After Being Marked by the Top Celebrity Childhood Friend [Entertainment Industry] - Chapter 1

Peppermint, Blood Orange, Bitter Grapefruit

“…Actor Lin Que’s suspected early departure from the fashion gala has once again sparked controversy over her ‘diva’ behavior…”

Lu Ling twitched. Her phone slipped to the side of her pillow. Subconsciously, she felt herself sinking into sleep, but aside from her inability to open her eyes, her senses of hearing and even smell were heightened. In her dazed state, she felt as though she were still awake.

She tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt as if they were stuck together with glue.

The world was pitch black. It felt as if all the strength in her body was being sucked away by the bed.

Bang!

“Ah!”

Her eyes finally snapped open.

She turned her head; the door was wide open. Beyond the door was an endless darkness, like the gaping abyss of a predator’s mouth mid-slumber. Everything around her was a blur. She felt around her—no glasses.

It was raining outside.

The cold wind, carrying droplets of rain, snuck in through the cracks in the window. The moment they touched her, the reality of the sensation made Lu Ling shudder again. She stared at the doorway, her hands involuntarily gripping the quilt—should she check it out? Or call the police?

If she went to check and there was truly a vicious criminal outside, there would be only one ending: instant death. If she called the police, that first ending was still possible, but perhaps the intruder would retreat out of fear of the authorities.

Call the police.

Lu Ling watched the door as her hand reached for her phone. The moment the sound from the short video app stopped—Sss—

A headache.

It was so painful she couldn’t make a sound. Lu Ling felt like a sponge soaked through with water, being cruelly squeezed by a pair of invisible hands pressing on her brain. Fine beads of sweat—or perhaps blood—were forced from the inside out, covering her skin. The sheets beneath her felt damp.

Creeeak—

Someone entered the room.

Lu Ling gasped, her mind a total blank. Her hands flailed wildly until, suddenly, her palm caught a soft texture—the feel of silk, like a woman’s dress.

A faint scent of peppermint.

So familiar.

Lu Ling caught a whiff of that fragrance, and her head seemed to hurt less. As the pain receded, her other senses gradually returned—around her waist, damp hands coiled like snakes, and a chin was rubbing against the crook of her neck.

It was a woman.

The fragrance grew more intense, like an invisible net.

Peppermint, Blood Orange, Bitter Grapefruit.

The woman’s warm breath brushed against her ear. Her tongue was like raindrops, falling minutely and lightly. Lu Ling raised her hand to cover her mouth; the tiny sound she involuntarily made was like that of a kitten, but the woman did not stop.

“Don’t be afraid, darling. Don’t be afraid.”

A familiar voice.

Lu Ling’s breath hitched. Her thoughts were slowly returning, but the woman behind her reacted with non-human speed. The arm around her waist suddenly tightened, pinning her hand back.

“Ugh—”

Without warning, it was like a lion biting the neck of a deer.

Lu Ling clearly felt the skin on the side of her neck being pierced. The frozen red light from outside caught the hand clamped over her throat, looking as if beads of blood seeping from her flesh had congealed upon it.

In the final moment before losing consciousness, Lu Ling’s hand twitched, striking the nightstand.

Clatter—

Her phone and glasses tumbled to the floor together.

The woman straightened up. The interlaced red and green lights looked like a gorgeous, extravagant gown. With blonde hair and crimson eyes, her cold, pale, slender hand remained clamped around Lu Ling’s neck.

Her temples throbbed, and physiological tears slid from the corners of her eyes, but her vision became clear.

Lightning pierced the sky. The cold light reflected off the woman’s pale, exquisite face—Lin Que.

Lu Ling blinked hard. For a moment, she actually thought she was dreaming. But the woman before her—who didn’t seem human, yet was clearly Lin Que—proved with her actions that this was no dream.

“Mm—”

Lin Que leaned in and kissed her lips.

The scent of peppermint filled her nostrils. Lu Ling’s curled fingers gradually lost their strength, like a flower quietly blooming in a spring night, until they were fully relaxed.

The screw of her glasses pricked the skin on the side of her finger, causing a flare of pain.

In the reflection of the glasses lying on the floor, an ancient locust tree of unknown years stood in the wind and rain, its leaves rustling. It was a rainy day, a sunny day, a summer day.

If this was a dream, it was a nightmare.

Regarding Lin Que, Lu Ling’s last truly clear memory was the day before she moved away from Blue Port Alley at the age of twelve.

That day, she got her first pair of glasses. Deep purple, silicone, round-framed glasses.

“Youyou, how did you become nearsighted?”

“My mom says nearsightedness keeps getting worse until you’re eighteen. And if you wear glasses for a long time, your eyeballs will bulge out, and your eyes will become sensitive to light…”

“Sensitive to light? Isn’t that like a vampire?”

Boring.

Lu Ling rolled her eyes at the sky, but her gaze instinctively flickered toward a certain spot.

Lin Que was sitting under the locust tree at the entrance of the alley, her elbows propping her up against the stone wall behind her. She held a cattail leaf fan between her middle and index fingers, the fan swaying weightlessly.

Like a ghost.

“Lin Que.”

The fan paused. Lin Que slowly looked at her.

One step, two steps.

The distance between them closed. Lu Ling looked down and noticed her own shadow being slowly consumed by Lin Que’s. Just before being completely swallowed, Lu Ling stood up and took a step back.

The overlapping shadows separated.

“My glasses.”

Lin Que glanced at them. She didn’t take them, but smiled slightly. “Very cute.”

Lu Ling frowned slightly and put the glasses on.

Lin Que smiled. Even a fake smile from a beautiful person was beautiful. “They look good.”

—A lie.

Lin Que had no interest in anything that happened to her.

Lu Ling took off the glasses and looked ahead again; the shape of the locust tree was a blur. When she put them back on, the interplay of light and shadow among the leaves became crystal clear.

Like discovering a new world, she looked at Lin Que in surprise. “Why do I have to wear glasses?”

Lin Que frowned. Lu Ling’s eyes were bright. “Why am I nearsighted and you guys aren’t?”

She pointed at the tree and continued, “Why is the ‘blur’ I see considered ‘blurry,’ but the ‘clarity’ you see is ‘clear’? Why is your ‘normal’ the ‘normal’ one?”

“Is it possible that I am the normal one?”

The other girls went quiet. The distant sound of people playing mahjong seemed to fade away. One of them said, “Before you wore glasses, you were the same as us… Youyou, what’s wrong with you?”

Lu Ling ignored her “you’re a freak” look. Her gaze swept over Lin Que as she asked, “What about at the very beginning? When we were babies, do you still have memories of this tree? I don’t remember, and clearly, you don’t either. So how can you be sure I was the same as you?”

“Do you remember?”

“I don’t remember either.”

Lu Ling’s eyes burned. “Neither of us remembers anymore.”

“Then maybe,” Lu Ling looked at Lin Que, “at the very beginning, ‘blur’ was the ‘normal’ state, and clarity is a disease… a sickness?”

Lin Que finally spoke, finishing the thought: “A mutation.”

“Yes, a mutation!” Lu Ling nodded excitedly. “Lin Que—”

“But if that hypothesis holds,” Lin Que crossed her arms, eyes half-lidded as she watched her, “then at least half the people in the world are patients.”

She thought of something and lowered her eyes, adding, “And the remaining half aren’t necessarily ‘normal’ either.”

Lu Ling didn’t answer. She just stared at Lin Que.

Lin Que stood in the sunlight, so pale she looked sickly, like a vengeful spirit wandering in the daylight.

Lu Ling could no longer remember how that debate ended. The day after that, she and Ms. Lu Ye moved from Chenghua to a neighboring city.

And now, twelve years later, the twenty-four-year-old Lu Ling had returned to Chenghua, sitting on the familiar yet distant Subway Line 2.

Buzz—

Lu Ling pulled out her phone:

Mother: Have you seen your Sister Xiao Shen yet? When do you start work?

Truly, what one fears most, one meets.

“Sister Xiao Shen” was Shen Yuchu, Lin Que’s older sister. However, it was strange; in Lu Ling’s blurry memories, Lin Que almost never called Shen Yuchu “Sister.” Occasionally, she had heard Shen Yuchu coaxingly call Lin Que “Sister.”

A strange pair.

Returning to the present, Lu Ling still didn’t know how a woman as proud as Lu Ye had managed to speak to Shen Yuchu or Lin Que. Initially, Lu Ye would dodge the question, and eventually, she just pretended she couldn’t hear, saying firmly: “You can’t keep wasting your life at home.”

Finally, when she stuffed Lu Ling and her guitar into the high-speed rail station, she left her with one sentence: “I’ve arranged a job for you. Just go do it properly!” Then she turned and left decisively.

That “arranged job” was as a celebrity assistant.

Twelve years—time had changed so much, yet it followed a logical progression. For example, Lin Que had become a superstar.

She had been unrealistically beautiful since she was a child. Debuting at twenty, she became a sensation in the entertainment industry based on a single shot in a famous director’s masterpiece. A high-ranking post once commented that if Lin Que had vanished or died after that one shot, she would have been the “white moonlight” and “cinnabar mole” in everyone’s hearts.

But Lin Que, who didn’t die, became notorious in the industry for her bad reputation. Yet, in every year’s commercial value rankings, she was always at the top.

And what about her?

In those twelve years, Lu Ling lived a normal life. She went to school, graduated, formed two bands, performed at music festivals, and released singles on platforms. But in the end, she was washed away by the tide of unemployment.

She couldn’t remember the details of the interview; it was just a formality anyway. She only remembered the interviewer listing off Lin Que’s various habits like they were precious artifacts.

The whole world revolved around Lin Que. Lin Que was the center of the world; she was the meaning of the universe.

And now, the sky after the storm was as blue as a gemstone. The sunlight and the wind, still damp, snuck through the window cracks. Lu Ling shuddered and woke up completely, looking to her side—

The center of the world lay quietly beside her.

For no particular reason, she stared at Lin Que. The adult Lin Que was a perfectly scaled-up version of her childhood self, more breathtakingly beautiful in person than on screen.

She suddenly remembered the end of that childhood debate—

“…Whether the hypothesis holds or not, it ultimately proves one thing: I am a very special existence—aren’t I?”

Lin Que had been stunned for a moment, then replied indifferently: “There are many people in the world just like you.”

“Then we are all very special.”

Happiness was incredibly simple for a ten-year-old Lu Ling—as long as Lin Que engaged with her topic, she could be joyful for an entire summer. Whether they agreed was unimportant. She even trembled with excitement over their opposing views.

But time had proven that the twenty-four-year-old Lu Ling was nothing special. Her glasses prescription didn’t stop increasing at eighteen, either.

Lu Ling rubbed the skin on her neck, looking at this person who wasn’t quite “human,” whom she had criticized in her heart countless times since childhood—

“Heh…”

“So you really aren’t human after all.”