Hearing that the other person was still feeling unwell, Xie Tingchuan’s heart softened instantly by half.
“An-bao, we aren’t far from each other. Let me come take care of you, otherwise I won’t be able to rest easy.”
Xie Tingchuan’s probing and coaxing intentions in his words came through loud and clear to Lin Qing’an. Yet the more considerate he was, the more panicked, anxious, and terrified Lin Qing’an felt.
Sooner or later, the two of them would meet face-to-face they would meet as “Xiao Qinggan” and Xie Tingchuan.
With the words out of his mouth, Xie Tingchuan gripped his phone tightly, ignoring the sweat gathering in his palms as he tried once more.
“An-bao, a man and a woman alone in the same room really isn’t quite appropriate. If you’re worried about me, you can have a friend come stay with you too. I won’t do anything that makes you unhappy, I promise.”
Dead, heavy silence stretched across both ends of the phone line. The usually infinitely confident Xie Tingchuan found himself repeatedly thwarted when it came to this online dating partner. He couldn’t take it anymore he was reaching his absolute limit.
Ever since confirming their online boyfriend-girlfriend relationship that day, the two had an unspoken agreement: whenever one party didn’t want to meet, the other absolutely must not resort to any external methods to track them down.
Yet Xie Tingchuan had already endured for a very long time. He could clearly feel the other person’s care for him, but he could just as acutely feel her deliberate detachment.
This push-and-pull, keep-me-close-push-me-away dynamic drove Xie Tingchuan absolutely crazy, making him want nothing more than to snatch his sweetheart into his arms right this second and give her a fierce “punishment.”
Yet Xie Tingchuan dared not. He worried she would be scared, worried that a rash move would only push her further away.
“Xie Tingchuan, if…” Standing frozen in place, Lin Qing’an watched as snowflakes—drifting down unawares landed on his long eyelashes, trembling up and down with every blink of his eyelids.
Infected by the heavy, oppressive tone, Xie Tingchuan instinctively held his breath. But after that single word “if” silence reclaimed the space.
“An-bao, what do you want to say?”
Xie Tingchuan’s voice was overwhelmingly gentle, tempting Lin Qing’an for a split second to spill everything about his hidden gender deception.
Yet, in the end, that impulse lasted for barely a single second.
Lin Qing’an flicked his hand to brush the snowflakes off his eyelashes, surprised to find that the melted droplets carried a surprising warmth, soaking his entire palm.
A gentle night breeze swept past, chilling his cheeks. Lin Qing’an tilted his head back and blinked rapidly, desperately forcing down the sour stinging behind his eyes.
“Xie Tingchuan, I’m just saying… what if after you meet me, you find out I’m completely different from the lover you imagined?”
The question came too abruptly. Xie Tingchuan had never once considered such a scenario, falling into a rare, prolonged silence.
Instead, Lin Qing’an curved his lips into a smile, though the smile lacked any warmth whatsoever.
“Xie Tingchuan, I think things are fine just the way they are now. Actually, you and me—”
“No, it’s not fine.” Xie Tingchuan suddenly broke in, cutting off her words. “An’an, I can say with absolute certainty: I like you. I want to see you, I want to embrace you for real in the real world, and I want to be able to look at you the moment I open my eyes every morning. I want to say goodnight to you in person instead of through a cold electronic screen.”
“I want to be right by your side. When you’re not feeling well, I want to be the one taking care of you with actual actions instead of repeating the same empty words over and over again.”
Xie Tingchuan’s plea was earnest, every single word dripping with absolute sincerity. Yet the more sincere he was, the more terrified Lin Qing’an became.
“Xie Tingchuan, if you really meet me, you’ll regret it.” Helplessly crouching down, Lin Qing’an watched crystal-clear droplets fall against the stark white ground—one drop, two drops, vanishing instantly into the snow.
“Can’t we just keep dating like this for a bit longer?”
With a heavy sob choking his voice, Lin Qing’an’s near-supplicant plea drilled straight into Xie Tingchuan’s ears, ruthlessly grabbing hold of his heart and squeezing it viciously.
A bitter sourness and tingling rush flooded through Xie Tingchuan’s entire body in an instant, a heavy boulder pressing down against his chest so hard that every single breath felt agonizingly difficult.
The muffled, repressed crying echoing through the phone receiver sent Xie Tingchuan into a panic, his sharp, piercing gaze instantly dissolving into utter helplessness and heartache.
“An’an, don’t cry. Let’s talk about this slowly.”
“Xie Tingchuan, can’t we just stay like this?”
“Xie Tingchuan, I know you want a lover you can actually hold in your arms. But I can’t do that, I can’t manage a face-to-face embrace. Can we just treat this relationship…”
Lin Qing’an’s hands gripped tightly onto the hem of his jacket, his knuckles turning pale from the sheer force.
“…Can we treat this relationship as a dream? A dream that will naturally wake up once the time comes, okay?”
It took a long, long time of suffocating silence before Xie Tingchuan finally managed to retrieve his voice—a voice laced with endless confusion and incomprehension.
“An’an, why? Don’t you like me? We’re both in the same city, why ask me to pretend not to notice when we’re standing mere footsteps apart?”
“Xie Tingchuan!” Lin Qing’an’s voice suddenly spiked, muffled heavily by his tears. Catching the sound, Xie Tingchuan felt an abrupt, sharp stab in his chest.
“I said, if we really meet, you definitely won’t like the kind of person I am! Why bother ending things in bitter discord? Why can’t we just let this sweet dream stay right inside my dreams?”
“An-bao, An’an baby, you can’t treat me like this. It’s not fair to me.” Staring blankly up at the ceiling in utter helplessness, Xie Tingchuan couldn’t comprehend how a conversation that was filled with laughter just minutes ago had derailed so rapidly.
“You can’t just make me fall completely in love with you and then toss me aside without a second thought.”
Listening to this, Lin Qing’an felt a crushing pain tear through his heart. As tears streamed down his cheeks uncontrollably, he finally snapped under the weight of it all, his voice raising sharply,
“Then what do you want me to do?!”
“What do you want me to do?! I’ve already tried my hardest to talk myself out of it. Every single night before falling asleep, I try to hypnotize myself: I don’t like you, I shouldn’t like you, I don’t want to like you.”
“Why?” Xie Tingchuan found it impossible to accept; he refused to believe that the beautiful romance he envisioned was built entirely upon his partner’s torment.
“Didn’t we get along so well?”
“I can’t like you,” Lin Qing’an drew in a sharp, shuddering breath, the freezing air plunging straight into his lungs and shocking him into an instant, icy composure, as though the heart-wrenching breakdown from moments ago had never happened.
“Xie Tingchuan, let’s stop contacting each other.”
“An-bao, you can’t do this.” Xie Tingchuan cried out in disbelief. Startled by the harsh sternness in his own voice, he swallowed down his rising fury and grievance, reverting to a soft, coaxing murmur.
“An’an baby, we don’t have to meet up for now. We can wait until the day you’re finally willing to see me—just please don’t shut me out, okay?”
The hard, defensive barrier Lin Qing’an had just erected around his heart shattered instantly under that single gentle coaxing plea, sending tears spilling past his control once more.
“There will never be that day.”
Choking on his tears, he sobbed continuously. “Xie Tingchuan, I’m never going to meet you.”
“Fine, then we won’t meet. An’an baby, we won’t meet, we’ll just keep dating online forever, alright? As long as you don’t ignore me, I’ll agree to anything you want.”
Holding his breath in sheer anxiety, Xie Tingchuan pitched his voice so tenderly it felt as though it might melt into water. “An-bao, are you still outside? Hurry up and head home, take a hot shower to warm yourself up, and then go straight to sleep. When you wake up tomorrow, everything will be just like yesterday.”
“An’an baby, don’t make me worry, alright? Let’s go home, winters in this city are way too cold.”
A night spent alone felt even colder. Adjusting his breathing to shove down the burning acidity in his throat, Xie Tingchuan spoke up once more into the quiet stillness.
“An’an, are you still listening?”
Ten seconds, one minute, three minutes passed with zero response from the other end. If not for the faint, ragged sounds of breathing and sniffling leaking through the phone receiver, he would have genuinely thought the person on the other side had vanished from the world entirely.
Finally, just as Xie Tingchuan’s patience was wearing razor-thin and he was on the verge of pulling up every tracking method available to locate “Xiao Qinggan,” a soft whisper drifted across the line.
“Mn.”
Xie Tingchuan let out a massive sigh of relief, slumping limply against the headboard like a deflated balloon as he dragged in lungfuls of air. Close, that was too close—she almost cut me off completely.
A sudden, tingling numbness flared across his arm, reminding Xie Tingchuan that his left hand holding the phone had been clenched so tight the veins were bulging violently and trembling entirely out of his control. The sharp ache forced a quiet gasp past his lips.
The second that soft gasp slipped out, Xie Tingchuan acutely noticed that the steady breathing over the earpiece stumbled violently, and the crying abruptly stopped.
Without missing a beat, Xie Tingchuan seized the opportunity, letting out a series of escalating, pained gasps as though enduring excruciating agony.
“Xie Tingchuan?” Lin Qing’an’s tear-stained voice grew raspy, anxiety and worry bleeding through the question.
“Xie Tingchuan, what’s wrong with you?”
Xie Tingchuan didn’t answer, merely intensifying his pained groans until he sounded thoroughly miserable.
“Xie Tingchuan, what on earth happened to you? Say something!”
Panicking, Lin Qing’an scrambled back to his feet. Having squatted for too long, a sudden rush of blood to his head blinded him with instant darkness, causing his legs to give out entirely as he pitched forward and crashed straight down onto the ground.
Thud.
Hearing the heavy impact echoing through the receiver, Xie Tingchuan dropped all pretense of playing weak and shouted anxiously,
“An-bao, what happened?!”
“N-nothing, I’m fine.”
Lying flat on the snowy ground, pain radiating from his wrists and knees, Lin Qing’an’s first reaction upon hearing Xie Tingchuan’s voice was to frantically pat his ear to ensure his Bluetooth earbud was still securely in place. Only after confirming it was still connected did he let out a mental breath of relief.
“Did An-bao take a tumble?” Xie Tingchuan felt a heavy wave of guilt wash over him. If not for his theatrical act, An wouldn’t have panicked like that and tripped over herself.
Though feeling guilty, Xie Tingchuan’s acid-soaked heart found a sweet solace in the reaction: An’an truly cares about me, she has deep feelings for me.
“I’m fine, just slipped and fell.” Lin Qing’an carefully pushed himself up from the ground. His down jacket and pants were thoroughly plastered with melting snow, soaking right through to his skin.
“How are you feeling now? Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.” Xie Tingchuan put on an air of sorrowful fragility. “Just… just now, I got too anxious and my hand accidentally cramped up. It wouldn’t stop shaking, trembling uncontrollably.”
Xie Tingchuan intentionally left the rest unsaid, letting his implications hang heavily in the air. “An-bao, I love you so much. You can’t abandon me; I’ll agree to anything you want, but you are not allowed to push me away.”
Bitterness, helplessness, and a storm of complex emotions swallowed Lin Qing’an whole, leaving behind a chaotic cocktail of sweet, sour, bitter, and salty flavors.
“Xie Tingchuan, I know what you’re like. I’ve even seen you in real life. But it’s precisely because I understand you that I don’t dare meet you in reality.”
Lin Qing’an let out a long breath, lifting the corners of his mouth into a hollow smile. “From now on, let’s not dwell on this so much. Let’s just have a normal relationship, okay?”
“A relationship that only exists on the internet?” Xie Tingchuan let out a dry, self-deprecating chuckle, desperately trying to suppress the fiery anger raging in his chest as he spoke in a soft, coaxing tone. “An-bao, you’re so generous.”
“You toy with me right in the palm of your hand, and you must feel pretty pleased with yourself, right?”
“You’ll bless me, you won’t pester me oh, wonderful, An-bao is truly so kind.”
Xie Tingchuan chuckled lightly twice. “An-bao, you really are an absolute saint.”
Lin Qing’an stammered, completely at a loss for how to respond.
The silence solidified the air inside the quiet space. Listening to the faint, steady breathing of Xie Tingchuan coming through his earbuds, Lin Qing’an found himself utterly unable to guess what the man was thinking.
Is he angry?
Well, of course he has every right to be angry.
If roles were reversed and the romantic partner he held closest to his heart treated him this way, he probably would have lost his temper ages ago. The fact that Xie Tingchuan had tolerated it this long was already remarkable.
He must be deeply disappointed in me, right?
From now on, maybe we won’t even contact each other ever again…
“An-bao, it’s freezing outside. Let’s go home, okay?”
Waiting and waiting, Lin Qing’an never expected such a gentle parting remark. Too stunned to formulate a reply, he walked silently through the snow, the crisp crunch, crunch of footsteps echoing across the vast, white landscape, leaving a single lonely trail of footprints behind.
Meanwhile, back in his apartment, Xie Tingchuan stared out the window at the heavy goose-feather snowflakes swirling through the night sky. The howling winter wind battered fiercely against the panes, yet it failed to extinguish the wicked, predatory gleam burning deep within Xie Tingchuan’s eyes.
“An-bao, you’re my lover my online lover. Don’t worry, I won’t let you down.”