The first time Zhou Ya met Fang Long, she had just turned a month old.

He was ten that year — his fifth year of being “Zhou Ya.”

His mother had been overjoyed, buying a gold bracelet for the niece she’d never met and knitting two little sweaters besides.

His father told him the little aunt’s husband was a city man, ran a big business, and reminded him to be polite, to greet people properly.

Zhou Ya’s voice wasn’t pleasant to listen to, and he’d grown used to staying silent outside the house, but whatever his parents hoped for, he would do his best to deliver.

It was the first time Zhou Ya had ever left Anzhen. The three of them rode a rattling iron-shelled bus, jolting along for an hour or two, changing buses two or three times, before finally reaching his aunt’s home.

A window air conditioner blew cool air steadily; the fridge held bottles of Robust soda; a candy dish on the table was filled with colorful Swiss candies and gold-foil chocolate coins.

That day, both his aunt and her husband were dressed in white. Zhou Ya felt almost dazed, thinking that the little girl in his aunt’s arms would surely grow up to look like a little princess out of a cartoon.

Long skirts, black leather shoes, butterflies and little birds trailing along beside her as she walked.

His mother brought the sleeping infant over, and Zhou Ya leaned in to look.

Round face, red lips, lashes curled upward, eyes closed, a bit of drool at the corner of her mouth.

Zhou Ya swallowed several times, rehearsing in his head a few times before he finally spoke her name aloud — Fang Long.

To his surprise, the baby’s eyes suddenly snapped open; she scrunched up her mouth, sniffled, and let out a wail.

Zhou Ya jumped, startled, and the adults all burst out laughing.

His aunt’s businessman husband even teased him, saying it was probably his strange voice that had frightened the little one.

His aunt rarely came back to Anzhen; on the occasions she did, she usually came alone, laden with bags large and small, and would leave again right after lunch.

During holidays, Zhou Ya would still accompany his parents on the hour-or-two bus ride to his aunt’s home.

The little girl learned to walk. The little girl learned to talk. The little girl learned to press her hands together and bow, saying to him, “Happy New Year, Cousin.”

Zhou Ya had thought he would get to watch Fang Long grow up, year after year. But that wasn’t how it went.

The year he turned eighteen, having finished vocational school, he became an apprentice at a food stall, handing half his wages to his parents and saving the rest.

He’d been thinking that this year, with a job, he could finally give the children red envelopes for New Year’s — but as the holiday approached, his parents told him there was no need to visit his aunt’s family this year.

Later, Zhou Ya learned from his mother that during the 1997–98 financial crisis, his aunt’s husband’s business had been hit hard, and the Zhou family had lent them a large sum to help them through.

The adults were unwilling to spell things out too plainly, so Zhou Ya never learned the full details.

Consumed by the daily grind of making a living, and with a certain detachment already in his nature, he gradually stopped thinking much about his aunt’s family.

It wasn’t until three years later, when he needed to travel to Shuishan City for some business, that his mother asked him — if he had time once his errands were done — to stop by and check on his aunt and Fang Long.

Zhou Ya finished his business at seven in the evening, barely in time to catch the last bus back to Anzhen, but he decided to go see his aunt and Fang Long anyway, for his mother’s sake.

His aunt’s address hadn’t changed; the building’s security door was useless in practice, so Zhou Ya went straight up, a bag of fruit and a box of cookies in hand.

He hadn’t expected that it would be Fang Long who answered the door.

She didn’t recognize him — she eyed him warily through the gap in the door and asked who he was looking for.

The girl was around ten, not tall, a pair of dark eyes set in a face that looked somewhat pale, which in the dim light of the stairwell gave her an almost unsettling look.

Zhou Ya crouched down, trying to meet her at eye level.

He introduced himself again: “I’m your cousin, Zhou Ya. Do you remember me?”

The girl studied him carefully; about half a minute passed before she finally unlatched the chain and let him in.

She said, “I don’t really remember what you look like. But I remember your voice — it’s really unpleasant.”

Zhou Ya should have been annoyed, or found it funny, but all he felt was shock.

Fang Long hadn’t grown into the pretty little princess in a fine dress.

She was wearing a school uniform far too large for her, the cuffs and collar somewhat dirty, her shoulder-length black hair thick and unevenly cut at the ends — not like it had been trimmed properly at all, more like it had been hacked at with craft scissors in front of a mirror at home.

And the home that had once been bright and spotless could now only be described as bare to the walls.

The window air conditioner was gone, a gaping hole in the glass patched crudely with a mail-order advertisement poster; the TV cabinet stood completely empty, the imported television and stereo system both vanished; on the low coffee table in the living room, homework notebooks and textbooks lay scattered messily, beside an opened bag of instant noodles…

A sour smell hung in the air, one entirely unfamiliar to Zhou Ya.

He asked Fang Long where her parents were; she looked down, picking at fingertips already red and raw, and said they’d gone to work.

He asked what kind of business they were doing now. Fang Long thought about it before answering: a gaming parlor.

Zhou Ya didn’t ask anything more.

Hearing the child’s stomach growl, he asked what she’d had for dinner. Fang Long pointed at the bag of instant noodles.

There was no meat or vegetables in the house; the fridge was almost frighteningly empty, only a few eggs and a couple of jars of pickled vegetables left inside.

There was, however, a large bowl of leftover rice from the day before.

Using the last small pinch of salt from the seasoning jar, Zhou Ya made Fang Long a plate of egg fried rice.

With so little to work with, it still smelled decent enough — the egg coating the grains of rice, each one separate and distinct.

The child, for her part, was in no way shy about it, eating with an eagerness that wasn’t exactly graceful.

While she ate, Zhou Ya went downstairs to a nearby corner store and bought some rice, oil, and seasonings, picking out a large bag of eggs as well.

By the time he came back up, Fang Long had finished eating.

He left the groceries with her, then took out every hundred-yuan bill in his wallet and gave them to her.

It wasn’t much — just a few bills — and he found himself regretting not having brought more cash with him.

He wrote down the Zhou family’s home phone number and his own pager number in her homework notebook, telling her that if anything came up, she could call her aunt or him anytime.

Back in Anzhen, Zhou Ya told his parents what he’d seen at the Fang household.

His mother sighed heavily, saying over and over that Fang Long was such an unfortunate child, saddled with parents so irresponsible — who knew what would become of her.

His mother kept trying to stay in touch with her sister, even secretly sending her money, hoping to improve things for her and Fang Long.

The matter caused no small amount of friction between his parents, and his aunt — by then changed almost beyond recognition by her vices — treated every bit of help like water poured into the sea, leaving no trace at all.

Zhou Ya never got the call for help he half-expected from Fang Long. What came instead was news of his aunt’s death, and of her husband’s arrest.

After that, they brought Fang Long to live with them in Anzhen.

A girl in the thick of adolescence, she was like a hedgehog — fiercely guarded, quick-tempered, taking offense at everything and everyone.

Fang Long liked to provoke Zhou Ya, and Zhou Ya wasn’t the type to indulge her — the two of them fought daily, clashed every other day.

His parents used to say the two of them were both made of stone, forever grinding against each other.

When Fang Long first started middle school, she got into no shortage of trouble, quickly becoming a problem student in her teachers’ eyes; Zhou Ya found himself heading to the school every few days to smooth things over on her behalf.

Since he himself had been something of a delinquent back in his own school days, Zhou Ya generally turned a blind eye to the fact that Fang Long had little interest in her studies.

But there were certain lines he couldn’t let slide.

Fang Long had a habit of petty theft.

Passing a bakery, she’d “casually” take a bun; passing a fruit stall, an apple; passing a stationery store, a ballpoint pen…

One time, caught red-handed stealing cookies from a corner shop, the owner confronted her directly.

Zhou Ya went to bail her out, handing the shop owner cigarettes and compensation, but Fang Long was too stubborn, refusing outright to apologize no matter what.

Zhou Ya was just as stubborn — he pressed his hand down firmly on her head, forcing it down no matter how she resisted.

Once home, Zhou Ya took out a feather duster and struck her with it several times.

Fang Long was beaten to tears, furious enough that she threw a glass cup at him.

Her words dripped with resentment — she told him he was nobody, that he had no right to control her.

What she meant was that Zhou Ya was nothing but a stray they’d taken in, and that calling him “cousin” was only a courtesy for his mother’s sake.

Zhou Ya said nothing. However many times he’d struck Fang Long, he struck himself the same number of times in return, the sound crisp and even.

Finally, he set the feather duster down and said that even if he had no right, he would still look after her.

Afterward, he made Fang Long write down every shop she’d stolen from, and made her go, one by one, to apologize and make amends.

For a stretch of time, his relationship with Fang Long was like fire and water — it only began to ease somewhat once Fang Long went on to vocational high school and grew, if only slightly, more mature.

Even Zhou Ya couldn’t quite say from which day it started — the day something else crept into the way he looked at Fang Long.

At first he hadn’t even noticed it himself; it was Ren Jianbai who, half-joking one day, pointed out that Zhou Ya only ever stopped acting like a mute when he was around his sister.

By the time Zhou Ya became aware of that murky, unspoken feeling in himself, it was already too late.

When Zeng Keyun broke up with him, it was partly because the Zhou family’s financial circumstances weren’t much and her family objected, and partly because Zeng Keyun felt that Zhou Ya had never really loved her enough to make it worth holding on to.

Zhou Ya didn’t try to stop her, sincerely hoping Zeng Keyun would find someone better suited to her soon.

As for Fang Long, Zhou Ya had tried to suppress it, tried to distance himself.

But his entire life was marked with traces she’d left behind; no matter what he did, it was futile.

The first time she appeared in one of his spring dreams, Zhou Ya sank into a deep well of self-loathing.

Yet the harder he tried to suppress it, the more often she appeared in his dreams.

She had become a shade-loving vine, spreading unchecked across the darkened side of his heart.

What he had once believed to be simple sibling affection had, without his permission, taken on the shape of something between a man and a woman.

Like a dish thrown together with the wrong seasoning entirely — never something meant to be served at the table.