“Who exactly are you?”
The question landed between them with more weight than the crackle of oil dripping onto the stove.
Shen Qingqing’s wrist was caught in his grip, her pulse beating wildly beneath his fingertips. Her mind spun three times in an instant, but her mouth moved faster than her thoughts.
“Are you sick or what?”
She tried to pull her hand back, but it wouldn’t budge. His strength was frightening.
“If I’m not Shen Yaning, then who am I supposed to be? Wang Guihua next door?”
Huo Yan didn’t loosen his hold.
“The calluses on your hand.”
“I got them from fixing things the past couple of days, why do you care so much?” Shen Qingqing raised her voice slightly, guilt tightening her throat. “Did you burn your brain or something? You ate one meal and developed paranoia?”
She pulled out the same energy she used in her previous life arguing with site supervisors on construction sites, loud voice, rapid speech, dense information, giving the other party no chance to interrupt.
“Have the wounds on your hands healed? Can you even hold your chopsticks steady? Did you soak the rice noodles for tomorrow’s stall? You never focus on anything important, just sit here interrogating me. What are you, the police?”
A barrage of questions hit him, and Huo Yan’s fingers loosened slightly.
Not because he was convinced.
But because he caught something in the rhythm of her heartbeat.
She was afraid.
Not the kind of fear of being exposed and retaliated against, but the fear that if she told the truth, he either wouldn’t believe her or would find it absurd and push her away.
The rhythm of those two kinds of fear was different.
The former was fast and chaotic. The latter was fast but heavy.
She was the latter.
Huo Yan slowly released her, one finger at a time.
Seizing the chance, Shen Qingqing pulled her wrist back, rubbed it twice, and stepped back half a pace.
“If you’re full, rest. I’ll wash the pot.”
She turned toward the stove, her footsteps quick, her slippers slapping against the floor twice as fast as usual.
Huo Yan sat on the edge of the bed, his hands resting on his knees as his fingers slowly curled.
Her wrist’s warmth still lingered on his fingertips.
She wasn’t Shen Yaning.
He was certain of that. But she also meant no harm.
His body accepted that before his mind did.
The warmth of the fried rice noodles in his stomach spread through his veins, reaching his limbs, bringing an unprecedented hint of warmth to his usually cold extremities.
The system notification said “Irritability soothed +10%.”
In reality, it felt far more than ten percent.
He felt like a bowstring stretched taut for nineteen years, and the moment that crispy pork lard entered his mouth, it was as if someone had nicked the string with scissors.
It hadn’t snapped, but it had loosened.
And once loosened, it could never return to what it was.
“Is there more?”
The words forced their way out of his throat, startling even himself.
Shen Qingqing was crouched on the floor scrubbing the pot, the steel wool scraping loudly against iron. Her hand stopped.
She turned to look at him.
Huo Yan sat upright on the edge of the bed, his back rigid, hands braced on his knees, his head tilted slightly in her direction. His blind eyes had no focus, yet there was something in his pupils she had never seen before.
Hunger! Not physical hunger, he was used to that.
This was something else, a craving seeping out from the cracks of his bones, like a beast locked away too long catching the scent of meat beyond its cage. His reason still held him back, but his instinct was already clawing at the bars.
“Is there more?” he asked again.
Shen Qingqing glanced at the bottom of the pot.
It had been scraped completely clean, not even a piece of scallion clung to the sides. The thin layer of oil reflected the yellow light above, illuminating her face.
“N-no, there isn’t,” she stammered. “That was for you to test… I mean taste. The rest of the rice noodles and ingredients are saved for tomorrow’s stall. We need to sell them.”
Sell! Make money.
Those two words slipped into Huo Yan’s ears, and his back stiffened again.
The lingering taste of pork lard clung to the back of his tongue, the caramelized soy sauce’s savory aroma stuck between his teeth. His tongue unconsciously pressed against his molars, touching a tiny bit of scallion caught there.
This flavor… she was going to bring it to the street, set it on a greasy metal stall, and sell it to strangers passing by.
Anyone could eat it. Anyone could pay a few coins and have it.
Huo Yan pressed his thumb into his kneecap, his nail digging into the fabric of his pants. An inexplicable irritation surged up from his stomach, lodging in his chest.
He couldn’t even tell what it was burning.
Was it the disappointment of not having enough to eat, or the absurd thought that this bowl of noodles shouldn’t be tasted by others?
He chose the safest response.
He turned away.
Facing the wall, the back of his head toward Shen Qingqing, his lips pressed into a thin line.
Shen Qingqing leaned on the pot and stared at the back of his head, blinking twice.
“…What’s with the attitude now?”
No reply.
“Hey, do you think it tastes bad or there’s too little? If it’s bad, just say it, I’ll adjust the recipe. If it’s too little, once we make money tomorrow, I’ll cook you another portion—”
“No need.”
The two words were cold as if pulled from an ice cellar.
Shen Qingqing pouted, set the pot aside to dry, muttered “Blind people sure have weird tempers,” and turned to pick up her own bowl of noodles from the corner of the stove.
The noodles had already clumped together, sticky and dull, the sauce darkened, the oil gone. She stirred them with her chopsticks. At the bottom lay two scrawny bits of meat, wilted bean sprouts, and scallions turned dark green from the residual heat.
No crispy pork lard. She had given all the meat and lard to him.
Shen Qingqing picked up a large bite of clumped noodles and stuffed it into her mouth, her cheeks puffing as she chewed. After a few bites, her eyes narrowed.
“Mmm—”
Delicious.
Even without meat, it was good. The wok hei remained, the soy sauce flavor had soaked into the noodles, leaving a subtle sweetness at the end.
She squatted by the stove, bowl in hand, eating noisily, oil smearing the corners of her mouth as she didn’t bother wiping it. By the third bite, she broke into a grin, revealing teeth stained with soy sauce.
Behind her, Huo Yan listened to every sound of her chewing.
She was eating with great enjoyment.
That bowl of nearly meatless leftover noodles, she was enjoying it even more than he had.
His fingers slipped from his knees, hanging at the edge of the bed, clenching and loosening again.
The inexplicable fire in his stomach was extinguished bit by bit by the sound of her eating.
Not extinguished, redirected.
Night deepened.
The rental room had no air conditioning. A hot breeze slipped through the iron bars of the window, carrying the scent of the alley’s sewer and the distant smoke from barbecue stalls. The light bulb was off, leaving the room in darkness, with only the streetlight outside casting crooked shadows through the bars.
Shen Qingqing slept at the very edge of the bed.
More accurately, she curled into the corner.
The bed was only 1.2 meters wide, and she had given most of the space to Huo Yan. Though he hadn’t gotten onto the bed, he sat as he had for the past few days, curled up against the wall at the foot of it.
She was exhausted.
Waking at four in the morning, pedaling a tricycle, squeezing onto buses, bargaining for two hours at Chengnan Wholesale Market, carrying over fifty pounds of goods halfway across the street, then washing, chopping, cooking, scrubbing, her physical energy had been completely drained.
When she collapsed, she didn’t even take off her shoes. Her flip-flops dangled from her toes for a moment before falling to the floor with a soft tap, and her breathing quickly deepened.
After a few minutes, faint snores emerged.
Soft, like a dozing kitten, a short burst every three seconds, then a pause, then again.
Huo Yan leaned against the wall, his sightless eyes open.
He wasn’t asleep. He was listening.
Listening as her snores shifted from shallow to deep, from deep to steady, each exhale stretching from three seconds to four, her body turning once, the quilt rustling softly, and then going completely still.
Deep sleep, Huo Yan pressed his palm against the ground and rose silently.
He didn’t wear shoes. His bare feet touched the concrete floor, toes curling slightly as he sensed its temperature and vibrations.
Nothing unusual. He took his first step.
Left foot forward, the outer edge landing first, then his weight rolling over slowly, making no sound at all. In his mind was a three-dimensional map of the room: the door at two o’clock, the stove at ten, the bed at twelve. Between the bed and the stove sat a plastic stool, beside the bed a crate of eggs, and next to it a woven sack.
Second step, third step.
He moved around the stool, stepped over the egg crate, his toes brushing the edge of the sack before shifting slightly to land on empty ground.
Fourth step, he stood at the head of the bed.
Shen Qingqing’s breathing was directly in front of him, slightly below, no more than twenty centimeters away. Her breath carried a faint warmth, brushing against the back of his hand with each exhale.
Her neck was right there.
Huo Yan raised his hand.
Five fingers spread, joints defined, the wounds beneath the bandages already scabbed over, scars from broken glass still lining his palm.
His hand hovered above her, guided by the sound of her breathing as it descended inch by inch. Past her forehead, past the warmth of her breath at her nose, then lower, to the side of her neck.
That artery pulsed beneath the skin.
He could feel the faint tremor of its rhythm in the air.
This hand had crushed glass cups, carried two-hundred-pound cement sacks, and at fifteen had gripped the throat of a Huo Family bodyguard who tried to harm him in a basement.
His fingers curled slightly.
Shen Qingqing turned over, mumbling something indistinct in her sleep.
“…Add another spoon of pork lard… no charge…”
Huo Yan’s hand froze. Suspended three centimeters above her neck, completely still.
Even in her dreams, she was still selling fried rice noodles.
Still adding pork lard into someone else’s bowl.
His Adam’s apple bobbed slowly as his fingers tightened, loosened, tightened again.
His hand didn’t move closer. Nor did it withdraw.
It simply hovered there, like a blade halted mid-fall, stuck in place.
Outside, the streetlight flickered, shadows trembling on the ground. Somewhere in the distance, a stray cat cried sharply, like an infant.
Shen Qingqing turned again, now facing him, a trace of soy sauce still at the corner of her mouth.
Her steady breathing warmed his suspended palm, carrying a faint scent of rice noodles.
At last, inch by inch, Huo Yan withdrew his hand.
He stepped back, returned to the wall, and slowly slid down to sit.
His hands rested on his knees, fingers curled, still holding the warmth of her breath.
His other hand touched the red string around his wrist.
The nylon thread, frayed from being rubbed all day, pricked against his fingertips, but he didn’t remove it.
In the darkness, his lips moved.
No sound came out. But if someone could read them, they would see three words.
“…Fried rice noodles.”
A pause. “I want more.”
The ceiling light remained off.
But what Shen Qingqing didn’t know was that beside her pillow, something had appeared.
Huo Yan’s coat, folded into a square, placed beneath her slipping head in place of her sweat-soaked pillow.
In the pocket of that coat, the hundred yuan he had earned carrying cement, the one she had stuffed back into his pocket on the first day, was gone.
The money now lay beneath the bag of dried rice noodles on the stove, one corner sticking out, wrinkled and dusted with cement.
Beside it, pinned with a dried chili stem, was a torn scrap of paper.
There were no words on it.
A blind man had pressed a deep mark into the page.
As if he had wanted to write something.
Or perhaps didn’t know what to write at all.