Wei Lai was glad that visibility inside the van was poor: Cen Jin had almost certainly wrapped him up in a way that looked absolutely ridiculous.

He slowly withdrew his arm from around her waist. “When I go back there, you drop to the floor under the seat immediately — curl into a ball, protect your head and face. Understood?”

“Understood. I’ve sheltered from artillery shells before — I don’t need instructions.”

Wei Lai smiled, drew a breath, braced his arms, narrowed his eyes to find his bearings, and prepared to make one swift, decisive lunge into the rear compartment.

“You’re young — don’t be so pessimistic. If he never came, just wait a little longer. It’s like waiting for a bus — one always shows up eventually.”

“What?”

She had apparently lost the thread entirely.

“The world is an unsettled place. Maybe something came up, maybe he was delayed — maybe his ship got hijacked, or there was a sandstorm. You need to be patient. Don’t go grinding your teeth and declaring ‘I’ll never wait again’ — how immature.”

Before he finished speaking, his gaze sharpened, and he launched himself forward.

The moment he was gone, the shelter he’d created vanished. The sound of wind and sand instantly pressed in from all directions. Cen Jin reacted without hesitation — she dropped low, her hair whipped upward by the wind, her scalp stinging sharply.

A man who played with paper airplanes, and he had the nerve to call her immature.

She didn’t have to wait long — only three or four seconds. Then a light, quick whistle sounded from the rear of the van, followed by Wei Lai vaulting over the top of the seat and landing in the front, pulling something open as he landed.

It was a large canvas tent — it fell exactly right over the front seats, enclosing both of them inside. The sand immediately began to patter against the tent fabric, the rustling sound dense as a heavy downpour.

Cen Jin raised her head and opened her eyes wide.

Just above her eyebrows, after a faint cracking and bending sound, a pale green horizontal line of light appeared — a glow stick.

Above the glow, Wei Lai’s smiling eyes looked down at her.

“Hey,” he said in greeting.

Cen Jin sat up, unamused.

Wei Lai sat down too and handed her pack to her.

“You might want to take out that silk wrap and drape it around yourself.”

Purely out of goodwill — grateful that she’d sacrificed a shirt for him.

But Cen Jin didn’t take it. “Is there something wrong with how I’m dressed?”

She was wearing a black strapless top, bare at the shoulders and neck, a slender span of pale waist showing. The gentle dip of her collarbones formed two shallow diagonal curves. She looked very much presentable.

“Have you ever been to the beach?”

Wei Lai nodded. Of course he had.

“Those women in bikinis — they were wearing less than I am, and you stared at them openly. Now I’m dressed like this, and you want me to drape a silk wrap over myself? Am I bothering you?”

Life was full of baffling questions. How did she know he’d stared at women on the beach?

Wei Lai quickly held out the first-aid kit, hoping to change the subject. “Could you give me a hand?”

He turned his back to her, grabbed the ragged hem of his ruined shirt, pulled it up and off entirely, then unwound the strips of cloth she’d tied around him.

Cen Jin held the glow stick close to look.

Numerous small abrasions, two lacerations down to raw flesh, the cuts packed with grit — it was difficult to look at directly.

She wedged the glow stick into the gap between the seat and the door frame, soaked a piece of gauze with alcohol, and began carefully cleaning the wounds.

Wei Lai asked, “Are you sure you can manage this?”

“Even if my reasons for going to Ka Long weren’t entirely pure, my emergency first-aid skills are more than adequate. I was there when Hu Sha’s severed head was being reattached — if you think I can’t handle this, do it yourself.”

Wei Lai smiled. His broad shoulders shifted with each breath, the skin surface radiating heat.

A man’s body seemed to run hot by nature — unlike a woman’s, which always tended toward coolness.

Cen Jin lowered her gaze and reached for the cap of the skin adhesive, twisting it open.

Wei Lai asked abruptly: “What was that about the radio?”

This man remembered everything, and chose the most unguarded moments to ask — just like that day at the Istanbul airport, in front of the newsstand stacked with fashion magazines, when he’d asked: “Why did you choose me?”

Cen Jin was silent.

After a while, she bowed her head, pressed gently around the edges of his wound with cool fingertips, and applied the adhesive in careful strokes.

A few strands of her hair brushed his back. Faint and delicate, tickling him.

“During the Ka Long massacre, the Huka people simultaneously activated radio broadcasts to incite the crowds. Over radio and loudspeakers, twenty-four hours a day, on a constant loop: Kill the Kasi people. They are our enemies. They are vermin. They are cockroaches.”

“We established a shelter in an elementary school to protect Kasi refugees. Wave after wave of Huka men arrived in vehicles surrounding the school, mounted speakers blaring toward it: We will break through soon and hack the cockroaches to pieces. We will kill you all, and your blood will flow in rivers.”

“That sound was in my ears every day. It would stop occasionally, but before you could finish exhaling in relief, the crackling static would start again — daytime, nighttime, in dreams. Inescapable.”

She stopped. Her gaze went blank as she stared at the adhesive in her hand.

The sound started up again, rising all around her, surging — mingled with frenzied laughter and the clashing of blades.

— “We will kill you all, and your blood will flow in rivers. We will exterminate every cockroach and everyone who protects them…”

“Hey,” Wei Lai said.

She hadn’t noticed him turn around.

Cen Jin looked up. She realized only now that a person’s voice could change, just as their eyes could — his had become thick and low, warm and steadying.

“Is it hard to forget? Hard to recover from? Even therapy doesn’t help?”

Cen Jin asked him in return: “What does recovery even look like?”

She raised her left arm. On the inside, there was the scar from the bear-claw slash wound — healing over now, the scab darkening.

“Is this recovery? But you always know it’s different from the skin around it.”

“I wanted to recover. I wanted to pull my life back onto course. I made a plan — exercise, read, socialize, date someone, watch comedies. I read books on psychological treatment. None of it worked. So I followed the advice and saw a therapist.”

She laughed at herself.

“I watched the therapist’s mouth move. Whatever he said, I already knew what he was going to say next. Every suggestion he offered, I could have given myself. My verbal expression is better than his too — I could have made it sound more convincing.”

Wei Lai reached out and supported her left forearm, his fingertips brushing gently across the edge of the scar: good — it was healing well.

He said: “Cen Jin — look, I’m not qualified to say things like ‘keep perspective’ or ‘be strong’ or ‘there’s no obstacle you can’t overcome.’ After all, I haven’t been through what you’ve been through. Most people in the world haven’t.”

Healing from something like war took generations.

“So all I can say is: if there’s ever anything you need help with, come find me.”

“I won’t charge you for it. I hope you’ll — give it willingly.”

Cen Jin looked at him. She didn’t smile, didn’t speak.

Wei Lai felt deeply awkward. After a long pause he finally spoke again — his voice very low, almost pleading.

“Could you do me the courtesy of smiling, just a little? I thought you were going to smile… this is leaving me with nowhere to stand…”

“Then stand there a while longer. You have a good build — broad shoulders, narrow waist, no reason to avoid being looked at.”

She turned away and curled toward the seat, pressing her head down low — hiding the slight smile at the corner of her mouth.

If only they’d met earlier. A little earlier. Maybe things would have been different.

Inexplicably, Wei Lai actually glanced down at his own abdomen.

Good build… Yes. He thought so too.

The wind and sand outside had probably eased. The faint, fine rushing sound, now that his ears had adjusted, actually had a kind of pleasant quality to it.

He breathed out slowly and felt — relaxed. Despite the sandstorm outside, the broken windows, the burning pain along his back, the interior of the van buried under a layer of grit.

But a sense of ease had always depended solely on the state of one’s heart.

Wei Lai turned his head toward Cen Jin.

The glow stick’s light was fading. She lay quietly curled on the seat, the whole of her looking small.

In fact she wasn’t short — only about ten-odd centimeters below his height. But when he held her, he could still cover her completely. Her waist was slender; one arm around it was more than enough.

She’d mentioned Ka Long many times.

If — if he’d known her earlier, would he have gone to save her?

Wei Lai considered the possibility.

Probably yes. After all, he didn’t have many friends — just as he couldn’t stand by if something happened to Ai Lin or Milu. She was a woman, in a situation that dangerous — just thinking about it made his heart clench.

If she’d called him and choked up on the other end, or cried — he wouldn’t have been able to bear it. He’d have gone even for less money…

Actually, scratch the money — she wasn’t anything to him, and showing up to rescue a stranger without payment would be impossible to explain.

He could run a tab.

So yes, he would have gone. Even though a war zone was incredibly dangerous, Ke Ke Shu had said it — the worse the place, the more a person like him was needed there.

He would have gone.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. The glow stick had gone dark. In the blackness, Cen Jin called his name suddenly.

“Wei Lai?”

“Mm?”

“The sandstorm seems to have passed.”

Wei Lai sat up, listened carefully — then with one sweeping motion, pulled the sheltering tent down.

Inside the van, outside it, earth and sky merged in a single expanse of reddish sand-mist.

To say the sandstorm had passed was not quite accurate — it had only moved on to ravage somewhere new, beginning another cycle of violent upheaval.

But the place it had torn through was now as quiet as the end of the world.

Visibility was only about ten or so meters. The van sat in the sand, its tires pressed into a clump of salt-tolerant grass. Not far off, a withered tree had been blown sideways by the wind, leaning at an angle — like a person who’d thrown their back out, propped against the ground and unable to rise.

The roof panel had been jammed shut by sand. Wei Lai forced it with his full strength; when it finally gave way, sand poured down over his head like a waterfall.

He didn’t mind. He shook his head, dusted off his hair, and spat sand out of his mouth.

There was quite a bit to do.

— Cen Jin. Fine — essentially no injuries.

He spread the tent’s ground mat beside the van and nudged her to sit down on it. “This is your zone. Don’t wander.”

— The satellite phone. Also fine — thank goodness for the protective equipment sleeve.

He opened the sleeve partway, extended and lengthened the antenna, started the automatic satellite search, and propped it on the roof of the van.

— The cold air unit.

The spots sealed with transparent tape were all intact. But the plastic-bag-covered sections had all been pierced by the sand. He gave the iron casing a pat — sand cascaded down.

This kind of electrical device couldn’t survive large quantities of sand infiltration.

Cold air unit — gone.

— The water drums and most of the rations in the rear compartment…

Despite being half-buried in sand, they’d sustained no major damage — something to be grateful for.

— The watermelon — gone. The tomatoes — gone. The dates…

The dates were still passable. Wei Lai scooped up a handful, blew the surface grit away in one breath, found two plastic bags, swished water in one to rinse them clean, then transferred them into the other.

He turned to her. “Want some dates?”

Cen Jin nodded. “Bring them over. My bodyguard said this mat is my zone — I can’t wander.”

Wei Lai didn’t move. “Your bodyguard says — come get them yourself…”

He stopped abruptly.

A beeping sound rose up, hovering in the reddish sand-mist.

Cen Jin raised her eyes, her voice quiet: “Answer the phone.”