Wei Lai chose the best guest room available. On the side was a small wooden ladder leading up to a rooftop terrace, with a table, two chairs, and a large umbrella for sun and rain.

If it weren’t for the pressing matter weighing on his mind, he could easily spend idle hours up there with Cen Jin — sitting in comfortable silence, not even needing to speak.

When evening came, the bar started filling with noise and life. None of the guest rooms had lights — reportedly due to power restrictions. In the courtyard, a single electric wire was strung precariously, suspending an amber light bulb that flickered with unstable voltage, dimming and brightening, like a fragile heart in the midst of all this clamor.

So the guests, having nowhere else to go unless they wanted the bar, sat scattered in the courtyard in twos and threes. A few young Egao women clustered together, speaking in low voices with men who wandered near, occasionally letting out light, lively laughter.

A local woman came into the courtyard selling shamas: Egao women liked to wear narrow, brightly colored skirts with a white shama draped loosely over them like a shawl. Since highland temperatures were lower, the skirts and shamas sold here were somewhat thicker. Cen Jin felt she needed some, and went over with enthusiasm to browse.

Wei Lai accompanied her at first — but too many people crowded around, mostly young women, and standing there among them as the only man felt rather awkward. So he stepped aside to wait.

A woman’s voice suddenly sounded beside his ear: “Want a woman?”

Wei Lai turned to look. It was one of the Egao women who had been gathered in a group earlier.

He understood immediately — those women were all sex workers.

This girl was very pretty, barely twenty years old. In truth, none of that group was hard on the eyes. The Egao people were of a complexion between black and white — a beautiful coffee tone that was said to produce the most beautiful women in Africa, with full figures and sensual curves. They had claimed more than a few global and regional beauty pageant titles, and not without reason.

Wei Lai’s brow furrowed.

The girl glanced over at Cen Jin and said: “I know she’s with you — but women are different. You can try something new.”

Wei Lai laughed out loud.

He liked people who spoke plainly, and held no particular contempt for sex workers. In his view, they at least respected the concept of a transaction — even if it was a kind of lopsided self-sufficiency, it was still far better than those who used violence and power to take by force.

He shook his head: “You can ask someone else.”

The girl was not deterred: “Just two dollars. You’re handsome, I like you — I can give you a discount. The lowest I can go is one dollar.”

Wei Lai blinked. He wondered if he’d heard wrong. When this girl had said “want a woman” — was it really what he had assumed?

“Two dollars? ……?”

The girl nodded.

“For one time?”

“For a whole night. However many times you want.”

Wei Lai was struck with disbelief. Since entering Egao, he hadn’t spent much; the local currency was the birr, and Cen Jin had been handling all the payments. He knew only that Egao was another desperately poor country in East Africa, but had no real sense of the degree.

He looked the girl over. That face, that figure — in another place, any number of men would go to great lengths, spending lavishly on roses and all manner of courtship — and two dollars couldn’t even buy a handful of roses.

He shook his head: “Try someone else. Good luck.”

The girl’s face suddenly fell. The next moment, she grabbed his belt fiercely.

Wei Lai didn’t dodge. He asked: “What are you doing?”

“You asked about the price — if you don’t go through with it, you still have to pay!”

She glanced back at Cen Jin again — Cen Jin was finishing paying the vendor.

“Otherwise I’ll scream, and let your girlfriend hear. I’ll tear my own clothes open too, and say you touched me but wouldn’t pay!”

Wei Lai said: “Is that so? Do you know what you look like to me?”

Before he finished speaking, he suddenly reached out, seized her shama, and with almost no effort at all, spun around and pinned her hard against the wall.

The girl was caught completely off guard and screamed.

The courtyard fell suddenly silent. Everyone turned to look.

Wei Lai didn’t look back. He smiled, speaking one word at a time: “Like a little wolf pup that wants to bite — but forgot to grow its teeth.”

“Now it’s not just my girlfriend watching — everyone is watching. Go ahead. Do everything you just threatened to do. All of it.”

The girl was embarrassed. In a low voice she said: “Let go of me.”

Her struggles were futile. A professional smile crept back onto her face: “I was just joking. A man should be magnanimous.”

Wei Lai smiled. His other hand suddenly rose as if to strike her. The girl flinched instinctively — then her eyes went wide and bright.

She recognized the folded, pale green banknote in his hand. At least ten dollars.

Wei Lai’s hand curled shut, crumpling the bill in his palm.

He said: “I’m a person who doesn’t like making enemies. If we can be friends, let’s be friends — even fake friends are better than enemies, at least in terms of peace of mind.”

“Don’t come disturbing me again.”

The girl nodded at once.

“I know those other girls are with you. Don’t let them try either — you can manage that.”

The girl’s eyes lit up: “No problem.”

“Are you staying at this inn?”

“I help out in the bar. I’ll be here for the next few nights.”

Very good. Wei Lai smiled: “Then in the next few days — if any strange people show up nearby, the kind who are always lurking around, or who keep staring at me and my girlfriend — let me know. You won’t regret it.”

The girl ran her tongue over her lips eagerly: “Okay, I’ll keep an eye out. I’m very thorough.”

Wei Lai laughed heartily and slapped her hand in a high-five. In the split second their palms met, he passed the crumpled banknote to her. The girl closed her fist tightly around it and giggled.

Then she walked away with a light, quick step, and when she reached the center of the courtyard, she called out loudly: “It was a joke — nothing to see here.”

With that, she even spun herself around in a graceful little circle on the spot, like a closing bow at curtain call.

——

The courtyard returned to its earlier din. Cen Jin came over with her newly bought clothes, giving him a look that was half smile, half reproach: “Always causing trouble.”

Wei Lai laughed and pulled her inside, closed the door behind them, and pressed her against the wall for a long, ardent kiss.

In the darkness, Cen Jin was breathing hard, her body sliding steadily downward. Wei Lai caught her at the waist and asked: “Do you know what that girl does for a living?”

“Yes — sex work is legal in Egao.”

“Not jealous?”

“I’m only jealous when someone takes something from me. What did she take from me?”

Wei Lai laughed heartily, scooped her up in his arms, and laid her down on the bed.

Then he pulled open the drawer and felt for a candle and matches. He struck a match against the side of the box — power outages were clearly a regular occurrence here; the candle had obviously been used many times before, burned down to just an inch. Wei Lai couldn’t be bothered to go ask for another one and simply lit what was left.

“Why light a candle?”

“So I can see you better.”

Cen Jin’s face burned. She threw her clothes at him: “Get lost. Blow it out.”

Wei Lai pressed closer: “Don’t put on any airs tonight — this time is for you.”

What does that mean? Cen Jin understood very quickly.

This time, he barely hurt her at all. His hands were precisely calibrated, tender to an extreme degree.

But some sensations are far more overwhelming than pain.

Cen Jin hadn’t expected to lose herself so completely. It felt as though she had endured to some absolute threshold, then suddenly burst. She cursed at him, shoved at him, desperate to escape — then when he caught her and pressed her down, she wept and bit him, her nails raking blood-streaked trails across his back. And then when the crimson candlelight finally tumbled and was snuffed out before her eyes, everything suddenly reversed into fierce, desperate tenderness — she remembered kissing him on her own, refusing to let him go.

Afterward, deep into the night, moonlight came through the window and lit one corner of the table a bright white. The candle had melted into a flat pool there — some wax had dripped over the table’s edge, hardening before it could fall, hanging like icicles from a rooftop in deep winter.

Cen Jin was burning with mortification. Wei Lai pressed the matter mercilessly, drawing her into his arms and tilting her chin up with his fingers, forcing her to meet his gaze.

“Did you know you’d go that wild?”

Cen Jin said nothing.

“I genuinely don’t understand how I can’t be tender with you in bed. Do you know how much it hurts when you bite? That’s abuse — do you understand?”

Cen Jin suddenly flew into indignant fury: “Don’t tell anyone — or I’ll kill you!”

Wei Lai roared with laughter. Cen Jin grabbed a piece of clothing to smother his face with, but he deflected it easily, dipped his head, and kissed her lips.

This kiss carried no urgency — long and still, until the roots of her lashes felt damp. Even after he pulled away, she was still slightly dazed. For one brief instant she wanted to forget everything that had come before and after, and simply remain this close, skin against skin, until the end of time.

Then Wei Lai held something out to her.

It was cold, its lines hard as iron — the Desert Eagle.

He said: “I forgot to tell you — there may be some trouble in the next day or two. This gun, starting now, you need to carry it with you at all times. Do you know how to fire it?”

He took her hand and guided it inch by inch over the frame, the grip, the chamber, the safety lever — then he unloaded it and had her practice the trigger pull, feeling the empty recoil, the slide cycling back, the hammer coming down.

Cen Jin asked softly: “Will it be very dangerous?”

“What isn’t dangerous? People die in their sleep sometimes — you said that yourself, didn’t you?”

“Can we avoid anyone dying?”

“I’ll do my best. Generally neither side wants deaths — a life is a serious thing, and one more death means one more complication. But if the other side pushes too far, I don’t need to show restraint.”

Cen Jin fell silent.

The Desert Eagle — she had only ever seen Wei Lai use it before. Now that it was in her own hands, she found it was heavy, its shape blunt and aggressive, and the metal was cold.

Especially cold — it pressed against her body for a long time without warming.

Cen Jin’s eyes suddenly stung and ached. After a long hesitation, her voice trembling, she began: “Wei Lai, actually I…”

No response.

She looked up. He was already asleep, a satisfied smile still lingering at the corners of his lips.