Shen Zhiyi struggled to lift her head. Through the rain blurred glass, she saw a dark silhouette in the distance, flickering in and out of view amid the raging storm.
By the time daylight seeped over the horizon, the ferry finally docked.
Following the crowd, Shen Zhiyi stepped onto the gangplank, her legs so unsteady it felt as if she were walking on cotton. A night of seasickness and storm had left her body chilled to the bone. Her soaked cloth shoes made a squelching sound with every step.
The dock on Naozhou Island was even more rudimentary than she had imagined. A pier made of rough wooden stakes stretched out over the water, with a few low stone houses nearby. Thick layers of salt frost and oyster shells clung to the planks.
The woman who had accompanied her waved from the ferry. “Take care, girl!”
Shen Zhiyi nodded. She wanted to say thank you, but her throat was too dry to make a sound. Tightening her grip on the blue cloth bundle in her arms, she turned and walked off the dock.
The wind was even stronger than it had been at sea.
The dock lay empty, save for a few fishermen in the distance mending their nets. No one paid any attention to the unfamiliar young woman.
There was no sign of the Zhao family that Matchmaker Li had mentioned. Perhaps they had never intended to come at all.
Following the direction the woman had pointed out the night before, Shen Zhiyi headed toward the eastern shore.
The path was nothing more than a dirt track, uneven and filled with puddles from the rain. Low shrubs lined both sides, their leaves turned pale by the sea wind. The farther she went, the more desolate it became, until the road ended at a stretch of dark reef.
This was Zhao Family Village?
She stopped at the edge of the reef, stunned.
Had she taken the wrong path?
Turning back, she found the way she had come already blocked by a small hill. She thought of retracing her steps, but her legs felt too heavy to lift, and her empty stomach ached.
After standing there for a moment, she gritted her teeth and continued forward. She had to find someone to ask.
The reef was far more treacherous than it appeared. The rocks were slick from seawater, covered in moss and barnacles. Holding her bundle in one hand and steadying herself with the other, Shen Zhiyi moved carefully ahead. Waves surged at her feet, salty spray splashing against her face.
Suddenly, a wave crashed in, larger than the others.
Instinctively, she stepped back, but her foot slipped. Her body tipped backward, and the bundle flew from her grasp, the blue cloth unfurling in the air.
Splash!
Cold seawater rushed into her mouth and nose as she fell into knee deep water. Her spare clothes, the half piece of corn cake wrapped in oil paper, and her mother’s handkerchief bundle all floated up, spinning in the waves.
The heaviest item, her father’s woodworking plane, tumbled out of the bundle, bounced twice on the rocks, and dropped into a narrow crevice between two boulders.
“No…”
Struggling to her feet, Shen Zhiyi rushed toward the crevice, ignoring her drenched clothes.
The gap was deep and dark, its bottom invisible. She reached inside, her fingers brushing icy seawater and slick sand, but she could not touch the plane. The crevice was too narrow for more than one arm. She forced her hand deeper, her shoulder scraping against the jagged rock, tearing her skin.
The tide was rising.
Wave after wave crashed in, the water level climbing visibly. If the plane sank to the bottom, it would soon be completely submerged.
Shen Zhiyi dropped to her knees.
She began digging into the sand at the bottom of the crevice with her bare hands. Her nails scraped against the stones and quickly split, blood seeping from her fingertips and mixing with the sand into a dark red sludge. She felt no pain, only digging again and again, as the sand slipped through her fingers and was washed back by the waves.
“What are you looking for?”
A voice sounded above her.
Shen Zhiyi looked up sharply.
Backlit by the morning light, she saw only the tall outline of a man standing on the reef. He stood against the light, his figure straight as a pine, leaning on something in his hand, a crutch.
“M my things fell in…” Shen Zhiyi’s voice trembled, whether from cold or urgency she could not tell. “A wooden plane… it was my father’s…”
The man said nothing.
Only then did she see his face clearly. Standing atop a two meter high rock, he looked down at her. He appeared no more than twenty seven or twenty eight, yet his eyes were unlike anything she had ever seen. Deep as the sea before a storm, still as the stagnant water beneath the reef, they held so much that it felt as though he had lived three or four decades more than his years.
He wore a faded military jacket, paired with ordinary gray trousers. The right pant leg hung empty, swaying slightly in the sea wind. Even with the crutch, he stood perfectly straight, his back taut as a rifle.
“Please help me…” Shen Zhiyi said hoarsely. “It’s the only thing my father left me…”
Still silent, the man descended from the reef. His movements were not agile, but steady, each step firm upon the rocks. As he drew closer, Shen Zhiyi saw that his crutch was homemade, a thick piece of hardwood polished smooth at the top.
He stopped by the crevice, bent down, and took a look. Then he straightened and extended the tip of his crutch into the gap, probing carefully from side to side.
Clink!
A dull sound echoed.
The tip of the crutch had struck something solid. Adjusting the angle, he flicked his wrist and lifted. The jujube wood plane flew out of the crevice and landed on the sand at Shen Zhiyi’s feet.
She lunged forward, picked it up, and held it tightly against her chest.
Using her sleeve, she wiped away the mud and checked it carefully. Fortunately, the blade was intact, only lightly rusted from the seawater.
“Thank you…” She looked up, then froze.
The man had not left. He stood there, watching her, his gaze too complex for her to understand. The sea wind lifted his empty pant leg, revealing a dark structure beneath. Was it a prosthetic, or had the amputation gone higher?
“You…” Shen Zhiyi stood up, her soaked clothes clinging to her body as she shivered. “Are you a fisherman on this island? Could you tell me how to get to Zhao Family Village?”
The man remained silent for a long time. So long that she thought he would not answer, so long that another wave surged in and splashed against his trousers.
“You’ve come to the wrong place,” he finally said, his voice low and rough from long disuse.
“No,” Shen Zhiyi tightened her grip on the plane. “Zhao Family Village, the eastern shore of Naozhou Island, Zhao Shuisheng’s home… that’s what Matchmaker Li said.”
The corner of his mouth moved slightly, as if forming a bitter, unfinished smile.
“I’m the man the Zhao family intends you to marry,” he said, each word as clear as waves striking rock. “But my name is Zhou Xubai.”
Shen Zhiyi stood stunned.
Zhou Xubai.
The name the woman on the ferry had mentioned the night before. A battle hero. A leg lost in an explosion. The solitary man living on the reef cliffs. The peculiar Comrade Zhou.
Not a “simple fisherman in his thirties.”
Not someone who would “catch fish and provide meals every day.”
But a man of twenty eight with the eyes of someone much older. A man whose empty pant leg swayed in the wind, yet who stood as straight as ever. A man who could retrieve her plane from the crevice with nothing but a crutch.