The new tenant was indeed a girl. She looked well-behaved, with smooth, straight hair, wearing a beige sweater. She spoke softly, repeatedly thanking the movers: “The things are a bit heavy, thanks for your hard work.”
The front door was open. Inside, there was only simple decoration; the floors and basic facilities were installed when the developer handed over the property. No furniture had been bought yet, so apart from the large cardboard boxes brought in by the movers, the apartment was very empty.
The girl looked thin and frail, but she was still helping to lift the boxes. After moving a box, she raised her hand to wipe the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve. When she lowered her hand, she saw two strange men standing at her doorstep: “…Hello, I’m the newly moved-in tenant. You are?”
She had never seen the two people in front of her.
They looked like celebrities; if she had seen them before, it was impossible for her to have no impression.
“We live upstairs,” the man with a smile in his eyes was the first to speak. “Heard you were the new resident moving in, so we came down to take a look.”
When Xie Lin stared at someone, it was extremely beguiling. Those eyes seemed unintentional, but the depths always contained a bit of “deep affection.” Only Chi Qing, that completely impervious person, had no reaction to him at all. If a normal person made eye contact with him for three seconds, they would easily surrender and disarm.
“My surname is Xie, single character Lin.”
As Xie Lin spoke, he pulled the person behind him—who had a cold face and was constantly keeping the maximum distance from the surrounding movers—to his side and introduced: “I live in the direction opposite to yours, he lives right above you. If you need anything in the future, you can look for us.”
The girl’s face uncontrollably turned red. She was just about to say “Thank you,” when the man beside Mr. Xie, who had been quietly shifting his position, said: “Look for him, don’t look for me. Remove the ‘us’.”
“…”
The girl noticed that the hair on the man’s forehead was very long. Although he was beautiful, he gave off a somewhat decadent feeling. His lips were redder than hers even when she applied a thin layer of lipstick. The man said coldly: “If you have any matters, try your best to solve them yourself, or look for this enthusiastic Mr. Xie, he should be very willing to help. In short, knock on my door less.”
While Chi Qing spoke, he also kept paying attention to the moving workers walking around and the pile of large cardboard boxes on the ground.
As long as the movers showed any tendency to approach him, he would retreat in the opposite direction. Eventually, his back was pressed against the corridor wall.
Xie Lin helped smooth things over: “He’s just saying that. If you go knock on his door, he’ll still open it.”
Chi Qing very honestly emphasized: “I won’t open it.”
“…” Xie Lin glanced at him. “She just moved in, are you going to leave her with such an ‘hard to get along with’ impression?”
Chi Qing leaned against the wall and said: “Making things clear right from the start can save a lot of trouble.”
The girl: “…”
Even though he looks like a celebrity, this upstairs resident seems weird.
The grip on Xie Lin’s hand slightly tightened, and he finally lowered his voice to remind him: “Do you still want to treat your illness? With this greeting style of yours, even after another ten thousand years you won’t have a way to normally interact with people.”
Chi Qing: “…”
Xie Lin said softly: “Say it again.”
Chi Qing was rarely threatened by people. Generally speaking, he basically had no fatal weaknesses, but his current out-of-control situation was the exception.
Chi Qing pursed his lips. After a long silence, he struggled to organize his words, and for the first time in his life, expressed an attitude of welcoming a visit to his neighbors: “If you really have an emergency, you can occasionally come look for me. Although I really don’t want to open the door for you, I will try my best to overcome it.”
“…”
These words weren’t much better than the previous two sentences.
Fortunately, the girl didn’t mind. After all, having just moved in, the fact that the upstairs residents came down to say hello was already beyond her expectations. Recently, the discussion about girls renting apartments alone outside was intensifying. Coming out to rent at this time, saying she wasn’t panicked inside would definitely be a lie. She introduced herself: “My surname is Ren, you can call me Qinqin or Xiao Qin.”
Xie Lin read her name aloud: “Qinqin?”
Xie Lin was a person who easily made others relax their guard while chatting: “Is it the ‘Qin’ from ‘Shuqin’ (harp)?”
However, unlike the fox beside him who gave away warmth for free, Chi Qing opened his mouth and poured a basin of cold water: “Miss Ren.”
Ren Qin: “Uh… calling me Miss Ren is also fine.”
While speaking, a very faint cat meow came from inside the apartment: “…Meow.”
“Ah, right,” Ren Qin turned around and went into the house, picking up her cat. “It’s called Gaogao (Cake), one and a half years old this year. I forgot to introduce it to you, isn’t it cute?”
This cat was picked up by Ren Qin from the residential complex she previously lived in—a chubby orange cat.
“Last winter, because it was too cold, it hid at my doorstep,” Ren Qin’s personality was as gentle as her speaking voice. “At that time it wasn’t as fat as it is now, just a tiny little thing, so I took it home.”
The orange cat seemed very sensitive to the word “fat,” considering it an insult to its feline dignity, and let out another “meow.” Gaogao was obedient and cute; anyone who had come to see it liked it. Ren Qin hadn’t thought about whether the two visitors from upstairs liked cats or not. She held the cat out a bit and said, “Gaogao, say hello to the two uncles.”
Chi Qing had already been forced to the wall by the movers. With this cat suddenly thrust towards him, he had nowhere left to retreat: “…”
Xie Lin stepped in front of him first, preventing the orange cat’s enthusiastic paws from touching Chi Qing. After blocking it, under Ren Qin’s surprised gaze, he picked a relatively passable excuse: “He was scratched by a cat when he was little, so he’s quite afraid when he sees cats.”
“Is that so,” Ren Qin let go, and the orange cat scurried back into the apartment in a flash. “Sorry about that, but Gaogao is very good, it never scratches people, you can rest assured.”
Xie Lin said: “It’s fine. I can tell it’s very good and very cute.”
The two of them—mainly Xie Lin—chatted with Ren Qin for a bit as a simple greeting.
Through a few words and simple observation, it wasn’t hard to piece together Ren Qin’s basic life information. She was originally the manager of a dessert shop in the neighboring city, but the chain store experienced a sudden change, and she could only follow the higher-ups’ arrangement to switch stores to continue working. So last week, she was transferred to work at a branch in Huanan City.
It was also only after arriving that she heard two murder cases had occurred in this area, and the killer had not yet been caught.
Although this place couldn’t exactly be called close to Yangyuan Complex, it wasn’t too far either.
“Are you living alone?” Xie Lin asked.
“No,” Ren Qin smiled. “I’m living with a friend. He will arrive two days later. We were too rushed when booking tickets and couldn’t book for the same day.”
After the brief exchange of pleasantries, confirming there was nothing they needed help with, the two didn’t disturb her any longer.
Ren Qin waited for the elevator doors to close again before taking out her phone and making a call. The person on the other end was obviously that friend she was going to live with. She said softly: “I’ve arrived. The moving company is almost done… Mm… I know…”
As Ren Qin spoke, she brought up the two upstairs residents: “The people upstairs just came down to see me. They’re quite nice. I was even wondering if they were celebrities… Yes, they’re handsome, but they came down holding hands.” Ren Qin found it inconvenient to mention just now, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t noticed the little interactions between the two.
Ren Qin looked at the tightly closed elevator doors: “It’s just that one of them looked kind of weird…”
The “weird” Chi Qing was currently standing in the elevator, his eyes lowered to look at Xie Lin’s unreleased hand. Actually, Xie Lin wasn’t using any force at all. If Chi Qing wanted to pull his fingers out of his palm, he could do so with just a twitch of his finger, but he didn’t.
Even after the elevator doors opened and the directions to their respective apartments were clearly completely different, Chi Qing still didn’t pull his fingers away.
The two stood at the elevator entrance for a while, looking at each other.
Finally, Xie Lin shook the fingers in his palm and asked, “Are you planning on coming home with me?”
This sentence from Xie Lin was just a joke. He was even prepared for Chi Qing to tell him to scram. But unexpectedly, Chi Qing asked in return: “Can’t I?”
Xie Lin raised an eyebrow: “?”
Chi Qing knew very well how bizarre that sentence coming out of his own mouth was, so he added: “This illness of mine, I might need to extend the treatment time, otherwise it won’t have any effect.”
“…”
This was indeed a completely irrefutable excuse.
After all, his illness was indeed severe.
Chi Qing was entering Xie Lin’s house for the second time.
The furnishings inside were about the same as the last time he came. Having been tormented by the voices in his ears for too long, Chi Qing hadn’t been sitting on the sofa for more than ten minutes before he quickly felt a wave of sleepiness hit him.
Before completely closing his eyes, through the narrow slit of his vision, Chi Qing vaguely saw Xie Lin sitting in the sofa chair beside him, maintaining the same posture as last time. Only, last time he was holding a phone, and this time he was reading materials related to the case.
Xie Lin had his back to the floor-to-ceiling window behind him. The black silhouettes of the trees outside looked like a background wall.
A pen was clipped between the man’s slender, elegant fingers as he flipped a page of the case file. Chi Qing noticed the ring worn on his finger.
Actually, he had noticed this ring many times.
From the first time he saw him at the psychological clinic, besides his face, the only thing that left an impression was this ring.
Chi Qing habitually strung together the details he normally noticed. For example, in Xie Lin’s apartment, there were no paired objects in the rooms, nor were there any traces of another person having lived there. Furthermore, he had never heard from Xie Lin himself or from Ji Mingrui’s crowd about him being associated with anyone else.
Although he had a face that didn’t look like he was single, various details pointed to the conclusion that “he should be single.”
Of course, another scenario couldn’t be ruled out—it was left by a former girlfriend.
Still wearing a ring after breaking up indicated that his love for her was deeply rooted. The reason for the breakup might have been family obstruction, or perhaps the other party had passed away.
When a person is sleepy, their thoughts easily wander. Before sleeping, Chi Qing thought of a bunch of random things, and in the end, the more he thought, the more awake he became.
After Xie Lin finished flipping through the files, he looked up and saw Chi Qing on the sofa staring at him.
Xie Lin: “What’s wrong?”
Chi Qing gave the ring one last look: “Nothing.”
Xie Lin: “It’s not ‘nothing’ if you’re staring at my hand.” Following his line of sight, Xie Lin narrowed down the target range, “You’re interested in this ring?”
Xie Lin used practical action to overturn all of Chi Qing’s deductions from just now. Unconcernedly, he took the ring off his finger and handed it to him, as if handing over a worthless little trinket.
“?”
A thin band ring was inexplicably stuffed into Chi Qing’s other empty hand. He was a bit bewildered: “Isn’t this a gift from your ex-girlfriend?”
“What ex-girlfriend?” Xie Lin didn’t know where Chi Qing got that conclusion and said, “Where would I get an ex-girlfriend?”
“I bought the ring myself. When I used to go to bars with Wu Zhi, too many people would crowd around me, making it hard to refuse them, so I just bought a ring to wear.”
“…”
Chi Qing never would have imagined this was how the ring came about.
At the same time, he recalled the grand spectacle he witnessed when he went to the bar to deliver clothes last time—there was still quite a crowd surrounding Xie Lin.
Xie Lin twirled the pen between his fingers, not denying that this trick had little effect: “…But it’s quite useless.”
__
Author’s Note:
Xie Lin: Has strong self-management skills.
