◎ Fire ◎

A strand of Gu Qiao’s hair slid onto Luo Peiyin’s face. She reached up to brush it away, and her fingers touched his face briefly before following the strand back behind her ear. Her fingers brushed her own ear — very hot.

Gu Qiao suddenly wanted to see whether Luo Peiyin felt the same. Her fingers drifted back to his face, sliding from his cheek to his ear — sure enough, his ear was just as burning hot as hers. In that moment they shared the same sensation, the same temperature. She pressed her lips together to hold back her smile. After getting the answer she wanted, her fingers didn’t stop their exploration but continued sliding down to his chin, tracing along it until they touched his Adam’s apple. Because an Adam’s apple this prominent was something she didn’t have, her fingers lingered there a little longer, using the pad of her fingertip to trace its shape. She felt his Adam’s apple move.

The feeling of gentleness he had given her earlier suddenly vanished.

His mouth nearly reached the corner of hers. The wire in Gu Qiao’s mind abruptly reconnected — she swiftly turned her face away and lowered her head, keeping him from kissing her mouth.

Gu Qiao’s head dropped very, very low, until her mouth pressed against her own collar. Gu Qiao felt a flicker of unfamiliarity. That unfamiliarity triggered an instinctive sense of danger within her. The person in front of her now was somewhat different from the cousin she held in her memory. During all the time she had not seen Luo Peiyin, her feelings for him had actually grown deeper than before. She had always loved gentle people — just thinking of Luo Peiyin made her feel warm even on cold nights.

In the day-after-day of missing him, she had sculpted a likeness of Luo Peiyin in her heart. Now that image had been breathed into life and returned to her reality, and she was of course very happy. She wanted to have a slightly deeper connection with him — one that would never be lost again.

But right now, Gu Qiao felt that the real Luo Peiyin was somewhat different from the image she had molded in her heart over these two years. Before, she had only needed to be with him to feel completely safe. But now she could smell his dangerousness in the air — if his arms tightened even slightly, she wouldn’t be able to break free. In this kind of atmosphere, her mind was in complete disarray, incapable of thinking clearly. That side of him was undeniably attractive to her too. If she stayed any longer, her mind wouldn’t be able to overrule her body.

“I should go home.”

Gu Qiao’s head was still bowed as it had been before, hair sliding over her cheek. Her face felt itchy.

The kiss that had been about to land on Gu Qiao’s mouth ultimately fell on her hair instead. Luo Peiyin kissed her hair, and neither of them spoke. Gu Qiao felt his knees move away from hers, and her heartbeat gradually steadied.

Luo Peiyin helped smooth Gu Qiao’s fallen hair back behind her ear, then leaned down, cradled her face in his hands, and pressed a solemn kiss to her forehead.

Luo Peiyin let her go. A small distance opened between them.

He smiled and asked Gu Qiao, “Doesn’t keeping your head down so low hurt?”

Gu Qiao felt that the person she knew had returned. She lifted her head and looked at him, her gaze moving from his Adam’s apple to his ear — his ear was very red, but this time she only looked, and did not reach out to touch it.

“Sit down for a bit, I’ll go get you something warm to drink.

There’s heating here, you can take your coat off.” He led Gu Qiao toward a shelving unit along the wall. “There are some CDs over there — see if there’s anything you like.”

“Don’t trouble yourself. I’m not thirsty anyway.” Gu Qiao dropped his form of address entirely.

“I want to spend a little more time with you.”

With that, Luo Peiyin didn’t look at Gu Qiao and simply walked toward the kitchen. The fridge held nothing but a few bottles of ice-cold mineral water. He tipped his head back and downed half a bottle of cold water himself, then started boiling water for Gu Qiao.

Gu Qiao stood there, thinking to herself: wouldn’t it be more time together if he didn’t boil water at all?

The temperature of the water in the kettle rose little by little. Gu Qiao took out a CD and put it in the CD player Luo Peiyin had given her. The living room filled with the sound of “Light My Fire.”

Gu Qiao could hear the water running in the kitchen.

Gu Qiao had never heard music like this before. Out of curiosity she listened on. Even with her limited English, when “light my fire” kept repeating, she understood what kind of fire this was. But she didn’t change the CD. Driven by curiosity, she listened all the way to the end.

The heat in her face did not subside.

The water in the kettle reached boiling point while the song in the living room was still playing. Luo Peiyin genuinely couldn’t tell whether Gu Qiao was bold or simply innocent.

He finished the remaining half bottle of cold water, walked into the living room, and handed the hot water to Gu Qiao. When their hands touched during the exchange, Gu Qiao noticed his hand was wet and cold — the sound of the tap running earlier had been him washing his hands.

“Do you like this?” The first time he had listened to this band was because they had no fixed bassist, which gave the keyboards much more room to play.

“I don’t know.” But she wanted to hear it again. She had spent the whole time trying to make out the words and hadn’t even figured out which instrument had drawn her in and kept her listening. The music itself urged her to hear it once more.

“Do you want to listen again?”

Gu Qiao nodded, then shook her head, her red earrings bouncing vigorously. She had understood the lyrics now — and understanding those lyrics had taught her a little something else too. At this hour, it was better not to listen again.

Gu Qiao quickly added, “I wasn’t really paying attention to the lyrics. I was just a little curious about one of the instruments.”

For the sake of Gu Qiao’s curiosity, Luo Peiyin returned to the keyboard he had grown somewhat rusty with. But he only played the intro of “Light My Fire” before shifting to a different piece — one even less familiar to him.

This piece was unfamiliar to Luo Peiyin, but Gu Qiao knew it well — she had listened to it until it was ingrained in her. She had heard it four times in the car today.

This was the fifth version she was hearing today.

The familiar melody brought Gu Qiao back to the past — to the night she had received the tape player from his hands. She had almost forgotten: she had listened to the song in that tape player all the way to the end through tears. Now she stood before him listening, and without realizing it, a single tear slipped down from the corner of her eye. Back then she had thought she would never see him again. Now he stood right in front of her, and she was willing to accept everything else about him for this one part alone.

Under the lamp’s glow, that tear was clearly visible. In difficult times she would forget to cry — but it had come back to her now.

When Luo Peiyin looked up, Gu Qiao smiled at him quite naturally, showing her small teeth.

“Could you play it once more?”

Luo Peiyin had never taken a song request from anyone before, but he played it again for Gu Qiao.

When he finished, he walked to stand in front of her, cradled her face in his hands, and kissed the part of her cheek dampened by the tear — gently and tenderly. His hands and lips, having just been rinsed with cold water, were cool this time. Being kissed like this, Gu Qiao’s face was no longer as burning as before. If before she had felt like she was being scorched by hot fire, now the feeling was of basking in mild spring sunshine — the ice fragments in a stream slowly melting in the warmth, as if she could hear a gentle flow of water inside herself, the current trickling over one small stone after another.

Gu Qiao’s heart no longer pounded as fiercely as it had before Luo Peiyin kissed her earlier. This was a feeling she had never experienced before. She wanted his lips to linger on her face a little longer. This time she wrapped her arms around Luo Peiyin. His body had nothing whatsoever to do with softness — and so the lips resting on her cheek seemed all the softer by contrast.

But Luo Peiyin was not like he had been a moment before. This time he exercised great restraint. After kissing her for a while, his lips left Gu Qiao’s face. Steadying her by the shoulders, he said, “Stay here tonight. I’ll sleep in the living room.”

“I should still go home.”

“Don’t worry — I’m not in the habit of forcing myself on anyone.”

Gu Qiao felt genuinely wronged. “That’s not what I meant at all. Sleeping in the living room would be so uncomfortable — and you can’t even stretch out on that sofa.”

Luo Peiyin thought back to roughly two years ago when something similar had happened. That time, returning from the train station, he had brought her here. Back then too, her concern had been where he would sleep, not anything else — she trusted him far too completely. She had placed him on that kind of pedestal, and naturally he could only remain there.

“Don’t worry — I have a sleeping bag, I can set up on the floor perfectly well. We can have breakfast together in the morning.” Without waiting for Gu Qiao to reply, Luo Peiyin told her, “Follow me.” He went to the bathroom and produced an unopened toothbrush. “Use this.”

Luo Peiyin told Gu Qiao that although the bath towel and bathrobe weren’t new, he hadn’t used them since the last time they were washed, so she needn’t mind.

He spoke quickly and left Gu Qiao no room to refuse. He took her hand and led her to the bedroom, pulled out a set of bed sheets from the wardrobe: “These have been washed too. Change them yourself.” He took out the sleeping bag and his change of clothes from the wardrobe and carried them to the living room.

Having arranged everything, he glanced at his watch: “No need to rush. I have something to take care of, I’ll be back in an hour. When you’ve finished your bath, go straight into the bedroom and lock the door.”

Gu Qiao was just about to open her mouth when she heard Luo Peiyin say, “Tomorrow I’ll follow your arrangements, but tonight you follow mine.”

With that, he took his coat from the rack and walked straight out the door without so much as a goodbye. Gu Qiao heard the door close.

Gu Qiao looked at herself in the mirror. The toothpaste was mint-flavored. This time she brushed far longer than she ever had before, her mouth filled with the taste of mint. She resolved not to eat any more tomatoes before they parted.

The scalding water flowed over Gu Qiao’s face, but it didn’t wash away the sensation he had left on her skin — on the contrary, with each recollection, the feeling grew clearer. She thought that his reason for leaving her here was at least half because he wanted her to stay and have a proper hot shower. In the small flat without a water heater, boiling water every evening for a sponge bath was quite a hassle.

She had heard there were new commercial apartments being built near the Asian Games Village. She still needed to work hard and earn enough to live in a place with a water heater and central heating.

Though today was the very beginning for the two of them, Gu Qiao was already thinking far into the future.

Of course, at home no one would approve of them right now — Lou Deyu would be the first to object. But knowing Lou Deyu as she did, his approval or disapproval was really just a matter of economics. The reason Zhou Zan had been able to live in Lou Deyu’s shadow for so long — enough to make him write her that kind of letter — was nothing but money. If her family had always been better off than Zhou Zan’s, Lou Deyu probably wouldn’t even remember Zhou Zan’s last name.

If she became wealthier than Luo Peiyin, Lou Deyu would never regard her as a potential victim waiting to be hurt, let down, and abandoned.

The problem was, she didn’t have a lot of money right now — but she couldn’t let that stop her.

A romantic partner was different from other things. Cars, houses, all the best things in the world could wait until you had money — you’d wait a while and something even better would come along. The same money that could only buy a numeric pager three years ago could buy a Chinese-character display pager now. But a romantic partner couldn’t wait. By the time she was successful enough and comfortable enough to enjoy luxury cars and beautiful homes, he might already be someone else’s boyfriend — or husband.

She didn’t like getting something for nothing, but if she waited until she had the full amount before making her move, the opportunity would have long since passed. Once she could put down twenty percent as a deposit, that was enough — that was when she could begin.

Gu Qiao didn’t let herself dwell on the distance between countries, or the obstacles of future family opposition, or the hardships of life. Experience had taught her that the road always finds a way through the mountains. What she needed right now was to secure him first.

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