It was getting late. After Chi Qing got back, he was told he could head home and rest first, and he didn’t stand on ceremony. He turned and left immediately. Ji Mingrui grabbed his car keys and called after him, “Wait, I’m heading back too. I’ll give you a ride.”
Ji Mingrui dropped Chi Qing off first. The road was clear the whole way, and by the time the sky was turning pale with the first light of dawn, he was just about to say, “Your neighbor just asked me a lot of questions about you,” when he heard the man in the back seat suddenly ask, “Do you know why the one surnamed Xie stopped being a consultant before?”
Chi Qing then asked, “You said he was a consultant ten years ago, right?”
“…?”
Ji Mingrui’s hands nearly slipped on the steering wheel.
Chi Qing had never shown interest in anyone before. Ji Mingrui had known him for years, and not even the names of his classmates had ever come out of his mouth. Now he was actually asking about Xie Lin.
At first, Ji Mingrui hadn’t known much about Xie Lin either. But there was no shortage of Xie Lin fans around him, and since Brother Bin got along with Xie Lin especially well, Ji Mingrui had gradually picked up a fairly rich understanding of the man.
“Yes, ten years ago. When he was in middle school,” Ji Mingrui said. “I heard that even back then he was getting love letters every day. The school’s confession board was full of his name. You could still go there now and see it.”
“His older brother and the school leadership were worried every day that he’d end up dating half the girls at school.”
“I’m not sure whether he ever dated anyone,” Ji Mingrui went on. “But looking at his face, he doesn’t seem like someone who never dated.” He muttered, “And he’s always wearing that ring too. Looks like he probably had a ridiculous number of romances outside.”
Chi Qing: “…”
That wasn’t what he wanted to know. And the ring wasn’t what Ji Mingrui thought it was either.
But Chi Qing still caught the key word in the answer: “His older brother?”
Ji Mingrui glanced at the rearview mirror to check the traffic behind them as he turned the car. “His brother, Xie Feng, passed away ten years ago… As for why he became a former consultant, I really don’t know. But I did hear someone mention that his psychological evaluation results back then seemed to have some issues.”
What Ji Mingrui didn’t manage to say was: since you two are so curious about each other, why not sit down and talk face-to-face?
After the case was closed and the killer was arrested, the news spread quickly. The gloom that had hung over Tianrui and Yangyuan Residential Complexes for a full month finally lifted.
After finishing her statement, Ren Qin got home at dawn. She stood at her front door, turned on the light, and Gaogao ran out from the bedroom to greet her. She crouched down and pulled the orange cat tightly into her arms.
Ji Mingrui’s team had assisted with the investigation and performed well, earning commendation. After that, they went back to their regular police station mediation work. The girlfriend who had threatened to jump off a building finally broke up with her boyfriend. On the phone, Ji Mingrui comforted her: “There’s no big deal, girl. There are plenty of men with two legs out there, aren’t there? Just live well. Why kill yourself over a man who doesn’t love you? Life is a journey — think of it as he got off the bus first.”
He was saying this very skillfully when he suddenly remembered Yang Zhenzhen crying in the bar a month earlier.
Before, his mediation had always just been casual comforting talk, but this time it felt different. He said with real feeling, “Girl, your life is still going on, so stop crying.”
After the case ended, Chi Qing finally had time again and picked up the interrupted counseling sessions. After setting a time with Dr. Wu, he put on his gloves and went out.
“Mr. Chi, hello. It’s been a long time,” the receptionist said with a smile. “Same room as before — just go straight in. Dr. Wu should already be in the counseling room.”
More than two months had passed since Chi Qing first pushed open the door to this counseling room. In those two months, he had unexpectedly experienced two cases and also met a psycho. All of these changes seemed to have started the very first time he opened that counseling room door.
Chi Qing curved his fingers and knocked on the door.
From inside came a familiar voice: “Come in.”
Xie Lin was sitting in Dr. Wu’s chair. This time he was reading a different book, Psychiatry. When he saw Chi Qing come in, he didn’t look surprised at all. “Sit.”
“…”
The scene looked eerily familiar.
Chi Qing said, “Why is it you again?”
Xie Lin closed the book. He had stayed at headquarters until very late last night, and today he still showed up at the counseling room in a different outfit, his hair carefully styled. He looked polished to an almost peacock-like degree, as if he was always ready to show off.
“Don’t misunderstand. Dr. Wu was the one who asked me to come this time,” Xie Lin said.
The expression on his face seemed to say he didn’t believe that. “I didn’t know you were here before I came. You also booked for ten o’clock?”
Chi Qing: “Otherwise why would I be here at ten? For a walk?”
While they were talking, Dr. Wu finally arrived late. “Sorry, I was just in the break room. Ah, once you get old, you can’t be without your thermos. How long have you two been waiting?”
The use of “you two” proved that Xie Lin hadn’t been lying.
This session really had been arranged by Dr. Wu.
As for the purpose, probably only Dr. Wu himself knew.
“I invited you two here because I have something I want to say.”
Dr. Wu unscrewed his thermos and left it open so the hot water could cool a bit. He sat in the seat Xie Lin had vacated and officially began the conversation. He honestly sighed, “The two of you can be said to be among the few bottlenecks I’ve encountered in my career.”
Chi Qing: “…”
Xie Lin: “…”
“So I adjusted my treatment approach,” Dr. Wu said. “I’m planning to arrange the two of you together and carry out treatment as a pair. This is an unprecedented thing in my past treatment experience. One plus one may be greater than two. I hope the two of you can move forward together.”
Dr. Wu’s final words were addressed to Chi Qing: “Xie Lin reported to me before that your combined treatment was temporarily interrupted. I don’t know why, but I think you can’t give up on the slim chance of hope. Your attitude toward treatment needs to become more proactive.”
Because the out-of-control state had ended.
Chi Qing answered silently in his heart.
Xie Lin, taking Dr. Wu’s feelings into account so he wouldn’t be embarrassed, chimed in: “Dr. Wu is right. Treatment attitude has to be proactive.”
Chi Qing didn’t care whether other people were embarrassed or not. If they were embarrassed, he couldn’t tell anyway. He said very calmly, “If you think your skill level isn’t enough for this job, I can leave your clinic and find someone more capable.”
Dr. Wu: “…”
Xie Lin still smiled and smoothed things over. “It’s fine. He always talks like this. You can just start.”
At first Dr. Wu didn’t understand where Xie Lin got his confidence from. He thought to himself that this Mr. Chi didn’t look like someone who would spare him any face at all — if he said he was leaving, he really would leave, and wouldn’t even turn his head back.
Then the next second, he saw Xie Lin brazenly grab the wrist of Chi Qing’s hand hanging by his side.
That made it impossible to leave.
Chi Qing: “Let go.”
Xie Lin: “Give me some face. Try it.”
Chi Qing: “No need to try.”
“Why not?”
“Waste of time.”
“We haven’t even tried,” Xie Lin said at last. “How do you know it won’t work? I think that meal at Ren Qin’s place last time was pretty effective. At the very least it’s better than you turning around, going home, and sitting alone watching relationship shows.”
The detail about relationship shows had only been learned from Ji Mingrui yesterday.
— “What does he usually do at home? Play games?”
— “I’ve never seen him play games. He doesn’t like them. Says they’re childish. Usually he likes sitting in the living room watching TV.”
— “Watching TV?”
— “Especially relationship shows. All those messy scenes, everybody crying and shouting. I don’t know why he studies that stuff.”
Chi Qing didn’t want to admit Xie Lin had a point. He still said “let go,” but his attitude had shifted somewhat, and only then did Xie Lin release him.
Dr. Wu’s interactive psychological exercise was very simple. He gave each of them a sheet of white paper and asked them to write their impressions of the other person: “It can be a strength, a weakness, or just some personality trait.”
It was a very common method. As a simple opening for two people to interact, many people couldn’t say much face-to-face, but sometimes putting pen to paper produced unexpected results.
When Chi Qing made the first stroke, he found a lot of words popping up in his head — things like “gifted at solving cases,” “very good at understanding people and communicating with them,” and “annoying but still barely tolerable.”
He hadn’t realized he actually had so many perceptions of Xie Lin.
But when it came to actually writing them down, he still couldn’t do it. In the end, after weighing everything, he wrote three words on the paper: psycho.
“You can’t just write something nice?” Xie Lin said. “My strengths should be pretty obvious. It shouldn’t be that hard to find one.”
The two of them were sitting side by side now, like desk mates in school. As long as one of them turned their head, they could see what the other was writing.
Chi Qing’s pen paused. “Turn back around.”
Xie Lin: “You write something nice and I’ll turn back.”
Chi Qing had never experienced anything like this before. Back when he was in school, his desk mate never dared to make a sound. They strictly obeyed the invisible line between them. Even if they accidentally touched his desk while passing a test paper, they’d be scared to tears: I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, Chi Qing, please don’t hit me.
Although Chi Qing had said he didn’t hit people, with his weird habits and his perpetually gloomy face, no one believed it.
The one surnamed Xie on the side was still chattering: “Is it really that hard to think of? First of all, being good-looking doesn’t even need me to say it.”
Chi Qing: “…”
So noisy.
So Chi Qing did something especially childish for once. He added two words in front of “psycho”:
very annoying
Once it became “very annoying psycho,” Xie Lin finally shut up.
Dr. Wu then chatted with them for quite a while about psychology-related topics. At the end of the session, he said, “If you’re interested in the content on the notes just now, you can exchange them and take a look.”
Xie Lin had already seen it, so he folded the paper in his hand neatly and slipped it into Chi Qing’s hand, then went back to discussing the earlier psychological theory with Dr. Wu. He looked less like a patient and more like someone there for advanced study.
Chi Qing wasn’t interested in snooping on what other people had written, so he hadn’t looked at what Xie Lin wrote at all. He only remembered, out of the corner of his eye, that Xie Lin finished writing very quickly — probably not that many words.
Thinking that, Chi Qing didn’t rush to unfold the paper. He was more concerned about something else. “By the way, there’s something I want to tell you.”
Xie Lin turned his head to look at him. “What?”
“The assistant thing…”
Chi Qing had already been planning to bring up the assistant arrangement. He didn’t need treatment anymore, and the case was over, so the role of assistant was originally only temporary…
Before he could finish, Dr. Wu interrupted: “I just remembered — I forgot to give you two something.”
Dr. Wu pulled open a desk drawer and took out a bag of wrapped items in gold paper. Inside were tiny round pieces, each wrapped in gold foil. “My wife made these chocolates herself. She made too many, so she asked me to bring some over. Try them — they’re all different flavors.”
Chi Qing was about to say no, but Dr. Wu was too enthusiastic and directly handed the chocolates to him.
Xie Lin took one naturally. “Hazelnut flavor? If you hadn’t said they were homemade, I really wouldn’t have been able to tell. The craftsmanship is genuinely good.” He looked over at Chi Qing. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
Chi Qing unwrapped one. The black chocolate looked ordinary, no different from the kind sold in stores. He thought he’d just deal with it, but the moment he bit into it, the ordinary chocolate finally revealed what made it not so ordinary: a strong brandy flavor burst out from within and filled his mouth.
“…”
Dr. Wu had been right. The bag of chocolates came in different flavors, and Chi Qing had forgotten that one of the varieties in the world of chocolate is liqueur-filled chocolate.
