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Kiss-seeking pest: I’m at the entrance to the complex.

Kiss-refusing pest: I’ll need about ten more minutes to wrap up here.

Kiss-seeking pest: That’s fine, I’ll wait for you.

Li Kuiyi had found herself a tutoring job over the summer — or more accurately, two jobs. With the title of “provincial top scorer,” finding students was effortless, and the rates could be negotiated quite favorably. After weighing everything, she had chosen two female students — one in her first year of high school, one in her second year of middle school. Their common denominator was that neither household had adult male relatives living in; she felt this was safer.

This meant He Youyuan could no longer spend every day attached to her side. He was bored to no end, and decided to work as a teaching assistant at the Xiao Hong Xiang art studio. His classes ended a bit earlier than hers, so every day he would come and wait for her outside the residential complex where she held her tutoring sessions, and the two would have dinner together in the evenings.

Today was Li Kuiyi’s final day of tutoring. Peking University and the Central Academy of Fine Arts both had their new student orientation in early September; she and He Youyuan were planning to go to Beijing two or three days early, to avoid last-minute chaos and to wander around the city a little. After drawing up a study plan for the next semester for her student Xiao Ying, who was in middle school, and chatting a bit with Xiao Ying’s mother, she officially wrapped up this summer job.

Xiao Ying’s mother and Xiao Ying insisted on walking Li Kuiyi downstairs. As it happened, just as they reached the ground floor, a light rain began to fall. Not heavy, but enough to quickly dampen the pavement. Xiao Ying’s mother sent Xiao Ying back upstairs to fetch an umbrella for Li Kuiyi; Li Kuiyi quickly refused. Neither woman could convince the other, and they were in this impasse when He Youyuan appeared, walking over with an umbrella in hand, in no particular hurry, with his characteristic easy amble. He made a low, casual sound in her direction — “Hey.”

Li Kuiyi didn’t feel comfortable announcing in front of a student and her mother that this was her boyfriend, and flushed red as she managed: “Oh, that’s, um… my younger brother. He came to pick me up.”

“Oh, your little brother——” Xiao Ying’s mother said, comprehension dawning, and looked the young man up and down.

Li Kuiyi ducked under He Youyuan’s umbrella, and the two of them said their goodbyes to mother and daughter. They turned through a few bends in the complex’s pathway until they reached a quiet spot, and then He Youyuan stopped. The night breeze swept through carrying threads of rain, lifting the hair at the top of his head in all directions. He looked at her with an expression of perfect innocence: “Hey — what did you just say I was? I forgot.”

She knew he wasn’t going to let that one go.

“That’s my student and her parent,” Li Kuiyi said. “I was worried about making a bad impression.”

“Oh.” He nodded as if he understood — then continued to press her without mercy. “So what am I, then?”

“My boyfriend — are you satisfied?” Li Kuiyi said with impatience.

“My, my!” he said, with a tone of exaggerated surprise. “So you do know!”

This person was truly beyond her. Li Kuiyi treated his sour remark as if she hadn’t heard it, lifted her foot to walk — and immediately walked out from under the umbrella into the rain. She stepped back under it, and looked up at the unmoving He Youyuan: “Are you upset again?”

“Kiss me.” His eyelids hung heavy as he looked at her.

She shook her head with resignation: “You want to kiss again?”

He huffed: “You want to refuse again?”

Li Kuiyi knew that, with his stubbornness, if she didn’t give him his kiss, he really was capable of standing here indefinitely. She looked around — the rainy complex was quiet, no one visible outside. She leaned toward him and tilted her face up, going through the motions of making a great effort to reach his mouth — but in fact, she hadn’t even risen onto her toes.

“Can’t reach,” she said with a regretful shake of her head.

He Youyuan gave her a fierce glare, then bent down and lowered his face to meet her.

She kissed the corner of his lips; he tilted his head, and the two met properly, their breath entangling for a moment before separating. Having received his tribute, he straightened up in satisfaction, looped her hand through the arm that held the umbrella, and said, “Let’s go.”

Outside the umbrella’s shelter, the rain tapped against the world in a soft, steady rhythm; the air smelled clean and wet. They were walking along when He Youyuan suddenly asked: “Do you know how far apart Peking University and the Central Academy of Fine Arts are?”

“About fifteen kilometers, I think,” Li Kuiyi said, remembering having checked on the map.

He Youyuan made a sound of acknowledgement, and then reached into his pocket and produced a bank card, pressing it into her hand. “I earned this working as a teaching assistant — not a lot, just around five thousand. I’ve put it all in here.”

Li Kuiyi held the card up to look, and saw that he had stuck a thin little label on it, on which was written: “I miss you” Fund.

“Remember to come find me,” he said, low and quiet.

Li Kuiyi put the card back into his hand: “I have money.”

She had been earning from tutoring as well. And she had her scholarship — a sizable one.

But He Youyuan was completely unreasonable. He closed his fingers around hers, making her hold the card tightly: “You can spend your own money on whatever you like — but when you come to see me, you have to use this.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m actually the one who wants to see you.”

He paused, and the corners of his eyes went faintly red: “Every time you come, it’s the same as granting one of my wishes. I can go and see you whenever I want to see you — but I hope you’ll also remember to come and see me. That would make me even happier.”

Li Kuiyi looked at this young man, whose voice and expression had taken on a slight shade of wistfulness, and felt her heart soften. She wasn’t particularly skilled at expressing her feelings — she didn’t know whether, in their day-to-day time together, she had made him feel uncertain. She rose onto her toes and put her arms around him gently: “Okay. I’ll remember to come find you — many times.”

He buried his face into the curve of her neck and nuzzled against her, insistently.

That evening when He Youyuan got home, he ran into Zhang Chuang at the foot of his building. Zhang Chuang grinned and said that, out of the generosity of his heart and given that He Youyuan was about to leave, he had magnanimously come to keep him company for an all-night gaming session. He Youyuan pressed the elevator button with complete disinterest: “Who’s having an all-night gaming session with you? I still have to pack.”

“What’s the rush? You’re not leaving until the day after tomorrow.”

“Still have to pack.”

In the elevator, Zhang Chuang gave him a nudge with his elbow and said in a lowered voice with a sly grin: “Hey — when you two get to Beijing, are you going to stay together? Same room or separate rooms?”

“Get out of here — don’t ask questions that aren’t your business,” He Youyuan said with a sidelong glance.

“I’m not asking anything else — just a simple question. What kind of person do you take me for?”

He Youyuan didn’t bother responding.

No one else was home. The two of them went at it without restraint, each with a controller, pressing buttons furiously. Deep into the night, hunger overtook them; they ordered delivery, ate it, and then fought straight on until dawn. The morning light came pouring in through the window, and their eyes were finally so dry they ached. He Youyuan threw down his controller: “I’m sleeping. Do as you like.”

He didn’t go straight to bed — he went to wash up and brush his teeth, carelessly pulled on a clean T-shirt and shorts, and only then came back and fell onto the bed. Zhang Chuang watched him and thought this person was absurdly fussy — exhausted to this degree and still concerned about washing up.

But Zhang Chuang was tired too. He threw down his controller the same, nudged He Youyuan’s leg where it hung off the side of the bed: “I’m heading out.” And then, with characteristic shamelessness, he tacked on: “Make sure you have a springtime dream.”

He Youyuan caught it in his semi-conscious state. He groaned a few irritable sounds, rolled over to the far side of the bed, and hauled the blanket over himself. He sank into drowsiness — half-confused, half-gone — and drifted into something like a dream. Before his eyes was a landscape of strange, shifting colors, white as chalk — the kind of white one sees after staring too long at plaster casts in an art studio, or perhaps the white lace cloth that covered the worktable, and on top of it, a cherry, deep red verging on dark and dazzling. Colors — pure and saturated at once — flowed slowly through him, sinking into his spine, and his back arched of its own accord, like a snail retreating into a warm shell.

He jolted awake from the dream, drenched in sweat, the clothes beneath him having grown damp and sticky at some point. He was mortified and furious all at once — this was not the first time something like this had happened to an eighteen-year-old boy, but it was the first time he had dreamed such a dream.

He got up and changed into clean shorts, then fled into the bathroom with burning cheeks to scrub at what he had just taken off. Fragments came surging back unbidden; he held his breath and refused, absolutely refused, to let himself remember the face in the dream.

He could not allow himself to think of her when he was fully awake. That was not right.

He hung up the washed clothes to dry, wiped his hands, and — with a passing thought that he would genuinely like to kill Zhang Chuang — went back to the bedroom. He sprawled across the bed and picked up his phone, half-wondering whether he should cancel the standard twin-bed room and book two separate rooms instead — but he was afraid that if he made that change, Li Kuiyi might overthink things.

Forget it. He dragged out his suitcase and began to pack.

The high-speed rail tickets were for the following morning, just after ten. He Youyuan’s maternal grandparents and his aunt had all wanted to come and see him off, but he had declined, saying with great seriousness that he had grown up, that it was just going to university, and what on earth could go wrong? He Qiuming, however, pressed her lips together and said with absolute certainty: “He’s got a girlfriend.”

The grandparents were astonished: “Really?”

He Qiuming: “Otherwise why would he be grinning at his phone all day?”

He Youyuan: “……”

Was it really that obvious?

The grandparents immediately wanted to know who the girl was — but He Youyuan didn’t say, because Li Kuiyi wasn’t ready to tell her family yet. As it turned out, however, He Qiuming found out anyway — she ran into he and Li Kuiyi holding hands quietly at his graduation banquet.

She drew in a sharp breath and asked He Youyuan: “How did she end up liking you? You’re 3,855 places behind her in the rankings!”

He Youyuan: “…Because I’m good-looking.”

In the end, it was He Qiuming who drove the two of them to the high-speed rail station. It was past three in the afternoon by the time they arrived in Beijing, only to find that Beijing was also raining — and raining with considerable force. They went straight by taxi to the hotel they had booked. After checking in and pushing open the room door, the same awkwardness and self-consciousness from last time swept over them in a wave.

This time, they had finished the college entrance exams. They were both adults. Certain possibilities were quietly expanding.

Li Kuiyi set down her luggage and put on a manner of complete nonchalance, walking to the window and gazing in silence at the rain against the glass. After a little while, He Youyuan came over too, stood beside her and looked along with her. The heavy rain had caused condensation to form on the glass in a thin layer of mist, and from time to time a small droplet slid down, leaving a winding trail in its wake. Outside the window was a tree of deep, lush green, its color seemingly dissolved and bleeding in the rain.

He Youyuan suddenly reached out and pointed at two droplets on the glass: “Which one do you think will fall first?”

“I’ll take this one.” Li Kuiyi chose the one on the left.

Both of them watched the droplets with genuine interest. And in the end, Li Kuiyi had guessed correctly. He Youyuan refused to accept the result, and they played another round, then another, with inexhaustible enthusiasm — both of them understanding, without needing to say so, exactly what they were doing.

At around seven in the evening, the rain finally stopped. The room had a light on, but remained dim. The young couple who had played every possible game and run out of options found it impossible to simply stand naturally in the room together — so they went out to find food. Beijing after the rain was humid and stuffy. They found a restaurant near the hotel, ordered two servings of eel fried rice, and asked for two bottles of Beijing-brand soda.

After finishing the fried rice, the two of them walked lazily along the street, bottles of unfinished soda in hand. The wet ground below reflected the glowing signs of shops and advertisements along the road — dazzling, colorful, and rather beautiful. They wandered until they found a bridge, stopped, and stood staring down at the dark water below for a little while.

The wide-open space dispelled the charged atmosphere between them, and they slowly began to relax. They drank their sodas and chatted for a while. But the ease didn’t last ten minutes — the rain came pouring down again without warning, and He Youyuan grabbed Li Kuiyi’s hand and pulled her at a run to shelter under the eaves of a nearby building. The overhang was narrow; the two of them squeezed into the corner, listening to the rain falling drip by drip and to the sound of each other’s heartbeats inside their chests.

“Can we get back?” Li Kuiyi asked.

“Do you want to get back?” He Youyuan looked into her eyes and turned the question around.

Li Kuiyi said nothing. He Youyuan looked at her, and then quietly lowered his head — pressing small, dense kisses to her, his lips grazing the corner of her mouth, her lower lip, their mingled breathing urgent and warm and restrained. But for all his restraint, a young man’s feelings are not so easily governed — especially not when the taste on her lips was the crisp citrus of the soda. His throat moved, and his tongue gently deepened the kiss, the space between their lips growing gradually warmer and wetter.

Kissing — and then he stopped, pulling back from her lips. Li Kuiyi slowly opened her eyes, breathing in quiet, shallow pulls, assuming the kiss was over — but he took off his glasses, his hand moving to cradle the back of her neck, and kissed her again. This time even more deeply, near-reckless in the way he drew breath after breath from her, muddled and unpolished and burning and bewildered.

Both of them breathless.

Li Kuiyi, undone by the sudden intensity, was almost on the verge of tears. She looked at He Youyuan, and his eyes too were wet and bright.

He reached out and touched her cheek: “Let’s just kiss out here for a while. When we get back to the hotel, we stop. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Back at the hotel, both of them were considerably more composed. But it was still a difficult night for He Youyuan — he lay awake the whole night listening to the rain outside the window, until the early hours of the following morning, past six o’clock, when exhaustion finally defeated everything else and he fell into a heavy sleep.

Li Kuiyi, on the other hand, slept perfectly well — a clear, untroubled night. She woke at around seven in the morning, saw He Youyuan on the other bed still deep asleep, and didn’t disturb him. She got up, washed, then took out a book she had brought along and curled up against the headboard to read.

But after she had read through most of the book, and the time on her phone had ticked to noon, He Youyuan was still not awake.

How could one person sleep so much? she thought.

Was he possibly dead? she thought next.

Li Kuiyi jumped off her bed and leaned over to He Youyuan’s side, reaching out a finger and placing it lightly just below his nose.

A small exhale of warm air. Still alive.

Past two in the afternoon, He Youyuan finally turned over and opened bleary, sleep-fogged eyes. His hair was thoroughly disheveled from sleeping, and he looked like a creature with no bones in his body, so utterly listless he could barely move. He sat against the headboard and struggled to come to himself for quite a while before he eventually managed to climb out of bed. He noticed Li Kuiyi sitting on the other bed watching him, so he walked over and wrapped his hands around her head, pulling it into a ruffling embrace, then patted her ear.

Done with that, he shuffled off to the bathroom in his slippers.

“How do you sleep so much?” Li Kuiyi couldn’t help asking.

“None of your business,” he said curtly, and closed the bathroom door.

After He Youyuan had washed up and gotten himself together, the two of them ordered food for delivery and ate it in the hotel room. By the late afternoon, they finally went out, taking the subway to Shichahai to watch the sunset.

They timed it perfectly — arriving at Yinding Bridge just as an orange sun hung suspended in the treetops, the Western Hills faint and half-revealed in the distance. The afterglow had soaked half the sky, deep red and wine-flushed, turning the water’s surface below into a rolling expanse of gold, the willows at the riverside soft and gentle in that light.

Such magnificent, gorgeous color — the kind that could make you feel like weeping.

The sun withdrew inch by inch behind the distant mountain ridge, and the sky darkened inch by inch with it. When the very last thread of crimson finally narrowed and vanished, He Youyuan reached for Li Kuiyi’s hand. They left the crowd on the bridge behind, and walked along the water’s edge for a while.

“Why didn’t you take any photos?” He Youyuan asked — on the bridge, everyone had had their phones raised.

“I wanted to see it with my own eyes.” She looked at him in return. “Why didn’t you take any photos?”

“I wanted to see it with my own eyes too — color is something I find deeply captivating.”

Li Kuiyi thought for a moment and said: “I just wanted to experience it properly.”

To watch a sunset — that was one good experience for her life.

At that moment, a strange feeling rose up inside her, unbidden. The world was genuinely very large, and yet the places she would truly be able to set foot in over the course of her entire life were very small. The world, then, was to her just a small garden — and in her whole life, she would only ever walk and re-walk this small, modest patch of ground, watching the flowers open, watching the water flow, watching the sun rise and set — and when she left, she would carry none of this small world with her, not a blade of grass or a single leaf. And yet all these beautiful things — she would have briefly, in the time she was alive, possessed them.

So all she needed to do was experience it properly.

Her self was a small garden.

Her world was also a small garden.

Li Kuiyi found this idea pleasingly right, and shared it with He Youyuan. At the end, she added: “Which means — I am the world.”

“Yes.” He Youyuan bent down and pressed a kiss to her eyelid. “You are the world.”

—End of Main Story—