Thank you @Renea for the Kofi.
Chi Qing rarely dreamed about the past.
He was stunned for a moment, completely forgetting that the distance between him and Xie Lin was too close. Because the dream had abruptly ended, his germophobia didn’t act up immediately. He got out of the car and said “Thank you” to Xie Lin for the second time.
Xie Lin: “Do you really want to thank me? Just saying it isn’t very useful.”
Chi Qing intuitively felt that whatever followed wouldn’t be anything good.
Sure enough, Xie Lin smoothly took out his phone and tapped open a certain WeChat mini-program. “Tell me your WeChat ID, I’ll add you. Adding me as a friend counts as your thanks.”
Even when Xie Lin proactively asked for someone’s number, it didn’t look like he was hitting on someone by the street, mainly because he himself had a face that people usually hit on.
“This is my first time proactively asking for a number,” Xie Lin said. “It’d be very embarrassing if I couldn’t get it.”
The electronic door let out a faint sound: “Beep.”
Chi Qing returned home and pushed open the door. The light in the entryway was off. He leaned against the door, looking down at the small red dot on his phone screen.
[You have a new notification]
[Accept friend request? Accept OR Reject.]
Chi Qing barely had any living friends on his WeChat.
When he wasn’t speaking, his face easily offended people; once he opened his mouth, it was even easier to offend them. Most of the people he had met back when he was studying acting didn’t dare to chat with him at all. Ever since that incident, everyone’s evaluation of him had gradually shifted from ‘the perfect kid next door’ to ‘He is pretty, but his personality seems a bit gloomy.’
He didn’t really like chatting anyway; the only person he usually chatted with was Ji Mingrui.
Since junior high, Ji Mingrui had been full of a sense of justice, which specifically manifested as a love for looking for things to do when there was nothing to do. He always felt obligated to look out for the gloomy, reticent classmate sitting behind him.
Through years of unremitting effort and astonishing perseverance, it wasn’t until they graduated high school that he barely managed to upgrade from “an ordinary classmate whose name isn’t remembered” to “a classmate with a name” in Chi Qing’s eyes.
Chi Qing tossed aside that slight feeling of discomfort and tapped ‘Accept’.
Xie Lin was probably still driving, so there was no activity from his end for the time being.
He thought for a moment and sent a message in advance: [Don’t message me if there’s nothing going on.]
After sending it, Chi Qing felt this sentence didn’t fully express his thoughts, so he added another one: [Don’t look for me even if there is something.]
As he exited the chat box, Ji Mingrui happened to send over a few messages.
– Are you home yet?
– I just heard about an insanely crazy old case. It’ll scare you to death, it’s practically my childhood trauma.
Ji Mingrui just thought of whatever and said whatever, his topics emerging endlessly. Without waiting for a reply, he started a new topic a few minutes later.
– Tomorrow is my day off, we’re planning a team-building activity. That kid Jiang Yu has grown so big and actually never been to a bar. If you’re free, wanna come together?
Ji Mingrui finally sent one last message.
– Oh, speaking of bars, I suddenly thought of something. From the time I met you until now… I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drink alcohol.
The room was as dark as ever. Chi Qing had turned on the TV in advance, leaving only the light from the TV in the entire living room. That pair of black gloves he had taken off was resting on the coffee table.
After taking a shower, Chi Qing sat on the sofa holding a glass of water. Looking at the pair of black gloves, he thought of the continuation he hadn’t dreamed of just now.
During those three months in the hospital, he also couldn’t believe this supernatural ability.
After his deafness symptoms disappeared, he thought he was cured.
Everything might really have just been auditory hallucinations; all the swarming voices weren’t real, and he had finally returned to the real world.
However, on the day he was discharged, he realized that this mind-reading ability hadn’t disappeared along with his deafness. It was just that compared to those three months of deafness—when it triggered unconditionally within a certain range—it now had a necessary condition: he needed to physically touch the other person with his bare hands.
But this condition wasn’t absolutely absolute either; there was one thing that could break these shackles.
[…I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drink alcohol.]
Chi Qing’s gaze fell on a certain word in the chat box.
If he drank alcohol, his mind-reading would lose control.
To be precise, it would return to the state he was in when he was deaf. He would be able to hear voices within a certain range. Within this specific range, as long as the other party was speaking right at that moment, he could hear them.
It would be as if the whole world was whispering eerily right beside his ears.
“Are the lives of you ‘Three Good Students’ all that boring?” The next day, Ji Mingrui sat in a dimly lit bar, pushing the drink the bartender had just mixed toward Jiang Yu. “Don’t tell me you’ve never drank alcohol either.”
Jiang Yu took it, saying a bit awkwardly, “Does beer count? In the summer, I’ve had my dad’s cold beer a few times with meals.”
“…”
Ji Mingrui really didn’t know what to say to him. “Look at Sister Lan next to you. She’s fiercer than you; she drinks whiskey without even blinking.”
Su Xiaolan had cut her hair into a neat, clean bob. Even out of her police uniform, she dressed exceptionally sharply. If one didn’t know better, they’d think she was here on some undercover mission, which sharply contrasted with her gentle face.
Jiang Yu: “Sister Xiaolan, why don’t you wear skirts? Do you not like them?”
Su Xiaolan glanced at him, uttering the most macho words in a gentle voice: “It’s inconvenient. Skirts affect my kicking speed.”
Ji Mingrui: “We’re here to relax.”
Su Xiaolan: “What if something happens in the bar unexpectedly, and the people need us?”
Ji Mingrui cupped his hands in respect: “Makes sense. I was being thoughtless.”
Having wrapped up a moderately sized case, the three rookies finally felt like they had gotten a real sense of being on the job. Their occupational hazards also arose accordingly. Unable to relax at all, they habitually sized up the establishment’s facilities—checking for any violations, whether their qualifications were sufficient, if they lacked business licenses, and whether there were any under-the-table transactions or illegal industrial chains going on in the shop.
The bartender in front of them felt a chill down his spine from their stares.
But no matter how they sized up the place, the most eye-catching person in the entire bar was an acquaintance.
The man was sitting alone on a sofa seat inside the venue, his posture lazy. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, and his fingers resting on his knee occasionally tapped along with the music. No one was sitting beside him, but there were quite a few people intentionally or unintentionally gravitating closer.
“Can I… sit here?” someone finally couldn’t help but ask.
“Sorry,” Xie Lin wasn’t as easy to talk to as usual, though a smile still lingered in his eyes. “Taken.”
“You’re very pretty,” Xie Lin raised his hand and pointed, signaling the waiter nearby to give her the drink that had just been brought over. “…Although the seat is taken, I wonder if I can buy you a drink to wish you a pleasant evening.”
Ji Mingrui had never seen such a scene of endless suitors; he was dumbfounded.
“…Is that basically everyone in the whole place going over there?”
Jiang Yu: “It’s my idol. Isn’t it normal for him to be charming?”
As a woman, Su Xiaolan had to admit this point: “But he hasn’t agreed to a single one, which is quite inconsistent with that face of his.”
Ji Mingrui: “He’s probably waiting for someone.”
Just as Ji Mingrui finished speaking, he saw another eye-catching person coming down from the upstairs private rooms toward the sofa area. This person was eye-catching mainly because he looked incredibly flashy—a typical trendy rich kid with a few strands of yellow dyed in his hair. He anxiously looked around before heading toward Xie Lin’s spot.
“Brother Lin!”
The yellow-haired guy sat down, chugged a gulp of alcohol, slapped his thigh, and said, “Finally, you’re here.”
Xie Lin: “Speak. What is it?”
The yellow-haired guy’s full name was Wu Zhi. He was a famous playboy in Huanan City. True to his name (Wu Zhi sounding like “no ambition”), he eventually became an ambitionless youth who had no ideals in his heart other than picking up girls. It was just that this person possessed nothing but money; because his EQ was truly low, he constantly lost and fought again on his journey of picking up girls.
The Xie family had also done some business in the early years, and later produced a Captain-level figure like Xie Feng, so they still maintained good relationships with the children of these prominent families.
Before Wu Zhi even stated his business, he respectfully picked up a glass of wine, smoothly blurting out a phrase as he toasted: “Daddy!”
Xie Lin tilted his head and laughed. Accepting the drink, he leaned against the back of the sofa and looked at him: “I don’t have a son as stupid as you, stop trying to suck up to me. If you have something to say, say it.”
Wu Zhi: “Well, there’s a girl I’ve been really interested in recently, but I don’t know what to say if I go over. Give me some advice?”
Xie Lin shot him a sidelong glance: “You’re interested in quite a few girls within a single month.”
Wu Zhi declared: “But every time I care, it’s genuine!”
Wu Zhi’s policy was like this: Even though he didn’t know how to woo women, he could ask someone who did.
Facts proved that Xie Lin truly was his second parent. It wasn’t that Xie Lin’s methods were incredibly superb, but rather that he seemed to very easily perceive what the other person was thinking. This kind of sharpness left Wu Zhi utterly convinced.
Xie Lin pinched the wine glass with his fingers, the bar’s ambiguous lighting casting over him: “Which one?”
Wu Zhi: “The one at the open table over there, gentle yet badass. The moment she walked into the shop today, she crashed right into my heart.”
Xie Lin: “Your ‘recently’ sure is recent enough.”
Wu Zhi: “It’s just the past ten minutes! Love always comes so suddenly.”
Xie Lin looked in the direction he pointed, froze for a moment, and then said: “I’m afraid you’ll have to pick another one.”
Wu Zhi: “?”
“Officer Su,” Xie Lin walked over with his drink and greeted Su Xiaolan and the others. “Day off today?”
Wu Zhi was dumbstruck: “…”
Officer?
Su Xiaolan didn’t know what was happening. She clinked glasses with Xie Lin: “It’s a rare day off so I came to have a couple of drinks. Didn’t expect to run into you here. I didn’t get a chance to properly thank you for last time.”
Xie Lin: “I didn’t do much. If we’re talking about thanking people, aren’t we missing one?”
Su Xiaolan realized he was talking about Chi Qing.
Ji Mingrui explained from the side: “I invited him, but he refused to come out, said absolutely not. I sent him a huge paragraph, and he replied with three words and a punctuation mark.”
Xie Lin could roughly guess what those three words were.
Xie Lin: “Noisy, comma, crowded.”
Ji Mingrui: “???”
Did this guy peek at our chat?
Xie Lin placed his glass on the bar counter, took out his phone again, and looked up a certain newly added person: “Let me try inviting him.”
Xie Lin tapped open the chat with Chi Qing, turning a blind eye to the two “greetings” Chi Qing had sent over earlier.
– I drank too much.
– If no one comes to collect me, I might get thrown out on the street.
Wu Zhi, whose brief ten-minute secret crush had just ended, caught a glimpse and praised him as a “master” in his heart, planning to note down these two sentences as textbook material.
However, he could never have imagined that the person on the other end was just as impervious to all approaches—a true match for his Brother Lin.
Chi Qing: Since you can still type, you can hail a cab back yourself.
Xie Lin: …
