The meal was eaten with a flavourless mouth and a tumultuous heart.

But Wei Lai remembered every topic. They talked about taste and heat and seasoning, agreeing that Lin Yongfu’s ability to be a cook was no accident — he clearly had his skills. Cen Jin also complained about stir-frying over high heat leaving her smelling of smoke.

She turned sideways and, laughing, offered herself for him to smell. Wei Lai lowered his head. The faint scent of woodsmoke and oil and salt reached him.

He drifted for a moment, and suddenly realized that many women had sprayed perfume for him, but one whose scent carried the warmth of a cooking fire — there had only ever been this one.

When dinner was done, Cen Jin quickly took a shower. She came out wearing the shirt he had altered, her hair half-dried and pinned up, a few strands trailing down her neck and shoulder. Water droplets ran along them and soaked the fabric. The small red garnet, vivid and bright, lay against her fine porcelain-like skin.

Wei Lai asked, “Aren’t you cold like that?”

Cen Jin shook her head, stacked the tableware back into the basket, and when Wei Lai moved to help she wouldn’t let him. In the end she picked it up herself and carried it to the front courtyard.

Wei Lai watched her go — the basket was clearly heavy, pulling her shoulder gently down. Just as she opened the umbrella, she suddenly turned back. “Wei Lai.”

The outdoor light filtered through the dense rain and the amber-yellow of the umbrella and settled over her. A few strands of hair lifted in the light. Her smile was gentle, her eyes holding no whole world — only him.

The doorframe was the frame. She was the painting inside it. Wei Lai smiled. If only time could stop at this moment, he thought — no thoughts of the past, and no need for a future.

Seize it before the spark goes cold. Hold this moment, fleeting yet eternal.

When she came back, she held an opened bottle of red wine and two tall-stemmed glasses, and said, “No label. You have an injury, so drink less.”

She set the wine down and settled into the chair opposite, then opened her shirt and from the waistband of her underwear pulled out a pack of cigarettes: “Didn’t have a free hand just now, so I stuffed it in there. They’re supposed to be a local variety — spiced flavour.”

She drew one out, tilted it toward the candle flame to light it, her hand very steady. She didn’t look at him. Her thick lashes fanned slightly, and around her a mood settled — heavy, dense, impenetrable as water that will not absorb.

The scene felt familiar.

Wei Lai remembered: their first formal meeting, in the interview room, she had been exactly like this.

Cen Jin drew on the cigarette, tilted her head back, and slowly exhaled.

Then she laughed: “It’s strange, falling in love. You don’t recognize yourself anymore. It’s like being in a dream. Some people are lucky — their dream runs long enough, and it’s a whole lifetime.”

She paused, then said quietly, “But I’m unlucky. I’ve always been just a little short. At the time… there were three colleagues, and together we stayed behind.”

Four of them, three men and one woman. The other three were all considerably more experienced than she was. After the UN convoy departed, they immediately organized their response.

First: keep up appearances.

The flags of the international organizations still had to be raised — and raised more visibly, in greater number, in larger size. In times of chaos, certain flags and symbols were worth more than human lives.

Second: register everyone.

After the announcement that they would not evacuate the Kasi refugees, a large portion of the terrified refugees had already scattered and fled; those who remained numbered around two hundred, and each was registered in a ledger.

Third: take stock of food and daily supplies.

Feeding this many people was a major problem. The inventory was sobering: the small school had essentially no reserves at all — at best it could hold out another day or two before running out of food entirely.

…

The four of them held a meeting and divided responsibilities clearly. Considering that women were more vulnerable to harm in chaotic conditions, they took care of Cen Jin: she would handle only staying behind, calming the refugees, medical care, and internal management. She would not need to deal with anything external.

The other three had their roles. One took responsibility for security and patrol: a set of equipment left behind by the withdrawing peacekeepers. That person put on a vest marked “UN,” donned a helmet, walked back and forth gripping a rifle, and was nearly convincing enough to pass for the real thing. Wary Huka men with knives prowled the vicinity, but didn’t dare approach.

The other two would go out on field missions: first, to find a way to secure enough food; second, because they couldn’t fight in isolation — they needed to contact the other scattered protected areas still operating and coordinate; third, in times like these, they were the eyes civilization had left behind, witnesses to history and testimony to events, and they had a responsibility to preserve photos and documentation. Someday, those materials might prove their worth.

After the meeting, Cen Jin felt considerably more settled inside. Everyone was optimistic: after all, this wasn’t an era of isolation. The whole world was watching. The international community would intervene quickly — who would stand by and allow such an atrocity to continue and escalate?

The next two days, the progress from the field missions was encouraging.

They had successfully bought flour, salt, potatoes, and even brought back some black tea.

It was said that protected areas like theirs were not unique — a French priest’s church was sheltering over three thousand Kasi people; the International Red Cross was functioning normally and had taken in many of the injured under significant pressure…

They had even encountered a BBC journalist. It was said that some photographs had already been transmitted back, and would soon be made public to the world.

…

But then hope began to gutter, like a candle flame slowly going out.

Crisis response was, in practice, like disaster relief: there were golden 72 hours. If the international community failed to strike decisively or speak clearly in those first days, it would be read as a certain kind of tolerance — and the perpetrators would grow bolder.

One day passed. Then another.

The sun rose. The stars fell. Sometimes Cen Jin would sit and stare blankly at the second hand sweeping around and around the face of her watch, and feel that Ka Long had been forgotten by the world.

The food brought back from outside grew scanter and scanter. The car window was smashed to pieces in one trip. Each time they went out, more damage was done to the vehicle — according to them, outside had descended into a kind of collective frenzy. The Huka men manning the roadblocks were growing bolder by the day.

The radio played without pause. After the early incitement, the broadcasts shifted in content, reading out various addresses: “Hurry, we’ve spotted a large number of cockroaches near such-and-such location — Huka warriors, take up your machetes, come quickly.” Like a call to gather for a killing game.

Cen Jin’s nerves grew tighter and tighter. Even in her dreams she heard the radio reading out the name of that small school, and then countless Huka men, machetes in hand, pouring in from all directions…

One day, the two colleagues who had gone on the field mission did not come back.

Unease spread like a tide through the protected area. After waiting through the night, the colleague in charge of security decided to go look for them.

Cen Jin waited again through another day of intense anxiety.

She paused here, was silent for a moment, and knocked the ash from her cigarette.

Wei Lai asked, “And then?”

Cen Jin smiled: “And then there was nothing after that. What a joke. All at once, four people — and then it was just me.”

“I stayed up through the night, lying there in the dark with my eyes wide open, thinking — I’m finished. No field team, no security, no food. Come daylight, the moment even one Huka man approached to probe our defences, this protected area was done.”

But fate is not always merciless — at dawn she suddenly heard the sound of a vehicle, and then someone rattling the locked iron gate of the school, calling out: Is anyone there? Please open up.

“I looked through the window and saw that the person shaking the gate was a white man. The emotion I felt in that moment was like seeing someone from the same country as me.”

The newcomers were Re Lei Mi and Se Qi, the two of them sharing one minivan, the side bearing the logo of the ‘Peace Relief Organization.’ The van pulled into the courtyard; when the canvas covering the back was lifted, it revealed ten or so refugees coated in dried blood.

“Re Lei Mi said that he and Se Qi had also stayed behind as volunteers, that their protected area had been overrun, and that those refugees were ones they had picked up along the way.”

Re Lei Mi brought some news that was not entirely optimistic.

First: the situation was deteriorating. The international community had collectively gone silent and appeared to have no intention of intervening in the short term.

Second: even protected areas were no longer safe. Just in those two days, they had heard of two protected areas being overrun.

Third: on the road they had heard that two foreign nationals, trying to force through a roadblock with Kasi refugees hidden in their vehicle, were given chase by over ten Huka vehicles, with more being called in via radio to block the road. The car had swerved off a bridge in the chaos, catching fire and exploding.

…

Cen Jin had a feeling: those two foreign nationals were perhaps her colleagues.

Wei Lai asked, “Those two — Re Lei Mi and Se Qi — how did they know the location of the school?”

Cen Jin said, “They said they’d met my colleague on the road, the one who’d gone out to look for the others. He had told them. They also told that colleague about the two foreign nationals whose car went off the bridge, but he insisted on going to confirm.”

She raised her glass, drank down most of it, then licked the foam from her lips: “That colleague of mine is still listed as missing to this day.”

She didn’t even have time to weep for her former colleagues before she was already with Re Lei Mi and Se Qi, working out a new plan.

Re Lei Mi proposed: extraordinary times called for extraordinary measures. With protected areas falling one after another, the old approach was no longer workable. It was worth trying some different methods.

“Re Lei Mi said that among the rioters, aside from a small core of genuinely fanatical extremists, most were simply opportunists looking to profit — people who could be bought. He’d heard that some protected areas were safer because the person in charge had bribed low-ranking military officers, who then quietly offered the protected area special consideration.”

Wei Lai asked, “Did you have money at the time?”

“No. But the Kasi people did.”

“So you went to solicit funds from the Kasi refugees yourself?”

Cen Jin smiled slightly: “Yes. In those days I was handling internal management, and the refugees trusted only me. There was no one else who could do it.”

At the time, the Kasi people had fled in such haste that they hadn’t taken much cash with them. And being confined to the school, money had no use anyway. When they heard it could buy them safety, they were tripping over themselves to hand it over — the amount came to quite a sum, and it quickly proved its worth.

“Re Lei Mi and the others went out and greased some palms, then came back with a great deal of food — even beer. Their plan was to clear a route by bribing every roadblock along it. Passage in and out would be trouble-free; the nearby Huka men, having got what they wanted, would stop harassing the school. That protected area would be a truly protected sanctuary.”

Cen Jin drained her glass: “The effect was remarkable — even more effective than the plans my earlier colleagues had drawn up. I thought Re Lei Mi and his people were clever and adaptable. Survival of the fittest.”

“They rescued several more refugees, bringing the total in to a peak of 292.”

Wei Lai asked: “Why ‘peak’? Did the numbers drop afterward?”

New refugees joining inevitably brought with them news flying around from outside.

Most of it was bleak and despairing: another large protected area had been overrun; being a foreigner was no longer a guarantee of safety, there were rumours of volunteers killed, the international community was still in session and couldn’t reach agreement, the agenda dragging on and on — while here, people were dying every single second.

But there was also heartening news: word was that some people had escaped, through waterways, to Uda. In times like these, a protected area wasn’t even a sure thing — the safest place was beyond Ka Long’s borders.

Re Lei Mi looked into it and corroborated the story: there was a large river between Ka Long and Uda, with boats on it — but bribing every checkpoint along the way, plus the passage on the boat, cost a great deal per person. Put plainly: someone was profiteering from the refugees.

Wei Lai went quiet. He thought of something Ke Ke Shu had said.

— I remember for a while the river water suddenly turned red. A lot of people went to the bank to look, and some people even pulled bodies floating downstream from the water.

— Word was later that a group of refugees had tried to escape through the waterway, but there was no boat available. The Huka men caught up with them at the riverbank, and then… chopped… and chopped…

Wei Lai asked, “Were there really boats on the river?”

Cen Jin smiled faintly: “I wouldn’t know. At the time, I never stepped outside the protected area, not once. And I didn’t see anyone go out to kill people with my own eyes. Everything was hearsay.”

But the news spread quickly. Many refugees came to find Cen Jin to ask about it. Cen Jin consulted Re Lei Mi. He replied: it was worth trying, but too dangerous — speak quietly to just a few people first, no more than five the first time.

Wei Lai interrupted: “From beginning to end, you were the one who went to speak with them?”

Cen Jin shrugged: “Yes. I was the one who asked for money, and the one who spread the news. The others were doing the fieldwork, running around outside — naturally, this kind of internal management fell to me.”

Wei Lai was silent, then said quietly: “Foolish girl.”

Cen Jin laughed: “Yes. I’m wiser now, except what a pity — I can’t give even a little of that wisdom back to my past self.”

Money was gathered quickly. Some pledged their bank statements as collateral; others provided their home addresses, told Re Lei Mi where their valuables were hidden and asked him to take care of bringing them out — in Ka Long, the Kasi people had always been a relatively prosperous class. The price of survival was steep, but they were still willing to stake everything on one chance.

The first group of five set out in the dead of night. At dawn, Re Lei Mi and Se Qi’s van returned, and even from a distance they were flashing victory signs at her.

Cen Jin’s eyes went faintly damp with relief.

“Re Lei Mi told me to keep this quiet — many mouths meant many leaks, and if word got out, the lifeline they’d worked so hard to secure would be forced to close. So I was very careful: kept each evacuation to around ten people, and arranged for family members to go together. When people asked about those who were missing, we always said they’d been moved to a nearby protected area to reduce risk.”

“We did this five or six times. One morning, I was waiting as I always did. When Re Lei Mi and Se Qi returned, they told me as always that everything had gone smoothly and without any incident.”

“Then they went back to rest. Re Lei Mi walked ahead of me. He was wearing a patterned shirt. I happened to glance at his back and noticed: there was blood, splattered across the back of his shirt.”

She met Wei Lai’s eyes: “And so I stood very still. They all went back to their rooms, and I was still standing there, not moving. I began to go back through how they had first appeared. And then… I was suddenly afraid.”