WMSR – QT Chapter 33

 

WMSR – QT Chapter 33

By

siofra

Chapter 33

With that, Bai Yichen flicked the steering wheel and steered the car toward the address Su Yuanhang had recited.

Su Yuanhang’s residence was not difficult to locate, situated inside an upscale residential complex in the heart of downtown. It appeared that Su Yuanhang did not live with his parents; after Bai Yichen unlocked the front door using Su Yuanhang’s fingerprint and passcode, the interior greeted him with an austere, chilly quiet.

Navigating to the master bedroom, Bai Yichen maneuvered Su Yuanhang onto the bed. Confronted with the younger man’s flushed, utterly unresponsive state, he could only resign himself to playing nursemaid and handling the aftermath.

First, Bai Yichen peeled off Su Yuanhang’s shoes, followed by his tailored suit jacket. As for the stiff dress shirt underneath, it was already hopelessly creased. Figuring there likely wasn’t an undershirt layered beneath, Bai Yichen had no choice but to unbutton the top two buttons, loosening the collar so Su Yuanhang could breathe without feeling choked as he lay down. Whether it was a trick of the dim lighting or his own imagination, Bai Yichen couldn’t shake the distinct impression that the moment those buttons were freed, the flush spreading across Su Yuanhang’s already-red cheeks deepened even further.

Tucking a newly tidied Su Yuanhang securely beneath the duvet, Bai Yichen turned to fetch a damp towel to wipe down his face. But right as he pivoted on his heel, the previously motionless Su Yuanhang suddenly thrashed sideways, his flailing arm sweeping across the bedside table and sending an object crashing to the floor.

The casualty was a picture frame. What should have been a standard decorative tabletop display met with misfortune—whether the frame’s structural joints were flimsy or the impact was simply too violent, the moment it hit the hardwood floor, the backing shattered into pieces, spilling a cascade of hidden items fluttering across the carpet.

This is…

Staring down at the scattered, densely handwritten slips of paper blanketing the floor, Bai Yichen froze in astonishment.

For a long beat, he stood immobilized before bending down to retrieve the stray cards. His initial instinct was merely to clean up the mess he had inadvertently triggered; he harbored zero desire to pry into the contents. After all, items secreted away this privately clearly represented thoughts their owner preferred to keep strictly shielded from the world.

Yet, though his moral baseline pointed toward leaving them untouched, several fragments of script accidentally snagged his vision, instantly arresting his motion. Human psychology possesses an involuntary radar for specific stimuli, and nothing commands attention quite like one’s own name. Even a lightning-fast glance was enough to capture it with absolute precision. The reason Bai Yichen froze dead in his tracks was simple: he had just spotted his own name scrawled across one of the cards. Why would his name appear across this stash of hidden slips? Were the contents somehow intertwined with him?

Hesitation warred in Bai Yichen’s chest. Even knowing it violated basic boundaries to read another person’s private notes, his hand drifted inexorably toward the card bearing his name, compelling him to sneak one unauthorized peek.

—So happy, so deeply happy with Chen-gege. Dreamt of Chen-gege again last night; he was just as gentle in my sleep. Today is bound to be a lucky day. No, how can I break into a grin the second Chen-gege crosses my mind? I have to hold it in, or Chen-gege will think I’m acting weird. But it’s so hard to suppress… Chen-gege must be made entirely of sugar, or why else would thinking of him make my heart taste this sweet, so sweet…

Bai Yichen paused, a strange, surreal vertigo blooming in his chest as he absorbed the frantic self-talk stamped across the card. And right then, he noticed that the surrounding cards scattered across the floor also featured identical references to his name. Prompted by an involuntary reflex, his eyes swept across the next slip, and the moment they did, his gaze glued itself to the page, utterly unable to look away.

—So happy. I get to go play at Chen-gege’s house again this weekend. I learned how to bake little shortbread cookies; this batch is going straight to Chen-gege for tasting.

—Chen-gege is incredible. He clinched first place in the academic competition again today. Damn it, I’m so dull; I need to study twice as hard, or what will I do if Chen-gege decides he’s too smart to bother with me anymore?

—The evening study hall lost power out of nowhere just now. The sudden blanket of darkness felt like it wanted to swallow people whole; I was so spooked I couldn’t move an inch. And right then, my phone rang—it was Chen-gege calling. The strangest thing happened: the second I heard Chen-gege’s voice, I wasn’t afraid of anything anymore.

—It’s thundering again. Chen-gege isn’t by my side. I wish I could stay bonded to Chen-gege forever, never separating for even a single second.

—Annoying. Song-gege came over to hang out with Chen-gege again today. Why does he always show up? If only Chen-gege would only play with me and nobody else.

—Chen-gege held my hand today. My heart hammered against my ribs like crazy—it felt exactly like all those years ago when Chen-gege pulled me out of that dark storage cabinet, his hand just as warm. But it’s so weird… why should Chen-gege holding my hand now make my heart race this violently?

—Chen-gege is going on a blind date… my chest hurts so much, it feels like I’m suffocating…

Bai Yichen stood paralyzed, mechanically flipping through the stack of slips one by one, frozen in absolute stillness. The cards varied in format; some bore the fading, yellowed tint of aging paper, testifying to how many years had bled away since their creation, while others featured crisp, fresh ink marking recent entries. Yet, despite spanning a massive temporal chasm, every single card orbited a singular, unyielding gravitational center: him—Bai Yichen.

Though the notes contained zero explicit, aggressive declarations of romantic intent—reading more like a fragmented ledger of mundane, trivial observations—the emotional current saturating every single line laid the writer’s soul bare beyond all possible misinterpretation.

It was a profound, careful, trembling devotion—adoration and longing etched straight down to the bone.

Staring down at the cards clutched in his palm, Bai Yichen plunged into a state of total, catastrophic cognitive dissonance. He reeled from the impact of the words, wrestling to reconcile them with the reality he thought he knew. How can this be? Shouldn’t Xiao Hang’s heart belong to Song Junchi? Aren’t they predestined soulmates? Why on earth would he harbor feelings for… me?

Bai Yichen flicked his gaze back to those written confessions, each one screaming an unignorable truth. Where… where did the timeline derail?

Clutching the stack of cards, Bai Yichen descended into a deep, agonizing internal autopsy of his nearly two decades in this world. After an extended eternity of dead silence, he carefully gathered every stray slip from the floor, squared them into a neat deck, slid them back into their fractured frame, and meticulously wedged the backing pieces into place, restoring the display to its exact initial configuration.

Once the frame was set back down by the bedside, Bai Yichen executed his original mission: fetching the damp washcloth to wipe down the resting figure’s face before turning and walking out the door.

What Bai Yichen remained entirely unaware of was that the exact second his footsteps cleared the threshold, the man supposedly dead to the world on the mattress snapped his eyes wide open. A pair of obsidian pupils shone with absolute, razor-sharp sobriety, utterly devoid of drunken haze. He turned his gaze toward the bedside frame resting in its restored position, a quiet, burning gleam of anticipation flickering deep within his eyes.

The following morning, Bai Yichen proceeded as scheduled to his blind-date engagement. Yet, burdened by the explosive truth unearthed the previous night, his mental equilibrium was thoroughly compromised, leaving his thoughts constantly hijacked by those haunting, inescapable lines of text.