After everyone arrived, they sat down and ordered food.
Xie Lin glanced at Chi Qing’s hand under the table and lowered his voice to remind him, “There aren’t many people around now.”
“…” Chi Qing said expressionlessly, “There are waiters.”
The private room was separated from the main dining area by some distance. Waiters carrying trays came through the corridor, and the room door was pushed open from time to time. A few cold dishes were served first.
After the dishes were all on the table, Chi Qing still hadn’t let go. Half his hand was tucked into his sleeve, and he was only hooking Xie Lin’s ring finger with the tips of two fingers. This time, without waiting for Xie Lin to ask, he pulled out the excuse he had already prepared and said coldly, “The waiters will come in to clear the plates too.”
Xie Lin: “…” Fine.
Although the other three couldn’t see what was happening under the table, they had already caught a glimpse when the two of them first came in.
Jiang Yu exchanged a quiet look with Su Xiaolan.
Su Xiaolan raised her eyebrows: I don’t know either. Ask Mingrui.
Ji Mingrui lowered his head and focused on eating, signaling that he didn’t want to take part in the discussion, and he also didn’t want to recall what he’d seen in the interrogation room at headquarters before. He shot Su Xiaolan a look: less talking while eating.
Jiang Yu was a grown man who didn’t like cake and didn’t care much about ceremony. This meal was enough to count as celebrating his birthday.
But the place had deliberately been chosen inside the mall rather than at some restaurant by the roadside, so clearly today’s plans weren’t limited to just one meal. In a mall, food, shopping, and entertainment were all in one place, so after eating, they could just wander around and find something to kill time with and relax.
In Jiang Yu’s words, this was called reasonably extending the time he could spend with his idol.
“Uh, since we don’t have much to do this afternoon anyway, why don’t we walk around the mall after dinner? I just heard Xiaolan say there’s apparently a movie premiere at the cinema today,” Jiang Yu said. “I checked, and the next screening is in 20 minutes. If everyone wants to go, I’ll buy the tickets?”
It was rare to get a day off, and the other two members of the rookie team had no objections.
As for Xie Lin, there was even less need to mention him. He was always easy to get along with, wearing a very understanding mask. His brows lifted slightly as he smiled. “Sure. I don’t mind.”
Only Chi Qing frowned when he heard the words “movie theater.”
He couldn’t understand people who liked to celebrate birthdays like this. A meal should basically be enough.
Why go watch a movie too?
He had barely ever stepped into a cinema in the past ten years.
…
Movie theaters were crowded and dense — that alone was enough for him to avoid them at all costs.
The film Jiang Yu mentioned was a huge hit. It had become popular even before release, with pre-sale box office already reaching several hundred million. The leads were all current top celebrities, and the director had already won two Golden Awards. The film was adapted from a novel with an excellent reputation, and all those factors together explained its remarkable results.
The cinema was upstairs. Just as the group reached the entrance, they saw a giant promotional poster. Four black characters hung vertically on the left side: Ghost Shadow Mystery City.
Several lead actors on the poster were obscured by dense black mist. Only parts of their faces were visible. The female lead showed only her eyes, while the two male leads each showed half a side profile. The thick mist looked like invisible hands clutching at them, as if it were roaring.
“A thriller?” Su Xiaolan genuinely hadn’t expected that.
After picking up the tickets, Jiang Yu ran over and said, “Sorry, there were too many people buying tickets for this movie. I couldn’t get seats together, so I bought front and back rows… Who wants to sit in the back two seats?”
What he hadn’t expected was that Chi Qing, who hadn’t spoken the entire time and clearly didn’t want to set foot in the cinema at all, would take the two tickets from his hand.
Chi Qing pointed at himself and Xie Lin. “I’ll go to the back with him.”
Ji Mingrui had known Chi Qing for so long and had never once been to a cinema with him. In a tone like he’d been abandoned, he said, “…Then what about me?”
Chi Qing glanced at him. “You can sit wherever you want in the remaining three seats.”
Ji Mingrui: “…” Damn.
The movie soon began. All the lights around them went out in an instant, leaving only a faint glow from the screen. The movie’s style almost perfectly matched the poster — dark and gloomy from the opening, and after the spooky opening sequence with sound effects, the theater only got a little brighter.
But not by much, because the opening scene followed a group of people exploring with a VCR camera, and the footage shook all over the place so nothing could be seen clearly.
A bright, excited voice shouted, “Hurry up, come look! There seems to be a village up ahead!”
Just from the opening, it was a very typical exploration-slash-survival movie.
Chi Qing didn’t pay much attention to the screen. He and Xie Lin sat in the back corner, and all his attention was on Xie Lin’s hand, which was being lit up and dimmed by the flickering screen. The hand was lean on the back, with distinct knuckles, and a thin ring sat at the base of one finger.
Xie Lin watched the screen for a while and found it uninteresting. He turned his head and happened to meet Chi Qing’s eyes. “You’re not watching the movie. Why are you staring at me?”
Chi Qing refused to admit it. “You were looking at me.”
“I was looking at you,” Xie Lin admitted with a smile. “You’re prettier than the movie.”
“…”
Chi Qing had been organizing his words in his head the whole time, trying to find some excuse. He wondered whether saying the theater was too dark would sound too ridiculous.
After meeting Xie Lin’s eyes, he thought… forget it.
He’d already made up excuses so many times today that even he thought he was being ridiculous.
Doing this once or twice was fine, but if he had to keep making up random nonsense in front of Xie Lin, he’d rather go back home and stay there. Worst case, he’d shut himself in for half a month. The noise would still be annoying, but at least he wouldn’t die anytime soon.
Chi Qing made up his mind to leave the theater.
But just as he was about to stand up, he felt something lightly rest on the back of his hand.
“You’ve been restless since sitting next to me,” Xie Lin said, holding his hand. “Even watching a movie and you still think there are too many people around.”
It was too dark around them to clearly see what the person beside him was doing. Because of that, Chi Qing froze when Xie Lin suddenly reached over and covered his hand.
That warm touch was very familiar to him, familiar enough that the frustration in his heart was inexplicably soothed in that instant.
The movie moved into its proper storyline. The group that had gone exploring with the VCR all died one by one, but the clips they had filmed went viral online. People began calling the mysterious village in the footage the “Ghost City,” and the place attracted many exploration enthusiasts.
Although Ji Mingrui was a police officer serving the people and looked big and rough, he was actually timid. When he was a kid, his mother would make sentences like “If you don’t behave, xxx is going to take you away,” and it worked every time.
He could still grit his teeth and tough it out at work, but once he got off duty, his true nature showed.
“Xiaolan,” Ji Mingrui said, trembling after the main cast entered Ghost City, “can I borrow your arm to lean on?”
Su Xiaolan was also affected by the horror atmosphere, but she was still fairly composed. “…Sure, lean on it.”
That was also when they realized this movie was clearly a couple movie.
At this time slot, there was only this one thriller among all the comedies and commercial films, making it very conspicuous, and it was exactly the kind of thing that helped couples deepen their feelings on a date.
And to be fair, the director really was skilled. He’d made the movie so well that even people who had wanted to show off their manliness had started trembling.
The girl sitting next to Chi Qing said, “Honey, I’m so scared. That scene just now was so bloody.”
Her boyfriend replied, “I’m scared too. Good thing we didn’t eat much at dinner.”
Xie Lin lightly pinched one of Chi Qing’s finger joints to make him pay attention, then turned and asked, “What do you think of the movie?”
Chi Qing answered truthfully, “Sixty minutes have passed since the opening, and in those sixty minutes I’ve more than once wondered why its tag is thriller.”
By all rights, this was nowhere near enough to count as a horror film.
Xie Lin agreed with him.
So the two people who could calmly lie on a bed or crouch under one at a killer’s crime scene because the film was too boring started chatting idly, still talking about the movie.
The girl next to Chi Qing had actually noticed when they first came in that there were two very handsome men sitting beside her. They were so good-looking that even though she was terrified by the movie plot, she still found herself paying attention to what they were saying, and occasionally sneaking glances at them.
Then she heard one of the handsome men — handsome, yes, but also gloomy-looking — say, “That stab was off. The heart isn’t there.”
The other man, smiling with his eyes, said, “Mm, and the intestines are in the wrong place too.”
The smiling one continued, “The director probably doesn’t understand anatomy. And if you want to kill someone in the most painful but still conscious state, there are actually better methods. It doesn’t need to be that complicated.”
Girl: “…………..”
What exactly had she just heard?
Was this the kind of topic handsome men were supposed to be discussing?
The more she listened, the paler she got. The smiling one even began listing a few methods on the spot. She had already been sweating from fear because of the movie, and now she couldn’t sit still anymore. She tugged her boyfriend’s sleeve and said, “Let’s stop watching and go.” Her lips silently formed the words: “The two people next to us seem not normal.”
Completely unaware that he had successfully scared someone off, Chi Qing fell asleep halfway through the film.
The other person, who was arguably the most composed in the whole theater, idly checked his phone for a while.
Wu Zhi, whom he hadn’t contacted in a long time, had messaged him ten minutes earlier: You there?
Because his credit card had been cut off by his family recently, Wu Zhi had been behaving himself for a while too.
Before he had even gotten around to explaining why he was messaging, Xie Lin sent back: No time. We’ll talk later.
–I haven’t even said why I’m looking for you yet.
Xie Lin replied: Still no time.
–So what are you busy with right now?
–Watching a movie.
Wu Zhi thought, It’s just watching a movie. That doesn’t interfere with chatting. You’re not going to use some “my hand is borrowed so it’s inconvenient to type” excuse to fool me again, are you? We’re friends after all. No need to do that.
Not long after he sent that, he received a dark, blurry photo from Xie Lin.
At first he didn’t know what the picture meant. But after he brightened his phone screen and zoomed in, he could faintly make out a pair of overlapping hands.
Xie Lin’s signature ring was very obvious. The other hand, although blurry and not easy to see clearly, was still strikingly white against that black background.
Wu Zhi: …………
Xie Lin finally sent him one last message: Not fooling you. It really is borrowed.
