#was slightly worried they were going to cut out rnz's weird gender completely

[olliepurples]

as a kaleidoscope of death reader, spirealm lin qiushi's reaction to li dongyuan pulling out a pic of ruan baijie is so interesting to me. he clearly knows who she is, but doesn't react with surprise at all; he's seen her before. however, thus far, ruan nanzhu has only ever presented male onscreen. therefore, lin qiushi must have met ruan baijie offscreen.

my hc scenario for this is that lin qiushi was just chilling at the obsidian house one time and ruan baijie walked out of a door and collapsed on the couch sighing. after a solid minute of thinking "who is that??? have they broken in??? do i need to tell someone???" cheng qianli walks in asks how ruan-jie is doing. cue several minutes of strained eavesdropping where lin qiushi tries to confirm if he heard right, before ruan baijie calls out to him to stop eavesdropping and make her a drink. this is the thing that confirms to lin qiushi that they are the same person.