Try using a full-length mirror next time.

 

After Xing Ye received permission to visit Lu Mingze at any time, he left with a satisfied expression, carrying the mirror-like phone case, having seen that Lu Mingze in the intensive care unit showed no unusual changes.

It was said that during his confession, Lu Mingze's heart rate had spiked again, but it quickly returned to normal.

With Lu's father and mother present, Xing Ye couldn’t say much to Lu Mingze. It wasn’t until they left the rehabilitation center that he gently asked, “What are you thinking about?”

Lu Mingze replied gloomily, “I just feel it’s so sudden, and you’re taking advantage of the fact that I can’t move.”

Xing Ye thought for a moment and said, “I know this is too sudden for you, but you don’t have to respond. I also know you’re not angry; rather, you don’t know how to handle our relationship. Not having a body makes you very passive—you’re passively following me, passively getting to know me, and passively interacting with me.

“Our relationship is unequal. I can put you in the system space at any time and not let you out to see your parents; I could throw you in a dark place and ignore you. Yet you can only rely on me. This kind of interaction makes you very uneasy. Even if feelings have developed, you can’t be sure if it’s genuine liking. You can’t determine if your feelings for me are just a product of the suspension bridge effect, and you’re worried whether my feelings for you stem from a desire to completely control someone.

(NT: The suspension bridge effect is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when individuals misinterpret their emotional arousal as romantic attraction. It suggests that situations that induce high levels of arousal, whether through fear, excitement, or stress, can potentially enhance feelings of attraction between individuals. This effect is often illustrated through a famous study conducted by psychologist Donald Dutton and his colleagues in the 1970s.)

“You’re even more afraid that if you reject me, our relationship won’t be as natural as before, worried about losing intimacy, which makes you even less willing to answer me easily, right?”

After hearing Xing Ye’s words, Lu Mingze sighed softly, “Are you a worm in my stomach? Also, why do you have to outline your feelings like writing a paper, breaking it down into points?”

At this moment, Xing Ye had already arrived at the company. He locked the door and instructed Assistant Qi to come back in an hour if there was anything urgent.

He set up the little mirror on the phone holder, trying to align their views as much as possible.

Xing Ye admitted to Lu Mingze, “Because I’m afraid too.”

Lu Mingze tilted his head in confusion; what was Xing Ye afraid of? He was the one being deprived of freedom, the one who was uneasy. Xing Ye had always been the one in control, so why would he be afraid?

Seeing Lu Mingze’s bewildered expression, Xing Ye spoke softly, “I’m afraid my feelings for you aren’t pure enough and that I might hurt you.

“As I just said, our relationship is too unbalanced. I hold your life and death in my hands; this is an unfair relationship.

“I realized my feelings for you when I was amnesiac in the hospital world. When I returned to the real world, I didn’t tell you immediately but took some time to reflect. You are an exceptional person, and liking you is very easy. I had to figure out whether my feelings were genuine affection, acceptance, and a desire not to hurt you, or a distorted desire for control, a wish to dominate a compliant puppet, and… transferal after losing all my family.”

Upon hearing Xing Ye’s words, Lu Mingze shivered and said quietly, “What you’re saying is quite frightening.”

But as Xing Ye pointed out, their unequal relationship could easily distort their feelings to such an extent.

Fortunately, even when it came to love, Xing Ye could first conduct a deep analysis. This analysis made Lu Mingze feel slightly more at ease, and he asked, “So have you figured it out now?”

Xing Ye smiled and said, “Not really.”

Lu Mingze: “…”

Xing Ye sighed softly, “While you were listening to your mother’s lecture, I made a percentage chart of my feelings, from gratitude nine years ago, to the companionship after losing family, to the sense of security knowing you were always by my side, to the astonishment of seeing your face after amnesia, to the delight when I misunderstood our relationship, to the possessiveness of wanting to confine you in my world, and the anxiety of losing you in the mental world. I pulled out each feeling strand by strand to weigh them, and in the end, I found that I couldn’t calculate it.”

“I feel like I have all these emotions, yet none of them truly apply. My feelings seem simple enough; they’re as straightforward as just being happy when I see you. Yet they also seem incredibly complex, complicated to the point where I can’t remember when I first started to have feelings for you. When I trace back the roots of these feelings, it feels as if you’ve left a different kind of mark on my heart since the very first time we met.

“But that doesn’t make sense. If I truly fell in love with you at first sight, it wouldn’t be possible to ignore you for nine years. Yet the truth is, I just feel that you’re different from everyone else. It’s as if after developing feelings for you, even my memories have taken on a filter, and I can no longer treat them with a normal mindset.

“In the end, I’ve concluded that love is a totally unreasonable thing. It’s simple enough to be just the secretion of dopamine, and it’s so complex that not even the world’s supercomputers combined could calculate my emotional data.

“What do you think I should do?”

Lu Mingze listened with wide eyes, and when he saw Xing Ye waiting for his answer, he shook his head and said, “If you can’t make sense of it, how could I?”

Xing Ye replied, “In the end, I’ve only determined one thing: I don’t want to lose you. I want you to return to your body, and I hope your parents can… not support me, but at least not stop me from seeing you. I’m someone who knows how to seize opportunities. I know that right now is the best time to win over your parents’ hearts, so I’ve decided to solve other matters first and focus on pursuing you.”

“What do you mean by ‘other matters’?” Lu Mingze asked, confused.

Xing Ye explained, “Family ties, societal expectations, public opinion, life, social relations, and so on. All these things can be considered ‘other matters,’ but they truly obstruct feelings. What I can do is resolve these obstacles before you regain your body so that you can focus solely on whether you want to like me, without worrying about other issues.

“I think I’m an overly rational person. I probably won’t know how to write the word ‘romantic’ in this lifetime. So my way of pursuing you can only be to do everything I can, and then it’s up to you to decide whether you love me.”

“What if I can’t respond to your feelings at all? Won’t you think your investment has failed?” Lu Mingze asked.

“That’s okay too. Feelings are inherently vague. I believe that every moment spent with you is a return on my investment.”

Xing Ye approached their relationship with the tone and attitude of analyzing a project, but Lu Mingze could clearly hear in his words that Xing Ye was saying, ‘As long as I can be with you, I seek nothing more.’

Covering his face, Lu Mingze crouched down, seemingly blushing.

Xing Ye poked at Lu Mingze’s reflection on the mirror-like surface and said, “Actually, I think you’re overthinking it. Right now, my main goal isn’t to win you over, but to win over your parents so that they’ll accept me. That way, I can visit your body often, hold your hand, or maybe even kiss your face.”

“No way!” Lu Mingze jumped up immediately and said, “Holding hands is fine, but no kissing until I’m back in my body!”

“Okay, I got it. We’ll wait until you’re back,” Xing Ye replied with a light smile.

Lu Mingze wanted to say, “Even when I’m back, it’s still not okay,” but seeing Xing Ye’s smile, he unconsciously said, “Let’s talk about that when I come back.”

He didn’t refuse, as if he couldn’t refuse.

After their long talk, Xing Ye went to a meeting. Lu Mingze didn’t want to hear about company secrets, so he asked Xing Ye to leave him outside the conference room, with security keeping watch.

Lu Mingze was placed on a table, and the two security guards nearby didn’t understand why their boss wanted them to guard a phone, whispering to each other that there might be some business secrets inside the phone.

Lu Mingze rested his chin on his hand, lost in thought.

He had initially been very anxious, fearing that the close relationship between the two of them would change because of Xing Ye’s confession. However, after hearing Xing Ye’s analysis, Lu Mingze felt that Xing Ye was still Xing Ye. Even when it came to romance, he would probably plan everything out meticulously.

Would someone really divide their feelings into percentages? Science majors were really something else.

After thinking aimlessly for a while, Lu Mingze found that his mind was filled with thoughts of Xing Ye, and he oddly felt, just as Xing Ye had said, that this person had already been different in his heart since nine years ago.

“Could it be that I also have a memory filter?” Lu Mingze pondered.

After this, Xing Ye was busy handling work and didn’t disturb Lu Mingze’s thoughts. However, Lu Mingze’s mind became a tangled mess, and in the end, he didn’t know what he was thinking at all.

Xing Ye was right; it was impossible to make sense of it. Love was such an unreasonable thing; he should just follow his feelings!

After returning home at night, his head spinning with thoughts, Lu Mingze said, “You pursue me.”

“Huh?” Xing Ye, who was lying on the bed, turned his head to look at him, puzzled about how Lu Mingze's magical brain circuit came up with this conclusion.

Lu Mingze patted his cheeks, took a deep breath, and said, “I’ve never been in a relationship, so I really don’t know how to do it. But I don’t dislike spending time with you; I love hearing you lecture, I enjoy listening to you analyze tasks like a class teacher, and during our time together, I haven’t felt any discomfort at all, except for… when you buried me in your chest, tossed me into the bathtub, oh, and when you threw me into the river, and when you knocked on the door in the cold wind in the middle of the night…”

Hearing this, Xing Ye couldn’t help but tap his forehead with his finger. If he had had the foresight, he would have treated the little mirror twice as well from the very beginning.

Lu Mingze counted on his fingers the various misdeeds Xing Ye had committed against the mirror in the novice world, and after counting, he said, “Besides those, everything else is great. So you can pursue me in your own way, and I’ll propose what I like. We’ll get along well, adapt to each other, and face each other with a whole new mindset.”

Xing Ye thought for a moment and asked, “If the phone vibrating makes you feel dizzy, does that mean you can sense the external influences on the mirror? When I kissed the mirror before, what did you feel?”

Mentioning this made Lu Mingze angry. He puffed up his cheeks and said, “You should find a small figurine, like a really tiny one, 5 centimeters, and kiss it. Whatever it feels like is what I feel. Or you could take two large pieces of meat and roll them on your body; you’d know what it feels like, and it’s not pleasant at all.”

Xing Ye: “…”

After considering the reason firmly, he said, “So the key is that the difference in size reduces the comfort level. Ultimately, it’s because you’re too small, so maybe next time we should try a full-length mirror instead. The feeling might be different.”

Lu Mingze replied, “That’s true. If there’s a mirror in the next world, I’ll switch to a larger full-length one.”

Xing Ye smiled, “It’s settled then.”

Lu Mingze: “?”

Something seemed off. Had he just made some not-so-great promises?

 

End of Volume Five: Where is this?

 

Translator : DarNan