Chapter 45 Mine

Chapter 45: Mine

During the afternoon rehearsal, Zhou Yan noticed Pei Zhi was off.

Not bad—actually, it was almost too good.

He didn't get into a fight with Zhou Yan about the arrangement today, and even when Jiang Muye hit a wrong chord, he just said flatly, "Again."

Zhou Yan had known Pei Zhi long enough to know something was wrong.

Totally wrong.

During the break, Zhou Yan pulled Pei Zhi aside, handed him a bottle of water, and asked quietly, "What's going on with you today?"

"What do you mean?" Pei Zhi hadn't expected Zhou Yan to notice, so he played it off.

"You're in a great mood." Zhou Yan twisted open his own water bottle and took a sip, giving him a side-eye. "Is it because the album's going well?"

At that, Pei Zhi let out a barely noticeable sigh of relief. "Yeah."

"Or is it because of Lin Xishan?" Zhou Yan said, sharp.

Pei Zhi's fingers froze on the bottle cap. After all, it was Zhou Yan, so he went with the truth: "Kind of."

Zhou Yan looked at him and broke into a smile. He patted Pei Zhi on the shoulder, didn't say another word, and turned back to his spot in the rehearsal room.

Jiang Muye leaned over and asked Zhou Yan, "What's going on with Pei Zhi?"

"Nothing." Zhou Yan picked up his bass and tuned the strings, unable to hide the smile at the corner of his mouth. "He's just good."

Jiang Muye was confused.

After rehearsal, Pei Zhi hopped on his motorcycle and rode back to the apartment.

Yes, that's right—a rockstar rides a motorcycle even with a wrecked back.

All for the look.

...Actually, the truth was he was too broke for a cab, and the motorcycle saved money.

He parked the bike, headed upstairs, and opened the door.

The living room light was on. Lin Xishan sat on the sofa. Hearing the door open, he looked up, pulled off his earphones, and smiled. "You're back?"

Pei Zhi stood at the door, looking at Lin Xishan's silhouette against the light. He suddenly remembered a question Xie Zhiyi had once asked him in a session: "Pei Zhi, do you think you deserve love?"

He hadn't answered then, because he thought he didn't deserve it.

But now, Lin Xishan was sitting on his sofa, looking up at him with smiling eyes.

Whether he deserved it or not, he'd already gotten love.

Pei Zhi changed into his slippers, walked over to the sofa, sat down, and leaned his head into the crook of Lin Xishan's neck.

A total clingy little cat.

Lin Xishan put his laptop down. "How was rehearsal today?"

"Fine," Pei Zhi said sleepily.

"That's good." Lin Xishan swiped his finger across the food delivery app. "What do you want to eat?"

Pei Zhi didn't respond.

Lin Xishan looked down—he was already asleep.

His pale gold hair brushed against Lin Xishan's collar, his breathing steady and deep, his brow relaxed.

Lin Xishan gently moved Pei Zhi off his shoulder, laid him down on his lap, grabbed the blanket from the back of the sofa, and covered him with it. Then he lowered his head and pressed a soft kiss to his forehead.

Time flew by in the blink of an eye. The day before the semester started, Lin Xishan moved back into the dorms.

The cohabitation was officially over.

Actually, it wasn't really moving—he just took his laptop and a few changes of clothes from Pei Zhi's apartment back to school.

Pei Zhi leaned against the bedroom doorframe watching him pack. His face was blank, but his fingers kept picking at a piece of peeling paint on the doorframe.

"It's only a few kilometers away," Lin Xishan said, zipping his backpack up. He walked over, took Pei Zhi's hand off the doorframe, and squeezed it. "I'll come on the weekends. You still have those few songs for the album's post-production to record, right? Perfect time to focus on them. Don't forget to take your meds on time."

"I know," Pei Zhi finally said. "You're so naggy. You're not even a dad yet and you're already this fussy."

Lin Xishan smiled, let go of him, picked up his bag, and headed out the door.

The first week of the semester was chaotic, as usual.

The course registration system crashed for half a day, the textbook distribution line stretched all the way to the cafeteria entrance, and the counselor sent seven or eight announcements in the group chat, each ending with "students must take this seriously."

Lin Xishan juggled all these trivial matters while coordinating the next phase of data needs with Professor Chen's project team.

But one thing was weighing on his mind.

Ye Jiaonan.

At the end of last semester, Ye Jiaonan had taken an extended leave of absence, blocked all of his contact info, and vanished from the school like he'd evaporated.

Lin Xishan knew he was hiding from him.

You can dodge someone for a while, but not forever.

Now the semester had started. He had to attend classes, he had to come back to the dorm. There was no way he could take another semester off.

On Wednesday, Lin Xishan ran into an acquaintance from the art school in the cafeteria.

His name was Song Ke—same major and same dorm building as Ye Jiaonan. They'd run into each other a few times before.

Lin Xishan sat down next to him with his tray and casually asked if Ye Jiaonan had come back to class this semester.

Song Ke chewed on his chopsticks, thought for a moment, and said he was back, but he looked a lot thinner, kept to himself, didn't talk much, and left right after class.

Lin Xishan thanked him, finished the food on his tray, then pulled out his phone and texted Pei Zhi: "Ye Jiaonan is back. I'm planning to go to his dorm after class today to finish what I didn't get to say."

A perfectly transparent, devoted boyfriend.

Pei Zhi didn't reply right away.

Lin Xishan put his phone back in his pocket and walked out of the cafeteria toward the classroom building.

Halfway there, his phone buzzed. He pulled it out and saw Pei Zhi's four-word reply: "Stay safe."

A few seconds later, he sent another message: "Don't let him touch you again."

Pure, unadulterated possessiveness.

Lin Xishan replied with just two words: "Don't worry."

Lin Xishan had a gut feeling that after he and Pei Zhi had truly connected, that weird controlling force wouldn't work on him anymore.

And if worst came to worst, he had a backup plan—he'd told Lin Jichuan that if anything seemed off after his meeting with Ye Jiaonan, he should call Pei Zhi directly.

Yeah, that was the real reason Lin Xishan had the nerve to go see him.

At six in the evening, Lin Xishan was standing at the entrance of the art school's men's dorm. The bulletin board by the entrance was plastered with posters for various exhibitions and performances.

Lin Xishan sat on a bench outside to wait. He'd looked up Ye Jiaonan's class schedule—Wednesday afternoons he had his major-specific class and would be back around six.

The sky gradually darkened, and a row of streetlights came on.

After about ten minutes, Lin Xishan spotted Ye Jiaonan walking over from the tree-lined path.

Ye Jiaonan really had lost weight. He wore a thin white jacket and carried a painting kit. He walked with his head down, shoulders slightly hunched.

A far cry from the bright, smiling person who had once walked arm-in-arm with Lin Xishan outside the coffee shop.

He looked like a drowned dog.

And today, I'm going to beat the drowned dog. Lin Xishan thought.

When Ye Jiaonan reached the dorm entrance, he looked up and saw Lin Xishan sitting there on the bench.

The painting kit slipped from his fingers and hit the ground with a dull thump.

"Lin Xishan." Ye Jiaonan's voice was shaky, carrying the panic of someone cornered with nowhere to run.

Lin Xishan stood up, sounding casual: "Long time no see. I need to talk to you. Won't take long—ten minutes, tops."

He didn't ask if it was okay, because today, even if it wasn't okay, it was happening anyway.

This grudge had gone on far too long. Time to end it.

Ye Jiaonan opened his mouth as if to say something, but his gaze swept past Lin Xishan's shoulder to the people coming and going, and he finally nodded.

He put away his painting kit, then followed Lin Xishan to the stone bench beside the small grove on the side of the dormitory building.

The two stood facing each other, about two meters apart, silent for maybe ten seconds. Ye Jiaonan spoke first: "Are you here about last time?"

"Yeah." Lin Xishan's voice was calm. "Last time, at the school gate, you said, 'Hasn't the control worn off yet?' and then ran off. I asked to meet you at the library, you didn't show, and in the end you just took time off and hid from me the whole break. Ye Jiaonan, you know about the 'control.' Not just know about it—you've been using it yourself."

Ye Jiaonan's face went a shade whiter. His lips trembled as if he wanted to deny it, but under Lin Xishan's calm, almost cold gaze, he swallowed the words.

"I'm not going to beat around the bush," Lin Xishan continued. "Since the start of freshman year, you've put me through a lot. You pulled me in, made me do things for you, made me think you were my closest friend, and then treated me like a backup option. I used to think there was something wrong with me for being so obedient to you. Then I realized something was wrong. Being close to you made me lose myself."

"You admitted to spreading those rumors on the forum before, said it was a moment of impulse. But did you think about the consequences when you made that post? Did you think about what would happen if everyone really isolated me? You did." Lin Xishan took a step forward. "You knew that if everyone abandoned me, I'd be even easier to control. That's your logic. You need me to always stand behind you, ready for you to take whenever you want, but never allowed to make my own choices."

"It's not like that." Ye Jiaonan raised a hand to cover his mouth, his eyes turning red. "I just didn't want to lose you."

Still putting on an act. Lin Xishan was completely disgusted.

But there was good news—he genuinely wasn't moved by the scene in front of him at all.

So that so-called controlling power really was gone for good.

The last thorn in his side had been pulled out.

"You never had me." Lin Xishan said calmly. "Whatever influence you had over me, whatever that power was, it wasn't love. Ye Jiaonan, I don't hate you, because in my eyes, you're pathetic."

Ye Jiaonan stood there, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Lin Xishan looked at him and admitted one thing to himself—this person really did have a face that made people want to go soft.

But that wasn't love. That was the scripted plot doing its thing.

"I don't want to keep getting tangled up with you anymore," Lin Xishan said. "I came to make things clear. Whatever that 'control' was, it's not going to work on me anymore. I won't be your backup in this script. From now on, you won't hear from me, and you won't see me showing up when you need me. We're done."

Ye Jiaonan looked up at him, eyes brimming with tears, but his voice suddenly changed. Not pitiful—sharp with irritation: "It's because of Pei Zhi, isn't it? After you met him, you changed completely. If it weren't for him, you'd still be by my side."

"You've got it backwards. If it weren't for him, I'd never have realized I was being controlled by you, because I couldn't even think straight. I don't owe you anything, and I don't owe this script anything either." Lin Xishan said flatly.

Ye Jiaonan stood still, the streetlight shining down from above, carving sharp lines of light and shadow across his face.

His eyes were still wet with tears, but the emotion in them had shifted from pitiful to something else—like a gambler who'd lost everything finally deciding to turn over his last card.

"You're right." Ye Jiaonan's voice was hoarser than before. "I do know about the 'control.' Not just know about it—I discovered it existed even earlier than you did."

Lin Xishan didn't cut him off.

Ye Jiaonan looked up at him, the corner of his mouth curling slightly, but there was no humor in that curve—only self-mockery: "What you said about the 'script'—you're right. This world is a novel. I knew that before you did. Because I've already lived through it once."

Lin Xishan's gaze stayed fixed on Ye Jiaonan's face, quietly waiting to hear what he wanted to know.

Ye Jiaonan's voice began to tremble: "In that book's ending, you ended up with me. But the story ended, and life went on. You changed later—stopped being so obedient to me, started thinking for yourself. I thought you were tired of me, but later I realized—you'd woken up."

He paused, wiping the corner of his eye with the back of his hand: "You were breaking free from the things controlling you, one by one. In the end, you calmly told me it was over. The Lin Xishan who truly liked me was a flat character written by the script, with no self-awareness. And the real you only woke up little by little after those controls disappeared."

"So in this life, I found you early." Ye Jiaonan's voice choked up. "I wanted to hold you tight. I thought if I could make you fall for me before the plot really started, you wouldn't wake up. But Pei Zhi appeared. He was like an anomaly that shouldn't exist, throwing everything into chaos. You broke free faster than I could keep up."

Lin Xishan finally spoke, his voice flat: "So you knew from your last life that I'd wake up. You approached me early—not to make up for anything, but to lock me down before I woke up."

Ye Jiaonan's shoulders shook. He didn't deny it.

"But I still woke up anyway," Lin Xishan said.

Ye Jiaonan's tears silently fell. He looked at Lin Xishan, his lips moving several times, and finally the words came out, barely coherent: "Xishan, I really do love you. Not Lin Jichuan—you. I've done a lot of wrong things, and I admit them all. I just wanted you to come back. Back to me."

By the time he finished, his whole body was shaking, like a reed bent to its limit by the wind, about to snap at any moment.

Lin Xishan looked at him, staying silent for about five seconds.

Then he said, "No."

"You've said your piece, so now let me say mine. The Lin Xishan from the last life wasn't me—he was a puppet controlled by the script. Your longing for him is longing for someone who would never leave you. But that person never existed in the first place."

Ye Jiaonan's face went completely pale.

"I already have a boyfriend." Before Lin Xishan finished speaking, he caught a familiar figure out of the corner of his eye.

Pei Zhi stood under the streetlight by the small grove, having arrived at some point. He wore a thin black jacket, his pale gold hair slightly tousled by the night breeze.

Lin Xishan looked at him and suddenly smiled: "When did you get here?"

"Just got here." Pei Zhi walked over and stood beside Lin Xishan.

The second he saw the message, he'd immediately wrapped up work and rushed over.

No way in hell was he letting his boyfriend stay alone with this guy.

He had to stay on high alert.

Ye Jiaonan was public enemy number one in his eyes—Shen Jiming didn't even come close.

Lin Xishan casually took his hand and turned back to face Ye Jiaonan. "Let me introduce you—Pei Zhi, my boyfriend."

Ye Jiaonan stared at the two of them standing side by side, his eyes so red they looked ready to bleed.

His gaze shifted from Lin Xishan's face to Pei Zhi's, then back again, his lips trembling violently, the words grinding out between clenched teeth: "You were supposed to be mine."

Lin Xishan let out a light scoff and pulled the person beside him into his arms. Pei Zhi's body pressed against his side, their warmth seeping through two thin layers of jackets.

"The script's already changed," Lin Xishan said.

Pei Zhi lifted his eyes and gave Ye Jiaonan a cold, sweeping glance, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

He turned his head slightly, his gaze landing on Lin Xishan's face, his voice low, each word sharp and deliberate: "Now, body and heart—both mine."