A Top-Tier Green Tea Actress Enters a Dating Reality Show - Chapter 44

“At that time, I wasn’t thinking about you that way,” Meng Ziqing’s eyes darted away, her tone suggesting a desire to avoid the answer.

The hand beneath hers gripped the hem of her long t-shirt. After answering, she fell silent, her gaze lowered. The usual tranquility in her eyes was absent, replaced by a confused panic.

Meng Ziqing was now thinking: What if it had been Qin Yue who was kidnapped back then, and Qin Yue who had walked out of the abandoned factory, bloody and with a laughing expression? What would she have been like?

As the thought absorbed her, Meng Ziqing involuntarily shivered, a creeping chill running down her spine.

She would go mad…

“No?”

Seeing Meng Ziqing’s uncommunicative attitude, Qin Yue felt she was lying.

A sense of absurdity and helplessness rose in her heart. She took a deep breath, trying hard to control her emotions which were already at the brink. Her voice was somewhat cold, “Meng Ziqing, we’re all adults, can we just play fair?”

Was it that hard to tell the truth?

Was it that hard to just say she didn’t like her?

If anyone could handle it, Qin Yue could.

What was the point of Meng Ziqing’s avoidance?

Qin Yue could handle it if Meng Ziqing said she didn’t love her now. She knew that love had a timeline, a hierarchy of importance, and she also understood that love was inherently unfair.

Perhaps one moment you liked this person, and the next you liked someone else. Perhaps one moment you felt indifferent about a person, and the next moment you were moved by a small gesture from them.

So, Qin Yue could accept it if Meng Ziqing said she didn’t love her now.

Not now, but what about the next second?

The second after that?

People fall in love every minute of every day in the world. If this second didn’t belong to her and Meng Ziqing, what about the next?

If the next second, wasn’t it, and the second after that wasn’t either, there would always be one second when that moment of confirmed love between partners would belong to them.

But now, Meng Ziqing’s attitude made Qin Yue feel helpless.

Because the person she loved was a coward who was very unbrave and dared not speak the truth.

Qin Yue’s clear, cold eyes reddened. Water from her hair dripped onto her collarbone, then flowed down into the thick white bath towel, making her shiver. She suddenly felt a little cold, or rather, not a little, but very cold.

It wasn’t the external cold of the morning in Tibet; it was a chill she felt from the inside out.

Cold.

Too cold.

The coldness of a passionate heart being frozen solid.

“I really wasn’t thinking about you that way!” Meng Ziqing looked up to explain. Hearing Qin Yue’s inner thoughts, she instantly felt annoyed. She was stung by Qin Yue’s disappointed gaze, and her tone involuntarily became sharp, “Why don’t you believe me?!”

“I really wasn’t thinking that you were worthless or anything like that. I!”

“I…”

“I…” Meng Ziqing opened her mouth several times but couldn’t utter the word ‘love’.

Love was like a fishbone, caught in her throat, twisting and turning, unable to be coughed up or swallowed.

In fact, after a long time, one might adapt, forget it, and ignore its existence.

Just like Meng Ziqing now, she didn’t know. She didn’t know if she had gotten used to the fishbone or if there was no fishbone at all, if she… had remembered incorrectly…

Did she love Qin Yue? Had clear liking turned into love? Didn’t she love her?

But… living together day and night, mistaking a liking, did she truly love her?

She didn’t know, didn’t know, didn’t know!

Meng Ziqing took a deep breath and closed her eyes in distress.

Her heart was filled with an unspeakable, agonizing conflict. Her head hurt, a pain so intense she felt she might die.

Meng Ziqing lowered her head, her voice repressed, carrying the impatience of pain, and explained again, “I don’t know…”

“But I really didn’t think of you that way.”

Meng Ziqing looked at Qin Yue, her mind too chaotic to form any other explanation. And the two lines of explanation she kept repeating were so…

Blank, empty.

Qin Yue’s usually straight shoulders sagged in defeat, slightly slumping. She swallowed hard, turned her face away, and finally said faintly, “Do whatever you want.”

She turned, intending to open the closet, get dressed, and leave.

She felt too uncomfortable being in the same room with Meng Ziqing.

Qin Yue’s movement of turning around snapped Meng Ziqing back from her jumbled thoughts. She knew that Qin Yue’s emotions were very unstable right now. If this rift wasn’t resolved immediately, it would inevitably fester into a major problem.

They would be over.

Meng Ziqing didn’t want that, absolutely not.

“Qin Yue, don’t go.”

Meng Ziqing’s eyebrows furrowed tightly, and a flicker of panic crossed her eyes. She quickly got up and, with a few hurried steps, grabbed Qin Yue, who was heading towards the walk-in closet.

“No, I really wasn’t lying just now!”

Meng Ziqing’s eyes glistened with unshed tears, her voice hoarse, “Don’t go!”

With the grab, Qin Yue had no choice but to turn back, but she didn’t speak, just looked at her quietly. Her eyes were deep, revealing no emotion, and her heart was surprisingly calm, allowing Meng Ziqing to read nothing from her.

After a long moment of staring at each other, Qin Yue said faintly, “You’re hurting my arm.”

“I’m sorry…”

Seemingly realizing that grabbing her arm so forcefully was excessive, Meng Ziqing instinctively let go. She frowned tightly, “Sister, I can’t answer your question about when I said ‘I love you’ right now.”

“Because… I don’t know if I love you.”

Meng Ziqing looked at Qin Yue’s cool, exquisite face, her long lashes trembling, and her eyes filled with melancholy.

Qin Yue pursed her lips, restraining herself from speaking.

“Just now, when you splashed coffee on yourself, I wasn’t thinking about whether it was worth it. Instead, I was worried that the coffee was hot and shouldn’t be spilled on you.”

Meng Ziqing tried to make her words clearer, “But that sentence, ‘I don’t love you,’ I can’t explain it.”

“What counts as love?”

Meng Ziqing raised her eyes to look at Qin Yue, but her gaze was blank, devoid of light. She was looking at her, yet not at her, but through her, at an abstract concept.

A concrete representation called love.

In the warm, sunny room, the silence was only broken by the rustling wind outside. The girl’s voice echoed in the slightly empty space.

“I don’t know if I love you now, but I am very certain that I like you.”

“Whether on the show or off the show, I like you.”

“But liking is liking, and I can’t be sure if I love you,” Meng Ziqing lowered her eyes, articulating the thoughts in her heart. “When you were in danger, my heart’s concern was for your personal safety. Not what kind of persona I should project under the camera, nor whether what you were doing was worth it.”

“All I thought was that it was very dangerous, and you shouldn’t go.”

“But does that prove that I love you?”

At this point, Qin Yue finally saw the struggle and the painful helplessness in Meng Ziqing’s eyes as she tried to sort out her feelings.

“Meng Ziqing…” Qin Yue opened her mouth, but now she didn’t know what to say. Meng Ziqing’s emotional state was clearly not right.

“Does this count as love?”

Meng Ziqing frowned and asked Qin Yue, “Sister, I clearly know I have feelings for you. But if feelings like worry and concern during a dangerous situation count as love…”

“Don’t you think that’s superficial?” She choked up.

Meng Ziqing seemed to be trapped in an unsolvable problem, without a single clue for the next step. She was close to breaking down, “And who knows if this is love or something else? We spend all our time together. If it were Zhang Ke or Su An’an about to be splashed with coffee, I would also be startled and a little worried.”

She was caught in a vicious circle, “But if it were them, I wouldn’t rush over without thinking…”

“But does that just mean you are more important to me than them, and is that love?”

Meng Ziqing covered her head, tormented by this question of love, her brow tightly furrowed, her eyes reflecting only pain.

She helplessly turned to Qin Yue for help, “Sister, what exactly is love?”

“Qin Yue, do I… love you now?”

Tears silently rolled down, dropping onto the floor, vanishing without a trace in an instant.

Meng Ziqing, who viewed the world as a game and navigated it with such ease, was a fish that would drown in the river of love, a failure in the subject of love—an idiot who couldn’t even distinguish what love was.

An idiot who was crying, her makeup smeared, her hair messy, and desperately asking a foolish question like “Do I love you?”

Qin Yue gazed at Meng Ziqing, for a long, long time. Finally, she just felt a sting in her nose. She turned her face away, a shimmer of tears flashing in her eyes.

The cool female voice was faint, yet somewhat choked, “I don’t know either.”

Qin Yue wrapped her arm around Meng Ziqing’s shoulder, patting her soothingly, resting her head on Meng Ziqing’s shoulder, trying hard not to let her tears fall, her voice catching.

“Be good, Qingqing, it’s okay not to know.”

“We’ll take it slowly.”