She Adopted Me After My Biological Mother Passed Away - Chapter 42

Could it be…?

That night, three people found themselves unable to sleep.

The first to receive the message was Yu Xiu. She was leaning behind the bar, a cigarette replacement candy in her mouth, nonchalantly polishing the rim of a wine glass with a cloth.

The air in the bar was thick with the scent of whiskey while jazz music drifted low around the pillars. She had just sent off a few rowdy customers when her phone vibrated, the screen light reflecting in her eyes.

Sliding the message open, Chi Yeyu’s boastful words hit her eyes. Yu Xiu arched an eyebrow, her finger tracing the edge of the glass as she let out a scoff.

Chi Yeyu was off the market? With whom?

Male or female? Was it even a human?

Thinking this person had likely lost a game of Truth or Dare, Yu Xiu didn’t rush to reply. Instead, she glanced toward the corner of the bar at a slumped figure.

Tiangua was clutching half a bottle of whiskey, her messy hair stuck to her cheeks. Scattered before her were sheets of scratch paper covered in model formulas, the edges soaked with wine and blurred with ink.

“Little Tian, wake up. Stop sleeping.” Yu Xiu walked over, pulling the bottle from her hand and rapping her knuckles against her head. “Is my bar the place for you to rush your deadlines?”

Tiangua looked up, the corners of her eyes red, her breath smelling of alcohol. “My supervisor picked on me again! She said my data was overfitted and that my set wouldn’t work in a real market scenario at all! I stared at that data for a whole week until I nearly went blind, and she denied everything in ten minutes!”

“I turned down an investment bank offer to do this damn PhD, thinking I could produce something real. And now? Am I really not cut out for academia?”

She wiped her face, her fingers catching the moisture at the corners of her eyes. She laughed self-deprecatingly, rambling a long string of academic frustrations.

Yu Xiu didn’t try to comfort her with words. She simply pushed a glass of warm milk toward her and tapped open Chi Yeyu’s message, holding it before Tiangua’s eyes. Since she wasn’t good at consoling people, she used this method to distract her. “Stop crying. Look, here’s something funny.”

“What is it?” Tiangua squinted at it, her lips curling without much emotion. “Chi Yeyu? Psycho. Who is she dating? Is she dreaming? Could anyone actually like her? Ask her what’s going on.”

Yu Xiu did as told.

Chi Yeyu replied: Quack quack quack.

Chi Yeyu added: Guess who? Someone I like very, very much.

Yu Xiu couldn’t guess and didn’t want to. Tiangua suspected it was a “duck” (gigolo) because of the hint in the previous message.

Since her bottle had been confiscated, Tiangua gulped down the milk, still looking like a defeated soul crushed by academia.

“Yu Xiu, do you think it might be someone from our band?”

Yu Xiu’s brow furrowed as a terrifying answer flashed through her mind.

Chi Yeyu wasn’t the type to mess around. If she were in a relationship, it would definitely be someone within her social circle.

And after finding Shi Shuxue again, Chi Yeyu would be even more cautious. She wouldn’t date someone she didn’t know well or trust.

That only left…

Tiangua suddenly had an epiphany: “Could it be Li Lingling?”

Yu Xiu lost her grip, and a wine glass shattered on the floor.

Tiangua jumped, wide-eyed. “Why are you being so clumsy? You scared me!”

Ignoring the ruined glass, Yu Xiu grabbed Tiangua’s shoulder, which had grown thin under the pressure of her studies. “You said Li Lingling??”

“I just said it randomly, why are you reacting so much? It’s not like it could be little Ci Cheng,” Tiangua frowned, prying Yu Xiu’s hand off.

Yu Xiu was silent for a long time before saying, “Actually, there’s one more person in our band.”

“Who? You?” Tiangua asked.

Yu Xiu felt a bit of a stomach ache. “There’s one more.”

“Who? You’re not suggesting Shi Shuxue, are you?” Tiangua looked at Yu Xiu with a judgmental gaze.

Yu Xiu couldn’t bring herself to nod.

“…Let’s just wait for Chi Yeyu to say it herself. She loves showing off, she won’t be able to hold it in.”

Meanwhile, in H City, thousands of miles away, the river wind carried a damp chill through the windows of the office building.

Li Lingling had just finished her last line of code. She stood up, rubbing her aching neck. Outside, the lights of the Yangtze River Bridge flickered. Her phone vibrated on the desk.

She picked it up casually, but when she saw Chi Yeyu’s message, her vision went dark. She nearly knocked over her coffee cup.

“Liking her more than the bass?” Li Lingling leaned against the desk, feeling both angry and amused as her fingers flew across the screen.

[Stop Making Bass Jokes Or I’ll Block You]: How is that possible?! Are you drunk? Obviously, the bass is more important than you!

[Stop Making Bass Jokes Or I’ll Block You]: You have no idea how much she loves the bass!

[Stop Making Bass Jokes Or I’ll Block You]: She is a girl who grew out of a bass!!!

Li Lingling remembered the days she spent painstakingly teaching Shi Shuxue how to tune and practicing until late at night. She didn’t doubt the girl’s passion for a second.

[Chi Yeyu]: What if I said we are together?

Li Lingling froze and immediately fired back:

[Stop Making Bass Jokes Or I’ll Block You]: You wouldn’t dare!

[Chi Yeyu]: The deed is done hahahahahaha

[Stop Making Bass Jokes Or I’ll Block You]: Chi Yeyu, you just wait. When I get back, I’m going to skin you alive!

After sending the message, she lost all desire to head home. she pulled up a photo of Shi Shuxue in her gallery.

It was taken during the band’s last performance, the young girl holding her bass, the corners of her lips slightly upturned.

Li Lingling sighed. She opened her chat with Shi Shuxue, typed and deleted a message, then finally tucked her phone away and walked out of the office.

As the night deepened, she reached the subway station and finally sent a voice note to Shi Shuxue: “Stay on good terms with Chi Yeyu, and don’t let her lead you astray.”

In the bar in W City, Yu Xiu listened to Tiangua’s intermittent venting about her strict supervisor and academic bottlenecks.

In a residential building somewhere in the south, Li Lingling watched the river view, still plotting how to denounce Chi Yeyu.

Three people, three different sets of worries, all pulled into a mess of emotions by Chi Yeyu’s boastful words.

Only the culprit, Chi Yeyu, was leaning back in her car seat. Listening to a sad love song on the stereo, her lips remained curled in a wide, eerie grin. Her mind was filled with the image of Shi Shuxue turning to wave in the night wind, her smile so tender.

She thought about it again. Actually, Shi Shuxue hadn’t smiled at all.

That was purely her own imagination.

Returning to the dorm, it was only 9:30 PM, and her roommates were still awake. Having just finished exams, no one was in the mood to study, they were all on their phones or computers.

Seeing Shi Shuxue return, Chen Xia, who was sitting near the door, turned to greet her with a straw in her mouth. She was about to say her name when her eyes glued onto the bouquet in the girl’s arms. The straw fell into her cup of instant noodles.

“Holy crap, Shi Shuxue! What are you holding?!” Zhou Qing’s voice popped out first.

Her shout was like a stone thrown into a still pond. Xu Xiaoyu, who had been lying on her desk watching a drama, pulled off one side of her headphones to look.

Zhou Qing’s gaze locked onto the champagne roses. “No way, no way… a Christmas Eve surprise? A confession? Who sent them?!”

“A boyfriend?” Chen Xia asked curiously.

The baby’s breath in her arms brushed against Shi Shuxue’s arm. She placed the flowers in the empty space on her desk. The rose petals were still dotted with melted snow.

“A family member sent them,” she said.

“Oh!” Zhou Qing dragged out the sound, her eyes darting around. She suddenly realized who her “family” could be. Wasn’t it Chi Yeyu?

Her eyes went wide. “Chi-god sent them to you?”

Shi Shuxue nodded. “Mhm. She came to visit.”

“Suspicious.” Chen Xia circled behind her, suddenly reaching out to poke her reddening ear. “Your ‘family’ sends you roses on Christmas Eve.”

Shi Shuxue’s face flushed deep red. She leaned down to reach for her water cup, dabbing at the flowers as she spoke. “Mhm… she always sends random stuff like this. My sister, I mean.”

She had never admitted Chi Yeyu was her “sister” before, but now she added it as a cover-up. If Chi Yeyu knew, she’d be wagging her tail in pride again.

Zhou Qing: “Ohh~ your sister. Did you two settle your conflict?”

“Sort of… the conflict was resolved directly at the root,” Shi Shuxue said.

“That’s great. Speaking of which, will I ever get the chance to see you two perform together? One drums, one bass, your chemistry must be amazing.”

“…She probably won’t take the stage again,” Shi Shuxue said. After all, the band’s current drummer was Ci Cheng. Ci Cheng hadn’t been there long, if Chi Yeyu suddenly returned for a special performance, it wouldn’t be fair to the drummer who was working hard to fit in.

Zhou Qing sighed with disappointment. “Alright then.”

Shi Shuxue added, “But if you like Chi Yeyu, I can record a video for you next time she plays the drums.”

Chi Yeyu was busier with work now, but she still squeezed out time to spend an hour at the practice room, playing for her own amusement.

“Record it for me?!”

Now, not only Zhou Qing, but even Xu Xiaoyu’s eyes lit up. “I want to see too! You two should play an ensemble together.”

“…Me, and Chi Yeyu?” Shi Shuxue froze, as if she had heard something unthinkable.

She had never considered playing with Chi Yeyu. In her heart, Chi Yeyu was more of a mentor, the person who led her into music, encouraged her to explore instruments, and someone she could never surpass.

Despite complaining about Chi Yeyu’s boisterous personality, on the path of music, she had always been following that person’s silhouette.

Chi Yeyu’s drumming was the most arrogant she had ever heard. Every time she saw her sitting behind the kit, she felt that music had a color, the blue of Chi Yeyu’s hair flying as she swung her drumsticks.

Since Chi Yeyu left the band to go abroad, Shi Shuxue had been competing with her in her own mind for a long time. But those suppressed feelings of longing always surfaced late at night, driving her to repeatedly watch performance videos uploaded by fans.

The person sitting between the cymbals and the toms was always blindingly brilliant. The sticks turned into a blur in her fingers. When she tilted her head back, the lines of her neck tightened, and sweat rolled down her collarbone, shattering into starlight under the spotlight.

Too strong.

So strong it made one lose the will to chase, only able to stare at the screen as the wall of sound gripped one’s heart.