What Did You Say?
Mu Wan had already fallen asleep.
Her ears felt as though they were submerged underwater. By the time Liu Qianxiu’s final words reached her, they had blurred into a few indistinct sounds.
She could not make them out.
Her consciousness sank deeper.
Then she slept.
When she woke, it was already morning.
Mu Wan stepped out of the guest bedroom.
The apartment was empty.
There was not even a cat’s meow.
Liu Qianxiu’s bedroom door was tightly shut.
She checked the time.
Eight in the morning.
He had probably already gone to work.
The cats had been taken to Xu Xingkong’s house yesterday.
Once again, she was the only person here.
Mu Wan walked into the kitchen and found breakfast waiting on the dining table, along with a glass of orange juice.
Everything looked exactly like the first morning she had ever spent the night at Liu Qianxiu’s apartment.
He had prepared breakfast.
Then gone to work.
Leaving her alone in his home.
And yet something was different.
Mu Wan’s mind was still hazy.
Her memory felt as though it had been covered by a thin sheet of paper. She could see the general outline beneath it, but not the details.
She climbed onto one of the high stools at the dining table.
Rain had begun again outside.
Listening to the soft patter, Mu Wan tried to remember what Liu Qianxiu had said just before she fell asleep last night.
She bit into her sandwich.
Then placed her phone on the cool marble tabletop beside her.
He had worked so late yesterday and gone back to the hospital early this morning.
He might be busy.
Instead of calling, she sent him a message.
Mu Wan: Liu Qianxiu.
Unexpectedly, his reply came almost immediately.
Daoist Liu: Mm.
A smile curved against the rim of Mu Wan’s glass.
She rested one arm on the table.
The marble beneath her skin was smooth and cool.
Listening to the rain, she called him.
He answered quickly.
There was the sound of papers being turned on the other end.
“Are you busy?”
The rustling stopped.
“Not too much.”
“Oh.”
Mu Wan paused.
“Are we leaving for the temple this afternoon?”
She thought for a moment.
“Is there anything I need to prepare? I’m free today, so I can go buy whatever we need.”
Someone knocked on Liu Qianxiu’s office door.
Xiao Tan entered.
Liu Qianxiu glanced at him before lowering his eyes back to the documents.
“Buy a few books you like.”
Then he added,
“The signal there is poor. You won’t be able to get online.”
“I don’t have any books I like.”
Mu Wan thought seriously for a moment.
“I’ll just watch you read.”
Liu Qianxiu pressed his lips together.
He said nothing.
The silence was exactly what Mu Wan had expected.
Almost every time she said something like that, Liu Qianxiu responded by not responding at all.
Her fingertip traced lightly across the marble.
The coolness of the stone seemed to seep into the lines of her fingerprints.
“You said something to me last night.”
Mu Wan tried to organize her thoughts.
“But I fell asleep right after, and now I can’t remember what it was.”
She frowned.
“What did you say?”
Liu Qianxiu looked up.
Xiao Tan pointed toward his watch.
They had a meeting.
“It wasn’t anything important,” Liu Qianxiu said.
He gathered the documents in front of him.
“I’ll be home around one. Eat something yourself first.”
He stood.
“When I get back, we’ll leave directly for the temple.”
Then he added,
“I need to go to a meeting.”
“Mm.”
The brightness in Mu Wan’s voice faded noticeably.
Liu Qianxiu lowered his gaze slightly.
Then he ended the call.
He straightened the materials in his hands and walked over to Xiao Tan.
“Let’s go.”
“Miss Mu?”
Xiao Tan opened the door as he asked.
The two men headed toward the conference room.
Nurses and patients greeted them along the way.
Liu Qianxiu acknowledged each with a slight nod.
Only then did he answer Xiao Tan.
“Mm.”
Xiao Tan had heard enough of the phone call to guess who was on the other end.
Once Liu Qianxiu confirmed it was Mu Wan, he was not particularly surprised.
Liu Qianxiu was cool and still as water.
Mu Wan was warm and bright as fire.
In a way, they suited each other.
Still, Xiao Tan glanced at him with mild surprise.
“I didn’t expect you’d actually take her to the temple.”
“Mm.”
Liu Qianxiu’s response remained faint.
“She wanted to go, so I’m taking her.”
Liu Qianxiu refused to tell her what he had said.
But Mu Wan did not believe for a second that it had been meaningless.
After hanging up, she tried to remember again.
The outline in her memory became clearer and clearer.
Yet she still could not break through the thin layer hiding the actual words.
She finished breakfast without remembering anything useful.
Eventually, Mu Wan gave up.
She cleaned the kitchen and left Liu Qianxiu’s apartment.
First, she needed to go home and collect her luggage.
Liu Qianxiu had said they would leave for the temple as soon as he got off work.
The schedule sounded tight.
She might as well bring her suitcase back now so they could leave directly from his apartment.
August was approaching.
The summer rain still came and went unpredictably.
A single day could turn from sunshine to rain six or seven times.
When Mu Wan left Liu Qianxiu’s apartment, the rain was still light.
By the time she reached home, it was pouring.
Even with an umbrella, she would have been half soaked.
And she still had luggage to carry.
Since it was early, Mu Wan was in no hurry.
She waited for the rain to weaken.
While waiting, she searched for Qingyuan Temple.
Xia City had both Daoist temples and Buddhist monasteries.
Because the city was prosperous, most had flourishing incense offerings and plenty of visitors.
But Mu Wan had never heard of Qingyuan Temple.
She searched the map.
All she could find was Qingyuan Mountain.
Xia City had mountains to the north and the sea to the south.
Qingyuan Mountain lay in the northern district, within the Sushan mountain range.
A river called the Su River wound between the mountains.
The scenery was beautiful.
Layers of peaks.
A long river threading through them.
Xia City had developed rapidly, and construction had spread just as quickly.
Yet much of the Sushan region had remained untouched.
A few resorts had been built around the outer areas.
Farther in, the mountains were still largely undeveloped.
Qingyuan Mountain lay deep inside the range, near the innermost stretch of the Su River.
It had never been developed.
The mountain itself was not especially high.
A small town sat at its base.
There was probably internet access in town, but the signal would weaken farther up the mountain.
Mu Wan had grown up in Xia City.
Yet this was the first time she realized a place like this existed.
Thinking about Liu Qianxiu, though, it made perfect sense.
Strictly speaking, he was not really a Daoist priest.
At most, he was an ordinary man who practiced quiet cultivation.
He did not seek immortality.
He sought only peace of mind.
“Peace of mind…”
Mu Wan murmured the phrase.
Something flashed through her mind.
Yesterday, Liu Qianxiu had definitely said something about his state of mind.
She was sure of it.
Mu Wan was straining to reconstruct the sentence when her phone rang.
The thought shattered.
“Ah…”
She groaned in frustration.
The caller was Gao Mei.
Gao Mei had been working out of town for the past two days and had not been at Xia City’s production base.
She had returned the previous night.
Today, she happened to be filming with the same production Mu Wan had been working on.
Only after arriving did she realize Mu Wan was nowhere to be seen.
“Cut?”
Gao Mei sounded incredulous.
“Your scenes were pretty important. They just cut them?”
“Mm.”
Mu Wan sat cross-legged on her bed.
Outside, the rain was gradually weakening.
“I don’t have anything to film this entire week.”
She added,
“Li Nan hasn’t told me anything about next week yet.”
By now, Gao Mei could tell something was wrong.
Her first thought was similar to Li Nan’s.
Mu Wan had always worked quietly.
She was only a supporting actress.
She never caused trouble on set.
No director or lead actor had any reason to make things difficult for her.
So why had an entire week’s worth of work suddenly disappeared?
“Do you know what’s going on?”
Perhaps Mu Wan herself already had an idea.
“Mm.”
Gao Mei immediately became worried.
“Then what are you going to do?”
She continued,
“No work this week, maybe none next week either. If this keeps happening, how are you supposed to make a living?”
“I’ll deal with it when I come back next week.”
Mu Wan already had her own plan.
But this was not really about anything inside the entertainment industry, so she did not explain.
Mu Wan had always been someone who knew her own mind.
She dealt with most problems herself.
Otherwise, with a face like hers, she would never have managed to work so peacefully in the industry for this many years.
Gao Mei relaxed slightly.
“You’re going somewhere this week?”
“Yeah.”
Mu Wan smiled.
“I’m going to a Daoist temple to cultivate my mind.”
Then she asked,
“Do you have any good novels to recommend?”
Gao Mei loved novels.
Over the past two years, adaptations of online fiction had become increasingly popular.
She had even appeared in adaptations of several novels she loved and had been delighted about it.
“Of course.”
Then Gao Mei paused.
“Wait.”
Her tone turned suspicious.
“You’re going to a Daoist temple to read romance novels?”
She asked,
“Are you going there to cultivate your mind or to fall in love?”
The question struck directly at the heart of it.
Mu Wan laughed.
She really was going there for romance.
Admittedly, one-sided romance.
Gao Mei sent her a reading list.
Mu Wan bought several books and packed them into her suitcase.
By the time she finished, it was already noon.
She ate something outside, then brought her luggage to Liu Qianxiu’s apartment to wait.
The length of surgery was difficult to predict.
Liu Qianxiu came home later than expected.
When he entered, Mu Wan was sitting at the low table reading.
Naturally, it was not the Tao Te Ching.
The pale cover in her hands belonged to a novel.
Mu Wan looked up.
She closed the book and rose from the carpet.
“You’re back.”
Then she asked,
“Do you want to rest for a while?”
He had just finished surgery.
His body and mind had to be tired.
But Liu Qianxiu simply shook his head.
“No need.”
He looked at her.
“We’ll leave now.”
— To be continued in Part 2 —
↞ Previous│❀ Table of Contents ❀ │ Next ↠
Comments
Post a Comment