◎ Taking Advantage of Vulnerability ◎
Going up the stairs, Gu Qiao was completely wrapped inside Luo Peiyin’s overcoat, the two of them almost like a single person.
She felt her shoulder in Luo Peiyin’s hand like bubble gum between her teeth — she had no idea what shape it might be pressed into.
Gu Qiao took kissing quite seriously, and had bought many different flavors of bubble gum for this purpose. Yesterday she had eaten orange-flavored, the day before strawberry. Today she decided on apple-flavored bubble gum.
Gu Qiao had no experience with intimacy whatsoever, nor had she gleaned any reference points from television dramas or novels. Her family had no television, and besides carefully reading the economic news in the newspaper, she had no time for romance novels. But none of this at all prevented Gu Qiao’s curiosity from filling her head with a whole heap of things she wanted to try.
She lowered her head and asked Luo Peiyin, “Can you promise me one thing?” The question seemed to have consumed an enormous amount of Gu Qiao’s courage.
Luo Peiyin didn’t ask what it was, and said directly: “Yes.” The two were standing very close together, and Luo Peiyin’s voice poured directly into Gu Qiao’s ears.
“Anything at all?”
“Anything at all.”
Luo Peiyin said it decisively — whatever Gu Qiao asked of him today, he would agree to.
Gu Qiao’s request was far simpler than Luo Peiyin had imagined, yet completely outside his expectations — almost exactly like that school newspaper reporter from back then. Gu Qiao wanted to take a photograph of Luo Peiyin; specifically a photo that would capture him doing something he loved and showing his happiness. To this end, the scene Gu Qiao had designed was Luo Peiyin playing the keyboard in front of the camera, smiling to reveal eight teeth. The difference was: if it had been that latter person making the request, Luo Peiyin would have refused immediately.
“You can ask for something else — whatever you’d want most from me.”
Gu Qiao said without hesitation: “It’s this. I want to keep a photograph of you. On the days I can’t see you, I’ll put it at home and look at it every day.”
Luo Peiyin turned to look at Gu Qiao from the side, silently repeating to himself: *Every day?* He asked her, “Why did you want to take that particular kind of photo?” What kind of fool would want to look at such a silly photo every day?
Gu Qiao didn’t know that Luo Peiyin privately found the scene she’d designed rather silly. She explained earnestly: “I want the photo to show you doing something you love, and being very happy. After that time I finished selling all the jeans, I still wanted to go to the bar to see one of your performances. But when I got there, you were already gone.” That time she had brought enough money to order a single cup of hot chocolate, but since Luo Peiyin wasn’t there, she had saved that money after all.
“That’s not the only thing I enjoy.”
“What else do you enjoy?” Gu Qiao very much wanted to know now.
Once inside the apartment, Gu Qiao switched on all the living room lights with a series of clicks, fully prepared to take Luo Peiyin’s photograph. But Luo Peiyin did not, as Gu Qiao had planned, sit down at his keyboard and smile his standard eight-toothed smile. Instead he took hold of both her hands, and with his teeth, bit down on Gu Qiao’s lips. Luo Peiyin looked into Gu Qiao’s eyes: “Weren’t you curious about what I enjoy doing?”
Gu Qiao stopped chewing her bubble gum and pressed her mouth tightly shut, allowing Luo Peiyin’s teeth to leave their impression on her lips. Now it was just the two of them — there was no need for the brief, dragonfly-skimming-water contact of before, like that time in the garden. Yet Gu Qiao’s heart still pounded fiercely all the same, as though this were the very first time he had done such things to her. Her sensitivity in this regard was especially acute; she could always feel the subtle difference each time brought.
Her lips tingled, but she still hadn’t parted them, the taste of apple saturating her mouth. For a moment she forgot entirely about taking the photograph.
Luo Peiyin paused and looked at Gu Qiao. Under the bright white light, the mole on Luo Peiyin’s ear appeared especially vivid red. As the two faces drew closer and closer together, Gu Qiao forgot to spit out her bubble gum; the tip of her tongue instinctively curled around it and blew an apple-flavored bubble.
Under Luo Peiyin’s gaze she felt embarrassed, and lowered her head to press her lips together. The bubble hadn’t had time to grow large before it burst from this very pressing of her lips. Gu Qiao hastily discarded the ruined sticky mess into the trash bin and pretended nothing had happened. But the corner of Luo Peiyin’s mouth betrayed that he had seen everything.
As though afraid Luo Peiyin might open his mouth and mock her, Gu Qiao leaned in to seal his lips. She didn’t want to leave him with this impression on the last night before their parting. By now she was quite skilled — she no longer bumped into Luo Peiyin’s nose when kissing. Gu Qiao discovered that the teeth Luo Peiyin was too lazy to show when smiling were actually quite sharp; seemingly not knowing their own strength, they would bite her painfully every now and then, and then, as if in comfort, brush lightly against her lips.
Gu Qiao had absolutely no experience, but her curiosity concealed her inexperience. She had an endless, insatiable interest in exploring him — this other gender of the human species. In this regard she behaved like a quick study: however he treated her, she would do the same to him.
Gu Qiao used the teeth that had just been chewing apple bubble gum to nibble bit by bit at Luo Peiyin’s lips.
Afraid of hurting him, Gu Qiao kept each bite very gentle. But Luo Peiyin did not return the same gentleness; even the tip of her tongue was bitten sore by him. Yet very quickly Gu Qiao forgot the pain, updating in her mind everything she had previously understood about kissing.
Gu Qiao felt she might suffocate on Luo Peiyin. She felt that what was soft about him was not only his lips but also the tip of his tongue; his tongue grew increasingly skilled, which only made her own clumsiness all the more apparent.
Gu Qiao was left breathless and flushed scarlet. When Luo Peiyin pulled back from her lips to look at her, Gu Qiao was even slightly out of breath — yet this didn’t stop her from looking at Luo Peiyin and smiling, her face red. She was someone with naturally full coloring, and when her face was excessively rosy and she stared fixedly at someone like that, it gave her a slightly rustic look. Luo Peiyin pressed his palm against Gu Qiao’s face, and suddenly recalled the first time he had met Gu Qiao — the ends of her hair had looked as though something had chewed on them.
He asked Gu Qiao, “Do you still remember when we first met?”
Gu Qiao certainly remembered. That time she had worried for quite a while about whether Luo Peiyin had been caught by the man in the flower-print shirt, and only after seeing him a second time had she felt relieved. But what she said aloud was something else entirely: “That first time I saw you, you were wearing those shoes — these days there are a lot of fakes on the market, and strangely they’re all very popular. Lots of people traveling on official business are even buying the fakes at the market specifically to take to Manzhouli to sell.” The profit margin on these fakes was very attractive to Gu Qiao; she had deployed considerable willpower to hold firm in her resolve not to sell counterfeit goods.
Luo Peiyin didn’t know whether he should marvel at Gu Qiao’s memory — that she still remembered what brand of shoes he’d been wearing at their very first meeting, something he himself had long forgotten — or whether he should be impressed that even now she hadn’t forgotten her business acumen. Gu Qiao herself also realized that bringing this up at this particular moment was perhaps rather ill-timed, and she stuck out her tongue in embarrassment.
Luo Peiyin stroked Gu Qiao’s reddened face and urged her to continue. He would touch Gu Qiao’s mouth every so often, but after kissing her he would look into her eyes and wait for her to continue speaking — until in the end it was Gu Qiao herself who could no longer go on. Her gaze settled on Luo Peiyin’s ears, and both hands moved involuntarily to touch them — they were very warm; the flush was not from the cold. They replaced with other forms of communication the things that words could not express.
Gu Qiao made progress quickly. It didn’t take her long to learn how to breathe between kisses.
In the pauses between one kiss and the next, Gu Qiao always couldn’t help staring at Luo Peiyin. Her curiosity about him had not diminished with the growing intimacy; if anything, it increased with every passing second. Her fingers rested on the area between his nose and his lips — no stubble there. She was very curious about when he had grown into the kind of young man who needed to shave.
She wanted to understand him a little better, but she didn’t ask anything. She simply cupped Luo Peiyin’s face in her hands and rubbed the tip of her nose against that patch of skin.
Gu Qiao felt something pressing against her. The sensation grew more and more distinct. Unable to hold back, she told Luo Peiyin — it seemed as though something was pressing against her.
In an instant, Gu Qiao felt Luo Peiyin’s body stiffen.
“You don’t even know about this?”
Luo Peiyin had not expected Gu Qiao’s knowledge of physiology to be this limited. But considering the scant biological knowledge from high school classes, he understood why Gu Qiao didn’t know.
For someone who didn’t even know something like this — what he wanted to do seemed like taking advantage of her vulnerability.
Luo Peiyin leaned close to Gu Qiao’s ear and explained to her the physiology she’d been absent for. Gu Qiao understood quickly.
Her whole body felt as though it had been run through with a stream of hot water from the shower — she couldn’t tell whether it was from shyness or from ignorance.
Luo Peiyin hadn’t expected that Gu Qiao would even now retain her competitive spirit: “You might not know everything either.”
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