"Coke, popcorn... mm, an egg waffle too. I'm kind of hungry."
Chu Ge leaned against the cinema counter buying things while standing on one leg like a golden rooster, and Qiu Wuji stood off to the side waiting, her face sour.
Only because the stuff he buys usually turns out pretty tasty.
What's with the golden-rooster-on-one-leg act? With my Golden Bell Shield trained to this level, how could it hurt that much? Hmph.
Chu Ge's pain was in his heart — he was about to cry... Once out of the haunted house he'd done some soul-searching, and he'd nearly given himself ten slaps across the face.
He'd cut his teeth writing harem novels, for heaven's sake — his male leads were masters of this stuff! So how come, when it was his own turn, he was missing a whole nerve? Waaah...
If I were writing this, what would the male lead do?
He'd gaze down into her eyes with all the tenderness in the world and murmur, "Real or not, whatever the danger, I'll be standing in front of you."
Or he could switch to the domineering-CEO template: "This is a man's business."
A look like that could have come with its own BGM, and he'd let it slip right by.
So much for learning the moves from novels — I can only write them. Put me in the actual scene and I'm just as clueless. What's the use of figuring it out afterward? Waaah...
A fat penguin shed tears.
Chu Ge squeezed through the crowd and found Qiu Wuji, then trotted up eagerly and handed her the food. "Hungry? Have something."
Qiu Wuji took in that lapdog manner of his and felt annoyed and amused at once. When you came down to it, him not being an old hand in the garden of love was obviously a good thing — did she want him to be as skilled as the male leads in his books? If he were, it wouldn't have been a stomped foot, it would have been a slap across his face.
Looking around, plenty of people were eating this popcorn. Qiu Wuji was rather looking forward to it, certain it must be a delicacy of the mortal realm. Then she tried a kernel. So-so.
"This stuff is nothing special. Not as good as those snacks you picked out before. Why does everyone eat it?"
"Emmmm... popcorn is standard-issue for the movies. I don't even know why. Some films have even spawned a dedicated term for it — popcorn movie."
"I see..." So Qiu Wuji did as the locals do: she hugged the popcorn bag with the hand holding the roses, and dug in for popcorn with the other.
The movie was about to start, and the crowd surged in from behind. Qiu Wuji wasn't shielding herself with any power, so she got jostled and stumbled a step. Her first instinct was to shield the roses with her power, and then she realized she'd bumped into a warm chest.
She looked up. Chu Ge had wrapped himself entirely around her, had even thrown up his Golden Bell Shield, his lower body rooted as steady as a green pine.
And he happened to be looking down at her too, and said softly, "No matter..."
"Shut up." Qiu Wuji said crossly. "If you dare pull that male-lead routine from your old books on me, I'll swat you dead."
Chu Ge: "……"
Inspiration struck; he quickly gripped Qiu Wuji's free hand. "It's too crowded — we might get swept apart."
Qiu Wuji looked down at her hand and said nothing.
In the surging crowd the two pressed close and moved along hand in hand with the flow. The female cultivator sect master didn't use a shred of power to protect herself; the only thing she protected was the rose in her hand.
"What are these glasses? I don't need glasses."
"They're for 3D. Gives it a bit of a real-scene feel — that's probably most of the point of coming to a theater at all. A computer or TV can't do it. Oh, well, I guess they can, if you buy the gear..."
Is that so... Qiu Wuji didn't think that was much of a point, though.
Including all those answers people gave online to "why go to the movies" — sound effects, picture quality, atmosphere, the feeling — none of it was of any use.
The real point was... in the dim light, tucked at the edge of the corner in the last row, it faintly gave a person the sense of a dark room, as though something were growing in the heart, and the heartbeat ran fast.
His hand was still holding hers, still unwilling to let go after all this time. She could feel the faint sweat in his palm, could tell he was nervous too — his heart was beating even faster.
What is he thinking about?
Not the movie, anyway.
Not one frame of the film on screen had likely made it into either of their heads.
It was more like that day at the nightclub, in that languid, decadent haze, when the two of them had hidden away in a corner couples' seat — the soft, charged sweetness of that moment.
Really, this is just the budget version of that time. No wonder men like taking girls to the movies...
Once Qiu Wuji thought it through, she settled down. What rough waters haven't I sailed?
She sneaked a glance at him. The popcorn and the egg waffle were sitting between them, and holding hands like this made them hard to reach... After thinking it over, she set the flowers on her knees, and her other hand stole over, filched a piece of egg waffle, and popped it into her mouth at lightning speed. She still hadn't tried this one yet...
Mm, this is pretty good — better than the popcorn!
Then she quietly got the cola and slurped away at it, slurp, slurp.
Chu Ge caught all of it out of the corner of his eye and didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Here he was, nervous as all hell, sitting stiff and proper, while she was utterly unbothered — eating and drinking as she pleased.
Qixi-season releases were mostly romances, and sure enough a kissing scene came up on screen. The mood in the theater turned a little strange — honestly, the kiss wasn't even as fierce as what you saw on ordinary TV dramas, but the young couple beside Chu Ge drifted together without meaning to: the girl buried her head against the boy's chest, and the boy lowered his head to find her lips.
As if you're carried away by a not-safe-for-kids scene. You two were obviously waiting for this scene all along — it just gives you both an excuse.
He stole a look at Qiu Wuji. 3D glasses on, eyes on the screen, still slurping at her cola — a picture like that had no lethal power over her anymore...
Do I need an excuse like that too? Chu Ge thought.
So courage sprouted in him; the pinky of the hand he was holding with stirred, and stealthily hooked against Qiu Wuji's palm.
Qiu Wuji's cola-slurping paused for a beat, and her delicate hand answered.
"Aow~"
The stifled yelp of agony made the young couple beside them jerk upright, and they slid their eyes over to Chu Ge: he was cradling his own hand, bent over like a shrimp.
Perhaps the only spoil from this probing assault's disastrous defeat was interrupting that shameless pair's make-out session?
Chu Ge was in floods of tears.
"That movie today was good."
The two-hour film let out; as the crowd thinned the street slowly emptied, until it was all young couples walking hand in hand, reluctant to part.
Qiu Wuji watched a girl riding on the back of a boy's bicycle, arms around his waist, leaning against his back; the evening breeze set her long hair streaming, and her smile was very sweet.
No telling whether the movie she'd called good meant what was in the movie, or scenes like the one before her now.
Anyway, Chu Ge had no clue what the film had been about — he hadn't even paid much attention to what the leads looked like — and the scene in front of him just left him force-fed dog food.
Everyone's out for Qixi, one guy one girl, watching a movie. The lovey-dovey ones are probably headed to a hotel right now, and me? My hand bones still hurt.
He was wearing a constipated look when he heard Qiu Wuji ask quietly, "This bicycle... can you ride one?"
Chu Ge blanked for a moment, then his eyes lit right up. "I can! Of course I can!"
Shared bikes can't carry a passenger, but you had to admit today's businesses were sharp: not far from the cinema exit there was a rental service.
And they rented by the night, so you could return it tomorrow.
The shopkeeper blinked at the man and woman in front of him and put on a suggestive smile. "Ninety-nine for the night. May you two last as long as heaven and earth."
Chu Ge looked at the rattletrap bike — not worth ninety-nine even sold secondhand — and still ate that blessing right up.
Because Qiu Wuji hadn't argued with it.
Come to think of it, she didn't argue back when the little flower girl said it either... Maybe she's used to being misunderstood by now and can't be bothered.
Anyway, Chu Ge's hand didn't hurt at all anymore. Beaming, he swung his leg over the bike. "Come on — Father God will show you the riverside night view. It's beautiful."
Qiu Wuji didn't take the bait. Copying the way the other girls sat, she perched sideways on the rear rack.
The bicycle flew along the riverside, the river wind whipping hard, flinging Qiu Wuji's loose hair across her cheeks.
She didn't brush it away. She lifted her head to look at the Milky Way above, then lowered it to softly breathe in the rose in her hand.
Is this what a girl of this world is supposed to experience?
If Chu Ge had eyes in the back of his head, he'd most likely have seen that the corners of Qiu Wuji's mouth were curved in a smile the whole way — a beauty that seemed not to belong to the mortal world.