Xie Lian's artistic side| Colors of the Heart ~ Hualian AU

Chapter XXXIX

"Gege, what are you doing here?"

Xie Lian wore an expression like he had seen a ghost.

***

"I'm all ears."

"Your ears are indeed big" Mu Qing grumbled and folded his arms.

Feng Xin sighed. "Mu Qing, I'll be silent until you decide it's time to share something meaningful, not only these stupid fight-back arguments."

Mu Qing heard the noise of Feng Xin sitting in between all the material inside the tight closet. "Why is it so warm in here?" was what he thought but said nothing. That room was so annoyingly small he could almost hear Feng Xin's heartbeats.

"You should consider speeding up with it so we can be released from this God-forsaken closet" Feng Xin added.

Bringing a liquid to its boiling point usually goes through a latent, simmering stage when the temperature is rising. This is followed by small bubbles appearing, then lingering, to being violently expelled into the atmosphere in between a current of other bubbles. The rushing bubbles need to find their way out of the dense liquid, otherwise the pressure resulting from holding them in will be explosive.

Since they met at the Café, emotions were simmering inside Mu Qing's chest just like water being heated. Now, the first bubbles could already be felt, but they were not sure they would find a way out yet. To increase the pressure, Mu Qing could not forget that Feng Xin liked to be pragmatic. He was probably already losing patience with the whole situation and that made Mu Qing dread even more.

***

"There, I sent all the info you asked for. Now where's my payment?"

"Calm down, what's yours is saved, you'll get it in the end." Jun Wu stood up and changed his shirt.

"Wait, that wasn't our deal. I thought it was a one-time thing." Qi Rong stood too and catched a can of iced coffee that came flying in the air at his direction. "Well, a second-time actually." Qi Rong had been questioning his own motives for doing deeds for Jun Wu. It was not for food, of course, since he could steal it from the big guy's room anytime he wanted. He was also not doing it for the payment, as he could guess he would not get any. One could imagine he was doing it to see where those situations would lead to, maybe for the sake of curiosity. It was a sensible thought. Still, it was not true.

"Why did you come back here then?" Jun Wu got his wallet and paused at the door to look at the hacker in his room, waiting for an answer.

Qi Rong did not know what to say.

"C'mon, get outta here. You can't hang in here whenever you want." Jun Wu walked away thinking about the future.

Qi Rong wandered back to his room looking for answers that could be in his past.

***

"Hello, Shi Talent Agency, how can I help?" Shi Qingxuan just left the restaurant she and Wudu had a late lunch at. He went home to deal with the preparation of an office they were trying to rent. She was walking back to where the audition of a new client she was accompanying was taking place, when her phone rang. It had a weird prefix, must have been from abroad.

"Good morning, oh, excuse me, good afternoon. I'm pretty sure it is already mid-afternoon over there, correct?" The voice on the other end was bright.

"Yes, yes. Here is actually late-afternoon. Who am I speaking to?"

"Miss Shi, I'm reaching you as you're the registered agency who manages actor Xie Lian's career, positive?"

"Yes."