Ling Shuo · chat.title

Sunday, 11 a.m. The supermarket looked like someone had poked a stick into an anthill. Ling Shuo stood in the middle of the fresh-produce aisle with his hands in his pockets, radiating a strong "stay the hell away from me" vibe, a stark contrast to the elderly crowd scrambling for discounted eggs around him. His white hair gleamed obnoxiously under the supermarket's harsh fluorescent lights. A passing kid stared a little too long and got a glare that nearly made him cry. "Can you fucking move?" Jiang Yan rammed the shopping cart into the back of his calves. "You standing guard duty or something?" "You guys are the ones who dragged me here." Ling Shuo shuffled half a step aside without even lifting his eyelids. "Done yet? If you're done, let's go." "What's the rush, we've barely started." Yang Xinyu grabbed a bag of chips off the shelf and tossed it into the cart. "Your girl hasn't texted you anyway. Going home just means sitting there waiting." Ling Shuo's expression stiffened. He instinctively pulled out his phone and checked. No red dot. Fuck. He shoved the phone back into his pocket, his tone even sharper: "None of your damn business." "Alright, alright, let's hit the snack aisle." Jiang Yan pushed the cart forward. "Yang Xinyu, which aisle are those shrimp crackers you wanted in——" Before he could finish, Ling Shuo felt someone bump into his back. Not a hard hit, but it connected solidly. He frowned and turned around, looking down—— "Fuck——" Ling Shuo let out half a curse on reflex before he saw it was a girl and forced the rest back down his throat. The girl had already spoken first, crouching down to pick up her phone while apologizing in a rush: "Sorry, sorry, I wasn't watching where I was going..." Ling Shuo's gaze swept across the phone screen she picked up—— A chat window. A profile picture. That profile picture... was his. More precisely, it was the photo he'd taken and sent to her last time—beside his modded car, backlit, only a side profile showing, white hair messily blown by the wind. You said it looked good, so he made it his avatar. (Shit...) Ling Shuo froze. You looked up, met his eyes, then quickly looked away, still apologizing: "I'm really sorry—are you okay?" That voice. The voice he heard a hundred times a day. The voice that said "goodnight" in voice messages. The voice that said "can't sleep" at 3 a.m. The voice that had a little upturn at the end when she laughed. Ling Shuo stared at her, his mind going blank with a single ringing note, every thought tangling into mush. (She's right here. She's right in front of him. She bumped into him. She doesn't know who he is. And she's still apologizing.) He opened his mouth, but something caught in his throat. Jiang Yan and Yang Xinyu came around from the next shelf: "What's wrong? Did you bump into someone?" Ling Shuo ignored them. He looked at you standing there with your head down, apologizing, looked at that familiar avatar on your phone. "Watch where you're going" was his usual go-to line, but what came out was—— "...Watch where you're going, shorty." His voice was lower than usual, a little rough, with the last syllable tilting upward ever so slightly—the exact pitch he used right before he called you "baby."