The old man’s doubts were not baseless.
When Bo Jiangxin first started school, he often heard the heart voices of his classmates, which made him develop a strong aversion to school and not want to attend.
Even his parents couldn’t understand, but fortunately, Grandfather knew the reason.
There was no helping it; for a child just a few years old, heart voices were just chattering, wild and unpredictable.
The old man, with his traditional mindset, believed that children absolutely had to go to school, and if teachers came to the house, the child’s personality would only grow more withdrawn.
Thankfully, these were peaceful times now, without so many uncontrollable hardships.
So the old man told the school teachers that his grandson was precious, introverted, and very clean—he wouldn’t use things others had touched or eat food others had eaten—and asked the teachers to take special care of him.
The old man often lamented that in his day, everyone emphasized collective consciousness; no one could stand apart from the crowd, and whatever you did, you had to follow the masses. But now times have changed.
Young people are increasingly unsociable, unwilling to make friends, to fall in love, or to have others intrude into their private worlds.
Even those without any mind-reading condition have become like Xin’er—resistant to socializing, resistant to contact with others.
Naturally, the old man was surprised when Bo Jiangxin was the first to actively come to him and ask how to hear heart voices again.
“Is something wrong with your classmate?” the old man asked. “Is it a close friend? Did you have a fight and want to reconcile, so you want to know what’s on their mind?”
“No,” Bo Jiangxin pressed his lips. “I’m just a bit curious.”
“If you don’t know either, then forget it.”
The old man snorted. “How could I not know? Have you forgotten what I did before Liberation? Back then, hearing heart voices was my job. For the Nation, for the People, I had to know what the enemy was thinking, no matter the cost.
“Without us, there would be no happy life like yours today.”
Bo Jiangxin sighed. “Yes, you’re very great.”
“Good that you understand,” the old man brought the conversation back to the point.
“Your Physics teacher must have said that the human body is a conductor. The body generates its own bioelectricity, and when people make physical contact, an electric current is produced between them. The reason we can hear someone’s heart voice through touch is because this current interacts with the human magnetic field, converting the other person’s brain language signals into electric signals, which then transmit to our brain and convert back into language—just like a phone call. So if the other person speaks a foreign language, you’ll hear that language too.”
“But now that you’ve already had contact through bodily fluids, it’s like you’ve been vaccinated; your body has produced antibodies. So when you have simple physical contact again, the electric current and magnetic field between you weaken, and the current generated is too weak to hear.”
Bo Jiangxin asked, “So can you only hear again through further bodily fluid contact?”
“No, I told you already. If you can’t hear because the current is too weak, you just have to increase the medium for current conduction.”
The old man explained, “For example, before you only shook hands lightly, touching just the hand area. If you hug instead, you contact their entire upper body. Increasing the contact area or the force of touch lets you hear again.”
Bo Jiangxin frowned slightly. “Isn’t that a bit too deliberate?”
“Of course it is. Suddenly hugging someone—if she’s a girl—back in our day, that would have been seen as lewd behavior,” the old man said. “Besides, hands have a layer of callused skin, which is hard. If you use your hands a lot, they develop calluses, like wearing thick clothes, which also affect hearing heart voices.
“So back then, we learned from those foreigners’ Western customs—they had cheek-to-cheek greetings and hand-kissing. Cheek-to-cheek was risky, but hand-kissing was very effective. The lips aren’t skin, so they conduct sound very clearly.”
At this, the old man sighed, “But that only worked on foreign women. Among men, hand-kissing wasn’t common. Plus, foreign men have hairy hands and strong body odor. After spying for intelligence, I had to gargle for days.”
Bo Jiangxin, who had a cleanliness obsession, frowned.
Since he wasn’t interested in foreign men, he changed the topic: “Besides hand-kissing, are there other methods?”
“There are plenty. It depends on how badly you want to hear. The principle is already explained: body parts without skin coverage are best for direct contact. Although the effect is immediate, their conductivity is better than bodily fluids.
“If you want clear hearing with longer duration, you need to add bodily fluid contact. Bodily fluids are like water—the more there is and the saltier it is, the richer the electrolytes and ions inside, so it conducts electricity better, making the heart voice clearer.”
Physics, Chemistry, and Biology—the three science disciplines—together cover nearly all natural laws. Pure scientific thinking helped Bo Jiangxin understand quickly.
Body parts without skin coverage?
Those are mucous membrane-covered areas—the mouth, digestive tract, respiratory tract—internal body structures that naturally secrete bodily fluids.
Before Bo Jiangxin could think it through, the old man sighed, “Luckily, I was already betrothed to your grandmother back then. I couldn’t do this myself, so I used your grandmother as an excuse, and the political commissar understood, so I wasn’t sacrificed to that extent.”
Bo Jiangxin understood. No wonder intelligence operatives back then were specially trained in this—man or woman, once desire took hold, the mouth couldn’t keep secrets, let alone the heart voice.
He chose silence, not wanting to hear the old man’s youthful romantic tales.
After a while, the old man finally realized and asked, “Hey, Xin’er, your classmate is male, right?”
Bo Jiangxin lowered his eyelashes slightly and gave a perfunctory “Mm.”
“That’s easy,” the old man said. “Just have a meal together and don’t use serving chopsticks.”
“But you have to be careful. Your generation is different from mine. I was forced by circumstances, but you must respect others’ privacy.”
Bo Jiangxin agreed.
After some small talk, the old man’s voice grew noticeably tired. Before hanging up, Bo Jiangxin said, “I want to ask you one more thing.”
The old man yawned. “Go ahead.”
“Are you still hearing Grandma’s heart voice?”
“Hasn’t been heard in a long time,” the old man said.
“Why? Are you bored of it?”
“No, your grandmother is simple. She thinks about all sorts of things—how to sneak out to play cards, how to manage my pocket money. I listen to it every day like a comedy show. After decades, I’m used to it.”
The old man chuckled twice, both helpless and content.
Amused by Grandfather’s tone, Bo Jiangxin smiled slightly, “Then why did you stop listening?”
The old man hesitated for a few seconds, then lowered his voice: “What else? I’m old now, don’t have the energy.”
He shouldn’t have asked.
After reminding Grandfather to take care of his health, Bo Jiangxin hung up.
Although he now knew how to hear heart voices again, it seemed useless.
He was still hesitating whether to try to hear Xiang Di’s heart voice to ease his current anxiety.
If her thoughts were as pure and innocent as his grandmother’s, he could listen as if it were a comedy show.
But the problem was, her thoughts were not comedy.
They were eighteen-plus.
Just like his own.
Did he really want to jump twice into the same fire pit with the same person?
Bo Jiangxin held his temple and sighed deeply.
After switching seats, the week ended in a seemingly peaceful routine.
The new student, Zhōu Línxiāo, only took a week to get familiar with most of the class.
Xiang Di was very pleased with her new deskmate—handsome, articulate, emotionally intelligent, able to tutor her in English, and even occasionally greeted her in Spanish.
A perfect deskmate.
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