What would happen after going back?
Wang Xiulan’s mocking laughter, her brother’s guilty eyes, the three hundred yuan bride price that could never be recovered, and the villagers’ pointing fingers and endless gossip…
“I’ll stay. But I have one condition.” Shen Zhiyi turned back and looked straight into Zhou Xubai’s eyes.
“Say it.”
“I won’t live here for free. I’ll work! Cooking, washing, cleaning, I can do it all. I’ve worked as a temporary worker at the textile factory before, I’m not clumsy. If there’s work on the island that I can do, I’ll take it. Whatever I earn, half will go toward repaying your three hundred yuan, and the other half I’ll save for myself.”
She spoke quickly, as if afraid she might regret it.
Zhou Xubai looked at her. He looked for a long time, so long that Shen Zhiyi thought he would refuse.
“Alright.”
Just one word, yet it felt like a stone finally settling to the ground.
“Then… I’ll go back inside.” Shen Zhiyi suddenly didn’t know what else to say.
She turned to leave, but Zhou Xubai called her name.
“Shen Zhiyi.”
She stopped. “Life on the island is hard. It’s nothing like the textile factory,” he said.
With her back to him, Shen Zhiyi nodded softly. “I know.”
She returned to the iron-sheet house and pushed the door open. It shut behind her, cutting off the sea wind and the night.
The room was quiet, with only the faint crackling of the fire. Shen Zhiyi sat at the table and picked up her father’s wood planer, her fingers gently tracing its smooth surface. The jujube wood had been warmed by the fire, as if it still carried a trace of her father’s warmth.
She remembered something her father used to say: “No matter how hard life gets, as long as your hands have work, your heart won’t panic.”
Now she had this planer in her hands. But her heart… was it still uneasy?
She didn’t know.
But she had a place to stay now, a role to hold onto, and someone who could, for now, be called a companion.
That was enough.
Outside, Zhou Xubai lay back down on the hammock, his gaze fixed on the faint light leaking through the door of the iron house. In the pitch-black cliffside, it brought a hint of warmth.
He thought of Shen Zhiyi’s third question: “Do you want this wife?”
He hadn’t answered.
Not because he didn’t know, but because the answer was too complicated, too tangled even for himself to sort through.
Back in 1969, when he stepped on that landmine, he hadn’t thought about why he pushed the recruit away. It had simply been instinct, something carved into his bones, he couldn’t let the person in front of him die.
That same instinct had surfaced again this afternoon, when he saw Shen Zhiyi kneeling on the reef, desperately digging through the sand for that wood planer.
He couldn’t just let her freeze to death.
He couldn’t let her have nowhere to go.
So he brought her back, gave her clothes, gave her shelter, gave her a choice.
As for whether he wanted this wife…
Zhou Xubai stopped carving the wooden stick in his hand and looked out at the sea. The night was deep, the fishing lights flickering like countless eyes floating on the water.
He let out a soft sigh.
Inside the iron house, Shen Zhiyi blew out the kerosene lamp. She lay on the wooden bed, covered with the thin blanket Zhou Xubai had left her. It carried the same faint scent of soapberry and tobacco, unfamiliar, yet not unpleasant.
She lay there with her eyes open, staring at the dim outline of the roof. The iron sheets rattled softly in the sea wind, like echoes of distant waves.
Just a wall away—no, just a door away Zhou Xubai slept on the hammock.
A fake marriage, a real partnership.
That was the agreement they had reached. Simple, direct, each taking what they needed.
But Shen Zhiyi knew clearly that things were not so simple. This man named Zhou Xubai, this war hero, this solitary figure living on the reef, carried too many secrets. Those Russian books, the nautical charts, the weather records, and the military duffel bag under his bed…
And what about her? A nineteen-year-old girl sold by her sister-in-law, deceived by a matchmaker, and driven here with no way out.
Two people with nowhere to go, forming a makeshift life together on a lonely island in the South China Sea.
The beginning of this story was far from beautiful.
But at least she was still alive.
Shen Zhiyi turned over and hugged the wood planer tightly.
Outside, the sound of the waves came again and again, never ceasing.
Amid that endless rhythm, she closed her eyes.
On the hammock outside, Zhou Xubai also closed his eyes. But he did not sleep. He simply lay there quietly, listening to the waves, the wind, and the faint sound of breathing from inside the house.
Suddenly, he remembered something an old squad leader had said many years ago on the battlefield: “Xubai, living is like swimming in the sea. Sometimes you save others, sometimes others save you. Saving each other again and again, you end up tied together on the same rope. No one can break free.”
Back then, he hadn’t understood.
Now… he finally did.
…
Before dawn had fully broken, the sound of the sea could already be heard inside the iron house.
When Shen Zhiyi woke, she felt a brief moment of disorientation.
This was not the drafty wooden bed of the Shen family’s low house, nor the bunk beds of the textile factory dormitory. The wooden board beneath her was hard, and the thin blanket carried a faint scent of soapberry mixed with the salty tang of the sea.
She sat up and looked through the gap in the door at the dim gray morning outside. The canvas hammock on the reef was still there, swaying empty in the early breeze.
Zhou Xubai was already up.
Shen Zhiyi pushed open the creaking iron door. The morning air on the island was biting cold. She wrapped the oversized old military coat tightly around herself, even after rolling the sleeves three times they still slipped down. She saw Zhou Xubai standing at the edge of the cliff, his back to her, leaning on his crutch and looking out toward the horizon.
He wasn’t wearing his military jacket, only a faded white shirt. In his left hand was a small notebook, and in his right, a pencil, recording something.
“Morning,” Shen Zhiyi said softly.
He nodded in acknowledgment, then turned back to continue writing.
Shen Zhiyi didn’t know what to do. She stood at the doorway for a moment, then remembered that the water jar inside was empty, so she picked up the iron bucket from the corner.
“Where are you going?” Zhou Xubai asked without turning around.
“To fetch water.”
“Walk east. Half a li, there’s a well.” He finally turned his head and looked at the bucket in her hand. “It’s too heavy. I’ll go.”
“I can manage,” Shen Zhiyi insisted.
Zhou Xubai didn’t argue further. He simply took out a small paper packet from his pocket and tossed it over. Shen Zhiyi caught it, opened it, and found two thumb-sized pieces of brown sugar.
“There’ll be people at the well. If you get hungry, have a piece,” he said, then turned back toward the sea.
Shen Zhiyi held the brown sugar, her palm warming slightly. She carefully tucked it into her coat pocket, picked up the bucket, and walked east.
The well was beneath an old banyan tree at the village entrance.
By the time she arrived, seven or eight women were already gathered there. They were all in their thirties or forties, dressed in dull gray cloth shirts. Some carried wooden buckets, others held washbasins. They had been chatting noisily, but the moment Shen Zhiyi approached, the voices abruptly stopped.
More than a dozen eyes fell on her all at once.
Lowering her gaze, Shen Zhiyi set down her bucket by the well. The old wooden pulley creaked as she turned it, the thick hemp rope groaning under strain.
“Yo, a newcomer?”
A sharp voice rang out. Shen Zhiyi looked up to see a middle-aged woman with high cheekbones sizing her up from the side. The woman wore a dark blue shirt with sleeves rolled to her elbows, revealing strong, sturdy arms.
“Mm,” Shen Zhiyi answered softly and continued turning the pulley.
The bucket rose, heavy with water. She bent down to lift it, her arms straining under the weight. Gritting her teeth, she managed to raise it.
“Looks delicate, doesn’t seem like she can handle work,” another round-faced woman clicked her tongue. “I heard… she’s from a marriage swap?”