WC ⋆ Chapter 43

“What’s going on?” Jiang Yishen didn’t use the ladder. He flipped down from the upper bunk and waved his hand in front of Fan Zi’s face a couple of times, then squeezed over to look at the phone’s call screen.

Unfortunately there was only the fierce battle between two armies in the game. He circled around Fan Zi in helpless frustration.

“You rest first, stop touching your phone.” Fan Zi said this while sliding through various skills, looking somewhat distracted. “We’ll meet up again once your shaved hair grows back.”

Qi Lin sat on the edge of the bed with both legs dangling, his brow furrowed in thought.

“Can it really be such a coincidence?” Jiang Yishen leaned against the bed and looked up at him in astonishment. “I’m not close with Fan Zi’s group of friends, so I had no idea it was him.”

It really was too much of a coincidence. In other words, rather than calling it a coincidence, it was more accurate to say that the “cause” had been pushed back another two months.

Before, they had both assumed the “cause” was the wish Qi Lin had made, and Yin Yu’s appearance was merely an accident, an outside factor that helped them interpret the loop.

But the amount of information revealed in that phone call just now was enormous, and the most critical point of all was the eyes Yin Yu had mentioned.

Those amber-colored eyes had left an exceptionally deep impression on Qi Lin. If everything originated from that car accident, then the bond between Jiang Yishen and Yin Yu ran far deeper than either of them had imagined.

It was as if interlocking gears had begun to turn at this very moment, the head biting its own tail, twisting into a perfect closed loop. Beneath the gears, countless timelines were pulled along, warped and kneaded together, pieced into a complete story.

Qi Lin thought of something impossibly important they had forgotten. “I remember you said before that the cactus here was off?”

The cactus.

Jiang Yishen slapped his forehead and began to improvise wildly. “I’ve got it. The cactus is a time-space shuttle. Every spine represents a point in time. Whichever one you pull out…”

Qi Lin raised a hand and swatted his words back at him. “What do you think you’re filming?”

The urgency of the situation immediately shifted. Dealing with Yu Jiaming could wait. The most pressing matter right now was to use this opportunity to map out the rules of the loop.

That pot of cactus lay quietly on the balcony at home, having attained neither spirit nor immortality, looking exactly as it always had.

The two of them gathered around the little potted plant and conducted a meticulous examination. Jiang Yishen had been right. The few spines Qi Lin had previously pulled out to determine whether the cactus had entered the loop were nowhere to be found, but beyond that there was no difference whatsoever.

Even the flower bud on the wilted seedling was identical.

Jiang Yishen hesitated a moment, then asked, “Did it get smaller?”

“Hm?”

“I feel like it’s a bit shriveled.” Jiang Yishen gestured with both hands, trying to make his words less abstract. “Shrunk by a size.”

Before, they had been too close and their attention had been on the shape and the spines. Now that it had been pointed out, Qi Lin shifted his focus to the whole picture and realized Jiang Yishen was right.

The cactus seemed to have shrunk proportionally.

He reached out and held his hand in front of the cactus for comparison, uncertain and unsettled. “It’s a lot smaller.”

The sound of a key turning in the lock came from the door behind them. “Qi Lin” was back from work.

The two of them crouched on the balcony and watched as “Qi Lin” walked over, closed the window, turned on the air conditioner, and walked into the bathroom, all with a calm expression and no sign of anything unusual.

“Can’t he tell the cactus is off?” Jiang Yishen asked.

Qi Lin shot him a glance. “What do you mean ‘he’? That’s me. My cactus was growing just fine last year. It absolutely didn’t have any of these problems.”

The trail of clues broke off there. Only the recognition that “the cactus is off” had been confirmed, which was meaningless on its own.

The two of them talked it over for a while and settled on a plan of action for the next three days: keep a close eye on Yu Jiaming, keep a close eye on the cactus, keep a close eye on Yin Yu.

And so they took up residence in this small rental apartment as a matter of course. The sofa was too small to lie on properly, but fortunately “Qi Lin” was in the habit of curling himself into a small ball and sleeping in the corner, so they could just barely squeeze in alongside him.

Qi Lin counted the days as they passed one by one. In just a few more days it would be Qixi, and after Qixi would come the start of the autumn semester, and once the semester started they would be due to break up.

It was practically upon them. This loop couldn’t last much longer. There was no telling when the next transmission would arrive. Nothing major happened after the time marker of buying the ring, and he was afraid that the next transmission would land them right at the crux of the breakup.

Qi Lin had Yu Jiaming on his mind. After being woken up in the morning by the other version of himself’s work alarm, he couldn’t be bothered to go back to sleep. He shook Jiang Yishen by the shoulder, trying to rouse him.

“Get up, we’re going to find Yu Jiaming today.” To Jiang Yishen’s ears, Qi Lin’s voice was like a Buddha’s transmission from afar, hazy and ethereal, and he rolled over and closed his eyes again.

Qi Lin got up and got himself ready, then went back to find Jiang Yishen passed out cold again. He leaned down and kissed him awake, calling softly, “Time to get up. One little ghost and you’re already addicted to sleeping.”

Jiang Yishen forced his eyes open with great effort. His voice was still hoarse and his gaze hadn’t even focused yet. “Baby.”

“Up, up, your great revenge hasn’t even begun yet.” Qi Lin said this and walked out of the room. From the sound of his footsteps he was heading to the balcony, probably to check on the cactus.

Before long, a wailing and howling started up again from the bedroom. “Baby!”

“What!” Qi Lin was focused on measuring the cactus.

Jiang Yishen didn’t answer. A few minutes later he shuffled out, one hand against the wall, looking like his morning grumpiness still hadn’t worn off, as though this sleep had been the death of a mighty warrior.

“Baby.” Jiang Yishen called to him persistently from the entryway.

Qi Lin pushed himself up off his knees and went over and kissed him again, and only then did he see Jiang Yishen curve his eyes in satisfaction.

“Qi Lin” was far more nimble than the two of them. He even found time to heat up two slices of bread and casually made a cup of soy milk, drank a few sips, then slung his bag over his shoulder and headed out.

Jiang Yishen and Qi Lin followed close behind. They parted ways inside the subway station. The morning rush-hour subway was packed, and the sight of half a soul being squashed flat was rather alarming. Fortunately by the time they were nearly at the school stop the carriage had thinned out a little, and there was a small patch of ground to stand on.

Yu Jiaming got up even later than they had expected. When the two of them made their way to the dormitory, the room was still dark, and he had only just sat up and was replying to messages on his phone in bed.

Jiang Yishen watched for a while and remarked, “He actually knows how to play with his phone.”

All this surveillance had drawn them closely into Yu Jiaming’s life, giving them a deeply strange, unsettling vantage point from which to understand this person in detail.

In all their past dealings, Qi Lin and Jiang Yishen had only ever seen Yu Jiaming as a flat, two-dimensional passerby: self-serving, selfish, his methods dirty and not particularly clever.

Now they had seen the death note on Yu Jiaming’s desk, and had suddenly been fed the plot point that “this person also has his own loves and hatreds,” which left them feeling as uncomfortable as if ants were crawling all over them.

Yu Jiaming finished replying to his backlog of messages, climbed down from the upper bunk, stood by the desk, and then suddenly began to change his clothes.

Qi Lin and Jiang Yishen were so startled they bristled, stumbling over each other as they turned and ran into the wall, shoving and jostling each other out the door, and stood in the corridor staring at each other.

Only after a full five minutes did Jiang Yishen hesitantly slip back into the room, where he found Yu Jiaming on a phone call.

“Something’s happening, something’s happening.” Jiang Yishen grabbed Qi Lin’s hand. By the light filtering through the curtains, they could see Yu Jiaming’s dark expression.

Without even guessing, it was obvious how much Yu Jiaming hated the person on the other end of the call. His expression was even worse than when Xing Yun had confronted him.

Back then it had only been resentment and unwillingness. Now it was pure hatred. He listened to the other person’s instructions with cold, icy calm, his jaw clenched so tight his cheeks bulged.

“Before October, I won’t meet with you.” Yu Jiaming spat out these words, the final syllable clean and sharp, leaving no room for negotiation.

The air in the room dropped eight degrees for no reason at all. The voice from the earpiece carried through clearly. “Four o’clock this afternoon. Come or don’t, up to you.”

Yu Jiaming held the phone up until he heard the dial tone from the other end, then slowly lowered his hand and tossed the phone onto the desk with a clatter.

“Why won’t he meet before October?” Qi Lin asked quietly.

Jiang Yishen shook his head, but his gut told him it had something to do with the guaranteed postgraduate placement. These days the thing they all said most often was “let’s talk about it in October.”

The phone screen lying face-up on the desk flashed once. Before the call-ended screen disappeared, Qi Lin quickly made out the contact label for the incoming call. It was “He Jian.”

In a flash of lightning, something came rushing back to him.

He knew this He Jian. He had, in fact, heard this name on many occasions.

He Jian was the Minister of the external liaison department of the school’s student council. He was a third-year preparing to step down, and the official handover would take place in September.

Qi Lin had spent a year in the college-level student council and had heard of this person through various school-wide events. He Jian wasn’t particularly close with any of his colleagues, which was precisely why his external reputation wasn’t bad.

“Which department of the student council is Yu Jiaming in again?” Qi Lin asked.

Jiang Yishen said, “The external liaison department.”

Yu Jiaming looked down at the small sticky note lit up by the screen’s glow and let out a cold laugh. “What are you so smug about. Same as you’ve always been, from childhood to now, a dog that can’t stop eating shit.”

Then he cursed He Jian with an extremely foul string of words.

Qi Lin looked over the sticky notes on the wall again and noticed that every person appearing on them had been born in the same year, the same age as Yu Jiaming.

“Four o’clock this afternoon, should we go take a look?” Qi Lin asked.

“We don’t even know where to go, and Yu Jiaming looks like he’ll stand them up anyway.” Jiang Yishen said.

Qi Lin thought for a moment. “It should be the external liaison department’s office.”

“They didn’t sound like they were talking about anything legitimate. Can they really discuss that in an office?” Jiang Yishen raised an eyebrow.

That was a fair point.

“Forget it, let’s go try our luck. It’s not like we can stake out the cactus all day.” Jiang Yishen said.

Yu Jiaming sat there stewing in silent anger for at least fifteen minutes. It was plain to see that he loathed He Jian to the bone. Then, with vicious movements, he yanked open the bathroom door.

Jiang Yishen and Qi Lin had no interest in watching another man wash up and retreated to the corridor. Passing by the stairwell, they caught a glimpse of a familiar figure out of the corner of their eyes.

The door to the back stairwell was left ajar. A voice drifted through intermittently, with words like “meet” and “didn’t buy” faintly audible.

Qi Lin identified the source of the voice one step ahead of Jiang Yishen and gave him a mild sideways glance, saying, “You’re arguing with me again.”

“How is that possible!” Jiang Yishen squeezed through the gap in the door and saw another version of himself crouching beside the staircase like a stray dog, talking very loudly into his phone.

He was saying, “You don’t need anything I give you at all. You don’t actually care what I give you, do you.”

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