Chapter 257 - 116: Self-Deception

Chapter 257: Chapter 116: Self-Deception

December 8th.

Saturday, 7 PM.

Xu Zhiruo, drenched in sweat, sat back down on the sofa, panting like a puppy with her tongue out.

Singing was a real workout. They had arrived at the villa at one in the afternoon, and now, a full six hours had passed. They hadn’t stopped for a single moment.

You had to jump and dance while singing, so it was impossible to do it constantly. Never mind a group of fifteen- and sixteen-year-old girls; even a man of steel couldn’t handle such a high-intensity workout.

So after a few songs, they decided to find a movie to watch. They turned on the projector, and the system still showed a half-finished *Journey to the West*.

Gu Qiuyan closed *Journey to the West* and asked them what they wanted to watch.

Xu Zhiruo found it a little strange that she would even think of watching this film. Her best friend was no artsy girl who’d sit on the sofa alone, clutching a box of tissues and crying her eyes out. No matter how classic the melodrama, she’d never deign to watch it a second time.

She could only chalk it up to her friend’s recent bad mood. People tend to gravitate toward sad things when they’re feeling down.

After the movie, they ran up to the piano room on the second floor. Gu Qiuyan sat elegantly before the piano while her friends lined up on a seat behind her. They watched her play everything from "Für Elise" to "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," the melodies at times cheerful, at times graceful. She actually played many more pieces, but Xu Zhiruo could only recognize those two. The rest were a dizzying blur of F major and D major, things she had never even heard of.

Not understanding was fine; a good audience member just needed to know when to applaud enthusiastically. Amidst the applause, you could see her long, slender, snow-white neck, like a swan’s. The young miss’s slender fingers glided over the keys, exuding a dazzling and proud aura.

Besides the piano, the room was also filled with block models. One of Gu Qiuyan’s hobbies was building with blocks—the one that had been smashed at school was just one of her countless creations. It was a European-style castle nearly the size of a washbasin. Exaggerated, right? But compared to the room full of block sets, it was just a drop in the ocean.

Then they started building with blocks.

The four teenage girls, not caring if they got dirty or looked ungraceful, sat on the floor like little kids. They built a long, long train track, and once their masterpiece was complete, they placed the battery-powered locomotive on it. They even lay on their stomachs, watching with rapt attention as the train started, barely daring to breathe. When the locomotive circled the track several times and returned to its starting point, they cheered and high-fived, all whipping out their phones to take pictures to commemorate their victory.

Just then, Qiumian suggested they go back downstairs and sing some more, saying she hadn’t had her fill earlier.

Xu Zhiruo just grunted at that. ’Of course you didn’t,’ she thought. ’When we asked you to sing earlier, you wouldn’t; you just sat on the sofa, glued to your phone.’

They all went back downstairs. This time, Gu Qiuyan found a silver hairclip. She deftly swept up her hair into a regal style fit for a little princess. But no princess would ever roll up the sleeves of her blouse and eye the song selection screen with such eager anticipation.

But then she started by singing "Fireworks Cool Easily," her voice once again tinged with melancholy and loneliness. ’Oh no,’ Xu Zhiruo thought. ’Does my pep talk have such a short shelf life? It couldn’t even last one evening?’

She was just about to rack her brain for a few more encouraging words when Gu Qiuyan finished the last line of the song and let out a breath.

"I told you, I’m fine." Gu Qiuyan widened her beautiful eyes. "Were you just thinking bad things about me?"

Xu Zhiruo breathed a sigh of relief and said teasingly that she wouldn’t dare. And sure enough, as if to prove Gu Qiuyan’s point, the words had barely left her mouth when a new song started on screen. Just from the rhythm, you could tell it was intense. Gu Qiuyan tapped her heel to the beat, and then went all out.

When the song ended, a mischievous strand of hair escaped Gu Qiuyan’s updo and clung to her flushed lips. Her chest heaving, she went to the coffee table for a drink of water. Xu Zhiruo took her turn, asking as she selected a song:

"I’ll pick ’Simple Love’ for you. That’s your favorite when we go to karaoke."

"No," she said, wrinkling her nose on purpose. "I don’t feel like singing sappy love songs today. Besides, we only have the Wu Bai version here. His love is too rough; it’s not simple at all."

After her drink, Gu Qiuyan took the stage again. She was the best singer and could handle any genre. The atmosphere finally livened up. They sang their way from Jay Chou to Wang Leehom, from Cyndi Wang to Leslie Cheung, and in the end, they still came back to Wu Bai.

Everyone was exhausted, but the excitement hadn’t faded, and no one really wanted to leave. Still, it was getting late. The party had to end sometime.

So someone—no one remembers who—suggested they end the night with Wu Bai’s "World’s Number One."

The proposal passed unanimously with a chorus of "Yeah, yeah!" As soon as the intro finished, the girls deliberately strained their voices, comically imitating the Hokkien accent. The four of them screamed themselves hoarse, their clear singing voices completely distorted. They couldn’t get more than a few lines out before collapsing into a fit of laughter. With the speakers buzzing, they fell onto the sofa in a heap.

A chaotic frenzy.

In the end, Gu Qiuyan had laughed herself hoarse. She slipped on her slippers and walked her three best friends upstairs.

The driver was already waiting outside the villa.

"You’re really not staying for dinner?" Gu Qiuyan asked.

"Probably not. Didn’t you say you had things to do tonight? We won’t stay. Besides, there’s always tomorrow."

"Alright then."

Actually, there had been a small incident while they were singing earlier. Xu Zhiruo had thought Gu Qiuyan would be completely focused on her performance, but who would have guessed that during a water break, she’d picked up her phone again to reply to messages. Xu Zhiruo was at the front selecting a song at the time and was startled when she saw it. ’Just what kind of Magic Power does this Brother Wood have,’ she wondered, ’to have stolen our young miss’s soul away again?’