◎ The Reckoning ◎

With the Spring Festival drawing near, the air was thick with the scent of the coming holiday. The neon signs on either side of the street were like drunken revelers, their dizzy colors spilling outward in every shade, all clamoring and lurching toward passersby’s eyes.

The restaurant was not far from the hotel, and the two walked back together. The winter wind in the Jiangnan region was nothing like the north — it always carried a dampness with it. Luo Peiyin, out of long habit, shared half his coat with Gu Qiao, shielding her from the wind. He did it with the ease of someone who had done it countless times before. Gu Qiao nestled inside Luo Peiyin’s coat, sharing his warmth through all those layers of fabric. Both of them were ordinarily fast walkers, yet tonight they walked very slowly. Their time together had always been too short before — no matter what they did, they were always in too much of a rush.

Gu Qiao and Luo Peiyin’s hotel rooms were on different floors. Though it made seeing each other slightly inconvenient, she had still booked her own separate room from the start — it was more practical for work, and Xiao Tian could come directly to her room to communicate, since phone calls weren’t always the smoothest way to discuss things.

In this respect they were quite evenhanded, taking turns visiting each other’s room. Tonight it was Gu Qiao’s turn to go to Luo Peiyin’s.

Inside Luo Peiyin’s room, Gu Qiao found cigarette ends again — more than one in the ashtray on the table. She had now discovered twice that he smoked. It was painfully clear that this habit had taken root after their breakup. It was difficult for her to feel that she had nothing to do with it.

In her mind, she pictured him lighting that first cigarette: “When I told you we were breaking up — did you hate me quite a lot?”

Perhaps the breakup had affected him far more deeply than she had imagined.

Luo Peiyin hadn’t expected her to ask that: “When you brought up breaking up, you didn’t actually think I was going to accept it happily, did you? Gu Qiao — I’m very curious right now about what kind of image I had in your mind back then.”

Luo Peiyin’s gaze moved to Gu Qiao’s red teardrop earrings. He gave one a little tug, then suddenly laughed: “But as for hatred — I truly had no idea who I was supposed to hate. After all, we’d been together all that time, and the only moments that made me feel anything like hatred were those few minutes when you said you wanted to break up.” There was self-mockery in the laugh. Today he’d asked this as casually as if it were a joke, but in the days when he hadn’t yet found peace with it, this had genuinely been a problem for him.

Although the cumulative time they’d spent together wasn’t especially long, his mind had stored far too many fragments of Gu Qiao. The girl on the bus in the yellow blouse who’d pelted him with jujubes. The girl in the blue-and-yellow-flowered sweater at the Summer Palace who came out the same way in every photo no matter how she posed. The girl laughing in the bitter wind while hawking gloves, so fearless she might as well have been swallowing gusts of air. The girl who spent her earnings from selling goods on a scarf and made him wear it. The girl who had rushed toward the train station through a blizzard. The girl who had ridden a three-wheeled cart loaded with pots and pans to the hospital to take care of him. The girl who always had a mind full of odd ideas about kissing and insisted on trying every imaginable flavor of bubble gum every single time…

They shared too many memories, and memories cannot be overwritten. He couldn’t let the particular cruelty of Gu Qiao in the moment she ended things erase all the memories of her that had come before, or brand everything that had once been between them with the mark of something hateful.

His hatred and his forgetting had no stable ground — he always had to be on guard against older memories of her rising up unexpectedly. They were hopelessly tangled, and being clean about any of it was too much to ask. Clean hatred, clean contempt, clean forgetting — all of it too difficult. There was always contamination. When he resolved to forget her, the memories from before the breakup would surge forward; he could even remember the expression on her face the time she’d asked him, “Can you promise to only like me?” But then when he missed her, the harsh words she’d said at the end would surface, making even his longing feel furtive and shameful — always unable to stand in the light. What could it mean, to pine for someone who had voluntarily left him?

Luo Peiyin was tormented by these memories and could not be still. Smoking was a way to restore calm — and it didn’t interfere with anything else. The habit had simply stuck around after that.

Gu Qiao picked up the cigarette box from the table, drew one out, and lit it with a long match. She watched the orange-red flame bloom at the tip and took a drag, as though she were trying to borrow the act of smoking to imagine what his state of mind had been. But she was far too unpracticed — after just two puffs she broke into a cough, and she accidentally coughed up tears. He took the cigarette from her lips and pressed it out in the ashtray, then cupped her face in both hands. Her lashes trembled against his palms, and the tears that the smoke had wrung from her fell with each tremble of those lashes into his cupped hands. Her lips, too, were faintly trembling.

In all the days apart, every version of her in his memory had been slightly more rounded than she was now. When he’d seen her again, the last traces of baby fat had completely vanished from her face. He had thought about revenge, but the moment he’d pulled up to her guesthouse in the car, that impulse had dissolved entirely. He still couldn’t bring himself to cause her pain.

“Back then, I desperately wanted to cut open your heart and see what was going on inside it.”

So that Luo Peiyin could understand what was going on inside her, Gu Qiao reached up and hooked her arms around his neck, pressing her lips to his. He left a trail of small imprints along her lower lip, and the ache of it spread — into her lips and into her heart. Gu Qiao’s red sweater had been fairly loose, but as a pair of hands slipped beneath it, her breathing grew more and more ragged, and the sweater moved with the rise and fall of her chest, growing tighter and tighter.

There was no way for Luo Peiyin to truly cut open her heart and see inside — all he could do was press his hands against her skin, over and over, feeling her heartbeat. Gu Qiao’s rapid breathing and her heartbeat tangled together; the rising and falling softness pressed against his palm as she yielded to his kneading and pressing, his fingers gripping with considerable force, as though trying to mold the shape of a heart from what he held. He had felt wave after wave of aching pain back then — now he wanted her to feel the same kind of ache, to make her understand that it hadn’t simply passed. How could she have imagined that once she said the words to break up, he could just let that be the end of it? How could it possibly be that simple?

Being pressed that hard was painful, and Gu Qiao couldn’t help but let out a faint hiss between her teeth. What Luo Peiyin gripped and kneaded seemed to grow small sharp red mouths, pecking again and again into his palm, as though pressing kiss after kiss there.

Luo Peiyin spoke close to her ear: “Every part of you is more honest than your mouth.” But back then, separated by the Pacific, the phone had been their only lifeline.

Gu Qiao’s red sweater seemed to have caught fire, burning her whole body hot. A tingling, numbing sensation crept up from her waist along her spine, spreading through her entire body — like feathers everywhere, tickling at an itch that had no fixed location. But she knew this itch had nothing to do with the rash on her back. She held him tighter and tighter.

Gu Qiao fell back against the white sheets, her black hair fanning out wide around her. Luo Peiyin unwrapped her layer by layer as though opening a gift, until the only thing she still wore were the blood-red teardrops on her ears. That touch of blood-red made the white of the sheets look even whiter.

Compared to her red earrings, the few remaining dots of the rash on her back were almost insignificant — yet when that tingling, numbing sensation raced through her whole body, he seemed to recall that he ought to apply the moisturizing ointment, just as he had before.

Gu Qiao had her back to Luo Peiyin. She tugged the blanket over the parts that needed no ointment. As her breathing rose and fell, the hollow curve of her waist disappeared beneath the blanket. The amber light filtered through the lampshade, and even though he had seen all of her, this moment was different.

“It cleared up in three days last time. I don’t know why it’s taking so long this time.”

“Last time? Why didn’t you mention it when I was applying the ointment before?”

“It was a long time ago.” As if the distance in time made it hardly worth bringing up.

“A long time ago — how long ago, exactly?” For someone as fundamentally healthy as she was, with no prior history of allergies, an outbreak of eczema was most likely due to excessive stress — same as this time.

Gu Qiao didn’t answer right away, but Luo Peiyin immediately guessed: it must have been after the six-hundred-thousand-yuan bank draft couldn’t be cashed.

He didn’t pursue the topic further: “Was it on your back then, too?”

Gu Qiao made a sound of agreement.

“Did you apply the ointment yourself that time?”

“Yes. It was a bit awkward to reach, but manageable.” This time, Gu Qiao hadn’t originally intended to ask Luo Peiyin for help either. When she’d said she’d use a cotton swab and do it herself so as not to risk giving it to him, he’d laughed the way he always did and told her she had a gap in her knowledge of basic biology — that wasn’t how it was transmitted. He never mocked her cultural level, but basic biology was the one exception.

After finishing his teasing, Luo Peiyin had insisted on applying the ointment for her every morning and evening. Gu Qiao herself was rather surprised — it was just ointment, after all. After such exhausting days, whatever longing rose from the warmth of his touch was quickly swept away together with her body into sleep.

In the days preceding this, they had been thoroughly innocent — ointment was just ointment, and sleeping beside each other was just sleeping beside each other, each keeping to their own side of the blanket. No — it was more than just sleeping. In those first two days when the rash had just broken out and the itching was at its worst, his sleep had somehow fallen into sync with hers. The moment she woke from the itch, he would wake too. During those unbearable bouts of itching, he would apply cold compresses for her, over and over, until the itch finally subsided.

Gu Qiao had barely finished speaking when she heard Luo Peiyin laugh behind her: “Truly, there’s nothing you can’t handle on your own.”

Gu Qiao accepted this compliment in silence. She could do it herself, yes — but twisting her arm behind her back to dab ointment on with a long cotton swab was a completely different experience from having his fingers spread it across her skin. There was no way to achieve the same level of care.

Gu Qiao let his fingers push the ointment along slowly, bit by bit, and she could feel clearly the texture of his fingerprints. Instinctively she reached up and touched her own face — it was quite warm. But with her back to him, he couldn’t see her expression.

That tingling numbness crept through her again. Gu Qiao’s legs pressed more and more tightly together without meaning to. The sheet beneath her had been cool and smooth before, but now it carried her warmth — and a few new creases. Gu Qiao pulled the blanket up another centimeter or two. She wasn’t generally someone who felt easily embarrassed about physical intimacy, but this was just him applying moisturizing ointment.

“When you were applying the ointment by yourself that time — did you think of me?”

As he asked, Luo Peiyin’s fingers were smoothing out the moisturizer along her spine, working it evenly into her skin. Gu Qiao felt as though it wasn’t just her face growing warmer — even her back was slowly heating up. The spots where her rash had been were already red, but gradually, as Luo Peiyin’s fingers moved, a warm flush spread across her whole shoulders and back.

“Yes.” The sound was very soft. She had indeed thought of him. But the reason she’d thought of him hadn’t been to wish that he were there to apply ointment to her back. She had thought of him because of something else. Breaking out in a rash this once was already this uncomfortable — he’d had allergic reactions all the time as a child. That must have been very hard on him.

“That answer is awfully perfunctory. It makes me wonder if it’s even true.” Despite his doubt, Luo Peiyin’s fingers didn’t become careless — if anything, they grew more meticulous.

Gu Qiao’s breathing grew more rapid with the movement of Luo Peiyin’s fingers, and her body rose and fell with her breath. The blanket slipped down a little, revealing the hollow curve of her waist.

By the time the ointment had been applied to the last spot, it had become a kind of torment for Gu Qiao. When it was done, Luo Peiyin looked at the back of Gu Qiao’s ear: “Your ears look as though they’ve been dyed by your earrings.”

Gu Qiao caught at once that he was saying her ears were very red: “You have ointment on your hands. Go and wash them.”

Gu Qiao listened to the sound of running water from the bathroom. When the water stopped, her ears were still just as red. Luo Peiyin cupped her jaw, and his freshly washed fingers carried a faint coolness — but it did nothing to lower the temperature in her cheeks.

Gu Qiao suddenly spoke: “Were your childhood allergies very hard on you?” To be allergic to so many things — so many things you couldn’t eat as a child, so many restrictions — that must have made for a very difficult life.

The question seemed to catch Luo Peiyin off guard. He answered simply: “It wasn’t too bad.”

“You always say I don’t tell the truth, but what you say to me isn’t always the truth either.” Gu Qiao bit her lower lip and went on: “You might think I’m turning this around on you unfairly, but the truth is, part of how I learned to treat you the way I did — I learned it from you. Do you remember the time Huang Dafa got into an accident in the snow and we both went to the hospital? You kept insisting I should leave, saying you could handle it alone. I knew from that moment that you’re someone who has a strong sense of personal boundaries. If someone doesn’t want to trouble others, then whether they say it outright or not, they also can’t tolerate others constantly troubling them.”

“You learned it from me? Weren’t you the one who stayed with me at the hospital the whole time? Gu Qiao, you didn’t say it first — so what you’re describing isn’t turning it around on me unfairly.”

Luo Peiyin swept Gu Qiao up in his arms, the blanket rolling off her, leaving her entirely exposed before him. He set her down and held her: “Since you learned from me, let me teach you something else.”

Luo Peiyin kissed her with great care, leaving a fine, close pattern of marks on her shoulder: “You say you learned from me? I never once thought about breaking up with you. Not once. Not even a passing thought. If you truly learned from me, you should never, ever have said those two words.” He meant this completely. That option had never once appeared in his mind. Even when she had broken her promises more than once, he had put it down to the inevitable strains of a long-distance relationship — he was not someone with zero tolerance for imperfection. Luo Peiyin had thought then: if only the distance problem could be solved, all of this could be avoided.

The plan he’d had in mind never came to fruition. When Gu Qiao told him she wanted to break up, his silence was not acceptance — it wasn’t even having nothing to say. It was that the option itself had never existed for him, so that hearing the words required an enormous amount of time just to process.

Luo Peiyin slowly lifted Gu Qiao’s face and looked directly into her eyes: “You made the wrong choice once — but it’s not too late to start again.”

Luo Peiyin turned off the light. In the darkness, his fingers slid to the parts of Gu Qiao that had just been covered by the blanket, tracing the curves of her body slowly, learning her again and again with his lips and fingers. His hand came to rest on her shoulder: “Why aren’t you following along?”

She did follow. And she learned well — quickly becoming no less capable than the one who had taught her.

The desire within Gu Qiao had been ignited little by little by Luo Peiyin, but then the tenderness fell away, and his fingers grew rougher, and even his words turned rough. Gu Qiao had never heard him speak like that, had never imagined such words could come from his mouth — just hearing them was enough to make her face burn. But his hands and everything else told her unmistakably: this was him.

Gu Qiao’s desire was not crushed by this unfamiliar roughness. On the contrary, the primal fire of longing within her was stoked higher and higher by his fingers, and no matter what, she could not put it out. She waited for him to fill her, but he held back. In the darkness, she heard the sound of her own breathing, impossible to keep still.

The light was switched back on. Every expression on her face was laid bare before Luo Peiyin. She turned her head slightly away, her long hair falling over the flush on her cheeks, but Luo Peiyin reached up and brushed her hair aside, staring into her eyes with unwavering intensity, and said word by word: “Whatever you look like — I love all of it.”

Luo Peiyin’s next words were: “Do you want me?”

Gu Qiao bit her lower lip and made a sound of assent. Her face had already turned crimson from the things he’d said.

Luo Peiyin lifted her chin, forcing Gu Qiao to hold his gaze, and asked the question again: “Do you want me?”

Gu Qiao answered quickly — but Luo Peiyin still didn’t let her go: “Whatever you want from me, no matter what it is, I will give it to you. But you have to tell me clearly exactly what you want.”

Desire had burned away Gu Qiao’s last trace of bashfulness. She held Luo Peiyin’s gaze and said what she had believed she would never say aloud in her lifetime.

□*□

The red teardrop earrings on Gu Qiao’s ears swayed violently. Her body was undone, and so was her mind — her thoughts went completely blank, with only a single idea remaining: he was hers. She wrapped her arms around Luo Peiyin and held on tighter than she ever had before.

When he finally filled her completely, Gu Qiao gasped sharply in pain for a moment, the color draining from her flushed face. Luo Peiyin stayed there, buried deep within her. The red teardrops on her ears no longer swayed — everything seemed to have come to a standstill.

Luo Peiyin kissed the beads of sweat from the tip of Gu Qiao’s nose, holding her like this. In that moment, Gu Qiao had the illusion that they were one person.

Luo Peiyin kissed Gu Qiao’s face while his fingers learned her again, over and over — or rather, let her learn him thoroughly in return. Until the flush returned to her face, and the still earrings began to sway again with a rhythm of their own.

Amid everything, nothing was clearer than the words he spoke to her. Luo Peiyin said into her ear, one word at a time: “Let’s not be separated again after this.”

Gu Qiao heard herself say *yes* almost at once.

—