WC ⋆ Chapter 10

This answer was unexpected. Jiang Yishen was briefly surprised, then quickly understood why Qi Lin was unwilling to tell him.

It was indeed a bit hard to say out loud, since they both knew perfectly well what kind of wish had been made.

This left him flustered. Jiang Yishen set down the cactus he had been squeezing into a ball, and after hemming and hawing for a while finally said, “How about we forget it for today, wait for the next loop, and I’ll come over. We can go together.”

“That really won’t be necessary!” Qi Lin said immediately.

Jiang Yishen made a soft “oh” sound, keeping his expression neutral, but his mood lifted at lightning speed.

With that said, he genuinely could not think of any new topic. Just as Jiang Yishen was working out how to say goodbye, Qi Lin suddenly brought up an old matter: “Don’t you need to apologize?”

Jiang Yishen was left completely blank by the question. He thought at first that Qi Lin was demanding an apology from him, and only after scratching at his slightly upturned short hair did he realize Qi Lin was talking about the incident where he had been locked outside. Just now, Jiang Yishen had said everything on his mind to get it off his chest, saying he did not need an apology and did not need that red envelope of a few hundred yuan either.

That kind of thing was not exactly common, yet it was a microcosm of their conflicts. In the countless similar clashes of the past, neither of them had chosen to get to the bottom of it. Now that their relationship had retreated to ordinary friendship, both of them were finally willing to open their mouths and ask for clarity.

Jiang Yishen said with certainty, “No need. It wasn’t your fault to begin with.”

“I know it wasn’t my fault, but I thought you needed me to say sorry,” Qi Lin said.

Jiang Yishen was hearing Qi Lin’s perspective for the first time and found it somewhat unbelievable. “Why would I need you to apologize? I just needed you to ask if I was cold.”

Qi Lin: “Ah… did you think that back then too?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” A nameless irritation flared up at the top of Jiang Yishen’s head, which he forcibly suppressed. “Yes.”

“But you never told me. I thought it wasn’t like that,” Qi Lin said.

After rolling the cactus round and flat between his fingers, Jiang Yishen said, “That’s because I…”

He thought for a moment about how to phrase it. There was quite a lot he wanted to say piled up at the tip of his tongue. At the beginning, it was because I knew this was your way of expressing love, so I accepted it. Later on, it was because even though I knew this was your way of expressing love, the love I felt from it was too little, leaving me powerless and adrift, as if it was not worth spelling out anymore, so I accepted it.

But feelings had too many twists and turns, and those caught up in them could not see clearly. Stepping back now from the state of mind and emotions of that time, it all just felt overwrought and unnecessary.

Yet this was still one of the reasons they had broken up. Jiang Yishen did not think a phone call was the right place to say all of this, so he only said, “That’s because I was carrying a burden and moving forward.”

Qi Lin was startled by his conclusion, and after quite a long pause said, “Were you just carrying a burden and moving forward again just now?”

“Yes.” Jiang Yishen touched his forehead, where invisible sweat had gathered. “Can we talk when you’re back? If I say what I actually mean, we might end up fighting.”

“What you actually mean?” Qi Lin caught the key word sharply. “Have you never been saying what you actually mean?”

“Haven’t I been real enough with you?” Jiang Yishen was starting to feel dizzy. “I even told you what I want and what I don’t want!”

The situation was hurtling in a strangely sophistic direction. Qi Lin felt something was off about where this was going, but got tangled up in the words and said without thinking, “But you said you were carrying a burden and moving forward the whole time before, so were the things you said you wanted and didn’t want back then not sincere either?”

“Sincerity is really hard to define!” Jiang Yishen started squeezing the cactus again. “A well-meaning sincere statement is still sincere, and a white lie told for the sake of sustainable development can count as sincere too!”

“Then when is it purely sincere, and when is it a lie?” Qi Lin said. “When you were in bed saying let’s do it one more time, was that also just for sustainable development?”

“Huh?” Jiang Yishen was so startled he nearly died on the spot. He had not heard such blunt phrasing in over half a year, which meant he could not respond right away.

Qi Lin let out a cold laugh. “Fine, Jiang Yishen. You’ve got some nerve.”

“Hey, wait, that’s not…” Jiang Yishen’s trailing words dissolved into the beeping sound of the call ending.

He held up his phone and spent a while digesting his shock, then for the first time in his life typed in a frantic rush: That one wasn’t a lie!

Qi Lin replied: Okay.

Jiang Yishen read layers of sarcasm into those two short characters and was so annoyed that he did not send another message for the rest of the evening.

A cold war was a cold war. Jiang Yishen had several urges to ask Qi Lin whether he had found the old man he had mentioned, but thought better of it each time and held back.

He did not want to talk to Qi Lin.

They had just finished a fight, and going back to press his warm face against a cold backside would make him look terribly eager.

This mutual cold war lasted into the evening, and the flight was delayed, as expected.

The real-time flight information on his phone showed airspace control as the reason. Boarding was pushed back half an hour, and after boarding they sat on the plane for another half hour, not taking off until nine fifteen at night.

That timing was uncomfortably tight. Jiang Yishen arrived early at the arrivals hall to wait, and saw the estimated arrival time scrolling across the screen: eleven forty-five.

Fight or no fight, they still had to kiss. No kiss meant another loop, another loop meant another flight, Qi Lin would have to attend the wedding all over again, and Jiang Yishen would have to spend another day gripping the cactus and giving him the silent treatment. Just thinking about it was exhausting. Whoever loved this rotten loop could have it.

Jiang Yishen had arrived so early that he even found time to eat a McDonald’s. It seemed that when people were in an awkward situation they became very busy. He would rather walk laps around the enormous airport after finishing his meal than go back to the arrivals exit.

The screen updated: eleven forty, the flight had arrived and was taxiing.

People waiting to pick up passengers gradually gathered beneath the screen, standing around in twos and threes. Jiang Yishen stood in the most visible spot, feeling that waiting wore a person down. The mental anguish made even his freshly styled short hair droop.

The feeling was exactly like being on a busy film set and having to film a kissing scene with a nemesis who had only joined the production that day.

He turned around and used the reflection in the glass to fix his hair again.

Eleven fifty. Not a single figure inside the arrivals exit.

Watching the time creep closer to midnight second by second, Jiang Yishen’s anxiety replaced his awkwardness. He paced back and forth, then opened his phone. No new messages.

He began bombarding Qi Lin’s WeChat.

– Have you come out yet?

– Hurry up and run out!

– Three minutes left, three minutes, three minutes!

He sent message after message while scanning every passenger who walked out. No sign of Qi Lin.

Jiang Yishen’s impatient temper flared up. With something like this, either you don’t do it at all, or you see it through. If Qi Lin had said there was no rush today, he would never have come to the airport in the first place. After all, one more loop was nothing. But since he was already here, he had to get that kiss in before midnight no matter what.

He turned in circles on the spot and called Qi Lin.

“Jiang Yishen!”

A familiar voice rang out from behind him, landing squarely in his chest. Jiang Yishen’s heart gave a hard thump. He turned around and looked up to see Qi Lin appear first at the arrivals exit, already running toward him, and then colliding into him, bringing a rush of cold air.

“There’s no time left!”

Qi Lin raised his arm and pulled him close, pressing down on the back of his neck to lower his head. Jiang Yishen’s vision went dark. It was Qi Lin leaning in to kiss him. Their lips knocked together on contact, but neither paid it any mind, and Jiang Yishen kissed back immediately.

Qi Lin had run all the way here. His breathing was ragged, and after the urgent, fervent kiss he needed to tilt his head slightly to catch his breath. Jiang Yishen instinctively chased after him and bit down hard, as if getting revenge for something.

The quarrel and unpleasantness of the day were briefly cast aside. Neither of them cared about coming out on top, neither cared about face. They simply focused on the kiss.

People were streaming in and out of the arrivals exit. Jiang Yishen gripped his shoulders, fingers pressing in, and pushed him back against a pillar, turning them to face away from the arriving passengers.

The kiss seized their breath like a storm. Qi Lin felt the lack of air. He wanted to pull back a little, but Jiang Yishen had him locked firmly in this patch of shadow, leaving him no choice but to stay where he was.

His hand still held his phone. His knuckles pressed against Jiang Yishen’s chest, and the phone was still vibrating, the unanswered call alert from Jiang Yishen’s line still ringing. The tremor traveled from his palm to his fingertips, then into his chest, making even his blood shudder.

Until the call disconnected automatically and the steady buzzing stopped abruptly, as if they had both been yanked back to their senses, pulled suddenly free from the hazy, tangled emotions.

That one was definitely more than ten seconds, Qi Lin thought.

He did not stop to think about his swollen lips and checked the time on his phone first. January 3rd, midnight exactly.

“Alright, that’s enough.” He let out a long breath and slumped against the pillar as if drained of strength. The discomfort in his lips was too present to ignore, and he could not help pressing them together.

The two of them stood in silence, each staring into space, heads lowered, neither looking the other in the eye.

The arrivals hall was livelier than before. The sound of suitcases rolling, footsteps, phone calls, all kinds of dialects, all of it flowing past them.

Qi Lin let his mind go blank. Everything felt not quite real. He lost control of himself and ran his teeth over the spot Jiang Yishen had just bitten, then finally looked up at Jiang Yishen and noticed that the man was dressed nicely today, at least not in the casual way he had been those past two days when he had come out to grab barbecue.

He looked for a moment and felt his heart soften again. His heart rate, which had spiked from running, was still elevated, and now turned into a bouncing, leaping wave.

“Alright, I’ll take you to get a late-night snack.” Qi Lin tugged at the hem of Jiang Yishen’s clothes, gesturing for him to follow.

Jiang Yishen had lost all the forceful edge he had shown just now and looked rather pitiful. He asked, “You’re not angry anymore?”

“I wasn’t angry,” Qi Lin said as he walked.

“You said I had some nerve.”

Qi Lin bit down on his back teeth in exasperation, turned to glance at him, looking as though he wanted to say something cutting, but in the end swallowed it all back and explained in the most concise terms possible: “That was embarrassment turning into anger.”

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