Xie Jinghe craned his neck, looking over with stubborn eyes. The palm pressing against Shi Linchuan’s wrist was burning hot, and Shi Linchuan could feel the other man’s pinky finger trembling violently.

It was fluctuating more erratically than an EKG.

Xie Jinghe’s pinky had been broken once.

It was likely when he was nineteen, shooting a police action film. An accident happened while filming a fight scene with another actor, and he tumbled down a flight of stairs.

The injury wasn’t serious, just a broken pinky.

At the time, the doctor said it was fine, but somewhere along the line, a nerve had been damaged. For all these years, whenever Xie Jinghe got emotionally agitated, that finger would tremble.

They were still in the dating phase when he told Shi Linchuan about it.

At the time, Shi Linchuan was stuck at the tail end of the first crucial plot point. According to the mission requirements, he had to propose to the protagonist and successfully achieve the “flash marriage” milestone.

The wind was strong that night, the night deep, and the window glass rattled—like a prelude to a storm.

They had just finished a round. Shi Linchuan sat at the edge of the bed, naked, wrapped only in a corner of the quilt, while the rest of it draped over Xie Jinghe.

The man was lying on the bed, dazed, his face buried in his folded arms, head turned sideways to look at him, thinking he was being subtle.

Shi Linchuan saw it perfectly clearly out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t really want to deal with him, so he pretended not to notice, silently blowing a smoke ring.

The smoke dispersed with his breath, like thick mist.

A bit annoying.

Just then, Xie Jinghe spoke.

He inched bit by bit toward Shi Linchuan, until his head rested on the man’s thigh, saying with a strange longing: “…Linchuan, I want to smoke too.”

Shi Linchuan lowered his eyes to look at the fuzzy head on his lap. His black-framed glasses had slid down, perched precariously on the lower bridge of his nose. He couldn’t be bothered to fix them, retracted his gaze, and responded with:

“It’s bad for your throat.”

His movements while holding the cigarette were casual, his tone gentle, and he even ruffled Xie Jinghe’s “dog head,” adding: “Aren’t you going to record a song in a while?”

In his heart, however, he was thinking viciously: Sharing a cigarette with a man… it’s kind of disgusting.

Because they had broken intimate boundaries during their first meeting, every encounter during their dating period basically ended with them rolling into bed.

Moreover, Xie Jinghe loved physical contact, was incredibly clingy, and had high needs. He wouldn’t be surprised if they had to roll for another round before they could rest.

Hindered by the role-playing mission, Shi Linchuan naturally couldn’t refuse.

So… he definitely didn’t want to taste secondhand smoke from Xie Jinghe’s mouth.

After being rejected, Xie Jinghe wasn’t disappointed. Instead, he slowly adjusted his posture, continuing to watch the man smoke from a “death angle,” his eyes filled with fascination.

Shi Linchuan grew even more annoyed by his gaze. He couldn’t help but take a deep drag, leaned down, and blew a mouthful of smoke directly onto Xie Jinghe’s face, forcing him to close his eyes.

Xie Jinghe didn’t dodge or evade. Squinting his eyes from the smoke as if he’d been drugged, he said softly:

“…What are you doing?”

Shi Linchuan said, “Don’t open your eyes.”

Taking advantage of the moment the other man obediently kept his eyes closed, he kept the cigarette in his mouth, stretched his arm out, and fished a small box out of the nightstand. Irritably, he slipped the contents onto the man’s neck and spat out the key line for the proposal, unwillingly:

“Xiao Jing, let’s become a real family.”

“…”

After hearing those words, Xie Jinghe’s reaction was somewhat similar to now: his pinky trembled violently, as if he’d been electrocuted, or like his neurons were malfunctioning.

Shi Linchuan, being blocked by him, wasn’t annoyed. Instead, he took the initiative to retreat, sitting steadily on the sofa, head tilted, and asked with apparent confusion:

“Why should I apologize?”

At that, Xie Jinghe’s pinky jumped heavily again. He was stunned for nearly half a minute before he tugged at the corners of his mouth, pulling a very strained smile, and explained: “Because… because I didn’t mean to, like you said…”

He couldn’t get the rest of the words out for a long time.

Shi Linchuan watched him quietly. His other hand had already picked up the glasses from the coffee table, but he wasn’t in a hurry to put them on, just balancing them on his thumb, tapping them one by one.

They were only half a meter apart.

Shi Linchuan saw that he looked as uncomfortable as if he had swallowed a mouthful of broken glass, unable to speak clearly, his tail-end words trembling, so he took the initiative to pick up the conversation, trying to sort out the logic.

“You didn’t mean it just now, right?” He stared at Xie Jinghe, starting from the beginning. “So you regretted it after you hit me, and felt you should apologize?”

Xie Jinghe nodded slightly.

Shi Linchuan continued, his logic impeccable as he tapped the glasses frame: “And you feel that I was in a bad mood and spoke without thinking, so you want me to apologize to you, too, so we can turn the page?”

Xie Jinghe tilted his head, wiped away the tears sliding down his cheeks, and nodded several times in a row.

Shi Linchuan suddenly laughed.

“No, I meant it.”

Clatter.

Shi Linchuan tossed the glasses into the trash can as if throwing away a useless mask. Facing Xie Jinghe’s dazed eyes, he emphasized:

“I meant it.”

Then he raised a hand to wipe the moisture from the corners of the man’s eyes and his eyelashes, brought his wet fingertips to his own lips, and gently licked them with the tip of his tongue.

A bit salty, a bit bitter.

Xie Jinghe’s expression looked as if he were staring at a stranger, while Shi Linchuan just bloomed with a somewhat cruel smile, continuing:

“Do you really think… you understand me at all?”

The floor-to-ceiling window leading to the courtyard hadn’t been closed, and the living room felt like a pocket with a giant hole, the night wind gushing in—but Xie Jinghe clearly felt that he was the pocket that had been ripped open.

The cold air invaded through that hole, filling every corner of his body.

Xie Jinghe subconsciously let go of the man’s hand.

He wondered if he had drunk too much tonight, leading to hallucinations and auditory hallucinations.

Because everything before him was so absurd.

Shi Linchuan finally managed to pull his hand back, the temperature of the other man’s palm still lingering on his wrist.

With the wind blowing, it felt exceptionally cold.

He suddenly felt bored.

So he got up, first taking out the equipment he had prepared long ago from the storage cabinet, then tidied up the coffee table, wiped it with an alcohol-soaked cloth, and finally laid those items out one by one.

It was a full set of tattooing equipment.

He turned his head and asked: “Do you want to understand me? Do you want to know why I did this?”

Xie Jinghe looked at him blankly, nodding lightly only after a long moment.

Shi Linchuan laughed again, then reached out to pat his knee and said, “Then, take off your pants.”

He had said it before.

Xie Jinghe could never refuse him.

According to the original plot, the “scumbag ex-husband” paid a high price for a house-call tattoo artist. During the process, Xie Jinghe had covered himself tightly with a hat and mask, with a blanket over his body.

But Shi Linchuan preferred doing it himself, and he could enjoy watching Xie Jinghe’s expression during the process.

It was a form of adjustment, after all.

The novel described the tattoo’s location as the inner part of his upper left thigh, which is why it was accidentally photographed later.

Shi Linchuan, however, wiped the inner thigh of Xie Jinghe’s left leg with a cleaning wipe, forcing the other man to lean back and prop his feet on his shoulders to expose the skin as much as possible.

He was very obedient.

Whatever Shi Linchuan said, he did.

When the first needle pierced his skin, Xie Jinghe couldn’t help but tremble. His mind was still on the “truth transaction” the man had just made with him, and for a moment, his eyes reflected the other’s skillful movements…

He asked blankly: “So you really were doing it on purpose.”

Shi Linchuan was very professional about his contracts and told the truth as promised: “Yeah, I even practiced a few times beforehand. After all, a poorly done tattoo would be quite a mood killer.”

Xie Jinghe had never been this confused.

He asked Shi Linchuan: “…Why?”

He also asked: “Did I do something wrong?”

According to how the scumbag ex-husband acted in the original work, Shi Linchuan should have nodded, pushed all the responsibility onto the other, and scolded him to keep himself clean.

But that would be too boring.

Since the role-playing mission had reached this stage, and after tonight, there was only the final key “divorce” plot point left between him and Xie Jinghe, Shi Linchuan didn’t mind speaking the truth.

He raised an eyebrow and countered: “Why does it have to be that you did something wrong?”

Xie Jinghe said: “Then why?”

Shi Linchuan thought for a moment and replied: “Because I am a bad man, and you are just unlucky.”

After speaking, his movements paused slightly. He lifted his eyes to look at Xie Jinghe and said sincerely: “Running into me, that’s just your bad luck.”

—This sentence was truer than gold.

Shi Linchuan spent over an hour tattooing his own name onto the root of Xie Jinghe’s left thigh. The ink was deep red, each character the size of a coin, every stroke looking like it had been carved in with a knife.

During this time, the two of them said quite a lot.

Shi Linchuan said, I hate you.

Xie Jinghe was like a broken record, asking why.

He listed them one by one.

Shi Linchuan said, because I hate you, I hate you from head to toe, I hate your flowers, I hate how you throw yourself at me like a bomb, I hate your moronic views on marriage even more, and most of all, I hate how you keep the word “love” on your lips every single day.

He said a long string of things in one breath.

Xie Jinghe was stunned for a long time, crying while saying: “You hate me but you still go to bed with me, you hate my flowers but you water them every day, you hate me throwing myself at you but you always reach out to catch me, you hate my views on marriage but you still married me, you hate my love…”

“Then why, why do you make me love you?!”

He almost roared the last sentence, the veins in his neck bulging, looking very prominent.

Shi Linchuan stared at him for a minute—or maybe two—and finally just said coldly with a stern face:

“Don’t move around.”

Having said that, he buried his head back into the tattoo work.

After finishing, he blew on the tattoo, causing the muscles in Xie Jinghe’s leg to spasm crazily for a while before sliding down weakly.

Shi Linchuan held his lower leg to steady him.

Xie Jinghe hadn’t made a sound for a good while, just covering his eyes with one arm, occasionally making sniffling sounds.

He looked exactly like a small animal caught in a trap—daring not to move, and daring not to cry too loudly.

Shi Linchuan first applied ointment to the tortured skin, then wrapped it in plastic wrap to prevent infection.

He picked Xie Jinghe up and walked upstairs, his steps incredibly steady, his voice calm and ripple-free.

He said: “I forgive you.”

“A slap—the mark will fade in a day or two, but the trace I’ve left on you, you will never be able to get rid of.”

Shi Linchuan smiled and added:

“I won’t apologize, so you don’t need to forgive me either.”

He laid Xie Jinghe on the bed and lifted the leg that had just been tattooed, being very careful not to touch the wound.

Xie Jinghe didn’t try to block his movements again.

He just looked at the man hovering over him with a very strange gaze, his voice trembling.

“…I will remove it.”

This was the shortest time the two had ever spent together, and also the most awkward. The strangest thing was that neither of them broke a sweat; Xie Jinghe even felt a bit cold.

After it ended, Shi Linchuan kissed that name through the plastic wrap and helped him clean up the mess, saying with complete indifference:

“Do whatever you want.”

This person still didn’t understand—

The palm print would fade, and the tattoo could be removed completely with technology, but the scars he had carved into his heart… he would never let them disappear.

No matter who Xie Jinghe met in the future, Shi Linchuan would not allow them to disappear, and even less would he allow Xie Jinghe to find peace.

Moonlight crept through the window and climbed onto Xie Jinghe’s fingertips hanging off the edge of the bed.

After a long while, he cursed with a hoarse voice,

“Shi Linchuan, you bastard.”

Hearing this, Shi Linchuan laughed with satisfaction, then pulled his hand into his arms, hiding them both in the shadows as he held him.

He responded with great triumph:

“Xie Jinghe, you only just noticed.”