WC ⋆ Chapter 55

Standing in a situation where he’d get cut whether he stuck his neck out or pulled it back, Jiang Yishen felt a surge of heroic resignation.

Dad had truly done his utmost as well, not asking any half-baked, ambiguous questions, cutting clean and sharp, severing the road of wordplay entirely.

Jiang Yishen had shielded Qi Lin very thoroughly, standing there stiffly and awkwardly like a fool, one hand behind his back, clutching at his own clothes.

Qi Lin watched him bunch the fabric into a little knot and reached out to poke it, startling the jumpy Jiang Yishen into snapping to attention like a soldier.

Silence was an answer in itself, but Jiang Changpeng stubbornly wanted a definitive one: “Cat got your tongue?”

“Dad.” Jiang Yishen was so uncomfortable he was practically oxygen-deprived. It wasn’t that he couldn’t face this kind of situation, he just felt it was embarrassing and humiliating to have it happen right in front of Qi Lin.

“Are you two deliberately trying to make me angry?” Jiang Changpeng was genuinely furious. Normally, no matter what, he would have held back out of consideration for an outsider being present, but now he let it all out at once: “No wonder, one after another, not a word said, just running into my home and hauling me off to the hospital. What you say about me behind my back, I can figure it out just by wiggling my toes!”

Jiang Yishen tried to get a word in, but Jiang Changpeng was working himself up more and more: “Out in the open, Jiang Yishen, you tell me nothing, just bring someone barging through the door. Is that right?”

“Uncle, at the time it was me who insisted on coming.” Qi Lin said.

He would have been better off not saying anything. Saying it was practically pouring oil on the fire.

“Fine, so now I’m the one breaking up a loving couple? The two of you are living happily ever after, is that it?”

Qi Lin shut his mouth and mentally slapped himself.

The day they took Father Jiang to the hospital, they had gone through several loops in a row, and by the end the boundary between the loops and reality had blurred. Their perception had gone off-kilter, and they had both acted without any restraint.

This matter was genuinely something they had handled poorly. It wasn’t unreasonable for Jiang Changpeng to bring it up.

He had just been thinking of helping Jiang Yishen clear himself of blame, but had forgotten the real crux of the matter right now. What Jiang Changpeng actually cared about wasn’t the hospital trip itself, but the feeling of losing control, of his son slipping out of his grasp.

Refuting Jiang Changpeng’s words would only put him up on a high pedestal, and neither of these two members of the Jiang family had it in them to go looking for their own way down. Jiang Changpeng wouldn’t listen to his explanations; it would only double his fury.

Qi Lin could see with his own eyes that the man had turned red all over. He was getting anxious watching it. Jiang Changpeng’s health wasn’t good, and he didn’t know whether the man could handle being this angry.

“How long have you two been at this?”

Jiang Yishen, stung by his words, said stiffly: “Not long.”

Which was also the truth.

“Not long is how long?” Jiang Changpeng slapped the door, knocking loose a layer of dust.

“Ten-odd days, thirty days, over two years!” Jiang Yishen rattled off three correct answers in one breath. “What’s the point of asking that?”

Jiang Changpeng, without another word, pulled out his phone and jabbed at the screen.

“I can’t manage you anymore. Last time at the hospital you had to go and call your mother. Does she know about this?”

“What do you mean I had to go and call Mom?” Jiang Yishen felt he was being unreasonable. “Who was it that made Mom come back in the first place?”

Jiang Changpeng was even louder than him: “Who? Who was it? Don’t you know better than anyone?”

Jiang Yishen had no rebuttal. He was getting heated in the argument, and this question he genuinely couldn’t answer, so he could only dodge around it: “Well, calling Mom won’t do you any good anyway! Mom already knew!”

The impact of those words was like the sun exploding right in front of him. Jiang Changpeng frowned, seemingly unable to process it: “Knew what?”

His disbelief added fuel to Jiang Yishen’s fire, and he immediately recovered his brazenness: “Knew that I’m in a relationship.”

Jiang Changpeng stared at him hard, his grip on his phone going unsteady.

Qi Lin shoved Jiang Yishen aside with force, crossed the distance in two strides, and took hold of Jiang Changpeng’s arm to guide him toward the bedroom: “Uncle, sit down first, let’s talk it through slowly, don’t get worked up.”

These two had the strength of oxen. Jiang Changpeng gave his arm a shake and sent Qi Lin stumbling back. He stood rooted in the entryway and repeated: “When did your mother find out?”

“She’s known for a long time.” Jiang Yishen said, his tone utterly careless.

Absolutely childish, this argument!

Qi Lin felt his head splitting in two. He was afraid Jiang Changpeng would actually make himself sick with anger, and afraid that Jiang Yishen would argue himself into tears and lose it again, so he quickly wedged himself between the two of them: “Alright, both of you stop. Can we please go inside first!”

“It’s not like I was the one who brought it up!” Jiang Yishen said.

Qi Lin pointed at him: “Would you kindly shut your mouth!”

Jiang Changpeng wasn’t having it either, craning his neck forward: “You’re very forthcoming with your mother! Have you two been in contact all these years?”

“Uncle, you stop too!” Qi Lin said loudly. “Can everyone calm down for a second?”

Both of them fell silent at once. After a brief two-second pause, Jiang Changpeng suddenly glanced at Qi Lin and asked Jiang Yishen: “You introduced him to your mother? At the hospital, wasn’t it?”

“I didn’t,” Qi Lin had barely gotten three words out before he was yanked back two steps with considerable force. Jiang Yishen stepped forward again: “Stop guessing! He had nothing to do with the hospital situation! Taking you to get checked out, calling Mom to come over, those were all my ideas!”

Qi Lin stumbled a couple of steps, feeling like a yo-yo being flung back and forth between this father and son.

“You’ve got a lot of ideas, haven’t you, Jiang Yishen? Finding a partner, getting your mother to help, just not willing to say a word to me. You walk in the door, yank the covers off your old man, and leave without a word. Your old man thought he’d been kidnapped!”

Jiang Yishen said: “What do you mean I didn’t tell you? I told you and you refused to admit it. You even dug out the hospital registration slip and still wouldn’t own up to it!”

“What nonsense! What registration slip!”

Jiang Yishen’s temper flared, and he was panting when he realized he had blurted out details from a loop that had already been reset and erased.

He recalled the scene from that loop. The towering blaze of urgency in his chest was suddenly doused by cold water, sending billows of thick smoke rolling up, stinging his eyes until they began to ache.

“If you were willing to listen to me, would I have needed to go find a partner and go find Mom?”

Qi Lin heard the change in his voice and knew things had taken a bad turn. This person’s ultimate form in an argument was to argue himself into feeling wronged.

“Okay, okay.” He tugged at Jiang Yishen’s clothes, cleared a path, and squeezed himself into the middle. “That’s enough, isn’t it? Can we please go inside and sit down to talk?”

Jiang Yishen’s aggrieved expression was like a very effective needle, instantly rendering Jiang Changpeng unable to say anything harsh. It was as if it were an indirect form of yielding, and the tug-of-war between the two of them finally cracked open a gap.

Jiang Changpeng walked silently into the living room, pulled a chair over and sat down beside the sofa, arms folded, saying nothing.

Jiang Yishen felt he had lost face again and stood there immovable as a stubborn mule. Qi Lin pulled and dragged but couldn’t budge him.

“Come over here! Do I have to send you an invitation?” Jiang Changpeng’s tone was taut. He had moved out of the arguing mode and become awkward and stiff.

Jiang Yishen naturally wasn’t going to listen. The words had the opposite effect, and he immediately moved to open the door and leave.

“Jiang Yishen!” Qi Lin strode forward quickly, one arm cutting across to stop him. His whole body was practically embedded in Jiang Yishen’s embrace, and he could only tilt his head up with difficulty. “If you leave now, there’s really no way to get through this New Year. I’m right here, I’m with you, okay?”

Jiang Yishen stood rigid and unmoving. Nearly a full minute passed, and then he suddenly raised his hand and touched Qi Lin’s cheek. It was a very gentle, unhurried touch.

His fingers rested beside Qi Lin’s eye. Jiang Yishen seemed to be in a daze, gazing for a long moment, and then finally rubbed the corner of his own forehead with the back of his hand, straightened his clothes, turned around, and went back to sit down on the sofa in the living room.

Qi Lin stood there for a moment before following. He saw that the Jiang Yishen on the sofa had lost the aggressive, childish look he’d had during the argument just now. His head was lowered, and the aura around him was no longer frantic or anxious.

Qi Lin sat down beside him and exchanged a glance with Jiang Changpeng.

Jiang Changpeng poured himself a glass of water and drank it before speaking: “That earlier, I was too hasty. I’m sorry about that, Little Classmate.”

He still used that term, Little Classmate. In the loop that had been erased and reset, when Jiang Changpeng first met him, he had called him that too.

“It’s fine, it really was too sudden. I’m sorry, Uncle.” Qi Lin said.

It was clearly a conversation between two people, yet after one exchange back and forth, both of them instinctively glanced at Jiang Yishen.

Jiang Yishen’s face held little expression. He was just listening quietly.

“So, I’m Jiang Yishen’s father.” Jiang Changpeng said.

Qi Lin suspected this was some kind of protocol, that when people had nothing left to say they defaulted to self-introduction.

“I’m… Jiang Yishen’s classmate.” He racked his brain and managed to come up with a summary of his own identity. “I’m a year ahead of him. We met at a basketball tournament.”

“Oh, oh. You play basketball too? Libero?”

“I don’t play basketball, Uncle.” Qi Lin said. “I was a student council staff member, organizing the basketball tournament.”

“Oh, oh. Did Jiang Yishen cause trouble for you all?”

“…No, nothing like that. I ran into a problem at the time, and Jiang Yishen helped me out. That’s how we got to know each other.”

Perhaps the conversational mode was too absurd. The person who had been silent all along suddenly let out a laugh. Qi Lin glanced over and saw Jiang Yishen with the corners of his mouth lifted.

Only then did he realize he had been drawn into a black hole of verbal exchange by Jiang Changpeng. Two completely pointless exchanges, out of place and inexplicable, yet somehow the only choice that could fit the mood of the moment.

“Don’t laugh, this isn’t over.” Jiang Changpeng’s taut shoulders relaxed, and he shot Jiang Yishen another furious glare, then picked up his phone. “I’m going to call your mother. Stay put.”

Saying that, he walked off to the bedroom and pulled the door shut behind him.

The bedroom window had been open for ventilation the whole time, and since they had come through the front door they hadn’t thought to close it, so when Jiang Changpeng shut the door, the air pressure pushed it shut with a loud bang.

Only two people were left in the living room. Qi Lin was still holding the slightly forward-leaning posture from the conversation just now. A long while passed before he nudged Jiang Yishen with the tip of his foot: “Was that funny?”

“I wasn’t laughing at you.” Jiang Yishen said sincerely, tapping the tip of his foot against Qi Lin’s in return, speaking softly. “It just felt like I grew up a little bit all of a sudden. I’m happy.”

Qi Lin couldn’t be bothered to engage with his peculiar way of putting things. He was more concerned with what was happening in the bedroom next door, and strained his ears to listen.

Only Jiang Yishen kept tapping the tip of his foot against Qi Lin’s at regular intervals, as if nothing in the world mattered as much as this right now, not even if the sky were falling.

He suddenly realized that what the loop had patched up wasn’t only their romance. Qi Lin had finally been willing to say “I’m with you,” and when he said it his eyes were bright and steady. Through Qi Lin’s eyes he had seen himself, the self in love, the self in family, every version of himself in the endless repeating loop, and every version of Qi Lin.

It seemed like he had suddenly begun to understand how to maintain a healthy relationship with family and with the person he loved.

Only then did he realize that growing up wasn’t entirely a process of social learning that came with the passage of years. Some growth was about filling in certain gaps, or reshaping the misshapen corners and edges back into something beautiful. Sometimes it happened in a single instant, in one moment of sudden clarity, and all it took was a pair of eyes that understood.

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