After half an hour, that riot of colors had finally turned into obedient, glossy black.
Liu Xu patiently blow-dried his hair, his palm passing through the black strands while his gaze settled on Chu Shicha’s half-closed eyes.
He was as docile as a cat.
There were plenty of opinions about him in assistant circles: bad temper, sharp tongue. People also gossiped that after years of being hated along his whole path through the industry, Chu Shicha must be twisted inside. He Mingyan had so many artists under her that she had stopped focusing on him long ago. Assistants came and went from Chu Shicha’s side; nobody wanted to bet on a discarded piece.
And yet that discarded piece now sat in the warm air from the dryer, head tilted as he dozed, overlong lashes trembling in the breeze. He looked entirely harmless. The freshly dried black hair had gone soft and fluffy, making his skin look even whiter.
For a moment, Liu Xu was reluctant to move his hand away from the soft hair against Chu Shicha’s scalp.
“Brother, it’s dry.”
“Mmh…” Chu Shicha slowly opened his eyes. He turned and looked at Liu Xu for a while, making Liu Xu’s scalp tingle. Liu Xu kept expecting that bad temper to erupt, but instead heard Chu Shicha ask softly, “Have you eaten?”
“Huh???”
Chu Shicha walked into the kitchen, efficiently cut the meat into chunks, tossed vegetables into the pot, and added salt. His expression was calm, his black hair soft and light. Perhaps because the pheasant colors had been replaced by steady black, he gave off an unexpectedly gentle impression.
Liu Xu’s limbs went stiff. He checked the calendar, then opened the assistants’ group chat and looked at old complaints about Chu Shicha, then checked the anti-fans’ abuse under his Weibo.
He let out a long breath.
Chu Shicha brought over the noodles.
“I’m not very good at cooking. Sorry.” Chu Shicha handed him a bowl of plain boiled noodles with meat.
The colors at least looked decent. Liu Xu took one bite, and every organ in his body immediately screamed that it wanted to go on strike. The words “TASTES AWFUL” flashed in glowing letters inside his head. Eyes wide, Liu Xu watched Chu Shicha calmly finish the noodles one small bite at a time without changing expression.
Liu Xu swallowed for the second time, got up, and went to wash the bowls.
“Beep, beep, beep.”
“Beep, beep, beep.”
While Liu Xu was washing dishes, the phone kept ringing. It was He Mingyan. He passed it to Chu Shicha and mouthed, “She wants to talk to you.”
Chu Shicha took it. “It’s me.”
He Mingyan raised her voice. “Why are you making such a fuss? Your contract is seven years and five have already passed. Couldn’t you just endure another two? I already spoke to President Liu for you. He says if you go and apologize properly, this will all be over.”
Her voice was loud enough that Liu Xu, standing beside him, heard every word clearly.
While he anxiously waited for Chu Shicha’s answer, Chu Shicha simply hung up and tossed the phone back to Liu Xu.
“You hung up on her?”
“Mm.” Chu Shicha did not leave. Instead, he curled up on the sofa, his profile hidden in the shadow of the curtains, making him look pale and fragile.
He Mingyan called again. Chu Shicha rejected it again. Furious, she called over and over like a madwoman, but Chu Shicha did not answer a single time.
Liu Xu’s head started to ache. “Brother, why aren’t you answering? Sister He is going to lose her mind. If you offend her completely, what if she starts sabotaging you?”
“I’m not afraid.” Chu Shicha reached out and gently stroked the top of Liu Xu’s head. His manner was modest and warm. There was a trace of cool detachment in him, yet it was especially compelling. His pupils were clear as lake water. Holding the phone, Chu Shicha said mildly, “I’m testing what card she has left.”
A person like He Mingyan—aggressive, arrogant, and overconfident—would eventually lose patience after repeated hang-ups and reveal the trump card she relied on to control her artists.
Liu Xu did not understand.
The next second, Chu Shicha’s phone began beeping nonstop as countless photographs arrived. Liu Xu accidentally caught a glimpse: broad expanses of porcelain-white skin and flushed cheeks, like roses in full bloom.
They were not decent photographs.
But Liu Xu noticed that when Chu Shicha saw those indecent photos, he smiled faintly.
With that smile, everything else in the world lost its color.
This time, when He Mingyan called, Chu Shicha answered.
He Mingyan: “You cheap thing! Did you forget those photos of yours? If Sister He hadn’t pulled you up back then, how would you be any different from a whore now? Go on, keep hanging up on me! I’ll send these straight to the media and ruin you outright! What the hell do you think you are? There are plenty of beautiful people in this industry. Even if I wanted to crush you to death, do you think you’d be able to make a sound?”
“Stop being so ignorant. From now on, behave yourself. I’ll send the address for President Liu’s place to Little Liu. If you don’t go, you know what the consequences are!”
Liu Xu received He Mingyan’s text and looked as though he had just been hauled out of the water. He did not dare speak, and he did not dare look at Chu Shicha.
After a long time, he asked, “Brother… Sister He’s place… are you going?”
Chu Shicha’s whole body was slender and thin. Wrapped in a bedsheet, he huddled in the sofa. His face was soft from the front, while his profile had deep, clean lines; forehead, nose, and lips traced a coldly glamorous, seductive curve. Long lashes drooped at the corners of his narrow eyes, and a faint sadness and helplessness flowed from his pupils.
Each time his lashes trembled, Liu Xu’s heart trembled with them. The back of Chu Shicha’s neck was bare, his spine faintly visible beneath the skin like a length of warm white jade that made one want to lay a hand upon it.
He looked unbearably pitiful.
“Brother, did you really hit President Liu?” Liu Xu moved a little closer.
“…Do you think I was wrong too?” Faced with Chu Shicha’s cool, translucent eyes and the wet flush at their corners, Liu Xu’s heart thudded wildly, hot and jubilant.
Of course he did not think Chu Shicha was wrong. Disgust toward unspoken sexual coercion was only natural. Yet now that he was standing inside it, Liu Xu found himself, for the first time, aching for Chu Shicha.
A thought he should not have had skimmed across his cerebral cortex, leaving behind a seed that sank roots deep into his bones.
—If the thorns were cut away, could one draw out a pure, unstained white rose from among them?
Huh.
Liu Xu shivered and heard Chu Shicha continue, “If I don’t go, He Mingyan will make trouble for you, won’t she?”
He rose from the tiny sofa, dragging the bedsheet with him as he rummaged through the wardrobe. He owned almost no proper clothes. The bright, gaudy pieces he piled aside in disgust and told Liu Xu to donate downstairs for stray dogs to use as nests through autumn and winter. Then he glanced at the dozen dead cacti on the windowsill.
The two of them spent nearly the better part of an hour cleaning the twenty-square-meter room. Once stripped of the city’s garish clutter, the little nest gave off a lonely, austere air.
Both of them collapsed from exhaustion.
Chu Shicha looked at the empty windowsill and asked, “Is there a flower shop nearby?”
Thinking of the dozen cactus corpses they had just removed, Liu Xu assumed he wanted another cactus. “There is. If you want one, Brother, I’ll go buy it for you.”
“No, I’ll go myself. You rest.” He spoke gently and politely, neither hurried nor slow. His eyes held distant indifference, yet there was nothing anyone could criticize. The more he behaved like this, the more it provoked a rebellious urge to move closer.
A little while later, Chu Shicha returned carrying a thin, crooked rose plant.
“Brother, you didn’t buy a cactus? Did the shop owner cheat you? This flower is skinny and weak. One look and you can tell it’ll be hard to keep alive.” What Liu Xu really wanted to say was: you managed to kill an entire ancestral line of cacti, so why are you trying to raise this delicate, high-maintenance young master?
Chu Shicha would not let Liu Xu touch it. He lowered his head and fiddled gently with the rose’s soft leaves, tender as though looking at his own son. On closer inspection, there was even a trace of sadness in him. Liu Xu was rendered speechless by that devastatingly beautiful face. When he looked at the flower, he too began to feel as though he were looking at his own son.
“What’s this rose called? Is it easy to raise? Should I go buy a couple of rose-care manuals?” Liu Xu had become precious about it too. He himself did not notice the deeper meaning slipping out through his words— I want to stay with you.
Chu Shicha watered the flower and scattered a handful of compound fertilizer over the soil. “It’s called Blue Storm. The florist said it’s easy to keep.”
“Blue Storm? So it blooms blue? That’s pretty unusual… but why stop raising cacti?” He had clearly kept more than ten pots; how could he suddenly decide not to raise them anymore?
Chu Shicha froze for a moment, then placed the flower on the windowsill opposite the bed.
The last of the sunset, autumn sunlight, fell across the new leaves still hung with droplets, refracting tiny, trembling halos of light.
Liu Xu heard a sigh so faint it was nearly inaudible.
Chu Shicha undid the button near his collarbone, touched his porcelain-white neck, and said gently, “Because all of that is over now.”
Something in Liu Xu’s chest ached dully. A firework of compassion shot from his tailbone along the marrow of his spine. Beneath that compassion, something cool and thin drove roots wildly downward, and something unexpected pushed up a tender sprout.
Under the flashing, dazzling lights of Heaven on Earth, young sweat and cheers worked like a hallucinogen, plucking at everyone’s nerves.
President Liu had one arm around a young man poised somewhere between green youth and maturity, while on his other side Ruan Qiang peeled grapes for him.
“Where is he? He Mingyan, are you playing me?” President Liu waited several minutes without seeing Chu Shicha. His temper slipped, and he pinched the back of Ruan Qiang’s hand hard.
“He’s coming, he’s coming. How could that kid dare refuse President Liu face? He’s at the door right now.” He Mingyan plastered on a smile, her eyes poisoned with resentment. She wanted nothing more than to skin Chu Shicha inside and out.
President Liu had truly fallen for Chu Shicha’s face. Although their previous encounter had gone badly, he was a peculiar man: he liked chewing on hard bones and found the resistance memorable.
The moment he heard Chu Shicha had arrived, President Liu waved the two beside him away and craned his neck toward the entrance.
There, where the lights faded into shadow, a handsome young man pushed open the door.
Black hair, white shirt, khaki trousers.
His shirt was neatly tucked in, showing off an exquisite figure and a smooth waistline.
His expression was calm. Long phoenix eyes were fringed sparsely by fine lashes. He seemed completely out of place amid the surrounding clamor and magnetic chaos.
He opened a path through the noisy crowd. From the outside inward, eyes burned toward him, as though everyone wanted to carve off a piece of flesh. He seemed not to notice at all and did not slow his pace for anyone.
Neither humble nor arrogant, neither happy nor sad, he resembled an immortal carved from ice. Only the occasional frost-sharp chill in his long eyes added a trace of seductive beauty and heartless allure.
Even without affection, he was moving.
He walked up to President Liu, swept a glance over He Mingyan beside him, then settled his gaze on President Liu and offered an even, unremarkable greeting.