Ying Yin slipped into the venue and took her seat. After a while, when the chair next to her remained empty, she finally snapped back to reality.
Why hadn’t Shang Shao shown up?
She fished her phone out of her clutch and sent him a WeChat message: [Mr. Shang, have you already left?]
The Galaxy Awards ceremony interspersed acting prizes with technical awards. Of course, the most anticipated trophy – Best Film – was saved for last. It was only nearing nine o’clock, and there was still a long stretch before the evening would end.
On stage, Shen Ji was charming, modest, and witty, drawing knowing laughter from the audience.
Ying Yin held her phone in her palm, waiting a few minutes until Shang Shao’s reply came through: [Outside, having a cigarette.]
The camera swept across the room. Ying Yin slid her phone back into her clutch, composed herself, and put on an expression of rapt attention. When the moment for the award arrived, the Best Cinematography prize went to the expected winner. Amid the thunderous applause, Ying Yin quietly rose from her seat and slipped out through the side door of the hall.
The cold spell had passed. The night air was warm and humid, drifting with a soft haze that made you feel as if spring had already arrived. The scent of some unknown fruit tree hung in the air. She pushed open the glass door and reached the end of the corridor.
The terrace was deserted, save for a single cigarette stub crushed into the ashtray by the corner wall.
Ying Yin leaned over the railing and stood in the balmy breeze for a while, then dialed Shang Shao’s number.
It was quiet on his end too. He asked, “What’s up?”
“Did you leave?”
“Yeah.”
It was so still on the line – he must have been inside his car.
Ying Yin hesitated for a moment, then asked again, “Did you really leave?”
“Really left.”
Just as she was about to say something else, a voice suddenly came from behind her. “It’s chilly at night.”
Ying Yin startled and turned around. There stood Shen Ji, who had just come off the stage.
She gripped her phone tightly and fumbled to press a side button, thinking she had hung up.
When she spoke again, her voice carried an unnatural stiffness. “Mr. Shen.”
“I saw you step out from the stage. I happened to want a cigarette.” Shen Ji held a cigarette between his fingers, palm up, and offered it to Ying Yin. “Want one?”
Ying Yin shook her head.
Shen Ji smiled. “I thought maybe you’d taken up smoking.” He paused, then lowered his voice, gentle and soft. “Has it been two years? We haven’t talked face to face like this. Or was it three?”
“I can’t really remember.”
“Been doing okay lately?”
“Yeah.” Ying Yin answered hastily, one word tripping over the next.
“Is that so? I saw those rumors about you and Song Shizhang dragging on for so long, I almost thought they were true.”
“They’re not.”
“I was worried.”
“Mr. Shen.” Ying Yin cut him off, steering the conversation elsewhere with clear urgency. “How’s your wife? I heard at the last banquet that she’s pregnant with her second child – is her morning sickness still bad?”
Shen Ji paused for a moment, then placed the cigarette between his lips. His eyes, full of unspoken feeling, lowered. “She’s fine. She hardly mentions you in front of me anymore.”
Ying Yin gave a strained smile, not knowing how to respond. The terrace was wide open, the deep blue night sky endless – but she felt as though she had nowhere to stand.
On set, Shen Ji’s wife had watched her like a hawk. Her gaze was more startling than the camera’s presence – like a blazing torch. Under that stare, Ying Yin had often felt as if she had no clothes on, nothing more than an untrustworthy whore.
But the director was strict. He didn’t tolerate any disruption.
Neither she nor the wife had any say in the matter.
There were so many intimate scenes. Every time the set was cleared, listening to the hum of the camera and staring at the jade-green colored glaze lamp on the ceiling of the hotel room, Ying Yin would see, before her eyes, the look in Shen Ji’s wife’s eyes from outside the set.
Later, in an interview, his wife was asked whether she worried about her husband developing feelings through his roles. She smiled warmly and said, “Not at all. Shen Ji isn’t the kind of shallow man who’s only interested in the body.”
For three years they had kept their distance. No matter the occasion, they didn’t speak, didn’t exchange pleasantries. When others brought up their collaboration, he stayed silent; she claimed not to remember.
Now, caught off guard like this, silence between them would only make it seem like something really was there.
Ying Yin wanted to leave immediately, but she hesitated, wondering if she should say a few more words about his wife and children. As she racked her brains, she heard Shen Ji call her name. “Xiao Ying.”
She looked up instinctively.
Shen Ji finally let his gaze rest on her eyes from afar and uttered a name that wasn’t hers. “Meijian.”
Li Meijian – the name of the female lead in the film they had made together.
The time it took to smoke a cigarette – too short for reminiscing, too long for small talk.
In the end, Shen Ji didn’t finish that cigarette. Before Ying Yin could say goodbye, he stubbed out the long remainder and said, “I’ll go first.”
Ying Yin nodded. Through the black glass door, his figure disappeared. She let out a breath and stood there in the night breeze.
She had hung up on Shang Shao in a panic – sudden and rude. Would he be angry?
But then again, she had hung up on him, and he hadn’t called back.
Her thumb hovered over the call log. Just as she was about to tap it, there was a sound behind her again.
“Why are you so distracted?”
Ying Yin’s shoulders gave a slight tremble. She turned her head and stared blankly at Shang Shao.
His clothes were damp with the night dew.
This man – wherever he went, he moved from building to car, from car to building. The tips of his shoes never touched dust. He was far more familiar with the feel of carpet beneath his feet than with pavement.
Ying Yin couldn’t figure it out. How could someone who was supposed to have driven away end up covered in night dew?
“Didn’t you leave?”
“I came back.”
“On foot?” Ying Yin was baffled.
“Traffic control. I walked back,” Shang Shao said casually.
A few hundred meters of road, traffic lights lined up like a long dragon, streets gridlocked.
The driver had let him off at an intersection. He walked the rest of the way, while the driver took a long detour, slowly circling back to the theater’s basement parking garage to wait for him.
Accustomed to high-rise buildings, used to looking down from the clouds, Shang Shao hadn’t walked along a street in a while.
Electric scooters zipped past on the sidewalk like arrows streaking through the shadows of palm trees.
As he walked, he listened to the other end of the phone line, a heaviness pressing on his chest.
It was a kind of uneasy feeling – like being submerged in water, dull and suffocating, making it hard to breathe.
His steps grew slower and slower until finally, without realizing it, he stopped altogether.
At the sharp, shrill blare of an electric scooter’s horn – right as the name “Meijian” came through – he hung up instinctively.
“Why did you come back?”
“I forgot something.”
Ying Yin hadn’t expected him to have returned for her. But in that first second when she saw him, there had been a quiet hope in her heart – a half-buried flutter of excitement.
She pressed her lips together. “What did you forget?”
Instead of answering, Shang Shao asked, “Why do you look so unsettled?”
“I’m not.”
Shang Shao didn’t press her to admit it. Casually, he changed the subject. “Just now in the hallway, before you were interrupted – what were you asking me?”
“I asked…” Ying Yin faltered, tried to remember, then gave up. “…What did I ask?”
It had been only twenty or thirty minutes ago, and she had already forgotten completely. Denying that she was distracted really wasn’t very convincing.
“You asked me why I’m still entangled with my ex-girlfriend.”
“Huh?” Ying Yin tried harder to recall. “Why would I ask that? Out of nowhere.”
“Because I was on the phone with my sister. You misunderstood.”
Ying Yin finally remembered – something about “moving in,” “babe,” and so on. Embarrassed, she said, “Right, I misunderstood.”
“My ex is getting married soon. We’re not in contact. There’s no entanglement, and there’s no so-called ‘staying friends after a breakup.'”
Ying Yin nodded.
“Do you think I’m the kind of person who would rekindle something with someone who’s already married?” Shang Shao steered the conversation subtly, his tone unhurried.
“No,” Ying Yin denied immediately.
“Or,” Shang Shao paused, fixing his gaze on her unhurriedly, his voice slow, “is it that affairs like that are so common in your entertainment industry that your mind naturally went there?”
Ying Yin’s head snapped up. “Mr. Shang, I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Then why did you ask that?” Shang Shao walked toward her step by step. “Why assume it was another woman? Why assume it was some other romantic interest? Isn’t it because you think affairs like that are completely normal?”
“It was just a reflex.” Ying Yin’s thoughts were a mess. She furrowed her brows slightly. “I don’t know your romantic history. I’ve only ever heard of her. I…” She gave up on explaining and apologized straightforwardly. “I’m sorry. I judged you by my own petty standards. I shouldn’t have lost it just from overhearing those conversations…”
Without her realizing it, both of Shang Shao’s hands had braced against the railing, caging her in his embrace.
He was silent for a long time, as if he hadn’t expected her to say that.
After a moment, he asked, “Lost it how?”
“Lost…” Ying Yin tilted her head back to look at him and swallowed hard.
She was completely led by him. Somehow, she had the vague sense that something was off – that she didn’t really know what he was actually talking about.
“Tell me.”
Ying Yin lifted her face slightly. Half of it was bathed in moonlight, the other half in the shadow of Shang Shao looming over her.
She gave up. Embarrassed, she said, “Mr. Shang, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been jealous of your ex-girlfriend and ruined your mood.”
Shang Shao took a long moment to steady himself before managing to carry on with his interrogation.
“So well-behaved. You really would make a good mistress.” His tone was cold and deliberate, feigning harshness, but his gaze was fixed on the tiny red mole on Ying Yin’s earlobe.
He really wanted to kiss her.
Why does he still need to wait?
Ying Yin had no idea what he meant. Shocked and humiliated, she said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“If the contract ends and I get married, but I can’t bear to let you go – would you be willing?” There was an air of condescending charity beneath his gentlemanly demeanor. “I’d be even more generous with you than I am now.”
Ying Yin’s eyes widened abruptly, but her expression remained numb. “I couldn’t do that.”
He was going to get married. She had almost forgotten.
He would spend his days and nights with his wife, have children with her, share countless nights together.
Far more enduring than three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Day after day after day – they would be a long river bathed in moonlight, while she and he would be nothing but a short, narrow ditch.
A cicada knows neither spring nor autumn. But now, suddenly, it knew – and a sharp, piercing pain shot through her limbs and bones.
As if together, they had just realized her own shallowness, her own short-lived fate.
Shang Shao watched her closely, as if trying to see whether her refusal was genuine, or just a temporary ploy – a pretense of dignity, a bargaining chip to drive up her price.
“Why couldn’t you do it?” he pressed slowly, his tone no longer as cold as before. There was a hint of tenderness now, as if he were genuinely negotiating.
“Whether it’s a business marriage or a political one, I imagine my future wife and I won’t have much feeling for each other. Her looks and figure certainly won’t compare to yours. Besides – you’re understanding, sensible, and know how to please. You’d surely put me more at ease than her spoiled temperament.”
This gentle calculation cut deeper than his cold, businesslike bargaining just moments ago.
Ying Yin was silent for a long time. Then she gave a small laugh and looked into Shang Shao’s shadowed eyes. “There’s no end to making money, Mr. Shang. I need to save my time for the person I actually want to be with.”
She turned her face away into the night, unaware that Shang Shao’s expression had suddenly changed.
After a long moment, his face dark, he asked, word by word. “Ying Yin, who is the person you want to be with?”
He had asked the wrong question. This wasn’t part of his plan.
What he had meant to ask was about her relationship with Shen Ji. Whether she had once set aside her pride and dignity for someone else, willingly becoming another man’s mistress.
How much money could an award-winning actor have? If she was willing to carry on an affair with him, it would be for love – love that made even plain water sweet.
That trace of affection would weigh more in her heart than his billions, one after another.
Shang Shao had never imagined that someone who understood people so well, who was so skilled at negotiation and controlling a situation, could lose control in such a small conversation.
His meticulous, precise line of questioning had been derailed by his own words.
Ying Yin didn’t answer him.
Her hands, braced on the terrace railing, showed pale knuckles.
A moment later, Shang Shao raised one hand, took hold of her chin, and slowly but inexorably turned her face toward him.
“Tell me.”
“There’s no one.” Ying Yin said it simply.
Shang Shao’s expression was already dark. When he heard those crisp, clear words -“There’s no one” – the emotion in his eyes shifted again, as if caught off guard.
“Really no one?”
“Really no one. I have a sense of contract ethics. If I were going to like someone, I’d wait until the contract period is over.”
Thunderous applause erupted from the auditorium – someone’s speech must have just ended.
Shang Shao nodded.
What he really wanted to ask was: What about me?
If there were no feelings involved, why would she want a fresh start with him on equal footing? Why preserve her pride in front of him? Why, drunk in Germany, had she cried and asked him, “Not now, but not ever?”
And why, after overhearing a slightly ambiguous phone call, had she irrationally jumped to jealousy over an ex-girlfriend?
But he didn’t ask any of it. Instead, he let go of her chin and took a step back.
The distance between them widened, and the warm breeze drifted gently through the space between.
“Go back inside.” He took out a cigarette, tilting his face away as he lit it. “It won’t look good if someone sees us.”
Ying Yin really should go back. Her seat was near the front, and the camera might catch her at any moment. Besides, this wasn’t exactly a hidden refuge – someone could walk over at any time.
She nodded, lowered her gaze, and brushed past Shang Shao.
“What if I don’t allow it?”
She had already pushed the glass door halfway open. The draft blew stronger.
Her black hair whipped across her face.
“What?” She turned, her eyes hazy and unfocused.
“What if I don’t allow you to like someone else after the contract ends?”
Ying Yin let out a laugh. Her perfectly maintained composure – so generous, so breezy – suddenly soured with unmistakable bitterness. “Mr. Shang, by then you’ll have a beautiful wife in your arms. Will you really have the spare time to care who I like?”
She stepped through the door, her red dress trailing behind her, and added in a low, strained voice. “Isn’t it enough, as long as she has you in her heart?”
The word “she” carried all the weight.
Shang Shao’s heart jolted. He almost snapped the cigarette between his fingers.
The glass door closed with a heavy thud. A moment later, it was pushed open again. He chased after her and, in the empty corridor, seized Ying Yin’s wrist firmly. “Come with me.”
Ying Yin stumbled a step. When she turned around, her eyes and the tip of her nose were red, her expression full of wounded defiance.
“What are you doing?”
“I told you. I forgot something. That’s why I came back.”
“You forgot…” Ying Yin struggled for a moment, then finally understood – but her retort missed the mark entirely. “I’m not a thing!”
Shang Shao’s lips curved slightly. He gave her a helpless look and pulled out his phone to make a call. “Get in touch with the theater. Have them send someone to meet us, and prepare a set of women’s work clothes – size M.”
“I wear S!” Ying Yin gritted her teeth.
“She wears S,” Shang Shao corrected calmly.
On the other end of the line, Lin Cunkang raised an eyebrow slightly. “Got it. Give me your location.”
Shang Shao gave him the nearest exit passage.
After hanging up, he made a second call.
“Ying Yin is sick. She won’t be attending the rest of the awards ceremony. Apologize to the film festival organizers on her behalf, and prepare a press release.”
Zhuang Tiwen: “…”
Footsteps approached from afar. Shang Shao, with Ying Yin in his arms, slipped into a restroom.
A man like him – even bending down with one hand to pick up an “Out of Service” sign – did it with the same elegance as bowling.
The yellow cleaning warning sign was set up at the door. The stall door slammed shut with a thud, followed by the click of the lock.
“Here…”
Ying Yin couldn’t finish. Shang Shao covered her mouth with his clean hand.
They communicated through their eyes. One asked: Stop talking? The other promised: Stop talking.
Shang Shao moved his hand away, pressing his thumb gently against her lips. His lowered eyes were filled with tenderness and deep, consuming desire.
He lowered his head and kissed her.
He had lost his mind for a moment and nearly forgot that coming here today was about taking her home. All the jealousy, all the pettiness, all the history – those could wait until they got back to settle slowly. How could he let the small things cost him the bigger prize and let her slip away?
Only when their lips met did he remember: they hadn’t kissed in five days.
It had felt unbearably long.
Ying Yin had meant to push him away. But the moment her hand touched his shoulder, pushing turned into holding – she wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, letting him lift her up until she was on her tiptoes, stretched as high as she could go.
She couldn’t keep her balance. The sharp, slender heels of her shoes clicked sporadically against the tiled floor.
He kissed her almost ruthlessly, his tongue twining with hers again and again, drawing the moisture from her mouth until she could barely breathe.
Her legs went weak.
He knew all her most pathetic reactions. His voice, low and hoarse, came close to her ear. “Go home?”
Ying Yin shook her head. She took the initiative to undo his tie and touched his Adam’s apple.
The stall door shuddered violently as Shang Shao pressed her against it. Her back against the champagne-colored wood, her face tilted high, eyes closed as she bathed in the light.
Her ten fingers, clutching the door, strained with effort – she could barely hold herself up.
She swallowed again and again, as if torn between unbearable need and deep pleasure.
Shang Shao’s phone buzzed repeatedly, each call ending automatically. After two missed calls, a knock came at the door. A calm, probing voice asked, “Is Mr. Lin Cunkang here?”
Neither of them responded.
