WC ⋆ Chapter 47

“How come a coworker is still calling after work hours?” Jiang Yishen assumed that during off-work hours, WeChat was modern humanity’s primary communication tool.

Qi Lin wrestled with himself for a full thirty seconds before gritting his teeth and coming clean: “It’s an annoying coworker, two levels above me, who just loves tracking down new hires after hours.”

The moment those key words landed, Jiang Yishen’s expression darkened, clearly dredging up memories of something unpleasant.

“I never mentioned it to you because we didn’t have much overlap. The mentor who supervised me during my internship was ranked higher than him, and now that I’ve officially joined, we’re not even in the same department.” Qi Lin said this while tugging at Jiang Yishen’s sleeve.

Jiang Yishen looked at the hand gripping his sleeve and said quietly, “You never told me a single thing about it.”

“Because at the time I didn’t think much of it. I assumed you were busy, and bringing it up would only add to your worries.” Qi Lin said.

He didn’t expose the fact that Jiang Yishen had been deliberately posting a lot of Moments to get his attention. That was Jiang Yishen’s own little private thought, and after the misunderstanding was cleared up, that kind of small gesture made him soft-hearted. He didn’t want to lay it bare.

There was clearly no chance of slipping back into the apartment tonight. If he wanted to check on the cactus, he’d have to wait until morning. They couldn’t actually sleep on the street, so they had no choice but to fall back on the backup plan and find a vacant hotel room nearby.

The whole way from the residential complex to the nearby hotel, Jiang Yishen stayed silent. It was obvious he was still sulking. Qi Lin knew he had been genuinely hurt before and was perfectly willing to coax him along.

But even after the two of them slipped into an empty room while the cleaner was tidying up, and Qi Lin tried to discuss which room to pick, this person was still snapping at every word. Qi Lin finally reached his limit.

“Alright, I was wrong. I promised I’d talk more from now on. Are you still angry?”

Jiang Yishen muttered, “I’m not angry.”

Qi Lin couldn’t stand watching him say one thing and mean another. It annoyed him enough to let out a short laugh. “Why don’t you go look in a mirror?”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, as far from Jiang Yishen as he could get. The more he thought about it, the more aggrieved he felt. Who didn’t have their own grievances? The version of himself in this timeline had been sitting alone in that small house all evening without eating.

“I’m not good at relationships. I don’t bring things up on my own. But you never asked me either.” Qi Lin said with his back turned. “Before, not asking was one thing. But after we got back together, you still never asked me anything.”

They both understood exactly what that was pointing at: a matter of personality. But Jiang Yishen fixated stubbornly on those five words, “never asked me anything,” and did his utmost to prove he hadn’t been silently carrying a burden all along.

“I did ask! I saw that you’d wanted to give me the clothes you’d left behind, and I misunderstood and said to throw them out. Didn’t I explain that to you the moment we met up?” Jiang Yishen said.

Qi Lin cut straight to the point: “You only explained the things that caused me to misunderstand you. You worried I’d be upset. But you never once proactively asked me for any explanation. Every time you were the one who’d misunderstood something, you just digested it on your own. Whenever you were unhappy, you never said so.”

What he said was something Jiang Yishen had never once realized about himself. For a moment he stood there frozen, unable to even recognize this flaw in himself.

But arguments don’t have a halftime break, and his pause felt like losing ground. Somehow the central thesis of this debate had shifted to the question of who loved the other more. Jiang Yishen refused to lose, so he kept pushing with whatever logic he could scrape together.

“That’s because I felt like bringing up old things again would be like settling old scores.” As Jiang Yishen kept talking, he somehow found a coherent thread of logic. “I know the wish you made was to stay together. Doesn’t that mean the old misunderstandings are already resolved? There’s no need to drag the past back up.”

“How could those possibly be the same thing?” Qi Lin was getting tired from arguing. He let out a sigh, closed his mouth, and curled up in his corner without moving.

Jiang Yishen sat in the opposite corner and pursed his lips, playing dumb.

A king-size room is only so big. Two steps in any direction and you’ve crossed it. No matter how far apart they tried to sit, there was nowhere far enough to go. They stubbornly refused to acknowledge each other like that, all the way until eleven o’clock at night.

Once the minute hand crossed the midpoint, both of them started stealing glances at the clock every now and then. As midnight drew closer and closer, the invisible standoff in the room grew more and more tense.

No kiss meant another loop. Someone had to make the first move.

Qi Lin had made up his mind to hold out until the very last second. He wasn’t afraid of waiting.

But Jiang Yishen showed absolutely no sign of moving. Qi Lin had his back to him and strained his ears to listen, not even catching the sound of fabric shifting.

He angled his face just enough to steal a glance, in case Jiang Yishen had fallen asleep.

What he saw startled him. Jiang Yishen was leaning against the headboard, staring at his back, his gaze unfocused, just drifting in his direction in a daze. The sight gave Qi Lin a jolt, and he snapped his head back immediately.

Another ten minutes dragged by. The person behind him cleared his throat and recited the line he’d been rehearsing in his head for a long time: “Hey, Comrade 1703.”

“What.” Qi Lin asked.

“It’s almost time.” Jiang Yishen said.

Qi Lin deigned to turn around, sitting cross-legged on the bed. After a long pause he finally opened his mouth, dripping with sarcasm: “Didn’t someone say he didn’t want to kiss just because of the loop?”

Hearing that pointed remark, Jiang Yishen felt his teeth ache. “Why do you hold grudges like this? That sentence had a second half!”

The second half was “I want it to be only because I like you,” but they both tacitly left it unspoken. Saying “I like you” openly and plainly was still far too difficult for either of them.

There was nothing to be done about it. The kind of confident self-expression that wasn’t nurtured from childhood could only be learned slowly, little by little, going forward.

The single-day loop was undeniably a waste of time in this timeline. They had to find the trigger for each transmission as quickly as possible and get back to the real timeline.

Seeing Qi Lin put on the look of someone steeling himself for death, Jiang Yishen felt a surge of irritation. “Is it really that bad? Is it really that hard to bring yourself to do it?”

Qi Lin ground his teeth together, squeezed his eyes shut hard, and leaned in to kiss him.

In the instant before their lips were about to meet, Jiang Yishen suddenly tilted back one centimeter to dodge, and asked stubbornly, “Am I really that repulsive to you?”

“Can you please say a little less?” Qi Lin pulled back and didn’t kiss him.

Jiang Yishen raised a hand, cupped his jaw, held him in place, and leaned down to kiss him.

This was probably the most reluctant kiss the two of them had shared since getting back together. When it was over there was no tenderness whatsoever. They lay down with cold expressions, one facing the window, one facing the wall.

That night they slept reasonably well. No one showed up mid-night swiping a keycard to check in. They slept straight through until morning. Today they needed to get up early, head back to the rental apartment ahead of time, and slip inside while “Qi Lin” was heading out.

Qi Lin had this on his mind and woke up very early. There were no overnight grudges, but when he looked at Jiang Yishen, who had somehow burrowed into his arms at some point and was sleeping soundly, he still felt annoyed.

Jiang Yishen had his arms wrapped around him. Qi Lin couldn’t get up with him like that. He tried pulling free twice with no success, and had no choice but to wake up this clingy koala.

As if triggered by some automatic mechanism, Jiang Yishen woke up, nuzzled the pillow, and started calling out to him again: “baby.”

Qi Lin finally rescued his arm. While straightening the bedding he said coldly, “I’m Comrade 1703.”

Jiang Yishen kept at it relentlessly: “baby…”

“Wait until we’re back in the real timeline to sleep properly.” Qi Lin propped him up and sat him upright on the bed to wake up properly.

Jiang Yishen bit his lower lip and said nothing. After staring at Qi Lin for a good while, he suddenly said, “Kiss me.”

“…” A string of pink bubbles burst open in front of Qi Lin’s eyes, wrapping around the two of them without warning, blowing away all his stubbornness and sulking and leaving his heart soft and warm. The effect was immediate.

Even the morning sunlight seemed to grow gentle. He couldn’t do anything with Jiang Yishen, so he cupped his face in both hands and kissed him properly and earnestly.

Jiang Yishen headed out the door feeling refreshed. Qi Lin walked behind him, feeling as though he’d been bewitched somehow, but he couldn’t find any evidence.

Today was a day off. “Qi Lin” didn’t have work. After getting up he lounged around at home for a bit, then headed out to the supermarket while the morning sun wasn’t too harsh yet.

Qi Lin and Jiang Yishen took the opportunity to slip inside and made straight for the cactus.

As expected, the cactus had shrunk again. This time the shrinkage was obvious enough that you didn’t even need to measure it by hand. It was visible to the naked eye.

There was no passing it off as an illusion anymore. Both of them were shaken to the core. Qi Lin suddenly recalled Jiang Yishen’s offhand remark before the last transmission, that this cactus was the trigger for each shift through time and space.

Could he actually have been right?

Thinking it through carefully, it did seem like every time they transmitted to a different timeline, it had been after one of them had touched this cactus.

Might as well try anything. Qi Lin poked a fingertip against one of the spines, gave it a gentle touch or two, and murmured to himself, “Next time should be the trip back, right?”

“Do you think the cactus in the real world has shrunk this small too?” Jiang Yishen asked.

That would be a bit too science fiction. Qi Lin was thinking exactly that when he suddenly felt a burning sensation at his fingertip. He assumed he’d pricked the skin, but when he pulled his hand back there was nothing wrong.

He cupped his palm gently over the top of the cactus and focused carefully on the sensation. In his palm there appeared the flowing feeling of time and space being drawn away, like the sensation of air being pumped out of a vacuum bag. The center hollowed out, a pressure differential formed, and under that accumulating compression, a tightly contracted vacuum took shape.

This was the same feeling of detachment that appeared every time the single-day loop activated.

“Jiang Yishen!” His heart lurched. With his other hand he grabbed Jiang Yishen urgently, their ten fingers locking together tight. “Something’s off.”

This strange new sensation made him feel as though he’d missed a step, his mind going completely blank, unable to recall anything. The only thought he held onto was: if they could get back, the first thing he wanted to do was find Yin Yu. He wanted to know whether, on the night of September 11th, Yin Yu had actually seen them in the gymnasium.

—

#