Volume 5 - CH 74.1

Xü Beijin is just staring at Lin Qin in bafflement.

As they sit in the bookstore, the window is brightening up. Even the perpetual grey fog outside seemed spooked by Lin Qin’s words, and is sneakily rolling back, resembling the dense, damp, dewy fogs of early mornings.

Seeing Xü Beijin’s silence, Lin Qin probes him again, “please tell me. Do you not feel anything like that?”

“Feel that…” Xü Beijin very slowly speaks up, repeating the question, “that you like me?”

Lin Qin merely nods as usual, and asks, “so, do you feel it?”

Xü Beijin “…”

His palm is itching, itching to slap right onto Lin Qin’s head to wake him back up.

Though considering the difference in their physical prowess, Xü Beijin can only give up on the thought regretfully.

He sighs and stands up from the chair to move his stiff limbs about. Sitting down the entire night has left him some fatigue, or at least, his mind is convinced of that.

Lin Qin tilts his head to ask, “why are you not answering me?” Then he narrows his eyes to add, “why do you look like you’re embarrassed?”

Xü Beijin”…”

You’re asking that? You’re really asking that?! You’re seriously still asking about that…?!

He’s on the verge of bursting thanks to Lin Qin.

Xü Beijin stretches his arms to calm down. He takes another deep breath, and then finally asks, “why are you talking about that all of a sudden?”

Lin Qin is looking at him oddly, but doesn’t point out the obvious. Instead, he mentions another thing, “do you still remember the two people who once loitered outside of your bookstore?”

Xü Beijin looks confused, asking, “I do, but what’s it got to do with this?”

“I’ve given them a warning before, and before they headed off to a higher floor, they told me that some people were interested in your Nightmare,” Lin Qin decides to improvise some drama into his parts, “and so I decided to warn those people once more.”

Xü Beijin is looking at him, speechless, and then says, “thank you.”

Although he is wondering if this really wouldn’t backfire in his mind.

And also… He recalls what Mu Jiashi told him in the Nightmare earlier, and is now able to understand a little better.

No wonder Mu Jiashi told him that Lin Qin likes him. It’s probably the headlines earlier on the bottom floor of the Tower that ‘Lin Qin has gone berserk for his significant other.’

… Xü Beijin is a bit restless again, feeling like his reputation has been utterly tarnished by the little apple in front of him.

While pondering those frustrating thoughts, he continues listening to Lin Qin’s explanation.

“You’re welcome; anyway I warned them, and then someone told me, that how I’m running all around for your sake, is a sign that I like you.”

Xü Beijin “…”

Wow. Hurray.

Xü Beijin definitely wasn’t expecting that, while he was warning Mu Jiashi in the Nightmare not to tell Lin Qin his strange fantasies so that Lin Qin wouldn’t misunderstand, the Missiontakers in the Tower have already misled Lin Qin completely!

Xü Beijin heaves a weary sigh. He’s unsure of what to do.

The embarrassment in the beginning waning, he is now more troubled by how he should explain this thing to Lin Qin.

Never mind the rumours circulating around──By the way how nosey were all those Missiontakers causing all these in the first place?──Forcing Lin Qin’s completely twisted impressions around will be quite the monumental task itself.

… In the end, Lin Qin merely helped him with a favour. How did those Missiontakers interpret it as evidence for romantic interest?! What even is the logic here?!

Xü Beijin thinks about it for a long time, and finally comes to a decision to say, “it is not true that you like me romantically. What you did was a gesture of goodwill, which was misunderstood by other people.”

That’s the truth.

Xü Beijin looks closely at Lin Qin to observe his reactions after hearing that.

Lin Qin blinks with a blank face. His natural baby-face is only exacerbating the innocence and confusion within. He wonders, “is that so…? It is just a misunderstanding?”

“Of course it is,” replies Xü Beijin.

Lin Qin stays quiet for a moment.

Xü Beijin thinks that Lin Qin’s simple worldview might not be able to interpret what ‘love’ is. If someone told him that ‘love’ is just that, then Lin Qin might really just believe it without questioning.

He remembers nothing of Earth. He is like a blank piece of canvas, and has only revealed his secrets to Xü Beijin.

Xü Beijin does not want Lin Qin to end up skewed.

If Xü Beijin was at all malicious, intent on bringing the crownless King of the bottom floor of the Tower under his fold, then he could just simply admit it, and coo Lin Qin into being his ‘beloved.’

Lin Qin’s trust, and his emotional understanding that is akin to a blank canvas, is obviously easy pickings for someone like Xü Beijin to ensure his lifelong obedience as a lackey or underling.

If he really did that, Xü Beijin can basically do whatever he wanted on the bottom floor.

But Xü Beijin does not want to do that. He has said it many times already – he is a good person, regardless of whether people believed him.

He is telling Lin Qin the truth, no more, no less.

He hasn’t any of those kinds of feelings towards Lin Qin either, so obviously he shouldn’t toy with Lin Qin’s emotions like that.

Though the fact that Lin Qin is so fixated asking him about this like business, perhaps having waited for him the entire night to do so, does make Xü Beijin feel rather complicated inside.

A feeling that he is treated cordially, courteously, respectfully, as Lin Qin carefully, meticulously asked for confirmation of something, the core of which lies with him, Xü Beijin.

He is a rational, reasonable being, of course, in fact, he is even a pessimist, but this is still, inevitably, leading to a tinge of vanity inside of him, but more importantly… a feeling that, Lin Qin has moved him.

He really likes interacting with someone like Lin Qin.

For Lin Qin, Xü Beijin is the unexpected speck of light appearing in his dark, abyss-like world; but who is to say, that it is not also the case for Xü Beijin?

In this lone Tower, standing in the grey fog, where hopelessness is so permeated it can be felt in the air itself, Xü Beijin and Lin Qin are both outcasts. Lin Qin is an outcast of the Missiontakers. Xü Beijin is an outcast of the Actors.

By pure chance, they now share a connection with each other.

Xü Beijin can’t help but feel impressed inside.

… That said, Lin Qin has been quiet for a while now.

To be honest, Lin Qin is really struggling inside. His mind is boggled in ways he cannot explain clearly to Xü Beijin, so he ends up being quite confused as well.

What first flushed over him, is actually a feeling of rebelliousness.

He might not know about those creatures back on Earth as exemplified by Quarrelsome in the first Nightmare Xü Beijin ever streamed, but what he has this urge to do is reminiscent of what Quarrelsome felt like the entire time back then.

He trusts Xü Beijin very much, true, but Xü Beijin’s rather dismissive tone to the whole thing, the attitude that he doesn’t seem to care at all for his ‘like,’ and the tone that sentences it a mere ‘misunderstanding,’ suddenly makes Lin Qin think that──What, just because you say I don’t like you, then it’s true that I don’t like you how?

How do you even know? How can you be sure this is a misunderstanding?

… What does that make him, sitting here alone the whole night, and fidgeting, anxiously, excitedly awaiting Xü Beijin’s return to tell him the answer──Whether he could feel his like for him or not──What was the meaning in all that?

When this man, who knows not the first thing about different emotions, heard about ‘like,’ and how it is a positive, and not a negative emotion, and when he, despite some doubts, still decided he wants to come ask Xü Beijin about it, for clarification, for details…

He would want to have an affirmative answer, regardless of his own, actual, truthful, material feeling.

He has heard about this brand new, unique thing. So, he wished that he also had that.

That’s it.

So now, after all that silence, he merely gives a muffled ‘oh,’ and remains largely unresponsive.

Xü Beijin said it is a misunderstanding – he thinks it is a misunderstanding, yes, and even told him so with that firm tone, that Lin Qin does not like him… This must mean that Xü Beijin really doesn’t feel anything from him that can convince him he ‘likes’ him.

Suffice it to say, that Lin Qin is willing to trust Xü Beijin has a better understanding of ‘love’ than he does.

So he is going with what Xü Beijin says for now.

That said, he is still wondering, if he really likes──Romantically, love, Xü Beijin, then, what would that be like? If it were true… What kind of feeling would like be?

What sort of display from him will convince Xü Beijin that he likes him?

Lin Qin is curious, the same way he is curious about Xü Beijin’s lifestyle not long ago.