Stellar

22 - Glare (Yue)

8:35am – Shanghai

Yue was late.

She was hardly ever late. Everyone could attest to that.

In her entire career, she was the early bird, the morning person, the one who waited for everyone.

But today she was absolutely on her toes because for the first time in years, she was running late.

And naturally, since they never really experienced this, it was Yangjin who was panicking the most.

"This is so uncharacteristic of you, my dear." She expressed to her charge who was still tinkering with the stuff inside her bag making sure she did not leave anything.

"I know! I'm sorry, jie! This won't happen again." She winced and started hugging Yangjin's arm tightly.

"You're lucky the photoshoot is just near the area. And good thing I told you to pack early or we'll be dead." Yangjin muttered while clicking her tongue. "Why did you wake up so late anyway?"

Yue bit her lip.

She was actually a little bit ashamed to tell her jie the answer.

"I..."

Half of it was because she was embarrassed to admit how clingy she was with Dylan recently. After all, she was the one who insisted on sending him off in the wee hours of the morning. It was also because she didn't want Yangjin to think that Dylan was being a bad influence especially now that he was back in her life. In his defense, he did try his best to persuade her not to go. She just felt stubborn and wouldn't have any of it.

"I...overslept? I couldn't sleep last night and snoozed my alarm. I'm sorry jie!"

Yue could feel her cheeks start to flush as Yangjin eyed her suspiciously.

"Why, Ms. Shen Yue. You just straight up lied to me! You think I don't know that you snuck out to bring Didi to the airport?"

She knew she was turning as red as a tomato.

"Jieeee. Wait. I'm sorry. Before you say anything, he didn't ask me to. I wanted to go—"

"Stop being defensive. I'm not going to blame him." Yangjin cut her. "I just wanted to hear it from you."

Then she folded her arms just as a smirk appeared on her face. "It's actually really good to see you being loose and carefree. You've always been such a straight A student even as an actress, it can get tiring too."

"Jie..."

"So don't apologize to me for being in love. I'm just happy that you have him now. You've always been much more fun with him around." she joked.

"Hey, I am fun too!"

"Well I haven't seen you this smiley in a while. I'm just... happy for you. For both of you."

"Jieeeee." Yue pouted as she hugged her again. She now felt absolutely guilty for lying to her.

They shared a silent moment. Yue swore she saw her jie's eyes glisten.

"Yaaa. I don't know where all these emotions are coming from! I guess I'm not used to being late."

Yue giggled. "What a lame excuse jie. But really, thank you for being happy for us. And I'm so sorry I lied. I feel so bad."

"Yue Yue, you know that you deserve to be this happy and more. Let's just try not to be late next time." Yangjin said, wiping the tears almost spilling out from Yue's eyes.

"Aaaah! Okay, enough with all this! Have you made sure you have everything then?"

They had a full day ahead of them, a series of photoshoots for her endorsements, a few hours of rest time to pick up her clothes and gear for the guesting tomorrow and then it's straight to the airport for her flight to Beijing. They couldn't afford to go back and forth from her place after this.