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Xü Beijin takes a deep breath and tries his best to put on a smile, “thank you for the drink…”
“Don’t smile.”
Xü Beijin asks out of surprise, “what?”
“Don’t smile,” Lin Qin answers with a deep tone, explaining, “when you don’t want to smile, you don’t have to.”
Xü Beijin is quiet for a moment before ending up sighing in front of Lin Qin, saying, “you know, Lin Qin…”
Lin Qin tilts his head in response.
“If you really want to have a fight with me, you’ll have to act much more brutish than that.”
Lin Qin seems to fall into thought before putting in some effort on forming an expression that, to him, best fits the word ‘brutish,’ before asking, “does this work?”
Xü Beijin is so amused he just blurts out, “that looks really cute, you know.”
Lin Qin furrows his brows glaring at Xü Beijin before saying, “don’t describe me as ‘cute.'”
Xü Beijin takes the hint and nods, promising, “alright, I won’t anymore.”
Lin Qin “…”
He doesn’t feel a tinge of sincerity in that.
For the first time ever, Lin Qin feels slightly troubled by his own appearance.
After the two of them went through the shopping trolley, it’s no longer as full, while a small pile has formed about the trash can. Lin Qin, as if possessed by some OCD ghost, arranges the cans of drinks neatly on Xü Beijin’s bookstore counter, one by one.
And then, he confidently declares, “I have memorised it. I will give you these from now on.”
Xü Beijin looks like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t.
Lin Qin is staring at him, then says, “just say it if you want to.”
Xü Beijin tells him, “even if you give me all these drinks, I wouldn’t fight with you.”
Lin Qin “…”
He looks like he might blow up at any moment.
Therefore Xü Beijin is also asking himself, yeah, he shouldn’t have said it. Why did Lin Qin push him to ask?
In the end, Lin Qin takes a deep breath before saying with this unfriendly tone, “that’s your thing.”
XĂź Beijin is surprised.
Lin Qin continues, “I would not force you to fight with me.”
XĂź Beijin pauses for a moment before slowly nodding.
He can’t help but feel slightly guilty. Lin Qin’s appeals and frankness have made Xü Beijin, the benefactor that be, a little ashamed.
But all the talk of violence——Especially talks of a one-sided violence on him by Lin Qin——Is making Xü Beijin wallow in the question of whether he might only be free of this after a sound beating by Lin Qin.
He heaves a weary sigh.
Then, he hands a can of peach soda to Lin Qin.
Lin Qin asks, mystified, “what?”
Xü Beijin replies, “try it. It’ll be gone once the Nightmare is over.”
Lin Qin stares for a moment before taking the can of drink. He examines it a bit longer, before telling him, “I don’t need you to cheer me up.”
“… What?”
“You said it yourself. When you are in a bad mood, you drink this sweet kind of drink,” Lin Qin says, “you don’t need to cheer me up. I’m used to you refusing me already. I’ll be irritated, but you don’t have to give what you like to me.”
There is an inherent sincerity and forthrightness to his tone – because he is speaking exactly as he thinks.
He is always bored, angry or irritated, but, this can of peach soda is something Xü Beijin would like. He doesn’t need Xü Beijin to give him what he likes just to cheer him up.
Just the same way that, he wouldn’t force Xü Beijin to like fighting either.
Even if he wants to fight with XĂź Beijin.
The man in question also realises that, and is truly impressed with how simple Lin Qin’s character is.
Though he smiles and asks a question, “isn’t it normal to share drinks I like with my friend?”
Lin Qin clearly wasn’t expecting such an answer. He murmurs to himself, “oh… is that what it was?”
“Yeah,” Xü Beijin continues smiling and answering, “I think it tastes well (TL: i.e. This is a different brand of peach soda) so I want you to also try it.”
Lin Qin thinks about it, and then, his simplistic brain also points him to a clear chain of logic. He says, “we are friends. I like to fight. Friends share what they like with each other. So…”
Xü Beijin immediately adds, “no fighting.”
Lin Qin holds the can tightly, saying, “… oh.”
He goes back to sit down by the entrance of the bookstore.
… Friends share what they like each other? Ha. Xü Beijin lied to him.
His unhappy mood made his gaze slowly turn towards the can of soda. Then, after briefly thinking about it, he opens it to take a sip.
… It’s really sweet.
Though, his mood might have improved. Maybe.
Confused, he is thinking about how Xü Beijin wasn’t lying to him about that.
Meanwhile, our liar in question has sat back down behind the counter already, while a sense of farce has filled up his mind. He is also wondering if Lin Qin realised the point of that statement is in ‘friends’ and not whatever it was he noticed.
In the Tower, ‘friends’ are really in short supply.
Lin Qin did not deny that claim at all. His acting like it was a completely appropriate word did make XĂź Beijin feel a little happy.
Though…
Xü Beijin is now pondering another question. Why would Lin Qin’s thoughts be so simplistic?
Sometimes, what the man does truly did seem to suggest there was something to those rumours in the Tower regarding Lin Qin’s intellect.
Yet he’s clearly not intellectually challenged. His world is simple, his usual habit may be just to abuse his prowess to resolve everything, which to everyone else makes him look mad, but he is definitely both a sharp and an honest person.
In a sense, this is so much better than those temperamental Missiontakers with all those complex relationships between them.
… And yes, he is specifically referring to this bunch of Missiontakers, currently seen arguing in the camera of the stream. Again.
XĂź Beijin quietly sighs inside.
He might be getting used to Missiontakers resolving everything by arguing at this pace.
Once, when he was an extra, he was just a background set-piece in bookstores. He wouldn’t know what the Missiontakers are doing. Yet, after these two Nightmares where he could observe how the Missiontakers actually go about solving the Nightmare, he can only feel…
That grace afforded by the mystique of the unknown has long disappeared by now.
The argument du jour is regarding the conversation with the cashier this time.
Earlier, when they took the boy with them to the cashier in the supermarket, he looked odd.
“You know who this is?” Laosan asked after picking up the cues.
Dai Wu nodded hesitantly, answering, “I do. He’s the kid… that surviving kid,” and quietly added, “pitiful, really…”
“We brought him over, but aren’t you curious where we found him?”
That was the question Mu Jiashi set up with a trap inside. Before this, Selfish and Scapegoat had asserted that they had almost acquired important information from Dai Wu.
Yet it was clear from their course of action that they definitely had some kind of plan and likely had extracted key information. Therefore, what the cashier had once told them the last run of the Nightmare became extremely important.
Mu Jiashi also knew that Scapegoat’s face had changed when Dai Wu had said that the boy had been missing. Therefore, this time, he set up the boy’s whereabouts as a question and asked it to the cashier instead.
Did he really know nothing?
What is the role this supermarket cashier is playing inside this Nightmare as a whole?
Even though Mu Jiashi did not know about Tower residents being Actors, but his mind happened to think about the word ‘acting’ then.
He wasn’t aware that Dai Wu had this Actor level of ‘Side Character,’ but he correctly deduced that he is an important character in this.
And Dai Wu lived up to that level with his brilliant Acting skills——Wholly unlike the lazy salted fish extra known as Xü Beijin.
He made a curious expression and asked, “of course, nobody knows where this boy went. Where did you find him?”
When he asked this, Scapegoat’s expression was twisted again. His brows were furrowed. He looked like he wanted to say something.
Laosan was observing him this whole time, and he couldn’t help but think, this guy’s acting really… he didn’t even know if it’s bad or actually good anymore. He was practically openly hinting at them that what the cashier said was somehow strange.
Though, how was it strange, anyhow?
Before he could think about it, though, Selfish coldly mocked them again, “you really are a bunch of braindead trash, aren’t you? Still suspecting me instead of thinking about the truth and endings of this Nightmare?”
“Won’t you fucking shut up?!” Laoda said tersely, continuing, “if the Tower let us kill each other, you’d the first on my list!”
Selfish retorted, “too bad you couldn’t, so? Hahaha.”
Erge muttered, “this is going nowhere.”
Scapegoat discreetly nodded.
Among the chaos, and as Xü Beijin tuned in, they suddenly hear the boy speak up, still almost sounding like he’s about to cry.
“This big gege,” the boy, who ended up in front of the cashier counter who-knows-when, has his eyes widened, staring at the cashier, saying, “I remember. I have seen you.”