GV – Chapter 69

Sunlight spilled over them. Cars came and went, and the cycles of life, aging, sickness, and death continued to play out in a highly concentrated fashion within the hospital’s few buildings. Yet, just across the street, everything slowed down. The rhythm of life returned to the mundane necessities, people met and missed each other, the spring flowers began to fade, and the resilient branches and leaves of summer started to dominate the botanical landscape—though that, too, would take time, waiting for the last petals to fall.

This was what an ordinary life looked like.

Ye Yuhuan and Song Zhiqing crossed the street and bought two ice cream bars from a convenience store. They were chocolate-flavored with a cranberry jam filling. The cold, sweet taste was perfect for forgetting everything on the other side of the street.

Forgetting Shen Wei, forgetting the Shangguan family, forgetting Guo Siwan.

Forgetting the plot, the character archetypes, the so-called destiny.

They quietly finished their ice cream at a table in front of the convenience store, then got into a car, accompanied by their silent but ever-present bodyguards.

The black commercial vehicle drove smoothly along the eight-lane road. The air conditioning was off, but every window was open. Wind howled in from all directions, whipping their hair and clothes into a messy tangle.

No one was bothering them now. The pottery studio was still forty minutes away on the timeline.

Song Zhiqing tied her hair into a sturdy bun and handed Ye Yuhuan a hair tie so she could manage her own appearance.

Ye Yuhuan fashioned her hair into a low ponytail, looking rather serene. When the wind blew, strands of hair swept across her cheek, making her resemble a noble lady from an ancient, esteemed family, leaning languidly against a courtyard railing in the drowsiness of spring.

Song Zhiqing bit her lip, a faint blush spreading across its pink surface. Suppressing the myriad of unspeakable thoughts in her heart, she leaned over and tucked the stray hairs still flying around Ye Yuhuan’s face behind her ear. As she moved her hand away, her fingers seemed to linger, brushing against Ye Yuhuan’s earlobe.

Ye Yuhuan glanced at her before turning back.

Song Zhiqing was annoyed. This blockhead.

“What is it you like about pottery?” Ye Yuhuan’s fingers twitched; she wanted to touch her ear—she wasn’t entirely unaffected, after all.

Ye Yuhuan’s question diverted Song Zhiqing’s attention. After several months of practice, she couldn’t say she was a master of pottery, but she had certainly developed a good feel for it.

“There’s something magical about pottery. It’s not something completely controlled by the creator. With a good fire, it can become more beautiful, but it might also shatter. That’s the price of greater beauty. When I’m making a piece, I often have to imagine what it will look like after being fired at high temperatures. It will become hard and smooth, forever fixed in one form, and that form is one I bestowed upon it. It gives me a sense of accomplishment very similar to creating music.”

“Ah, I see,” Ye Yuhuan said thoughtfully. “I didn’t realize you were so possessive.”

Song Zhiqing’s heart skipped a beat, thinking she had been found out. But when she understood the full meaning of the sentence, she was puzzled. “How did you make that connection? Possessiveness is about things that don’t belong to you, right? I feel like my works are a complete extension of myself. Connecting that to possessiveness seems very far-fetched to me.”

Ye Yuhuan opened two bottles of water and handed one to Song Zhiqing. The clear water washed away the lingering sweetness in her mouth. Ye Yuhuan set the bottle aside, her long, slender eyebrows rising in a teasing arch. “‘Bestow,’ ‘belong’—those two words already make it obvious, don’t they?”

A simple, casual chat was gradually turning into a debate.

Song Zhiqing was getting a little worked up. She was indeed possessive, but that was towards Ye Yuhuan, not everything she had a connection with. “I’m stating an objective fact. In terms of attribution, the things I create are subordinate to me. There’s no emotional color of possessiveness involved that could be brought into it.”

Ye Yuhuan shook her head in disagreement. “There’s no such thing as ‘works’ in the world. Everything is an independent entity. Even a poem or a book doesn’t belong to its author. They undergo interpretation, evaluation, and re-interpretation, and in the end, they might be vastly different from the original image in the author’s mind. So, there’s no absolute subordinate relationship.”

Ah, so that’s the crux of the matter.

This Ye Yuhuan person simply didn’t believe in fixed relationships.

Song Zhiqing knew she couldn’t easily break through Ye Yuhuan’s cold, hard logic with words—that would take too much time. So she wrapped an arm around Ye Yuhuan’s neck, pressing her down onto her. With her lips to Ye Yuhuan’s ear, she explained with great earnestness, “Look now, we’re hugging, so we’re in a hugging relationship. When my hand touched your neck just now, your breathing quickened, and your head instinctively tilted back. That’s a change in you caused by me. For at least those five seconds, all your reactions were a work I created. So, can you say there’s no relationship between us now?”

“Of course… you can’t.”

The wind was still blowing relentlessly. The temperature today was twenty-two degrees Celsius, so why did it feel so hot and stuffy in the car?

Ye Yuhuan pulled Song Zhiqing’s hand away. She wasn’t fully convinced, but she didn’t want to argue anymore.

“Looking at it now, it seems quite natural.”

A triumphant smile spread across Song Zhiqing’s face, her round almond eyes sparkling. The lace trim on her sleeve brushed against the back of Ye Yuhuan’s hand. Ye Yuhuan turned her face away and looked out the window. “Are we almost there?”

The driver replied, “Still a ways to go.”

Ye Yuhuan let out a breath.

She finally asked the question. “Seeing Shangguan Xianxian and Shen Wei so intimate just now, didn’t you feel sad?”

Song Zhiqing’s heart lurched. She touched her nose and lowered her gaze, trying her best to look heartbroken. “Mmm… it was a little uncomfortable. But maybe because I’d already accepted it, it wasn’t as sad as it was at first.”

In truth, she had been so preoccupied with teasing Shen Wei that she hadn’t had a single thought to spare for mourning her dead-and-buried crush.

But if Ye Yuhuan was suspicious, she might as well play along, lest she scare her off again.

Hearing this, Ye Yuhuan moved a little farther away from Song Zhiqing, so far that even her side profile seemed to glint with the sharp edge of a blade.

“Oh, you’re really good at accepting things.”

The words were laced with sarcasm.

Song Zhiqing blinked, then blinked again.

Eh, why is she angry when I’m going along with her?

You’re so difficult, Ye Yuhuan.

But she had to admit, Ye Yuhuan’s apparent jealousy deeply pleased her.

She grinned and scooted closer, patting Ye Yuhuan’s head as if she were a small dog.

Ye Yuhuan turned her head to avoid her touch, remaining silent.

I’ll just be angry for five minutes, she thought, then I’ll pull myself together and figure out how to make Song Zhiqing give up on Shangguan Xianxian.

But Song Zhiqing scooted over again, resting her chin on Ye Yuhuan’s shoulder. She blinked her big eyes, feigning a pitiful look. The warm air from her mouth and nose drifted across Ye Yuhuan’s jaw, and she felt hot again.

So annoying, Song Zhiqing. You won’t even give me five minutes.

Ye Yuhuan couldn’t take it anymore. Not caring that they were in a car, she used both hands to straighten Song Zhiqing’s head, then bent down, slid her right hand under Song Zhiqing’s knees, wrapped her left arm around her waist, gathered her strength, and lifted her to the other end of the seat in one swift motion.

Fortunately, the car was spacious, so Song Zhiqing didn’t hit her head.

But her face flushed red from Ye Yuhuan’s touch.

At last, Song Zhiqing was quiet.

Ye Yuhuan successfully obtained her five minutes of exclusive anger time.

Five minutes later.

As if the past five minutes had never happened, Ye Yuhuan seamlessly continued the conversation. “If it were me, I’d feel it wasn’t worth it. You’re not bad yourself, after all. There’s no need to hang yourself on this tree that’s already been taken home by someone else.”

Song Zhiqing couldn’t hear a word she was saying. Her mind was screaming, Ye Yuhuan just held me, right!

She gave a perfunctory “Mmm.”

But considering the perfunctory response was for Ye Yuhuan…

She made it, “Mmm-hmm.”

Ye Yuhuan was satisfied.

There was plenty of time. Given how clingy Shangguan Xianxian and Shen Wei were, and her own advantageous position, she refused to believe she couldn’t force Song Zhiqing to fall for someone else.

The car ride ended on Song Zhiqing’s final “Mmm-hmm.”

They had arrived at the pottery studio.

The shop was opened by a B-list actress who had retired many years ago. This person had quite a few business collaborations with the Song family, so Song Chen had introduced his daughter here.

The actress had been a popular starlet back in the day, on the verge of breaking into the A-list when the paparazzi exposed her relationship. She was of an age where her fans wouldn’t have minded much, but her partner was a woman—and a divorced woman with a child, at that.

At the time, the same-sex marriage law had only recently been passed, and public opinion was still rife with suspicion and condemnation towards same-sex relationships. If the partner had been a good match, people might have just gossiped and left a few nasty comments.

Unfortunately, on the surface, that wasn’t the case. The woman was the actress’s high school classmate. She had gotten married after college, divorced a few years later, and was struggling to start a business while raising a child on her own.

The fans went ballistic, desperately pleading with the actress to break up, claiming the woman was a straight woman pretending to be a lesbian, just looking for a meal ticket to take care of her for the rest of her life.

The actress tried to explain a few times, posting two thousand-word essays.

One explained that their love was sincere.

The other declared that because she could not tolerate the baseless slander against her beloved, she had decided to retire from the entertainment industry.

It had caused a massive storm back then, but times had changed. Nowadays, celebrity scandals came in ever more varied and bizarre forms, which ironically made people nostalgic for the actress’s courage and passion in quitting for love.

After all, a certain young male star who had been caught cheating not long ago simply posted an apology, laid low for a few months, and then reappeared beautifully on various red carpets.

Meanwhile, the actress and her lover had started a business together and had become one of the country’s top fifty richest women.

This pottery studio was one of their ventures. It wasn’t for profit, but purely a memento. The woman loved pottery, so when the actress was pursuing her, she opened a pottery studio for her, brazenly declaring that she could support her.

It really did sound like the kind of easy mark the fans had imagined.

The woman didn’t accept the studio, but she did accept the actress.

To this day, the studio had become a popular spot for pottery enthusiasts in A-City. The story of the two female owners had spread, attracting many couples who came to soak up the happy vibes.

Song Zhiqing harbored similar intentions.

As they walked inside, she told Ye Yuhuan the story behind the studio.

Ye Yuhuan nodded along in agreement, her eyes constantly scanning the shop’s decor.

The most eye-catching features of the shop were two walls. One was lined with finished pottery works, and the other was covered in ceramic shards. The shards were painted with various symbols and logos. Ye Yuhuan gave them a quick scan and saw that most had couple-related elements, either two intertwined initials or a simple stick-figure drawing of two happy, sweet-looking little heads, mostly girls.

Song Zhiqing had moved on to the two owners’ legendary entrepreneurial history. Judging by her enthusiastic expression, she greatly admired such a love story.

They entered a private room. From the staff’s behavior, it seemed to be Song Zhiqing’s exclusive room.

After the staff member left, Ye Yuhuan’s fingers, resting against the seams of her pants, couldn’t help but curl slightly. Song Zhiqing took out a block of clay and began to knead it.

The clay was scented, so the earthy smell in the air was not overpowering. Instead, it created a sense of tranquility.

Ye Yuhuan… perhaps it was because of the story, perhaps the atmosphere, or perhaps it was simply because of Song Zhiqing.

She was a little nervous.

But Song Zhiqing didn’t wait for her. She had already started shaping the outline of a piece. Ye Yuhuan forced herself to calm down and focus her mind on the clay in front of her.

She began to shape the outline of a tomato.

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