The silence lasted for about ten minutes.

The hotel room was brightly lit, but Xie Jinghe remained with his back pressed against the door. He had shifted from picking at his trouser seams to picking at his own fingers, his frame completely swallowed by the tall shadow cast by the man standing before him. His expression was impossible to read.

After a long while, Shi Linchuan heard him murmur:

“My attitude today was very poor.”

Before Shi Linchuan could respond, Xie Jinghe abruptly changed the subject. “We haven’t seen each other in a long time. During this period, aside from sending other people to deliver documents to me, you never came home.”

By “other people,” he meant Pei Yue.

At this point, Xie Jinghe faltered.

Shi Linchuan picked up the thread smoothly: “You were the same.” He smiled slightly and added, “You didn’t contact me either, did you?”

The silence stretched out again, but this time only for a minute or so. Xie Jinghe finally stopped fidgeting with his fingers and looked up. His face was blank, but the corners of his eyes were slightly red.

“I was afraid that if I contacted you, you’d say those things to me again. Ever since that day, my mind has been filled with the memory of you grabbing my chin and asking me what my thoughts were…”

“You were determined to torment me.”

He stated it as a fact.

Shi Linchuan admitted it flatly: “Yes.”

It was the truth. He had no reason to deny it. Whether it was for the sake of the “role” he was playing or driven by his own malice, Shi Linchuan had indeed done it on purpose—he had even gone three steps further than what was in the original script.

The next second, Xie Jinghe said quietly: “So, I was scared.”

Then, as if he had finally opened the floodgates, he spoke quickly: “Including this morning at the Civil Affairs Bureau, when you helped me pick up my hat—you were so considerate, even taking the initiative to greet me as if nothing had happened… but we had clearly been in a cold war for a month!”

“I couldn’t help but wonder what you were going to say or do next. I felt both afraid and angry, which is why I turned and ran. When we argued later, I said some hurtful things,” he lowered his head to pick at his fingers again, his voice becoming smaller, “but I didn’t mean any of them.”

Shi Linchuan gave an “oh,” finally understanding.

Xie Jinghe seemed to want to apologize and reconcile.

Shi Linchuan crossed his arms and preemptively declared, “I won’t apologize to you.”

Xie Jinghe replied: “I know.”

“You did it on purpose; why would you apologize?”

Hearing this, Shi Linchuan raised an eyebrow: “Your memory is quite good.”

Having said that, he remembered Xie Jinghe’s sharp-tongued performance earlier that day and, being quite petty, added: “My memory is also quite good. You said I had no breeding, and that just looking at me made you want to vomit.”

Xie Jinghe’s expression remained blank. It was a long time before he answered: “Those were all the opposite of what I meant. It’s because you never talk to me properly, as if you’re deliberately picking a fight. You weren’t like this before, so I…”

Before, before, before.

Shi Linchuan interrupted: “As you said, that was before.”

After a moment of silence, Xie Jinghe nodded: “Then we won’t mention the past.”

As he spoke, he caught a glimpse of the cold expression on the man’s face and felt inexplicably flustered. He had a sudden urge to smoke to soothe his nerves, but he forcibly held it back.

After a long while, Xie Jinghe took a deep breath and asked the question he most wanted answered today: “Linchuan, do you want to do this show with me, or do you really want to divorce me?”

Actually, these things should have been made clear long ago. They were likely the most confused pair among the three couples. The past month had been a blurry mess.

Shi Linchuan pondered for two seconds, finding Xie Jinghe’s question quite interesting, and retorted: “Is there a difference?”

Xie Jinghe replied quickly: “The difference is that appearing on a divorce show to go public with our relationship doesn’t necessarily mean we have to get a real divorce in the end. Besides, during the cooling-off period, as long as one party is unwilling, the divorce can’t go through—unless it’s a lawsuit, the kind that goes to court…”

His voice grew quieter.

“If I don’t want to divorce, will you take me to court?”

Shi Linchuan caught the drift; Xie Jinghe seemingly didn’t want to divorce and had even started pre-setting the conditions for what would happen if they chose not to. For some reason, he suddenly felt a flash of irritation. He tilted his head, about to speak, when he heard two knocks on the door.

The conversation was temporarily suspended.

This time, it was truly the room service waiter.

By the time Shi Linchuan realized it, Xie Jinghe had already opened the door and retrieved both beautifully packaged meal boxes. He held one in each hand, used his shoulder to close the door, and looked over. He quickly lowered his eyelids again, staring at the floor, and asked: “We haven’t finished talking. Can we eat together?”

He still didn’t want to leave.

Shi Linchuan said nothing, his face cold, simply stepping aside to make room.

And so, the two of them ended up eating face-to-face, in a rather inexplicable situation.

As they ate, Xie Jinghe kept his head down and suddenly asked: “Have you lost weight?”

Shi Linchuan: “No.”

Xie Jinghe: “You lost weight.”

Shi Linchuan: “…”

Xie Jinghe: “This past month, did you miss me?”

Shi Linchuan: “No.”

Xie Jinghe: “But I have been thinking about you the whole time.”

Shi Linchuan: “…”

Xie Jinghe: “I thought about it over and over.”

He paused, shoved a mouthful of rice into his mouth with a hint of agitation, chewed twice, and swallowed. Only after repeating this a few times did he continue:

“You asked me to come on this divorce show with you—is it because you never wanted to hide our marriage in the first place, and were only doing it to accommodate my career…”

He had a bad habit: when anxious, he tended to overeat.

Shi Linchuan said: “No.”

It really wasn’t.

Hiding the marriage had been a mutual decision after they discussed it. In the first year of their marriage, Xie Jinghe had even wanted to go public, but Shi Linchuan had flatly refused.

Xie Jinghe asked again: “Then is it because I wasn’t good to you?”

Shi Linchuan asked him: “Why would you think that?”

In all fairness, even though in their three years together he had indeed taken better care of Xie Jinghe due to his “persona,” the other man had also been living his life with him wholeheartedly. Every time he went out for work, he would bring back gifts; even for short-term day trips, he’d bring something back.

He would either wait obediently at home for Shi Linchuan to return, or follow him around like a little tail the moment he got back. Even his bank card password was set to Shi Linchuan’s birthday, allowing him to spend it however he pleased.

In those daily, trivial days, Xie Jinghe wasn’t entirely the one being taken care of. Sometimes, he even felt he wasn’t doing enough for their home life, which was why he had wanted to quit some of his work, to the point of completely burning bridges with Fu Guang Entertainment.

“Didn’t I tell you the reason long ago?”

Seeing that he insisted on finding a reason, Shi Linchuan smiled and repeated in a measured tone: “You are just too unlucky to have met me. I was never the ‘good guy’ you imagined. I was faking it to trick you from the start. You already knew that, didn’t you?”

Xie Jinghe: “…”

He was silent for a long time before saying:

“But I don’t feel like meeting you was an unlucky thing.”

The window in the hotel room hadn’t been closed tightly. A gust of damp, cold air scraped past the back of Shi Linchuan’s neck, giving him a chilling sensation. He let out a soft breath, put down his chopsticks, and stood up to close the window.

Creak.

The window clicked shut, and Shi Linchuan locked the wind, the rain, the clouds, and whatever was coming out of the night, leaving not a single gap.

He turned around, but instead of walking back, he leaned against the windowsill, looking back at Xie Jinghe’s silhouette from several meters away. He heard the man continue:

“I am glad I met you that day. It was like a dream. So when you brought that up that night, I couldn’t control my emotions and lashed out.”

He added:

“I regret that, but I don’t regret meeting you.”

Shi Linchuan suspected Xie Jinghe’s brain had broken.

He asked with a cold laugh: “Even with me treating you like this now?”

Xie Jinghe: “Even with you treating me like this now.”

Shi Linchuan asked again: “Even if I continue to treat you like this in the future?”

Xie Jinghe: “Even if you continue to treat me like this in the future.”

Shi Linchuan was so angry he laughed: “Your brain is truly broken.”

Xie Jinghe let out a couple of muffled, inexplicable chuckles. It ended abruptly. He reached behind his back to wipe the corner of his eye and replied: “You’re doing that on purpose again—I’ll get angry, and then we’ll end up in another pointless argument, but…”

He said “but” for a long time.

Shi Linchuan had a premonition.

He couldn’t let Xie Jinghe continue.

However, the night wind kept battering the window frame, not having given up on the idea of getting in. Shi Linchuan had to stand there to block it, so he could only watch as Xie Jinghe pursed his lips, looked up with his chin tilted, and said word by word:

“But…”

“I still don’t want to let go of your hand.”

He stood up and walked slowly toward the man without a single sound.

Shi Linchuan, however, seemed to hear a deafening sound—thump, thump—like a gale knocking at the window, or perhaps an earthquake in some remote place, with the aftershocks finally reaching him.

But in the end, it was just one person quietly walking to his side, gently taking his cold hand, and then whispering: “Linchuan, you seem ready to let go of my hand. If I don’t hold on, are you really going to leave?”

Xie Jinghe paused, took several deep breaths, and steadied his voice: “Since you always say I don’t understand the real you, can you…”

“Let me understand?”

Right at that moment.

CRASH!

As soon as he finished speaking, the window behind the man was blown open by the fierce night wind. The cold air rushed greedily into the room, and the temperature dropped several degrees instantly, making them shiver.

Yet, Shi Linchuan suddenly felt warmth in his chest.

Xie Jinghe had carefully moved into his embrace, his fingers locking into the gaps between Shi Linchuan’s, and pulled his hand into the hem of his own shirt, using his stomach to warm his cold fingers.

The hotel floor was quite high, and the wind roared loudly.

Shi Linchuan stood by the windowsill, feeling as though he were swaying precariously. The hair against his chin was smooth and soft. A sentence drifted into his ears on the wind.

It was Xie Jinghe speaking.

He said,

“It’s been a long time. I missed you very much.”