◎ The First Lesson ◎

Gu Qiao stared into Luo Peiyin’s eyes and said, “I’m very happy when I’m with you too.”

Her hand was taken hold of. Gu Qiao hadn’t known that a single hand could convey such rich content — even more than what eyes could express. There was so much content that she couldn’t process it all at once. She had always been a straightforward person, yet now one hand of hers was being kneaded by him until her heart twisted into nine bends and eighteen turns.

Gu Qiao’s face grew redder and redder, though embarrassment wasn’t the main cause. She tried to redirect her attention — her gaze slid from Luo Peiyin’s eyes to his nose, then drifted to the outline of his ear. Before, when she looked at him, it had always been in a general, sweeping way. This time she looked more carefully, and it was the first time she had ever noticed a tiny mole on his ear.

Gu Qiao’s eyes finally settled on the area between Luo Peiyin’s nose and lips, deliberately avoiding his mouth.

She thought focusing there might calm her somewhat, yet it didn’t calm her any more than before.

Gu Qiao forced herself to keep staring at just that one spot.

She heard him say, “Let’s go up and sit for a bit.”

Gu Qiao immediately said yes — she responded so quickly it startled even herself. But she had not the slightest intention of taking it back. She didn’t know what would happen, but she very much wanted to find out what would happen. What else would he say to her? She wanted to hear his words right away, with no desire to leave anything for tomorrow.

She was young, with a healthy appetite, and the world was spread out before her — there was nothing good in it she didn’t want to try. She felt that Luo Peiyin was like a gift placed in front of her. She had only just untied the bow, and didn’t yet know what was inside. She desperately wanted to keep looking. She didn’t conceal her curiosity in the slightest — when she said “yes,” her eyes were bright, without any hint of shyness.

Luo Peiyin jumped out of the car, walked around to Gu Qiao’s door, extended his hand, and waited for Gu Qiao to place hers in it.

Gu Qiao gave him her hand, and it was immediately enveloped in his. As she jumped down from the car, her red earrings bounced without rhythm, like her heart.

Gu Qiao’s feet landed step by step on the stairs, but she felt not even a trace of being grounded. His fingers forced their way between hers, gradually filling every gap until there was no space left. Gu Qiao felt as though she were floating, all her attention concentrated on the hand Luo Peiyin was holding. She could feel the rise in temperature with every brush of their palms. When one moment ended, she was already anticipating the next. Her anticipation was stirred higher and higher by his one hand, and she instinctively sensed that Luo Peiyin could feel her anticipation.

With each step up the stairs, Gu Qiao discovered a longing growing alongside her curiosity — a longing that swelled more and more. Yet given the limits of her imagination about intimacy, she didn’t know precisely what she was longing for. She couldn’t find any words to name what she felt in her heart and body, yet the feeling of longing grew ever more distinct.

They didn’t walk quickly, so Gu Qiao’s vermillion earrings swayed only slightly, bouncing with a soft, gentle rhythm.

This was the first time Gu Qiao had felt so muddled — she didn’t even know what floor she’d reached. If Luo Peiyin hadn’t stopped in front of the door while holding her hand, she would have kept climbing the stairs.

The door opened, then closed. Under the glow of the doorway light, Luo Peiyin brushed Gu Qiao’s loose strands of hair behind her ear and gazed at her flushed face. The light here was clearer than in the car.

Gu Qiao had no experience with anything like this. Right now the only thing she could rely on was boldness — she stared back at Luo Peiyin with uninhibited directness.

Gu Qiao’s curiosity about the other gender in the world and her curiosity about Luo Peiyin now overlapped into one. Or rather, her curiosity about Luo Peiyin had sparked her curiosity about the other gender in the world. This curiosity made her forget his dangerousness and find him endearing.

Luo Peiyin looked at her and gave her red cheek a little pinch.

Gu Qiao also reached out and pinched Luo Peiyin’s cheek, just as he had done to her. Afraid of hurting him, she didn’t use much force — in fact, “touch” was a more accurate word than “pinch.”

If Luo Peiyin wanted to understand her, this was the first lesson she was teaching him: she was different from before. She hoped he would understand.

As she touched Luo Peiyin with her fingertips, she accidentally brushed the corner of his lips. No matter how sharp-edged a person might look, their lips are always soft. His lips were a little cold.

Just as Gu Qiao’s fingers were about to flee the scene of the crime, they were caught. Luo Peiyin grabbed her finger and pressed it against his lips, then placed it between his teeth and bit down firmly. She felt a tingling, stinging pain — a reaction entirely outside anything she had imagined. He stared at her, and this time it was different from any time before; she felt something unfamiliar in him.

The tearing and biting in his gaze had found a physical outlet. She stared at him with wide open eyes, curiosity and confusion in her expression. He softened quickly then, spreading open her palm and kissing the calluses on her fingers. The ten fingers are connected to the heart — with each kiss, Gu Qiao felt a tremor deep inside her. Finally, his kiss landed in the center of her palm.

His gaze bit into her, yet his lips were extraordinarily soft. She was almost unable to bear it. Gu Qiao felt that if she were a snowman popsicle, being kissed like this would melt her into a puddle of water. But she was a person with her own warmth — her whole body grew even hotter.

Luo Peiyin’s lips left her hand, and then he wrapped her hand again with his large one. His thumb pressed and kneaded the palm he had just kissed. The longing from climbing the stairs surged back up again, and all of her senses concentrated in her palm.

Gu Qiao heard Luo Peiyin ask her, “When did you realize that I liked you?”

He skipped directly over “I like you” and asked Gu Qiao when she had figured it out.

Gu Qiao had only just become certain now, but that didn’t matter. She extracted the few words she needed most: he liked her. Though she had already sensed this a moment ago, he had now formally confirmed her answer.

Luo Peiyin tugged at her red earring. “Did you already know for a long time?” When he had first seen her today, her blood-red earrings had made her ears look pale and bloodless by contrast — but now her ears were gradually taking on a color close to the earrings.

Gu Qiao shook her head, and her earrings swayed along with the motion.

Luo Peiyin’s lips pressed close to Gu Qiao’s ear, his voice unhurried and low: “But now you know.” His lips grazed her ear.

As if afraid Gu Qiao hadn’t heard, he leaned close to her other ear and repeated what he had said before: “I like you — do you know that now?”

When he kissed her ear this time, Gu Qiao’s earring trembled.

Gu Qiao lifted her head again. She said neither yes nor no, but looked Luo Peiyin in the eyes and said, word by word, “I like you too.” Having said it, she held his gaze. If there had been an element of refusing to show weakness in her earlier stare, all of that had now slipped away. She simply wanted to take a good, long look at him — openly and without hesitation.

But when the kiss landed right beneath her eyes, Gu Qiao’s eyes blinked involuntarily. After registering what had just happened, her eyes drifted slightly downward, her lashes fluttering and covering most of her eyes.

Gu Qiao was pulled into an embrace. The last time they had hugged, she had still needed to ponder what kind of hug it was. This time, without Luo Peiyin saying a single word, she immediately understood its meaning completely. She liked the scent of soap on him — her sense of smell hadn’t yet evolved to the point of appreciating men’s cologne, the kind she often smelled when doing business with foreigners. Held like this, she felt the warmth of their two bodies blending through the layers of their clothing. She could feel his body heat.

Luo Peiyin’s knees pressed against hers, but this time he didn’t pull away at all as he had before. Gu Qiao’s knees were knocked against again and again, and she had the impression he was doing it on purpose.

Luo Peiyin propped up Gu Qiao’s chin with his fingers and studied the expression on her face. When Gu Qiao noticed Luo Peiyin’s gaze settle on her mouth, she said without thinking, “I ate tomatoes.”

She remembered he was allergic to tomatoes.

Luo Peiyin continued to stare at her. Gu Qiao began to suspect she had perhaps been wrong just now — he wasn’t planning to kiss her mouth at all.

Luo Peiyin gazed at her and smiled. She interpreted this smile as mockery — mocking her for overthinking it. Though his smile was quite lovely, it annoyed her a little.

Gu Qiao was just about to defend herself when he bit her chin, and she almost suspected he would leave a tooth mark. Perhaps Luo Peiyin realized the same concern, because his teeth eased off. Not even the lower edge of Gu Qiao’s lips was left with any mark. Gu Qiao kept her eyes open the whole time, dividing her attention — she was very afraid his teeth might reach her mouth. But they never did.

Luo Peiyin gradually became gentle again. He was even gentler than anything she had previously seen or imagined — so gentle that Gu Qiao could barely endure it. In the depths of this winter, she thought of spring. His fingers threaded through her hair, tenderly kissing her increasingly flushed face, his lips growing warmer and warmer too. Her whole body felt light as air. If her waist hadn’t been supported, she even wondered whether she was standing at all.

Gu Qiao thought of swings — before a person swings on their own, someone always needs to give two pushes first to get it going. But the one doing the pushing needs to be someone familiar, someone with a steady hand. Before today, Gu Qiao had believed that while she might not understand Luo Peiyin in many respects, she at least understood his character. But now she couldn’t even be sure of that. She had no idea where he was going to push her — and she very much wanted to find out.

Curiosity and longing mixed together, and Gu Qiao felt an impulse to kiss Luo Peiyin too. But she remembered she had eaten tomatoes. And he was allergic to tomatoes.

So she could only bite her own lip and passively receive his kisses.

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