Even though Chi Qing was no longer particularly keen on paying him any mind, once he saw that message, the chatter of the protagonists on the television seemed to fade away from his ears.
He didn’t even notice the cat quietly shifting its bottom, its tail sweeping across the surface and landing perfectly right beside his feet.
Chi Qing didn’t reply in his usual conversational style. He moved his fingers for a moment and typed back a single character:
-Yes.
After sending it, he waited for the reply on the other end. He didn’t know what Xie Lin intended by asking that question, or if his own thoughts were aligned with Xie Lin’s… This emotion called “anticipation” had appeared in his world for the very first time.
Chi Qing stared at the phone screen for a while. Seeing no reaction, the cat grew bolder, shifting half its body toward him and carefully using its hair-shedding frame to nudge the man’s pale, slender ankle.
Chi Qing didn’t notice the cat’s small movements. He was simply thinking: So this is the feeling people have when they chat.
The phone screen seemed to have been cast with a spell. The wizard waved his wand, and the next second, two lines of text popped up:
-From now on, you’re not free tomorrow.
-Your time tomorrow belongs to me.
“Meow~~~”
The cat rubbed against Chi Qing’s ankle with satisfaction. It wasn’t until it made a sound that Chi Qing noticed it, and the cat hair drifting everywhere: “…”
Chi Qing couldn’t explain why this cat was “dancing on his landmines” (provoking him), but his temper was unexpectedly good. He didn’t immediately banish it 800 meters away or knock on Ren Qin’s door to make her take it back. He simply shifted his position, poked the cat’s forehead through the air, and spoke in a tone that could be described as gentle: “Don’t follow me.”
Chi Qing stared at the commercials on TV for a while, his mind flooded with thoughts ranging from “Where will Xie Lin take me tomorrow?” to “What will the weather be like?”
He unlocked his phone again and opened the weather app, wanting to see if tomorrow would be a good day. For the first time, he found himself hoping for a cloudy day.
Xie Lin was busy until the middle of the night. After he got back, he wanted to see Chi Qing. Even though they hadn’t been apart for more than 12 hours and were only separated by a single wall, he still missed him dearly. But considering Chi Qing’s stable rest schedule, he ultimately decided not to disturb him.
Little did he know that Chi Qing, who usually had a very stable sleep schedule, was lying in bed at that very moment, eyes closed. He was exhausted, but for some reason, he couldn’t fall asleep.
A split second before he drifted off, a thought suddenly struck him: What should I wear tomorrow?
Chi Qing: “…”
Late at night, the darkness outside was heavy. The coldest days of winter had passed, and the weather was gradually warming up, revealing a hint of faint warmth. He stood in front of the wardrobe for a long time, pulling out coats one by one, until several outfits were laid out on the bed.
Looking at those clothes, Chi Qing felt like he had lost his mind. In the end, he stuffed them all back one by one.
Is trying to date someone really this annoying?
On the other side, Xie Lin wasn’t having an easy time either. He was in his study processing work documents modified by his employees. As he worked, he opened a new blank document page beside the work files and began a different “work” task—preparation for a date.
The points he needed to be mindful of when dating someone like Chi Qing were listed out from top to bottom, filling half the document.
Places with too many people are a no-go.
Noisy places are a no-go.
Places that aren’t clean enough are definitely a no-go.
…
Xie Lin thought back carefully, trying to recall if Chi Qing had ever praised any place before. He thought for a long time. There was actually one.
Xie Lin loosened the grip on the fountain pen he was holding and pressed his temples with a headache: “…”
“It can’t be… a one-day trip to the morgue, right?”
Perhaps heaven heard Chi Qing’s inner call. The next morning, the forecast shifted from cloudy to overcast, with an 80% chance of rain. The weather, which had just started to warm up yesterday, took a sharp turn, and temperatures plummeted.
Chi Qing was quite satisfied with this. He pulled back the curtains to admire the gloomy weather for a moment and said to the cat that had snuck into his room early in the morning: “The weather is quite good today.”
The cat tilted its head at him: “Meow? (You call this good?)”
Chi Qing: “In honor of the nice weather today, I won’t hold it against you for coming in and out of my room as you please.”
The cat blinked its eyes and gave a deep look at the dark, cloud-covered sky outside: “…”
Humans, perhaps, are just a species that cats can never understand.
Chi Qing watched it, holding the coats from the bed in his hands. By some strange twist of fate, he tried to seek the cat’s opinion: “Pick one.”
The cat: “Meow, meow, meow???” It couldn’t tell the difference between these black coats at all.
Chi Qing urged impatiently: “Pick quickly. If you don’t pick, you don’t get dinner.”
The cat: “…”
The cat meowed for a while, then finally strutted out of the master bedroom.
Chi Qing listened to its three meows and looked at the clothes in his hands: “The third one?”
Chi Qing’s patience finally hit its limit—mostly because he felt annoyed with himself and didn’t want to overthink it anymore. He grabbed one at random, picked up an umbrella from the entryway, and as he pushed the door open, he found Xie Lin already waiting outside.
Xie Lin was leaning against the wall, his gaze falling on him.
The man was in his usual black palette. Because his skin was pale and his lips were red, he didn’t look monotonous at all. The tip of the thin silver umbrella in his hand tapped against the floor.
Time seemed to instantly revert to the day they first fought. After he had finished inspecting the dead cats in the warehouse, when he looked up, he saw a face through the falling rain.
At the same time, he noticed that Chi Qing hadn’t worn his gloves today.
Chi Qing pursed his lips. He didn’t know why Xie Lin kept staring at him. He was already feeling awkward for not wearing gloves, and being stared at made it even stranger: “Is there something on my face?”
“No,” Xie Lin laughed. “Just looking at how good you look.”
Chi Qing held his umbrella and stood side-by-side with Xie Lin at the elevator door: “Thanks. You’re not bad yourself.”
He was telling the truth. Xie Lin wasn’t dressed any less low-key than he had been in the private room that day; the man was tall and long-legged, dressed like a repeat offender of a “scumbag” who specialized in deceiving the hearts of innocent girls.
Finally, Chi Qing found a topic to talk about: “The weather is nice today.”
Xie Lin knew his personality, so he didn’t bother nitpicking whether an overcast day counted as “good weather”: “It is nice… Anyway, as long as you’re by my side, even if it were hailing, I’d think it was a good day.”
“…”
The time Xie Lin had scheduled with him was 10:00 AM, just in time for lunch. When the two arrived by car at the restaurant entrance, the black clouds in the sky were pressing down lower and lower, though it hadn’t started raining yet. The cold wind, carrying moisture, poured straight into their collars.
After getting out of the car, they stood side-by-side on the sidewalk waiting for the red light to change.
Xie Lin suddenly asked: “Are you cold?”
Without waiting for an answer, he naturally went to touch Chi Qing’s hand—a simple gesture to test his temperature. They hadn’t been out of the car long, and the heating had been on full blast, so Chi Qing wasn’t cold at all.
Even though Xie Lin felt Chi Qing’s warm skin and knew he wasn’t cold, he didn’t let go of his hand after testing the temperature. The traffic lights flickered and changed; the red light passed. The previously stationary crowd finally moved, and the flow of people surged forward slowly.
Xie Lin made a slight adjustment to his hand and, under the guise of “testing temperature,” slid his fingers between Chi Qing’s pale fingers, filling the gaps perfectly.
Chi Qing was stunned.
[Let’s go], Xie Lin said, holding Chi Qing’s hand; his voice transmitted through their distorted secret channel: [My little clean-freak who can’t cross the street alone.]
Chi Qing: “…”
The crowd was crowded and noisy. No one knew they had a communication channel that belonged only to them.
Xie Lin noticed Chi Qing’s silence: Not letting me call you that either?
Xie Lin’s skin tone wasn’t dark, but compared to Chi Qing’s hands—which rarely saw the sun—the color contrast was remarkably stark.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want him to call him that.
Of course, it would be better if that name wasn’t used, but… he simply hadn’t anticipated Xie Lin’s next move.
Every time they drank, Chi Qing had touched Xie Lin’s hands many times, and even when sober, he had touched them many times, but never in this way—fingers interlocked. His fingertips were so hot he wanted to escape.
Finally, Chi Qing said indifferently: “…Suit yourself.”
The restaurant Xie Lin chose was a Western restaurant—standard level, neither impressive nor terrible. While eating, Xie Lin said he would take him to an interesting place later.
After the meal, Chi Qing was taken to a deserted office building. The higher the elevator went, the fewer people they encountered. It didn’t look like an entertainment district or an office building, making it impossible to guess what this building was actually for.
Until the elevator doors opened, and they walked out on the 21st floor, following the hallway to a door at the very end to see the store name: Escape Room.
Chi Qing glanced at the name a few times, never expecting this to be the date location Xie Lin had chosen: “Is this the ‘interesting place’ you mentioned?”
“I searched all night yesterday. Aren’t you aware of how picky your own preferences are?” Xie Lin said, holding his hand. “I searched everywhere and this was the only one that fit. You seem to like following along with case investigations… As it happens, this escape room has no staff, pure puzzle-solving type, no need to jump around, and it’s dark and quiet. Does that satisfy your requirements?”
There were several types of escape rooms. Most had staff dressed as ghosts or required crawling through tunnels. But Xie Lin had confirmed with the owner that this place had none of that—the environment was very clean and hygienic, and wouldn’t get their clothes dirty.
The owner had said over the phone at the time: “The only problem is that this theme has a high difficulty level. It might be hard for two people to play. Usually, it’s six people minimum.”
Chi Qing was speechless.
In all his years of living, for the first time, he found himself reflecting on his own finicky tastes.
In the end, he had to admit that finding a place like this was indeed a challenge for Xie Lin.
“You’re the two who made the reservation yesterday, right?” The owner was a man in his late thirties, thin and lean, appearing to have some trouble walking. He opened the partition door and moved slowly as he stepped out of the lounge.
He looked up and saw that the visitors were two young men, both outstanding in appearance, and was somewhat surprised.
“Although I said it once yesterday, I’ll emphasize it to you again—at this difficulty, two people might…”
“It’s fine,” Xie Lin interrupted, storing their phones and items in a locker. “We just want to challenge ourselves.”
Chi Qing wasn’t as tactful as Xie Lin and poked a hole in his statement: “At this difficulty, playing alone shouldn’t even be a problem.”
Owner: “…”
The escape room consisted of five rooms in total, themed “My Older Brother.” The first room had a messy desk with a broken diary spread out on it, which unfolded the initial plot: Eight years ago, my older brother mysteriously disappeared.
To summarize, it was a story of a younger brother looking for his missing brother. The mystery they needed to solve was whether the brother was dead, who killed him, and how he died.
The room was indeed very dark, and there wasn’t a single other soul inside. Chi Qing felt quite comfortable staying in there.
Xie Lin’s choice of a date activity wasn’t bad, but the one thing he hadn’t considered was their intelligence levels.
Less than two minutes later, the two of them had already entered the second room.
At this rate… by the time they finished this theme and exited the fifth room, they wouldn’t just be well under the 60-minute limit—they might not even need 20 minutes.
In the second room, Chi Qing quickly found key information on the wall, successfully cracked the safe code, and questioned the file inside the safe: “Why does such a simple game require six people?”
Xie Lin: “…Maybe, it’s just livelier with more people?”
Xie Lin’s remark reminded Chi Qing.
The two of them were on a date; the game content was secondary. If he kept solving it like this, they would be home in no time.
So, upon entering the third room, “The Morgue,” Chi Qing slowed down his puzzle-solving pace.
Several corpses were laid out in the morgue, each one made with exceptional realism. Prop corpses were displayed on iron-framed beds, and even the air was filled with a scent very close to that of rotting flesh. One had to admire the shop owner’s meticulous attention to detail.
Xie Lin’s date preparation had also been quite meticulous.
Chi Qing’s favorite setting, the morgue, had finally been arranged for him in this alternative way.
The room was very dark.
Once he stopped focusing on the puzzles and logical reasoning, the presence of Xie Lin’s hand—which had never let go—became impossible to ignore.
After some of the chaotic emotions settled down, Chi Qing suddenly remembered that Xie Lin had said so much that day, and subsequent developments had been so unexpected, that he still hadn’t explained to Xie Lin that he could read people’s minds.
Xie Lin hadn’t asked him about it either.
After a long pause, Chi Qing moved his slightly stiff knuckles. Xie Lin turned his head to look at him: “What’s wrong?”
Chi Qing: “Don’t you have any questions you want to ask me?”
Xie Lin: “What kind of questions?”
Chi Qing pointed at their hands: “For example, this. You haven’t asked me why I can hear…”
As Chi Qing said this, because the light in the escape room was extremely limited, his foot stepped on a bottle cap accidentally dropped by a previous player. He lost his footing, and his other hand reached out subconsciously behind him for something to grab.
The closest thing was the iron bed frame holding the corpses. Chi Qing’s palm pressed against the metal board, while the other half of his palm touched the prop “corpse” on the rack.
He happened to land right on the hand dangling from the corpse.
…
At this touch, Chi Qing sensed something was wrong, and the rest of his sentence died on his lips.
Because something fell lightly onto his hand following the movement. Chi Qing looked toward the only source of light and discovered it was a black-and-yellowed fingernail, with the underside sticky, coated in rot-fluid and bloodstains.
