◎ Morning Glow ◎
Gu Qiao lay in bed that night, unable to sleep.
Even now, her mouth was still filled with the taste of mint. The day before, she had brushed her teeth vigorously and rinsed thoroughly, even scrubbing her tongue more than once until the toothbrush had scraped it raw. She had purged every trace of anything tomato-related from her mouth.
She was wearing a T-shirt at the moment — one Luo Peiyin had lent her to sleep in. Even last night, she hadn’t planned to stay at his place for long. She didn’t want him to keep suffering through nights on the sofa; they could just as easily see each other in the morning.
Gu Qiao thought of something and immediately jumped out of bed. The T-shirt hung loose and wide on her frame, and with that sudden movement, a certain part of her was bouncing freely beneath the fabric — like two leaping, fleshy pears. She hurriedly wrapped herself in a bathrobe over the T-shirt, pulling it tightly around herself, then grabbed a flashlight and headed toward the door. The moment she turned the bedroom door handle, light from the living room cut through.
She had barely stepped out of the bedroom when she looked up and found Luo Peiyin — who had apparently just taken another cold shower. He was wearing a black T-shirt, his neck flushed red. He seemed to own a whole dozen T-shirts, differing only in color; the one he’d given Gu Qiao was white. The red patches on his neck hadn’t faded yet. His allergic reactions were different from most people’s — often, by the time the symptoms on his face had disappeared, those on his neck were still lingering.
Because allergies had been on Gu Qiao’s mind the entire time, the first thing out of her mouth was: “Are you having an allergic reaction?”
It was the first time Luo Peiyin avoided Gu Qiao’s gaze. He walked quite naturally to the coat rack and pulled on a black turtleneck sweater, the collar concealing the reaction on his neck.
“It’s nothing. It’ll pass in a bit.”
“If it’s really nothing, why are you covering it up with a sweater?”
“I just got out of the shower. I’m cold. You’re only wearing a T-shirt — aren’t you cold too?” Only then did Luo Peiyin begin to look at Gu Qiao properly. The bathrobe she was wearing was also his, and it didn’t fit her at all. She had knotted the sash tightly at her waist in a figure-eight, making the robe cling to her body. The very tightness of her bundling, paradoxically, revealed the contours of her figure.
Gu Qiao’s face went a little pink. “I…” She was only wearing the T-shirt underneath — not even a bra. When she walked quickly, her chest bounced with each step. How could she come out and face him like that? Of course she needed to wrap something over it. And it wasn’t purely because of the cold.
Luo Peiyin could see that Gu Qiao was already embarrassed, so he didn’t linger on the subject. Instead, shifting his tone, he said with a smile, “I have you to thank for turning me down in time. Otherwise my symptoms would be far worse.” He pressed both hands against her cheeks — still cool from the cold shower — and the warmth of her face lowered a few degrees in response. “Go back to the bedroom and rest. By the time you wake up in the morning, you’ll find I’m already better.”
Gu Qiao didn’t say yes. Instead, she rose up on her tiptoes and kissed Luo Peiyin on the cheek — just a light brush, like the time she’d used the beak of her little bird brooch to peck at her own finger.
When the kiss was done, she murmured softly, “Don’t worry. There’s absolutely no trace of that cocktail left in my mouth.” She had scrubbed her tongue raw yesterday; the only thing that lingered on it now was the mint of her toothpaste.
Luo Peiyin looked at her, his gaze landing squarely on her face. In one motion, he pulled Gu Qiao into his arms. Her hair tickled his chin with a faint prickling sensation — it carried the scent of his usual shampoo. Nestled against him, she seemed so small. He stroked her hair. Gu Qiao tilted her eyes up to look at him; he lifted her chin and kissed her on the mouth. To Gu Qiao, the kiss felt impossibly light — as light as her own fluttering lashes grazing his face. Her kiss in return was just as light, but with every press of her lips against his, she could feel her heart beating with powerful, steady force.
Gradually, Luo Peiyin began to use his teeth. He kissed and nibbled slowly across her face, his fingers tracing the line from her jaw down to her collarbone. He would kiss, then look at her; Gu Qiao felt as though she were being caressed by his gaze. As the heat in his eyes intensified, so did the warmth rising in her cheeks. She couldn’t tell whether the faint, dense impressions of his teeth were imagined or real, yet somehow she felt them everywhere — as if her entire body had been softly bitten, and it still wasn’t enough.
He kissed her eyelids, her nose, her ears, her chin — every part of her face surrounding her lips — yet never once touched her mouth. Gu Qiao even developed a strange illusion that the traces of tomato had never quite been washed away from inside her mouth. She bit her lower lip.
Luo Peiyin wound a loose strand of hair that had fallen near her ear around his finger, then used it to tickle her chin — as if he intended to make her feel, from beginning to end, the same torment her hair had inflicted on him. His eyes stayed fixed on her lips. The tickling on her chin became unbearable — and not just her chin. When the strand of hair brushed the edge of her lower lip, she couldn’t stand it any longer. Just as she was about to speak, her mouth was stopped. He slipped effortlessly past her teeth, without any resistance at all.
Now, within this kiss, Gu Qiao sensed waiting — he was waiting for her to respond. Drawn forward by that expectation, she tentatively extended the tip of her tongue. The kiss that followed was longer than any she had ever known. If Luo Peiyin hadn’t caught her by the waist, she might have sagged back against the wall behind her. She was utterly inexperienced in such things; under these circumstances, she was completely overwhelmed.
When the kiss finally ended, Gu Qiao slowly opened her eyes, feeling almost breathless. Yet her eyes looked like a half-moon emerging from behind clouds — open only halfway. Luo Peiyin’s breath fell warm against her face, his gaze fixed intently on her. Gu Qiao held his gaze with equal steadiness, refusing to yield.
Because they were pressed so close together, the lower curve of her chest was gently compressed against him. A tingling, electric sensation shot from her chest all the way to the tips of her toes. She counted her heartbeats by the sound of their knees touching, stretched her toes taut to keep herself from sliding, yet refused to let her eyes surrender. It was impossible to say who initiated the next kiss; in any case, neither of them was innocent.
Gu Qiao’s hands, which had been resting on Luo Peiyin’s back, now slid up to his neck. She held on tightly, her slender wrists emerging from the wide sleeves of the robe, as though she might fall backward at any moment if she loosened her grip.
Luo Peiyin kissed her and carried her through into the bedroom. The two of them fell onto the bed, continuing the kiss that had never quite ended. When it finally broke, Gu Qiao’s hair was spread in loose handfuls across the white sheets. Her face was flushed a deep red — whether from breathlessness or some other cause was impossible to say — but the contrast between the color of her cheeks and the white of the sheets was striking. She breathed through parted lips, her chest rising and falling heavily, her eyes fixed on Luo Peiyin with a look that resembled someone slightly drunk — though the small amount of alcohol that had passed her lips earlier had long since been washed away entirely.
She called his name in a soft voice: “Xiao Luo.” As if they had been playmates since childhood.
Luo Peiyin slid one arm around Gu Qiao’s waist, while his other hand moved to undo the figure-eight knot at her sash. She was an expert at tying things up, and had knotted her own sash just as firmly. Luo Peiyin dipped his head and began to nip at the skin exposed to the air, and only when Gu Qiao gave a sharp hiss of pain did he turn gentle again.
Gu Qiao’s body had gone completely soft. If Luo Peiyin had done anything at all to her in that moment, she didn’t think she would have wanted to refuse. To say she didn’t want to refuse was perhaps a way of shifting responsibility — she could not pretend she had no desire of her own. That desire was becoming more and more specific; her body’s sensations were giving her a very clear direction.
But when the knot finally came undone, a measure of Gu Qiao’s reason returned. She reached out and took hold of Luo Peiyin’s hand. “Xiao Luo — let’s… save it for next time. Wait until you come back… next time…”
What Gu Qiao meant was that next time she could prepare contraception in advance — though in the moment, she found it difficult to say the words aloud, even though she understood perfectly well that there was nothing shameful about it.
After a long while, Luo Peiyin returned her grip and closed his hand around hers. He pulled the quilt over her and tucked her in completely. He held her through the quilt and kissed her face — lightly, quickly, as if he didn’t trust himself to linger. Each kiss landed and was gone, like a dragonfly touching water.
The last kiss fell on Gu Qiao’s eyelids. “You sleep first. I’m going to take a shower. In an hour, I’ll wake you, and we’ll drive out to the Corner Tower to watch the sunrise. With weather like today’s, if we’re lucky, we might even see a fire-cloud sky. It’s rare to see one in winter.”
On the seventh day of the Lunar New Year, 1992, before dawn had broken, the yellow Dafa — manufactured in 1984 — set to work. The car had no stereo, so they brought a portable CD player. Luo Peiyin told Gu Qiao to pick whatever CDs she wanted from the bookshelf. Gu Qiao chose two on instinct.
It was still dark. The streetlights cast their glow on the black asphalt road, and there were almost no people on the street. At a distance, Gu Qiao spotted a figure waving in their direction. As they drew closer, she could make out a young man.
He called out to them: “I’m heading to Wudaokou — how much?”
Gu Qiao shook her head and said through the window, “I’m sorry, this is a private car. You’ll have to wait for the next one!” She laughed after saying it — it wasn’t often that anyone used the term “private car” to describe the yellow Dafa. Besides, Wudaokou was in completely the opposite direction.
Gu Qiao asked Luo Peiyin, “Have you ever come here to watch the sunrise with anyone else before?”
“Of course.”
“Who did you come with?”
“Many people.”
Gu Qiao let out a small, disappointed sound.
Luo Peiyin smiled. “The Corner Tower isn’t mine. I can’t exactly drive other people away. All I can say is — you’re the only person I want to watch it with. And my reason for watching the sunrise today is different from all the other times.”
“What is it?”
“Don’t you think the way your face changes color today looks just like a sunrise? I want to photograph today’s dawn and keep it as a memory for the two of us.”
Gu Qiao’s face immediately flushed a little deeper — which seemed to confirm exactly what Luo Peiyin had said.
Then from inside the car, Bob Dylan’s *You Belong to Me* began to play. The lyrics echoed softly in Gu Qiao’s heart.
They couldn’t park near the Corner Tower, so Luo Peiyin left the car by the roadside and they walked the rest of the way. As he usually did, Luo Peiyin tucked Gu Qiao inside his coat, one arm around her waist as they walked forward. Gu Qiao curled herself into his arms; her hair tickled his chest, but he said nothing — only held her a little tighter.
A number of people had already gathered by the Corner Tower ahead of them, all waiting to photograph the sunrise. They had brought cameras too.
When the sunrise finally came, Gu Qiao heard the sound of countless shutters clicking. Everyone else’s lens was trained on the sky, but Luo Peiyin’s camera was aimed at Gu Qiao.
Great swaths of red and orange stained the sky, the colors growing more vivid and dazzling by the second. Gu Qiao turned to look at Luo Peiyin, her red earrings swaying — like a small, beating red heart. She raised her hand and pointed at the glowing sky, just about to tell him not to waste the moment on photographs, that what your own eyes take in is what truly becomes yours.
At that precise instant, Luo Peiyin pressed the shutter.
—