Chapter 47: The Runaway Bride

As the song ended, the lingering sound seemed to still echo in the private room.

"Clap! Clap! Clap!"

Crisp applause sounded.

That androgynously dressed woman abruptly stood up, walked quickly to Xu Yunzhou, whose eyes were blurry, and solemnly handed over a minimalist-designed business card:

"Hello, Mr. Xu! Let me officially introduce myself. I am Chang Yuan, the manager for Queen of Pop Song Jiaru's team."

Her tone carried the excitement of discovering a rare treasure,

"Forgive my bluntness, but have you ever considered entering the entertainment circle to develop? Your appearance, your vocal conditions, and especially that unique sense of story during your singing just now, it's simply God chasing after you to feed you rice!"

Hearing the three words "Song Jiaru," Xu Yunzhou looked at her with blurry, drunken eyes and subconsciously pressed:

"Song Jiaru... does she... know me?"

Chang Yuan was startled by this headless and tailless question. She looked at her phone, which had no movement, and felt somewhat awkward:

"Uh... I just sent the video of you singing to her, but... at this hour, she might have already rested, and hasn't replied to me yet..."

Xu Yunzhou fell silent, lowered his head, and muttered to himself, his voice so light that almost only he could hear:

"As expected... I thought too much... A game is ultimately just a game..."

Everyone looked at each other, completely unable to understand what encrypted communication this handsome guy was muttering about.

Beside them, Song Jinxuan's eyes quietly underwent a change.

That initial mockery and coldness faded, replaced by a kind of... interest mixing appreciation, possessiveness, and a trace of playfulness.

Without changing her expression, she gave a tacitly understood look to the other female companions in the private room who had long mingled to become "human spirits."

(TL: "Human spirits" refers to people who are very shrewd and socially adept.)

Those few people immediately understood implicitly.

Smiling, they picked up their wine glasses one after another, gathered around, and began to frequently toast Xu Yunzhou, whose consciousness was already blurred.

"Mr. Xu, drink one more cup!"

"Handsome, with such a beautiful singing voice, your alcohol tolerance definitely isn't bad either!"

"Come come come, I'll finish mine, you drink as you please oh~"

Xu Yunzhou didn't know how much mixed liquor he was forced to pour down later on.

His consciousness became increasingly blurry, and finally, he couldn't even sit steadily, toppling over onto the sofa.

Seeing that he was already dead drunk, Lu Qian hurriedly said to Song Jinxuan with apology:

"Chairman Song, I'm really sorry. My friend is too drunk, I have to take him back to rest first, he can't drink anymore."

Song Jinxuan, however, waved her hand, her gaze glued to Xu Yunzhou's face:

"No need to trouble you. Tonight, I will take him back."

Lu Qian's heart skipped a beat:

"This... this isn't appropriate, right, Chairman Song? I brought him here, I have to be responsible for his safety..."

The two female assistants brought by Song Jinxuan had already stepped forward smilingly.

They hooked their arms around Lu Qian's and enthusiastically pulled her to sit down:

"Sister Qian, relax your heart. Is Chairman Song going to treat Mr. Xu unfairly? Come, let's drink a bit more and chat about signing the contract..."

Lu Qian could only watch helplessly as Song Jinxuan personally stepped forward, half-supporting and half-hugging the dead-drunk Xu Yunzhou, and left the private room with him amidst a crowd of unclear gazes.

The door gently closed behind them.

...

At this time, Binzhou's Olympic Sports Center Stadium was so empty at midnight that one could hear the sound of the wind.

Beneath the huge dome was endless darkness, with only an isolated cold white spotlight hitting the center of the stage, enveloping Song Jiaru's figure within it—holy, yet lonely.

That wedding dress on her body, specially custom-made for the concert two days later, twinkled with fine fragments of light under the illumination. The layered tulle skirt hem was like solidified moonlight.

The team and designers all highly praised this creative concept, saying this was the ultimate romance of her "marrying music, marrying the stage."

Nobody knew that this wedding dress was a "ritual" she dedicated to an illusory promise.

Dedicated to that "Big Brother" who barged into her life like a god when she was eighteen, shaped her, yet completely disappeared.

Sweeping her gaze over the boundless ocean of seats submerged in darkness below the stage, her heart fiercely twitched for no reason, abruptly accelerating its beating, bumping against her chest until it hurt:

"Ten years."

"Big Brother, it's been exactly ten full years since you left!"

"Big Brother... the day after tomorrow, will you... really come?"

What supported her through these long peak years, besides music, was only that appointment carved into her bones, that hope so slim it was almost illusory.

She muttered to herself facing the empty stadium, her voice light as if afraid of disturbing something,

"Sometimes I even doubt, was everything really just a... dream so beautiful I didn't want to wake up from, that I had when I was eighteen?"

Thinking of this, she suddenly laughed to herself again, trying to use a joke to suppress the continuously growing fear at the bottom of her heart.

"If Big Brother really does come... what would he even look like? He couldn't have been reincarnated, could he? If he was... wouldn't he just be a ten-year-old little bean right now?"

She was amused by her own thought, her brows and eyes curving,

"My god, then what do I do? Do I acknowledge him as my godson on the spot? No no no... I definitely wouldn't be able to resist pinching his cheeks every day, forcing him to call me 'Mom'... Aiya, that's too disrespectful to Big Brother, sin, sin..."

The image of herself chasing a little boy holding candied haws who looked exactly like Big Brother all over the street surfaced in her mind.

She couldn't help but laugh out loud, but as she laughed, the corners of her eyes unconsciously became wet.

"Big Brother, you must come. No matter what you turn into, I want to see you!"

Standing in place for a long time, until the chill of the deep night seeped in through the thin wedding dress, she finally took a deep breath and prepared to return to the hotel.

Just as she picked up her bag, her phone screen lit up. It was a message sent by her manager Chang Yuan, accompanied by a video.

Song Jiaru clicked it open somewhat absentmindedly, thinking it was again the profile of some newcomer needing her evaluation.

The next second—

All the blood in her body seemed to freeze in an instant!

In the video, that man with blurry drunken eyes, holding a microphone... that face... that familiar demeanor between his brows...

It's Big Brother!

Exactly the same as that figure in her memory from ten years ago! Even that uninhibited and desolate temperament hadn't changed a bit!

Not a ten-year-old child! That's wonderful!

Her fingers trembling, Song Jiaru could barely hold her phone, and replied at top speed:

"Sister Chang! Where is he? Send me the location immediately!"

The instant she received the location, Song Jiaru couldn't care about anything else!

Gripping her phone tightly with one hand, she abruptly grabbed the heavy skirt hem with the other.

Like a white bird decisively breaking free from a gorgeous cage, her high heels tapped out rapid "clack clack" sounds in the empty passage as she rushed out of the stadium desperately!

On the late-night street, dragging the huge white skirt hem, she flagged down a taxi.

The driver looked at this woman flagging down a car in a hurry in the early hours of the morning, wearing an incomparably grand wedding dress, wearing a black mask that couldn't cover her red eye rims, and his eyes went straight.

He instantly imagined an eighty-episode grand urban emotional ethics drama in his head:

"My dear goodness! Ran out wearing a wedding dress? This, this, this... fleeing a marriage?"

"Going to KTV? Hiss—could it be that her first love heard she was getting married, went to get drunk in heartbreak, and then she realizing he own mistakes, directly leaving the groom hanging at the church to go comfort her old lover?!"

"Aiyowei! Young people nowadays play too fucking wild! This plot is dog-blood enough!"

The taxi let out a low roar. Carrying this "runaway bride" whose heart was burning with anxiety, it plunged headfirst into the deep night of the city.