Starlight Descends - 35
Good Luck
In the end, Qi Yao wasn’t the one who took the photo either.
She wasn't much good at selfies. For a group shot, her arms weren't nearly long enough to frame everyone, so they had Lizu trundle out with the Polaroid to save the day.
Yu Jiashu pinched the freshly developed Polaroid between his long fingers, studied it with downcast eyes for a moment, and seemed thoroughly pleased. Then he lifted a brow at her gave the photo a little wave. "For me?"
“...Take it, take it.” Qi Yao pressed her lips together.
By the time she pushed open the door and stepped into the living room, her face was still red. She futilely smoothed the loose hair by her temples, trying to cover the pink flush climbing up her ears.
The floor-to-ceiling mirror caught the bright daylight outside. Three people were already sitting in the spacious flat’s living room.
Zhou Qi, Da Bai, and the girl from last time.
Da Bai yawned. “Finally. Another minute and I'd have fallen asleep."
"I thought you were short a fourth," Qi Yao said.
"Our little Zhou Qi has homework to finish. No time for mahjong," Da Bai said, pulling a face with obvious schadenfreude. This drew the college student's immediate wrath, and a brief chaos of squawking and flailing ensued.
Qi Yao let out an “oh” and shot him a sympathetic look. Then she saw the girl at the table stand up.
She was dressed casually, but her posture was perfectly straight, neck long and elegant, an innate coolness and pride resting between her brows and eyes. Her presence was striking.
She reached out a hand and smiled at her.
“Hello. I’m Yan Jiu.”
A handshake was a professional gesture, almost too formal for a casual mahjong game, but her expression was earnest, her fine eyes warm with a smile, as if she were seriously and properly meeting Qi Yao as a person.
“Hello.” Qi Yao curved her eyes into a smile and instinctively bowed her head slightly. Their slender hands touched lightly in midair. After hesitating for two seconds, she added softly, “I've known of you for a long time."
"Have you?" Yan Jiu's brow arched slightly, her eyes narrowed with amusement as her gaze swept past Qi Yao’s shoulder.
The man behind her seemed to be in a very good mood. Chin tipped slightly up, brows relaxed, even his movements carried a lazy sort of satisfaction.
Hearing them talk, he glanced over casually, and tipped one brow a shallow fraction.
The message was clear: Behave yourself.
Tch. Lovesick fool.
Hopeless.
Yan Jiu had only come by to drop off some documents.
She was fully in charge of the Jingfan and Hongtu acquisition process. Now that everything was completed, she’d brought over the files for him to review. After signing them, for some reason, this man had stubbornly insisted she stay and join the mahjong game.
Honestly, it wasn’t hard to guess why.
The girl in front of her was beautiful, even prettier than on camera or television, with no trace of arrogance or impatience. She carried a gentle, peaceful quality from head to toe, different from the figure Yan Jiu had glimpsed sitting in the pavilion that evening at dinner.
Back then, even her silhouette had looked flustered, almost fleeing in haste beneath the fading dusk.
There must have been some misunderstanding.
For years, ever since high school, people have always misunderstood them. They were both used to it by now.
Neither liked explaining themselves. The pure remain pure without defense.
But this was the first time Yu Jiashu had wanted her to explain, and she was perfectly happy to oblige.
Yan Jiu pulled her gaze back and tilted her chin toward the man behind Qi Yao. "Because of him?"
Qi Yao thought for a moment, then shook her head. Her peach-blossom eyes were attentive and sincere, her face soft and serene. "Not really, no."
“You’re outstanding in your own right. Didn't the school love putting up those honor roll posters? I used to see your name all the time."
"In our graduation year, they hung a banner at the gate congratulating you on getting into PKU's law program. I thought that was seriously cool."
Her tone was unhurried, voice soft as ever.
...She was so sincere.
As if every word came straight from the heart.
Yan Jiu paused for two seconds, her chin lifting slightly, caught off guard for the first time.
Yu Jiashu walked past them, pulled out a chair, and tapped the backrest with his fingers.
“We’ve been waiting forever. Come on, let’s play already.” Da Bai rolled up his sleeves and pressed the auto-shuffle button. The clatter of tiles churning inside the machine filled the air.
With so many people, the usually quiet living room grew noisy. Amid the clamor, Qi Yao saw Yu Jiashu raise his eyes, tilt his chin carelessly toward her, and gestured her to the chair he'd just pulled out.
His long fingers curled slightly as he casually hooked the chair beside hers and sat down again.
If there was any fast way to bring people closer together, it was probably interactive games like mahjong or board games.
Even strangers could gradually grow familiar while chatting between rounds.
“So Jiujiu and Shu grew up together?”
“Yeah.” Yan Jiu drew a tile and answered casually, “We lived in the same residential compound as kids.”
“Ohhh, no wonder.” Da Bai reminisced, laughing. “Back in university, tons of people thought you two were dating. It was only later we found out your boyfriend was from the next department over."
“...Wait wait wait, pong!” Da Bai leapt up to claim a tile, arranged his hand, and discarded one. Unable to resist any longer, he asked with visible effort at restraint:
“So did Yao-mei and Shu already know each other before?”
Qi Yao glanced at the person beside her.
Yu Jiashu lounged lazily against the chair, elbow propped against the table, long fingers loosely holding his tiles. He clearly had no intention of speaking.
Seeing that he had no objection to the topic and no desire to address it himself, Qi Yao briefly recounted the coincidental pen-pal program between their two schools.
"So you've been exchanging letters all the way back in middle school?” Da Bai widened his eyes. It was his first time hearing about this.
“Mm.” Qi Yao nodded.
“That explains it!” Da Bai had a sudden epiphany and tossed out a two-bamboo. “No wonder the first time you came over, he already knew you hated cigarette smoke and locked me in the study so I couldn’t come out...”
Clack.
Distinct fingers pushed three matching tiles onto the table with a crisp sound.
Yu Jiashu raised his eyes, drew a tile, and tossed it down idly. "Kong."
Da Bai: "..."
Damn it.
Did this guy have to look this cool even playing mahjong?
“Why me? Didn’t you say last round you’d go easy on me?” The married man was frugal. Watching his money slip away like this was pure agony.
"Say fewer things you shouldn't." Yan Jiu lifted her gaze and added with clear insight.
Qi Yao played deaf, pressing her lips together, she waited for Yu Jiashu to discard a tile so she could draw a new one.
Distracted, she didn’t dare look at him, nor did she really pay attention to what tile he threw. She only gave it a cursory glance before reaching out to draw.
“Ahem.”
Yan Jiu suddenly felt she never should’ve agreed to this mahjong game today.
She cleared her throat twice, folded her arms, leaned back in her chair, and asked innocently:
“What tile was that? I didn’t catch it.”
“Wasn’t it six dots?” Da Bai answered.
"Hm?" Qi Yao pulled her hand back, checked the tile, and her eyes curved. "I can win on six-circle."
"Yo yo yo yo yo, winning off a kong discard!” Da Bai clapped excitedly twice, grinning ear to ear. “Lemme calculate this. That’s double points. Which means I don’t have to pay anymore either. Hehehe, karma finally caught up with you.”
Yu Jiashu lifted his eyes, glanced at Qi Yao, and huffed a lazy laugh. He looked down and praised her. “Pretty lucky.”
Arms still crossed, Yan Jiu watched their interaction, one brow slowly rising.
This was the most blatant feeding she'd ever seen. He was blatantly scanning the table, figured out exactly which tile she was waiting for, and handed it to her.
One person here was obviously coaxing and indulging someone.
And the other was happily oblivious.
Yan Jiu couldn’t take any more. Right on cue, her phone rang. Zhou Qi had finished writing his paper and came out, so she waved him over to take her place.
They played two more hands. Qi Yao's luck was shockingly good, the poker chips they used to track points had already piled thick in front of her.
Da Bai clicked his tongue twice in amazement. “Incredible, Yao-mei. Looks like your luck’s finally turning around.”
"For sure! The dust has settled." Zhou Qi had been holding it in for ages and finally had his chance to speak. Words poured out like beans from a tipped jar. "Our Yao-mei's only going to get better from here. This whole thing was a total disaster, okay? I was seriously furious before.”
Da Bai nodded from across the table. “My wife said the same thing. What the hell was all this about? None of us believed it!”
Actually, as far as Qi Yao was concerned, the unpleasant matter had already ended the moment a solution appeared.
The people close to her knew her temperament and deliberately didn't bring it up again.
After all, nobody could live forever trapped inside negative comments.
She only cared about protecting the things she deserved. She had no interest in other people’s embarrassment or downfall.
But he'd used the word "us."
That word encompassed too much. It carried an unspoken, undefinable weight.
As if telling her, as a matter of course, that there would always be people who trusted you unconditionally.
Qi Yao’s heart softened without warning.
Her lashes fluttered, and she instinctively looked up, casting a glance at the man beside her.
His profile was refined, the bridge of his nose high and straight. As if sensing her gaze, he turned his head just slightly.
Their eyes met in midair.
Her heartbeat suddenly skipped.
Completely oblivious to the undercurrent flowing between them, Zhou Qi was still indignantly ranting.
“How does one even do that? Cheat on their partner and then uses someone else as a shield, while staying completely silent!”
“And that XiaoLiNeverSleeps person got cursed out by netizens so hard she finally apologized to you. Saying she never meant to slander you. Who believes that? You got attacked for two whole days, and only after the clarification did she pop out to say something. Where was she before?"
The pounding of Qi Yao’s heart hid beneath Zhou Qi’s nonstop chatter.
After two seconds, her lashes fluttered again and she quietly looked away.
Zhou Qi still noticed nothing. "But thank god it got cleared up. When my ge sent me downstairs to get the surveillance footage, I didn't even realize what was going on."
“...Hm?”
"You didn't know?" Zhou Qi was on a roll now. "That day, he and I went down to buy water, I was wondering why he kept staring at those people. Then out of nowhere he asked me if you and Gu Heng had really dated. Turns out he already recognized him back then!”
“...”
Qi Yao froze, fingers unconsciously tightening around the mahjong tile in her hand.
So he really had recognized him?
But he never paid attention to the entertainment industry. Before this whole thing blew up, he'd had zero connection to Gu Heng.
How had he noticed so quickly?
...And why, Qi Yao pressed her lips together, had he asked whether she and Gu Heng had really dated?
“Zhou Niuniu.”
Yu Jiashu slowly lifted his eyes. His chin tilted lazily back, and he said the name without any particular inflection.
"Hm? What's up?" Zhou Qi looked puzzled.
The kid still hadn't caught on.
Da Bai kicked him under the table, coughing in a painfully transparent attempt to cover up, hand over his mouth, voice lowered. "Say less of what you shouldn't."
Zhou Qi was even more confused. He furrowed his brow. "What shouldn't I say? Ge even hides in the study secretly watching Yao-mei's livestreams before! It’s not weird he recognized Gu Heng.”
Da Bai: “...”
Qi Yao: “...”
Silence settled over the table.
After a long moment, Yu Jiashu slowly lifted his eyelids and tugged lightly at the corner of his mouth in a half-smile.
“Nice.”
“You really know how to talk.”
***
The mahjong session ultimately ended with Zhou Qi suffering a catastrophic defeat.
Yu Jiashu played like he had a computer built into his brain. Pure suits, seven pairs, every round he won massively.
His moves felt almost targeted, specifically winning off the young guy’s tiles over and over.
And yet he still looked completely relaxed, nonchalant even, as if he couldn't care less.
Zhou Qi was too embarrassed to ask questions.
By the end, he sat there utterly defeated, looking like his soul had left his body.
Da Bai, having seen the light and corrected his ways in time, narrowly escaped disaster and even won a little money.
Human sorrow and joy do not flow in the same channel.
For a while, the living room echoed with Da Bai’s hearty laughter as he counted money and Zhou Qi’s fake sobbing, noisy beyond belief.
Yan Jiu finished her work and waited for her ride.
She stood at the bar, pouring herself a glass of water, watching Qi Yao sit sideways on the sofa comforting the devastated little buzz-cut who'd gambled away even his underwear. She tilted her head and said quietly:
"She's rather wonderful."
Whatever jealousy or need for explanation there might have been, Qi Yao had never once treated her like a romantic rival.
Yu Jiashu took the glass, circled around, and pulled a bottle of soda from the fridge. He said nothing, just lifted his brow lightly.
Meaning: I know.
Yan Jiu sighed softly. “I like sincere people.”
It wasn’t hard to tell that Qi Yao liked him.
But she was open and straightforward about it, never petty or manipulative, independent and clear-minded. Staying untainted in the cesspool of the entertainment industry was no small feat.
“Approved.” Yan Jiu set down her cup and teased, “I approve of this marriage.”
“As if I need your approval.”
Yu Jiashu shut the fridge lazily, scoffed at her, and walked back into the living room with the soda bottle in hand.
“I’m usually not this bad at mahjong.” Zhou Qi said, face crumpled in misery. “How did I lose four figures playing five-yuan stakes? My entire scholarship, gone."
Qi Yao felt strangely conflicted and didn’t know what to say, so she could only pat his shoulder comfortingly.
“Should I transfer some back to you? I won money anyway.”
“No!” Zhou Qi shook his head with righteous refusal. "That's money you won fair and square. Lucky money. You can't just give it away. I accept my loss!"
The two of them huddled together, chattering away, jumping from topic to topic, spanning television dramas, the entertainment industry, and daily life, completely failing to notice someone standing behind them.
After seeing Yan Jiu off, Yu Jiashu stood beside the sofa holding the soda bottle and silently watched them for a long while.
He even cleared his throat twice, lightly, pointedly.
Still nobody noticed him.
“I know, I know, that drama really wasn’t good!”
“Huh? Really?” Qi Yao looked surprised. “But his acting should still be decent, right?”
“It’s okay, I guess. At least I don’t feel taken out of the story watching him. Wasn’t he the second male lead in Ye Qingman’s drama too? Oh right!” Zhou Qi suddenly remembered something. “That day we ran into you in the elevator, was that Qingman-jie next to you?"
“The day we bought hotpot ingredients? Yeah.” Qi Yao laughed softly, chin propped on her hand. “The dog was hers too. Oh, and I even made a cameo appearance in that drama.”
"No way! Seriously? I get to see you again—"
“Ahem.”
Yu Jiashu cleared his throat again. The condensation on the glass bottle had completely evaporated, dripping down his fingertips.
“Did you see it? Xiao Li’s apology post started trending again!”
"Didn't look." Qi Yao said. "Don't want to."
“Exactly, don’t! People like that are way too much. Hiding behind being a regular person with public sympathy and keep stirring drama. If you ask me, Gu Heng should be blacklisted!"
“Is he even that good looking? I always thought he was super average. He’s not even as good-looking as my Ge! Yet people praise him like crazy. What kind of terrible—"
Mid-sentence, Zhou Qi glanced down at the message notification on his phone.
The moment he opened the chat window, his pupils widened. He inhaled sharply.
The last two words of his sentence twisted awkwardly around in his throat before finally emerging in an unnaturally elongated tone:
“...taste in men.”
The sender was precisely the person he’d just declared more handsome than Gu Heng.
[Ge] transferred 10,000 yuan to you.
[S]: Go inside and do your homework.
That was three or four times more than what he’d lost.
Hesitating even one extra second would’ve been disrespectful to ten thousand yuan.
“...I’m gonna go work on my thesis.”
Zhou Qi instantly shut his mouth, sprang to his feet, and strode directly toward the study with absolute seriousness before even finishing his sentence.
Qi Yao stared at his oddly synchronized arms and legs, at the strangely cheerful urgency in his retreating figure.
“...?”
That was sudden.
Hadn’t he just finished earlier?
Yu Jiashu lockef his phone screen, pocketed the device, folded himself onto the sofa, and handed her the soda.
Orange flavor.
The condensation had already been wiped clean with tissues.
Even the cap had been unscrewed beforehand.
Qi Yao pressed her lips together. Her fingers curled unconsciously before she reached out to take it.
“Wanna play a game?” Yu Jiashu asked, though he’d already placed the controller in her hand. “Fang Qian’s coming over for dinner later. Stay?”
He sounded so natural about it.
As though she had already become part of this household.
The excuse she’d been about to make about going home lodged briefly in her throat before swallowed again.
Qi Yao accepted the controller.
“Okay.”
They switched to another game, still two-player. The Switch graphics were far clearer than old retro consoles.
Qi Yao guided Luigi through a haunted mansion, vacuuming up little ghosts popping out around corners.
Curious, she asked:
“Is Yan Jiu a lawyer?”
Yu Jiashu had already cleared the game once before. Now he simply wandered idly behind her character, pretending he had no idea where the clues were.
“Mm.”
“She came back after finishing her law master’s overseas and joined a top-tier firm.”
“That’s amazing.” Qi Yao was earnestly searching the hallway for the exit key. Noticing Yu Jiashu circling endlessly around a pillar, she went over to join him.
“I actually got a script recently related to that kind of job. Being a lawyer seems really cool.”
“It’s alright, I guess. She travels constantly and pulls all-nighters preparing documents.” Yu Jiashu leaned back lazily against the sofa, watching the screen with little interest, and then laughed suddenly.
“Why are you following me in circles?”
“Huh?” Qi Yao widened her eyes. “I thought there was a clue here.”
Luigi stopped in front of the pillar looking adorably stupid.
Afraid he didn’t understand, she gestured with her free hand in explanation:
“You know, the kind where two people have to trigger a specific event together to activate a mechanism or something."
He'd played practically every game on the market. How could he not understand?
The curve of Yu Jiashu’s lips deepened slightly.
This girl really was a little silly.
“Fine.” His lazy voice dragged out leisurely. “Then keep spinning.”
“Three more laps and I'll go retrieve the treasure chest key for Her Royal Highness the Princess.”
Qi Yao pressed her lips together and obediently kept moving.
Onscreen, Luigi in his green hat smacked straight into the pillar and plopped onto the floor before awkwardly climbing back up again.
Then, after hesitating for a moment, he slowly started circling the pillar again, constantly stumbling.
Exactly three laps.
As she rounded the pillar, the other character emerged from the dark hallway holding a flashlight.
In his hand gleamed a bronze key glowing softly in the darkness.
He stopped perfectly in front of her.
Like a prince riding a white horse.
Like a warrior returning victorious after slaying a dragon.
Like her savior.
"Is there anything else you require, Your Highness?"
Yu Jiashu’s voice carried lazy amusement as he spoke softly beside her ear.
"This knight is always at your service."
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