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Chapter 8: The Prophet’s Threat (3)
“What’s going on, A-Si? Xiao Gu, are you two hiding something from me?” Zhou Wen immediately noticed the change in Shen Si’s expression.
Shen Si didn’t respond. With so many colleagues from the External Communications Department around, he didn’t want to embarrass Zhou Wen.
“Sis Wen, how could we hide anything from you? The nanny just said Lulu had a bit of diarrhea,” Xiao Gu said with a fawning smile, trying to smooth things over.
Zhou Wen didn’t even glance at Xiao Gu. She just kept her eyes fixed on Shen Si. “A-Si—”
“Why are you so suspicious?” Shen Si stood up impatiently. His eyelids lowered, long thick lashes covering his unique amber eyes—along with the disgust in them.
In the room next door, a few newly recruited assistants were sneaking glances this way. When they saw Shen Si stand up, his silhouette visible through the thick frosted glass, they couldn’t help whispering excitedly, “Wow, he’s so handsome! A-Si is so handsome—”
The muffled voices drifted over, and Shen Si felt a wave of helplessness.
He glanced at Zhou Wen.
This woman had been orbiting around him like a satellite since his debut. He remembered how her cheeks turned nearly scarlet the first time she saw him.
Human hearts!
He gave a dry laugh. “Everyone, continue your discussion. Let me know when you reach a decision—I’ll follow whatever you decide!” He turned and pulled open Zhou Wen’s office door, walking out without the slightest hesitation. Xiao Gu hurriedly grabbed Shen Si’s bag and ran after him.
By the time Xiao Gu reached the parking garage, he only caught the tail end of Shen Si’s sports car, angrily blasting out a stream of blue exhaust from the tailpipe.
“He’s really hard to serve, huh!” someone drawled lazily, voice deliberately lowered across several lanes.
Xiao Gu looked up—it was Qin Huan, the only celebrity in the industry who could rival Shen Si in popularity.
What’s he doing here? Xiao Gu eyed him warily.
If Shen Si was the king of music, then Qin Huan was undoubtedly the emperor of film and television.
Xiao Gu quickly fixed his expression, squinted his puffy eyes under messy bangs into two slits, gave Qin Huan a flattering smile, then dashed off.
As he ran, he muttered inwardly: Who’s harder to serve than you? Even Empress Dowager Cixi would’ve given up.
In just three years, Qin Huan had gone through assistant after assistant. Yet in just three days, Xiao Gu would have served Shen Si for a full four years.
Halfway down the road, Xiao Gu received a text from Shen Si: Plan remains unchanged.
He paused briefly, then got moving again—he was long used to following Shen Si’s instructions without question. As Shen Si’s personal assistant, he had long ago set his professional standard: Just act, don’t ask.
To Jiang Chunyi, women in the world fell into two categories:
One type were regular women who lived by their biological cycle.
The other type, like her old friend Xu Zhiyi, lived strictly by their cellular growth cycle.
For the latter, time had to be measured down to the hour. Even after more than twenty years of friendship, meeting for a meal required scheduling days in advance.
But tonight was strange. She had just showered, was drying her hair while watching the late-night news, and getting ready to binge a Korean drama.
“Hong Kong Wetland Park—57 black-faced spoonbills suddenly found dead—”
On TV, a Cantonese-speaking news anchor reported live from the scene. A worker wearing elbow-length rubber gloves picked up the snow-white corpses of the birds. Holding up a large dead bird to the camera, he said,
“These are migratory birds that just arrived to winter here in the past two days. Everything seemed fine yesterday—lots of visitors were still taking pictures. This morning, we found the ground covered in corpses. The black-faced spoonbill is a rare species, as precious as the giant panda, with only 2,725 left globally… A mass death like this has never occurred in our park. We can’t rule out poisoning, disease, or possibly the sudden drop in Hong Kong’s winter temperatures. We’ll be reporting this to the Health Department for further investigation…”
Jiang Chunyi paused. So… it’s like losing 57 pandas at once?
The camera zoomed in on the bird’s lifeless, hollow eyes—no longer reflecting light, just a chilling, indifferent stillness. She shuddered and was about to change the channel when her phone rang—it was Xu Zhiyi.
“Want to grab a drink? My treat!”
Jiang Chunyi’s brain buzzed. She instinctively replied, “Sure, I’ll be right there.”
“Same place as always,” Xu Zhiyi replied tersely.
After hanging up, Jiang Chunyi paused for a moment. Something felt off. She didn’t even finish drying her hair—just threw on clothes and rushed out. She knew—if Xu Zhiyi was calling her this late, something serious had happened.
When Jiang Chunyi arrived, the food street behind the university was bustling with lights and life.
Fragrant aromas wafted from the row of street-facing eateries, each one packed and lively. Voices in all sorts of accents clashed and tumbled out. The bitter winter air had been driven off by the fiery hormones of youth.
Rubbing her frozen hands, Jiang Chunyi ducked into a Japanese-style grill.
As she pulled aside the coarse curtain at the entrance, a wave of wasabi and grilled meat aroma hit her like a punch. She gasped—and immediately heard boss Deng Wu’s Sichuan-accented Mandarin boom cheerfully in her ear,
“Miss Jiang is here! Your usual spot—Professor Xu’s been waiting a while!”
The short, loud Deng Wu’s booming voice made her eardrums ring.
“Xiao Wu, how many times do I have to tell you, don’t call me Miss Jiang—it’s bad luck.”
“Next time, I promise!” Deng Wu bowed with a grin like an old-time tavern waiter.
Jiang Chunyi made her way past four or five tables of rowdy students, and sat down at a small, dark red table near the bar, away from the crowd.
“You sure took your time!” Xu Zhiyi glanced up at her, then looked down to pour a drink—but found the bottle empty. She snapped her fingers crisply at Deng Wu.
She shook the empty bottle, and Deng Wu brought a new one over at once, leaning in to tell Jiang Chunyi, “Miss Jiang, this is her third bottle.”
Jiang Chunyi waved it off—Got it. She took the full glass, sipped it.
The fiery spirit burned going down, with a sweet aftertaste—no wonder Xu Zhiyi was already three bottles in.
“So? What’s gotten into you tonight, suddenly treating me to drinks?” Jiang Chunyi studied her friend closely.
Xu Zhiyi looked calm, her features relaxed. The restaurant was warm—most people had taken off coats, leaving only shirts or tees. Only she was still wrapped in her coat, her usually pale cheeks now with a bit of flushed color, looking less cold and aloof.
“Nothing much. Just feeling… off,” she said.
“What, spring fever?” Jiang Chunyi clinked glasses with her and downed another.
“You think everyone’s like you—catching feelings over some idol drama?”
“I’m perpetually in puberty,” Jiang Chunyi said, striking a playful pose like a lovestruck teen.
“More like in heat,” Xu Zhiyi replied, stuffing some seaweed into her mouth.
“Please, spare me. Did your great universal flu vaccine hit a snag?” Jiang Chunyi asked casually.
“How did you know?” Xu Zhiyi blinked.
“What else could bother you, besides lab stuff? Come on, spill.”
“Sigh, it’s complicated,” Xu Zhiyi downed another drink. “Forget it—talking about it will just kill the mood. You wouldn’t understand anyway.”
“Then say something I can understand.”
Xu Zhiyi looked her up and down, holding her glass silently, as if deep in thought.
Jiang Chunyi waved in front of her face, “Hey, what are you spacing out for?”
“I’m trying to figure out what I can say that you’d understand,” she replied seriously.
“I gave up my K-drama crush of two weeks and came out on a freezing night—this is how you repay my love? You might as well head straight to the crematorium!”
Just then—
Two bright flashes went off.
They both instinctively turned. A nondescript man at the door was snapping photos with a camera.
“Is he taking pictures of us?” Jiang Chunyi asked uncertainly.
“I don’t think I’m that famous,” Xu Zhiyi tilted her head at the man.
“Maybe he was moved by my beauty?” Jiang Chunyi bit her chopsticks. “A talent scout?”
“Don’t flatter yourself!” Xu Zhiyi rolled her eyes, but suddenly slapped the table. “Speaking of talent scouts—I just remembered something.”
Jiang Chunyi leaned in, signaling she was listening.
“I saw your idol—Shen Si!”
“What?! Tell me everything!” Jiang Chunyi lit up.
“Well… strictly speaking, I didn’t see him clearly.” Xu Zhiyi described briefly the cafeteria encounter.
“I know that story! I almost called you at the time, but figured you wouldn’t care about such juicy gossip. Turns out—you were there?!”
Jiang Chunyi excitedly tapped her glass with chopsticks, ding ding ding: “Details! I need details! Was he as outrageously handsome in person as in photos? I saw pics of him falling while escaping fans—broke my heart. But wow, even falling, he looked gorgeous.”
“Can’t comment. I lost my contact lenses. He sat right across from me—I didn’t even see his face. Just caught a whiff of his cologne… or should I say—his aura.”
“You’re hopeless! Just got a sniff—what a waste!”
“Please don’t misuse idioms.”
“Oh, coming from someone who didn’t even finish high school?” Jiang Chunyi fired back, then laughed. “Not looking at a handsome guy is wasteful.”
Xu Zhiyi and Jiang Chunyi had been classmates in elementary and middle school. Much to Jiang Chunyi’s frustration, by the time she entered high school, Xu Zhiyi had already skipped ahead to university.
“The more handsome a man, the more dangerous he is. Have you ever seen a precious sword willingly stay sheathed?” Xu Zhiyi lit a cigarette, puffed a cloud of smoke in Jiang Chunyi’s face.
“Stop with the drama queen nonsense,” Jiang Chunyi waved away the smoke. “Save me from your ‘no filial kids by a sickbed, no lovers for menopausal women’ theories.”
The two joked and drank until closing time before parting.
Jiang Chunyi stood at the door, watching Xu Zhiyi’s slender figure fade into a gray-white dot in the night.
Xu Zhiyi never complained—because even if she did, Jiang Chunyi wouldn’t understand. That world of viruses was too far removed. All she could do was accompany her.
Xu Zhiyi tightened her coat. Her scarf, looped asymmetrically, dragged on the ground. She staggered along the streetlit campus path.
It was already past midnight. The huge campus was eerily quiet, like the bottom of the sea. Dark. The wind whispered like underwater currents.
A fuzzy, pale moon hung in the sky like a smudged tear.
Xu Zhiyi looked up and pointed boldly at it: “What are you crying for? Tears are the most useless weakness!” She yelled, stumbled on her scarf, and nearly fell.
She let out a muffled laugh and kept walking, mumbling to herself. In the empty campus, probably only the wind could hear her.
Unconsciously, she circled the campus again and again before finally finding her dorm. She staggered up to the 5th floor, poked her key at the lock seventeen or eighteen times before finally unlocking it.
When dawn broke, the bluish light shone on her closed eyelids.
She opened her eyes to find she’d fallen asleep sitting on the bathroom floor, head resting on the toilet lid.
She chuckled awkwardly, got up, and took a long hot shower.
Alcohol truly was a miracle. At least last night, she didn’t suffer from insomnia.
Feeling refreshed, she stepped out of the bathroom, poured a glass of now-cold water from the thermos, downed it, and shivered.
Then she sat at her desk by the window, towel drying her wet hair, opened her laptop, and began drafting her next research grant proposal.
This project was the dream of her life—nothing would stop her.
She would do whatever it took to make it a reality.