That night, I sat on the sofa waiting for him, until the familiar sound of his motorcycle grew closer and closer, finally sounding right outside.

The bike stopped in the courtyard, but he didn’t get off right away.

I walked to the door and saw the man leaning against the bike, long legs crossed, a cigarette pinched between his fingers, the sharp lines of his profile clear and defined, dark lashes lowered, the heaviness in his brow and eyes slowly blurring into the drifting smoke.

The light beside him was blocked by shadow.

Seeing it was me, he ground out the cigarette underfoot, and the emotion in his eyes gradually faded, replaced by a clear, gentle glow.

“Why aren’t you asleep yet?”

“I was waiting for you.”

I walked slowly until I stood beside him, using my pinky to brush against his cold fingertips, hooking gently around them, pretending it was nothing as I tugged him forward.

The next second, his large hand forced my finger away, then took hold of it instead, until our fingers were laced tightly together.

His voice carried a trace of a smile. “Let’s go.”

I quietly slowed my breathing, trying to keep my thundering heartbeat under control.

My hand, meanwhile, silently tightened its grip.

We stayed hand in hand the whole time, as I watched him close the door with one hand, climb the stairs, and finally reach his room to grab his pajamas.

As he rifled through the drawer, he cleared his throat lightly.

I turned my head aside and closed my eyes, telling him, “Go ahead and get your things, don’t mind me, I’m not looking.”

The drawer was pulled open quickly, then pushed shut again.

Even as I followed him all the way to the bathroom door, I still refused to let go.

I didn’t know why, but it felt like only by truly feeling each other’s warmth could my restless heart find any place to settle.

He looked down at me, his meaning unmistakable. “I’m going in to shower now.”

I hummed in acknowledgment.

He raised an eyebrow, emphasizing, “Not wash my face. Shower.”

I said, righteous and certain, “I know.”

He gave our joined hands a little shake, his eyes clearly saying, “You know, and you’re still not letting go?”

“What if I cover my eyes and don’t look, is that okay?”

“No.” He shot me a cold glance.

“Then what if you just don’t close the door?”

“…No.” A faint red crept over his face.

My eyelids trembled, and I suddenly looked up with a suggestion.

“How about you just skip showering tonight?”

He stared at me in shock, with an expression impossible to describe.

“No.”

In the end, I reluctantly crouched down right outside the closed bathroom door. The door was frosted glass—nothing could be seen from outside, and nothing could be seen from inside either, unless the person outside pressed right up against the door, in which case a shadow’s shape might be visible from within.

So I turned my back to the bathroom, my palm pressed flat against the door.

Every so often, I’d call out, “Can you see me?”

“…Yes.”

A moment later.

I asked again, “Can you see me?”

“…Yes.”

Another moment passed.

He said, “I can see you. I can see you the whole time.”

Me: “…”

He finished a quick, no-nonsense shower and came out shortly after.

Wearing a long-sleeved top and pants that covered him completely, the black strands of hair over his forehead still dripping, water sliding down his chin and onto his collarbone.

He pulled me up off the floor, lifting his eyes to look at me.

“Tonight, you’re being a bit of a little weirdo.”

I had no ground to argue, so I didn’t.

I simply followed him into his room, fully intending to seal my own guilt.

We’d fallen asleep in our clothes together many times before, usually in my room, with me holding onto him so he couldn’t leave.

Unlike my room, his was simple—black, white, and gray.

I climbed onto his bed without a second thought, like it was the most natural thing in the world, squeezing in beside him.

I reached for his hand and quietly held it tight.

He said, thoughtfully, “What’s gotten into you tonight?”

I bit my lip, saying nothing.

Idly, on and off, I traced my fingers over his.

Just as he thought I wasn’t going to answer, I suddenly spoke. “Are you leaving?”

Time seemed to stop.

Every second he hesitated felt to me no less agonizing than waiting for an execution.

His voice came out hoarse and dry. “I—”

“Are you going to become a police officer? I know—I know you’re a police officer, just like Brother Fu. Are you going to work in another city? Please take me with you. Whatever city you go to, I’ll apply to a university there—my grades can get me in anywhere. I’ll be good, I’ll be so obedient, and I’m smart too, and I’m already an adult, so I can work part-time to earn money, I won’t be a burden on you.”

I ran through every possibility I could think of, talking faster and faster, less and less coherently.

“Oh right, I forgot to tell you, I was thinking of studying forensic medicine, so once I graduate maybe there’ll even be a chance for us to work together, we’ll still be able to stay close, maybe I could even help you solve cases like in the dramas.

“I won’t be any trouble, I promise I’ll be so, so good.

“Zhou Haiyan, please, take me with you?” By the end I couldn’t hold back the tears creeping into my voice.

“Our Qingqing is too smart, and too understanding, for her own good.”

He sighed, cupping my face in his hands, trembling as he kissed away the tears at the corner of my eye, one by one.

Then he pressed his forehead against mine, the dampness spreading across the pillow, impossible to tell whose it was anymore.

The unease in my chest grew stronger and stronger, and my grip on his fingers went white.

He lifted his head, gently patting my back, the way you’d soothe a small child. His voice sounded caught in his throat as he forced out a lighthearted tease. “Cry less from now on. You’ll ruin your eyes crying so much at such a young age.”

The tears finally stopped, but something inside me was still bleeding. I didn’t even know anymore whether it was calling him “big brother” over and over, or calling him “Zhou Haiyan,” or neither, that could ever keep him here.

He suddenly said, “Do you want to hear the story of my parents?”

Without waiting for my answer, he went on, speaking to himself as much as to me.

“My mother had a hard life, honestly. She was the second child in her family—an older brother four years above her, a younger brother ten years below. Their family favored sons over daughters, so all the chores fell to my mother, even raising the younger one.

“They never intended for my mother to go to school, but it happened to be right around the years the national college entrance exam was reinstated, when the country was pushing hard on education. She’d carry a little basket to cut pig fodder near the school every day, and while cutting, she’d sneak over to the classroom window to secretly watch and listen. The teacher noticed but never chased her off—from age six to eight, relying purely on her own sharp mind, she taught herself the first and second grade curriculum in whatever scraps of time she had each day, so eventually the teacher made an exception and let her formally enroll.

“Going to school never got her out of the chores at home, and since the teacher had gone to persuade her parents in person, and it cost nothing, and in that era educated people were still respected, she was allowed to keep studying.

“The year my mother was nearly ready for the college entrance exam—that would be ’89—a huge flood hit the Jiangnan region, wiping out large stretches of farmland, destroying the crops overnight, and her brother lost the money he’d need to marry.

So they decided among themselves to sell my mother off as a concubine to the old village chief. My mother refused, no matter what—she begged them in tears, said she was confident she could get into university, that she’d earn enough money later to help her brother get a wife properly. But they wouldn’t listen.

“So my mother ran away. She had no money on her at all, just fled straight to the train station that same night. At the station there were street performers, and beggars too. My mother was too proud, too stiff-kneed to bring herself to beg, so instead she danced—the one and only dance she’d learned from her teacher at school. But no one paid her any attention. She danced the whole day and didn’t even earn enough to buy a bottle of water. As the last train of the night was about to leave, she started to panic.

“That’s when a man in a military uniform showed up. He told her she danced beautifully, then asked where she was headed, and offered to buy her a train ticket as payment for the performance he’d just watched. My mother had no idea where she was actually going, so she asked him where he was headed instead, then pretended his destination happened to be along her way too.

“My father had just been discharged from the military that year, twenty-three years old, a full five years older than my mother, but that didn’t matter much—my mother loved books, my father had traveled far and seen much, and the two of them talked happily the whole ride, growing more convinced with every word that they’d found a kindred spirit in each other. So much so that even after he got off and realized my mother had lied to him about their destinations matching, all he did was praise how clever she was—one bold enough to follow, the other kind enough to take her in.

“They worked in factories together, ran street stalls together, even collected scrap together for a while. Slowly, the two of them fell for each other and decided to marry, but there was the problem of the household registration. My mother suggested they just live together as a couple without official papers, but my father wouldn’t hear of it. He took the money he’d saved over the years, went back to my mother’s hometown, and bought out her household registration, severing all ties between her and that family for good.

“They got married properly, out in the open, with a simple wedding ceremony. Afterward, my father worked as a taxi driver for a while, and my mother found a job teaching at a small rural school.

Their life together was hard, but sweet too.

“By the time I was born, my father had become a police officer, and my mother stayed home raising me while running some small side business. Life wasn’t great, but at least there was a steady income every month. My mother had a difficult labor with me—funny enough, when my father, a grown man, heard my mother’s agonized screams, he charged straight into the delivery room without a second thought, and the doctors couldn’t even stop him. He held my mother’s hand and shouted at the doctor to save the mother, save the mother—said forget the baby.

“The doctor told him the baby was doing just fine, they weren’t about to just give up on it.”

Zhou Haiyan’s tone was light and humorous, and I laughed through my tears despite myself.

He stroked the top of my head and kept going.

“After that, both mother and child came through safely. My father took care of my mother through her recovery month, then went straight to the hospital and got a vasectomy, said he was done having children.

“Our family was the classic gentle mother, strict father setup. When I was little, if I ever made my mother angry, my father was sure to give me a beating the moment he got home. But honestly, they both loved me dearly. Growing up, I always thought my father was so cool, I admired him so much—every time I heard about him catching criminals, I felt like my father was a real hero.

“As fierce as my father was out in the world, he was that gentle to my mother at home. My mother always managed the money in our family; my father said the station provided meals, so he had no need to spend on himself. Whenever my father was home, all the housework fell to him—he taught me from a young age, he said, a man who keeps his eyes open for chores is a man who truly keeps his family in his heart. He’d wash my mother’s feet, massage her shoulders, and knowing she loved osmanthus flowers, he planted an entire courtyard full of osmanthus trees.

“If there was anything not so great, it’s that my father never once showed up to my parent-teacher meetings. I carry my mother’s surname, and the space for father’s information on my school forms was always left blank. He never took photos either—back then, because we were so poor, he and my mother never even got a wedding photo taken together.

“Later on, my father got busier and busier, sometimes not making it home even once in six months.

The neighbors, who could never stand to see my mother happy, started spreading rumors that my father had someone else.

I asked my father what exactly he was so busy with, and he never told me. Right around when I was ready to give up on him entirely, my mother still believed, without a shred of doubt, that my father would never do anything to betray her.

“Not until the year he took a bullet and was carried home did we start to realize his job might not be so ordinary. He spent half a year recovering at home, and even during that time he never told me directly what he did—he just took me around, teaching me the difference between poppy flowers and opium poppies, telling me I needed to remember what the drug plants looked like for the rest of my life, and to destroy them the moment I saw them.

“That’s when I finally understood what kind of work he did. I asked him if it was worth it, and he said, someone has to do the job nobody else wants to do. Caught up in my father’s heroism, I applied to the public security university, wanting to walk the same path he had, to become someone just as formidable.

“Once he’d healed, he went right back to being too busy to come home. The last time he left, he promised my mother he’d be back in time for her birthday. But on my mother’s birthday in 2012, what came back wasn’t my living, breathing father—it was his superiors, carrying his ashes and a banner honoring him with a first-class commendation.

“During a joint operation to arrest a drug trafficking ring at the border, my father fought the traffickers to the death, and was killed by a grenade. According to his colleagues, his chest was blown apart into something resembling honeycomb coal, and his calves were entirely gone.

“After that operation, the remaining traffickers went into hiding. Out of fear that his family might face retaliation, my father’s funeral never happened, his gravestone couldn’t bear his name, and we couldn’t even go visit his grave during Qingming.

“My mother fell into despair after that. She even developed a psychological aversion to the profession itself, becoming almost obsessively anxious about my safety. She begged me not to follow my father’s path, so within six months of graduating university, I packed my mother up and moved us both here, to start over.

“Fu Yuan was my closest friend in university—he had a rough idea of what happened to my father.

“You already know the rest of the story.”

It felt as though an invisible hand had seized my heart, crushing it until I could barely breathe. I never could have imagined it had been this tragic, this heroic and sorrowful all at once.

No wonder I’d never once seen Auntie celebrate her own birthday. No wonder I’d never seen her visit a grave. No wonder the fifth of every month always seemed to bring her such pain—on what should have been the happiest day of her year, she’d been forced to bear the most unbearable outcome imaginable.

And to think, when my father used to curse at her, calling her husband a short-lived wretch who deserved to die young, how much that must have torn at her.

I couldn’t even imagine how she’d managed to survive these years.

Uncle had died in the line of duty at forty-six, so Auntie chose to end her own life exactly at forty-six—unwilling to live even one day past that.

For her, her husband’s death wasn’t a single storm—it was a long, endless dampness stretching through the rest of her life.

The conversation he’d had with Officer Fu those days before, which had seemed like nonsense to me at the time, suddenly made complete sense.

One generation carrying on where the last left off.

He too was about to walk his father’s path, becoming a narcotics officer.

Words of persuasion wouldn’t come—I had no standing, no reason to say them.

No one can forgive on another’s behalf, and no one can stop another from setting off toward the horizon.

Some people have wind in their blood, destined from birth to run forever forward. And as long as someone keeps running forward, someone else will inevitably be left behind along the way.

I once read a line in a book:

If you long for something, you must first set it free. If it returns to you, then it was always yours. If it never comes back, then you never truly had it at all.

The same is true of people. The same is true of love.

I wiped the tears from my face, and asked, in as steady a voice as I could manage.

“Zhou Haiyan, when are you leaving?”

“I don’t know. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after.”

“How long will you be gone? Will we ever see each other again?”

He looked at me silently, saying nothing.

I fought as hard as I could not to cry. “I’ll wait for you. I’ll wait until you come back.”

His eyes slowly reddened.

He said, “What if you end up waiting forever, and I never come?”

I said, in complete earnest, “That won’t happen. Heaven won’t be that cruel. I believe you’ll come back.”

He said, “Alright. I’ll come back.”