WC ⋆ Chapter 8

After the jewelry box interrupted them, the earlier topic couldn't be picked back up no matter what. Jiang Yishen had no desire to go into detail about his own life, and a few perfunctory words were enough to let it drop.

Qi Lin also felt a little awkward. On an emotional level, the way Jiang Yishen had shut him out was uncomfortable, but reason kept reminding him that they were just ordinary friends now, and Jiang Yishen had no obligation to confess to him the parts of his private life he'd rather not share.

But his nerves kept tugging at him, telling him that their mutual friends all knew, and yet it was being kept from him specifically. Jiang Yishen didn't treat him as an ordinary friend at all.

Another nerve twitched back in rebuttal: obviously, an ex is still an ex. How could they ever really become ordinary friends?

In the middle of all that mental back-and-forth, a notification popped up on Qi Lin's phone and shattered his tangled thoughts.

"Holy shit!" he blurted out, the profanity crisp and perfectly enunciated.

Jiang Yishen immediately rushed over and covered his mouth. "You can't swear on New Year's Day. Can you say something auspicious for once!"

"Mmph, mmph." Qi Lin nodded inside his palm.

Jiang Yishen pulled his hand away. Qi Lin shot up from the sofa: "The airline app just reminded me. My flight takes off in three hours."

"Holy shit!" Jiang Yishen said, stunned. "What flight? Where are you going?!"

"I'm going to…" Qi Lin had completely forgotten about it. Only now, staring at the flight number, did it come back to him. "A friend's wedding. The wedding is tomorrow."

Airfare in January had shot up in price. He'd booked the ticket about half a month in advance, bought a gift, and then put the whole thing out of his mind. The New Year's Eve loop had stretched his subjective sense of time by a full week, and as far as Qi Lin was concerned, this was something that had happened a month ago.

The friend was someone he'd met when renting an apartment, two years older than him. The two of them had shared a short-term rental for a while in October and November, and they'd gotten along well.

Qi Lin had an introverted personality. Once he'd left campus, it became very hard to meet people he could really open up to, so this roommate had been something of a surprise. When they were sharing the place, Qi Lin had just quit his internship and decided to take a full-time break to study for the civil service exam. Life's pressures were piling up on him, and the lingering misery from his last relationship refused to let go. His whole state of being was in bad shape.

The roommate was an engineer who'd come to the city on a business trip, an old friend of the landlord's. He was willing to split the rent with Qi Lin as a way to pocket some travel allowance. Qi Lin had once asked about it: a long assignment of fifty-odd days came with fifteen thousand yuan in allowances, twice what Qi Lin's internship company had paid.

Back then they'd made a promise to attend his wedding at the start of the new year. Then the loop had barged in and cut across everything, and Qi Lin had forgotten about it entirely.

Jiang Yishen didn't know whether to ask which friend or which city first. His tongue got tied in a knot before he managed to stammer out: "Wait, so what do I do?"

"You…" Only then did Qi Lin realize the problem.

If the inference that they'd loop forever without kissing was correct, then they couldn't be apart for more than twenty-four hours.

The flight was taking off in three hours. There was no way to make it. If he rebooked to a departure tonight, he'd still have to be back before midnight tomorrow.

Qi Lin felt his vision go dark. "Can I come back tomorrow?"

"It's not a question of 'can.' You have to come back." Jiang Yishen said it, then still couldn't hold back the question: "Which friend? How come I don't know about this?"

Driven by some hard-to-name impulse, Qi Lin found, the moment he was asked, that he didn't want to talk about his life in the second half of the year either.

Only in this moment did he suddenly understand Jiang Yishen's feelings. It was a kind of pride that was difficult to describe, mixed with a certain studied dignity.

Nobody wanted to dissect their less-than-smooth life for an ex to see. Even if Qi Lin didn't think sharing a rental with strangers fell into the category of "less than smooth," an unbalanced state of mind worked exactly like that. As long as you hadn't made it big or distinguished yourself, even an ordinary, unremarkable life wasn't something you wanted to put on display.

The September breakup had been like a rest note, cutting their lives in two. Everything that happened afterward, everyone they met, was stamped with the label of "new life." Telling an old person about your new life always carried a subtle, ambiguous undercurrent, as if you were letting them back in.

They both wanted nothing to do with that kind of ambiguity, as though not drawing close again meant never getting hurt again.

Seeing that Qi Lin hadn't answered for a long time and was just quietly packing his bag, Jiang Yishen didn't press further. He understood what that silence meant, and he could empathize with the same kind of avoidance.

After paying the steep rebooking fee, the new flight was at six in the evening. Heading to the airport now was a bit early, but sitting around the apartment felt like having needles in his back, and Qi Lin would rather go to the airport and wait it out.

He was only going for one night. Qi Lin packed a backpack, tucked his documents close to his body, and stood at the door. He faced the front door for a full minute, staring at it, before steeling himself to turn around.

There was no escaping it. If it had to be kissed, it had to be kissed.

Jiang Yishen was leaning against the opposite wall, arms folded, watching him.

Neither of them spoke. Qi Lin held his gaze for a few seconds, then looked down, fingers rubbing the pocket of his trousers, unconsciously hooking the corner of his ID card inside.

He said nothing. Jiang Yishen said nothing.

Silence stretched across the small apartment. You could even hear the refrigerator cycling on and then cooling down. Qi Lin noticed his own heartbeat thundering like a drum, impossible to suppress no matter what. His very breathing sounded heavy by contrast.

The Jiang Yishen across from him suddenly moved. Qi Lin looked up on reflex, wanting to step back. His heel caught the edge of the rug, and he stopped himself cold.

"Then forget it," Jiang Yishen said, looking at him. "Loop once tomorrow, catch the original flight, and you'll even save a few hundred yuan on the rebooking fee."

Qi Lin ran through the scenario in his head. He'd probably spend the whole night thinking about the fact that they had to kiss tomorrow. Better to get it over with early. Faced with the prospect of being forced to kiss his ex-boyfriend, a few hundred yuan in rebooking fees really didn't amount to much.

He squeezed his eyes shut. "How long does it have to be?"

"Is there a time limit on this?" Jiang Yishen raised an eyebrow.

"How would I know? Yesterday it was you who kissed me." Qi Lin said.

He didn't actually care whether there was a time limit. He was just racking his brain for something to say, anything to scatter the awkwardness and unease.

Jiang Yishen moved a little closer. "I don't remember. I drank too much yesterday."

Qi Lin looked up at him.

Jiang Yishen didn't remember, but he did. Ten seconds. Xu Baili had told him over WeChat.

His gaze settled on Jiang Yishen's lips. Thin, pale in color, but he knew what it felt like to kiss them.

The touch was familiar. The scent was familiar. Every movement was familiar.

That familiarity left Qi Lin at a loss, yet he still closed his eyes when Jiang Yishen lowered his head and leaned in.

Jiang Yishen liked to start with a light brush, lips carrying a coolness, then move to the corner of the mouth, licking and nipping gently until they turned soft and warm. His kissing technique was poor. He always ended up biting someone until it hurt. But Qi Lin would only grip his forearm, fingers grazing the raised veins on the back of his hand.

Breaths intertwined. Just as Jiang Yishen bit down on the corner of his lip, Qi Lin suddenly stepped back half a pace, both hands braced against his shoulders. "Wait, wait a second."

Jiang Yishen stopped. He looked at him with dark, heavy eyes, and through that gaze passed all one hundred and eleven days and nights, restrained and full of longing, burning so bright it was hard to look at directly.

But when Qi Lin finally took a few deep breaths and met his eyes, all that was left in them was a pure, simple grievance, saying wordlessly how much those few centimeters of being pushed away had hurt.

Qi Lin couldn't bear that look. Even knowing it was something Jiang Yishen was putting on deliberately, he was helpless against it.

He let go, hands falling slowly, and closed his eyes again.

Closing his eyes was consent. Jiang Yishen cupped the back of his head, and this time the kiss was deep and lingering.

Jiang Yishen was constitutionally incapable of stopping at a taste. Even a ten-second routine obligation had to go deep, tangling lips and tongue and refusing to let go.

Nobody kept track of the ten-second count. Habit had been carved deep into the subconscious. The kiss carried a pull, a following, a synchrony so perfect it was almost frightening.

Qi Lin was kissed dizzy, his mind going blank, and he couldn't even remember afterward how he'd opened the door and left.

He sat on the subway heading to the airport, his mouth dry, yet the corner of his lip kept feeling, mistakenly, like it was still wet. He thought, in a daze, that the first kiss of the new year had actually come on New Year's Day itself. He'd originally thought he'd be alone all year.

Qi Lin looked at his own reflection in the glass. The teeth marks on his lower lip didn't seem to have faded yet. His heart felt unsettled, a bitter taste like squeezing juice from orange peel, hollow and empty, yet something was lodged in his throat. All he could hear was the lonely echo of his own heartbeat.

So that was that. That was all it could be.

They couldn't go back to the way things were. Just like the single-day loop that briefly ended after the kiss, the days rolled forward, and the flowing passage of time couldn't hold anyone in place.

Even if the kiss was the same, the feelings behind it were no longer quite the same.

After that moment of reflection, Qi Lin opened his phone and found that Jiang Yishen had sent him a WeChat message a few minutes ago.

Jiang Yishen: Why did you take the only key in the apartment with you…

Jiang Yishen: I locked myself out. My clothes are still inside. So cold…………

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