Resisting Arranged Marriages: Starting with Myself - Chapter 6

The eight guests chatted as they finished their dinner. As the meal drew to a close, the production team spoke up once again.

“Congratulations to everyone for successfully completing the first task! We believe today’s ancient incense-making process was a very meaningful experience. The incense items you created will be handed over to professional masters for grinding and polishing once they have finished drying. They will then be threaded and given back to you as souvenirs. At the same time, we have one final segment for today’s activities.”

With that, the staff handed an envelope to each person.

“What is this?” Wu Shuo asked, shaking the envelope.

“Inside are the data points recorded by the monitoring bracelets worn by you and your partner during the incense-making session today,” the production team replied. “To ensure everyone’s privacy, each envelope contains only the data for yourself and your partner. The data of other guests will remain confidential.”

Le Xiao opened his envelope. Inside were two plotted axes. The top one belonged to Ye Jiming; it had more peaks, higher values, and more frequent activity. The bottom one was his own. By comparison, his peaks were fewer and much more scattered.

This was expected. After all, during the entire incense-making process, Ye Jiming’s monitor had alarmed frequently, while Le Xiao had only received vibration alerts. However, something caught his eye.

“Your peak heart rate was 130?” Le Xiao’s eyes widened. He leaned in and whispered into Ye Jiming’s ear, “That is way too high.”

“And here, it returned to the normal range from 130 so quickly?” he said in disbelief. “Is that normal?”

Looking at the timestamps, it happened around the time Ye Jiming had gone to the bathroom.

“Is there something wrong with your heart?” he asked with a worried expression. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”

Hearing this, Ye Jiming helplessly gave Le Xiao’s forehead a gentle flick. “It is nothing. If you are that worried, do you want to listen to it?”

“Who would want to listen to that?” Le Xiao ignored him and tucked the paper back into the envelope.

After reviewing the envelopes, the group chatted about the interesting things that happened during the activity. As the clock struck nine, they said their goodbyes and headed back to their rooms.

On the way back, Le Xiao overheard the couple behind them, Duan Weiyue and He Chen, talking.

“This morning you said I had a poisonous tongue, so whose data looks bad now?” It was Duan Weiyue’s voice. His tone was as calm as ever, but the slight upward lilt at the end gave him away.

“You cannot say it like that,” He Chen argued. “My heart rate has always been higher than yours.”

“An athlete’s heart rate is higher than an average person’s; that metric is not persuasive.” Duan Weiyue’s serious attitude made it sound as if he were grading a student’s thesis. “Pheromone concentration, the number of peaks, the frequency of alarms and alerts; except for the heart rate, you were lower in every single category.”

“That is only because I was away for training recently and was not at home.”

“Not at home? That is your excuse?” In front of Duan Weiyue, even the national swimmer turned into an obedient schoolboy receiving a lecture. “Then tonight.”

Their voices faded. Le Xiao could not resist the urge to look back, but the two had already entered their house.

Ye Jiming had clearly heard the conversation as well. Their eyes met, and Le Xiao saw the amusement in Ye Jiming’s gaze clearly.

“Xiao Xiao’s data today was also not as impressive as mine,” Ye Jiming said in a breathy voice. “Tonight.”

Alarm bells rang in Le Xiao’s mind. He used nearly every ounce of strength to restrain himself so that their “newlywed couple” persona would not collapse. The night sky masked his burning cheeks, but it amplified his intense heartbeat until it felt deafening.

At this moment, his heart rate was also 130.

“Tonight, we should get some rest early.” Watching the look of shock on Le Xiao’s face, Ye Jiming finished the rest of his sentence unhurriedly with a smile.

“Oh.”

Le Xiao did not know how to respond. His cheeks felt like they were being consumed by a wildfire. He could feel Ye Jiming’s heat through his fingertips; it felt more scorching than ever before.

He suddenly yanked his hand away from Ye Jiming’s grasp. “I need to go to the bathroom!” With that, he sprinted toward the cottage at the speed of a hundred-meter dash.

Leaning against the cold bathroom wall, Le Xiao panted heavily while trying to calm his racing heart. Was this heart rate due to the sudden physical exertion, or because of the first half of Ye Jiming’s sentence?

It definitely was not the latter! He told himself firmly. How could someone he had no emotional foundation with cause his heart rate to accelerate like this? It had to be an illusion or a miscalculation!

He splashed a handful of water onto his face. Looking at himself in the mirror, his bright red cheeks were far more obvious than the water droplets rolling down his skin.

By the time Ye Jiming returned, the bathroom light had been turned off. Aside from the light left on in the foyer indicating someone had returned home, the entire house was as quiet as if it were empty.

“Xiao Xiao?” He searched room by room, pushing open doors only to face dark, empty spaces.

Finally, when he turned the handle of the master bedroom door, the lock gave a “click,” and the door remained shut tight.

“Xiao Xiao, are you in there?”

“What do you want!” Le Xiao’s voice came from inside. It sounded slightly distorted through the heavy wooden door. “Do not bother me, I am writing a song!”

“Alright,” Ye Jiming replied in a low voice after a moment.

He did not disturb him further. He turned around, went downstairs, and took his laptop to the living room sofa to work on the emails that had accumulated throughout the day.

However, the characters on the screen began to blur and crawl around like ants. They refused to enter his thoughts. He spent fifteen minutes looking at a single email without replying with a single word. His gaze wandered, and when he finally snapped back to reality, he realized he had been staring blankly at the stairs.

The staircase stood silently. It did not emit even the slightest creak of wood. He had not come down; he was still in the room with the door locked.

Gradually, Ye Jiming’s heart began to grow anxious. He could not help but replay what had just happened: the quiet village at night, the other happy couple on the path, his own teasing words, and the way Le Xiao’s face had instantly flushed.

Was he angry? After all, they were only a couple in name, and their relationship was colder than that of strangers. Perhaps his joke had crossed a line, was inappropriate, or had upset Le Xiao. Or was he a little shy? The monitor data did not lie. In that quiet room while they made incense, the continuous vibrations were the most powerful proof.

Ye Jiming exhaled softly. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

He sat on the sofa until late into the night. Watching the wall clock approach midnight, he stood up and went upstairs once more. He stood before the master bedroom door and knocked. “Xiao Xiao?”

There was no answer.

“Xiao Xiao?” He knocked again. Still, there was no response.

Left with no choice, he found a key. When he pushed the door open, he found Le Xiao sprawled on the floor, long since fallen fast asleep. The notebook beside his hand was spread open lazily; it was completely blank. The floor was scattered with many crumpled balls of paper.

He laughed helplessly. He carried Le Xiao back to the bed and tucked him in carefully. In his sleep, Le Xiao seemed to be disturbed; he let out a soft groan and turned over, burying half of his face in the soft pillow.

Afterward, Ye Jiming picked up the messy notebook and the crumpled papers one by one. Once he had cleaned everything up, he turned off the light. In the darkness, standing in the doorway with the light from the hall behind him, he said softly, “Goodnight, Xiao Xiao.”

Le Xiao had not actually intended to fall asleep.

After washing his face in the bathroom to force himself to cool down, he began to think of a strategy. What should he do when Ye Jiming returned? Should he walk out of the bathroom nonchalantly and pretend he really just needed to use the toilet? Or should he have a serious talk with Ye Jiming to draw a clear line between them?

It seemed he could not do either. The thought of seeing Ye Jiming again, talking to him, and seeing those shimmering eyes behind the occasionally reflective lenses eyes that looked at him with watery, smiling warmth made him feel cowardly. It felt as though his internal organs were being scorched. The pheromones flowing through his blood seemed to boil along with them, leaving him with nowhere to hide under that gaze.

He hesitated at the top of the stairs for a long time. Before he could make up his mind, he heard the front door open again. Like a prey animal encountering a formidable predator with nowhere to run, he did not have time to think. He instinctively fled back to the room and locked the door as fast as he could.

A minute or two later, Ye Jiming’s footsteps echoed in the hallway. Then came the sound of the handle turning and the “click” of the lock refusing to budge. He was too nervous to know what to say.

From outside the door, Ye Jiming knocked. “Xiao Xiao, are you in there?”

In a moment of desperation, he shouted, “What do you want! Do not bother me, I am writing a song!”

The hallway was quiet for a second or two before a soft “Alright” was heard. The footsteps faded away, the stairs creaked, and then everything went silent.

Le Xiao leaned against the door and slowly calmed his breathing. Then, as he used to do, he took his notebook out of his bag and sat on the floor, preparing to write a song. The words were already out there; he had to at least make it look real.

However, when he actually opened the book and picked up the pen, he realized he could not write a single line. His usually overflowing inspiration felt like a dried-up stream. His mind was blank. He could only stare at the pristine white paper.

Was Ye Jiming sad? He had fled from a joke that could hardly even be called a joke. It made it seem like he was always afraid of him, dodging him, and avoiding him. Would that make him sad? Or was he angry? He had left in silence without saying a word. Was he angry because Le Xiao could not take a joke and had run away to hide?

Le Xiao inevitably thought of the “divorce plan.” If Ye Jiming was angry, would he divorce him? Then he should feel very relieved, should he not? After all, is that not what he always wanted?

But where was this complicated, tangled feeling coming from? It felt as if the strings of his heart were being plucked by an invisible, delicate hand, creating a beautiful melody. His heart beat like a drum, echoing that melody. What was this? Was it still dislike? Was it nervousness?

He thought again of the fresh, cold scent of cedarwood, the vials that shimmered like blue tears, the incense clay mixed with cedar and mint, the constant alarms in the quiet room, and those shimmering, smiling eyes behind the lenses.

Earlier at the dinner table, he had smelled everyone’s pheromones: osmanthus, rose, bergamot; every scent had its own charm, but he was uniquely drawn to that cold touch of cedar. But they clearly had no feelings for each other, and certainly no marking. How could pheromones have such a strong attraction for him? And why did it have to be Ye Jiming? Why cedar?

If Le Xiao had not gone to the Civil Affairs Bureau himself to get the certificate, he would have suspected that the staff had used some unknown method to bind their pheromones together when they issued the marriage license.

As his mind wandered, his pen seemed to move with a consciousness of its own. By the time he snapped back to reality, a cartoon had appeared on the paper: a tiny blade of grass at the foot of a tall pine tree. Cedar and mint.

He immediately tore the page out, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it aside. However, it was not long before he absentmindedly wrote the word “Ye” on the paper.

Tear it out. Crumple it. Toss it aside.

“Ye Jiming.”

Tear it out.

He did not know how much time had passed. His feet were surrounded by crumpled wastepaper, and he had long since been worn down by a thousand thoughts. He went from sitting to lying down, until finally, he was sprawled on the floor, unable to get up. The notebook, which had lost many pages, lay quietly by his hand, still without a single word written upon it.

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