I've Been Waiting a Long Time for You to Break Up - Chapter 1

“Ah Xu, let’s film an anime transformation video next. This IP is really trending right now.”

Gu Xiaoshuang pushed open the studio door while holding her phone, speaking as she walked in. Her freshly washed hair brought a damp, humid mist that slid off her shoulders, and there were still traces of paint on her slender collarbones from the special effects makeup she had just filmed.

Jiang Xu sat in front of the computer and responded without lifting her head.

Gu Xiaoshuang leaned in, saw her editing the footage from earlier, and asked, “Why are you editing it now? Are you in such a rush?”

“We have dinner plans tonight. We’re going to meet some friends,” Jiang Xu’s voice lacked much inflection, her gaze never once leaving the computer screen.

Gu Xiaoshuang puffed out her cheeks and murmured an “uh-huh.” She put her phone away and stood behind her for a while. Jiang Xu seemed extremely anxious, and it didn’t seem to be just about this video.

She knew how to edit videos too, but Jiang Xu rarely let her do it. Jiang Xu would say, “You’re already tired enough researching what to film; let me handle the other things.”

The two of them operated a video account together. It was neither popular nor obscure; they didn’t earn a fortune, but it was enough, and they spent money together from a shared bank card.

They were a couple first and business partners second. Before graduation, they stopped drawing lines between “mine” and “yours” on many things. Even the fans who followed their account knew they were a singular entity, inseparable.

Gu Xiaoshuang was beautiful and had a warm, vibrant personality. In university, she was a well-known campus belle and often worked as a freelance print model. After graduation, they started the account—that had been Jiang Xu’s idea.

Jiang Xu said that the competition for print modeling was too high and it required being too rigid; it was better to run their own account and be free, occasionally taking small advertisements, which was enough to keep them comfortable for a long time.

Gu Xiaoshuang didn’t have any objections. She didn’t care what they did; as long as she was with Jiang Xu, had money to spend, and didn’t go hungry, anything was fine.

They were meeting a few bloggers for dinner, where everyone brought friends to build connections, making future collaborations easier.

Before they set off, Gu Xiaoshuang asked Jiang Xu, “Who’s all going? Should we call Lin Huai to come along?”

Jiang Xu was too busy to even lift her head and said casually, “Lin Huai isn’t coming. She has other things to do.”

Hearing her say that, Gu Xiaoshuang didn’t pay much attention and went out to clean up the mess from the shoot.

When they arrived at the private room in the restaurant, she spotted Lin Huai already sitting at the table from across the room. Without thinking, she pulled on Jiang Xu’s sleeve to head over. Once they sat down, she tilted her head with a smile and asked, “Didn’t you say you had things to do?”

“Who has things to do?” Lin Huai glanced at her once before she arrived, and only after she sat down and spoke did she put down her phone, raising an eyebrow at her. A moment later, her gaze drifted past her to look at Jiang Xu.

Jiang Xu was also somewhat surprised. “Didn’t you say you had a shoot with someone else?”

Lin Huai let out a laugh, her hair loosely pinned back, a black baseball cap covering half her eyes. “Finished shooting early, and I got brought here.”

She retracted her gaze after speaking and, after sitting for a while, looked up at the others.

Gu Xiaoshuang watched her from the corner of her eye, feeling that something was off, so she leaned in and asked, “Who brought you here?”

Lin Huai lowered her body halfway, leaning in with a scent of green citrus, and whispered, “Sister Jing. I told her I wanted to make videos in the future, so she brought me along.”

Gu Xiaoshuang nodded. “That’s great. Sister Jing knows a lot of people; she can introduce you to many of them.”

After she finished speaking, she looked up at Lin Huai with a smile. “I thought you were being bullied; you didn’t look very happy.”

Lin Huai glanced at her sideways. “Could you tell?”

“Are you really in a bad mood?” Gu Xiaoshuang frowned again while looking at her.

“Didn’t sleep well,” Lin Huai nodded with a smile and sat back without saying anything more.

Gu Xiaoshuang wanted to ask more, but Jiang Xu patted her arm, joking, “Are you two forming a little clique again?”

Gu Xiaoshuang and Lin Huai were roommates in college, and they had always been close. They stayed in touch after graduation; in fact, at first, Jiang Xu couldn’t even enter their lives. She had chased Gu Xiaoshuang for a long time before finally winning her over. Before they started dating, it was always Lin Huai who helped Gu Xiaoshuang take photos.

Jiang Xu said this not out of jealousy; on the contrary, she felt very secure about the relationship between Gu Xiaoshuang and Lin Huai because Gu Xiaoshuang was a well-known “love-brain”—once she decided on someone, she definitely wanted to spend her whole life with that person.

While they were waiting for everyone to arrive, Lin Huai tilted her head, looking at the two of them with a smile, teasing them with a relaxed tone: “I’m looking into poaching your models. I’ll need to have a place for myself in the short-video field in the future.”

Jiang Xu scanned the people talking in the room and looked back at Lin Huai, laughing, “You studied tourism management, so just be a tour guide honestly. Don’t come here to steal our rice bowl in new media.”

“That won’t do,” Lin Huai shook her head, sat back, and drew out her words, showing off a bit. “Who told me I was born with this talent?”

The three of them chatted and joked for a while about the employment situation for tourism management graduates, and then they formally integrated into the gathering.

The group was entirely composed of bloggers, each one more eloquent than the last. Even someone as calm and steady as Jiang Xu managed to jump in with ad-lib comments, making the whole evening rowdy enough to cause a headache.

As they were leaving, they filmed a few videos and exchanged contact information; only then did the dinner finally come to an end.

Coming down from upstairs, facing the fresh, cold breeze, Gu Xiaoshuang gently let out a breath and held her palm upward. Jiang Xu, following behind her, reached out and gave her a light pat, but when she tried to close her hand to grasp hers, the other person lightly moved her hand away.

She could only grab a handful of air, wrap her coat tighter, and walk quickly to keep up.

Her relationship with Jiang Xu was quite stable. The other person’s personality had always been like this; she only showed enthusiasm when the mood struck her, and Gu Xiaoshuang had long been used to it.

Back home, they followed their routine of posting the video and checking the comments section. The video for today had just been posted, and the reaction was decent—standard, average traffic.

This video didn’t have any advertisements; there were no demands from a client, so the traffic didn’t matter.

Gu Xiaoshuang curled up on the sofa playing a little game. She never worried about her career; she was someone with a very relaxed, “lying flat” mindset. But Jiang Xu was different; she poured every ounce of her energy into managing the account.

At that moment, she was sitting on the other side, checking the comments section, occasionally replying to fans to liven up the atmosphere.

After a long time, she frowned and said calmly, “The next video still can’t have advertisements; it will be restricted by the algorithm.”

Gu Xiaoshuang nodded, her fingers continuing to tap on her phone screen. The blue light reflected colorful spots on her face. Jiang Xu looked up at her, her expression gradually turning ugly.

“Stop playing.”

She never hid her emotions, and sometimes her tone of voice was particularly harsh, just like this sentence. However, this was all something Gu Xiaoshuang had spoiled her into by being willing to coax her.

Upon hearing this, Gu Xiaoshuang immediately turned off her phone screen and placed it face down on her lap, coaxing her with a smile and gentle words: “Let’s film a transformation video. I’m just researching a new makeup look, and you’re good at editing those.”

Jiang Xu silently withdrew her gaze and continued looking at her phone, soon anxiously biting her thumb.

Gu Xiaoshuang leaned back on the sofa. A stray lock of hair had fallen onto her thin shoulder. The night light was behind her, making her hair glow with a warm gold. She was quiet and comfortable. After a while, she said, “You don’t need to worry so much about these things. The data was bad today just because it was throttled; the next one might be better. If it’s still not working, we can just pay for a promotion.”

After saying this, she sighed silently to herself, pinching the flesh on her own arm. It was an account for beauty videos, yet they were so obsessed with making money.

Jiang Xu didn’t reply to her and looked down at the data on her phone again.

Gu Xiaoshuang stared at her for a while, picked up her phone, and started tapping away again. She had never understood why Jiang Xu was so career-driven. The money they made was actually enough to live on, and there was even a surplus, all kept in their shared bank card.

As she thought about this, her movements gradually stopped. She remembered the days before graduation when they would go out happily after filming videos. Back then, they were very free, riding buses aimlessly across the whole city, going wherever they pleased. Sometimes there were two of them, sometimes three.

Gu Xiaoshuang and Lin Huai were tourism management majors; she had originally chosen that major because she thought she would be able to go out and travel, but she never expected that now she would become someone who stayed quietly at home.

“Ah Xu, get some rest early,” Gu Xiaoshuang thought for a long time, gradually pulling in her wandering thoughts and staring into Jiang Xu’s eyes. The other person didn’t even look up; her brows were almost furrowed into a deep crease.

She had been getting more and more anxious lately, and Gu Xiaoshuang inexplicably began to feel a panic.

Every time it reached this point, she felt she was so far away from Jiang Xu. She felt as if she had never understood what the other person was thinking.

Except for when they first started dating, when Jiang Xu would clumsily stumble over her words to express her thoughts, she never said them afterward. She wasn’t someone who would keep such things on her lips; after being together for so long, she spoke about them even less, and every time, Gu Xiaoshuang had to observe it herself.

They had been together for a long time. Counting the time they had known each other, they had been together for almost five years. Most of the time, Gu Xiaoshuang could tell what Jiang Xu was thinking, but she couldn’t understand her today.

Jiang Xu sat on the other side of the sofa, without turning on the lights, her entire person hunched in the shadows. Only the reflections from the phone screen and her glasses were visible. Judging from the reflections, she was still looking at the comments under the video.

Could it be that she saw some negative comments?

Gu Xiaoshuang opened her phone and flipped through, but there was nothing strange.

She stared at the reflection in Jiang Xu’s glasses again.

She didn’t want to be like this, but apart from this method, she had no way of knowing Jiang Xu’s mood.

Gu Xiaoshuang watched with a trembling heart. To cover herself up, she opened her game interface and tapped away, but in reality, she wasn’t looking at it at all.

Soon, she saw Jiang Xu switch tabs to WeChat. On the lenses, she could see some green, but she couldn’t see what was written in detail. She could only see Jiang Xu swipe up a few times, a few photos flashing by, and then she swiped back and started replying to the message.

Gu Xiaoshuang watched, unmoving, wondering if someone was talking to her about a new collaboration.

What kind of collaboration could make Jiang Xu so conflicted?

There had never been a situation like this before. Gu Xiaoshuang guessed the other party must be a top-tier blogger with millions of followers, a level they naturally couldn’t reach.

Perhaps that really was the case; otherwise, why would Jiang Xu have been so anxious for so many days?

And she hadn’t even told her.

Gu Xiaoshuang couldn’t help but smile, and she started playing the little game again while thinking about what to film tomorrow to boost the traffic.

She didn’t play for long before going to sleep. Jiang Xu required her to maintain her skin condition, waking up and going to bed early, and eating and drinking according to the healthiest standards.

When she woke up in the middle of the night, there was no one beside her. Gu Xiaoshuang pulled back the hand she had reached out with and picked up her phone to check the time; it was already three in the morning. Jiang Xu rarely stayed up this late.

People always said that being a blogger easily led to a chaotic schedule, but the two of them always had a healthy routine. Jiang Xu was the type who always rushed to get things done and never dragged them into the night.

Gu Xiaoshuang sat up and listened for any sounds outside, but there was no movement at all. She suspected that Jiang Xu had accidentally fallen asleep on the sofa. She sent Jiang Xu a message to ask, but received no reply. It seemed she was truly asleep.

Gu Xiaoshuang got out of bed to find her. The living room was lit only by the small lamp she had turned on for Jiang Xu before leaving. The other person was huddled in the corner of the sofa, one hand covering her face and the other holding her phone, which was still lit, fast asleep. On the phone screen was still the data page for their short video account.

Gu Xiaoshuang went over and took the phone away first. Just as she was about to turn it off, she suddenly, on a whim, wanted to see what Jiang Xu was worried about. She held the phone and hesitated, as she had never done such a thing before.

The person lying on the sofa was sleeping very soundly; Gu Xiaoshuang had been kneeling beside her for a long time, and she didn’t react.

Counting to five in her heart, Gu Xiaoshuang guiltily tapped open WeChat. At the very top was the message she had just sent, and immediately below it was the name of a stranger. From the outside, she could only see a “Okay.”

Gu Xiaoshuang curiously clicked into it. The previous message was: “Then let’s meet as soon as possible.”

Scrolling up, there was no work-related conversation between Jiang Xu and this person at all. They were just introducing themselves to each other, and finally, they were discussing a meeting time. She flipped back and forth through these messages twice; the two didn’t have a single word of nonsense. Since they added each other, they had been exchanging various introductions.

Gu Xiaoshuang never overthought things, but these chat records, without needing to overthink, wrote some self-evident information.

She exited the chat box and saw that Jiang Xu had also been talking to her mother tonight.

Her mother didn’t know that Jiang Xu had a girlfriend of nearly four years. Jiang Xu had said that her family wouldn’t accept it, and the two had kept it very well hidden.

Gu Xiaoshuang clicked into it, and her brain immediately felt swollen. She desperately tried to suppress her heavy breathing, but the tears uncontrollably smashed onto the phone screen. Underneath the flowing tear streaks was a sentence: “Come back early. This young man is quite good; if you can get married, don’t keep picking and choosing.”

What did Jiang Xu reply?

Jiang Xu had actually replied: “Okay, I’ve already talked to him; he’s acceptable.”