Please Be Our Third Person - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I first met Xu Mingche and Shen Yanxi at four o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon.

They were my last visitors of the day. By all rights, I shouldn’t have taken on a new case unless it was an emergency.

My assistant, Lin Zhaoning, sounded a bit hesitant when she handed me their files. She said the couple had been sitting in the waiting area for forty minutes, insisting on seeing me in person.

I flipped open the appointment schedule. The husband’s column contained only four words: High-risk dependency.

The wife’s column was even simpler: Cannot leave him.

My initial instinct was to refuse.

That was until I pushed open the door to the consultation room and saw Shen Yanxi. On her lap sat a copy of *Intimate Dependency*, a book I had published three years ago. Tucked inside was a blurry photograph.

In the photo, I was wearing a gray cashmere coat, standing at the entrance of a nursing home with a bag of oranges in my hand.

I had been on my way to visit my mother.

There were no public events that day, and no media present.

“Ms. Qi.”

Xu Mingche was the first to speak.

He was impeccably composed-black suit, silver-rimmed glasses, and cuffs folded without a single wrinkle. Even the fresh bandage on his left wrist looked like a deliberate piece of negative space.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

His voice was low, neither fast nor slow, sounding as if he were discussing a business deal that had already been settled.

Shen Yanxi sat beside him. She was thin, pale to the point of being translucent, with long hair draping over her collarbones. At first glance, she looked like someone who had been tormented by a relationship until only a thin layer of skin remained.

But when she looked at me, her eyes were unnervingly bright.

It wasn’t a plea for help.

It was more like a starving person finally seeing food.

“Your appointment notes were too vague.”

I sat down and pressed the photo back into the book, not looking up at her.

“Since you want me to take your case, at least tell me: what is the most immediate problem right now?”

Xu Mingche glanced sideways at Shen Yanxi.

That look was tender-tender in the way of precisely engineered lighting.

“She’s afraid I’ll die,” he said.

Shen Yanxi gave a soft laugh, her voice sounding like the edge of a glass lightly brushing against a tabletop.

“He has it backward.”

She reached out and placed her hand on the table. There were several faded, white scratch marks on the back of it.

“He’s the one afraid I’ll leave, so he always has to hurt himself a little to confirm whether I’ll stay.”

“Yanxi.”

When Xu Mingche said her name, the tail end of his tone was soft, yet it felt like a wire pulled taut.

She fell silent immediately.

I looked at her, then at the bandage on his wrist.

“Did this happen today?”

“Yes.”

Xu Mingche was startlingly candid.

“She woke up from her nap and couldn’t find me, so she had a breakdown. I didn’t want to argue with her. A small cut makes things end faster.”

He used the phrase “a small cut.”

As if he were describing accidentally nicking his hand while opening a package.

Shen Yanxi, however, stared at me, her eyelashes trembling slightly.

“Ms. Qi, do you also think he’s using this to control me?”

“What do you think?” I threw the question back at her.

She was silent for two seconds before suddenly saying, “But if he didn’t do this, I would doubt whether he loves me.”

The room fell quiet for a moment.

I had seen many pathological attachment relationships.

Some used rage to make people stay, some used tears, some relied on money, some on children, and some on illness.

But what made me most wary of the couple before me wasn’t their inability to leave each other.

It was that they spoke these words without a hint of shame.

They were like two players who had long since mastered the art of domesticating one another, finally seeking out a third person who could understand the rules of their game.

“Why did you choose me?” I asked.

This time, Shen Yanxi answered first.

She opened the book and pushed it toward me.

The title page bore a platitude I had written during a book signing three years ago: *May you have boundaries in love, and the courage to match.*

And beneath that platitude was a new line of unfamiliar handwriting.

The script was elegant, seemingly written by a woman.

*Ms. Qi, when will you become a part of us?*

I stared at the line, feeling as if a block of ice had dropped into my stomach.

“Who wrote this?”

“I did,” Shen Yanxi said with a smile.

“Though Mingche helped me change a couple of words. He said this sounded more like an expression you would appreciate.”

Xu Mingche looked at me, his gaze calm to the point of being polite.

“We’ve seen three other consultants.”

“The first only knew how to advise divorce. The second kept treating Yanxi as a victim. The third tried to take my side, teaching me how to handle her more ‘properly.'”

“None of them were interesting.”

He paused.

“Only you are different.”

“When you write, you don’t sound like you’re advising people to save themselves. You sound like you’re teaching them how to recognize what kind of love will swallow a person whole, step by step.”

“You understand this.”

I should have told them to leave.

The surreptitious photography, the boundary-crossing, the testing, the way they arrived with a sickening sense of familiarity-it was more than enough for me to list a full page of reasons to reject the case.

But I didn’t.

Because in that moment, I truly felt a flicker of unspeakable excitement.

It was like a hunter spotting a beast that was too clever and too dangerous; knowing full well it was best not to pursue, yet already reaching for the gun.

“I need to perform an evaluation before I decide whether to take the case.”

I closed the book and pushed it back toward her.

“From now on, do not collect anything related to my private life without permission.”

Shen Yanxi nodded, her demeanor almost submissively obedient.

“Alright.”

Xu Mingche nodded as well.

“Of course.”

As they rose to leave, Shen Yanxi suddenly turned back, looking at the cream-colored shirt I was wearing today.

“Ms. Qi, you’re thinner than you were in the photo.”

“But gray still suits you better,”

she said.

“Just like that day at the nursing home.”