Probably not... the clothes were pretty normal anyway, she was the one who brought up the black stockings, and "girlfriend" was other people's misunderstanding, I never called her that... the only questionable item is that sexy little pair of underwear, and nobody's ever going to see that, so it's just a tiny bit of bad taste...
"Um... what 'girlfriend' means... it's about the same as a Dao companion. Right — a Dao companion." Chu Ge was all smooth talk. "You know 'Dao companion' isn't such a narrow term, right? It just means companions on the same path — men and women both count. Look: close, like-minded, one step beyond mere friends. Doesn't that fit our relationship exactly?"
Qiu Wuji said with a blank face, "Then what does 'a good match' mean?"
Chu Ge said cautiously, "Of course a Dao companion can slide toward a narrower meaning too. That's the meaning they were using."
Qiu Wuji: "..."
Chu Ge: "..."
The atmosphere suddenly went quiet.
After a long while, Qiu Wuji asked, "Why didn't you deny it?"
She sounded calm enough, which left Chu Ge completely at a loss. He kept bluffing: "Because I think we really are Dao companions. The narrow meaning is other people's guess. Why should I deny the broad meaning? Besides, denying it wouldn't help. We went shopping for clothes together, underwear included — who's going to believe anything else?"
In truth, Qiu Wuji already knew this guy was talking nonsense. By that explanation, "girlfriend" simply meant lover.
Somehow, she wasn't very angry. Maybe because she knew this really was easy to misunderstand and had been braced for it, or maybe because she'd long known that all of Chu Ge's courage ran out at his mouth, that grinding on this point was tedious, and that she didn't feel like beating him up. What else could she do?
Or maybe because "girlfriend" wasn't as blunt and grating as "lover" — it sounded like "friend," which made it easier to swallow...
What popped into her head instead was a very strange thought: this world really is bizarre. Everything is done so provocatively and blatantly, yet the words are conservative. It means lover, but they insist on saying friend.
Is this what they call... playing the prude and the lecher at once?
In the end she didn't keep going at Chu Ge. She said quietly, "Does this count as my first step into this world?"
Chu Ge let out a breath. "It counts. At least now when you walk out the door nobody stares at you like you're a monkey."
Qiu Wuji said, "And the second step? Getting an identity?"
"Mm... that's a bit of a hassle. I may have to ask around with some friends... In the meantime, binge-watch shows and soak up more about the modern world. If I have to explain everything one item at a time, I honestly wouldn't know where to start. You watch first, and ask me about whatever you don't understand — that's more targeted."
"All right." Qiu Wuji took the advice readily, sat down on the sofa and picked up the remote.
Yesterday, while supposedly just watching Chu Ge operate it, her eyes had actually been stealing glances the whole time, and she'd quietly memorized it all. Now she worked it quite convincingly; under Chu Ge's astonished gaze, she successfully opened a drama whose cover featured a female lead dressed very much like she was now, and sat there watching quietly.
Chu Ge glanced over and recognized it: a fairly popular drama from the last couple of years about the lives, careers, marriages and romances of several thirty-something women... He'd heard of it, never watched it. He'd once drooled over a couple of the actresses, but now, somehow, none of them looked as good as Qiu Wuji, and they seemed flavorless.
The drama had barely started before Qiu Wuji asked, "Shanghai is the name of a city? What's ours called?"
Chu Ge was silent a moment. "Ours is called 'Real Place Names Are Not Permitted,' so it's called Nanjiang City."
"...Then what's a subway? Do we have one?"
"It's a way of getting around. I'll take you for a ride one of these days."
"What's a Pac-Man?"
"A game. I'll download it for you to play later."
Less than a minute into the drama, her questions had already come thick and fast. Chu Ge seemed to have expected this, and only now did Qiu Wuji understand why he'd said he wouldn't know where to start explaining one by one.
Because she didn't understand practically anything.
The information gap between two worlds was far more than a bowl of noodles and a few sets of clothes at his side could reveal.
She couldn't even make sense of the female lead's actions: why was the woman strapped into a strip of cloth hung from the ceiling, spinning in circles? That's not how you kill yourself. Cultivation training? Who trains like that? That's just asking for trouble.
"What is 'husband'? Lord husband?"
"Right."
"Then why don't they seem to sleep together? The female lead has already gone running and come back, and the man is still asleep."
"...Husband and wife sleeping in separate beds is supposedly more scientific. Though not many actually do it."
"Weird. What's that fruit? It looks delicious."
"Strawberry. That's a strawberry cake."
"Why did the sentence stop there?"
"How about I take you to eat some one of these days?" Chu Ge smiled. "I'm tapped out today. Next month, when the pay comes in — it won't be long."
Qiu Wuji turned and glanced at him, knowing this kind of food was probably several times more expensive than the soy milk and steamed buns Chu Ge ate every day.
Suddenly she lost the mood to keep asking, because even inside a single world, different people were effectively living in different worlds. That, she knew from experience.
And suddenly she understood why Chu Ge wrote the kind of stories he wrote.
The quality of life of the drama's heroines was probably already beyond Chu Ge's reach — perhaps including the actresses who played them; that kind of beauty didn't look like something ordinary people could possess.
He couldn't have it, and he resented it.
So he dreamed, and all his readers dreamed along with him — the story of an utterly ordinary youth, mediocre birth, mediocre talent, with nothing but his own effort, climbing step by step. The flowers he plucked along the way were his reward.
And she was the highest of those flowers.
Seen from that angle, the sleazy feeling really did lighten quite a bit.
Not that I'd ever be willing, of course.
Dao companion? Saying it proves nothing — you'd have to actually walk that road first... Right now we are, in the truest sense, people of two worlds.
"Why did you stop asking?" Chu Ge asked, puzzled.
Qiu Wuji smiled slightly. "Slowly. Ask too much at once and I won't keep it all straight anyway. First I'll take in the rough shape of things; a good deal I can guess from the context. Whatever I truly can't guess, I'll ask you. You must have work to do — if I remember right, don't you still have a chapter to update?"
"Mm..."
"You do your own work. There's plenty of time ahead."
Chu Ge wondered how this girl had gotten so understanding once she put on modern clothes. Her attitude, which used to swing to beating people up at the drop of a hat, had turned nearly a hundred and eighty degrees... Could his frank talk really have been that effective?
As if guessing what he was thinking, Qiu Wuji smiled faintly. "It's only life. Wherever you are, it's still life, so why be so tense? I was out of line before. Father God must have found it laughable."
So she really had settled in completely. What nerves. Chu Ge went back to his room, glancing back every few steps; looking at Qiu Wuji sitting on the sofa in her OL suit, watching her show, the strangeness in his heart was beyond description.
It looked more and more like the real thing.
The feeling of a home.
Just as he was thinking that, Chu Ge suddenly felt a little blurry-eyed.
Qiu Wuji, sitting there, began to slowly grow fainter.
His heart jumped. He hurried back, and sure enough, Qiu Wuji rose to her feet, her figure gradually turning to nothingness, and gave him a smile: "Looks like your patch didn't buy me much extra time for now... I can't go relying on it. When I get back I'll keep tempering my divine soul, and try to stay a little longer next time..."
Chu Ge: "..."
How long have I even gotten to look at the miniskirt and black stockings? At least let me get my fill first, would that kill you?
Qiu Wuji's voice began to grow distant: "To me, that side is just as important... I want to try it too. Now that I know the plot, can the Venomous Hand Demon Lord still plot against me? That is the path we two share, isn't it?"
The voice echoed on; she was already gone.
All her clothes were still on the sofa — she couldn't carry away even a single thread.
Yet Chu Ge felt no pang at all over not getting to see whether anything had been exposed as she vanished. He just stared blankly at the empty room and the clothes on the sofa, silent for a long while.
He'd only just thought of "a home," and in an instant it was gone, like some kind of joke.
A bare, naked reminder to Chu Ge: this was no modern OL beauty. They were, truly and completely, people of two worlds.