Don’t Pick Up Boyfriends From the Trash Bin

translator: baumkuchen (unedited)

Gan Yu, who didn’t need to participate in the filming, watched Chi Xiaochi, his arms crossed. His eyes were filled with gently restrained admiration.

This wasn’t his first time seeing Chi Xiaochi act, but it was his first time seeing him do it in person.

He could only say that he was born for the camera lens. That kind of indescribable spirit and charm, as long as they saw it, it could easily move one’s heart.

Every scene with him in it passed in one shot.

……While everyone else was called over by the director to be scolded, Chi Xiaochi returned to the dressing room with the Gan siblings under the excuse of having to touch up his makeup.

He still wasn’t very used putting on and taking off contacts, so he left it all to Gan Yu.

Gan Yu carefully took off the two lenses, then helped him apply eye drops for eye strain, blowing on his eyes lightly. He then told him to close his eyes and rest, pressing his hands against his shoulder blades to tell him that he was always here, that he could close his eyes without worrying, there was no need to be scared. 

This consideration made it truly impossible for Chi Xiaochi to not make some associations.

As Gan Tang picked out clothes for Chi Xiaochi, she asked, “I’ve always wanted to ask, why do you have to pretend to be blind. If it’s because you’re afraid of others finding out about your heterochromia, isn’t that easily solved just by wearing colour contacts?”

Chi Xiaochi’s eyes were closed as he rested. In a lazy voice, he said, “Yes, why is that?”

Song Chunyang himself was rather pure, so he would never have thought of these questions. He just felt like this was a kind of painless fun, which would just let him and Yuan Benshan be more intimate with each other. When times where he could help people came, he was never afraid to expose his identity as someone with Yin-Yang Eyes. 

Song Chunyang thought of it like this. What about Yuan Benshan?

“Because being ‘blind’ means that you’re troublesome. Who would be willing to form a team with a blind person?” He said indifferently, “Yuan Benshan doesn’t want to let other people team up with us, to share information with us. In his view, I’m his, so this pair of Yin-Yang Eyes should be his, should be his biggest chip to ensure his survival. If he let other people use them, wouldn’t that be letting others benefit without getting anything in return?”

Gan Yu picked up a soft cloth and wiped away the eye drops that were rolling down from his eyes. He gave a simple summary of Chi Xiaochi’s analysis, “Egoism.”

Chi Xiaochi shrugged. “I didn’t say that there was anything wrong with wanting to only benefit oneself. Gaining a personal benefit without having to harm others is actually a show of skill.” 

Gan Yu asked, “What if some people are harming others for their own personal gain?”

“Then the people by his side need to be a little smarter,” Chi Xiaochi said, “Kindness requires a warm heart, but also needs a set of sharp teeth and claws. The former is used to be kind to others, the latter is used to protect oneself.”

With this back and forth, they managed to say practically everything Chi Xiaochi had wanted to say to Song Chunyang. 

Song Chunyang’s only problem was that he had been too well-protected, to the extent that the first time he was made aware of the cruelty in people’s hearts, he had to pay far too bitter a price.

Chi Xiaochi wasn’t afraid of Song Chunyang not being able to see the darkness, he was just afraid of him not being able to believe in the light.

However, if, after ten tasks, there was Xi Lou to stay by his side, maybe he didn’t have to worry.

Thinking of this, he leaned back into the soft chair, his lips pursing up in a light laugh. 

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For these past two days, Guan Qiaoqiao had locked herself inside the room. All her food and drink had to be brought to her by other people.

With the nearing of the figure in the photograph, her condition had gotten more and more serious. Guan Qiaoqiao was already so sick that she had no way of leaving the room whatsoever. Only this haunted room could give her a slight sense of security,

But this kind of security was nothing more than a pavilion in the sky. It had absolutely no way of giving one true comfort, it could only push one to slide step by step into the abyss of collapse.

The “Night Returnee” was faced away from her, hiding their figure, which actually just made Guan Qiaoqiao even more nervous. She desperately wanted to see how much closer the “Night Returnee” had gotten, but at the same time, she didn’t have the courage. 

Over these past few days, her nerves had been worn to the point of being as thin as string, almost stretched to the point of snapping. When she saw Yuan Benshan, she abruptly flipped over and sat up, a glimmer of hope reappearing on her pale, haggard face. “Has Chunyang come up with anything yet?”

Yuan Benshan replied, “He’s still thinking.”

These words were just a prevarication. 

Everyone knew that Guan Qiaoqiao was done for. It was just a question of if she would die sooner or later. However, the person herself still held a glimmer of hope.

Sometimes, hope could be more painful than despair.

“Thinking! Thinking thinking thinking!” Guan Qiaoqiao started screeching uncontrollably, “Exactly when is he going to think of something! Why don’t you give me a time, huh?!”

Yuan Benshan’s expression cooled as he forced himself to hold back his impatience. 

No one would be happy to watch a dying person’s deathbed struggles and hysteria. This couldn’t give anyone any joy.

He put down the lunchbox. “Eat.”

Guan Qiaoqiao stared at Yuan Benshan. She asked suspiciously, “Yuan Benshan, did you say something to Chunyang? Why hasn’t he come to see me?”

These days, Guan Qiaoqiao had been overly suspicious of everything, truly making one feel annoyed. And Song Chunyang was an idiot, often searching out Yuan Benshan to blather on about “if I had given her a Yin-Yang Eye earlier this wouldn’t have happened”. Adding on to that how badly this task had been going, with all these matters combining, Yuan Benshan couldn’t hold back the sneer itching at the corner of his mouth any longer. “Aren’t you yourself clear on what you’ve done?” 

Guan Qiaoqiao stilled. Her slightly lidded eyes stared rigidly at Yuan Benshan. “What I’ve done, you’ve also done. Don’t try to paint yourself as so clean.”

Yuan Benshan didn’t want to say anything else to her. With a weird laugh, he turned his head and started to leave.

But this laugh totally triggered Guan Qiaoqiao’s delicate, sensitive nerves.

She wrenched off her quilt, saying, “You’re planning on giving up on me?” 

Yuan Benshan lowered his voice and shot back, “What value is there in keeping a partner like you? ……Someone who’s going to die at any moment now!”

This evaluation clearly triggered Guan Qiaoqiao. She let out a laugh, her face already almost distorted. “Is that so? Yuan Benshan, then have you ever heard of ‘the words of a man on his deathbed always come from the heart’?

Just as Yuan Benshan was still thinking about what those words meant, he saw Guan Qiaoqiao leap down from the bed, and yell out in a sharp voice, “Chun——” 

Seeing that the situation was good, Yuan Benshan covered her mouth with one hand, grabbing her hair with the other, and directly pushed her down, harshly slamming her head against the bedside table!

Guan Qiaoqiao’s body immediately softened. As the world around her spun, a warm liquid with a metallic tang trickled down from her head. Her vision went dizzy.

She thought that her sense of pain had long since been numbed by fear, but when she was really hit, her body still thrashed in pain.

Over these past two days, everyone had gotten used to her yelling and screaming. No matter how she screamed, everyone would just take it as her acting up again, there was no way they would come to check on her so easily. 

The pain roused an impulsive malice. She threatened him in a twisted voice, “If you don’t quickly come up with a way to save me, I’ll let Chunyang know about what you’ve done. If I die, don’t even think about living well!”

Yuan Benshan just looked at her, silent.

The pressure of despair and hope drove Guan Qiaoqiao completely insane. In a strange voice, she said, “Doctor Yuan, if you have the ability, just kill me. You’re the last one to have seen me. If you kill me, the most suspect one will be you.” 

Yuan Benshan stared at her seriously for a while, then smiled.

He asked, “What are you talking about? Why can’t I understand what you’re saying? What do you want to tell Chunyang? ……Ah, it’s about us conspiring together, right? But where’s your proof.”

Guan Qiaoqiao, “Don’t forget, I have my phone——”

Yuan Benshan pulled out a phone from his pocket and said with a smile, “……You mean this?” 

Ever since he had started suspecting Guan Qiaoqiao of leaking their secret, Yuan Benshan had begun destroying the evidence.

His own phone had been lost on the way there. It might have been stolen by a pickpocket, which actually saved him the trouble of destroying it. Guan Qiaoqiao’s phone had been stolen the last time he had sent her food, and soaked in water. He had also pulled out the memory card, snapped it in half, and flushed it down the toilet, totally destroying it and leaving no possibility for repair.

In this other world, their phones had no signal, so there was no way to use them. They couldn’t even beat a brick in terms of usefulness, so Guan Qiaoqiao hadn’t even realised that she had lost her phone. 

Guan Qiaoqiao fell into a frenzy once more, starting to struggle with all her might, roaring, “Then I’ll tell him myself! There’s no need for any evidence! I’m already dying, what am I afraid of? What else do I need to be afraid of?”

“Really?”

Yuan Benshan pulled the sheets off of the bed, slowly saying, “Then let’s test it out and see.”

It was easy for one to lose their reason in the throes of madness. Only when she realised that her hands had been tied to the steel bed frame did Guan Qiaoqiao start to panic. “Yuan Benshan, what are you doing?!”

Without saying a word, Yuan Benshan pulled off the pillowcase, and firmly stuffed it into her mouth. He then tied Guan Qiaoqiao’s limbs to the bed, securing it with a surgical knot.

After doing all of this, Yuan Benshan walked over towards that photograph.

Guan Qiaoqiao guessed what he was about to do. She immediately let out a scream of fear. 

“Didn’t you say that you were about to die?” Yuan Benshan said, “Didn’t you say that you’re ‘not afraid of anything’?”

He grabbed the picture frame, raised it up with a lot of strength, and flipped the frame around!

A heartrending roar tried to burst out of Guan Qiaoqiao’s throat, but it was blocked by the pillowcase.

As she retched with fear, she let out muffled sounds of rage, which were probably extremely vicious curses. 

But Yuan Benshan wasn’t in the mood to continue listening to her. He grabbed the room key off the struggling Guan Qiaoqiao’s body, walked out the door, locked it, stuffed the key into his pocket, and walked away.

He might not be able to kill, but the ghost could.

That all-encompassing gaze fell onto Guan Qiaoqiao once more. 

Guan Qiaoqiao was tied to the bed, she couldn’t move. Her chest rose and fell uncontrollably. She didn’t dare to look at the photograph, but at the same time, she couldn’t help but look.

She finally carefully glanced at it out of the corner of her eye.

The photograph was still a vast swath of white snowfield, the undergrowth hazy, but the figure of the night returnee hadn’t continued to grow. It was even a little smaller than the size it had been in the previous days.

However, the sense of being watched was still growing, tormenting her to the point that she couldn’t keep from repeatedly smacking her head against the bed. 

What’s going on? Hadn’t the night returnee walked off?

And the image in the picture gave Guan Qiaoqiao a subtle ill feeling, as if it wasn’t exactly the same as the photograph she;d seen before.

She gathered up all her courage, before looking over at it properly.

Gradually, Guan Qiaoqiao’s eyes widened. 

……She had realised it. 

The white in the image, wasn’t the white of a snowfield. It was the white of a sclera.

And the dark black dot, was a still pupil, staring straight at the her on the bed.

She opened her mouth wide, saliva flowing out of the corners of the lips. A hoarse wail of grief rushed out from her chest, so frightened it didn’t sound like a human’s voice.