LCP Ch 7

Chi An was carried through the front door in Liang Ce’s arms, facing him directly, before tumbling onto the living room sofa. While kissing him, Liang Ce unbuttoned his own shirt first, placing Chi An’s hand onto his body in earnest hope that Chi An would like it.

Chi An loved it. Toying with Liang Ce’s zipper, he hummed softly while threatening, “If you don’t do well, we’re not trying anymore.”

How should one put it? Liang Ce really shouldn’t have been called out on that confession wall back then. He was actually very good at it.

Later, Chi An asked Liang Ce about his ex. It was after they had just finished once—the pillows were on the bed, but they were lying on the floor. Liang Ce had pulled over the fluffy duvet to wrap Chi An up, gently kissing his fingertips and the back of his hand before leaning in to nuzzle his neck. Chi An loved it when Liang Ce clung to him at times like this; it made him feel like whipped cream that had finally found its bowl, wanting nothing more than to lazily melt away. Yet he purposely said, “No more kissing,” even though he didn’t even bother to dodge. “I want to hear you talk. Liang Ce, you talk too little.”

“…You don’t like guys who talk too much, do you?” Liang Ce thought of the person Chi An had a crush on—aloof, a bit cool. He felt he was portraying that persona quite well.

“How do you know what I like?”

Liang Ce thought, Of course I know. He wanted to sink into that wave of bittersweetness, but Chi An’s next words sounded so lovely: “I want to get to know you. If you don’t speak up, I’ll never know.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Have you kissed anyone else before? Have you slept with anyone?”

“No,” Liang Ce was stark naked, yet he still flushed at such explicit words. “Before you… I never liked anyone else.”

Liar. Chi An only dared to think this secretly. Still unwilling to let it go, he asked, “Never dated anyone? Not even once? Even a week counts.”

Liang Ce recalled the big boast he had made earlier: “I’m actually pretty good at being in a relationship…” He felt a bit nervous, worried that his previous answer would make Chi An think he was inexperienced. Lowering his eyes, his fingers instinctively smoothed Chi An’s hair as he answered stiffly, “No. Do you still want to? I can help you.”

Physical intimacy was their way of changing the subject, and Chi An didn’t expose his lie.

Two weeks after they got together, Chi An went to the hospital again. As usual, he had a psychological consultation scheduled after his re-examination. “I haven’t had that nightmare recently,” he shared the good news first.

The therapist offered gentle congratulations, noted it down, and then asked, “What about the compulsive behaviors?”

“…They still happen. But less frequently.” Sometimes, he would suddenly lie in bed with his hands trembling, his throat choked with a massive wave of grief. If Liang Ce wasn’t around, Chi An would fetch tools from his box. The tools could always inflict intense pain, but he no longer felt like he had gotten his wish—he only felt an acute, overwhelming misery. His perception of pain seemed to have reconnected with actual suffering.

On his way back, Liang Ce sent a voice message asking when he would be off work. Chi An lied, saying a stray cat rescued from a high-rise building had just arrived unexpectedly, so he would be delayed. When he finally rushed home and opened the door, he saw the dishes on the table covered with insulated food warmers, while Liang Ce was in the kitchen washing dishes. Chi An ran over, squeezing himself into the space between Liang Ce and the sink, placing Liang Ce’s soapy hands onto his own body. If only you could wash me clean, too, Chi An thought to himself. To cover up his thoughts, he kissed Liang Ce’s brow and the bridge of his nose with excessive enthusiasm: “I’m back.” In the end, that was all he said.

They ate dinner, walked the dog, washed up, and leaned against each other to watch half a movie before leaving a single nightlight on and getting into bed. Sitting on Liang Ce’s left, Chi An reached out to touch the earring hole on Liang Ce’s right earlobe, prompting Liang Ce to naturally turn toward him. Then he said, “I can’t fall asleep.”

Liang Ce asked, “When you couldn’t sleep before, what did you usually do?”

Play with myself using tools until I fall asleep. How could he possibly say that out loud? Chi An huddled closer toward Liang Ce, his lips brushing against Liang Ce’s cheek as he spoke: “If you found out, you might stop liking me.”

“I won’t. It’s hard not to like you.” Liang Ce was genuinely sincere, turning a line people usually used as flattery into a heartfelt confession. He was so certain he never would, because he already knew: Chi An had someone he couldn’t forget, someone he probably thought about whenever he couldn’t sleep. But it didn’t matter.

“When I couldn’t sleep back in my school days, I’d play mini-games on my phone. My eyes just needed to focus on something moving, and I’d get sleepy really fast,” Liang Ce held Chi An a little tighter. “I cleared so many levels of Tetris.”

Liang Ce liked games where even if you lost, you could restart infinitely, because dying over and over simply became reviving over and over. Liang Ce could lose tirelessly and seize the next chance without fatigue, slowly getting better at it bit by bit. It was true for games, and it was true for Chi An.

His work had finished early today, so he went downstairs to wait for Chi An to finish his shift at the clinic. He knew Chi An hadn’t come out of the clinic. But that didn’t matter either.

Chi An asked slowly in a whisper, “Then have you ever played a real-life version of Tetris?”

He was being unusually passionate right now because he wanted to escape. Liang Ce hid away right alongside him.

“Teach me,” Liang Ce begged while kissing him.

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The influencer couple whose boyfriend had previously cheated indeed arranged a dinner at home, explicitly asking Liang Ce to bring Chi An along. On the drive after work, Liang Ce parked the car into the garage while asking him, “When introducing you, can I say you’re my boyfriend?” Liang Ce’s voice was never loud, yet it always carried weight; this time, however, his words fluttered as if he didn’t dare pronounce them clearly.

Chi An waited for him to park the car securely, wanting to look into his eyes when answering, but his silence was interpreted by Liang Ce as hesitation. “It’s fine to just say friend, too,” Liang Ce cut the engine, unbuckled his seatbelt, and quickly added. Then he leaned over, intending to end the topic with a kiss.

Chi An leaned away from his approach: “I am your boyfriend. Why shouldn’t you say it?”

He said this while looking straight into Liang Ce’s eyes, then opened the car door and stepped out.

The female influencer who had cried in the Fukang car last time was named Fang by birth, and her ex-boyfriend was named Yuan. She often mocked herself: With a “Fang” (square) and a “Yuan” (circle), who knew it would end up as a love triangle? Last week, she had just posted a video announcing the breakup. The entire video avoided emotional rants and stuck strictly to the facts, attaching evidence appropriately, blurring out her best friend’s name, and focusing entirely on her ex-boyfriend. It was only in the final minute that she slowed her pace and said: “A lot of people questioned if our relationship was scripted. I used to proudly say it wasn’t, but I never expected he was acting out his own script with me the whole time.” Facing the camera, the fill light and reflector easily made her eyes glisten with moisture. “However, I will not wallow in it for any kind of profit, nor am I afraid of leaving messily and being laughed at. I am willing to pay the price if it means the girls who follow me have one less chance of running into a scumbag; I’m also willing to pick myself back up under everyone’s gaze, because I want people with similar experiences to see the hope of a complete transformation.”

The script had been revised word by word by Liang Ce. To facilitate its spread, he produced both video and text-and-image versions tailored to different platforms. Liang Ce had discussed it with Lu Xi: the company forfeited their share of advertising fees and event commissions around the breakup period, and even chipped in extra to make it a pleasant round figure, letting Fangfang donate the entire amount to sponsor young girls’ education—mentioning it lightly at the very end of the video. Then he reached out to marketing accounts he previously knew to boost initial retweets before pushing it onto the trending searches. After letting it ferment naturally across other platforms for a few hours, he deployed a moderate number of paid posters a day later to adjust the narrative direction. After pulling two consecutive all-nighters, the comment sections on the platforms with the biggest splash were roughly split half-and-half—which was the absolute ideal outcome. Commercial value was never about how universally praised a KOL was, but how hot the KOL currently was. A mix of good and bad allowed for debate, and debate meant business opportunities.

Many believed that mixing commercial intent into doing the right thing made it inherently impure, but Liang Ce believed that only when there was profit to be made could the right thing be seen by the world. Back in first grade, he noticed a boy in the back row constantly stabbing the girl sitting next to him with a pencil. He went home and told his mother, but his mother told him not to say anything because speaking up wouldn’t benefit him, and nobody had proof anyway. The next day, Liang Ce used a week’s worth of breakfast money to buy snacks for seven or eight classmates sitting around him: “Did you guys see? Zhang Chao kept stabbing her with a pencil yesterday.” Chewing on gummy candies, the classmates exchanged glances and tacitly learned to say they saw it. Liang Ce said, “Let’s go find the teacher together. My mom gives me money for snacks every week.”

That was the kind of benefit a first-grader wanted; Liang Ce knew that back then. And as for what clients wanted as businessmen, the current Liang Ce knew that just as well. So when Chi An asked him on the way to the party whether he was really afraid the influencer couple would break up, Liang Ce shook his head: “No matter what decision she ultimately makes, I have ways to make her even more famous.”

When Fangfang opened the door for them, Liang Ce was just handing the lighter gift to Chi An. “You guys are here!” Fangfang showed full enthusiasm, appearing to be in high spirits. “I was just telling Lu Xi to ask where you were. Come on in!”

Fangfang led them inside. Lu Xi was currently slicing ham and cheese at the kitchen island, while seated on the sofa were the business manager responsible for Fangfang, her assistant, and two closely connected influencers. Without needing to introduce Liang Ce, Fangfang directly patted Chi An: “This is Chi An. He went to help drive for me last time—he’s Liang Ce’s friend.”

Just as Liang Ce was about to speak, Chi An smoothly took over the conversation, stating with a light chuckle in his tone: “Hello, everyone. He’s my boyfriend now.”

Several people gasped and cheered in excitement. Looking at Chi An, Liang Ce felt his own heartbeat sounding even louder and more chaotic.

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Why was Chi An always able to say things that stirred one’s heart so naturally?

Liang Ce spent the entire evening pondering this question. He had never met someone as smooth as Chi An. No matter how potentially awkward a situation was, Chi An could make it look effortlessly graceful.

Lu Xi brought over the sliced platter, and they sat down at Fangfang’s round table with a built-in lazy Susan. Chi An quietly shifted his chair closer to Liang Ce.

Throughout the meal, Chi An’s quiet moments and interactions were equally endearing. He seamlessly blended into conversations; even Lu Xi, whose sharp edge usually showed during social settings, was chatting with him with great delight. When handing a drink to a girl, Chi An would loosen the bottle cap first, and he could magically make the foam disappear when pouring Coca-Cola into an ice cup… Yet someone so smooth and collected would pull on Liang Ce’s wrist and lean into his ear to whisper, “I want to eat the green beans.”

The green beans were merely on the other side of the table, yet Chi An’s eyes sparkled brightly and his voice was so soft, as if only Liang Ce could help turn the tray over for him.

Halfway through the meal, Liang Ce went into the room to take an urgent business call from a client, while Chi An and Lu Xi went to the kitchen refrigerator to grab the next round of drinks and alcohol.

“I feel like Liang Ce might have a bit of a misunderstanding about you,” Lu Xi considered Chi An a friend after sharing this meal, taking the opportunity to say a few extra words. “He seems to think you don’t care about him that much because you had someone you loved more before… But right now, I think you really like him.”

Chi An froze, his mouth confessing faster than his brain could process: “I don’t have anyone I loved more.”

“I can tell,” Lu Xi walked out holding the bottles, adding with a smile at the end, “Every single word you said tonight was meant for him to hear.”

Chi An trailed behind, still dwelling on Lu Xi’s words. He realized that Liang Ce really seemed to think that way. When Liang Ce confessed, he said he could understand that Chi An couldn’t accept someone new so quickly; he seemed to believe Chi An had a deeply rooted past relationship… Why did he think that?

“Oh my gosh—I’m so, so sorry! My hand slipped!” A girl’s apologetic voice came from up front. Chi An snapped back to his senses and walked out to see Fangfang’s business manager flustered as she cleaned up spilled alcohol on the table and floor. Chi An turned back to grab paper towels and a trash can from the kitchen, taking the soaked napkins from the girl’s hand and tossing them in: “Let me handle it.”

“No, no, no,” the girl pressed her hands together in apology. “I couldn’t hold it steady just now, and I even spilled it on your phone. Let me take off the case and wipe it down for you…” Chi An’s phone had also been soaked in alcohol. Fortunately, Fangfang had been quick on her feet and picked it up; right now, it only looked wet on the outside. Pulling out fresh, dry paper towels, the girl pressed her thumb against the case to pop it off and wipe it.

Chi An suddenly realized something: “Wait a second, uh—”

A photo with a blue background drifted out from inside the phone case. Liang Ce happened to finish his phone call and walked out right at that moment. “What happened?” he asked.

“It’s nothing, just accidentally spilled some drinks.” Chi An reached his hand under the table, naturally grasping the photo and hiding it in his palm. He seemed to finally understand where the problem lay.