Shen Zhiyi looked at his back and suddenly recalled what he had said that afternoon, in name she would be his wife, but in reality… she would live in the house while he stayed outside.
But there was only one room here. Where was this “outside”?
“There’s only one room,” she said.
“I’ll sleep outside. A hammock.” Zhou Xubai pulled the door open, and the evening wind rushed in, flipping the pages of the books on the table with a loud rustle.
Then the door closed.
Shen Zhiyi stood by the stove for a long time, holding the old military jacket in her arms.
At last, she began to change. As she took off the army coat and unfastened the soaked blouse, her fingers were still trembling, not from the cold, but from something she could not quite name. Her underclothes were damp as well. She hesitated, then did not remove them, simply pulling the old military jacket over herself.
As expected, it was too large. She wrung out her wet clothes and draped them over a chair near the stove, then walked to the desk.
She carefully flipped through the books on it. A Russian dictionary, a volume on maritime meteorology, and a handwritten notebook filled with strong, forceful writing that recorded daily wind direction, wind speed, and air pressure. She could not read Russian, but she recognized the latitude and longitude markings and ocean current arrows on the navigation chart.
This Zhou Xubai was nothing like the “disabled fisherman” she had imagined.
Outside, the sky had completely darkened. Shen Zhiyi lit the kerosene lamp, and its dim glow spread a small patch of warmth. She heard a faint rustling outside and peered through the crack in the door.
Zhou Xubai had truly set up a hammock on the reef. It was fashioned from fishing nets and canvas, tied between two protruding rocks. He lay on it, one leg hanging down, the empty pant leg swaying gently in the sea breeze.
Shen Zhiyi watched his back. In the twilight, among the jagged reefs, he looked like a solitary island, stubborn and silent.
She suddenly remembered Wang Xiulan’s sharp voice, “A fishing island in the South China Sea, fish at every meal.”
She remembered her brother crouching at the doorway, unable to meet her gaze.
She remembered the woman on the ferry saying, “Zhou Xubai… is a battle hero.”
She remembered the afternoon on the reef, when he had come down with his crutch and, with a simple flick, retrieved her father’s plane from the crevice.
“Can’t have you freezing to death,” he had said.
Shen Zhiyi took a deep breath and opened the door.
The sea wind rushed toward her, carrying the chill of night. She wrapped the oversized jacket tightly around herself and walked toward the reef.
Hearing her footsteps, Zhou Xubai stopped carving the wooden stick in his hand, though he did not turn around.
“Have you decided?” he asked.
Shen Zhiyi walked up to the hammock and looked up at him. From this angle, she could see the tight line of his jaw and the shadow of the scar across his face.
“I have three questions,” she said, her voice carried slightly by the wind.
At last, Zhou Xubai turned his head and looked down at her. The lamplight leaking through the door illuminated her face, making her eyes shine with startling brightness.
“Ask.”
“First question,” Shen Zhiyi said, enunciating each word, “how was your leg injured?”
Zhou Xubai was silent for a few seconds. In the distance, waves struck the reef with dull, rhythmic thuds.
“Saving someone. Stepped on a landmine. Pushed a new recruit away. I was half a beat too slow,” he said.
Simple, without embellishment or emotion, just a statement of fact.
Shen Zhiyi thought of what the woman on the ferry had said, that he could have avoided it, but chose to save the frightened recruit instead.
Her throat tightened. “Second question. Why did you agree to this Marriage Swap?”
This time, Zhou Xubai remained silent even longer. He lifted his gaze toward the sea. In the distance, the lights of fishing boats flickered like scattered stars upon the water.
“I don’t know. I was drunk that day. Zhao Shuisheng is my uncle. He and Matchmaker Li got me drunk together. When I woke up the next day, they said I had already pressed my thumbprint.”
“You could refuse.”
“The money has already been given.” Zhou Xubai lowered his gaze back to her. “Three hundred yuan. Your brother took it. Zhao Shuisheng said if the engagement is broken, your brother would have to return the money and offer compensation. He can’t afford it.”
Shen Zhiyi clenched her fists. Her nails dug into her palms, but she felt no pain.
“So you just accepted it?”
“I planned to go to the dock today, tell you the truth, and send you back. But you arrived early, and fell into the sea.” His voice remained calm.
Shen Zhiyi remembered her miserable state that afternoon, soaked through, digging into the sand with bleeding fingers, clutching the wet wooden plane and shivering.
“Third question.” Her voice trembled slightly. “Zhou Xubai, do you want this wife?”
The moment the words left her mouth, she regretted them.
It was too blunt, too direct, too shameless.
But she had to ask.
She needed to know, in this marriage built entirely on deception, what this man, this man who had saved lives, fought in war, and now lived alone on a reef, truly thought.
The wind picked up suddenly, causing the hammock to sway. The carving knife in Zhou Xubai’s hand paused, a half shaved curl of wood still clinging to the blade.
He did not answer.
A long silence followed, filled only with the wind, the waves, and the faint barking of a distant dog.
Just when Shen Zhiyi thought he would not respond, Zhou Xubai spoke.
“I need a place to live. And a status to shut people up. Since you’re here, it works out.”
Shen Zhiyi blinked. “What do you mean?”
“A fake marriage, a real partnership. You live inside, I stay outside. We say we’re married, no one will come trying to matchmake me again, and no one will gossip about you. When you’ve saved enough money, or found another way out, you can leave anytime.”
He paused, then added, “I won’t touch you.”
Those last four words were spoken lightly, yet they struck Shen Zhiyi’s heart like a stone, sending ripples through her chest. She looked at him, searching his face for any trace of deceit or calculation, but found none. His gaze remained as calm as a deep well, reflecting the night and the distant fishing lights.
“And you? What do you get out of this?”
Zhou Xubai seemed slightly surprised by the question.
“Peace! And…”
He stopped, leaving the sentence unfinished.
“And what?”
Zhou Xubai shook his head and did not answer. He sat up from the hammock, not an easy movement for him, yet steady. Then he came down from the reef with his crutch and stood before Shen Zhiyi.
There was only a single step between them. Only then did she realize how tall he was. Even leaning on a crutch, he stood a head taller than her. In the darkness, his silhouette seemed carved from the reef itself, solid, silent, weathered by the sea.
“Have you decided? Stay, or go back?” he asked.
Shen Zhiyi did not answer immediately. She turned to look at the iron shack. Warm yellow light spilled from the crack in the door, creating a small, comforting glow on the dark sea cliff. Inside, there was a bed, a stove, and on the table, the books and her father’s wooden plane.
Then she looked farther out.
The sea stretched into darkness, dotted only by distant fishing lights. That was the direction she had come from, and the direction she could return to.