rsvt_11

"My apologies."

Realizing the atmosphere had suddenly frozen after those words came out, Di Jing awkwardly rubbed the back of his head.

The rest of dinner went smoothly. Lu Shutong and Yu Ran'er had butted heads a little that afternoon, but now they sat together peacefully. Mu Qi thought to herself, thank goodness nothing serious had come of it.

She hoped they could get through a whole month of filming in peace.

Mu He had set his heart on calling her Little Sunshine, and Cui Ran and Di Jing had started following suit. Mu Qi's attempts to talk them out of it got her nowhere, so she just let them be.

After the meal, everyone started dividing up chores. Four people would handle grocery shopping, four would handle cooking. Cleaning the house would rotate in pairs. Mu Qi wrote down on a small whiteboard who was in charge of what the next day, and with no objections from anyone, they all settled onto the couch to chat.

That's when everyone got a message from the production team.

Mu Qi opened it.

【Zero Distance With You: The first date is about to begin. Please tell us which guest you're interested in or feel a spark with.】

Mu Qi simply wrote "none" and swiped to send it off.

If she could, she'd write "none" for the entire month.

"Ugh." Lu Shutong let out a sigh.

Mu Qi asked her, "What's wrong?"

Lu Shutong shook her head.

A moment later, everyone's phones buzzed at once.

【Zero Distance With You: Round one selection invalid, please select again. Note: "None" is not a valid answer.】

Mu Qi bit her lower lip. Wasn't this message from the production team clearly aimed at her? The rundown she'd gotten at the start had said "none" was an acceptable choice.

"Who wrote 'none,' seriously, that's hurtful." Mu He said from the other side, glancing at Mu Qi, "Little Sunshine, that wasn't you, was it?"

Mu Qi said nothing. If she absolutely had to pick someone, it definitely wouldn't be Mu He.

She stared blankly at the message box on her phone, quietly glancing around at everyone else out of the corner of her eye. Di Jing and Cui Ran seemed to have already finished choosing, sitting there in a daze. Mu Qi's wandering gaze happened to meet Di Jing's.

He had both hands clasped behind his head, posture lazy, and glanced over, catching her eye exactly, "What, is Little Sunshine struggling over who to pick?"

"Ha ha." Mu Qi forced a smile.

The image she'd had of Di Jing in her mind had shattered on day one. She'd thought this big star would be someone so out of reach, but no, turned out he was this childish. Playing right along with Mu He, making her the butt of their jokes.

At least he knew how to hold back, thankfully.

As for Mu He, the moment Mu Qi did anything, he reacted big. Earlier during the chore assignment, when she'd brought over the small whiteboard and started writing down names, Mu He had made a fist and held it up to his mouth, eyes wide with mock shock.

"The homeowner really is the homeowner, even knows where the whiteboard is."

Mu Qi's hand twitched mid-writing.

So childish.

Su Zhizhi had even chimed in to tease along, "Feels like she knows where everything in this house goes."

"Exactly, which just proves she's the homeowner." Mu He finished, then looked at Mu Qi, "Be honest, is this house actually one you lent to the production team?"

As if she had that kind of money. Mu Qi was utterly speechless. Mu He was clearly just latching onto her to make jokes, so after that she mostly ignored him.

After a moment of silence, Mu Qi quickly typed in her choice.

【Zero Distance With You: Match results will be announced at midnight.】

Yu Ran'er: "Wow, that's fast. I thought we'd start choosing tomorrow, turns out we have to pick our spark on day one." She turned to look at Di Jing after saying this, "Brother Di Jing, who'd you pick?"

She was sitting at the far right end of the couch, Di Jing at the far left. To find out his answer, she made a point of circling all the way over to the left side.

"Don't ask." Seeing her approach, Di Jing looked like he already had a headache coming on.

At times like this, he always found himself thinking of Yu Xiaochong.

Wanting to tear him to pieces.

Mu He was sitting beside Di Jing, and he could tell Di Jing wasn't keen on answering, "Ran'er, come on, that's no fun, where's the mystery in that? Just wait for the production team to announce the results tonight."

"Fine. But I picked you, Brother Di Jing." Yu Ran'er stated her choice without hesitation.

Everyone present was taken aback.

Mu Qi wasn't surprised in the least, she'd already noticed it, Yu Ran'er's one-sided interest was far too obvious. Anyone could see she liked Di Jing.

But Di Jing didn't seem to feel the same way.

Whenever Yu Ran'er drifted toward his left side, his leg would shift to the right, a clear sign of avoidance.

Sigh, probably a bittersweet one-sided crush, no, not even one-sided, an out-in-the-open crush. Something the production team would definitely keep in the cut.

For the rest of the casual chat, Di Jing didn't seem to have his heart in it. Yu Ran'er stayed seated right next to him without moving, chiming in after everything he said, and it clearly wore him down. He excused himself, claiming he was tired, and went upstairs to his room. The moment he left, Yu Ran'er lost all interest in staying in the living room too, and went back to her own room as well.

At eleven at night, Su Zhizhi was starting to feel sleepy. Worried she'd go to bed and forget about the tarot reading, Mu Qi pulled her into her room.

"Wow! You actually look the part."

Su Zhizhi sat on Mu Qi's bed, watching her shuffle the cards with a sigh of admiration.

"What do you want to ask about?"

Su Zhizhi let her hair down, smoothing it out with her hands. She pursed her lips, brows furrowed, seeming to think it over quite seriously.

"Love, I guess. Let's see when I'll get married."

Mu Qi was a little surprised, "I thought you'd want to ask about your career."

"Well, I'm not getting any younger, am I. I'm actually serious about this show." Su Zhizhi's voice came out a little quiet, but Mu Qi still caught it.

"You're only twenty-five, twenty-six, what do you mean not getting any younger. And isn't that still young for an actress?" Mu Qi casually shuffled the cards together, then squared the deck and held it in her hand, "Honestly, I was a little surprised to see you signed up for a dating show."

But she'd been a little surprised by everyone else too.

Especially Yu Ran'er.

She'd heard Yu Ran'er had only graduated from university last year, and it wasn't even clear if she'd debuted a full year ago yet.

Su Zhizhi lowered her head and said nothing.

Mu Qi set the cards down on the bed and sat facing Su Zhizhi.

Su Zhizhi suddenly spoke up, "You're still young, so you wouldn't understand the pressure I'm under."

Mu Qi, who was only a year or two younger than her, was utterly confused.

"That's it? Just like that?" Watching Mu Qi casually set the cards down on the bed, Su Zhizhi looked somewhat curious.

"Feels too informal? Hang on, wait for me." Mu Qi stood up, opened the door, and dashed out.

She ran toward the kitchen, she remembered there was a tablecloth in one of the kitchen cabinets. Di Jing was in the kitchen drinking water, Mu Qi greeted him and pulled out the tablecloth.

Watching Mu Qi's excited expression, Di Jing looked a bit lost.

What on earth did she need a tablecloth for this late at night?

Mu Qi spread the tablecloth out over the bed.

"Much more official now, right?"

Su Zhizhi: "......" She was a little at a loss for words.

"Alright then, now I'm supposed to cut the deck, right?" Su Zhizhi asked.

The moment she heard that, Mu Qi knew Su Zhizhi had definitely had her cards read by someone before, on the side.

"Go ahead and cut."

Cutting the deck mainly serves to focus the diviner's attention on what's about to be read, but in actual practice, it's not strictly necessary, it comes down to the individual reader's habits. Mu Qi wasn't any kind of professional tarot reader to begin with, she was simply using tarot as a cover for her foresight ability, so she kept the reading process as simple as possible whenever she could. Whether or not the deck got cut made no real difference to her, but if it helped sell the act, she'd go along with it.

Once Su Zhizhi finished cutting the deck, Mu Qi spread the stack of cards face-down into a half-circle.

"Alright, silently think of what you want to ask about, then draw two cards."

"It's really that casual?" Su Zhizhi let out an amused laugh.

Su Zhizhi drew two cards and placed them between the two of them, and Mu Qi drew one as well.

She silently focused on Su Zhizhi's love fortune in her mind.

Right after, that familiar sensation of being swept over by warm water surfaced, Mu Qi felt her whole body go light and floaty, incredibly pleasant, if she closed her eyes, she felt as though she were floating in water right then. But she quickly snapped herself back to alertness, because fragments of images were already rushing toward her from somewhere far off.

Just like the first time she'd given Wu Feifei a reading.

Su Zhizhi's two cards represented her past and present.

The card Mu Qi had drawn represented her future.

The foresight ability meant seeing the future and knowing the past. All these fragments of Su Zhizhi's past and future converged together, crashing into her mind like a tide.

Her future didn't look good.

Mu Qi's brows knit slightly as she caught hold of one image.

Su Zhizhi sitting at the edge of a bed, back hunched, turned away from view, with a scatter of white pills on the floor around her.

At the same time, she also understood now why Su Zhizhi had just said she was too young to understand her pressure.

Su Zhizhi's age had been falsified.

Though Su Zhizhi was no longer a girl in her early twenties, she had the advantage of a baby face and a sweet, youthful look. The company had seen potential in her and changed her age so she could star in idol dramas.

Su Zhizhi had shot to fame with her very first project, having starred in countless sweet little romance dramas since, but her range had only narrowed further over time, she'd never tried any genre outside of sweet rom-coms, and no director had ever actively sought her out for anything else.

On top of that, with her getting older and more and more newcomers coming up, it seemed there was less and less room left for her in the sweet-drama scene. Although her official artist profile listed her as twenty-six, she knew full well how old she actually was.

It was only a matter of time before netizens figured out the truth about her age. It seemed her path as an actress couldn't last much longer.

The career anxiety alone she could handle, ever since her debut, from the moment the company changed her age, she'd already mentally braced herself for that.

Her real anxiety mainly came from her family.

Mu Qi flipped all the cards over.

The future card.

Seven of Swords.

That tracked.

"Feels like you've been under a lot of pressure lately." Once Mu Qi had taken in all the images, a sudden ache settled in her chest.

"What is it, is it bad?" Noticing the hint of sorrow on Mu Qi's face, Su Zhizhi grew curious. When Mu Qi didn't answer, Su Zhizhi went on talking to herself, "Ah, I already knew it. In this line of work, love was never going to come easy."

"Your family's been pressuring you, haven't they?"

"Huh?" Su Zhizhi let out a laugh, then nodded, "You can even tell that?"

"And being pressured like that made you anxious, so you came on this dating show, but if you don't end up liking anyone on this show, you'll just go back and marry whoever, settle for anyone, right, that's what you're thinking."

Su Zhizhi fell silent.

"Your career is about to hit a setback, you're worried you won't be able to weather it, and on top of your family constantly pressuring you, you've started to think maybe they're right after all, so you've decided to get married, to build a family of your own as a way to escape everything online." Mu Qi gathered the cards back together.

"Settling for just anyone will ruin the rest of your life."

"I know." Su Zhizhi murmured.

She had Mu Qi lean in close, leaning toward her ear, and said in a low voice, "I'll tell you a secret, don't tell anyone else." Her voice caught slightly, Mu Qi could tell she was making a difficult decision in that moment.

"I'm not some idol-drama princess in her early twenties. I'm already thirty-two."

She'd expected to see a look of shock on Mu Qi's face, but instead, Mu Qi only gave a faint, calm smile.

"So what?"

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