herself was clearly…
Qiao Yu buried her head in the pillow, viciously ordering herself in her mind to stop thinking about this matter.
Apologize, yes, she must apologize first.
Then, she should express her gratitude to Lin Qing for going through all the trouble to bring her home.
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If she hadn’t been drunk, she wouldn’t have caused such trouble, nor would she have had Lin Qing send her home and back to Cong Ye’s place—ugh, argh!
Qiao Yu hugged the pillow and rolled on the bed into a contorted shape, full of regret for her past actions.
Thinking carefully about yesterday’s karaoke, there was absolutely no progress between the two of them! Actually, there was a bit more progress between Cong Ye and Lu Yao! Curses, if only she had been replaced by Cong Ye during the pocky game—
“…if that were the case?”
Qiao Yu stopped in her tracks for a moment, then sat up cross-legged, her hair in a wild tangle.
Well, well—how should she put it—
…Strange, no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t conjure up an image in her mind of the two of them sharing a pocky stick; in fact, it was difficult to fit them into any scene that could be called romantic.
Even though her rational mind told her that if such an event had actually occurred, both of them would likely have insisted on changing that directive simultaneously, but still, yet…
Despite being the male and female protagonists with perfect chemistry in a romance novel, why couldn’t she perceive any couple vibes between them…
Blaming it all on her own barren imagination, Qiao Yu rallied from the subtle slump in spirits.
Gratitude first, yes, after giving thanks, it was time to get to the main topic, which was inviting Lin Qing to her birthday party.
This task, which sounded quite mundane, became extremely pressing given that there were less than four days left until the birthday party—not to mention the fact that the air between the two of them was still unclear, hanging in a delicate balance…
Cong Ye and the others probably knew her birthday well in advance, but Lin Qing, who had only been around for a month, was likely still in the dark—unless Cong Ye had already brought it up, which he better not have!
Finding out from others that her friend hadn’t invited her to their birthday party, and hadn’t done so yet, would be too much of an oversight—she didn’t want to commit such a faux pas with Lin Qing. She really just didn’t remember!
Alright, the sequence of actions was decided. With a surge of bold energy, Qiao Yu opened Lin Qing’s chat interface and started typing away.
I’m sorry Lin Qing for what I did yesterday…
…the choice of words seemed a bit odd.
Qiao Yu felt it sounded too ambiguous, and the apology didn’t come across as sincere enough, so she deleted everything and started typing again.
Regarding the pocky game incident yesterday, I don’t know if you still remember it, but I am deeply ashamed of myself for what I did, and I hope you can forgive me…
Qiao Yu wrote a long paragraph with flourish, but upon checking it over, she felt it was increasingly inappropriate.
…So heavy. Sending this would surely make her seem like a weirdo.
She silently deleted the text in the dialogue box, feeling the heaviness that indeed, the beginning is the hardest part.
Eh! Apologizing should be done decisively and straightforwardly! Just send a “I’m really sorry about the pocky game incident!” for starters, then deal with Lin Qing’s response as it comes!
Qiao Yu decided to just do it and started typing her third apology with trembling hands.
Pocky—check, space, game—check.
Then, with her hand shaking, she accidentally tapped the key that had become the send button one more time, and the words “pocky game” without any context immediately appeared on the screen of their conversation, completely ambiguous in meaning.
“Ha ah—?! What?!”
How could she make such a basic mistake at a time like this! What on earth was she emphasizing?!
Feeling as if her heart had turned to ashes over her own failure at such a critical moment, Qiao Yu shed tears of despair in her heart.
Lin Qing had been staring at her phone in a daze after lunch.
It was already this time, so it should be okay to send Qiao Yu a greeting message, right? She also had no idea how drunk Qiao Yu had gotten.
She hesitated for a long time on the chat screen with Qiao Yu, not yet having figured out how to break the ice, when she suddenly saw Qiao Yu’s name change to “typing…” at the top.
“Huh?”
Lin Qing’s eyes widened in surprise, as she subconsciously held her breath and concentrated, fixated on her phone, waiting for Qiao Yu’s message.
Then the “typing…” stopped, started again after a while, and then stopped once more.
No words came through at all.
Lin Qing speculated about the agony and indecision of the person on the other end of the screen, finding it somewhat amusing despite herself.
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Yes, that matter hadn’t been properly discussed before getting drunk; now she must not know how to start the conversation.
Although she hadn’t yet received a message from Qiao Yu, Lin Qing’s mood had lifted, and she childishly swung her legs.
…I kind of want you to agonize a bit longer, sorry about that.
Apologizing to Qiao Yu in her heart, Lin Qing laughed softly, finding joy in Qiao Yu’s awkwardness.
As long as she’s also this concerned, it’s good.
It’s much better than her blustering through an explanation, calling it an accident, or not taking it seriously at all.
Propping her face with one hand, Lin Qing was in such high spirits that she reached to poke at Qiao Yu’s profile picture—a black text against a white background that read “I need to study” spelled out in four large characters. It was something she put up when she started her tutoring sessions and apparently hadn’t had the chance to change it yet. If she poked Qiao Yu now, would it give her a startle?
Before she could put this mischievous idea into action, her phone suddenly vibrated, rolling out a message from the bottom of the screen.
Qiao Yu: pocky game
Lin Qing, quick as lightning, retracted her hand just in time and didn’t send the poke, her eyes filled with surprise and uncertainty as she looked at the message. Her heart pounded wildly at just those two words, heating her face up. Thinking about how Qiao Yu could be so straightforward, was she possibly suggesting—
【“Qiao Yu” has deleted a message】
Her already racing heartbeat nearly stopped for a moment as she blinked in confusion.
Despite the distance between their screens, both individuals were thrown into a fluster by those two simple English words.