After Shen Qingyue was discharged from the hospital, life seemed to return to its normal track.
At least, it did on the surface.
The numbers on the Gaokao countdown board grew smaller day by day, and the atmosphere in the classroom became increasingly tense.
Everyone was buried in their final sprint, and even the chatter during breaks had dwindled.
Su Qing thought she could endure it.
That night at the hospital entrance, Lin Mo’s gentle “Yeah, go on back” had kept her mind at ease for two days.
On the third night, when she still couldn’t help but tap on the encrypted folder in her phone, her finger hovered over the screen.
The report arrived on time, complete with pictures and text:
[5:40 PM – 6:20 PM, Library third floor. Lin Mo and Shen Qingyue studied in the same group and spoke for about 20 minutes. Shen Qingyue smiled three times, and Lin Mo smiled two times. Photo attached.]
In the photo, the two sat opposite each other across a table, which was littered with test papers and notes. Shen Qingyue was looking down, pointing at something, while Lin Mo leaned his head to the side to look. It was a perfectly ordinary scene of a study group. Nothing crossed the line.
Su Qing stared at the line that said “smiled two times.”
‘See, I told you.’ The Demon Su Qing inside her mind sat with her legs crossed. ‘She’s out of the hospital, so he can go back to her side. Did you really think she’d be satisfied with just that?’
“You’re so annoying!”
‘You know what I mean.’ Demon Su Qing sneered. ‘She has a perfect excuse now. A “Study Representative tutoring a classmate” in the same Study Group. How legitimate. What about you? What excuse can you use?’
Su Qing remained silent.
The next day, she opened the contact labeled “Courier Master Wang” and typed:
“Resume the daily reports. Also… install a fixed recording device in the northeast corner of the library’s third floor. I’ll cover the costs.”
After hitting send, she stared at the screen, her heart racing.
‘You’re doing the right thing.’ Demon Su Qing was laughing. ‘This is called taking precautions.’
Su Qing flipped her phone face down on the desk, not wanting to look at the chat box.
She told herself it was just for her peace of mind.
Once the Gaokao was over, once Lin Mo and she were admitted to the same university, and once Shen Qingyue naturally faded out of their lives… these “methods” would naturally stop.
Right?
—
Lin Mo wasn’t oblivious.
In fact, he had been waiting ever since that night he returned from the hospital.
He hadn’t forgotten a single word of Su Qing’s Hypnosis, her explanation, or her tears. He was simply cooperating by “forgetting.”
He knew Su Qing would definitely do something else.
It wasn’t out of malice; he just knew her too well. A person who used Hypnosis to confirm ‘Do you still like me?’ wouldn’t stop just because of one “success.”
That insecurity was rooted too deeply in her heart—so deep that she felt compelled to repeatedly confirm and control everything.
Only this time, Lin Mo was no longer just “being observed.”
He started to pay attention.
On Wednesday afternoon, as he left the Library, his peripheral vision caught a figure in a baseball cap at the corner of the hallway. The person quickly looked down to rummage through a bag, their movements feeling forced.
Lin Mo didn’t stop, acting as if he hadn’t seen them. But he memorized the color of the hat—dark gray with a white logo, a style not commonly seen around the school.
On Friday after school, while waiting for the bus at the school gate, he noticed a silver-gray van parked nearby for three bus stops. The windows had a dark tint, making it impossible to see inside, but the person in the driver’s seat seemed to be pointing a phone toward the school gate.
Lin Mo boarded the bus, and the van didn’t follow.
But he noted the end of the license plate: A·7K392.
That night, as he lay in bed, he connected these fragmented “coincidences” from the past week.
The suspicious van at the gate. The junior high girl always wandering near him in the library hallway. Last Tuesday, while he was buying water at the convenience store, the strange boy next to the register who kept his head down to play on his phone, yet the camera was aimed toward the refrigerated display where he stood.
It was too much.
Too much to be explained away as a coincidence.
Lin Mo stared at the ceiling.
It wasn’t a coincidence.
Someone was recording him.
No, Su Qing was recording him.
The moment this realization surfaced, Lin Mo felt only one thing… an expected sense of exhaustion.
So that was it.
She wouldn’t just use Hypnosis on Shen Qingyue and him.
She would monitor them constantly.
Who he met today, how many words they spoke, and how many times he smiled.
Was this data sent to her phone every single day?
What was she thinking when she looked at those reports?
Was it relief, or was it…?
Lin Mo closed his eyes.
He had to leave.
The thought was no longer a “maybe.” It had to be planned. He had to give them both some space.
—
Su Qing sat at her desk, her phone screen glowing.
She hadn’t clicked on today’s report yet.
She hesitated for a long time before deciding not to open it. She put the phone in the drawer, pulled it out again, and then put it back.
Lin Mo was perfectly normal today. She knew that. She knew even without reading the report.
But the existence of that report gave her a “sense of security” that she could verify at any time.
She would just leave it there. She wouldn’t look. But she knew it was there.
‘What are you afraid of?’ Demon Su Qing’s voice was uncharacteristically soft, lacking its usual mockery.
“I’m afraid…” Su Qing’s voice was barely a whisper. “I’m afraid that after I look, I’ll want to do something else.”
‘And then?’
“And then…” She lowered her head. “And then he’ll drift even further away from me.”
Demon Su Qing fell silent.
The only sounds in the room were the chirping of insects outside the window and the occasional hum of a passing car in the distance.
Su Qing closed the drawer and didn’t look at that phone again.
—
A few hundred meters away, at the other end of the neighborhood, Shen Qingyue sat on her bay window holding Qiuqiu.
The moonlight outside was faint.
She had felt something was off these past few days.
It wasn’t about the wound on her forehead that had already scabbed over. The doctor said it was an accident, and she shouldn’t doubt that.
But fragments of memories kept surfacing in her dreams.
Blurred voices. A sentence left unfinished. And… Lin Mo’s voice? Did he call her name? Or was it… President Su’s voice?
She couldn’t remember clearly. Every time she tried to recall it, her temples would throb with a dull pain.
Qiuqiu rolled over in her arms, letting out a soft purring sound.
Shen Qingyue lowered her head, resting her chin against the cat’s warm back.
“…Forget it,” she whispered.
“Maybe I’m just overthinking things.”
“Qiuqiu, what do you think he’s doing right now?”
Hearing her voice, Qiuqiu responded.
*Meow?*
“Are you saying he’s waiting for me to reach out first?”
*Wa-meow-wu!*
Shen Qingyue set Qiuqiu down, picked up her phone, and opened her chat with Lin Mo.
The chat history was still stuck on last night’s Electromagnetic Induction problem and the “WANAN (I Love You)” she had stared at for a long time.
She typed a line: [There’s a physics quiz tomorrow. Do you need me to go over the key points with you?]
She paused for a few seconds.
Then, she deleted it.
She typed again: [Qiuqiu seems to have lost weight.]
She deleted that, too.
‘(>﹏<)… What am I even doing?’
In the end, she sent nothing. She simply placed the phone face down on her pillow.
The moonlight spilled over her quiet profile.
Three young people, under the same night sky, each harbored secrets that could not be told as they moved toward their own midnight.
Some thought they were monitoring others.
Some discovered they were being monitored.
Some knew nothing at all, yet felt a faint, lingering unease.
And everything flowed quietly onward to the ticking sound of the Gaokao countdown.