Smile Code (Lost Laughter) 失笑 - Zhu Le 祖乐

43

Appetite is one of the few pleasures we can truly feel.

Gu Yi thought this wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Losing her tooth was a fact, and Liang Daiwen, full of guilt, kissed her in the car. That was a scene she couldn't help but blush and feel her heart race over, even just thinking about it under the covers-a memory that made her want to run wild on the street from sheer joy. How much of that moment did Liang Daiwen feel? Was he truly moved? In the cramped space of the back seat, she could hear his heartbeat too-it wasn't any steadier than her own...

Too bad Liang Daiwen couldn't express himself well. He kissed her and then said the only reason he was different from others was because he was missing a tooth. After the kiss, there were no texts, no calls-not a single message. What did that mean? Did he want to just shirk responsibility and run? Gu Yi lay in bed, flipping over angrily. If this were turned into a comedy sketch, the audience at Ounce might as well drag them both to the altar for a wedding on the spot.

Too excited to sleep, Gu Yi stayed up half the night writing comedy material on her phone, only to wake up with a swollen eye. Eager to share her jokes, she messaged Yu Dule:

"Hey, I haven't been able to draw a slot for a performance at Ounce lately. Can you pull some strings?"

"I can't."

"You're just jealous and don't want to give me a chance."

"No-scheduling's no longer up to me. The boss is back and restructuring things at the bar. I'm waiting for updates too."

Feeling heartbroken about her material going stale within a week, Gu Yi thought about where else she could perform. After some frantic brainstorming, she remembered a female comedy group that had once invited her. Tentatively reaching out to the organizer, she was told they only had one show a week, and all slots were long booked. A place like Ounce, with three or four shows a week, seemed much more luxurious in comparison. During the phone call, the organizer jokingly added, "Our frequency is low-just like women's place in society."

Gu Yi didn't know how to respond to that.

After three days of being teased at the office about her missing front tooth, she decided to ditch her mask entirely. Her coworkers' curiosity couldn't be curbed by a mask anyway. Meanwhile, an internal email from the company announced that Jacqueline's department would not only oversee One Week but also take on the younger-focused Bypass magazine, accompanied by significant personnel changes. Gu Yi wondered: wasn't Jacqueline on shaky ground at the company? Could it be that she was focusing more on work now after breaking up with Xu Guanrui?

Pony suggested in the group chat: "Let's all cheer up our little bunny! How about some team bonding this weekend?" Gu Yi almost ground her molars to dust. She thought it'd be better to just buy an ad and publicly execute her on a Times Square billboard. Still, she replied in the chat:

"Sorry, everyone, I'm swamped with work. Pony gave me a task, and I'll have to do interviews this weekend."

Adding words like "sorry" and "swamped" were ways she'd taught Liang Daiwen to politely deliver sarcastic jabs. But Pony wasn't one to lose at such games-she scheduled a karaoke outing for the entire team that afternoon, making escape impossible. It was worse than being at work.

The content team, along with their interns, made a group of 12. Pony sat across from her with all the male colleagues except her own intern. The songs they picked were pretentious and out of touch. When they egged Gu Yi on to sing, all just to get a better look at her missing tooth, she didn't hold back and boldly chose A Hero's Song for herself.

The male colleagues were even more enthusiastic than Pony, teasing:

"Wow, Gu Yi, what happened to your tooth? Did you knock it out while drunk?"