What Do I Do When a Client Falls for Me During an Astrology Reading?

[Love at First Sight | Long-Running Scheme | Cool, Brilliant Student × Gentle Astrologer | Healing Each Other]

The Northern Cross stretched across the ink-dark sky screen, its twelve bright stars clearly arranged. Their positions were etched into Su Xingci's very bones.

She was an astrologer who made a living interpreting the stars. She had seen all manner of longing and fulfillment, and had long since grown used to talking with the stars in the deep night.

On a snowy night in Geneva, she crouched beneath a streetlamp to feed a stray cat, snowflakes gathering in her hair. Cheng Yao stood for a long time across the street. The usually cool and restrained computer science prodigy experienced a racing heart for the first time.

Three months later,

a special client appeared in her astrology consultation inbox. Their ID was an awkward Latin phrase: Custos interpres.

That person always spoke with precision and restraint, yet was unfailingly thoughtful in the little things, enough to make her heart flutter. They remembered that she loved cream of mushroom soup, quietly closed the window beside her during video calls, and even kept the astrological chart error she had mentioned in passing tucked away in their mind.

Su Xingci thought it was just a chance online encounter, until one snowy night in Ireland, when he finally understood what that ID meant.

What about their meeting had been accidental?

From that first glance on the snowy night in Geneva, he had carefully planned every step, drawing closer to her little by little.

The stars shone just right that night. He was about to say something when she looked up and met his gaze first. She lightly touched the spot over his heart with her fingertips, her voice as soft as falling snow.

“Everyone knows the Northern Cross has twelve stars.”

“But in my star chart, there’s a thirteenth.”

She gazed at him, her eyes filled with a light brighter than the starry heavens.

“That one isn’t in the sky. It’s you.”