Don’t Pick Up Boyfriends From the Trash Bin

translator: baumkuchen  editors: glitterypanda, serefina

TW: Rape scene towards the end. Not involving/between our two leads. 

061 hugged Chi Xiaochi tighter, using the warmth of his body to slowly drag Chi Xiaochi’s boiling body temperature back to normal.

The next morning, Chi Xiaochi, sleeping alone on his bed, was back to a normal temperature.

He moved his arms and legs experimentally, and found that other than being a little dizzy, he actually didn’t feel unwell at all. He couldn’t help but click his tongue in wonder. “This body of Song Chunyang’s is really good.” 

Xi Lou, “Heh.”

Chi Xiaochi vaguely remembered whom he’d collapsed onto last night, and chose to ignore the Yuan Benshan on the ground. “Doctor Gan’s skills really are amazing.”

Xi Lou: Yes, amazing in all aspects, especially in the area of stealing other people’s boyfriends, this next door Old Gan’s skills are absolutely top-notch.

Xi Lou, who’d seen everything that had happened last night, had long since seen through it all.

Very good, one and now two, all-inclusive, all of them are old rogues.

Fortunately, he remembered Chunyang telling him that he didn’t like people who were older than him by too much.

Xi Lou did some mental calculations. Gan Yu was a resident. Even though his face looked very tender, according to his qualifications, he had to be at least thirty four or thirty five. 

Xi Lou had heard that in the field of medicine, the workload was heavy but the amount of hair was light. Don’t be fooled by how thick Gan Yu’s locks were now, after another two years, his hairline will have receded by at least five centimetres.

Upon thinking of this, he let out a long sigh of relief.

It had to be said, after a night of mentally psyching himself up, Xi Lou had already become at peace with himself. 

Chunyang was good in every aspect, except that his ability to evaluate other people wasn’t very good.

When he got his body, the first thing he had to do would be to go to Song Chunyang’s side, and keep this person, who already had glaucoma at such a young age, close to himself. 

The first people to come visit Chi Xiaochi that morning were, unexpectedly, “Guan Qiaoqiao” and “Liao Wu”. 

……The combination of these two “people” was a strange one.

“Liao Wu” had left that crazed state from last night behind him, and now had a gentle expression on his face. He had cleaned himself up neatly, even re-tying his hair into a pigtail. His broken skull had been fixed, and he even had a bit of makeup on his face, looking exactly the same as he’d used to.

It seemed, “Guan Qiaoqiao” had another “actor” to act along with her.

Chi Xiaochi remembered seeing a photograph of a woman sitting before a sewing machine, her eyes lowered in concentration, and her tools all arranged next to her as she focused on repairing a broken drum. 

……Chi Xiaochi vowed that he absolutely wouldn’t think too carefully about how Liao Wu’s broken head had been fixed.

“Guan Qiaoqiao”, appearing very concerned, asked about how Chi Xiaochi had fallen ill so suddenly.

Chi Xiaochi pulled his attention away from “Liao Wu”, smiled, and replied with a joking tone, “Why do you care about me so much?”

Next to him, upon hearing this, an expression like he’d eaten a fly appeared on Yuan Benshan’s face. 

The female ghost’s wanting him to stay in good condition was because she thought of them as props, and naturally didn’t want her props to be damaged, instead wanting them to accompany her in quickly finishing filming.

Unexpectedly, “Guan Qiaoqiao”’s face reddened slightly. She replied honestly, “Because…… you’re really good. You’re really good at acting, and you’re really good to me."

When not acting, “Guan Qiaoqiao” didn’t seem at all like a typical female ghost. She was shy, gentle and soft, seeming just like an actual living human being.

Chi Xiaochi’s attitude was warm. “I’m fine, I already feel a lot better. I can still act with you today.” 

“Guan Qiaoqiao” let out a brilliant smile, revealing a pair of small tiger teeth. 

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I don’t want to die, I want to live.

Liao Wu’s companions’ anger was real, their pain was real, but their desire to survive was also real.

Having lost the dagger, they’d lost the capital to fight for their lives. They could only listen to Chi Xiaochi’s blend of truth and lies, acting with fear and trepidation in their hearts, hoping for the “death qi” around them to lessen slightly. 

The death of their companion made them still hate “Guan Qiaoqiao”, so malice might still breed in the dead of night, but when they saw “Guan Qiaoqiao” and “Liao Wu”’s faces the next day, it would disappear entirely.

There was only one reason: they still wanted to live.

Originally, Chi Xiaochi had still been worried that the female ghost would still have a kill quota to meet, but as time went on, Chi Xiaochi found that she was completely absorbed in acting, unable to extricate herself. 

It couldn’t compare to acting, killing couldn’t compare to acting.

As long as there weren’t any violent or murderous people, she was willing to dig out her heart to treat others well.

Her malice, had always only been directed back to those with malice in their hearts. She was a mirror, only reflecting the dirtiest part of one’s heart, and returning it hundredfold.

But Gan Yu didn’t think that them being able to pass through this second half safely and without any problems was merely due to luck. 

The prompt of “acting” given by the system couldn’t be any more straightforward. The meaning was exactly as it stated, act well, and don’t think about anything else.

However, the tragic deaths of two people occurring in a row, made it impossible for them to not think more.

If that day, Chi Xiaochi hadn’t been able to wrest control of the room, or hadn’t thought of snatching the dagger out of their hands ahead of time, then how things would have proceeded afterwards could completely be imagined.

——Ponytail girl, Tan Yue, would continue with a plan to kill “Guan Qiaoqiao”, and would undoubtedly become the next victim. 

——Tan Yue’s death would result in even more turbulence in the group, directly impacting the filming progress. And when the progress of filming was interrupted, if “Guan Qiaoqiao” even showed a hint of dissatisfaction, it would deepen the cracks in the task-taker’s hearts. They would worry about themselves “going out of character”, and being the next target that “Guan Qiaoqiao” would set her eyes on.

——If things continued in this way, they would either be all the more determined to kill her, or break down mentally.

——Or even, in situations of extreme fear, some people would turn their attacks inwards, resulting in internal strife.

In the end, they would collectively die from their own fear, suspicion and unease. 

All in all, if not for Xiaochi, this eighth world wouldn’t have passed so smoothly.

Going a little further, Chi Xiaochi is the awesomest, not accepting any disagreement.

The task was completed with extraordinary success.

Half a month passed in a blink of an eye. The film hadn’t yet been finished, but they already had to leave.

The night they were to leave, there just so happened to be a dinner organised for the cast and crew.

There was a rich array of food, with even a redwood branch barbeque. Lamb meat was skewered onto those branches, gradually seeping golden oil. A natural, crispy crust formed around the meat, completely enveloping the fresh lamb meat, ensuring that the juices would continue to overflow. When the lamb meat was fully roasted, fresh chili peppers were sprinkled on top, arousing the appetites and stomach acid of the people who loved spicy food. 

As the end of the task approached, everyone’s heart was set on speeding home, finding these delicacies utterly tasteless.

……Other than Chi Xiaochi and the Gan siblings, who were busy helping Chi Xiaochi roast meat.

“Guan Qiaoqiao” had drunk a bit of alcohol. She was an extreme lightweight. After just half a cup, she was slumped onto the reclining chair next to Chi Xiaochi, dazed.

Seeing that she had been holding a bottle of mineral water this entire time, Chi Xiaochi was going to use it to let her rinse her mouth. 

Who knew that she would hug the bottle to herself in a death grip. “Don’t touch this bottle…… I can’t bear to drink it.”

Chi Xiaochi had already become really familiar with her. He couldn’t help but laugh as he said, “Did you fill it with the water of immortals?”

“Guan Qiaoqiao” started laughing as well.

She blinked, then quipped, “It’s even more precious than the water of immortals.” 

As they ate barbeque, they talked a lot.

Afterwards, with the gradual opening of the door to her heart, she told Chi Xiaochi a story.

Once, there was an acting student who had yet to graduate from university. Her family background was ordinary, but since she was young, she’d dreamed of acting. 

It wasn’t because she liked the world of frivolity and beautiful clothes, but because she liked to analyze and appreciate different kinds of lives.

She had originally gotten a pretty good score on her college entrance exams, and had even passed independent recruitment. She could have gone to a certain school to study law, but she still chose to enrol at the acting school that she’d taken the exams for half a year ago.

After enrolling in school, she played a lot of small roles in many films. Even as she ate ten-yuan boxed meals outside in sub-zero temperatures, wrapped in a military coat, she still found joy in acting, never tiring of it.

She believed that she would be favoured by fate as long as she kept working hard like this.  

One day, she was suddenly chosen to act as the female ghost in a horror film by a director she’d worked with before.

After reading the script, she immediately agreed.

She really loved this story, to the point that even if she had to act as a ghost, she was willing to join.

However, only after she joined the cast did she learn that the person playing the male lead had been stuffed in by the investor, and he was a famous, frivolous young master, who’d managed to make ripples in the acting world by depending on his looks and his father. 

He felt that this script was too pretentious. As acting went on, he stopped having fun, so he wanted the script to be changed.

She went to the director and begged him to not change the script.

But no one listened to her.

The film slowly became completely unrecognisable, changing from a literary horror film reflecting on the impacts of school bullying, to a third-class trash film that couldn’t be any more cliche if it tried. 

She knew that she had no power to get people to listen to her, so she had no choice to just bear with it, privately trying to stay as far away from the male lead as she could.

Who knew that her reluctance to interact with him would arouse the male lead’s interest? He began to say obscene things to her, trying to flirt. Later on, he got even worse, knocking on her door in the middle of the night.

She would hide in her room, using her pillow to cover her ears, thinking, please let my part in the film be over soon, when it’s done, I can finally leave.

However, no one would have expected that, being unable to get the girl, the male lead would actually make the rape scene real. 

When she was penetrated, she almost went crazy, kicking and punching in despair, even biting, but how could a girl’s strength overpower that of a man’s?

Countless cameras were aimed at her, like cold eyes, silently staring at her from all directions.

They only watched, watching her along with the people behind the cameras.

No one came to save her. 

The director and assistant director lowered their heads, not yelling for him to stop, just taking it as him going too deep into the act.

The crew members at the scene would impercibly suck in cold breaths from time to time, asking “they’re acting, right” in small voices.

The rape went on for a whole five minutes, until she passed out.

When she woke up, she had already been sent back to her room. The male lead was sitting smugly next to her. He asked her to be his girlfriend, saying he would “take responsibility”. 

She completely descended into insanity, chasing after him and beating him, saying that she’d expose everything.

By the time she realised something was wrong, the drunk male lead had already wrapped the curtain he’d torn down from its rods around her neck and hung her on the chandelier.

She died. The authorities concluded it was an accident. 

She wanted to tell everyone that she didn’t commit suicide.

So, on the day filming was completed, she went to the male lead, but no one could see her. They were only able to take photos of the male lead as he ran around crazily, having lost all control over his bowels, and of his figure as he, in a panic, fell off the diving board.

When she saw his crushed skull, she cried.

Then, she was pushed into this secret realm by an unknown force. 

This place was very different from her original world. There were only ghosts, no living people.

She wasn’t bound to one place, so she went to many different places and took a lot of photographs, then returned to this place, developed them one by one and hung them on the walls. Occasionally, she would take on a role in one of them, and experience their different joys and sorrows.

But she still had one wish: to finish that movie that had been changed into a completely different one.

“Guan Qiaoqiao”’s, or rather, her, expression was incomparably gentle. Her drunken eyes were watery.

“They weren’t good to me.” She looked at the other task takers who were sitting far away from her, then turned to face Chi Xiaochi, looking a little naive and shy. “You were good to me, you’re a good person, you even helped me open this water bottle.”

Chi Xiaochi looked down, only then suddenly remembering where that bottle of water she was holding had come from.

It was the water bottle Chi Xiaochi had once opened for her. She held it carefully in her hands, like she was protecting a weak and sensitive heart. 

……She was a ghost, but she was also human.

Song Chunyang had once been killed by her. Maybe after he’d died, she’d used his body.

Because after Song Chunyang had his eyes stolen, the hate and despair in his heart produced a malice that far exceeded that of Guan Qiaoqiao and Yuan Benshan. 

Today, Chi Xiaochi was using Song Chunyang’s body and was sitting side by side with her, talking candidly with her, and even made a request to her. This couldn’t be described as anything other than fate.

Chi Xiaochi turned and whispered quietly into her ear, talking for a long time.

She was stunned for a moment, then nodded, a complicated expression on her face.

Chi Xiaochi stuffed something into her hand and nodded at her cordially. 

“Guan Qiaoqiao” hid the item up her sleeve, then smiled warmly.

In the next moment, the air before Chi Xiaochi’s eyes twisted.

The half a month was up, they’d returned to the ancient castle.