WC ⋆ Chapter 20

No matter how much the world changes, a college student comes back still a college student, with finals looming and no more time to waste before failing.

Jiang Yishen had spent four years in the top 8% of his grade, and this was his first taste of last-minute cramming. His mind was a mess, but he'd taken his mom's words to heart: get through each hurdle one at a time, survive tomorrow's exam first and worry about the rest later.

The feeling of bringing his laptop to his ex-boyfriend's place to study was deeply strange, especially watching Qi Lin sitting cross-legged at the other end of the sofa, busy with his own work, as if Jiang Yishen were some kept boy being supported by a white-collar professional.

The two of them had nothing to say to each other for a while, each absorbed in their own tasks, and once they got into it they briefly forgot the awkwardness. It was only when dusk settled and Qi Lin stood up to turn on the lights that Jiang Yishen finally snapped back to himself.

He watched Qi Lin's back. The heating in the apartment was turned up high, and Qi Lin always wandered around in a big, loose sweater that looked very soft to the touch.

"What are you staring at?" Qi Lin didn't even turn his head.

"What are you working on?" Jiang Yishen asked.

Qi Lin answered dismissively: "Problems."

Jiang Yishen rubbed his nose and went back to staring at the sweater.

"What exactly do you want?" Qi Lin stopped walking and turned around, wary. "Have some self-respect. We've already broken up."

"What did I even do!" Jiang Yishen hugged his laptop, face full of indignation. "I've been sitting right here without moving."

That was technically true. His body hadn't moved. Only his eyes kept wandering.

Qi Lin couldn't find fault with that, so he turned back around and continued toward the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water. After a couple of steps he really couldn't help himself and twisted his head back: "Why do you keep staring at me?"

"I'm not staring at you!" Jiang Yishen argued his case. "I'm looking at your clothes."

Qi Lin nearly dropped his water glass. "Can you have some respect for what we are to each other? What you're doing right now counts as sexual harassment."

Jiang Yishen choked a little: "What we are to each other right now is people who kiss once a day."

Qi Lin felt he was acting with complete impunity, and there was no way to refute it. He gripped the glass so hard it was about to crack. "What more do you want?"

"Oh, I just think your sweater looks really comfortable." Jiang Yishen blinked a couple of times, looking perfectly innocent and sincere.

Qi Lin had the distinct feeling he was being teased, and his anger tipped over into a laugh. "Haven't you touched this sweater before?"

He had many sweaters of roughly the same cut, loose and comfortable, and Jiang Yishen had always loved cupping his palm around the waist, the soft fabric bunching under the heel of his hand, his thumb pressing against the lower abdomen so the hem would lift and reveal a strip of lean, taut waist.

Jiang Yishen found it hard not to recall the feeling of his palm against that skin. He swallowed very lightly, and his attempt at an excuse came out guilty: "I didn't mean anything by it, I was just complimenting the sweater."

Qi Lin let out a cold laugh and walked into the kitchen, leaving behind one ice-cold remark: "I'm not going to sleep with you, so spare yourself the burden of carrying that weight."

"Hey, that's not what I—" Jiang Yishen sat bolt upright, his ears flooding with heat at the speed of light, his tongue stumbling, his whole being thrown into chaos. He still forced himself to argue back. "I meant what I said! Did you hear me? Bab… that, 1703!"

"If you want to order delivery, go outside. Not in my place!" Qi Lin said.

The sound of water being poured splashed noisily into the conversation. Jiang Yishen's already scattered train of thought was cut off, and he finally gave in with a sigh: "Fine, forget it then."

Jiang Yishen was, as always, easy to fluster. It didn't show much in the moment, but the more he replayed it later the more embarrassed he became. By evening, after washing up and getting ready for bed, with the clock bearing down on midnight, Qi Lin sat on the edge of the bed scrolling through his phone, waiting and waiting with no sign of Jiang Yishen emerging from the bathroom.

Without even having to think about it, Qi Lin knew Jiang Yishen had been teased into hiding. Qi Lin shuffled over in his slippers and knocked on the door, pounding it hard enough to shake the frame: "Are you done yet?"

"Yeah, yeah, almost." Jiang Yishen's answer came out garbled, as if he were very busy in there.

Qi Lin leaned against the door. "What are you doing in there?"

"Nothing—"

"Hurry up and come out. It's almost midnight. Are you going to kiss me or not?"

Before the words had even finished, the bathroom door was yanked open from inside. Qi Lin still had his full weight leaning against it, and caught completely off guard, he lost his balance and fell straight inward, landing squarely on Jiang Yishen.

Jiang Yishen caught him steadily and immediately started scolding: "Watch what you say. That counts as sexual harassment against me too!"

Qi Lin climbed out of his arms. His hair had been rubbed into static by the fabric and was sticking out in all directions. He looked up and glared. "Kiss me or don't. If you don't, forget about ever passing this final."

"Then Fan Zi would be getting a concussion every single day," Jiang Yishen said.

"Let him concuss all he wants. Otherwise we'd have to send him to that hotel every day, and I get psychological trauma the moment I walk in and see the front desk." Qi Lin said through gritted teeth.

Jiang Yishen sensed there was something more behind those words and immediately distanced himself: "That's not my fault! That glass panel was already badly installed to begin with!"

"Would it have shattered if you hadn't pressed me up against it?" Qi Lin said it with complete naturalness.

Jiang Yishen felt like his ears were about to ring. He frantically covered Qi Lin's mouth. "Stop talking, stop talking. You're sexually harassing me again!"

Qi Lin was utterly baffled. "What's wrong with saying it? We broke up, we didn't lose our memories."

"I'm scared, I can't bear to hear it." Jiang Yishen's whole head was steaming, his blood heating up at an alarming rate. Seeing that Qi Lin was about to say more, he fumbled to cup Qi Lin's face and bent down to press his lips against his, biting down on that lip, then slowly, softly licking and kissing it.

Qi Lin was caught completely off guard by the kiss and stumbled backward several steps until his back hit the wall. Jiang Yishen's fingers pressed into his cheeks with considerable force, leaving a few red marks.

It was only in this moment that Qi Lin noticed Jiang Yishen's hair seemed to have grown longer, or perhaps it was because it had just been wet from the shower. The short strands hung damp against the ridge of his brow and brushed against Qi Lin's forehead during the kiss.

Qi Lin felt a little ticklish but couldn't move. He endured it until the kiss ended, and only then thought to raise his hand and rub the spot where the strands had caught.

After the chaotic kiss, the two of them finally calmed down.

Kissing was an act of too much intimacy. In the midst of that closeness, emotion always managed to wash over reason, awakening muscle memory and bodily instinct, drawing out the most direct longing and tenderness from the bottom of the heart. Only when the kiss ended and the two of them separated did reality come rushing in all at once, shattering the fairy tale, clearly and repeatedly reminding them of the obstacles they had no choice but to face.

Kissing had withdrawal symptoms. This made Jiang Yishen suddenly feel bereft. He was being pulled between idealism and the difficulties of reality, and he didn't know what to do.

"Just let it be like this," that thought surfaced in his mind for the countless time.

Just like this, looping through this one day forever. They could go on living inside a story they knew by heart, without having to face the world's challenges, without having to spend too much effort working things out. Their feelings would warm in the suspension-bridge effect of being abandoned by time and space, and they would never grow old.

"Okay," Qi Lin said quietly. "Don't press so hard."

Jiang Yishen could only hear his own heartbeat. After a long while he said: "I'm sorry."

Qi Lin hadn't expected him to say that either. It was like a small wooden splinter had suddenly pricked his heart, yet he couldn't find where exactly he'd been pricked. He was stunned for a moment and couldn't find anything to say in return.

That night passed quietly. The atmosphere in the apartment was a little cold, and they had no way to warm it.

The next morning Jiang Yishen woke up very early. He didn't wake Qi Lin, just tidied himself up and headed out to make it to his nine o'clock exam.

The subway ride from here back to school took a while, and by the time he arrived there was no time for breakfast. He bought a few steamed buns from the breakfast stall downstairs and stuffed them in his pocket, then stood in the corridor outside the exam room and ate them.

Students from the same major were all in one exam room. He'd eaten half when he spotted a dormmate coming out of the classroom to use the bathroom. They exchanged greetings, and the dormmate asked how his studying had gone. Jiang Yishen just said he'd done a quick pass.

The dormmate joked: "Fan Zi's got it made though. He wasn't going to study anyway, and now he gets a deferred exam on top of it."

Jiang Yishen's hand clenched and he nearly squeezed the filling out of the bun. He said in alarm: "What did you say!"

"Oh, you didn't know?" The dormmate was startled by his reaction too. "Oh right, you didn't go back to the dorm yesterday. He posted on his Moments this morning. I thought you knew. He got hit by an electric scooter yesterday, he's in the hospital."

Those words hit him like an invisible club striking both body and soul. Jiang Yishen felt a cold sweat break out at his temple in an instant. He even took out his phone to check: January 4th. No loop. Yesterday they had indeed picked up the drunk Fan Zi and brought him back to the hotel, steering him away from the collision with the flower bed. Everything had gone right.

So where had it gone wrong?

The dormmate saw his face go chalk white and assumed it was from shock, quickly adding: "It's fine, he just fell and scraped his elbow. He exaggerated it to get out of the exam. The girl who hit him is worse off than he is. She knocked her head and got a mild concussion apparently. The two of them are in the same hospital room now, and by all accounts they're getting along pretty well."

"The same… hospital room?"

—

Qi Lin sprinted into the inpatient ward of Central Hospital, gripping his phone tightly, the screen not even dimmed yet, showing Fan Zi's Moments post from that morning: a medical report, and a selfie of an arm wrapped up like a mummy.

Waking up to a Moments post like that, Qi Lin genuinely wondered if he was still half asleep.

Even though they had used the loop to change the outcome of Fan Zi's accident, he had ultimately ended up in that fated hospital bed anyway, just through a different set of circumstances.

Qi Lin had some guesses forming in his mind, but he still needed to verify them with his own eyes.

He had run so hard his lungs were burning, his every breath scalding hot. He weaved through the crowd in the corridor and arrived at that familiar hospital room, shoving the door open hard.

What met his eyes was a familiar smiling face: the girl with yellow hair, a fruit basket already opened on the bedside table, the girl in the middle of peeling an orange. Fan Zi was in the next bed, sprawled out with both arms spread wide, one arm wrapped in bandages, chatting and laughing with the girl.

On the chair beside Fan Zi's bed sat a man. The man heard the sound and turned to look, and just one glance made Qi Lin feel like ants were crawling all over him.

It was the Leather Jacket Guy, still dressed in the same outfit from last night, his side-swept bangs unmoved as ever.

But Qi Lin had the distinct feeling that something was off, coming from his sharp sixth sense. He couldn't tell whether the strangeness was about the connection between Fan Zi and that girl, or about this Leather Jacket Guy.

Either way, in that moment he had a sudden epiphany about one of the fundamental laws of the loop: it seemed to be a kind of fixed destiny. No matter how unpredictable the world might be, the destined red thread would never break.

—

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