WC ⋆ Chapter 13

The call lasted less than a minute. When Jiang Yishen came back, his expression was off.

Qi Lin could tell something was wrong. He pulled him out of the hospital room and sat down with him on the bench outside the door. "What's going on?"

"Nothing. My mom's here." Jiang Yishen hung his head, his brows knitted together. "She arrived this morning. She wants to have dinner with me tomorrow."

Qi Lin knew that the two of them hadn't seen each other in person since the college entrance exams, and he picked up on the strangeness right away. "This suddenly? Did she say what it's about?"

Jiang Yishen shook his head, staring at his own reflection in the hospital floor.

"Does she know you… don't have exams?"

"She knows." Jiang Yishen said quietly.

Qi Lin understood. If that was the case, then his mother was aware of what had been happening at home. A thought surfaced in his mind, and he wasn't sure whether to say it out loud. But looking at Jiang Yishen sitting beside him, still clutching the orange Fan Zi had stuffed into his hand on the way out, he looked so pitifully forlorn, so clearly in need of company.

"Could it be because of your dad?"

"No." Jiang Yishen said it almost on instinct, then thought it over more carefully after the fact. "They haven't been in contact for a long time. She wouldn't come for him."

Even so, he was unsettled at heart. He paused for a moment, then said, "I'm a little worried. Once we loop through today, let's get Fan Zi out of the bar first, and then during the day I want to go home and check on things."

"Okay." Qi Lin's mood grew heavy too. This matter signaled to them with unmistakable clarity that life was continuing. No matter what happened, days still had to be lived one by one, relationships would carry on, unfinished things would need to be seen through. The loop didn't seem to be a means of escape.

At midnight that day, they were in a taxi on the way back from the airport. As the day reached its end and the loop reset began, they were plunged into a dizzy, detached state. The world's clock turned back and restarted, and sure enough, the two of them woke up in the taxi once more.

Qi Lin opened his phone and checked. January 3rd. Correct.

Jiang Yishen gave the driver the bar address Fan Zi had left, had him change the route, and the two of them headed straight for the bar.

Unlike the neon-lit, raucous bar they had imagined, one look after stepping out of the car told them this place had a low-key luxury aesthetic. They pushed open the door and stepped inside: deep navy marble flooring stretched toward the back of the room, and a low, elegant classical melody flowed quietly through the air. Jiang Yishen double-checked the address. He couldn't picture Blues Home being a high-end establishment like this. In his mental image, a place like this should have a sharp English name, or at the very least an Italian one.

A front desk attendant in a suit greeted them and asked whether they had a reservation.

Qi Lin gave Fan Zi's phone number, and the attendant worked at the computer for a moment before apologetically telling them that Mr. Lu Fan's private room was already full, and they would need to call ahead to confirm the visitors.

Jiang Yishen stared in disbelief. While the attendant made the call, Qi Lin leaned over and asked, "Isn't Fan Zi just the kid of some ordinary small business owner?"

"How would I know? That's what he said himself. Maybe the small business grew into a big one." Jiang Yishen said through gritted teeth.

The attendant finished the call and gave them a room number, then guided the two of them toward the elevator in the middle of the corridor.

The atmosphere of the club was nothing like a drinking establishment. Potted plants and incense made the corridor feel exceptionally refined, and it made you lower your footsteps without thinking. It wasn't until they knocked on the private room door and a wave of alcohol hit them, and the noise of chattering spilled out, that they confirmed this was indeed a bar and not some other kind of entertainment venue.

The private room was brightly lit. The people inside seemed to have been expecting this, and were already propping Fan Zi up and walking him toward the door. The person who opened it stepped slightly to the side and gave a polite nod. "You're Lu Fan's friends, right? He lost quite a bit tonight and mixed his drinks badly. Sorry to trouble you."

Qi Lin muttered under his breath, "Useless idiot. He told me he wouldn't start drinking until after one. It's barely twelve fifty now."

"Hm?" The person who had opened the door shifted his gaze from inside the room to Qi Lin.

Jiang Yishen stepped forward half a step without any change of expression, placing himself in front of Qi Lin. The unspoken message was clear: back off. But this person apparently didn't know how to take a hint. He deliberately craned his neck to look past Jiang Yishen at Qi Lin and struck up a conversation. "Are you his roommates?"

The guy had a tan complexion, wore a sleek leather vest, and had a hairstyle that looked expensive. Qi Lin's definition of an expensive hairstyle was the kind that wouldn't get blown apart by the wind after ten minutes outdoors, the kind that showed up on TV, the kind male celebrities loved most: a side-parted style.

"No." Qi Lin's answer was simple.

"Oh." The side-parted guy nodded and smiled at him. "Sorry for the trouble then, coming out this late. Maybe we can all have dinner sometime? We're all friends here."

Qi Lin's mind moved faster than anyone's. He could naturally hear the undercurrent in what this person was saying. He just had no interest in making new friends, especially not a roomful of visibly bourgeois types.

He kept up the social niceties and said lightly, "No trouble."

"Can you manage?" Jiang Yishen suddenly called out loudly toward the room, cutting off the exchange. He stepped further inside as he said it, took Fan Zi from the others, pulled his arm over his own shoulder, and the two of them together completely blocked the doorway.

He was tall to begin with, and with Fan Zi added on top of that, he planted himself squarely between Qi Lin and the side-parted guy, a solid wall of shadow.

"Alright, alright, thanks man." Jiang Yishen gave the side-parted guy a firm clap on the back. The leather vest rang out with the impact. Then he walked out without looking back.

Qi Lin got swatted a few times by the invisible tail wagging furiously behind him, and helplessly said goodbye to the side-parted guy before taking two quick steps to catch up.

Fan Zi was still fairly coherent at this point. His body was limp and unresponsive, but the shock in his eyes was practically overflowing. "Holy shit, am I hallucinating? Did some manhole cover get left open and let you two out?"

Qi Lin gave him a strange look. "Why do you swear so dirty?"

"I'm taking you home. Otherwise you're going to be watching the sunrise while riding your bike into a flower bed and getting a concussion." Jiang Yishen said coldly.

"Are you out of your mind?" Fan Zi grumbled and cursed, but his body wasn't cooperating, so he had no choice but to let Jiang Yishen haul him along.

There were no taxis to be found along the way at this hour. Qi Lin took out his phone to call a rideshare, but didn't know where to set the destination. School was long since locked up, and he didn't really want to bring an outsider back to his place.

"Set it to the hotel at the school's west gate." Jiang Yishen said.

Qi Lin said "okay" and had just tapped open the destination input field when he saw that the very first entry in the location history below was that exact hotel.

This made him unbearably awkward. He immediately selected it without looking too closely, then fumbled through the vehicle type selection and tapped everything except the business car.

From waiting for the car, to getting in, to getting out, to checking in, Jiang Yishen kept a cold face the entire time, dragging Fan Zi along like a stress-relief doll, the air around him chilled to absolute zero.

It wasn't until they had swiped into the room that Qi Lin couldn't hold back anymore. "Who are you making that face at now?"

"I'm not making any face." Jiang Yishen dumped Fan Zi onto the bed, his tone dripping with passive aggression.

"You think I can't tell?" Qi Lin pulled the curtains shut, suppressing his irritation. "Don't take it out on me. I said a grand total of five words to that person, seven if you count goodbye."

Jiang Yishen said, one word at a time, "I. Am. Not. Angry."

Qi Lin hated nothing more than someone who said one thing and meant another and then refused to back down. Thinking about how Jiang Yishen was already carrying so much, it made him even more annoyed. "Then stop giving me that face. Even if I'd said seven hundred words to him, it's none of your business. It's not like I started it."

"I said I didn't. What do I have to be angry about?" Jiang Yishen turned to look at him. "I don't have the standing to be angry at you."

"What do you mean by that? You're the one who brought up the breakup, and now you don't have the standing?"

"Would we not have broken up if I hadn't brought it up?" Jiang Yishen said. "It's not like I wanted to break up."

"Hey, hey, hey!" Fan Zi rolled himself upright on the bed, pointed at the two of them, and shouted with a thick tongue, "If you want to fight, go fight outside. This is a place for sleeping, not for you two to play gold-medal mediators!"

The two of them were stuck mid-argument, their anger neither rising nor falling. Jiang Yishen glared at him. "You're paying for the hotel, and the cab fare too!"

"What do you mean how much is it? You're the one who dragged me here, why do I have to reimburse you?"

"Two hundred and eighty." Qi Lin said.

Fan Zi had no concept of money right now, but he knew how to play poor. "Holy crap, that much? How did you end up booking a chain hotel room?"

"It's under my ID, so it's only a little over a hundred. Count yourself lucky." Jiang Yishen said.

"Why?" Fan Zi asked.

Qi Lin couldn't listen anymore. "He smashed the bathroom glass once, told the hotel the glass wasn't sturdy, and the hotel gave him forty percent off for twelve months."

Fan Zi kept asking. "Why did he smash the glass?"

No one answered him this time. The room fell into a strange silence. Fan Zi sat there cross-legged on the bed, blinking as he watched the two of them go quiet, then, in wordless unison, begin making up the beds, and then lie down without speaking.

"Huh?" Fan Zi let out a question mark of a sound.

No one paid him any attention. He sat there a while longer, then flopped down too. The alcohol hit him hard, his eyes fell shut, and he passed out cold, leaving the world entirely behind.

He slept like a dead pig and didn't wake up even when the sun was high in the sky. Outside the hotel, traffic lights blinked and directed the morning rush. The school gate saw people coming and going. The security guard, bundled in a padded jacket, wandered back and forth at the entrance. A lively, bright day, and only Fan Zi remained impossible to rouse no matter how hard you tried.

Qi Lin gave up trying to shake him awake and let out a sigh. "Forget it, just leave him here. Let's go eat something at school, and then we'll go to your place."

Jiang Yishen sent Fan Zi a WeChat message with instructions and the bill, tidied himself up, and left the room with Qi Lin.

The hotel was right outside the school's west gate, separated by just one intersection. The morning sunlight was too bright. No wind today, the weather was quite nice.

They were walking toward the intersection when they suddenly heard a string of car horns. They turned to look, searched for a while, and finally spotted the source: a black Lincoln in the queue waiting at the red light.

The window rolled down, revealing a woman's face. Her black wavy hair was pulled back neatly behind her head, her lips were a vivid red, and she lifted the sunglasses from her face. The light reflecting off her watch gave them a start.

Even though it had been four years since he'd seen her, Jiang Yishen recognized her in an instant. He drew in a sharp breath with every ounce of strength he had. "My mom!"

He had no time to think about why, when he was only supposed to receive his mom's call tonight to arrange dinner for tomorrow, she was already appearing near the school this morning. His mind held only one thought: had she seen which building they had just come out of?

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