Chapter 41: A Match Made in Heaven

Xie Yingnian caught Ni Qian in the midst of composing her expression. The doctor, so skilled at reading between the lines during casual chit-chat, suddenly sat bolt upright. Xie Yingnian pulled her own upper body away from the soft sofa backrest as well, recognizing that it was time to shift into a more serious and professional consultation mode.

“If you drew inspiration for that from the case files on my bookshelf, then as your attending physician, I’m sorry to have unwittingly provided you with a channel for imitating such a negative example.”

“I thought you’d approve of the behavior.” Xie Yingnian picked up the water glass from the table and took a sip. The sleeve of her bathrobe slid down to her elbow with the motion. She had removed the electroshock patches before her bath, but the tingling sting of the muscle tremors from the current was still fresh in her memory.

That invisible switch, linked to her heartbeat, was in Zhong Jia’s hands.

Yet Zhong Jia remained oblivious, fooled by Xie Yingnian’s flawless decade-long masquerade, content to amuse herself with the game of “does she like me or not.”

Approve?

Ni Qian chuckled wryly. “Maybe I should step outside the role of ‘friend’ to remind you that in all your past behavioral assessments, self-harm and harming others scored similarly.”

“Besides.” She sighed. “I told you the first time we met formally: we’re collaborators bound by a legal contract. My duty is to help alleviate your condition—and if things go well, maybe even cure it.”

“You’re my patient. You’re even the employer paying my hefty salary. Whether out of a doctor’s duty or professional conscience for the money, I have to warn you: this way of hurting yourself is nothing short of drinking poison to quench thirst.”

Xie Yingnian set down the water glass. She neither refuted her nor bothered to explain whether that equation held true.

The doctor in her white coat, seated at her swivel chair, knew her admonition was a waste of breath. To Xie Yingnian, “drinking poison to quench thirst” wasn’t a pejorative at all—perhaps it was even something she relished. This woman had been born with a volatile and restless streak in her genes; a penchant for cruel, extreme things was perfectly normal for her.

“Of course, if you want some praise, I can give you that.” Ni Qian tried to lighten the mood, letting out a laugh. “Viewing yourself as a potential danger and reining in your behavior accordingly—that’s a spot-on self-assessment.”

The woman on the screen, with her stunning looks, responded with a cooperative smile—one straight out of the entertainment news playbook.

Ni Qian shrugged. “In any case, our positions aren’t adversarial. I hope you get that. Compared to police station scoldings and lectures, my main business here is recycling emotional waste.”

“Sometimes I even moonlight as an emotional coach.” Ni Qian tilted her head slightly, flashing a teasing grin. “I really didn’t expect someone like her to show up and effortlessly solve your sleep issues—problems even imported meds barely touched.”

“Forgive my slowness, but you wanted to talk about her from the start, didn’t you? So, is she that important to you?”

It wasn’t Ni Qian’s fault for being slow; situations like this were just too rare.

In the early stages of treatment, Ni Qian had tried hypnotizing Xie Yingnian, but it had been extremely difficult. The woman had incredibly strong psychological defenses.

People like that were desperately short on a sense of security. Their everyday social interactions were polite yet distant, locking their inner worlds behind layer upon layer of barriers, making trust nearly impossible to grant.

As everyone knew, the bedroom and bed were the most private of spaces. Yet Xie Yingnian had willingly given half of hers to what she called her girlfriend for several days running.

“You know it’s hard for me to judge how important others are to me.”

Xie Yingnian smiled calmly. “It’s a symptom common to people like me.”

And not just innate, either.

The fact of being abandoned by her birth mother had early on cemented her belief: no one in the world was good to you without reason. Even sharing the same blood or bearing the title of family didn’t guarantee anything—parental duties were just empty promises enforced by societal norms.

That belief resonated with some people, so it wasn’t extreme on its own. Unfortunately, external factors along Xie Yingnian’s path to adulthood had relentlessly amplified the extreme branch of it, leading her to always preemptively assume relational breakdowns in her interactions with others.

The room’s air conditioning was on, but Xie Yingnian wore only a white bathrobe. She switched the video call to her phone, stood up, and the plush carpet dutifully muffled her footsteps.

She walked to the floor-to-ceiling window and gazed downward. It was eight o’clock at night in the most bustling part of this small county town, the first week back to work after the New Year holidays, and the intersection below teemed with traffic.

Her view was limited; Xie Yingnian could only make out the cars parked along the opposite roadside and the occasional ant-like pedestrians passing by in twos and threes. The figure she was thinking of clearly wasn’t among them.

Dinner with Gong Wenyin was taking this long?

The key wasn’t who she was dining with or what she was doing with Gong Wenyin—it was how long Zhong Jia had been out of her sight.

Hearing Xie Yingnian’s flat, emotionless tone, Ni Qian recalled Zhao Yangguang, who had left such a deep impression on her.

The woman he had mutilated and dismembered was his second wife. It had started as a missing persons case; initial police interviews had concluded the couple was harmonious. If not for the man’s hair left at the severed arm stump and the specimens displayed in the basement, Zhao Yangguang—under the neighbors’ “good husband” filter—might have cried foul even at being named a suspect.

People like him had emotional disorders of varying degrees. They often expressed feelings in extreme ways, with a terrifying possessiveness toward those close to them, demanding total ownership. In severe cases, they even displayed aggression.

“Before today, I never detected any such signs in you. The one silver lining is that you didn’t use the shock patches on her—” Ni Qian’s features took on a stern, mature cast, though she loved to joke. “Unless it was some lovers’ kink, of course.”

Time was about up. Ni Qian wrapped up the unusually substantive session with her usual round of instructions and advice.

“But when filming wraps and you’re back in Yanjing, come to the hospital for a full checkup anyway. With her in the picture, I think I need to reassess you.”

The glass window reflected her own hazy features. Listening to Ni Qian’s somewhat anxious reminders, Xie Yingnian recalled the international call she had once overheard as a child.

Her mother had fame, had money—more than enough to raise her comfortably. Even abroad, she lived like a wealthy housewife.

On a bitterly cold winter night with fat snowflakes drifting down, she had abandoned her daughter—barely a year old—at the orphanage gate. No guilt, just relief: “Xiao Fen, how many times have I told you? It’s not that I don’t want to take care of her; it’s that I can’t. Her dad’s illness is hereditary—she’ll get it too, you know…”

“Can diseases be cured? Sure—ten days or half a month, or maybe ten or twenty years? Don’t hit me with the ‘mom’ card; I’m not that noble. I divorced him ages ago. Banning me from acting—what’s that about? He even restricted me from going out, drilling holes in the bedroom walls to chain me up… God, that night I really thought I’d lose my mind! I still get chills thinking about it!”

“You’re so kindhearted; you raise her then. No offense, cousin, but if she starts seeming off, send her straight to the loony bin. She’s little now, but grown up, she’ll turn out just like her dad.”

The warm yellow light by the window illuminated Xie Yingnian’s pale face. She pulled her drifting thoughts back from the distance and crossed her arms. “Shouldn’t you be telling her not to contact me? Advising her to stay far away?”

Ni Qian thought it over seriously, then replied after a pause. “For now, everything’s looking up. I don’t think that’s necessary yet.”

She hesitated, then added that she ought to encourage Xie Yingnian to vent some of her less destructive impulses through this relationship, which was providing positive feedback. Repress too long, restrain too long—it was like a reservoir filling day after day. Sooner or later, it would exceed capacity.

And then it wouldn’t just be a breached dam flooding the fields.

“In my years of practice, the patients I’ve seen fall into two types. The first goes without saying. The second is the polar opposite of you: they crave emotional bonds, thirst for intimacy, give selflessly without regret, and even after getting hurt, they dive back in full of hope—like they were programmed from birth for self-sacrifice.”

Xie Yingnian’s gaze drifted, as if thinking of someone.

“Fire can melt ice, but water can douse fire in turn. The same goes for people—one thing conquers another in those wondrous magnetic fields between us.” Ni Qian smiled. “Romantic way to put it: a match made in heaven.”

She leaned forward toward the screen, striking a “talk to you later” pose. “Before anything bad happens, why not stay optimistic? What if you really meet someone like that?”

Was there anything worse than this?

Zhong Jia stood at the hotel elevator bank. The car was descending slowly from high above. She glanced at the trash bin by the elevator—its mouth stuffed full with a cake box, a ribbon dangling down—while a brat who’d just ruined her good mood wailed and babbled in the lobby. The parents, who had offered a perfunctory apology, were doubling down on their lack of manners, ignoring the front desk staff’s hesitant expression.

Having cleaned up the cake mess on the floor, a cheerful janitor auntie hummed a tune as she passed Zhong Jia.

Ding—the elevator reached the first floor. The doors slid open leisurely at her command, but no passengers emerged. Feeling quite lonely, it closed its metal doors again.

Zhong Jia turned toward the exit, whipping out her ride-hailing app in record time. The cake shop stayed open until nine p.m.; if she hustled, she should make it.

Her phone buzzed. A WeChat from Gong Wenyin popped up: Tiantian, you left way too early! We’re getting together again in the capital—you’re not dodging me, right?

She hurried along the street while split-screen replying to messages. In the pinned chat that flashed by was Xie Yingnian’s message from that afternoon: the first one said, “Have fun.” The second read, “There’s a nice cake shop nearby. I’ve tried it once.”

When Xie Yingnian called something “very nice,” it usually meant she liked it—a rare treat. So Zhong Jia wanted her to have it again, even if this trip turned out to be a bust. She still wanted to dash through the night for her sake.

Her ponytail swung side to side with every step, her pace quickening almost to a run. But then Zhong Jia slammed on the brakes. She swiped across the flickering screen and slowed down. “Xie Yingnian…”

The other woman’s voice betrayed no particular emotion. “Gone singing?”

“No.”

“You’ve got an early shoot tomorrow morning. Don’t stay out too late.”

Zhong Jia let out a puff of laughter. “Oh.”

“What’s so funny?” Xie Yingnian pictured her expression right then and found herself drifting toward the door without realizing it, as if it would bring her closer.

“Are you my guardian now, Teacher Xie?”

If they counted from way back, maybe. Xie Yingnian’s smile turned playful. “You’ve put it that way. It wouldn’t do if I didn’t set a curfew for the kid.”

Zhong Jia halted in her tracks, momentarily stunned. “Huh?”

“Be back by nine, or I’ll confiscate your room card. You’ll have to sleep outside.” Xie Yingnian said it casually, like a joke. The other woman didn’t catch the trap that had just been laid.

“But… but I was planning to buy you that cake.” Zhong Jia completely forgot to protest her suddenly curtailed freedom.

“What cake?” Xie Yingnian asked, then remembered. She had a feeling her chat with Ni Qian tonight would run longer than usual, so she’d pulled a little trick to keep Zhong Jia out a bit longer.

As she listened to Zhong Jia’s explanation—the cake shop had been impossible to find, and some bratty kid had been a total pain—Xie Yingnian sensed how much it bothered her that she hadn’t gotten the cake. She could almost taste the soft, delectable treat herself, and her tone softened. “I don’t really crave it that much. I’ve already brushed my teeth. You come back first.”

Zhong Jia agreed and canceled her ride-share order. She jogged the rest of the way, taking the elevator up to the room.

From that simple “you come back first,” she sensed a longing that might have been nothing more than her imagination. Even her silhouette brimmed with eager delight.

The moment she swiped her card and stepped into the room, a firm, unyielding grip seized her wrist—and with it, every trace of doubt about that imagined longing began to dissolve amid their tangled breaths.

Xie Yingnian pinned her against the wall and leaned in close, staring into the eyes of the girl who had forgotten to blink. As she lowered her head, a kiss landed. Zhong Jia was ready to respond, but she hadn’t expected this kiss to feel so unlike Ruan Ting, so unlike Xie Yingnian herself—aggressive, domineering, almost alien. It roughly fused their breaths together.

It hadn’t even been half a minute, but Zhong Jia was already breaking a sweat, her legs going weak. She tried to say something, but it came out as muffled syllables, swallowed up. Her dangling hand clutched at Xie Yingnian’s waist.

She couldn’t catch her breath. She thought she wanted to push away, but instead she gripped the loose bathrobe tightly, seeking only reassurance.

Once. Again. Zhong Jia finally realized that she truly loved being treated this way.

This was better than a fleeting peck on the lips or a quick, withdrawing hug. Right now, Xie Yingnian desired her—no more guessing at her intentions.

“Mm…” Her lip was nipped hard, drawing an involuntary muffled groan from her.

Xie Yingnian steadied her limp waist and lifted Zhong Jia onto the small bar counter in the entryway. She leaned against the wall, forced to accept everything that was given to her. Something small tumbled from her line of sight. The woman who had been locked in the kiss broke away just long enough to ask, “In your pocket? What’s that?”