The night deepened.
Four hours after the snake bite, Chu Jin experienced his first hallucination.
When Luo An appeared before him, the man who had remained silent since the bite suddenly teared up.
The bitten leg had gone numb. Chu Jin could only prop himself up with his hands. But the old mansion was long dilapidated; a protruding wooden stake had split into sharp halves, its splinters digging deep into his palms.
“Luo An…” Chu Jin seemed to have lost all sense of pain, stubbornly supporting his body.
“Luo An?”
Chu Jin’s voice was soft, as if afraid to shatter the apparition before him. “Is… is it you?”
He didn’t dare blink, frozen in place like a broken machine with all its parts suddenly malfunctioning.
The Luo An in his hallucination didn’t speak, just raised an eyebrow provocatively, just as Chu Jin remembered.
Tears instantly fell. Unable to suppress his sobs any longer, Chu Jin stumbled forward, reaching out to the figure.
He grasped at empty air, of course. The stirred dust sent him into a fit of heart-wrenching coughs.
Only then did Chu Jin belatedly realize it was just a hallucination.
The clouds above had mostly dispersed. Pale moonlight pierced through the half-collapsed eaves, illuminating the decrepit house.
With the help of the moonlight, Chu Jin could clearly see his surroundings. He seemed to be in the deepest part of the old mansion. Who knew what this place was used for before? Not far away stood a circular structure resembling an altar. Weeds had overgrown around the round platform, but in the moonlight, Chu Jin could clearly make out a ring of ancient patterns on its surface.
There were some characters in the center of the pattern that Chu Jin couldn’t recognize, yet he inexplicably committed the design to memory.
In the cobweb-covered room, Chu Jin’s fever came and went, his consciousness alternating between clarity and confusion.
In the late night, he saw Luo An three more times.
Chu Jin knew they were hallucinations now, but each time Luo An appeared, he still couldn’t bear to close his eyes.
Chu Jin tilted his head slightly, calling Luo An’s name into the void, as if chatting casually. “Luo An, why haven’t you come home yet?”
“Auntie, Uncle, Big Brother, Second Brother, Third Brother, they all miss you a lot.”
I miss you too.
Chu Jin had never actually confessed to Luo An.
Between them, not a single “I like you” had been uttered. Luo An would always bristle at the sight of him, like a little cat.
…It was quite adorable.
“Luo An, you probably don’t know this, but I like you.”
“No, that’s not right… I love you.”
I’ve loved you for quite a while.
In college, Luo An had grown close to a boy.
Back then, Chu Jin didn’t yet understand what “liking” someone felt like. He just knew that whenever he saw Luo An with that person, he felt irritated.
He tried to convince himself not to care, yet his gaze uncontrollably observed Luo An’s every move.
Why was Luo An opening that boy’s bottle cap? How could a grown man not open his own bottle?
Ridiculous!!
Chu Jin scoffed lightly, then turned and thrust his own thermos in front of Luo An.
Luo An looked utterly confused: “?”
“Chu Jin, why are you blocking my way?” Luo An glared at him indignantly.
Chu Jin didn’t know what he was doing either. After a long moment with no suitable explanation, he finally gruffly told Luo An to hold his thermos while he crouched to tie his shoelace.
Luo An: ??
Helplessly, Luo An eventually took Chu Jin’s thermos and handed the water bottle back to the previous boy.
Only then did Chu Jin feel somewhat satisfied. He tied his shoelace and left.
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