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Cheng Xiaoshi slammed the photo album shut, glaring at Lu Guang.
“Why do you always mess up the order of the photos?” he snapped, voice sharper than he intended.
Lu Guang blinked, then frowned slightly. “Seriously? That’s what you’re mad about?”
“It matters! How do you expect me to fix time if the photos are all—”
Cheng Xiaoshi stopped himself, realizing he was yelling over nothing—but stubbornness froze the words on his tongue.
<“Wow,” Lu Guang muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. “You really are a drama queen. Jeez, I’m human too—I make mistakes, you know!”
The words hit harder than either of them expected. Silence stretched between them, heavy and awkward.
Cheng Xiaoshi’s jaw tightened. He wanted to yell more, but stubbornness held him back. Lu Guang wasn’t much better, though he was supposed to be the “calm and understanding” one.
Over the next few days, distance grew between them. Their only interactions were during missions, and Qiao Ling quickly noticed the tension. She wasn’t an idiot—later, she cornered Lu Guang. “Go talk to him already,” she said, nudging him. “Ignoring it won’t help.”
Lu Guang adjusted his glasses, gaze lowering to the floor. “It’s not that simple.”
Qiao Ling raised an eyebrow. “It literally is. You had a dumb fight. You apologize. Boom. Problem solved.”
“It wasn’t just a fight,” Lu Guang murmured.
She crossed her arms, waiting.
Lu Guang stayed silent for a moment, fingers tightening slightly around the edge of the counter.
“What if he’s still angry? What if talking makes it worse? What if he thinks I don’t take things seriously? Or…” He hesitated. “What if he doesn’t need me there anymore?”
Qiao Ling stared at him, unimpressed.
“You two are actually exhausting,” she said flatly.
Lu Guang flinched slightly but said nothing.
“You know what your problem is?” she continued. “You overthink everything until the solution runs away from you. Cheng Xiaoshi just wants you to talk to him, not solve a math equation.”
Lu Guang pressed his lips together, clearly still spiraling somewhere in his own head.
Qiao Ling sighed, throwing her hands up.
“Unbelievable. You’re a lost cause.”
She walked off, leaving Lu Guang standing there with a thousand unfinished thoughts bouncing around his mind.
A few hours later, the studio door creaked open again.
Qiao Ling looked up from her phone, expecting Lu Guang to have finally grown a backbone. Instead, Cheng Xiaoshi stepped in, shoulders slightly hunched, hands shoved into his pockets.
“Oh,” she said, blinking. “You.”
Cheng Xiaoshi scratched the back of his neck, avoiding eye contact. “You busy?”
“Nope. Just watching two idiots emotionally self-destruct,” she replied casually.
“…Fair.”
He plopped onto the couch, the cushions sinking under him. For a moment, he didn’t say anything, just stared at the floor like it had personally offended him.
Qiao Ling waited. She knew he’d talk eventually.
“…Do you think I overreacted?” Cheng Xiaoshi finally muttered.
“Yes,” she answered immediately.
He groaned, falling back against the couch. “Great. Awesome. Love that for me.”
“But,” she added, “that doesn’t mean your feelings weren’t real.”
Cheng Xiaoshi went quiet again.
“It wasn’t even about the photo album,” he admitted after a while, voice softer. “I know that sounds stupid.”
“It doesn’t.”
“He called me a drama queen like I was just… being annoying,” Cheng Xiaoshi continued, frowning. “I know he didn’t mean it like that, but…” He swallowed. “It still hurt.”
Qiao Ling’s expression softened slightly.
“He always acts like he understands everything,” Cheng Xiaoshi said, fingers fidgeting with the hem of his sleeve. “So when he said that, it felt like he wasn’t taking me seriously at all.”
He laughed quietly, though it sounded more tired than amused. “And now it’s awkward. Every time I try to talk to him, I keep thinking about it, so I just… don’t.”
Qiao Ling leaned back, studying him. “You know he’s doing the exact same thing, right?”
Cheng Xiaoshi blinked. “What?”
“He’s been pacing around like he’s calculating the emotional consequences of breathing wrong,” she said.
“…He has not.”
“He has.”
Cheng Xiaoshi stared at his hands, processing that.
Silence settled between them, lighter than before but still fragile.
“…I don’t even care about the stupid photos,” he admitted quietly. “I just don’t like fighting with him.”
Qiao Ling smirked slightly. “Wow. Revolutionary discovery.”
“Shut up.”
“You’re both terrible at this,” she said, standing up and stretching. “Honestly, I should start charging therapy fees.”
Cheng Xiaoshi huffed, but a faint smile tugged at his lips.
“So,” Qiao Ling continued, grabbing her jacket, “you can sit here and mope, or you can go talk to him before you two make this even more dramatic than it already is.”
Cheng Xiaoshi hesitated.
“…What if he doesn’t want to talk?*”
Qiao Ling rolled her eyes. “Then congratulations, you’ll both suffer equally. Now go.”
.....
Cheng Xiaoshi lingered by the door long after Qiao Ling left, hands shoved deep into his pockets. His heart thudded like a drum in his chest, but his legs felt like lead. Just go talk to him. Say something. Anything.
He tried. He really did. He imagined every possible line:
“I’m sorry.”
“I was overthinking.”
“I care about you.”
Every phrase felt either too weak or too loud. In the end, he didn’t move at all.
Meanwhile, Lu Guang sat in his apartment, glasses slipping down his nose, fingers twisting the hem of his sleeve. He was pacing slowly, muttering to himself. What if he hates me? What if I messed everything up?What if he’s already given up on me?
Hours stretched like days. Both of them retreated into their stubborn little bubbles. When they were on missions, their conversations were clipped, polite, and professional—never a word about the fight, never a hint of their mutual worry.
Days passed. Shared spaces became minefields. A brush of hands passing equipment, a shoulder accidentally touching in a narrow corridor, a glance lingering too long—each moment twisted into a thousand what-ifs in their minds. But neither of them dared speak first.
Qiao Ling noticed. She rolled her eyes at them during lunch one day. “You two are exhausting,” she muttered under her breath, grabbing her tea. “Seriously, do you like suffering this much, or is it a full-time hobby?”
Cheng Xiaoshi glared at the floor. Lu Guang didn’t respond, staring at his tray as if it held the secrets of the universe. Qiao Ling sighed. She had given up trying to make them confront each other—for now.
Later, Cheng Xiaoshi found himself leaning against a wall outside Lu Guang’s room, listening. He didn’t hear anything. He hadn’t even knocked. He just… lingered there. Thoughts spinning, heart aching. Maybe he’s asleep. Maybe he’s angry. Maybe he’s pretending I don’t exist.
At the same time, Lu Guang was staring at his door, wondering the exact same things. Is he angry? Has he given up on me? Should I… should I just leave him alone?
The silent tension stretched on for days, weeks even, punctuated only by missions where they had to cooperate. Each mission felt heavier than the last because neither wanted to break the silence.
One evening, all three of them ended up in the same room—the studio.
Qiao Ling, curled up with her phone, finally had enough. Cheng Xiaoshi sat at one end, shoulders tight, hands fidgeting. Lu Guang slouched at the other, glasses sliding down his nose, lost in thought.
“Okay, that’s it!” Qiao Ling snapped, tossing her phone onto the table. Both Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang jumped.
“What?” Cheng Xiaoshi muttered, eyes wide.
“You two,” Qiao Ling said, hands on her hips, “are driving me insane with this ignoring-each-other game. You cannot keep doing this forever!”
Lu Guang opened his mouth, but Qiao Ling cut him off with a glare that could slice steel. “No talking back. I’ve seen the way you look at each other when you think no one’s noticing. The lingering glances. The tiny sighs. You literally cannot live without each other!”
Cheng Xiaoshi’s jaw tightened, heart hammering. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. Qiao Ling wasn’t done.
“So here’s the deal,” she continued, voice firm but edged with exasperated care, “either you two sit down and actually work this out like normal people, or I swear I’ll start taking bets on which one explodes first. And trust me—it won’t be pretty.”
Lu Guang finally looked up, eyes flicking toward Cheng Xiaoshi. For a long moment, silence stretched, broken only by their shallow breaths and the faint ticking of a clock.
Cheng Xiaoshi’s lips twitched, the stubbornness warring with the ache in his chest.
“…I… I just want things to be normal again,” he muttered quietly, almost inaudible.
Lu Guang’s shoulders twitched. He still didn’t speak, but his eyes lingered on Cheng Xiaoshi longer than they should have, betraying a storm of feelings.
Qiao Ling smirked. “Finally. Took you long enough.”
The tension in the room didn’t disappear—it didn’t have to. But for the first time in what felt like forever, the walls between them cracked, and both Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang realized that maybe—just maybe—they couldn’t avoid each other forever.
The days dragged on. Cheng Xiaoshi found himself noticing things he couldn’t unsee—how Lu Guang’s hair caught the sunlight in the studio, the way his sleeves always seemed slightly too long, the faint crease in his brow when he was thinking. Things that used to make him smile now just twisted in his chest with a bittersweet pang.
But every time he thought about approaching him, his stubbornness flared. He should come to me. He should notice me first. And so he stayed quiet, moving around the studio like a ghost, speaking only when absolutely necessary for missions.
Lu Guang, on the other side, was doing the same thing. He found himself watching Cheng Xiaoshi without realizing it—how he sighed when focused, how his hands fiddled with equipment when he was nervous, how his jaw tightened just so. Every accidental brush of their arms sent a shock through him, and he kept thinking, Does he even want me to notice him? Maybe I already messed up too much.
Qiao Ling rolled her eyes more than once when she caught them staring at each other across the room. Once, she muttered under her breath, “You two are literally unbearable. Do you want to be angry forever or not?”
But the stubbornness between them was like a living thing. Neither would speak first. Neither would apologize. Even small glances were brief, almost accidental, as if acknowledging the other person’s presence might ignite a flame too dangerous to control.
One evening, they were both assigned to a mission together. The room was tense from the moment they entered. Words were clipped. Instructions were given and repeated in quiet tones. At one point, their hands brushed as they passed an object back and forth. Both froze, hearts thundering, and yet—neither spoke.
After the mission, they walked back in silence. Cheng Xiaoshi felt a strange emptiness without words to release the tension. Lu Guang, meanwhile, couldn’t stop thinking about the way Cheng Xiaoshi’s eyes had softened when he’d passed him the file. A flicker of something unspoken passed between them, but it disappeared before either could catch it.
They walked back from the mission in silence for a few moments, the weight of unspoken words pressing down on both of them. The evening air was cool, carrying faint sounds of the city around them, but neither noticed.
Cheng Xiaoshi finally swallowed hard, breaking the quiet. “…Lu Guang.” His voice was low, hesitant, like testing the waters.
Lu Guang stiffened, glancing at him briefly. “…Yes?”
Cheng Xiaoshi fidgeted with his sleeve, trying to find the right words. “I… I didn’t mean for it to get like this.”
Lu Guang’s gaze softened just slightly, though his arms stayed crossed. “Neither did I,” he admitted quietly. “I… I didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t want to make things worse.”
Cheng Xiaoshi exhaled, a mixture of relief and tension leaving him. “I know… I overreacted. It was stupid—about the photos.” His lips twitched in a nervous half-smile. “I just… I hate when we fight. Even over something dumb.”
Lu Guang’s shoulders relaxed slightly, though he still didn’t look at him directly. “I get that. I… didn’t think it mattered that much. But I didn’t realize it would… bother you so much.”
Cheng Xiaoshi’s steps faltered, then steadied again. “…I guess we’re both just stubborn,” he said softly. “And maybe we both care more than we’re willing to admit.”
<
Lu Guang paused mid-step, eyes flicking up at him. “…Maybe,” he said, almost reluctantly, but his warmth was clear. And for the first time in days, the quiet between us felt… enough .
A quiet fell between them, comfortable in a new way, as if the first crack had formed in the wall of tension. Their shoulders occasionally brushed, and neither flinched this time.
Cheng Xiaoshi’s heart thudded in his chest. Maybe… this is a start, he thought. Maybe we can actually talk again.