WC ⋆ Chapter 28

The three of them sat at one table to eat, a scene unprecedented before and never to be repeated after. Even back when Qi Lin and Jiang Yishen hadn’t broken up, they had never sat together like this.

Xu Baili kept his head down and shoveled food into his mouth, hoping to dodge any questions through this method.

“What are you two being so shifty about?” Qi Lin could no longer hold back.

Xu Baili defended himself weakly: “I’m not being shifty.”

Qi Lin stabbed a piece of braised chicken into his rice and smiled coldly: “It’s not like I’m here to settle scores with you.”

The two people across from him gave a small shudder.

Qi Lin wasn’t slow to react. He just hadn’t connected the dots at all, and only figured out the whole story after he sat down with his food.

The source of the cold war that day had been Jiang Yishen asking him about his family over the phone. After hanging up, Qi Lin had wondered how Jiang Yishen had found out, but at the time most of his attention was on how to explain things, and he hadn’t gotten around to tracing it back to the root.

Thinking about it now, it had probably been pried out of Xu Baili’s mouth.

Qi Lin had no intention of blaming him. Jiang Yishen was the type who was always good at playing the victim, and if someone got cornered in a room with him it really was hard to hold out. Xu Baili hadn’t meant to get involved either, so there was nothing to blame him for.

But the two people across from him looked extremely guilty. In the cramped booth, each was shrinking to one side, looking as though if circumstances had permitted, they wouldn’t even have wanted to breathe the same air.

The three of them ate in silence, the atmosphere growing more and more oppressive, until Xu Baili truly couldn’t take it anymore and broke the deadlock: “Did you two fight because of that? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“No.” Qi Lin reassured him. “We didn’t even get around to fighting.”

“What do you mean ‘didn’t get around to it’?” Xu Baili was crunching through a piece of fried chicken cutlet, and vaguely pointed the tail of his chopsticks at Jiang Yishen’s fingers. “Aren’t you two back together?”

Qi Lin said: “Oh, those are two separate matters.”

Xu Baili stopped chewing with the chicken cutlet still hanging from his mouth, and his gaze slid toward Jiang Yishen.

“It’s a bit hard to explain.” Jiang Yishen rubbed his nose. “Getting back together first and then fighting feels more reassuring.”

Xu Baili couldn’t sit still any longer. He suddenly felt like a light bulb shining brilliantly: “…That’s good then.”

“Aren’t you going to pull out the cactus spines anymore?” Qi Lin ladled the braised chicken sauce over his rice, fragrant steam curling up.

Xu Baili sighed: “I was joking. As long as you two aren’t unhappy because of what I said, that’s all that matters.”

“Speaking of which, you’re not going home for the New Year, so why not come to my place?” Jiang Yishen suddenly interjected.

Qi Lin didn’t answer right away. He frowned almost imperceptibly, and the chopsticks in his hand stopped moving.

This was the outward expression of Qi Lin’s inner resistance. Xu Baili vaguely sensed something was off and wanted to cut in with a few words, but he turned to look at Jiang Yishen and found that this person didn’t seem to be asking casually either. As if he had wanted to say this for a long time but had never found the right moment, his expression was heavy now, and he was quietly staring at Qi Lin.

Xu Baili realized that the best thing he could do right now was keep his mouth shut.

“Let’s talk about it when we get back.” Qi Lin said.

“You don’t want to come.” Jiang Yishen said immediately.

Qi Lin took a deep breath: “I never said I didn’t want to.”

“What are you worried about?” Jiang Yishen’s tone was full of genuine confusion, with a hint of barely perceptible grievance. “Before, we had broken up, so it was fine if you didn’t want to tell me things. But what about now?”

Qi Lin looked up at him: “There’s still someone else here.”

“After the loop he won’t remember any of it.” Jiang Yishen said.

Xu Baili: “What?”

“Have you come out to your family?” Qi Lin was pushed into discomfort by Jiang Yishen’s relentless pressing, and his voice turned cold too. “Does your dad know?”

Jiang Yishen didn’t understand: “I can tell him we’re friends.”

“He’s not an idiot either. Have you ever brought anyone home for the New Year in all these years?” Qi Lin said. “And what about the future? Your dad might not even like me. The first time we met, I took him to the hospital as your so-called friend, and on top of that I made him lose face in front of his ex-wife and his son.”

Jiang Yishen fell silent at once. He looked at Qi Lin, as if something sharp had raked across him. A chill sank to the bottom of his heart, then slowly rose into an ache.

He hadn’t considered any of this. Back then his whole mind had been on taking his dad to see the doctor. His thinking had narrowed to a single track. The loop had been subtly changing his behavior and mindset, and he always thought there was still a chance to start over, still another loop to go through. So he acted carelessly and didn’t think too deeply about the consequences.

Right, he had made another mistake.

After a long silence, Jiang Yishen said quietly: “He won’t dislike you. I’ll go back and tell him…”

“Your dad just finished surgery for a tumor.” Qi Lin cut him off. “It’s the New Year. Don’t bring this up with him now.”

“Then what about you?” Jiang Yishen refused to give even half a step, stubbornly wanting to find a solution that worked for everyone. “What comes after can wait. Don’t overthink it.”

“But I can get along just fine on my own.” Qi Lin finally said. “You don’t need to go to all this trouble.”

Those words fell like a gavel striking the table into complete silence. Even the sound of bowls and chopsticks clinking disappeared.

Jiang Yishen didn’t know how to argue against that. He felt it shouldn’t be this way.

It was no different from the spark that had ignited their breakup, just a minor illness at the turn of early autumn. Jiang Yishen felt there was no need for Qi Lin to drag himself sick all the way to school to find him, and Qi Lin felt he was making a mountain out of a molehill.

Love is something where you can only know your own feelings from the inside, yet you can also be blind to them when you’re in the thick of it. Many situations are clearer to an outsider looking in, yet the two people caught up in it insist on ramming their heads into that dead end.

Qi Lin’s independence was rooted in twenty-four years of growing up. Not troubling others was a virtue he had acquired through socialization, but in Jiang Yishen’s eyes it was a flaw.

“On the first day of the New Year, let’s eat together, okay?” Seeing that he was genuinely upset, Qi Lin softened his voice to coax him.

Jiang Yishen knew he should say “okay.” It wasn’t a difficult thing.

It was even a simple and perfect solution. His dad wouldn’t get suspicious, and Qi Lin would feel comfortable too.

But he remembered Qi Lin once saying he didn’t want to keep carrying burdens forward. Those four words gave him a headache every time he thought of them now, afraid that if he made the same mistake again he’d be nagged about it for the rest of his life.

“Okay.” Jiang Yishen stabbed a braised potato chunk into an unrecognizable mess, then added: “But I actually want to be with you. I don’t want you to be alone.”

Perhaps because he so rarely heard such unadorned words, Qi Lin was caught off guard for a moment. In that instant his hand slipped, the chopsticks went “clack,” and a piece of chicken flew out and landed right in front of Xu Baili.

Xu Baili didn’t dare breathe. He stared at the chicken piece for a few seconds: “…I’ll go eat somewhere else.”

Nobody objected. Xu Baili fled the table, leaving Qi Lin and Jiang Yishen to finish their meal in wordless silence facing each other.

Only when they were clearing their trays did Qi Lin say: “You scared him off.”

“You still haven’t answered me.” Jiang Yishen followed up immediately.

You could tell he had been holding it in for a long time. Qi Lin actually wanted to brush it off, but couldn’t bring himself to truly be dismissive. So he pressed his lips together: “Let me go back and think about it.”

This awkward little problem wedged itself in and left the atmosphere slightly stiff. Coming out of the cafeteria doors, a gust of wind swept through again, sending every student who stepped outside stumbling.

Both of them were a little sulky, but Qi Lin still instinctively moved to stand beside Jiang Yishen, quietly using him as a windbreak. Unfortunately, Jiang Yishen noticed midway.

Jiang Yishen had long arms. He pulled Qi Lin entirely into his embrace. The wind howled, and he bent his head down to speak into Qi Lin’s ear: “After a fight you still want to use me as a windbreak. Isn’t that a bit much!”

The wind was blowing so hard Qi Lin couldn’t keep his eyes open. He only felt warm breath landing against his ear, and somehow it wasn’t blown away by the cold wind.

“What fight! This was a conversation!”

Jiang Yishen pressed in close, making his voice go low and sticky: “Do you think I’m being childish?”

Qi Lin wanted to say something, but the wind stuffed itself down his throat the moment he opened his mouth. He simply tilted his head up from within the embrace and with some difficulty pressed a kiss to the side of Jiang Yishen’s face.

They were heading toward the dormitory building. Having been a freeloader at someone else’s place for a few days, Jiang Yishen needed to come back and bring some daily necessities over.

A couple of days ago his mom had also come to school to drop off some things, a woven bag stuffed full of food and supplies. He planned to haul it all over to Qi Lin’s place.

They had walked this road together countless times before, and right now it brought back some of the feeling of a campus romance. Qi Lin stopped at the entrance of the dormitory building and gave Jiang Yishen a nudge: “You go up. I’ll wait here for you.”

Jiang Yishen glanced at the trees by the entrance being blown every which way: “It’s too cold outside. Let’s go in together.”

“No need. I can’t help you with anything up there anyway. Just go and come back quickly.” Without giving him a chance to argue, he pushed Jiang Yishen through the door.

It was lunchtime, and students were constantly coming and going. Qi Lin stared at the door and drifted off for a moment, thinking about how it used to be the same way. He would stand on the steps at the entrance, and at some point Jiang Yishen would suddenly appear, running toward him through the glass door.

The dormitory auntie was watching short videos in her little window. An electronic clock hung inside the main entrance, though the screen was old and worn. The red digits had faded to a pale pink. Safety and fire prevention knowledge hung directly facing the main door, and Qi Lin was nearly able to recite it from memory.

Students went by with their bags, some carrying food in their hands, in twos and threes, joking and fooling around. Beside him was the dormitory building’s delivery rack, sometimes also colonized by courier boxes, all twisted and tilted by the wind.

It seemed like nothing had changed. The dormitory building welcomed and sent off students every year, yet the campus was always full of life and energy.

Qi Lin thought about the look in Jiang Yishen’s eyes just before he went through the door, as if he had wanted to say something to him.

The words “but I want to be with you” kept circling in his ears. All the way here he had only been aware of his heart thumping, and even now it hadn’t calmed down.

He lowered his head and gave one last press to the loose crumbling brick at the far left end of the step. He made up his mind, turned, and followed behind a male student who had opened the door with a face scan, entering the dormitory building.

Qi Lin went upstairs with practiced ease, heading toward Jiang Yishen’s dormitory.

Just as he turned the corner at the stairwell landing, he brushed past a figure. He hadn’t paid much attention at first, but the person hesitantly called out to him.

“…Qi Lin?”

Qi Lin braced himself on the railing and turned around. He stared for a moment before recognizing the person. A tall and slender male student wearing a pair of framed glasses, a classmate of Jiang Yishen’s from the same major.

“How come you’re back at school?” The person saw him look over, confirmed he hadn’t mistaken the person, and even his tone lifted: “Are you here to… find someone?”

Qi Lin didn’t really want to deal with him.

He knew this person well. After Jiang Yishen gave up his guaranteed postgraduate spot, the slot had moved down one place, landing squarely on this individual.

And before the postgraduate recommendation list was announced, Jiang Yishen had received a nitpicking anonymous report. The stated reason was that he had violated dormitory regulations by repeatedly staying out past curfew on multiple nights.

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