Just filming this episode of the reality show took nearly five hours, from 7 PM to midnight. The entire production crew was eagerly awaiting their exit, so when Zhou Ziheng opened the door, the crowd outside erupted in cheers.
Ruan Xiao and Chen Chen followed closely behind him, and when they emerged, they were also showered with confetti by the staff waiting outside.
“So did we win or lose?” Chen Chen, with streamers hanging from his head, looked at Ruan Xiao in confusion.
Ruan Xiao laughed so hard she leaned on Chen Chen’s shoulder, “We were the second to come out, and our points are still pretty high.”
Chen Chen looked shocked, “So Zhenheng isn’t the killer?”
Xia Xiqing, standing beside them, laughed and joked, “It’s me.”
Chen Chen looked at Xia Xiqing with another shocked expression. Ruan Xiao pushed Xia Xiqing, “Stop teasing Sister Chen Chen.”
This push wasn’t a big deal, but it just so happened to push Xia Xiqing into Zhou Ziheng’s arms, who was standing behind him. Zhou Ziheng’s instinctive reaction was to reach out and grab Xia Xiqing’s arm from behind to steady him.
His hair brushed lightly against Zhou Ziheng’s chin, tickling him.
Xia Xiqing hadn’t expected Ruan Xiao to push him over, and when Zhou Ziheng caught him, he turned around in surprise. After their eyes met, he quickly regained his composure and said softly, “Thank you.”
Those words swept past like that careless strand of hair, and Xia Xiqing stepped back a little, then continued joking as if nothing had happened, “Ruan Xiao, I never would have guessed you had such extraordinary talent in the supernatural.”
“Would I say I got into Mensa because of my strength?” Ruan Xiao stretched lazily. “Being inside kept me on edge the whole time. Now that I’ve relaxed, I feel so hungry.”
Chen Chen agreed, “Me too. I feel tired and hungry. I didn’t feel that way before.”
Zhou Ziheng made a rare suggestion, “Let’s go out for a late-night snack after work.”
“Sure,” Ruan Xiao grabbed Chen Chen’s arm. “Let’s go together. I want to eat hot pot.”
Everyone was enthusiastically discussing their choices for late-night snacks, but Xia Xiqing felt something was off. His eyes scanned the people present, then glanced toward the door, before finally asking, “Wait a minute… where’s Sui Rui?”
“Shirui…” Ruan Xiao finally remembered, “Ah! Shirui was just calling from the study…”
The cheers were too loud, drowning out Shang Sui’s cries for help.
By the time everyone finally rushed to the study, Shang Sui had already given up on calling for help. He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. When he heard the study door open, he suddenly sat up straight, “You finally remembered me!”
Everyone burst into laughter. Zhou Ziheng also wanted to laugh, but it wouldn’t be appropriate now, so he held it in and walked over to untie the ropes binding Shang Sui.
“Come on, Ziheng, you’re taking this too seriously.” Shang Sirui, sitting in the chair, began to complain to him, “Handcuffing me was bad enough, but you had to tie me up with ropes too.”
“This is how it was when we first entered the room.” Zhou Ziheng rolled up the rope and tossed it aside, glancing at the handcuffs restraining his wrists. He realized he hadn’t taken the key, and as he was about to stand up, he saw a hand holding the key in front of him.
Zhou Ziheng raised his hand, and in his line of sight was Xia Xiqing’s clean and innocent smile.
It only looked clean and innocent, he denied it again in his heart, then took the key from Xia Xiqing’s hand.
“He wasn’t handcuffed when he came in,” Xia Xiqing laughed. “Only I was handcuffed, worse than you. My eyes were also covered.”
“Wow… your escape was way too difficult.”
Shang Siru and Xia Xiqing chatted, while Zhou Ziheng, half-kneeling, silently unlocked the handcuffs. This reminded him of the time he had unlocked Xia Xiqing’s handcuffs before. Shang Siru’s hands were also quite nice, but to be honest, they weren’t as long as Xia Xiqing’s, nor as white.
Why compare?
With a click, the handcuffs came loose. Zhou Ziheng snapped back to reality.
What’s there to compare?
Shang Siru, now free from his restraints, jumped up and down a few times, one hand around Xia Xiqing’s shoulder and the other, with some effort, around Zhou Ziheng’s shoulder. “Finally over.” Several staff members came forward to help them remove the microphones from their bodies. Xia Xiqing immediately felt a sense of relief, raised his hand to rub his neck, and noticed a ribbon that hadn’t been removed earlier on Zhou Ziheng’s neck.
He reached out his hand.
“What are you doing?” Zhou Ziheng suddenly felt a chill and turned around to see Xia Xiqing’s hand reaching toward his neck.
He looked like a little tiger with its fur standing on end. Xia Xiqing suppressed a smile and said, “Sorry,” then removed the ribbon.
There was nothing to be embarrassed about; he had deliberately used the pretext of removing the ribbon to touch him, on purpose.
His slender fingers held one end of the ribbon, waving it in front of Zhou Ziheng’s face, then let go, allowing the ribbon to drift down like a feather, finally landing at his feet.
The ribbon’s color was glaring. Just like the smile on Xia Xiqing’s face at that moment.
Zhou Ziheng fidgeted for a while before finally saying thank you.
“You’re welcome.”
Why did this person’s voice always sound so light and airy? Like a cloud lying in the wind, impossible to grasp, light and carefree.
The director of the program came over. “We’ll be recording some behind-the-scenes footage after the show,” he said, handing one camera to Si Rui and the other to Chen Chen. “There are two cameras here. You can split into two teams and take a look around this house. It took our production team two and a half days to set it up.”
“It’s on, it’s on.” The director said and walked to the side. Shang Sui saw that Zhou Ziheng was trying to avoid the camera, so he immediately pulled him back and turned the camera to his own face, coughing twice, “Hello everyone, I’m today’s on-duty VJ and host, Shang Sui from HighFive! Hey~~ Now I’ll introduce everyone. Ding ding ding ding—“ He turned the camera to Zhou Ziheng’s face. ”Zhou Ziheng! Wow, Ziheng, your face looks so good on camera.”
Zhou Ziheng jokingly covered the camera with his palm. Shang Sirui struggled for a moment before finally getting the camera out of his grasp and turning it to Xia Xiqing on the side, “This is our super-smart Xia Xiqing. His performance in the escape room really blew me away. If it weren’t for Xiqing, I might have won.”
“So you’re expressing dissatisfaction?” Xia Xiqing smiled softly, “Your performance also amazed me, okay?”
“Hehe.” Shang Sirui held the camera and turned it around, aiming it at the entrance of the house, “Let’s take a look around first.”
After the recording ended, Shang Sirui was as energetic as a child on a sugar high, wandering around with the camera. Zhou Ziheng and Xia Xiqing followed behind him, only speaking when prompted.
When they reached the study, Shang Sirui was thrilled. “This is where I was imprisoned by Ziheng! He handcuffed me and tied me up with ropes!” He turned the camera toward Zhou Ziheng. “This handsome guy kidnapped me.”
“Haha.” Xia Xiqing couldn’t help but laugh. Zhou Ziheng, who was being confronted by Shang Siru with the camera pointed at his face, remained calm and said, “Who told you to lie?”
“It was the production team who forced me to do it. I was so scared, okay?” Shang Siru was curious, “By the way, how did you figure out the final password? I looked for it for a long time but couldn’t find it.”
“It was in this room.” Zhou Ziheng pulled out a flashlight from his jacket pocket. “I found this flashlight on the sofa. The clue mentioned two keywords: study and turn off the lights…”
Before Zhou Ziheng could finish speaking, Shang Sirui, who reacted too quickly, reached out with his free hand to press the light switch by the door. “Is it a clue that can only be seen in the dark?”
His hand was grabbed.
“Don’t turn off the lights!”
Xia Xiqing was taken aback. Even he hadn’t reacted to the idea of turning off the lights, but he saw Zhou Ziheng grab Shang Siru’s arm without hesitation, stopping his action.
“What’s wrong?” Shang Siru looked at Zhou Ziheng with a puzzled expression.
To be honest, Zhou Ziheng hadn’t expected himself to stop him like that. The words had almost slipped out without any thought.
“What he means is, the camera is recording, so this shouldn’t have infrared filming, right…” Xia Xiqing quietly gripped Zhou Ziheng’s wrist, the protruding wrist bone exposed at the cuff, and pulled his hand down. “Right?”
“Hmm.” Zhou Ziheng silently wriggled his hand free from Xia Xiqing’s grip, “I’ll just tell you directly. After turning off the lights, use this flashlight to shine on the four corners of the room, and a numerical code will appear. You only need to crack one of them.”
“Oh, I see…” Shang Sirui nodded, seeming to understand but not quite, then sighed regretfully, “I feel like I was just one clue away! Otherwise, I would have won. How frustrating!”
After filming the last room, the three of them arrived at the underground passage connected to the elimination area, which directly connected to the external recording preparation area. The passage was very narrow, and Zhou Ziheng had to crouch down to walk through it.
Luckily there was a light, otherwise he would have fallen…
Luckily? Why “luckily”?
Zhou Ziheng found it extremely strange. He was becoming increasingly confused about himself. It was as if a little person had forced its way into his head, talking nonsense all day long, causing him to become somewhat deranged.
Shang Sirui walked ahead alone, moving quickly, speaking the closing remarks for the behind-the-scenes footage to the camera. Xia Xiqing followed closely behind Zhou Ziheng.
The narrow corridor compressed the space along with the breath, and the air around him seemed to turn into tiny particles suspended around his body, drifting like plankton.
Suddenly, he felt his back being grabbed. Zhou Ziheng turned slightly. Xia Xiqing hadn’t expected this stubborn guy to comply so easily. As he grabbed the hem of his shirt, he stepped closer, intending to speak.
In an instant, the distance between them shrinks dramatically.
In his field of vision, the tiny mole on his nose suddenly enlarges, draws near, briefly touches Zhou Ziheng’s lips, then glides away like a shooting star.
The tiny particles, which had been floating like glowing jellyfish, suddenly come to a standstill.
The air freezes.
In the dimly lit corridor, Shang Sui’s childish words faded into the background, while another sound slowly grew louder.
Thump—
Thump thump—
Zhou Ziheng snapped back to reality in a panic, wanting to retreat hurriedly, but he forgot how narrow this place was, leaving no room for his 193-centimeter frame to move freely.
“Be careful!” Xia Xiqing watched as Zhou Ziheng’s head collided with the upper part of the passageway. He tried to grab him but missed. In the chaos, Zhou Ziheng’s foot slipped again, and he fell to the ground.
The tiny particles that had been suspended in the air due to the tension suddenly began to fall rapidly, like a large jar of pearl sugar raining down from the sky, clattering against Zhou Ziheng’s body.
Zhou Ziheng shook his head, trying to shake off the illusion before his eyes.
He was utterly disheveled.
Hearing the commotion behind him, Shang Suiwei called out, “What’s going on?”
Xia Xiqing immediately replied, “Nothing, Ziheng just tripped. You go ahead.”
After saying that, he reached out a hand to Zhou Ziheng.
Zhou Ziheng didn’t even look at the hand, but stood up on his own, awkwardly brushing the dust off his clothes. When he turned around, he felt a sharp pain in his tailbone and had to lean against the wall to walk slowly.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Hmph.” Another soft laugh.
Zhou Ziheng felt uncomfortable, as if he had been looked down upon. He wanted to escape this awkward atmosphere and divert the conversation from this embarrassing topic, so he cleared his throat twice and asked Xia Xiqing, who was facing away from him, “You… what were you going to say just now?”
“You remember?” Xia Xiqing’s tone was as always, as gentle and playful as the wind, capable of stirring up a storm in one’s heart that couldn’t be calmed.
“Are you going to say it or not?”
His tone was quite harsh, even though his ears were red.
“I just wanted to ask… how did you recognize me?” Xia Xiqing followed Zhou Ziheng’s footsteps, stepping on his shadow, “It was after I entered that darkened study.”
Zhou Ziheng suddenly fell silent, almost leaving. He climbed the stairs in silence.
As a seasoned lover, Xia Xiqing was well-versed in the art of flirtation and knew exactly what to say to keep the conversation flowing. If the other person didn’t speak, he could always keep the topic from becoming awkward.
Zhou Ziheng still didn’t speak.
He reached the last step, and the air grew noisy again. Staff members exchanged greetings, celebrating the successful recording of the first episode. Shang Sirui and Chen Chen complained to each other, Ruan Xiao laughed sweetly, and many other voices mingled together.
Among them was Zhou Ziheng’s deep voice.
“I instinctively thought it was you.”
When I approached you and grabbed your hand, I smelled the perfume on your body, which made me even more certain.
Xia Xiqing’s final step lingered in the air for a second, his mind frozen in place.
Instinctively…
He landed, stepping on the last stair. Xia Xiqing looked up at Zhou Ziheng’s back. This person probably didn’t even realize it himself, but this unconscious ambiguity was incredibly powerful.
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