WC ⋆ Chapter 27

Qi Lin rested on the sofa with his eyes closed for more than ten minutes before going back out to the balcony to check on the cactus.

The little round thing sat there with two wilted flower buds on top. He poked at them with a finger and felt a headache coming on again.

What gave him the most headache wasn’t the fact that the cactus couldn’t bloom in itself, but that the whole situation had appeared in a very strange way.

If he remembered correctly, it was during one of the five loops on New Year’s Eve that he had accidentally discovered the cactus had grown flower buds. Now, counting generously, only five days had passed since New Year’s Eve. The last time he brought Jiang Yishen to look at it, the buds had still been growing vigorously. For them to wither and drop in less than two days, wasn’t that a bit too fast?

If the days the cactus had experienced weren’t just a short five days, but ten-odd days counting the single-day loops, then it would actually make sense.

But a potted cactus looping along with them sounded a bit too science-fictional. Qi Lin thought about it, pulled out a spine from just below the flower bud, and decided that if the loop appeared again, he could check whether the spine had regrown at that spot after the reset.

He crouched beside the cactus and stared at it, his mind drifting involuntarily to what Jiang Yishen had told him yesterday about that experience.

Jiang Yishen said he had fallen into a Memory Rewind, becoming a single point on a Möbius Strip, where moving forward or backward was all cause and effect feeding into each other, carrying a strong sense of predestination.

Qi Lin didn’t doubt his words, because Jiang Yishen had accurately recounted the irrational wish he had made at the temple all those years ago.

He had even discovered that their meeting beneath the Ferris Wheel had been something Qi Lin had deliberately engineered.

Qi Lin hadn’t expected this to be something Jiang Yishen would find out about in this way. It made him feel deeply embarrassed, especially when he recalled how, after Jiang Yishen had started pursuing him, he had occasionally pushed back and played coy. What had seemed like a mutual back-and-forth was clearly just him playing hard to get.

But Jiang Yishen didn’t seem to have thought that far into it. Last night he had pulled Qi Lin close and fallen asleep with his eyes shut, sleeping so soundly it left Qi Lin with a nameless irritation.

He watered the cactus according to the care instructions, then went to the fridge and grabbed some of the pudding Jiang Yishen had bought, standing in the living room eating and spacing out.

Jiang Yishen slept very soundly, probably without even dreaming. Qi Lin could understand it. Anyone facing a situation where a single moment of misjudgment could have sent their whole relationship down a different path would feel anxious and insecure.

But Qi Lin hadn’t lived through it himself. After hearing the account, the lingering fear outweighed any sense of relief, and he couldn’t settle his mind to rest.

He spent the whole morning lost in scattered thoughts. When the alarm went off it was ten-thirty. He had promised to go to school and have lunch with Jiang Yishen at noon, so it was time to head out.

He had been in too much of a rush getting up, and Jiang Yishen hadn’t asked how he knew there was still an exam today. Qi Lin was grateful he hadn’t asked, because it would have been genuinely embarrassing to admit that yesterday, unable to find him, he had gone to his dormitory and asked for the exam schedule.

There was a strong wind today. Before leaving, Qi Lin half-suspected the exhaust pipe of the range hood was going to get blown off. This city’s winters were windy, though the windy days were always clear, and you could see a brilliant blue sky.

Heading into the wind toward school, Qi Lin walked with such an air of righteous confidence that he blended in among the crowd of students and strolled straight through the school gate without a second thought.

Half a year since graduation, and the school hadn’t changed at all. Even the sweeping vehicle parked inside was in the same spot he remembered. It gave him a somewhat wistful feeling.

Qi Lin had originally wanted to scan a shared bicycle, but every bike, e-bike, and scooter at the parking spot had been knocked flat on the ground without distinction, and he finally gave up on the idea of riding into the headwind.

The Teaching Building where Jiang Yishen’s exam was held was a bit far away, but strolling through his alma mater had its own particular charm, with familiar scenery all along the way.

Walking around campus always made his steps feel lighter. Qi Lin even took a detour to the little convenience store he used to frequent, said hello to the owner, and the owner said warmly that he still remembered him. Whether that was true or not, Qi Lin couldn’t say, but it was nice to hear either way.

During the exam period, the academic area was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Occasionally a student who had finished early would come out, head down, scrolling on their phone. Qi Lin walked to Jiang Yishen’s exam room and peered in through the glass panel of the back door.

Jiang Yishen was far too easy to spot. He was sitting by the window, chin propped on his hand, staring blankly into space.

One glance and Qi Lin knew he had finished. How well he had done was another question entirely.

The few people in front of Jiang Yishen were his dormitory roommates, seated by student number, all clustered together. Surprisingly, Fan Zi was among them.

Arm still in a cast, showing up at the exam room this brazenly, wasn’t that a bit too dedicated?

The invigilator was the professor who taught this course. Qi Lin recognized him. This teacher had also taught Jiang Yishen’s third-year classes, and Qi Lin had sat in on them before.

He wasn’t sure if it was because his down jacket was black and he was a bit conspicuous hovering by the back door, but Jiang Yishen suddenly turned his head and looked over.

Their eyes met. Qi Lin tried to quietly drift out of sight, but he watched Jiang Yishen bang to his feet, grab his answer sheet, and sprint up to hand it in.

The roommates in front of him turned one by one to watch him charge up to the front in stunned disbelief. Fan Zi reacted fastest, the first to spin around and look at the back door, locking eyes with Qi Lin directly.

The other roommates, as if on a delay, also turned their heads one after another, and with them a number of other students in the class, not knowing what was going on, also looked toward the back door.

Qi Lin was startled into sidestepping out of the line of sight. The next second Jiang Yishen came bursting out with his bag, skidded to a halt at the door, then turned back into the classroom and grabbed a carton of drinks off the radiator.

Qi Lin found it a little hard to meet his eyes. He felt a trace of the awkwardness from when they had first started dating, perhaps because Jiang Yishen now knew about the front he had put up when they first met, and he was now facing this relationship again with a particularly candid and direct posture.

“Here.” Jiang Yishen shoved the drink into his hands and said quietly, “Bought it this morning. You used to like this.”

Qi Lin took the drink and held it in both hands. It was warm.

He was touched for a moment, but what he most wanted to ask was something else entirely. “You actually had time to go buy something this morning.”

“This exam has so many calculations. Your brain doesn’t work if you don’t eat something.” Jiang Yishen casually slung one arm around him and steered him toward the cafeteria. “One minute late, but it’s fine, it’s fine.”

“How come Fan Zi came to take the exam? Isn’t he deferring?”

“When did I have time to ask him? I walked in and seeing him gave me a shock too. I thought the loop had cycled us somewhere else.” Jiang Yishen said. “I figure he decided that having too many deferred exams is also exhausting. It’s not like you can study much over the New Year anyway, so better to finish early.”

The trigger word “New Year” activated, and both of them automatically dropped the subject.

The moment they stepped out of the Teaching Building, a gust of wind smacked them full in the face. There was no need to think about conversation topics at all. Even if you sang a folk song, you couldn’t hear what the other person was saying.

At one point Jiang Yishen leaned close to Qi Lin’s ear and said, “The wind always used to pick up at night. How come it’s blowing this hard during the day today?”

Qi Lin said nothing. He was only grateful that the wind was so strong it had turned everyone’s ears red, so Jiang Yishen wouldn’t be able to notice anything off about him.

The cafeteria wasn’t too crowded at this hour. For once they took a proper look around all the counters and settled on the braised chicken rice that everyone agreed was the best.

The clay pot would take a while. Jiang Yishen sat down at the nearest available seat and was just about to call Qi Lin over when his gaze swept past and he spotted an uninvited guest who had been appearing with unusually high frequency lately.

Xu Baili was standing a few rows of seats away, holding a bowl of chicken cutlet rice, looking in this direction with the same indecisive, faintly horrified expression.

But Xu Baili seemed to be looking at Qi Lin.

Jiang Yishen turned his head and found that Qi Lin’s expression was also guilty, his eyes drifting, not daring to meet Xu Baili’s gaze.

Xu Baili’s guilt was something he could guess at. Probably because he felt bad about having told Jiang Yishen the things Qi Lin had kept from him.

But what was Qi Lin feeling guilty about?

The three of them stood in an equilateral triangle, none of them making a move. Only Jiang Yishen looked left and right, then broke the standoff first, walking toward Qi Lin. “What’s wrong?”

Qi Lin shuffled his feet and in one breath put three meters of distance between them.

“What are you dodging for?” Jiang Yishen was baffled and insisted on closing the gap, pressing himself back to Qi Lin’s side by force.

“Xu Baili!” Qi Lin squeezed out three words through gritted teeth.

“I saw him.” Jiang Yishen glanced over at Xu Baili, whose expression was even more spectacular than before, a whole kaleidoscope of emotions.

“He said if we got back together, he’d pull out all the cactus spines.”

Jiang Yishen was momentarily stunned by such a ruthless statement. He felt the cactus was innocent in all this, but the more pressing issue was obviously, “But he’s already seen us.”

As he said it, he spread his five fingers and waved them in front of Qi Lin’s face. That ring was impossible to miss.

Qi Lin finally understood why Jiang Yishen had drawn so much attention when he handed in his exam paper just now.

The braised chicken seemed to be ready. The fragrance drifted out, the clay pot sizzling away. He noticed that when Xu Baili caught sight of Jiang Yishen’s ring, his eyes went wide and his chicken cutlet rice nearly ended up on the floor. Yet he showed not the slightest inclination to come over.

“Why isn’t he coming over?” Qi Lin asked.

This time it was Jiang Yishen’s turn to look guilty. Qi Lin didn’t get an answer. He turned to look at Jiang Yishen and found him pretending not to have heard, craning his neck to peer at the braised chicken.

“What have you two been up to behind my back?” Qi Lin caught a whiff of something unusual.

Jiang Yishen clicked his tongue in protest, “Don’t make it sound like the two of us were having an affair.”

Qi Lin realized he had probably let yesterday’s events go to his head and missed some piece of information. He immediately grabbed Jiang Yishen with one hand and called out to Xu Baili, who was trying to make his escape, “Don’t move! Come eat with us!”

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