Starlight Descends - 53
Harsh Winter
The room was dim.
It was a long time before the ragged breathing finally calmed.
The hem of her skirt slowly fell back into place. Reaching behind herself, Qi Yao spread her slender fingers and gripped the doorframe to steady her balance.
...Her legs still felt weak.
Seeing Yu Jiashu reach out as though to help her, Qi Yao shot him a glare, planted a hand on his shoulder, and shoved him behind the door.
The man paused, then obediently stood behind the door as he unhurriedly pulled out a tissue, clicking his tongue under his breath.
Qi Yao took two deep breaths, lowered her head to straighten her clothes, and after gathering herself for a few seconds, finally opened the door.
A gust of colder air swept in from outside.
The boy pacing anxiously in the hallway stopped as well.
Their eyes met. After a brief pause, Qi Yao said softly, "Sorry. I was busy just now."
Her voice sounded oddly hoarse.
"It's fine, as long as you're okay." Wen Chuan seemed to exhale in relief. Two seconds later, he studied her face and hesitantly added, "But your face is really red. Are you sure you're not feeling sick?"
"..."
"I'm really fine." Qi Yao shifted her gaze away, somewhat uncomfortable. "The heater was probably set too high."
To change the subject, she replayed what Wen Chuan had said outside the door. She had only caught fragments, but it was enough to piece together the gist of what this kid was trying to say.
Looking at him, she said, "I'm not angry with you."
Her voice was slightly hoarse, but she was very earnest.
Wen Chuan froze. He heard her continue calmly, "But I do hope you can refine your craft as an actor. Causing repeated NGs because of your own mistakes isn't exactly a good thing, whether for the actors you're working with or the crew."
"...Okay. I understand. Thank you, Yaoyao-jie," Wen Chuan said.
Qi Yao nodded and seemed ready to close the door. "Anything else? If not, then I..."
"Yes."
Qi Yao stopped, looking at him with a hint of confusion.
The milk tea in his hand was still warm, yet suddenly he didn't want to give it to her anymore.
As Wen Chuan looked at her face, her earlier words still echoed in his ears, and suddenly, she seemed impossibly out of reach.
"Would Yaoyao-jie think... that I'm bothering you like this?” Wen Chuan paused, his face gradually flushing red. "I really do like you. I was wondering if you'd be willing to give me a chance..."
Abruptly, his words died.
In the gap of the half-open door, the profile of a man came faintly into view.
He was tall, with a long, upright posture, casually emerging from the bathroom.
His dark hair was neatly trimmed. Pale eyelids lowered indifferently over black eyes. Sharp shadows cut cleanly along his jawline. Relaxed and nonchalant.
As though nothing in the world could catch his interest.
Sensing his stare, the man lifted his eyes as well and cast an emotionless glance his way.
His pupils were dark and unfathomable; there was a cool aloofness to them.
Less than a second later, his gaze drifted away again, completely disinterested.
The impression was strangely vivid, like Wen Chuan wasn't even worth looking at for another second.
The words caught in Wen Chuan's throat, everything he had planned to say vanished.
Qi Yao noticed none of this. She just assumed he was young and too embarrassed to finish. After watching him for a moment, she considered her words before answering gently. "To be honest, a little."
—"Would it bother you, me being like this?"
"Yes."
It was a rejection as clear as could be. Only softened and softened again into the language of adulthood.
Wen Chuan might still be a student, but he wasn't so dense as to not understand a polite refusal.
For some reason, he thought of the four simple words written on the blackboard at the filming set earlier that day for meal support.
—"Qi Yao's Family(Jiashu)."
So this was the family member.
A long silence later, Wen Chuan hid the milk tea behind his back. "Okay. I understand."
***
After the door closed, Yu Jiashu spoke casually.
"You're pretty good at rejecting people. So decisive?"
"Learned from you." Qi Yao answered offhandedly. She walked to the window and pulled the curtains open, light immediately flooded the room. Looking up, she noticed he was still wiping his hands.
Qi Yao: "..."
"Are you done yet?!"
She pursed her lips and smacked his arm in annoyance. "Was there really that much?!"
Yu Jiashu paused for a moment, lifting one eyebrow slightly. "This is water. From washing my hands just now."
He crumpled the damp tissue into a ball, rolled it between his fingertips, and tossed it lazily into the trash. Then he turned back, regarding her with that infuriating calm. "What exactly did you think it was?"
"..."
Qi Yao felt her face ignite all over again. She immediately turned away and pretended not to hear. Glancing at the clock, she said, "It's already one o'clock. What are we eating?"
The subject change couldn't have been more obvious.
Yu Jiashu laughed softly. Deciding not to tease her further and sat down on the sofa to check his phone.
"I ordered Huaiyang cuisine. It should be here any minute."
Later, Yu Jiashu stayed and had lunch with her before heading out again. Apparently he really had work to attend to. Qi Yao didn't know the specifics of his business trip, but he seemed extremely busy.
She was busy too. After eating and tidying up, she went to the set to do her makeup and styling for another overnight shoot.
During the two or three days Yu Jiashu was here, they spent hardly any time together. Aside from that first afternoon, most of their conversations took place through their phones, scattered messages separated by hours at a time.
The day Yu Jiashu returned to C City, Qi Yao's schedule was completely packed.
She couldn't even find time to see him off. All she could do was send him a WeChat message in a gap between another actor's NG takes.
[1]: Are you there yet?
More than ten minutes later, Yu Jiashu replied.
“Just got to the airport.”
Qi Yao looked at the message. Her fingertips lingered on the screen for two seconds, hesitating. In the end, she didn't send anything else.
"Yao-mei, why does your complexion look so bad?" Lizi asked worriedly.
"Does it?" Qi Yao put down her phone and glanced into the mirror Lizi handed her. "Maybe today's foundation is too pale."
Lizi wanted to say that wasn't it.
After two consecutive overnight shoots, filming from midnight until dawn in the winter winds that seemed capable of slicing straight through bone, even Lizi nearly collapsed from exhaustion on the sidelines, let alone Qi Yao, who had to constantly recalibrate her performance in front of the camera.
Qi Yao hadn't looked well for days.
Before Lizi could say anything, the director called again. Qi Yao set down her hot water bottle and stood.
In the freezing wind, her figure looked exceptionally fragile, like she could get carried away by a single gust.
Watching her retreating figure, Lizi sighed and opened her phone to search for recipes to ward off the cold and nourish the body.
Stewed Old Duck with Cordyceps Flower. Kelp and Pork Bone Soup. Too bad Yao-mei doesn't eat kelp.
As she browsed, she jotted notes into her memo app.
Before she even got a chance to make any of them, a sudden cry of alarm erupted from the middle of the set.
People rushed toward the center. That thin silhouette, without any warning, had fallen backward, collapsing unconscious into the arms of the person beside her.
***
The dreams came in fragments.
Every place that had ever left a deep impression on her seemed to drift through them.
One moment it was a dim, cluttered corner of the orphanage. The next, a strange room with floral curtains. Then an old apartment stairwell damp with age.
After the world spun around her one final time, Qi Yao jolted awake.
Her eyelids felt rusted shut. It took immense effort just to slowly pry them open.
The first thing she saw was a paper-white ceiling made of simple square panels. A bare fluorescent tube emitted a harsh, glaring light.
The sharp smell of disinfectant and the cold sensation on the back of her right hand made her realize, belatedly, that she was probably in a hospital.
Her fingers twitched slightly. Cold liquid flowed into her veins through the IV.
Half her body felt stiff.
She squinted, thinking fuzzily. She must have fainted on set.
Frowning, she called out for Lizi twice. The room was silent; no response. Qi Yao struggled to sit up, not daring to put weight on her right hand, afraid the IV line would back up with blood. So she propped herself up with one arm, reaching for her phone on the nightstand.
The room spun around her.
Suppressing a wave of nausea, she checked the time. Her fingers brushed against the call log.
She had apparently called Yu Jiashu near noon.
...What had she said?
She couldn't remember.
With her consciousness still adrift, she lay back down and stared blankly at the ceiling.
The high fever had dulled her mind. Just as she began sinking toward another endless dream, she heard the ward door open.
She forced her eyes open with effort.
The first thing Yu Jiashu saw when he walked in carrying chicken soup was Qi Yao lying in bed, her head turned toward him.
A few seconds later, her lashes trembled, and her eyes instantly reddened.
So did the tip of her nose.
She looked so small. Curled up in the middle of the blue-and-white hospital bed, she seemed to occupy less than half of it.
He paused, then stepped to the bedside and covered her cold IV hand with his own.
Qi Yao seemed to process his arrival very slowly.
Now she wasn't worried about disturbing the IV anymore. She turned her hand over and clasped his, cautiously brushing the back of it with her fingers.
It was warm, real.
Her long lashes quivered once, then tears suddenly fell.
The emotion came without warning and hit with overwhelming force.
Holding his hand, Qi Yao blinked slowly and spoke through a thick nasal voice.
"I dreamed of this scene once before."
Tilting her face up, the rims of her eyes glistening, she said softly,
"This place. And you."
The winter of her senior year had been brutally cold.
C City was in the south and rarely saw snow, but the damp chill seeped into everything. The sudden drop in temperature made every breath hurt, like shards of ice were scraping through her nose and throat. Even the wind felt sharp enough to pierce bone.
Old people rarely handled winters like that well.
Her grandmother was no exception.
The alley between the orphanage and their home was narrow. During winter, power shortages sometimes caused the streetlights to fail. An elderly man living nearby often collected discarded bottles and cardboard boxes and stacked them along the staircase.
One night, returning from the orphanage, her grandmother stepped on a plastic bottle she hadn't noticed.
She fell down the stairs, and never stood up again.
Her grandmother had always clung to some inexplicable superstition. She believed that once an elderly person entered a hospital, they rarely came back out.
Qi Yao never believed it.
Until she had no choice but to.
After breaking her leg, Grandma stayed in the hospital for a month. Every day, her spirits seemed weaker than the day before. She always held Qi Yao's hand with a smile crinkling her eyes, but Qi Yao could feel her slipping further and further away from her.
At the time, Auntie Ren was swamped at the orphanage and couldn't get away. The older children were in school, while the younger ones couldn't leave the premises.
Among all the children her grandmother had once cared for, only Qi Yao remained nearby to look after her.
She never once mentioned about the pressure of her senior year. Every day, she shuttled between school and the hospital, did homework until the early morning hours, slept three hours, and woke before five to simmer chicken soup. She memorized her lessons hunched over the small stove, so exhausted she'd nod off and lurch forward. The burn scar from that scalding clay pot still lingered behind her ear even now.
One day she was simply too tired.
Half dreaming and half awake, she stared at the results of her monthly exam.
She had dropped more than a hundred places.
Standing before the ranking board, she clutched the corner of her clothes in confusion and panic.
Then looked up at the photos of the top ten in their grade.
So far away.
At that moment, Qi Yao thought: They were just so far away.
When she jolted awake, daylight was already flooding the room. She was nearly late for class, let alone having time to cook. With no alternative, she simply rushed to school.
During lunch break, she first ordered delivery on her phone, then went to the hospital to be with Grandma.
How do you describe a person's breaking point?
Being abandoned at birth? Leaving the orphanage, only to be quietly returned?
No.
Those were just quiet sorrows, like a pain lurking deep in the bones, only flaring up on rainy days. Protracted, but could be endured.
Real breakdown came in a single instant, like an emotional dam giving way.
She had held it together in the hospital room, saying all the right things to comfort the frail old woman.
Once she stepped outside, menstrual cramps hit so hard she could barely speak. Clutching her stomach, she slid down the wall and crouched in the hallway.
Tears blurred her vision.
And then the delivery driver called.
There were too many people at the hospital, he said.
He couldn't bring the order upstairs. He'd left it by the flowerbed across the street.
Pain clouded her thoughts. Even the fluorescent lights overhead had become a stabbing glare.
She asked in a small voice, can you bring it in? I'm really not feeling well, I can't walk over.
The man on the other end sounded middle-aged. Impatient, he said, everyone in the hospital is not well, what makes you so spoiled? You can't even walk a few steps?
Pressing her lips together, she tried to speak again, but he had already hung up.
Mixed with the dial tone was one final complaint, calling her so dramatic, saying she was wasting his time for his next delivery. His voice was piercing, agitated and impatient, the disgust in his tone seeming to crash down on her.
Looking back now, she could understand it.
Every profession has its own hardships, there was no need to blame anyone.
But at that moment, Qi Yao had been truly desperate.
Days of worry and anxiety, exhaustion from lack of sleep, fear and uncertainty about the future. All of it became accomplices to the twisting pain in her abdomen.
And a stranger's casual accusation was enough to be the last straw that broke the dam.
Was she dramatic?
Was she spoiled?
She had just made a request, that was all. How did it come to this?
Waves of sharp pain tore through her stomach, and through her thoughts.
The thin girl crouched outside the hospital room, curled up at the base of the wall with arms wrapped around her knees, crying soundlessly.
In that moment, as her face buried in her arms, Qi Yao thought of many things.
She thought of her life of misfortune.
Of undeserved accusations.
Of countless sleepless nights.
Of the endless rows of names separating her from the top student on the ranking board.
She thought of her grandmother's hand gripping hers just moments ago. Rough skin stretched over fragile bones, the sleeve slipping back to reveal pale age spots.
Her grandmother had said:
When I'm gone, don't buy me a grave plot.
Don't visit me on the anniversary of my death.
I don't like that.
Come on my birthday instead.
Let's all be happy.
It was the first time Qi Yao felt the utter helplessness of death staring her in the face. Her mind went blank. All she could do was grip the old woman's hand in vain, forcing a smile and saying,"That won't happen."
"Grandma is going to live to a hundred."
The old woman smiled too, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes deepening, "All right."
"Grandma will stay with Yaoyao until she's grown very, very big."
Old and young, one standing, one sitting, they leaned close, eyes crinkling, hands clasped. Take that single frame out, and it might look like a beautiful family scene.
Only they knew it wasn't.
In the face of death, words are the most powerless thing. Those hopeful promises were nothing more than a lie they silently agreed to tell.
The girl remained crouched there, thin and lonely. Even her crying had to be silent for her grandmother was only a wall away.
She bit her lower lip until it went pale. The pain made her dig her fingernails desperately into her palms.
The window at the end of the long corridor wasn't closed. A wind howled down it, wild and merciless, as if it was determined to break her in half.
It was so cold.
The winter of that year was too cold that, no matter when she thought back on it, Qi Yao would still feel it in her bones.
"But the strange thing is..." Many years later, sitting in a hospital bed with reddened eyes and nose, Qi Yao frowned in confusion. "When I looked up..."
"That bowl of chicken soup was just there. Beside me."
A bag sat on one of the cold metal chairs lining the corridor, placed neatly in the exact center of the leftmost seat.
The packaging was untouched, even the receipt still attached.
The girl stared blankly, then blinked twice.
A remaining tear slipped from the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek.
Her vision cleared. Slowly releasing fingers that had clenched until her knuckles turned white, she carefully reached out.
The paper surface rustled against the plastic bag. The receipt clearly displayed her name.
...This was her order. Someone had brought it in.
Qi Yao looked up in a daze.
A woman across the hall was folding her blanket after a nap. A nurse nearby was cleaning a half-paralyzed patient. A cleaning lady was wiping the railings with a rag. Everyone seemed busy.
No one seemed to be the giver of this fleeting kindness.
Confused, she tilted her head, her gaze wandering aimlessly until it fell on a figure far end of the corridor.
A tall potted plant stood in the corner, still lush and green. Under mottled light and shadow, a handsome side profile flashed briefly into view.
Before she could see clearly, the tall, straight silhouette disappeared around the corner, leaving only the leaves swayed faintly behind him.
The air was still for a long time.
In the hospital room, a very soft sigh sounded.
"Even now, I don't know if I was simply too devastated back then that I selectively blurred my memories, or even fabricated a person out of thin air."
Qi Yao pressed her lips together, lowering her lashes. A few seconds later, she lifted them again, a self-deprecating smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "But it's strange."
"For all these years, I always felt..."
"That person was you."
She looked at him quietly.
This thought had taken root in her teenage heart and proved impossible to erase.
Later, she often wondered. With nothing more than a blurry silhouette, what right did she have to be so certain?
"Afterward, I thought, as much as I liked you, I couldn't turn you into my personal savior and pin everything on you."
"That wouldn't be fair to either of us."
The girl looked down, her long lashes trembling, "So eventually I decided maybe it was just a dream I invented because the pain was too much."
The hospital room remained quiet for a long time.
He'd turned on the heater as soon as he arrived. He'd also brought a blue-and-white hand warmer and placed it in her right hand.
The returning warmth restored her circulation, her fingers no longer felt numb.
After a long while, Yu Jiashu lowered his gaze. His long fingers moved slightly, unfastening the latch on the thermal container.
The fresh aroma of chicken soup spread through the room.
Just as Qi Yao thought he wouldn't respond to the subject at all, she heard him ask:
"Was it December?"
In that instant, even the air seemed to stop moving.
Even the tiny dust motes floating in mid-air paused, waiting for her answer.
Qi Yao blinked slowly, trying to process the question. Several seconds passed before understanding finally dawned.
Then her heart skipped violently.
She abruptly looked up at him, a little lost, her mouth opening and closing. The words came out tangled and uncertain.
"...It really was you?"
The chicken soup Lizi made smelled wonderful. Yu Jiashu first tested the temperature against the side of the porcelain bowl, then he stirred it twice with a spoon and brought it to her lips, answering quietly.
"If it was on the second floor..."
He looked down at her, his dark lashes veiling his expression.
"Then yes, it was me."
---
Author's Note:
A little easter egg:
When Shu ordered food for the production crew, he deliberately arranged a different meal for Wen Chuan.
When the staff delivered it, they asked, "Are you Mr. Wen Chuan?”
Wen Chuan replied, "Yes."
The staff member respectfully handed over the meal and said, "Inside is kelp pork bone soup. It's good for the brain. It helps improve your memory."
Wen Chuan: "..."
It felt suspiciously like he'd just been insulted.
---
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