Custom Audio Caught by My Straight Stepsister - Chapter 3

Ming Fei didn’t tell Fu Zhisu right away.

After the online group interview ended on Friday, the HR lady from the firm told them that the results would be out by tomorrow at the latest, sent via email. Ming Fei closed her laptop, took off her headphones, and packed up to head to her part-time job at the campus cafe.

She wasn’t particularly nervous about the interview and had a good idea of what the outcome would be. For one, she was graduating from a top-tier university with a major that was a perfect fit. Secondly, she felt she had performed well during the interview. Finally, a senior who was already working full-time at the firm had leaked that the demand for winter interns was huge, so anyone who passed the initial resume screening was basically guaranteed a spot.

The odds were high that she could naturally go stay with Fu Zhisu over the winter break.

Still, it wasn’t official yet. If she didn’t get in, she didn’t want to have gotten her hopes up for nothing.

At her part-time job, between the upcoming graduate entrance exams, civil service exams, and graduation thesis proposals, the cafe had been slammed from the moment Ming Fei walked in.

“Two caramel lattes, one iced with standard sugar, one with very, very little sugar.”

Ming Fei skillfully pressed the buttons on the register. “Alright, please show me your payment code, I’ll scan you.”

The person across from her held up a QR code. When she used the scanner, it wouldn’t recognize it as a payment. Ming Fei thought she just hadn’t aimed it correctly, so she scanned it twice more up close, only to realize that the person was holding up a personal QR code used for adding friends.

Just as she was about to point out the mistake, she looked up to see a senior student giving her what he clearly thought was a charming smile. “Junior, how about adding me? Oh, wait, we’re already friends.”

It was Lu Cheng, the first-year grad student under her advisor.

Ming Fei gave a tactful reminder: “Senior, it’s very crowded right now.”

I don’t have time for your antics. Can’t you see the line behind you?

Lu Cheng completely misread the room. “OK, I’ll wait over there for a bit and come back when it’s less busy. I’ve got nowhere to be. Consider the low-sugar coffee my treat, you girls always order half-sugar or sugar-free to keep your figures, right?”

Ming Fei started to say, “No need,” but she was interrupted.

A girl with a high ponytail, who had been scanning the QR code on the table to order from the back of the line, strode forward. She shoved herself in front of Lu Cheng and slapped her phone and gloves onto the counter. “Two cups, huh? How generous.”

Lu Cheng hadn’t expected to run into someone he knew and let out a dry laugh. “What a coincidence, Senior.”

The girl with the high ponytail was another student under their advisor, set to graduate next year. She had filled in for the advisor to host one of their group meetings once.

Ming Fei followed suit and greeted her as “Senior” as well.

The senior leaned against the counter. “Lu Cheng, there was a problem with the data you sent me last time. Did you secretly mess with the correlation yourself? Since I see you brought your laptop, find an empty table and run it again in front of me. I still have to report back to the advisor. Also, you said you were turning in your literature review last week, who did you give it to? Did you actually finish it?”

Lu Cheng instantly looked like a wilted plant. He grabbed his coffee and tried to bolt. “Senior, I actually have something I need to take care of…”

Ming Fei briskly packed the coffee, offering a polite smile while pulling the rug out from under him. “Senior Lu just said he was free all afternoon, and there’s an empty table right there. I can drink coffee for free since I work here, so why don’t you take the one he just bought? You’ve been working hard, Senior.”

The senior girl took the coffee from Ming Fei without a hint of hesitation. “What could possibly be more important than your thesis? Let’s go, Junior.”

Lu Cheng was crestfallen, unable to even force a smile. He didn’t dare act out in front of his senior classmate, or the next group meeting would turn into a public execution of his character.

Lu Cheng suffered under the senior’s supervision for over an hour before he was finally liberated and ran for his life. While the senior was packing her bag, Ming Fei took the opportunity to bring over a slice of red velvet cake.

The cool senior gave Ming Fei a smile like a mischievous calico cat. “Men are annoying, aren’t they?”

“Our advisor likes to have the first-year grad students check the empirical parts of the undergrad theses. If your thesis unfortunately ends up in his hands, you can skip him and come straight to me. My name is Fang Yirui, I’m in the group chat.”

…

When her shift at the cafe ended, Ming Fei took off her apron, stretched, and rubbed her aching lower back.

The accounting firm was remarkably efficient, sending out the internship reporting notice even while working overtime. Ming Fei screenshotted the email and sent it to Fu Zhisu: [Sister, I’m going to your city for a winter internship.]

Fu Zhisu’s rental apartment was small, with only one bed.

She could finally lie in the same bed as her sister every night again. Ming Fei wished tomorrow was already winter break; she was ready to intern, she loved interning, she was the number one fan of interning.

Within seconds, Fu Zhisu initiated a video call.

Ming Fei hurried to fix her hair using the cafe window as a mirror. She pulled the lipstick her sister had given her out of her pocket, dabbed a bit in the center of her lips, and pressed them together firmly before answering.

“Sister.”

Her voice tilted upward at the end.

“Xiao Fei, the internship in Li City doesn’t cover housing, right? Are you staying with me again?”

Fu Zhisu’s face flashed across the screen. Ming Fei moved quickly to take a screenshot, capturing a slightly blurry view of half her sister’s face.

Fu Zhisu was beautiful. Ming Fei remembered being in elementary school when the teacher asked the students to stand up one by one and talk about who they wanted to become when they grew up.

Some said they wanted to be a scientist like so-and-so, some wanted to be a star, an astronaut, a lawyer, a doctor.

When it was Ming Fei’s turn, she stood up and stared at the open book on her desk. “I want to become my sister.”

“What?”

Ming Fei raised her voice. “I… I want to become my sister.”

The teacher tapped the podium with a piece of chalk. “Ming Fei, you heard what the other students said. You should answer with a profession. Who do you want to be like, and what job do you want to do? Let me give you some hints: a writer like Yang Hongying, a scientist like Yuan Longping, or a healthcare worker like Florence Nightingale…”

Ming Fei’s mind was a complete blank. The only person she could think of was Fu Zhisu. She wanted to be Fu Zhisu; she couldn’t think of anyone else. The harder she tried to think of the famous people in her textbooks and their glorious careers, the more she could only remember the way Fu Zhisu’s hair fluttered in the wind when she picked her up from school on her bike.

“I want to…”

It was supposed to be an open discussion, so the teacher didn’t force her and moved on to the next student. After class, her seatmate, who wore two little pigtails, asked, “Ming Fei, is your sister really amazing? My sister hits me and steals my snacks every day, I don’t like her at all.”

Ming Fei said, “She’s amazing.”

“So what does she do?”

Ming Fei thought about it and realized she didn’t actually know what Fu Zhisu did all day.

So she said, “Sister never hits me.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Yes.”

Her tone was absolutely certain. “Prettier than the stars on TV.”

The seatmate didn’t believe her. During the next parent-teacher meeting, the seatmate peeked into the classroom through the window. Afterward, she found Ming Fei and sounded a bit disappointed. “Ming Fei, your sister is pretty, but she’s not as pretty as the stars on TV. Where are your mom and dad?”

Ming Fei looked down. “They’re busy.”

***

She snapped back to the present.

“I’m staying. Otherwise, my internship salary won’t even cover a hotel room.”

“Alright, then I’ll come pick you up at the station.” Fu Zhisu’s face flashed in front of the camera again. “Have you eaten? Do you have enough money? I see you still haven’t changed your glasses.”

Every time they talked, Fu Zhisu would ask if she had eaten or had enough money. Ming Fei noticed that only the mothers of her other roommates asked those kinds of questions. Sometimes she wondered if Fu Zhisu saw her more as a sister or a daughter, then she’d realize the dilemma was pointless, she didn’t want to be either.

“I ate. I have enough.” It was her standard, unchanging answer.

“Sister, you weren’t even looking at me, how did you know I didn’t change my glasses?”

“I was looking. Not only did I see that you didn’t change them, I saw that you’ve gotten even prettier.”

The camera shook, and the white light from the ceiling flashed across the screen. There was the sound of Fu Zhisu’s footsteps, then the camera stopped moving. Half the screen was the ceiling and the other half was Fu Zhisu’s hair, followed by the sound of a package being ripped open.

“Sister, the camera. I can’t see you,” Ming Fei reminded her. “I’ve been a bit busy lately. I’ll go get the glasses once my thesis proposal is done.”

Fu Zhisu finally adjusted the camera. Ming Fei noticed her eyes looked a bit swollen, and she realized why Fu Zhisu had tactically chosen to do something else instead of focusing on the call.

“Sister, were you crying again?”

Fu Zhisu looked a bit embarrassed. “This afternoon we handled a fifteen-year-old Ragdoll cat. When it was time to say goodbye, the owner wouldn’t even look at the cat once, she was just busy with work. We almost thought it wasn’t her cat being cremated. When it was finally time to send it off, we thought she should have one last look. When I went to call her, I heard her voice trembling on the phone, telling her boss, ‘Please don’t be angry, I think I’m sick, I can’t understand you, I didn’t mean to keep making you repeat yourself…’ Later, when I gave her the box with the ashes, she sat in the corner for a long time and suddenly started sobbing, just apologizing to the box over and over.”

Ever since Fu Zhisu stopped working at the milk tea shop and became a pet mortician, her eyes were often swollen. But perhaps because she felt she was the “older sister,” Fu Zhisu always felt she shouldn’t cry in front of Ming Fei. She would either stick to voice calls or use being busy as an excuse not to show her face on camera.

Ming Fei said, “Sister, once I go over for winter break, you’ll have someone to hold while you cry. You won’t have to be a woman who weeps alone anymore.”

She used a joking tone.

In front of Fu Zhisu, Ming Fei’s true thoughts could only be expressed as jokes. She wanted to say, Sister, I’m almost graduated, you can lean on me now. You can show me your vulnerability openly, just like I admitted I was afraid of worms to you when I was little.

But if she actually said that, it would probably scare Fu Zhisu into fleeing the city overnight.