I was exposed for adding my female boss to my group of female friends.

Taylor's fans lost a large number of supporters, while her haters rallied together and spent all their time spamming her Twitter feed with snakes.

During that period, not only was she attacked online, but even her fans were targeted and cyberbullied, given insulting names, and mocked for "liking such a scheming woman, they are hopeless."

As a result, Taylor's career plummeted in an instant.

These were the darkest days of her life.

"Dong dong dong."

Someone knocked on the door.

Taylor lay lazily on the bed, shifting her limbs slightly.

The people knocking on the door now are either fans who want to help or her manager. She didn't want to open the door.

"Dong dong dong."

But the person outside kept knocking on the door.

Taylor reluctantly got out of bed and walked to the door.

"Didn't you say I could rest as much as I wanted today...? Uh, hey! Oh... it's you..."

Standing outside the door was someone she never expected—JX.

"How are you? I just found out that you're also having a concert here tomorrow, and your room is here too. What a coincidence! I swear I didn't do it on purpose; it's just a coincidence."

She sized up the man outside the door.

She had a pretty good impression of JX.

She liked his music and his attitude towards creation.

The last time they met was on that radio program. It was the first time she had met him. He was humble, polite, and humorous.

After that, the two exchanged contact information, but never spoke to each other.

This was only the second time the two had met.

Looking at JX, Taylor stepped aside and said, "Hello, please, please come in."

After closing the door, JX stood awkwardly in the room, while Taylor plopped down on the soft bed.

"Is there something you need?"

“Actually, I didn’t need to come in,” JX said. “I just wanted to express that I like your songs, that’s all.”

"Really?" she asked, looking up at him.

She suddenly realized that chatting with him was much healthier than scrolling through social media to kill time.

It is beneficial to physical and mental health.

JX dragged a chair over, sat down, and said, "I've been thinking lately about why there hasn't been any country rock music. I recently came up with a solo idea and I'm planning to write a song called 'Hotel California'..."

...Then, the two of them talked about music, life, and ideals.

JX also played what she considered to be the best guitar solo she had ever heard. JX said the song was called "Hotel California," but they hadn't been able to find anyone to sing it yet.

JX told her a lot of fun things, including her nickname in China, "Mei Mei," which is because she is very beautiful and because she is always unlucky. This made her laugh so hard that she said she really liked the nickname.

She had a wonderful day.

When they saw JX off, the two stood at the door and talked for a long time, with a hint of reluctance in their voices.

It was already 11 p.m., and if they kept talking, it would go on and on, potentially affecting her performance at tomorrow's concert. Only then did she reluctantly say goodbye.

Just then, a loud bang came from next door, startling everyone in the hotel.

Taylor turned his head sharply and saw that two rooms away, many shards of porcelain were flying out of that room, and a large amount of water was gushing out.

"What happened?" Taylor asked in shock.

“It’s nothing,” JX said. “Keith Moon just blew up the toilet with explosives.”

"This doesn't sound like nothing's wrong!"

“It’s a common occurrence for him, so it’s nothing,” JX said.

Suddenly, he said, "You know what? I actually quite like you."

"Really?" Taylor's mind was still on the poor toilet next door, and she was a little distracted. "I like you too."

"Okay, goodbye." JX waved. "I have to go deal with the money loss."

"Goodbye, and good luck," Taylor waved to him.

It wasn't until she got back to her room that her face started to burn, and she realized what terrible things they had just said.

She thought that from that moment on, they were in a relationship. It wasn't until JX said later, "When I said I liked you, it wasn't that kind of liking. It was just a simple expression of my opinion on your life and so on," that she realized she had been completely fooled.

Bai tossed and turned in bed, thinking about all that.

……

Some people want to go to Rome, while others are born in Rome.

While Taylor was rushing to the scene, the people in the music archive had already started watching the next scene.

To everyone's surprise, JX was no longer in the United States when this scene unfolded.

In the scene on the screen, people wearing trench coats walk down a gray street.

In the very center of the painting, a place name appears:

Vienna, Austria.

Chapter 167 Can You Play It for Me?

That happened a year after Tianya left China.

To be specific, it was 14 months and 7 days after Xu Xiangxiao sent that text message. That message was still at the top of her chat app—she had pinned it.

Only Tianya was pinned to the top; only he received this treatment, even though she doubted whether he even knew about it. (It's very possible that she wasn't pinned to the top on his end, but it didn't matter, she wasn't an INTJ.)

Even though they haven't been in contact for a very, very long time, long enough to make one wonder if their friendship still counts.

The last conversation was 14 months ago, when she ended by saying, "Just kidding, when are you coming back?"

The joke she made was, of course, referring to her confession.

She racked her brains trying to explain the nature of her feelings for him, attempting to disguise her confession as just a casual chat, making herself look like a clown.

So in the end she gave up and simply said in despair, "I was just kidding."

There was still no response.

She suddenly felt that the small black question mark at the end of the chat was like a footnote to Chen Ya's long absence and lack of return.

The cursor blinked innocently in the chat box. Helpless, Xu Xiangxiao exited the software and turned off her phone.

She dared not send any more messages, for fear that a small red exclamation mark would appear next to the message, indicating that the other party was no longer her friend.

14 months and 7 days—that's more than a year, and not just slightly more, but far more. She was just wishfully thinking it was only a year.

Before this, she naively believed that in just one year, Tianya would reappear beside her unharmed.

His usual languid gaze sharpened instantly when he saw her; he lifted a strand of her hair with his finger and said:

"Why have you grown your hair so long?"

Thinking of this, Xu Xiangxiao gently tugged at her hair. In just one year, it had already fallen below her shoulders. If given another year, she wondered how far it would go.

It wasn't until she grew her hair long that she began to understand the hardships of being a woman. Washing and maintaining her hair were inconvenient, and she started shedding a lot, which was similar to raising a dog. Sometimes it would even clog the bathroom drain.

Medium-length hair is also not suitable for appearing in front of the media. This length of hair is not pretty, and she doesn't want to do any hairstyle based on its current length.

Moreover, her hair length had already trended on social media recently, after being photographed by paparazzi who said that Xu Xiangxiao used to have long, straight black hair, exuding femininity.

After seeing the news, she felt a kind of resentful joy—did I not have any femininity before?

I feel like I've never been so humiliated before.

So, please, I'm begging you.

Tianya, please come back soon.

Xu Xiangxiao put her gloved hands into the pockets of her down jacket, exhaled a breath, and white mist rose and disappeared into the silent air.

Christmas is just one day away.

This year's temperature is colder than usual, and the weather forecast says it will snow tomorrow.

She was actually hoping it would snow soon, because it would be warmer than it is now.

In fact, Xu Xiangxiao already knew that Tianya probably already had a girlfriend.

He just never says it.

It's not his fault, it's just that she never dared to ask.

At first, she only cared about music and paid little attention to everything else. From a young age, she was determined that nothing else was worth caring about, which led to her tragic childhood and tragic present.

The reason she suspected Tianya had a girlfriend was because she gradually recalled that from the beginning, Tianya would suddenly leave after receiving a phone call, or disappear for several days without saying goodbye.

At first, she actually thought this was normal. Later, after she made more female friends, she realized that this might be a sign that she was in a relationship.

If it wasn't his girlfriend who called him, why would he suddenly disappear like this?

Of course, she had no reason to accuse Tianya of being unfair, after all, she was just a singer who sang songs that Tianya wrote for her.

They were just business partners.

Wanting Tianya to write songs only for her and to make music forever was wishful thinking on her part. She knew all along that this story would eventually come to an end, but she never expected it to end in such a terrible way.

She took three steps at a time, jumped up the steps, and stepped into the elevator.

As he took out his keys, he saw his own door and, at the same time, the furry body squatting in front of it.

"Snowball, Snowball, what brings you to my house again? Are you here for a visit?"

Xu Xiangxiao greeted the little dog, but received no response.

"Snowball" is a dog she found last month. She doesn't know why it ran to her doorstep. It was so hungry that its stomach was flat, so she kept it for more than ten days. Before that, she had never kept any small animals.

About ten days later, Snowball's owner came to her door and told her that it was their dog and that its name was not "Snowball" but "Franklin".

Xu Xiangxiao readily returned "Franklin" and expressed her willingness to establish a good friendship with the family, welcoming them to bring "Franklin" to her home as a guest.

When she lay down in bed that night, it felt like she had been punched in the chest, and she couldn't sleep for most of the night.

Even though it wasn't her dog, she still felt like something had been taken away from her.

Moreover, she didn't like the name "Franklin" because it didn't sound cool at all.

This little black dog should be named Snowball.

Xu Xiangxiao began to seriously consider whether or not to get a dog.

She just hadn't decided which breed to get, so she asked her friends for a lot of information about raising dogs and learned a lot of knowledge.

But in the end, he still couldn't make up his mind.

"Snowball, Snowball, are you asleep?"

Xu Xiangxiao put the key back in her pocket, skipped over, and squatted down next to "Snowball".

It was only then that she realized something was wrong. "Snowball's" body was stiff, lying on its side on the ground, and its belly was not moving.

Xu Xiangxiao squatted down on the ground, lost her balance, and sat down on her bottom.

Then, with tears welling up in her eyes, she covered her mouth with her hand.

"Snowball" is dead.

The little black dog she had only fed for a little over ten days finally died at her doorstep the day before Christmas.

She didn't know what she was feeling when she returned to her doorstep; she only felt miserable, and even trying to think about it made her feel heartbroken.

Xu Xiangxiao sat on the ground and burst into tears, as if her entire soul was weeping.

After making a few phone calls, the dog owner arrived quickly and kept apologizing to her—she felt they had completely misunderstood her; they probably thought she was crying from fright.

That's absolutely not true. But she didn't want to explain at all.

After explaining countless times to the housekeeper and her agent, and finally convincing them that she was alright, that night, lying in bed, she impulsively opened her chat history and sent a message to the person pinned to the top of her chat list: