Bai Xialin’s face was too close.
Close enough to see the curve of her eyelashes, fluttering like butterfly wings.
He’d heard many Seoul girls had “surgery faces,” faces altered by the knife.
Her nose was small and delicate, her eyes large and somewhat unreal, clear as if holding water.
But Bai Xialin’s face… was perfect to an unnatural degree.
Cherry-like lips, a high, straight nose bridge, long, thick eyelashes—everything was just right, as if she’d stepped straight off a magazine cover.
So beautiful it made one doubt if it was real.
But those eyes, for some reason, felt familiar.
At first glance they were black, but looking closer, an extremely faint violet sheen surfaced, like amethyst soaked in morning mist.
This color… Gu Yebai felt like he’d seen it somewhere before.
Where?
His memory was fuzzy, leaving only a vague sense of familiarity, like a needle lightly pricking his heart.
He suddenly felt he couldn’t keep staring like this.
Maybe for Bai Xialin, this was just an outgoing foreigner’s way of expressing enthusiasm, but for Gu Yebai, the only person of the opposite sex he’d ever been remotely close to growing up was Gao Hongyi.
Being stared at this closely by someone… was really… easy to get shy about, especially with a great beauty like Bai Xialin.
Gu Yebai instinctively turned his head away, his cheeks instantly burning, spreading from his ears all the way down his neck, as if scorched by fire.
“I said…”
“Hmm?”
“You’re too close.”
His voice was as small as a mosquito’s hum.
Bai Xialin blinked, then leaned in a tiny bit more instead.
When she smiled, she revealed two little canine teeth, excited like a Samoyed, her tail practically wagging.
“It’s only by getting closer that I can see your face clearly~!”
Her voice carried a slight nasal tone, her warm breath hitting Gu Yebai’s ear, mixed with the scent of lemon sports spray and faint sweat, a bit alluring.
“This is my first time meeting a real-life famous author! So your features really do have a unique aura… I super like it!”
Gu Yebai’s Adam’s apple bobbed.
He took half a step back, his fingers unconsciously tightening on the hem of his shirt.
Seeing this, Bai Xialin didn’t retreat; her eyes only grew brighter.
“Can I come in and see your place?”
She tilted her head, looking at him with eyes brimming with anticipation.
Gu Yebai was silent for two seconds.
An image flashed in his mind: Gao Hongyi standing on tiptoe to kiss him before leaving this morning—the panic and possessiveness hidden in those dark pupils, like a thin red thread silently tightening around his neck.
But this girl in front of him… she hadn’t done anything wrong.
She just liked his novels, just wanted to make friends, just… was too enthusiastic.
If he was going to grow a spine, it had to be now.
“Alright, please come in.”
His voice was so light it sounded like he was convincing himself.
….
“Shin-nan-da (I’m so excited)~ Thank you, Xiao Gu!”
Bai Xialin cheered like a child getting candy, bent to put on the slippers by the entryway, and bounced into the living room.
The moment she entered, her gaze was firmly captured by the Bösendorfer upright piano by the floor-to-ceiling window.
“What a beautiful piano! Does Xiao Gu Gu play?”
She trotted over, her fingers tracing a line just above the keys, not daring to actually touch them, then looked back at Gu Yebai, her eyes curved like crescent moons.
“Uh… Hongyi plays.”
“The kitchen looks amazing too!”
“Xiao Gu Gu, I’m really good at cooking. Want to come to my place for lunch? I’ll personally zou a meal for you!”
“Zou a meal?”
“Ah, sorry, sorry! I mean zuo! Cook! Cook!”
She clasped her hands together, cheeks slightly pink.
“I’ve been studying Chinese for a year and a half, but I still mess up a lot… I’m so dumb!”
“You’re already very strong. If I had to learn Korean, I’d probably still be mute by now.”
She circled the open kitchen, then her nose suddenly twitched, like a real little puppy, sniffing here and there.
“There’s the smell of pumpkin porridge from this morning, and egg yolk pastries!”
“Is my accent weird? Even though Chinese isn’t my native language, I can already read your novels! I’ve looked up a lot of Korean-Chinese dictionaries too, some parts I still have to guess… but it’s really quite fun~!”
After checking out the kitchen, she slipped into the bedroom.
Finally, she arrived at the most important room: the study.
….
Hands behind her back, she paced back and forth in front of the bookshelf like she was inspecting new territory.
“So this is where Xiao Gu Gu writes!”
“Are all these old things brought from Linchuan?”
“Uncle Gao and my dad talked about your past, you know. Xiao Gu Gu works really hard, and you like to run just like me!”
“When I say ‘run,’ I mean work hard, not shrink back from difficulties, it’s… let me think, right, it means ‘motivated’!”
“Run, be free, like the wind, hehe!”
“You xi hou, you can even feel like the wind can’t outrun you!”
“Occasionally there are niu yan fei yu, but to you it doesn’t matter, because you’re walking ahead of them, so that’s why they gossip about you.”
Gu Yebai’s mouth twitched.
“Sometimes” had become “you xi hou” again, “gossip/rumors” had become “niu yan fei yu”… Even though she seemed to want to talk philosophy, to strike a cool-girl pose…
This accent made it really hard to take seriously.
“I super love running! Last night I kept waiting for you to accept my friend request, tossing and turning unable to sleep, so I just drank a big cup of iced Americano, then ran to the gym to lift! After lifting, I ran a big loop along the Bund! The more I ran, the more energized I got. When I finished training and got home, I saw you’d accepted, ya-ho! I was so hyped up~!”
“That’s the meaning of freedom!”
She plopped down on the chair by the desk, swinging her legs wrapped in leggings, speaking passionately.
But that strange accent still diluted the intensity quite a bit.
“So, Xiao Gu Gu, life lies in movement!”
….
“I super hope you’ll come downstairs every morning and run with me! We’ll become great running buddies!”
“Uh…”
“That word ‘running buddies,’ you’d better not say it casually.”
The way she pronounced it just now really made people think of something else.
Without context, it could easily be misunderstood.
“Miss Bai, I think you should look up homophones more often, and also—”
“An-dwae~!”
“Pardon? I don’t understand Korean.”
“I said, no!!!”
Bai Xialin crossed her arms in front of her chest, puffing out her cheeks.
“Don’t call me Miss Bai! You can call me Xiao Lin!”
“Xiao Lin?”
“That’s fine! Call me Xiao Lin, and I’ll be happy. That sounds more like friends!”
“I know, I’ll definitely study Chinese hard from now on! Just wait, this year, I’ll definitely become as good as a native ze!”
She clenched her little fist, her eyes sparkling as if making some solemn vow.
But the “zhe” in “native speaker” was pronounced “ze” again, sounding a bit… illegally cute.
However, Gu Yebai realized this was dangerous.
He immediately chanted in his heart: ‘Not cuter than Gao Hongyi. Absolutely not!’
“Alright, we’ve pretty much seen everything we need to see!”
“Are you heading back?”
….
“No, no, no, Xiao Gu Gu, let’s go downstairs together, let’s go have a cup of coffee!”
“I said on WeChat, I really, really, really want to buy you a cup of coffee!”
“About the coffee, I’ll have to pass.”
“I still have to write, and also…”
“It’s not very convenient.”
Bai Xialin jumped off the bed.
Before Gu Yebai could react, she had already naturally reached out and hooked her arm through his.
She pressed herself extremely close, her soft chest inadvertently brushing lightly against his arm.
‘Just physical contact like this?’
Gu Yebai’s mind went completely blank.
That warm sensation transmitted through the thin sweatshirt fabric, zipping down his spine like an electric current, freezing him in place.
‘I touched her chest!’
“Let go, Xiao Lin, really, I can’t. I’m already breaking the rules!”
Bai Xialin didn’t let go.
Instead, she tilted her head, looking at him with sparkling eyes, as if she didn’t understand.
“What rules~ What’s wrong with having a cup of coffee together?”
She gently shook his arm, like a spoiled puppy wagging its tail.
“I think we’ll become super good friends. Is having coffee with a friend something you hate?”
“Or is it… Xiao Gu Gu hates me?”
Her voice softened, the last few words drawn out long, carrying a hint of a hurt, nasal tone.
“No, I absolutely don’t hate you!”
….
Gu Yebai denied it almost reflexively.
Gao Hongyi had said: Don’t go out.
Their last chat was forty minutes ago; he told her he was going to write.
If Gao Hongyi found out he’d met Bai Xialin privately, even… gone out with her…
Then everything would really be over!
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