After Reuniting with My Aloof Movie Queen Childhood Friend - Chapter 26

When the phone call ended, Ji Youyi was initially in a very good mood.

But as her phone screen automatically switched to the screensaver, the large digits jumping into view caught her eye, and a single thought flashed through her mind. I’m screwed.

It was currently a quarter to eleven. Meng Xingshu had said she was a bit far away and it would take an hour to get there, which meant she would arrive after eleven o’clock!

After chatting casually for just a couple of minutes, it would be midnight! It would be her birthday!

Ji Youyi had originally thought that since she would be active in S City for the foreseeable future, she wouldn’t run into Meng Xingshu anyway, so there was no rush to pick out a birthday gift.

Now, look at her. She had ended up in the very first wave.

The problem was, where on earth was she supposed to find a suitable birthday gift in the middle of the night?

Ji Youyi changed her clothes and headed out the door.

After walking around the neighborhood, she sorrowfully discovered that under S City’s exorbitant prices, the one thousand odd yuan in her pocket couldn’t buy any decent finished gift at all.

When your cash isn’t enough, you have to make up for it with presentation. But she couldn’t make any complex handicrafts on such short notice, so the little pauper had no choice but to find a nearby flower shop.

Flowers were still better; though cliché, they were cheap. In any case, the grand movie queen had so many people giving her gifts, she certainly wouldn’t care about what Ji Youyi gave her.

Pushing open the shop door, Ji Youyi initially intended to bargain first.

Her plan was to pick out just a few flowers as a token of gesture, striving not to exceed fifty yuan.

Regrettably, the moment the shop assistant saw her, the assistant’s eyes instantly lit up like bright lanterns.

“Li Bao!” the shop assistant screamed. “You’re Ji Youyi, right?! I like you so much!”

Ji Youyi knew that the assistant’s “like you” only meant liking Ning Li.

Switching into her professional mode, she playfully winked at the assistant using Ning Li’s demeanor:

“Older sister, I want to buy a bouquet of flowers, just a few stems will do. I’ll wrap it myself, but I’ll need to use your wrapping paper. Around how much will it be?”

Sure enough, the shop assistant’s face instantly flushed red. “No charge! Whatever flowers you want, I’ll give them to you as a gift.”

If she had heard these two words, no charge on any ordinary day, Ji Youyi couldn’t imagine how happy she would be.

But right now, she was out in public using Ning Li’s image and was burdened with the task of promoting the drama; there was no way she could actually not pay.

She felt the banknotes in her pocket and sighed heavily in her heart, following the assistant to pick out flowers.

Ji Youyi had never given flowers to anyone before and didn’t know what would be appropriate. The last time she had been to a flower shop was when she was thirteen, working in the props department, making purchases for a movie shoot.

She remembered that Meng Xingshu seemed to like the color black very much, so she planned to wrap a bouquet of flowers using black wrapping paper.

This kind of color was too somber and didn’t pair easily with fresh flowers. Ji Youyi looked around the room and caught sight of a cluster of nude-pink roses.

The elegant pink color was gentle and sophisticated; the petals were wide, thick, and richly layered, carrying a unique velvety texture.

She picked four stems to use as the primary flowers.

For the accent flowers, she chose a certain kind of blue, five petaled small flower with pearl-like pistils, which looked classic and exquisite.

With a few sprigs of silver dollar eucalyptus cut and added, a small, vintage style bouquet was complete.

Ji Youyi’s handwriting was ugly, so she chose not to consider writing a greeting card to avoid ruining the aesthetic. Instead, she selected a small card printed with “Happy Birthday” and pinned it on top.

While she was picking and wrapping the flowers, the shop assistant had been taking photos off to the side. Now that the wrapping was finished, the assistant approached again with her phone, nervously asking if she could take a few close-up shots of the flowers.

Ji Youyi generously agreed. Before leaving, she left two hundred yuan on the counter.

Her fifty-yuan budget had quadrupled. To say her heart didn’t ache would be a lie, but…

Ji Youyi walked out of the shop door, looked at the bouquet in her hands, slowed her steps, and reached out to fiddle with the wrapping paper.

On this midsummer night, the evening breeze was pleasant, blowing the bouquet into a gentle sway.

Ji Youyi smoothed out the ribbon bow on the bouquet and tugged a crease in the black wrapping paper into a more beautiful curve.

Before pulling her fingertips back, she paused slightly, and as if possessed by some ghost or god, she gently touched the rose right in the center.

The thick petals were soft and cool, causing her heart to tremble inexplicably.

Like an electric shock, her fingertips pulled away at the touch, curling into her palm, carrying the faint, delicate fragrance of the rose.

A bit flustered, Ji Youyi averted her gaze, adjusted her breathing, stopped looking at the flowers, and resumed her pace. Only, her steps seemed to be a bit lighter.

Although it had exceeded her budget, it was actually quite pretty. Maybe Meng Xingshu would like it?

If Meng Xingshu liked it, then those two hundred yuan… let it be two hundred then.

She felt it was worth it.

In the flower shop, the assistant took a long time to calm her emotions, still feeling that a chance encounter with a celebrity was well worth posting a Weibo update:

I can’t believe it, just now Ji Youyi came to my shop to buy flowers. Wuu wuu, Li Bao is truly so cute. Originally I just liked her a lot, but now I feel like I’m going to grow old at the bottom of this fandom pit for the rest of my life. How can there be such a wonderful girl in this world! She’s super beautiful in person, just too thin, such a tiny little thing. Her voice is incredibly nice to hear, a very, very sweet teenage voice, both gentle and polite, and she smiles so much. Ah ah, I’m truly happy to death!

Below the post, she attached several pictures.

In the photos, besides the beautifully blooming fresh flowers, there was a pretty girl dressed in a white T-shirt keeping busy.

Whether crouching in front of the roses to select them carefully, or lowering her head to wrap them mindfully, she looked as if she were treating something of extreme importance to her.

The assistant’s account had no followers, her original intention in posting on Weibo was merely to record her life, but she never expected that this Weibo post would unexpectedly go viral.

At the very beginning, there weren’t many comments on the Weibo post, with only Ji Youyi’s fans and fans of the drama The Thousand Gold Bone catching onto it.

But very quickly, a quote-retweet comment appeared:

Xiao Ji went out in the middle of the night to buy flowers, even choosing them personally, wrapping them by hand, and putting a birthday card on them Thinking face Who is she sending them to? It’s so hard to guess.

As if waking the dreamers with a single word, the Weibo post was carried over to the CP (Couple) Super Topic, where everyone keenly picked up on something:

I can’t guess at all~ [doge] I only know it’s a certain someone’s birthday tomorrow.

Make way, make way, the class representative is here! They are just good friends. Fearing everyone might misunderstand, I’ve specially come to share some knowledge, the main flowers Xiao Ji chose are Cappuccino roses, whose flower language is “gentle love” the accent flowers are blue tweedia, symbolizing “trust and cherished value” flowers that can be used for a bride’s bouquet, you know! [peace]

Alright old representative, I get it [starry eyes] They are just good friends who can get married, that’s all.

There’s only one hour left until Teacher Meng’s birthday. Coming out to pick flowers personally so late at night is just to deliver them at their freshest moment [crying] She loves her so much, wuu wuu wuu.

Grasp the key point, why is buying flowers in the middle of the night the freshest moment? Hmm?

[enduring] Things having reached this point, it’s truly hard not to spread rumors, so I’ll start then: How do you know my CP is spending the night together tonight?

The CP name #MengYouJi was adapted from Ji Youyi’s name, playing on the homophone for A Dream Journal, and the fans were called the Dream Notebooks.

The number of people in the Super Topic was only a little under twenty thousand, making it a small circle, with a bunch of solo fans and anti-fans watching like hawks outside. Originally, they were just enjoying themselves within their own circle, but unexpectedly, after hitting the lower ranks of the trending list, quite a few passersby were drawn in.

Some were looking for the person. Can someone be this beautiful bare-faced? It must be Photoshopped. Which celebrity is this? What drama has she played in?

Some were there to eat popcorn. I seemed to have heard before that she and Meng Xingshu are a couple, so it turns out to be true?

Worse still, some people wrote between the lines as if they were already certain the two were together. Ji Youyi has a pretty good aesthetic, her color coordination is absolutely superb. It’s my first time realizing that black and pink can be such a perfect match. I like it a lot. I plan to buy an identical bouquet tomorrow. By the way, I looked up her and Meng Xingshu, and I feel like the two of them are a bit like this bouquet, vastly different when viewed separately, yet unexpectedly harmonious when put together. They are indeed a great match, blessings.

CP fans agreed wholeheartedly and followed up with comments. A great match, blessings.

Just like that, under the combined efforts of fans and passersby, one trending topic after another began to climb upward…

The cavewoman Ji Youyi was entirely unaware of this.

She was making preparations to welcome her big boss.

Boss Meng’s looks were too striking, she definitely couldn’t entertain her outdoors.

Originally, she wanted to borrow the hotel’s conference room, but after inquiring about the price…

She was certain that her own room was actually a very perfect conference room!

As for tea and water. Ji Youyi closed the price list that started at three digits and went out to buy a few bottles of soda water herself.

Coming and going took up quite a bit of time, and not long after Ji Youyi returned to her room, she received a message from Meng Xingshu.

She hurriedly went to open the door, but when she saw the person outside the door, she couldn’t help but daze.

The person she had to look at through a screen in the live stream room this afternoon was now right before her eyes. Ji Youyi inexplicably remembered what Li Zhulan had said while watching the live stream.

“D City is quite far from S City.”

She had changed her clothes, put on accessories, and had even applied light makeup.

Her pure black burnout dress was calm and elegant, with half-sleeves, and the forearms exposed beneath the cuffs were well-proportioned and beautiful. Her long hair was tied in a low bun, accentuating her serene brow and eyes and her slender neck, presenting two completely different temperaments from daytime.

Unsure if it was because she had just watched her movie and the character filter still remained, Ji Youyi actually felt that tonight’s Meng Xingshu was exceptionally gentle.

Sniffing the familiar fragrance in the air, Ji Youyi’s heart grew inexplicably hot, and she stared at Meng Xingshu until she lost herself in thought.

It wasn’t until the person in front of her tilted her head slightly and greeted her in a soft voice, her tone like a clear spring sliding across the heart. “Director Ji?”

Ji Youyi abruptly snapped back to her senses, her face burning intensely.

Feigning that she was just opening the door, she shrank half her body behind it, and her gaze naturally shifted away from Meng Xingshu to look into the room. “Teacher Meng, please come in.”

“Excuse the intrusion.” Meng Xingshu nodded politely and stepped inside, walking toward the sofa.

Ji Youyi trailed two steps behind, her gaze drawn to those slender legs beneath the hem of the dress.

She was secretly looking at Meng Xingshu’s beautiful figure, but suddenly realized that this was her first time seeing Meng Xingshu wear a dress in reality.

She hadn’t been wearing this outfit in the morning, so why did she change into a dress at night?

Could it be… she had just finished a date?