Although Lin Qing’an had said he didn’t need to be called for lunch, Duan Xuan and Qin Zhiyi still quietly made a trip back to the room.
Lin Qing’an lay on the bed, staring blankly up at the ceiling, completely missing the sound of the two of them opening the door and entering.
Or rather, he noticed it, but simply didn’t care to acknowledge it.
Exchanging a glance, Duan Xuan and Qin Zhiyi placed the bento box aside and asked,
“Qing’an, get up and eat. Today there’s shredded pork with garlic sauce on rice, your favorite.”
Giving a listless, lifeless “mm” in response, Lin Qing’an hoisted himself up with a defeated slouch.
“Lao Duan, Lao Qin, save me. I think I’m done for.”
Propping up a small wooden table and pulling it right up to Lin Qing’an’s bed, Qin Zhiyi asked, “Talk while you eat. What happened?”
Viciously shoveling down a couple of mouthfuls of rice, Lin Qing’an spilled his guts about everything: how he had faked his gender for online dating and livestreaming to scam people, and how he had now nearly gotten his own sexual orientation warped in the process.
After finishing his confession, Lin Qing’an kept his head down, shoveling bento bites into his mouth one after another, not daring to lift his gaze to look at his two friends. What he had done was genuinely lacking in any shred of dignity.
Had it been anyone else, they probably would have started cursing him out long ago—after all, he was the one who started the deception.
Within the span of a few short minutes, Duan Xuan and Qin Zhiyi felt as though they had been struck repeatedly by thunderous lightning: first hearing that their friend was cross-dressing as a female streamer online, then that his livestreaming exploits had reeled in a “sugar daddy,” then that the “sugar daddy” turned into a “boyfriend,” and finally that a single video call had him questioning his own sexual orientation?
Did the plotline of this story make any sense?!
Clueless as to what to make of it, Duan Xuan could only cast a hopeful gaze toward Qin Zhiyi.
Qin Zhiyi was equally bewildered. What kind of bizarre mess was this?!
Was a two-thousand-yuan monthly living allowance really that little? Was it?!
If two thousand yuan a month counted as little, wouldn’t his own fifteen-hundred-yuan allowance mean he had to go sell a kidney?
No wait, selling a kidney was illegal and not to be encouraged.
But what Qing’an was doing wasn’t to be encouraged either!
Wait, no, the train of thought derailed. Pull it back, pull it back, return to the main topic.
“Cough, well, Qing’an,” Qin Zhiyi racked his brains, desperately searching for something to say to comfort the devastated Lin Qing’an.
“Don’t be like that. That ‘sugar daddy’ probably isn’t hurting for pocket change anyway.”
Right, exactly he’s not hurting for cash. But is it just about pocket change here? Over four hundred thousand yuan!
A little sprite inside Qin Zhiyi’s brain was screeching at the top of its lungs.
Seeing that Lin Qing’an remained unresponsive, Qin Zhiyi had no choice but to push onward. “Qing’an, putting everything else aside for a second, let’s just talk about this last part: just because of a single video call, you’ve concluded that your sexual orientation is…”
Qin Zhiyi gestured awkwardly with his fingers, searching for a word. “…bent? Isn’t that a bit too hasty?”
Duan Xuan immediately nodded in rapid-fire agreement by his side. “Yeah, exactly what Zhiyi said.”
Lifting his depressed head, Lin Qing’an looked at the two of them with a miserable expression. “But when I listened to his voice and his breathing, I…”
Raising his right hand, Lin Qing’an stared at his palm with a look of existential despair. “I made a mess all over my hand, and it happened more than once.”
“The first time, I was caught off guard, but the second time…” The second time, he had been crying while doing it.
The rest of the sentence went unsaid, but how could Duan Xuan and Qin Zhiyi possibly fail to understand? Instinctively catching their breath, the two men took a synchronized step backward, looking at Lin Qing’an with guarded vigilance.
The gloomy, depressed Lin Qing’an was tickled by their reaction. “You guys can’t be serious! If I were ever going to fall for either of you, would I have waited until now to turn gay?”
Exchanging a glance, Duan Xuan and Qin Zhiyi let out mutual sighs of relief.
“Good, good then, Qing’an.” The moment Duan Xuan started speaking, he felt a strange awkwardness wash over him. It was a nickname he was thoroughly used to shouting, yet knowing now that his buddy might actually fancy guys made uttering it feel inexplicably weird.
“Buddy, don’t overthink it. If you ask me, you’ve definitely just gotten mixed up.”
“Gotten mixed up?” Lin Qing’an looked at Duan Xuan, confused. “So I still like girls?”
Taking a deep breath, Duan Xuan stepped forward and slung an arm around Lin Qing’an’s shoulder. “Hey man, who hasn’t had moments of impulse? Besides, you’re already 19 and you’ve never even had a girlfriend before. Getting physically stimulated and reacting to something intense is completely normal.”
With that, Duan Xuan patted Lin Qing’an’s shoulder, reassuring himself of his own theory.
“You just need to hurry up and get a girlfriend, and all this nonsense will sort itself out. You’re just confusing things over a minor misunderstanding.”
Hesitation flickered across Lin Qing’an’s face. “Is that really it?”
“Yeah, absolutely, that’s definitely it,” Qin Zhiyi chimed in. “Qing’an, why don’t you try observing things for a bit longer, or straight up try dating a girlfriend? Won’t that give you a definitive answer?”
Nodding thoughtfully, Lin Qing’an muttered, “What you guys are saying makes sense. I must just have been single for way too long.”
Seeing that their good friend’s sexual orientation was still salvageable, Duan Xuan and Qin Zhiyi inwardly wiped away cold sweat.
Duan Xuan: “There are girls who came along on this trip too. Do you want to try pursuing one and see how it goes?”
“Better not,” Lin Qing’an rejected the idea instantly. “I think I was just temporarily bewitched. Besides, we’re all classmates; it’d be wrong of me to pursue someone else when I’m not genuinely into them, just to test the waters. What if we became a couple and then I ended up catching feelings for someone else?”
After pausing for a few seconds, Lin Qing’an added, “It’s too inconvenient here anyway. When I get back home, I’ll go watch a few videos. It should all be the same thing.”
Nodding along to his own logic, Lin Qing’an muttered, “Right, it’s all the same thing.”
Duan Xuan agreed readily. “True. The female leads in those videos are all quite pretty, and their voices sound nice too.”
The two of them harmonized seamlessly, plunging right back into a deep discussion about which adult films had the best plots and highest production standards, leaving Qin Zhiyi accustomed to their oversized hearts as usual.
However, there was still one major, glaring issue left hanging: What about that scammed “X”? How was this online-dating farce supposed to wrap up?
Gazing at Lin Qing’an, who seemed to have bounced back to his normal self, Qin Zhiyi could only temporarily swallow the question and push it to the back of his mind.
Whatever. Figuring out his best friend’s sexual orientation came first.
With a solution in hand, Lin Qing’an’s mood rebounded completely, and he plunged headfirst back into the excitement of the getaway.
Finishing his bento box, Lin Qing’an ran off to rejoin his classmates. The group launched into card games, King, Truth or Dare—one game after another, playing with such zest that everyone was having a blast.
During the festivities, his phone buzzed with a few text notifications, disrupting Lin Qing’an while he was caught up in the thrill of the games. Out of annoyance, he simply flipped Xie Tingchuan’s WeChat chat to ‘Do Not Disturb’.
Having just gone through a staggering, sanity-shattering crisis over his suspected sexual orientation shift, he temporarily refused to look at any messages associated with Xie Tingchuan.
Long after the video call had ended, Xie Tingchuan stepped out of the bathroom enveloped in a fresh mist of vapor.
A pleasant surprise.
The tingling, numbing wave of satisfaction still lingered lingeringly across his cerebral cortex. Lounging lazily across the bed, Xie Tingchuan felt an enduring, unsatisfied craving humming in his chest.
He wanted to see her in person, wanted to embrace his real-life lover, wanted to do everything couples were allowed to do together side by side.
Fingertips tapping lightly against his phone screen, he sent another string of messages to his shy, fugitive girlfriend.
One message. Three messages. Five messages…
Yet Lin Qing’an had made up his mind to completely ignore him for the time being!
That was what he told himself, anyway, but by the time night fell and Lin Qing’an finally unlocked his phone to find over 99+ unread notifications, he couldn’t resist tapping them open.
Xie Tingchuan: “An’an, such a pretty name.”
Xie Tingchuan: “An’an, my baby, did it feel good?”
Xie Tingchuan: “When can we meet up? I can make you feel even better, I can help you.”
…
The second he tapped into the chat, Lin Qing’an was greeted by those blatantly explicit messages. Letting out an involuntary gasp of shock, he flung his phone away onto the mattress as if it were burning hot.
At that exact moment, Duan Xuan emerged from the bathroom. Catching sight of Lin Qing’an’s horrified expression, he sauntered over with a grin.
“What, are you watching a horror movie all by your lonesome again? Did you forget how you used to sit in the dorms crying your eyes out from being scared out of your wits?”
With that, Duan Xuan reached out to pick up the phone to investigate, causing Lin Qing’an to scramble forward in a panic and snatch the phone away, pressing it tightly against his chest.
Startled by his own frantic reaction, Lin Qing’an offered a sheepish, awkward explanation. “Nothing, just a regular horror movie. Accidentally clicked on it while scrolling, no big deal.”
If Duan Xuan failed to smell something fishy after an act as sketchy as that, he truly would have been an idiot.
With a teasing, knowing smirk, Duan Xuan drawled, “Oh～ a little secret! I get it～”
He managed to stretch those two words out over a hundred and eighty turns—even the steepest mountain pass in Sichuan wouldn’t bend that sharply.
Yet Lin Qing’an was in no position to argue back. He offered a vague, perfunctory nod to accept the teasing, grabbed his duvet, pulled it straight over his head, and buried his entire body inside.
Curiosity regarding Xie Tingchuan’s messages gnawed relentlessly at Lin Qing’an’s thoughts.
‘Deep breaths, deep breaths…’
After administering plenty of psychological self-suggestion, Lin Qing’an cracked open Xie Tingchuan’s chat window once more.
As he toggled the screen back and forth, Lin Qing’an felt his breathing grow increasingly restricted, and his body temperature climbed steadily.
A fluttering thrill hammered against his ribs while a stray thought flashed across his mind with a flicker of secret gratitude: Thank goodness I hid my head under the blanket; otherwise, Qin Zhiyi and Duan Xuan definitely would have spotted something wrong with me.
Speak of the devil.
Qin Zhiyi walked right up to Lin Qing’an’s bedside, staring down at the trembling lump under the covers. If he didn’t know Lin Qing’an’s character inside out, he honestly would have thought the guy was hiding under the quilt playing some unmentionable little games with himself.
“Qing’an, Duan Xuan and I are heading out for a stroll. Do you want to tag along?”
The finger scrolling through messages paused. Lin Qing’an muffled his voice from beneath the quilt, “I’m not going, you guys go ahead.”
Qin Zhiyi: “Alright, we’re off then.”
Stiff as a board under the duvet, the second Lin Qing’an heard the soft click of the door closing behind them, he burst upward into a sitting position, gasping greedily for fresh air.
Finally, I’m brought back to life.
Left all by himself in the room, Lin Qing’an felt a lot bolder. Reaching to his bedside table, he slipped on his Bluetooth earbuds and hit play on the long string of voice messages Xie Tingchuan had left behind.
The sheer text-to-speech impact alone had already accelerated his heartbeat; he could only wonder what kind of destructive power these audio clips held.
Inside the quiet bathroom, Lin Qing’an listened to that low, magnetic voice echoing through his earbuds while keeping his eyes locked tightly onto his own reflection in the mirror.
A deep flush had crawled up his cheeks, and those eyes—usually sparkling with mischief—were now heavy with bashful shyness.
“Shameless! How can Xie Tingchuan just casually say such… such explicit things out loud?”
Lin Qing’an felt a wave of bewilderment, and lacked the courage to think it through.
Turning on the faucet, Lin Qing’an repeatedly cupped water into his hands and splashed it across his face. After doing so a few times, he felt like it wasn’t enough, so he bravely shoved his entire head right beneath the running tap, letting the cool stream drench his hair and head in an attempt to shock his overactive brain back into calmness.
Xie Tingchuan: “An’an, your breathing sounds so good. Make sure you pant like that for me to hear next time.”
That sudden, unprompted dirty-talk voice clip rendered Lin Qing’an completely speechless. Ignoring the lingering tremors in his chest, he reached up to yank off the Bluetooth earbud, though his fingers hesitated the absolute second they brushed against the plastic.
Until every last drop of audio finished playing out in his ears.
Drooping his eyelids, Lin Qing’an washed the grease and grime off his hands, pushed open the bathroom door to let the steam clear, and threw himself limply onto the mattress.
As expected… I really did turn gay, didn’t I?