Chapter 21: All Are Method Actors

Inside the hospital ward.

Shen Qingyue lay on the bed in the observation room. Her eyelashes fluttered, and she slowly opened her eyes.

Her vision was blurry at first before gradually becoming clear.

The ceiling came into view, followed by two familiar faces by her bedside.

Su Qing sat in the chair next to the bed with her back straight. Her face held just the right amount of concern — the expression a Student Council President should have when a classmate met with an accident.

Lin Mo stood a bit further away with a slight frown. His gaze rested on her face. Seeing her wake up, he seemed to let out a sigh of relief.

“Student Shen, you’re awake?” Su Qing spoke first, her voice gentle and clear. “How do you feel? Is your head still dizzy?”

Shen Qingyue blinked. Her consciousness was a bit muddled.

She tried to remember. Fragments of memory surfaced — the Student Union Office, a thick stack of documents, President Su’s soft voice… and then a sudden bout of dizziness and darkness.

“I…” she began, her voice dry and raspy. “What happened to me?”

“While you were helping me organize files in the Student Union Office, you accidentally slipped and hit your forehead against a bookshelf,” Su Qing explained smoothly and naturally, her tone carrying a hint of guilt. “It’s my fault. The floor had just been waxed. I should have warned you.”

Slipped? Hit a bookshelf?

Shen Qingyue tried hard to recall, but a faint, throbbing pain came from her temples.

Her memory ended at President Su saying, “These data points are very important, so check them carefully,” and then… it was a complete blank. She couldn’t remember at all what happened in between or how she fell.

It seemed… did she have an impression of the floor being slippery? Or was she just distracted at the time?

She vaguely remembered hearing Lin Mo’s voice at the end. It was very blurry, and she couldn’t recall the content at all.

This feeling of memory fragmentation made her a little uneasy, but looking at Su Qing’s frank and concerned face, along with Lin Mo’s silent figure nearby, that bit of unease was suppressed.

Perhaps… she really had been careless. She had been exhausted from studying lately, so it was possible she couldn’t concentrate.

“I’m sorry, President. I caused you trouble.” Shen Qingyue braced herself to sit up. The wound on her temple was pulled, causing her to let out a soft gasp.

“Don’t move around.” Lin Mo instinctively took half a step forward. Seeing her pale face, the bandage on her forehead, and the way she still politely apologized, he sighed inwardly.

“It was because I didn’t pay attention to the environment that you got hurt.” Su Qing supported her with a gentle movement. “We’ve already notified your mother. She just went out to take a call and will be back soon. The doctor said it’s nothing serious, but you need to stay under observation for a few days.”

“Thank you, President,” Shen Qingyue whispered her thanks. Then, her gaze turned toward Lin Mo, and a very faint blush appeared on her pale face. “And… thank you, Student Lin Mo. It was you who carried me to the hospital, right?”

In her last blurry perceptions before losing consciousness, she remembered a warm, solid back and a reassuring scent. Thinking about it now, it must have been Lin Mo.

“Huh? No, it’s fine. It’s what I should have done.” Lin Mo seemed startled as if he had been suddenly called upon. He hesitated, and then his face showed the slightly awkward embarrassment typical of a boy his age.

He raised a hand to rub the back of his neck, his gaze drifting to the side. “It was just… I happened to be there. Classmates should help each other.”

Lin Mo acted very well. He vividly portrayed the image of a green, slightly awkward boy who was trying to stay calm while being thanked after “incidentally saving a beauty.” Even the tips of his ears turned slightly red to match the performance.

Because this was essentially playing himself — he was, after all, a green high school boy.

(ーー;) But in his heart, he sighed again.

The fuzziness and gaps in Shen Qingyue’s memory almost confirmed his suspicion.

Su Qing had indeed used her hypnosis superpower on her and very likely tried to blur or modify certain key memories.

She remembered going to help and remembered Su Qing, but she had lost the middle process entirely. She even only had a vague, general concept of “being careless” regarding how she got injured.

This was not normal memory loss.

‘Look, it went smoothly.’ The little devil in Su Qing’s mind kicked its legs up proudly. ‘She doesn’t remember anything. Your handling was perfect.’

Su Qing didn’t respond, but the fingers resting on her knees loosened slightly. She maintained a calm expression, but her gaze involuntarily drifted toward Lin Mo.

She was observing.

She was observing Lin Mo’s reaction to Shen Qingyue’s gratitude, watching every tiny change in his expression. This was mainly due to her guilty conscience after doing something bad.

When she saw Lin Mo’s embarrassed, innocent reaction, her tensed nerves seemed to relax a little more. It seemed… the hypnosis was effective. What he remembered was the version she had allowed him to “remember.”

However, just as her gaze swept over Lin Mo, he happened to look up.

Their eyes met briefly in the air.

Lin Mo’s heart skipped a beat. Was Su Qing’s gaze… inquiring? Scrutinizing? Or something else?

But this wasn’t Lin Mo’s first time acting. His acting skills had already surpassed those of many popular young actors by who knows how much.

He looked as if he had suddenly realized he was being watched by his childhood friend while being “caught in the act” of talking to the Gossip Academic Representative, Shen Qingyue. That embarrassed blush “whoosh” spread across his face, a flash of panic flitted through his eyes, and he quickly looked away. He even gave an obvious, forced cough to cover it up.

That appearance was the spitting image of a simple-minded male high school student who cared about another girl but was afraid of being discovered by his childhood friend, resulting in a “caught red-handed” misunderstanding.

If Su Qing usually saw Lin Mo acting like this, she would probably be so angry that she wouldn’t talk to him for one day, or perhaps even give him some special “punishment.”

But at this moment…

Lin Mo’s performance perfectly matched the “suspicion” points Su Qing might have had. It also perfectly fit his reasonable state of “only remembering the surface facts after being hypnotized while perhaps still harboring some slight, hazy good feelings toward Shen Qingyue.”

As Su Qing looked at him like this, the final trace of doubt deep in her eyes seemed to dissipate.

As expected. He was still that Lin Mo. He would feel embarrassed for saying a few more words to Shen Qingyue and would be afraid of her misunderstanding.

She even curled the corners of her mouth slightly, almost imperceptibly. It was a tiny expression mixed with exhaustion, relief, and a hint of morbid satisfaction.

‘It seems… it’s really fine now.’

Just then, Mother Shen returned after finishing her call, offering more thanks. After confirming her daughter was fine, she prepared to take her home to recuperate.

Su Qing and Lin Mo saw the mother and daughter to the hospital entrance and watched them get into a car and leave.

The night wind swirled the fallen leaves on the ground, bringing the chill of late autumn.

The hustle and bustle faded away, leaving only the two of them standing under the lights in front of the hospital.

Su Qing turned around and looked at Lin Mo. In the night, her eyes appeared exceptionally bright and exceptionally… focused.

“Lin Mo,” she spoke softly, “should we head back too?”

Lin Mo looked at her and nodded. A hint of a tired, gentle smile appeared on his face at just the right moment.

“Yeah, let’s go back.”

He walked half a step behind Su Qing, listening as she seemingly let out a sigh of relief before starting to talk in a low voice about the Student Council matters to be handled tomorrow and how her mother had tried a new soup recipe.

He responded cooperatively, occasionally asking one or two questions.

Everything seemed to have returned to “normal.”