WC ⋆ Chapter 6

Qi Lin woke up, and the most immediate physical sensation was a pounding, swollen head; the fatigue and dizziness from the hangover had still not faded.

He lay there staring at the ceiling for a while, then wrapped himself tighter in the blanket, rolled over, and squeezed his eyes shut.

The party operation’s ultimate objective had been achieved. He had personally verified it: his physical state would not reset along with the loop.

He had eaten too little yesterday but drunk far too much, and now his stomach felt hollow and tight. He lingered in bed a while longer, then reached out to feel for his phone on the nightstand so he could order delivery.

His hand crept out from the warm covers and groped around the nightstand for a long time. No phone. No notebook either.

Qi Lin snapped fully awake, bounced upright, and heard the sound of slippers shuffling outside the door. Only then did his heart drop back into place. He remembered that Jiang Yishen was here, probably having moved his things to a different location.

The owner of the slippers appeared in the doorway shortly after, staring at Qi Lin with a deep look, and squeezed out a greeting from his throat: “You’re up?”

“Mm.” Qi Lin rubbed his eyes and flopped back down onto the bed.

Jiang Yishen watched as the edge of the blanket was slowly pulled back, and Qi Lin wrapped himself up again. His voice was a little hoarse: “Drank too much, head’s spinning a bit. Where’d you put my phone?”

“What do you need your phone for?”

Qi Lin found him a bit odd, but answered honestly anyway: “Check the time. Order delivery.”

The slippers shuffled away, then came back a few seconds later. Jiang Yishen said in a stiff, measured tone: “Ten thirty in the morning. What do you want to eat? I’ll go buy it.”

“No need, I’ll buy it myself,” Qi Lin said.

Jiang Yishen spoke like a robot: “Do you want rice noodles, your favorite place?”

Qi Lin went silent.

His silence made Jiang Yishen uneasy. He added: “Something else is fine too, you… if you’re not feeling well, just rest for now.”

The more he spoke, the less conviction he had. Anyone could tell something was off. Qi Lin sat up again, his hair sticking out in all directions, studied Jiang Yishen cautiously for a moment, then suddenly threw off the blanket and walked over.

Jiang Yishen immediately planted himself in the doorway, one hand braced against the doorframe, his tall frame blocking it completely: “Are you trying to get some water? I’ll go get it for you.”

“What are you doing?” Qi Lin looked up at him, his tone a little cold. “Not letting me out?”

Without waiting for Jiang Yishen to stammer out an answer, he shoved him aside and walked into the living room, looked around, and couldn’t see anything obviously wrong. Qi Lin made a skeptical circuit of the apartment, then stopped in front of Jiang Yishen: “What are you up to?”

“I’m not up to anything.” Jiang Yishen gave a light cough, trying to look righteous. “I’m just looking out for you, that’s all.”

Qi Lin didn’t buy it. He held out his hand: “Give me my phone.”

He really couldn’t hand over the phone. Jiang Yishen’s wrist pressed tight against his trouser pocket, where Qi Lin’s phone was sitting. Its WeChat inbox was exploding with messages from Xu Baili, messages that ran the full gamut of desperate pleading, bewildered questioning, and remorseful self-reflection. They thoroughly expressed the complicated feelings of a friend who had once helped his buddy climb out of the shadow of a failed relationship and was now watching him walk right back into the darkness.

Even more terrifying was the fact that one press of the lock screen would reveal the unmistakably glaring date: January 1st.

Jiang Yishen had no idea how to explain this to Qi Lin.

“Why won’t you give it to me?” Qi Lin pressed his fingers hard against his brow. He was genuinely exhausted and had no energy to play hide-and-seek with Jiang Yishen on an empty stomach. “Did you get into trouble again? I won’t be angry at you, just tell me.”

Jiang Yishen shook his head.

“Then you…” Qi Lin was about to say something when a burst of firecrackers suddenly went off outside the window.

The sound of New Year’s Day.

New Year’s firecrackers, meant to drive away misfortune and welcome good luck. Yet both people inside the apartment shuddered. Qi Lin’s eyes went wide with disbelief, and the sound of the explosions snapped the taut wire of his nerves.

He forgot everything else and immediately lunged for the phone in Jiang Yishen’s pocket.

“Just hear me out, just hear me out,” Jiang Yishen was shoved down onto the bed and scrambled frantically to pin Qi Lin down. But Qi Lin’s strength was surprisingly great this time; in two or three moves he broke free and snatched the phone away.

January 1st. The second day of the twelfth lunar month. New Year’s Day. 10:41.

Qi Lin went still. Jiang Yishen went still.

They held that scandalous position, Qi Lin in a state of shock, Jiang Yishen struck by a bolt from the blue.

After some indeterminate stretch of time, it was only when WeChat popped up a message from a friend at last night’s dinner that Qi Lin came back to himself.

He shoved Jiang Yishen off and held the phone with slightly trembling hands: “January first, it came. The loop is broken! Why? What did you do?”

“I…” Jiang Yishen’s hand covered the screen and pressed it gently down. He himself crouched a little lower, leaned in toward Qi Lin, and fixed his eyes on him. “This is going to sound a bit absurd. Brace yourself first.”

Qi Lin looked at his unusually serious expression, and a thousand guesses flashed through his mind. But the joy of the loop ending still overrode his reason. He said: “How absurd can it be? More absurd than us being trapped in a loop?”

“Yes.” Jiang Yishen said with absolute sincerity. “Now I’m going out to buy you rice noodles. After I leave, look at WeChat. I’ll give you two hours to process this. Before noon, let me know what flavor you want.”

The way he said it sounded like a last will and testament. Qi Lin immediately felt the phone turn into a hot potato in his hands. Jiang Yishen’s fingers, still resting on the screen, brushed against his palm, burning hot, almost scorching.

Jiang Yishen solemnly patted his hand, then flipped nimbly to his feet, put on his clothes, grabbed his keys, and headed out the door with a smoothness that, from the back, looked very much like someone fleeing for their life.

Qi Lin stood rooted to the spot. He pulled open the bedroom curtains and let the sunlight spread across the entire bed, then sat down cross-legged and opened WeChat.

Xu Baili had sent him 99+ messages.

It was hard to say whether this counted as the anxiety of approaching home, but in any case Qi Lin somehow couldn’t bring himself to open them right away. He opened a few private chats from friends first, expecting New Year’s greetings or questions about whether he’d sobered up. But the words on the first screen froze him cold.

[Fan Zi: Xiao Qi, you guys all drank too much last night. Don’t worry, no matter what, don’t feel pressured. Everyone’s treating it as just a bit of fun.]

Qi Lin sharply sensed the gravity of the situation. He couldn’t afford to delay any longer. He opened Xu Baili’s chat and read from the very beginning, one word at a time.

[XU: Are you awake? Still not awake? Jiang Yishen took you away. I am extremely concerned for your personal safety right now.]

[XU: It’s not that I’m against you two getting back together. I know I shouldn’t meddle in your business, but as your friend, let me give you a piece of advice from the heart: if you want to get back together, sort out your problems first.]

[XU: If you don’t fix the problems, you’ll only repeat the same mistakes. I don’t want to see you two like that either.]

The first dozen or so messages were relatively calm. Around three in the morning, Xu Baili’s messages turned unhinged.

[XU: What the f*ck, Uncle, wait, when did you two get together? I had absolutely no idea!]

[XU: But we really did try our best to stop him. He was just too fast. If he’d kissed even a little slower, we would’ve taken him down!]

Kissed what? Kissed who?

Qi Lin had actually already guessed the rough outline of events, but he didn’t want to believe it.

[XU: He kissed for a full 10 seconds. Isn’t that a bit much? Holy hell, 10 seconds! In front of six people! I’m starting to wonder if one of us is his romantic rival.]

Qi Lin immediately pressed the lock button. His lips, which had felt nothing since he woke up, suddenly started burning, and the back of his tongue ached too. Everything ached everywhere.

He was still in his pajamas. He was now beginning to wonder if there was a ghost haunting the apartment, because how else could it be this cold.

The sunlight today was brighter than yesterday. It seemed the wind had picked up overnight, scattering the clouds and mist from the sky to reveal a deep blue expanse.

Every single thing was proclaiming that today was a new day, and the key to breaking the loop appeared to be kissing Jiang Yishen.

This wasn’t merely absurd, it was downright perverse. It made their behavior yesterday of recording data against the clouds look utterly ridiculous. The high-minded terms in the notebook, things like magnetic fields and temporal flow rates, were all clowns in a farce. They hadn’t been living inside a science fiction story at all. It was lowbrow pulp fiction.

Qi Lin’s psychological resilience, honed over several days of ordeal, had reached its peak. He gave himself ten minutes to accept this. By the time he was standing at the sink brushing his teeth, he was already thinking deeper without realizing it.

If this truly was the only way to break the cycle, what about the days ahead?

Before they found a way to end the loop for good, did they really have to kiss every single day just to get to the next one?

It was as if Cupid’s arrow had pinned them together. What they would have to face was far more than just the act of kissing itself. There were countless attachments that came with it. They would have to live together, figure things out together. This meant they were once again going to step back into each other’s lives.

And yet their breakup in September had been precisely because of incompatible personalities within a romantic relationship.

Qi Lin knew how painful that feeling was. He didn’t want to go through it again, and he didn’t want Jiang Yishen to go through it again either.

He bent down and splashed cold water onto his face. The droplets ran down the tip of his nose and fell. He felt a heaviness in his chest, some dull, nameless emotion packed in there.

Far outside the residential complex, Jiang Yishen stood inside a bakery, staring blankly at the fragrant, freshly baked bread. The phone clutched in his palm suddenly buzzed once. He quickly looked down and saw it was a message from Qi Lin.

[70: I want tomato flavor.]

Jiang Yishen quietly let out a breath of relief. He had been afraid Qi Lin would be so frightened he’d block him, which would have made things impossibly awkward. He was just about to reply with an “okay” when the next message popped up.

[70: Why did you kiss me??]