◎ Embarrassed ◎

Gu Qiao’s cheeks were faintly flushed. Her fingertips slid across Luo Peiyin’s throat, her touch very light: “When did your allergy finally clear up last time?” There had been so many things to say when they first reunited, and no time to say them. Her curiosity about his body included the part about the allergy.

The last time they had parted, Luo Peiyin had still been wearing that high-necked sweater of his. Gu Qiao wasn’t sure whether the red spots on his neck had faded by the time they said goodbye.

Childhood allergies sometimes persist for a lifetime; others fade as a person grows up. After a long childhood of hypersensitivity, Luo Peiyin had grown into someone who almost never fell ill. He had never gone back to be tested for allergens. He had simply learned, by instinct, to avoid the things that had triggered reactions in his childhood. It wasn’t until he tasted the tangy trace of tomato on Gu Qiao’s lips that he understood: some things truly do stay with you for life.

A child with many allergens takes up a great deal of a parent’s caregiving time — especially in an era when allergy treatment was still underdeveloped, even in households with a housekeeper to help. That period was when his father had finally, after long frustrations, been reinstated into his position. He was desperate to stretch every minute, his schedule planned to the last detail. His mother was no less ambitious when it came to her career — she kept her own carefully devised timetable. A child’s illness was the most unplannable thing in the world: no knowing when it would start, no knowing when it would end. For two parents who were fastidiously precise about every minute, they had developed an acute awareness of how much their child’s illness encroached upon their time.

Yet they were, at heart, normal parents. They could not blame a child who had no desire to be ill. So the blame turned toward each other instead — each accusing the other of failing to shoulder more of the family responsibilities, even resorting to blaming the other’s family bloodline for producing such a sickly child. That last accusation was one-sided, coming only from his mother; his father merely pushed back. In their arguments, his father’s one act of consideration was to never once mention his maternal grandfather in Singapore. They attacked each other endlessly, yet always carefully avoided each other’s most vulnerable points — which is perhaps why this marriage, marked by arguments every three days and full-scale quarrels every five, still managed to go on for a long time, until the two of them were finally in separate cities.

Growing up in this environment, Luo Peiyin had understood from an early age that maintaining one’s own health was a personal obligation — it spared oneself unnecessary suffering and spared others from becoming burdened. After identifying a long list of allergens through the process of getting sick, he had removed all of them from his life entirely, and had actively tried every form of physical exercise he could find. Even to this day, he had never once complained about his parents for it. They had simply internalized society’s rules ahead of time and applied them at home. What struck him instead, when he first learned of Gu Qiao’s years-long search for Lou Deyu, who had caused so much trouble for the family, was the immediate thought that it was neither rational nor cost-effective.

Gu Qiao lowered her head and pressed her lips to Luo Peiyin’s moving throat. Her hair brushed his chin. She kissed him there, then lifted her chin to look up at his eyes; his breath fell warm against her face.

Luo Peiyin laid Gu Qiao down on the bed. He took her chin between his fingers and kissed her mouth. The pressure of his hand grew stronger by degrees. The fullness inside her brassiere seemed almost ready to leap free, pressing upward into his palm. Her blouse tightened with each breath, yet Luo Peiyin unfastened only the top two buttons, then bent to kiss and graze the skin newly exposed above them.

The two of them were pressed so close together that Gu Qiao could not help but become aware of the change in Luo Peiyin’s body. That desire stirred something in her too, and she thought of the promise she had made before — but…

She murmured that *but* to him. Luo Peiyin told her that before returning to China he had prepared what she would need, and that it was in his wallet right now — though he hadn’t come to the hotel with the intention of letting anything happen here.

From the look on Gu Qiao’s face, that answer did not appear to be what she had hoped for. Luo Peiyin held her gaze: “You don’t think I came back to China just to have you fulfill that promise of yours, do you?” In a place where intimacy was not treated with excessive gravity, obtaining it had never been difficult.

“I didn’t think that. I know what kind of person you are.”

But she had, just for an instant, doubted him. Luo Peiyin had caught it.

“Forget about whatever promise you think you made. I’ve never needed that kind of promise.” Though Luo Peiyin did not evade his desire: “I did come back this time hoping we could take a step closer. I want to know you more deeply.”

Luo Peiyin didn’t wait for her to answer. He brought his lips close to her ear and spoke each word with deliberate clarity: “The choice is in your hands. You can refuse me at any time. The moment you say no, I’ll stop.”

Luo Peiyin even sought her agreement before undoing each individual button. After however many quiet sounds of consent Gu Qiao herself had lost count of, her blouse was finally removed. Her chest rose and fell with increasing intensity, the small white fabric straining tighter and tighter.

Luo Peiyin kissed her ear and asked if he could undo it. Gu Qiao’s boldness allowed her to accept or refuse this relationship with directness — but in the specific details, her instinctive shyness won out over everything else. She shook her head, very slightly.

The movement was small, but Luo Peiyin received it without hesitation. He didn’t push her in the least. He kissed her along her jaw and collarbone — he had confirmed by now that those were the places she was most sensitive to. His hand rested against the white fabric, feeling her increasingly rapid rise and fall. Gu Qiao felt as though every inch of skin that he looked at, touched, or grazed was on fire — rising and leaping, straining against its restraints.

Then Luo Peiyin asked her once more if she was all right. Gu Qiao said yes.

The two softly swelling shapes finally came free from the fabric, growing firmer under his repeated pressing and kneading — and yet compared to Luo Peiyin’s teeth, they were still too tender and yielding. Gu Qiao couldn’t tell whether it was an itch or a pain. The sensation was more than she could bear. When that pale pink tip was finally taken between his lips, she drew in a long, involuntary breath, and a tingling, electric sensation shot through her — all the way down to her toes.

The red droplets swayed ceaselessly at her ears. Gu Qiao’s fingers clutched the bedsheets, anchoring herself in place.

Luo Peiyin’s teeth went searching for her most unguarded places. Gu Qiao had grown up in the countryside; she had been climbing trees and chasing flowers since she had learned to walk. She was herself like a small tree pulled straight from the soil — her two legs like pruned branches, appearing slender because every inch of her was firm and lean, but underneath, full of strength. Luo Peiyin seemed to do it deliberately, seeking out the most delicate part of the trunk. He nipped and bit her into a state of tingling ache, inch by inch, then went back to soothe the places he had bitten. Her fingers sank deeper and deeper into the bedsheets, pulling all the fabric around her into wrinkles.

Luo Peiyin raised his head at this point to study her expression — his lashes dipping slightly, softening the sharpness in his eyes.

The part of Gu Qiao that was not quite gentle was pulled out of her by him. She suddenly wanted to leave a mark on him too — to press her own stamp onto him. Gu Qiao parted her lips slightly as she breathed. The hand that had been gripping the bedsheets slid into Luo Peiyin’s hair. When he lifted his head again to look at her, the desire in his eyes was no longer concealed.

When Luo Peiyin leaned in to kiss her again, Gu Qiao bit him on the mouth. He murmured close to her ear: she would do well to bite somewhere others couldn’t see — otherwise, if it were noticed, he himself didn’t particularly mind. Gu Qiao didn’t know if she was taking him seriously or acting deliberately, but she pressed her mouth hard to his shoulder and bit down — harder by far than anything he had done to her, carving a deep tooth mark into his shoulder, as though staking a claim. When she was done, she looked up at him, her gaze fixed fiercely on his: “Besides me, you can’t be with anyone else. If you are, I’ll…”

“You’ll what?”

The first half of Gu Qiao’s declaration had been fierce and final. The rest came out with all the menace of a gentle breeze: “I’ll… I’ll never like you again.” She had thought of so many ways to hurt him, and couldn’t bring herself to use any of them. The only thing she could do was to stop liking him.

Luo Peiyin pressed his lips close to her ear: “Besides you, I won’t be with anyone else.” He delivered each word straight into Gu Qiao’s heart. The only adornment Gu Qiao wore now above the waist was the pair of red droplets at her ears. In the lamplight, Luo Peiyin stroked the hair at her forehead.

Gu Qiao reached over and gently rubbed the tooth mark she had left: “Does it hurt?”

Luo Peiyin didn’t answer. He sealed her mouth with his own. He asked Gu Qiao nothing further after that — because he already knew she would say yes to everything. He kissed her face with tenderness, his fingers moving to the places he had grazed with his teeth, caressing them over and over with slow, careful gentleness.

Luo Peiyin took Gu Qiao’s hand and brought it to his belt.

—

Luo Peiyin held Gu Qiao’s hand: “If you don’t want to right now, we can wait a little longer…” His fingers slid between hers, and their hands wound together in a slow, interlacing rise and fall. Through that motion, Gu Qiao felt as though a quiet current were passing through her body.

In the sound of that current, Gu Qiao became aware of a hazy, unfocused longing. When Luo Peiyin’s fingers found their way inward, that longing took on a definite shape. The soft warmth that had opened there drew his fingers in, reluctant to let them go.

Gu Qiao turned her face to the side. This was the moment she most regretted cutting her hair short — if only her long hair were there, she could have swept it forward to hide her face.

—

Gu Qiao could not prevent Luo Peiyin from looking at her. She could only resort to a self-deceiving measure: she raised one hand to cover her own eyes. For the first time in her life, she felt this mortified.

Luo Peiyin kissed the fingers she had pressed against her face: “You like me. What is there to be embarrassed about?”