[In the assistant’s response, the user is asking for a full English translation of a long Chinese passage. Given the no-tool constraint for this turn, provide a direct translation.]
“The room was filled with voices again. ‘Mr. Xie is really so handsome. I haven’t seen him in a long time. I wonder if he has a girlfriend.’
The voices in Chi Qing’s ear suddenly multiplied. They seemed to come from the entire clinic — staff voices, voices from patients in the neighboring consultation room, and among the staff, nine out of ten sentences were about Xie Lin.
‘Although I really like Mr. Xie, the distance between us is too far…’
‘Mr. Xie…’
‘…’
Mixed in with those were a few other topics: ‘That big beauty in sunglasses who came to our clinic yesterday — I thought she looked familiar. I just checked Weibo and remembered she’s the popular actress Yin Wanru, right? Celebrities really are a high-risk profession these days. She always looks so sunny and cheerful on variety shows, and yet she has psychological issues too. Speaking of which, there have been several celebrities who’ve come for counseling at our clinic…’
As the voices grew more and more numerous, it became hard for Chi Qing to make out what exactly they were saying. Everything was tangled together, unbearably noisy.
After Xie Lin saw that Chi Qing had finished the chocolate, he still hadn’t said anything. The man’s long bangs hung down over his forehead, and the expression in his eyes grew even more dark and cold, like he was wrapped in a fog that wouldn’t disperse. “What’s wrong? You don’t like it?”
Chi Qing still didn’t speak.
Xie Lin had seen this situation once before, when the two of them had accidentally switched drinks in the bar.
Xie Lin raised a hand and waved it in front of his eyes, casually threatening, “If you don’t talk, then I’m going to touch you.”
He thought those words might move Chi Qing, the man with the lifelong cleanliness obsession. Chi Qing did move — but things developed in a completely different direction than Xie Lin had expected. Chi Qing took off one glove and directly touched Xie Lin’s hand. Xie Lin hadn’t pulled his hand back; his fingers were spread open in front of him.
“I’m dizzy,” Chi Qing said this time very naturally, without much psychological resistance, making up an excuse. “I can’t stand steady.”
Compared to the first time, when he’d awkwardly hesitated over sending even a text message, Chi Qing found himself surprisingly calm.
After all, they had already touched each other so many times.
One more time didn’t matter.
When Chi Qing spoke, Xie Lin vaguely caught a sweet alcoholic scent. He froze, then turned to Dr. Wu and asked, “What did you give him?”
“Chocolate,” Dr. Wu said.
“I know it’s chocolate. I’m asking what kinds are in it.”
“There are all kinds in there. I don’t know which one he ate.”
Xie Lin asked directly, “Is there one with liquor filling?”
“Yes,” Dr. Wu said, nodding when the topic came up. “It uses carefully selected fine brandy. The texture is delicate and layered. Did he eat that one? Was it good?”
Xie Lin: “…”
The one Chi Qing had eaten was probably exactly that.
Xie Lin regretted having urged Chi Qing to take one just now. No one could have guessed there would be a liquor-filled one hidden among all those chocolates, and that it would happen to be the one Chi Qing picked. It really was the more you feared something, the more likely it was to happen.
In the end, before Xie Lin led the ‘unsteady’ Chi Qing out, he rarely dropped his smile and said to Dr. Wu very seriously, “He’s allergic to alcohol. He can’t have anything with liquor.”
When the two of them came out, several receptionists were gathered together chatting.
Chi Qing had just heard them talking about Xie Lin, but after he touched Xie Lin, the voices had gone quiet all at once. At that moment, apart from ordinary conversation, he couldn’t hear anything else, so he had no idea what they were thinking, and he couldn’t read the shocked expressions on their faces.
Why were the two of them holding hands while walking out?!
Today Xie Lin had driven himself. By the time they reached the garage, Chi Qing only briefly let go of Xie Lin’s hand while getting into the car, but as soon as Xie Lin bent down and sat inside, he quickly went back to the same state.
“…” Xie Lin was silent for a moment before asking, “Are you still dizzy in the car?”
Chi Qing said, “The dizziness now is different from before. Now I’m dizzy from the car.”
Xie Lin reminded him, “The car hasn’t even started.”
Chi Qing didn’t bother arguing with logic at all. “Maybe it’s because I drank alcohol. The moment I got in, I got dizzy. Do you have a problem with that?”
“I wouldn’t dare have a problem,” Xie Lin said helplessly at last. “If you’re like this, I can’t fasten your seatbelt.”
As soon as he said that, he saw Chi Qing lean toward him. This might have been the first time Chi Qing had ever taken the initiative to move so close to someone else. He was close enough that Xie Lin could clearly see Chi Qing’s lowered eyelashes through his hair — long, black, crow-feather-like lashes casting a shadow under his eyes.
Then Xie Lin heard a click.
Chi Qing’s other hand had yanked the seatbelt across and snapped it into place.
Was this really alcohol allergy?
Xie Lin thought inwardly. This feels more like he’s drunk.
Still, he tried persuading him further. “Be good. You’re already in the car, so you shouldn’t still be dizzy. And if you keep acting like this, it’ll make it hard for me to drive.”
After hearing ‘hard to drive,’ Chi Qing fell silent again. A few seconds later he took off his other glove, then pulled his phone out of his pocket.
“What are you taking out your phone for?” Xie Lin didn’t understand what he was doing.
Chi Qing’s pale fingers tapped twice on the screen. He opened a ride-hailing app and said while operating it, “I’ll get a driver.”
Xie Lin: “…………”
He really was drunk.
But it had to be said, the logic was still pretty sound.
It was a workable solution.
“Forget it,” Xie Lin said, letting Chi Qing’s hand rest on his right hand as he stepped on the accelerator. “Don’t move your hand around. I’m not responsible if something happens.”
On the way, Chi Qing really did not speak again, and he didn’t move his hand either.
All he could think about was what to do tonight.
Were there still sleeping pills at home?
No apartment in his building should be having a quarrel lately that involved yelling in the middle of the night.
…
He had always been very careful about what he ate. He would check ingredient labels over and over whenever he bought something, afraid that the ingredients list might contain something related to the word ‘alcohol.’ He never imagined that human calculations could not beat heaven’s arrangements.
Before the car drove into Yu Ting, Xie Lin suddenly remembered the topic that had been interrupted at the psychology clinic. “What were you about to say before?”
“What?” Chi Qing asked.
“Didn’t you have something you wanted to tell me?” Xie Lin slowly turned the wheel into the underground garage. “I only heard you say something about an assistant, and then you didn’t finish… What were you originally going to say?”
Chi Qing remembered. He had originally wanted to end the assistant arrangement.
But plans couldn’t keep up with changes.
“Nothing,” Chi Qing said at last expressionlessly, word by word. “I quite like being an assistant.” He added, “Our treatment can continue. You and Dr. Wu were right. My attitude toward treatment before wasn’t proactive.”
“That’s all you wanted to say?”
“Mm.”
Xie Lin said, “But from your face, I can’t see the slightest sign that you like it. You look more like…”
Chi Qing, with no self-awareness at all, asked, “Like what?”
“Like you were kidnapped,” Xie Lin said as he unbuckled his seatbelt. “We’re here. Get out, Assistant Mister.”
Although Chi Qing very much wanted to linger a little longer with Xie Lin, the last traces of his rationality told him he couldn’t make it too obvious. Xie Lin’s suspicion of him hadn’t been fully dispelled. Those casual, made-up explanations might fool other people, but not necessarily him.
After they got on the elevator, Xie Lin glanced at him. “You’re not even dizzy in the elevator, are you?”
Chi Qing drew the line at just the right moment. “It’s better now.”
The elevator quickly reached the ninth floor.
The moment he let go of Xie Lin’s hand, the sounds in the building rushed in like countless invisible ghosts squeezing through the crack as the elevator doors slowly opened.
‘Gao Gao, why are you stealing cat food again? No matter where I hide it, you can still dig it out.’
‘The old man is dead. Why should the inheritance all go to the younger son? Isn’t the older son a son too? So biased. When he was hospitalized, I didn’t see your precious younger son come by even a few times. What bad luck. If I had known I wouldn’t be able to get anything, who would have wanted to work themselves half to death at the hospital for a month.’
‘…’
Chi Qing still couldn’t determine how many days this loss of control would last. Once he got inside, he took a pen from the pen holder beside the calendar and circled the first day of February in black marker.
He looked at the fresh calendar page for a while. After the voice about the inheritance gradually faded, he turned around and went to the kitchen to pour water.
After that, he went to the medicine box to look for sleeping pills.
Based on past experience, the dosage couldn’t be too high at the beginning. Otherwise, even if he took more later, it would be very hard for it to work. Unless he swallowed an entire bottle, which could indeed make him close his eyes and hear nothing — but then it would also be hard to open them again. It was easy to sleep and never wake up.
After taking the pills, Chi Qing sat on the sofa and watched the relationship show that Ji Mingrui and Xie Lin had jointly mocked. He tried to understand why the people on TV were arguing, why they were crying, and what they were laughing about, but after watching for two hours, he still didn’t feel the medicine taking effect.
“…”
Maybe it was still the drug resistance acting up. The interval since the last loss of control had been too short. He’d been taking medicine all last month too, and its effect was becoming less and less obvious.
Chi Qing swiped open his phone to check the time, and saw a message Xie Lin had sent an hour earlier.
- Is your alcohol allergy feeling better?
Chi Qing replied: – It’s okay.
The reply came very quickly.
- Want to go to the hospital and get it checked?
He wasn’t actually allergic to alcohol at all. What would they even find at the hospital?
- No need.
After replying, Chi Qing set the phone down on the coffee table and planned to go shower, then lie down early and let sleep gradually build up. But just as he was about to take off his shirt, he felt a square object in his shirt pocket.
His movement paused slightly. Only after he took the square object out did he remember it was the note Xie Lin had stuffed into him before the counseling session ended.
— ‘What kind of person is the other party? What is your impression of them?’
Chi Qing didn’t know the answer, nor could he guess it.
But he still had some self-awareness. The words on the note should be something like ‘hard to get along with,’ ‘clean freak,’ or ‘weirdo’ — after all, Ji Mingrui often complained about him like that in his heart.
Thinking that, Chi Qing casually unfolded the note.
There really weren’t many words on it. Half of it was still blank when he opened it, and only after he unfolded it completely did he see what was written.
Only five words were written on the note:
- A very special person.
Chi Qing froze.
Xie Lin hadn’t used words like ‘abnormal,’ nor ‘strange’ or ‘odd.’ He had used the word ‘special.’
__
Author’s note:
- Xie Lin does have some kind of ‘personality defect,’ but he does not have supernatural abilities!!”
