[I know you can hear me.]
Chi Qing felt as if he had been scalded; he tried to pull his hand back like he’d been electrocuted.
The car remained silent. Neither of them spoke. The only sounds were their shallow breathing and the rustle of fabric as Xie Lin leaned forward. That distorted voice—a voice only the two of them could hear—sounded like a dream-murmur.
Xie Lin closed his eyes slowly, opened them, and continued to share his deductions about Chi Qing.
[At first, I thought you only heard certain voices when you were drunk. These “certain voices” were related to Ren Qin. You were certain she was in danger, but the scope was too large and too hard to guess.]
[In the month or so after you got drunk, you would deliberately appear around me, so there had to be some connection between me and that “voice.”]
[If my guess is correct—the secret you’ve been carrying is that you can hear what people are thinking. Though this conclusion sounds absurd. Actually, if you think about it, you are clearly not a person who can read the room. You can’t even tell if someone is genuinely smiling or forcing a bitter one, yet sometimes, you always seem to realize what someone wants to express.]
[That’s the reason you wear gloves. You can’t touch other people’s hands.]
Xie Lin hadn’t read all those psychology textbooks in Dr. Wu’s office for nothing. As soon as he pondered it, he realized the origin of Chi Qing’s germaphobia. 【You have a phobia of germs, but perhaps it’s also because you’ve read too much over the years. You hear things that can’t be spoken—the hypocritical or dark thoughts. Sometimes, it’s not the hands that are dirty, but the human heart.]
When Chi Qing heard those voices, he couldn’t speak out, nor could he make any obvious expressions. He could only express his discomfort by doing something else: washing his hands. In psychology, there were many similar cases.
…
But that wasn’t all Xie Lin wanted to say. There were other things he couldn’t hold back, things he didn’t want to endure any longer.
It was true that the adult world relied on seduction, but that was useless on the person in front of him. You ask him what kind of person he likes, he says “dead people”; you wink at him, he might ask if there’s something wrong with your eyes.
Xie Lin opened his eyes and met Chi Qing’s gaze directly.
They were similar in some ways—both carried a sense of danger—but they were also worlds apart. Xie Lin’s eyes were slightly upturned, a very light color, usually as gentle as a March breeze.
Chi Qing, on the other hand, was like a deep pool of frozen water. But the surface of this bottomless, icy pool rippled, as if the ice were cracking. He knew Xie Lin had been suspecting him, and he knew he had exposed himself a few times in front of Xie Lin, so he knew Xie Lin must have had all sorts of theories… but he never expected Xie Lin to guess the one truth that seemed most impossible.
The secret he would have preferred to drink until he collapsed rather than reveal in the private room earlier.
Chi Qing’s eyelashes trembled. He wanted to ask, “How did you know?”
The moment that thought arose, he recalled the glass of beer Xie Lin had blocked for him just in time. If he had known all along, then when Xie Lin blocked the drink… apart from knowing about his alcohol allergy, was he also trying to shield him?
The voice in Chi Qing’s ear didn’t stop. The man’s voice paused, then made a “shh” sound, signaling him not to speak yet:
[If you really can hear me, let me finish first.]
Following that, Xie Lin asked: [Am I handsome today?]
He quickly answered himself: [—I changed into this for you. I tried on seven or eight outfits before leaving the house.]
Xie Lin asked a second question: [Is the earring nice?]
[Actually, I haven’t worn those things in eight hundred years. I’m not some rebellious eighteen-year-old kid; I wore it for you, too.]
Xie Lin self-destructively spilled out every deliberate thing he had done.
[Your cat is indeed very well-behaved. It took me half an hour of teasing it before it would finally scratch me. I did it on purpose; I wanted you to help me blow-dry my hair.]
[The cast on my wrist, too. I was afraid that once the cast on my leg was off, I wouldn’t find a reason to get close to you.]
[…]
[I didn’t want to tell you so soon, but you are just too dense. If I don’t say it, you might never notice, and even if I do, you might not understand—you are very special. I like you. The word “like” might be appearing in your dictionary for the first time. I don’t know how to explain it to you, because it’s the first time it’s appeared in mine, too.]
[But actually, I can’t be entirely sure if you can hear me. You hate being touched by others so much, yet you always come to touch me after you’re drunk. Perhaps I possess some ability to eliminate those voices.]
Xie Lin’s voice slowed and deepened: 【I still wanted to take the gamble, because these thoughts are so intense that even I can’t control them. Even if I don’t intentionally think about them, they circle around my ears all day. So if you really have this ability… you must hear them, right?】
Chi Qing’s mind went blank for a second.
The voice, unique to Xie Lin and distorted by his mental projection, drowned out every other sound in the real world.
To an outsider, the two of them sitting in the car would be an indecipherable scene. They hadn’t said a word, yet they had fully occupied each other’s entire world.
He couldn’t hear the engines turning off in the parking spots nearby, couldn’t hear the owners getting out of their cars and slamming their doors. He didn’t even notice the motion-sensor lights in the hallway flickering on and off, matching the rhythm of his own heartbeat.
These illusory sounds, which usually annoyed him, didn’t feel annoying at all right now. Instead, for the first time, he felt they were more real than reality itself.
He knew every word Xie Lin said when broken down, but when combined, it was hard for him to react. By the time the last syllable faded, Chi Qing had only just finished digesting the line: “You are very special. I like you.”
You are very special.
I like you.
These words overlapped with the note Xie Lin had exchanged with him after that psychological consultation.
—”…What kind of person do you think the other person is? Write down what you want to say on a piece of paper. When the consultation is over, if you are both willing, you can exchange them.”
Back then, when the consultation ended, he had opened the note and seen Xie Lin write five words in a fluid hand:
-A very special person.
After Xie Lin finished speaking, the world in Chi Qing’s ears gradually grew quiet. Returning to reality from the world Xie Lin had opened up to him, he faintly heard the neighbor from the next spot push open the fire door and head upstairs.
That door let out a faint bang.
Everything Xie Lin had deduced was basically correct. The word “like” didn’t exist in Chi Qing’s dictionary. The last time he heard it was when Ji Mingrui’s mother had jokingly asked if he had anyone he liked.
…
He hadn’t dreamed of butterflies this time, but his heartbeat was as fast as a butterfly flapping its wings.
Xie Lin waited a long time without receiving a response from Chi Qing. He stared into Chi Qing’s deep, black pupils, losing all the judgment he had once been so proud of. He couldn’t tell if Chi Qing had heard him or not.
He thought with a sinking heart: Did I guess wrong? Or does Chi Qing just not want to bother with me?
…
Before this disappointed thought could even last half a second, Chi Qing’s overly red lips moved. He pursed them, looking a bit unnatural as he said: “I can hear you.”
Xie Lin, whose head had slumped slightly, jerked upward.
Xie Lin’s gaze was scorching. Chi Qing turned his head away and repeated: “You guessed right. I can hear you.”
Xie Lin had confessed, but he hadn’t expected a response. He didn’t mean that because he liked Chi Qing, Chi Qing had to give him an answer today or be with him. He just couldn’t help but lay his cards on the table; he just wanted Chi Qing to know.
Given Chi Qing’s personality, it was normal that he wouldn’t be won over in a short time.
However, after they silently left the garage and went upstairs—just as Xie Lin finished entering his door code and was about to lean against the doorway to tell Chi Qing goodnight—Chi Qing, who had been facing away from him, suddenly took his hand off the touchscreen. He turned around and walked toward him.
Xie Lin thought his reaction time was just slow, and that he had finally organized his thoughts to face him and scold him. He had already imagined what Chi Qing would say—it would probably be something like, “Although I don’t know what ‘like’ is, I advise you not to like me; get lost.”
Xie Lin was fully prepared. Even if Chi Qing had raised his sleeve to punch him right then, he wouldn’t have been surprised. Just as he was thinking this, he heard Chi Qing say something completely unrelated to “get lost”: “Earlier, when we were playing games in the private room, the truth question was to tell a secret. Actually, I have more secrets than just the one you guessed.”
Chi Qing stood in front of Xie Lin, blocking all his lines of sight. He pondered how to express his recent feelings: “I have another secret, and that secret has to do with you.”
Chi Qing had something to say. He was never one for beating around the bush; he was always blunt, so blunt that he often offended people. Though he didn’t quite understand why he had been so abnormal lately, he still intended to say these thoughts to his face.
Chi Qing’s cold voice stated flatly: “When I see you, I become very abnormal.”
“My heartbeat is very fast when I help you blow-dry your hair, and it’s very fast when I put on your earring. In short, every time you get close to me, I want to push you away, but I can’t open my mouth.”
This time, it was Xie Lin who was stunned.
He had braced himself to be scolded or punched, only to hear such unexpected words. All his senses shut down for a moment, and then clicked back into place like he’d been electrified.
“And those things that I would usually hate if anyone else did them, you can do them without me minding,” Chi Qing continued, “I don’t hate being touched by you, and I don’t hate you talking to me by my side, even if it feels annoying sometimes. I often wonder if I’ve contracted some kind of disease.”
My secret is that my heartbeat is too fast when I see you.
It’s that you have gradually become the exception.
At first, Xie Lin held special status only because Chi Qing couldn’t read his mind. But ever since he had become able to hear Xie Lin… this person remained an exception.
