WC ⋆ Chapter 67

Jiang Yishen came home carrying a bag of braised beef. The moment he opened the door, he saw Jiang Changpeng standing in the kitchen with an expression like he’d seen a ghost.

“Dad.” Jiang Yishen gave two light coughs, closed the door with forced composure.

Jiang Changpeng was still half-bent over, the refrigerator door not yet shut, staring at him in astonishment, then at the closed bedroom door, eyes going back and forth several times.

“How did you come in from outside?”

Jiang Yishen had no idea how to explain this. He hemmed and hawed for a long while before finally saying, “Went out to take a look.”

He hadn’t told Qi Lin just now, but based on his experience from previous loops, in about half an hour Jiang Changpeng, who would sneak out to peek at the minced meat frozen in the fridge, would discover he wasn’t home and then call him.

In several of the loops Jiang Yishen had managed to get back home before his dad noticed, right up until the time he and Qi Lin had run off to get a hotel room. That time he hadn’t received his dad’s call, and only found out about it the next morning after seven, rushing back in a panic.

Jiang Changpeng turned on the kitchen light and pointed at the bag in Jiang Yishen’s hand. “You bought something?”

“Ah…” Jiang Yishen couldn’t think of how to explain this. He stalled so long that Jiang Changpeng was nearly ready to reach out and grab him, and only then did he say, “Xiao Qi’s dad gave it to me.”

This set off a thousand waves from a single stone. Jiang Changpeng hadn’t even heard it clearly. “Who?”

Jiang Yishen realized this was not the moment to bring up someone else’s father, so he swapped the wording. “Xiao Qi’s family gave it.”

Just six short words. Jiang Changpeng rubbed his hands, reddened from rummaging through the frozen meat, and said with a mix of shock and suspicion, “You ran over to his place?”

“Yeah.” Jiang Yishen turned his back, not looking at him, and changed out of his coat on his own.

“At this hour? Midnight, and you ran over to his place?”

“It’s a long story.” Jiang Yishen felt the way his dad was putting it made the whole thing sound deeply strange. He wanted to defend himself, but what was said was indeed the truth, and he couldn’t find any angle to work with.

The refrigerator door, radiating a bone-deep chill, was finally shut. Jiang Changpeng shot him a glare of exasperated disappointment, let out several sighs in a row. “You’re something else, you really are. I can’t manage you anymore.”

“I wasn’t actually planning to go inside.” Jiang Yishen tried to explain. “I got spotted by accident…”

Jiang Changpeng’s face looked like it had been slapped several times. Jiang Yishen could see this was only making things worse, so he simply shut his mouth. “Good thing we got some extra food tonight. This beef looks pretty tasty.”

The beef ended up going into the refrigerator after all. Past two in the morning, the five people across their two households probably couldn’t sleep, any of them.

Jiang Yishen looked perfectly calm on the surface, but inside he was churning. He replayed his performance at Qi Lin’s place in his head, sat bolt upright in bed several times in sheer agitation, and sent Qi Lin over a dozen sixty-second voice messages in a row.

Qi Lin replied: It’s fine.

Jiang Yishen saw those three words and felt his anger flare up all over again. He kept sending: “You didn’t even listen to the voice messages I sent!”

A few seconds passed. Qi Lin replied: I did listen.

Followed by a sticker, some creature of indeterminate species with wide eyes and a few teardrops hanging from them.

Jiang Yishen stared at that sticker and found he genuinely couldn’t stay angry. He ground his back teeth and furiously pinched the plush cactus toy sitting beside his pillow.

Qi Lin: It’s fine, don’t think about it, worst case we just loop one more time, okay~

Okay~!

Jiang Yishen pulled the blanket over his head, clutched the plush cactus, and closed his eyes in despair.

A night of chaos did nothing to change Jiang Changpeng’s habit of doing a thorough clean to the sound of the television the next day. Jiang Yishen didn’t remember when he’d fallen asleep. He was woken again by the television broadcast, groggy and disoriented, and at first couldn’t work out which loop this was. It was only when the firecrackers outside the window went off right on schedule that the absurdity of meeting Qi Lin’s family the night before floated belatedly into his mind.

Jiang Yishen let out a groan of suffering and rolled over to contemplate his existence.

The living room television was broadcasting New Year’s Eve celebrations from various places, lively and festive. Jiang Yishen lay there for a while, then carefully turned the whole thing over again in his mind, and suddenly found it didn’t feel as impossible to accept as it had before he’d fallen asleep.

They say there’s nothing a good night’s sleep can’t get you past. He’d never believed that before, but it turned out sleep really did carry some kind of magic. Maybe it was because he’d stepped back from the state of total immersion in the crisis he’d been in the night before. Thinking about it now, he didn’t feel completely wrecked, and it didn’t seem all that terrible.

He fished out his phone. This time Qi Lin had sent a good morning message half an hour ago, paired with that same sticker of the unknown creature, blinking its big eyes at the screen, with two little hearts beside it.

Qi Lin hadn’t really been one for saying good morning and good night before, and hadn’t been big on stickers either. Jiang Yishen tapped to open the creature and studied it for a long time. He still couldn’t identify what species it was supposed to be, but he saved it to his favorites anyway.

He got up and walked to the living room. Jiang Changpeng was at it again, sticking up the hanging money decorations[[1]]. Jiang Yishen took one look and went to get the broom to sweep the floor.

When he swept into the kitchen he found that one of the decorations already put up had been blown by the wind until only half of it remained. He called out, “Dad, one of the ones in the kitchen fell!”

Jiang Changpeng’s voice came through loud and clear even through the window glass. “Falling is good. The hanging money falls, money falls in, we get rich!”

Once they’d tidied the place up, they boiled a pot of noodles for a simple lunch. The topping was a fried sauce made from the minced meat chopped the night before. They set it on the table steaming hot, and Jiang Yishen saw his dad take out a bowl and start slicing the braised beef.

He walked over to stand beside his dad.

Jiang Changpeng said nothing, head down, slicing the meat.

The kitchen held only the sound of the blade tapping against the bowl. Jiang Changpeng couldn’t stand the oppressive atmosphere and couldn’t help himself. “Stop standing there in the way!”

Jiang Yishen pointed at the meat in the bowl. “Is it good?”

Jiang Changpeng pinched up a slice and put it in his mouth, chewed, and gave a reluctant verdict. “Not bad, I suppose.”

“He braised it himself.” Jiang Yishen said.

“I know!” Jiang Changpeng raised his voice, then silently finished slicing the last piece, and said with impatience, “When you get a chance, bring something over. Beef isn’t cheap these days. Think about what you can give back, don’t be shabby about it, get something decent.”

Jiang Yishen hadn’t seen his dad act this prickly in a long time. He laughed a little. “They’re not doing it expecting anything in return.”

“I know!” Jiang Changpeng pushed the bowl toward him, looking somewhat flustered. “You think I don’t know that? They don’t want it so we just don’t give anything?”

“Alright, alright, alright.” Jiang Yishen genuinely wanted to laugh now. “We’ll prepare a return gift in both our names.”

Jiang Changpeng chased after him scolding, determined to get the last word. “Don’t drag your old man into it, makes it look like we’re throwing ourselves at them! You already made a fool of yourself running over to their place in the middle of the night, that was embarrassing enough, and now you want to do it in your father’s name too, looks way too eager, doesn’t look like a respectable family. Do you hear me! Jiang Yishen!”

Jiang Yishen couldn’t stop laughing. He didn’t even know what was so funny, only that he felt the pent-up breath that had been lodged in his chest laugh itself all the way out, and the world in front of him opened up.

An unexpected turn of events had thrown his careful plans into disarray, yet it had brought with it a more direct, unadorned kind of happiness.

He had wanted to meet Qi Lin’s family in the best possible light, but what he’d presented was a disheveled encounter. He hadn’t wanted Jiang Changpeng to make contact with Qi Lin’s family too soon, and yet by some unforeseen accident an indirect exchange had unfolded in a way he never could have planned.

Every part of it had been chaotic, and yet every part of it had been just right. Random. Real.

Jiang Changpeng couldn’t keep his dignity with Jiang Yishen laughing at him like that. He sat on the sofa with a straight face, mixing his noodles. Jiang Yishen tipped some cucumber strips and carrot into his own bowl, and sent the rest into Jiang Changpeng’s.

“We eat too much salt and oil normally. You need more vegetables.” He said.

Jiang Changpeng shot him a look but said nothing, stirred everything together with his chopsticks, and bent his head to eat in big mouthfuls.

The topping was a bit salty. Jiang Yishen thought it was absolutely perfect.

In the free time that afternoon he went out again, sent a message ahead of time to arrange to meet Qi Lin downstairs.

Qi Lin had been frying potatoes at home. There was still starch on his fingers that he hadn’t wiped off, and he came running down just like that.

He had assumed Jiang Yishen was coming to pay a proper visit and had been puzzled about why he’d chosen today of all days, and why he wasn’t coming upstairs. He’d just run up to him, hadn’t even caught his breath yet, when he heard the other person announce something significant.

“I think the loop can end this time around. What do you think?”

Qi Lin suspected he’d misheard. He froze for a moment, then smiled. “So sudden. Weren’t you saying last night you couldn’t take it anymore and wanted to die, asking me to kill you?”

Jiang Yishen turned half a step to block the wind for Qi Lin, lowered his head to look at him. “Last night was last night, today is today. Today I suddenly feel… it’s pretty good, actually.”

Before this, they had been chasing perfection, wanting the loop to end in a flawless situation. The loop had indeed provided an opportunity to search for the most complete solution possible.

But if this day were to be overwritten by the loop, that would be far too much of a waste.

There would be more dignified meetings ahead, but every thread of feeling that had burst forth in these dozen or so hours would never come again.

Qi Lin brushed the starch off his hands and said quietly, “It is pretty good. I really love this day too.”

Being caught in a loop on New Year’s Eve was a happiness almost too great to imagine, yet that happiness existed only in contrast to a life without the loop. When that contrast was gone, repeating forever in a stretch of time you loved became a proposition with an unknown outcome. Qi Lin felt he couldn’t live in repeated days. Ten times, a hundred times, fine, but a whole lifetime, truly not.

“Are we going to end the loop?” Jiang Yishen grew nervous. In these nearly two months, he had never been this nervous.

Qi Lin took a deep breath. He looked around. An unremarkable moment in time, a corner at the base of the apartment building, the sound of firecrackers in the distance, occasionally swallowed by the sound of some car engine starting up in the building next door.

Just an ordinary afternoon like this.

“Let’s end it,” Qi Lin said.

He closed his eyes and felt Jiang Yishen drawing close. Warm breath intermingled. Those lips pressed against the corner of his mouth, a pure and precious kiss, unlike every kiss before it that had carried desire.

Jiang Yishen’s hands were a little cold. He seemed to want to cup Qi Lin’s face, but afraid of chilling him, he only let his fingertips hover lightly for a moment before reaching around to the back of his head to cradle it.

A long, lingering kiss. Both of them had their eyes closed. Nose touching nose, their entire awareness sank away into the tenderness. The winter wind seemed to grow gentle, brushing softly along the line of their lips, flowing past in a quiet trickle. At the end of the wind it was as if there lay the autumn two years ago, when they had kissed for the first time, young and shy, not yet well acquainted with each other, fumbling and exploring.

The thirty-day extraordinary journey came to rest here. The filmstrip corridor that had carried them wandering through the river of time and space countless times held this final frame, then dissolved in completion, breaking into countless tiny particles that drifted away with the wind, rising upward to melt into the clouds, falling downward to settle as dust, drifting and scattering, all the way to a distance too far to see clearly.

“Mm.” Qi Lin called to him very softly, lips still touching, but he shifted slightly apart and stared at Jiang Yishen’s chest.

Jiang Yishen looked down and found it was a small piece of starch still stuck to Qi Lin’s knuckles that had accidentally smudged onto his chest.

Carrying a subtle intimacy, like some one-of-a-kind, only-between-the-closest-of-lovers little mishap.

A small white smear on the shirt, yet both of them looked impossibly happy, fussing over it in a flurry for a long while.

New Year’s Eve was drawing near. The new year was almost here.