My Idol Turns Out To Be My Ex-Girlfriend - Chapter 25

He Wenyu was shocked. “Then didn’t you already have her WeChat?”

My god! What kind of dramatic twist of fate was this? She suddenly felt like she couldn’t stop the destiny unfolding between her brother’s girlfriend and her own best friend.

Lin Sanyuan’s pupils had been shaking since the moment Tang Hengzhi spoke her first sentence. Her online aliases for her novels and comics were both “Yeye Yuanxiao,” and her popularity wasn’t particularly high. Because her work wasn’t famous, Lin Sanyuan actually felt a bit self-conscious, which is why she hadn’t answered when He Wenyu asked for her pen name earlier.

Now, her secret identity had been stripped bare in a single second.

But that wasn’t the point. The point was, how could someone like Tang Hengzhi, who seemed so detached from worldly affairs, actually follow web novels? She even went as far as joining the fan group and adding the author’s WeChat. This really didn’t seem like something a mature woman in her thirties would do.

Furthermore, if they were friends, why didn’t Sanyuan have any memory of her? Lin Sanyuan finally opened her contact list.

Good grief! “September Watches My Wish”!

Wasn’t this the “ghost follower” she had cleared out just a few days ago? How incredibly awkward! How was this any different from someone using an ultimate move right in her face? This “Great Master” was surely something else. As a reader and fan, is it normal for a person to stay silent for years after adding someone on WeChat? Why stay a ghost follower after getting the contact?

Unaware of the internal chaos, He Wenyu delivered a precision strike. “Well, this is great. You’re fans of each other. Tang Hengzhi, in all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you fan over anyone. I’m quite curious, a person like you actually reads novels? Reading is one thing, but adding the author? What do you usually talk about? You’re such a quiet person, can you even hold a conversation? Does the great author reply to you often?”

Big sister, please, stop talking! Sanyuan pleaded internally.

Tang Hengzhi leaned back against her seat, holding her phone with slender fingers and a half-smile. “It seems we haven’t had the chance to talk yet.”

Lin Sanyuan’s head slumped.

He Wenyu asked, “What does that mean?”

Tang Hengzhi looked at the new notification for the accepted friend request and curled her lips. Just as she was about to speak, Lin Sanyuan couldn’t fake it anymore. She grabbed Tang Hengzhi’s wrist, her voice low and lacking confidence. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have deleted you from my WeChat…”

Please don’t say anything more, can we just let this go?

If not for re-adding her, Tang Hengzhi’s cold personality probably meant she would never have initiated a conversation anyway. The two basically had no overlap, so she never would have discovered she’d been deleted. Save me!

He Wenyu froze for three seconds before reacting, bursting into a loud, mocking laugh. “Hahaha! Tang Hengzhi, even you have a day where you’re rejected! You actually got deleted? Were you stunned when you had to re-add her? It must be because you’re such a dullard that you didn’t speak after adding her, so she cleared you out as a ghost follower! Ahahaha!”

Whether Tang Hengzhi was stunned or not was unknown, but Lin Sanyuan certainly was. Especially since she had been hospitalized that night, and Qiao Lian had taken the wrong phone and called Tang Hengzhi.

Crap, did Qiao Lian say anything wrong?

Tang Hengzhi twirled the phone in her palm, looking at Lin Sanyuan with hesitation, as if she had questions. But He Wenyu was chirping away with such a strong presence. Tang Hengzhi lowered her eyes to look at the hand resting on her wrist. Because Sanyuan had been desperate to stop her from talking, the movement was subconscious, and she was holding on tight. Tang Hengzhi could even feel a thin layer of sweat in Sanyuan’s palm.

Lin Sanyuan’s hands were small, slender, and soft, almost excessively so, without much bone definition. Her nails were trimmed neat and clean, as she never had the habit of growing them long. Her skin was very pale, and with the slight pressure, her delicate fingertips and knuckles turned a faint, rosy pink.

Tang Hengzhi had once tried covering this hand with her own, and she could easily envelop the entire thing. Every time that happened, Sanyuan would nervously curl her pinky finger and hook it around Tang Hengzhi’s pinky ring. These were clearly tiny, trivial things, but now, for some reason, they were like the scales of a great fish in the deep sea, shimmering with clear, fragmented light, suddenly piecing themselves together perfectly.

Tang Hengzhi’s throat tightened, and her heart began to flutter with a painful itch.

Seeing Tang Hengzhi staring at her hand, Lin Sanyuan realized her rudeness and let go of the wrist, apologizing again. Tang Hengzhi tucked her phone back into her pocket as if nothing had happened, feeling the residual warmth on her wrist. She then brushed her hand over the silver pinky ring, turning it once.

On the way home, they perfectly avoided the rush hour traffic. He Wenyu dropped Lin Sanyuan off at her building. Lin Sanyuan said goodbye and got out. Just as she walked through her front door, her phone vibrated.

She opened it to find a message from “September Watches My Wish”: “Are you home?”

This… It felt like she was just trying to find something to say.

But Lin Sanyuan didn’t dare give her the cold shoulder, so she quickly replied: “Mm-hmm, I’m home.”

The conversation felt awkward without a formal address, and she didn’t dare keep calling her “Sister.”

The reply was almost instant: “Okay.”

She didn’t have to guess now, it was obvious she was just fishing for conversation. It turned out it wasn’t just “struggling author” nobodies like her who were bad at chatting, even “Great Masters” like Tang Hengzhi were terrible at it. Usually, a topic would end right there.

But Lin Sanyuan was different, she was very direct: “Teacher Tang, is it my imagination, or does it feel like you’re forcing a conversation?”

Seriously, please. She was terrible at small talk. Hearing a WeChat notification from a “Great Master” made her more nervous than receiving work messages.

Tang Hengzhi’s reply was still very fast: “It’s not your imagination.”

Lin Sanyuan was a bit speechless. The cold, aloof artist from Weibo was slightly different from what she had imagined. After a few back-and-forth exchanges, Lin Sanyuan had no idea how to reply. She agonized for a long time before deciding to send a “doge” emoji.

But Tang Hengzhi’s next message came immediately: “I was just thinking, if I don’t speak more to establish some presence, will Great Author Yuanxiao forget me again and delete me?”

Lin Sanyuan silently deleted the doge and sent an emoji of someone offering a cold cola to a boss.

He Wenyu looked in the rearview mirror and frowned. “What are you doing sitting in the back seat with your head down, smiling like that?” It made her spine feel cold.

Tang Hengzhi ignored her, looking down at her WeChat.

He Wenyu couldn’t stand it. “Can you stop playing with your phone? Do you have your ID? You need to make an appointment at the hospital.”

Tang Hengzhi’s fingers didn’t stop tapping the screen, and she didn’t look up. “I’m not going to the hospital. The injury isn’t serious. Let’s just go straight home.”

He Wenyu gnashed her teeth. “Then what was the point of you coming out today? Are you just flirting so shamelessly? I’m still right here, yet you’re committing crimes right under my nose! Who are you messaging? Is it my brother’s girlfriend? If you keep playing with that broken phone, I’m going to floor it and drive straight into the lake so we can die together.”

She was being treated like she wasn’t even there.

As soon as Lin Sanyuan got home, she changed into her pajamas, and her WeChat rang again.

“Cola is a carbonated drink. It’s bad for the stomach, you should drink less of it.”

Lin Sanyuan: “…”

Seriously? Is there really nothing else to talk about? This AI tone is terrifying.

She retracted the previous emoji and sent one of someone offering tea to a boss.

“Drinking tea affects sleep and isn’t good for the heart. You should drink less of it.”

Can’t drink this, can’t drink that. What should I drink then? The northwest wind?

Lin Sanyuan wanted to smash her phone. She replied: “Is Teacher Tang still in the car? Maybe stop playing with your phone? You’ll get motion sickness and feel bad. You probably didn’t rest well last night, why don’t you sleep in the car for a bit?”

“Okay.” Tang Hengzhi replied with only one word, giving a sense through the screen that she was finally behaving. Afterward, she indeed stopped messaging.

Lin Sanyuan sat in the living room and put on a face mask. Checking the time, it was only 8:30 AM. Qiao Lian hadn’t texted her yet, so she was likely at the school. Just as she opened her computer to do some sketches, the sound of a metal key entering the lock came from the front door.

Seeing Qiao Lian enter the house, Lin Sanyuan was surprised. “You didn’t go to school?”

Qiao Lian was carrying a few small bags of breakfast. She yawned and put on her slippers. “It’s the weekend, school is out.”

“Oh.” When Lin Sanyuan worked from home, she basically didn’t distinguish between workdays and holidays. Looking at the constantly yawning Qiao Lian, she knew the girl hadn’t rested well. She got up to make her a cup of hot milk.

“How is your sister? Why did her dad start getting physical out of nowhere?”

Lin Sanyuan always had boundaries regarding other people’s family matters. For Qiao Lian to rush back late last night meant the situation was serious. She hadn’t asked much last night to avoid adding to Qiao Lian’s stress.

“I’m not entirely sure about the specifics between her and her dad. It seems she had some conflict with a classmate at school, and the other parent came to the house. Her dad flew into a rage, and as they argued, things got physical. He regretted it immediately after hitting her and called me, hoping I could talk some sense into her. Hmm… I brought breakfast, let’s eat together?”

The breakfast Qiao Lian brought back was quite varied: savory bean curd skins, sticky rice chicken, soup dumplings, wontons, and fried eggplant boxes. The breakfast in this small village was very simple, without much variety, so she must have brought it from near where she stayed. It was still steaming hot.

“Parents and children have arguments, but getting physical makes it a bit too big, doesn’t it? That kid must be a bit of a tiger. No matter what, a girl’s physical strength can’t match a grown man’s. If it comes to blows, she’s the one who suffers.”

Lin Sanyuan had already eaten, but not much. He Ye had gone out on his motorcycle, and in this weather, the breakfast he brought back was freezing cold. Because Qiao Lian brought many types of food, the portions of each weren’t huge to avoid waste. There was only one bowl of wontons, and Qiao Lian pushed it to Lin Sanyuan first. She knew Sanyuan had a small appetite, but she wanted her to taste a bit of everything. It didn’t matter if she couldn’t finish, Qiao Lian would help clean up the leftovers.

Qiao Lian bit into a soup dumpling and smiled at her. “Your focus is so strange. Is this a question of who wins or loses a fight?”

“I just think blindly getting physical is inadvisable. If there’s a quarrel at school, it’s not usually just one person’s fault. When the other parent comes to the door, and your own parent immediately rages at you, that sense of betrayal is huge. Another parent stands up for their kid while your own father only criticizes you. If it were me, I’d probably end up running away from home. Uh… just eat your bun, why are you looking at me like that?”

Qiao Lian’s eyes were full of laughter. “Nothing. I just think being your child would be so happy. Where else could one find a mother who knows how to pamper someone so well?”

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