The rental apartment sat at the very end of an alley in the urban village, on the third floor with no elevator.
Shen Qingqing climbed the three flights of stairs in those broken high heels with the snapped heel, banging her knees against the corners of the walls twice along the way. By the time she reached the top, her calves were already bruised blue.
Huo Yan followed behind her with one hand braced against the wall, his steps steadier than hers.
The moment Shen Qingqing pushed the door open, a musty smell rushed at them, mixed with instant noodle seasoning and the sour stench of leftover food that had sat overnight.
The room was pitifully small. A chipped wooden bed frame was shoved beneath the window, and newspapers had been pasted over the glass. Several plastic bags were piled in the corner, all stuffed with discount-tagged clothes and counterfeit bags.
Shen Qingqing’s stomach churned again.
The original owner had used Huo Yan’s hard-earned money to buy all this garbage.
“Sit,” she said, shoving him toward the edge of the bed.
Huo Yan’s calf knocked against the frame. He paused briefly before sitting down.
The wooden bed creaked loudly, sounding as though it might collapse any second.
Shen Qingqing bent down and rummaged beneath the bed, dragging out a red plastic storage box. When she opened it, she found expired cold medicine, half a dried-up tube of toothpaste, and a nail clipper.
No gauze. No antiseptic. Not even a bandage.
She searched through the TV stand drawers next, pulling out piles of receipts and takeout flyers, but nothing useful.
“Where’s the first aid kit?” she muttered, crouching down to turn the area beneath the bed upside down.
Huo Yan sat quietly on the bed, his head tilted slightly as he listened to the sounds of her tearing through the room.
Her movements were frantic and impatient. Plastic bags rustled noisily, broken by the sound of her heavy breathing.
Shen Qingqing straightened up, sweat covering her forehead.
Without wrapping his hands, the wounds would definitely get infected if dirt got into them.
She lowered her eyes to the clothes she was wearing.
The original owner had on a black lace camisole decorated with sequins around the chest. The fabric was thin enough to see through, though the lace trim around the neckline was fairly wide.
Shen Qingqing gritted her teeth, grabbed the hem of the camisole, and yanked hard.
“Riiip—”
The sound of tearing fabric exploded through the tiny room.
Huo Yan reacted as if he’d been electrocuted. His whole body jerked backward as he shrank toward the wall, his back slamming against it with a heavy thud. His jaw tightened into a sharp line.
“Don’t touch me.”
The three words were squeezed out through clenched teeth, his voice rough and breathy.
His fingers gripped the bedsheet beneath him so tightly that his knuckles turned white, the blisters on the back of his hands swelling from the pressure.
Shen Qingqing froze for two seconds, still clutching the torn lace strips in her hand.
She didn’t even need to think to understand what that ripping sound meant to him.
Had the original owner’s belt made the same sound before it lashed across him?
Her throat tightened, and her voice softened unconsciously.
“I tore my clothes to wrap your hands.”
Huo Yan said nothing, remaining pressed against the wall.
Shen Qingqing stopped wasting words and grabbed him directly.
She seized his left wrist, pried the wounded hand free from the bedsheet, and began wrapping the rough lace strips around it layer by layer.
The muscles in Huo Yan’s arm twitched violently, his entire arm rigid as iron.
He didn’t pull away.
Not because he didn’t want to, but because he was waiting for what came next.
Shen Qingqing wrapped the bandages clumsily, the strips unevenly tight and loose. It took her three tries just to tie the knot properly, and when her fingernail scraped against a wound near his thumb, the corner of his mouth twitched.
“If your hands get ruined, how are you supposed to work and make money later?” she muttered while tearing another strip to wrap his right hand. “Seriously, look at these hands, they’re practically wrecked already. Can your fingers still bend? Bend them for me.”
Huo Yan’s fingers moved slightly. Slowly, all five curled inward before relaxing again.
“They can bend,” he said hoarsely, his voice sounding as rough as sandpaper. “What exactly are you trying to do?”
“What I’m trying to do is none of your business,” Shen Qingqing shot back as she tightened the final knot and bit off the excess fabric. “I want to do it, alright?”
She flipped his hand over to inspect it. The black lace wrapped around his scarred, bony hands looked bizarre beyond words, the delicate trim contrasting sharply against blood crusts and wounds.
Huo Yan lifted his bandaged left hand and brushed his fingertips lightly over the texture of the lace.
He recognized the fabric.
It came from her camisole. She had thrown that same lace against his face before. He remembered the feel of it.
“You tore your own clothes to bandage my hands,” he repeated flatly, as though he were stating an impossible fact.
“They’re already torn. Want me to sew them back together too?” Shen Qingqing rolled her eyes, then remembered he couldn’t see and realized the gesture had been wasted.
She pulled out her phone. The screen was cracked down the middle, but it still barely functioned.
After scrolling through local listings for a while, she searched for “blind massage training.” Several results popped up. The closest one was at the east side of the urban village. Three hundred yuan for a five-day crash course, guaranteed to teach students the trade, lunch included.
She looked at the price, then at the money she had stuffed back into Huo Yan’s pocket earlier.
Enough!
“Come here.” She patted his arm.
Huo Yan ignored her.
Shen Qingqing leaned closer and shoved the phone beside his ear, turning the volume all the way up as she read the course description aloud word by word.
“‘Master Zhang’s Blind Massage Crash Course in East City. Three hundred yuan for five days. Hands-on teaching. Certificate upon completion.’ Hear that?”
Huo Yan’s brows furrowed.
“I signed you up for it,” Shen Qingqing said while tapping noisily across the screen and filling in a fake name. “Go learn a skill for five days instead of hauling cement around at construction sites every day.”
The room fell silent for three whole seconds.
Huo Yan’s lips moved slightly, his Adam’s apple bobbing once.
“A massage class.”
“Yeah, a massage class.”
“You want me to learn massage therapy.”
“Are your ears broken? Can’t you understand plain Mandarin?”
Huo Yan lowered his head. His hands, still wrapped in black lace, rested on his knees while his fingertips lightly picked at the edge of the fabric.
He said nothing. The corner of his mouth twitched faintly, not quite a smile, more like he was biting down on something he couldn’t swallow.
A massage class.
A three-hundred-yuan massage class in the middle of an urban village.
The last time he had ever sat in a massage chair was at the top-floor spa of the Beijing Park Hyatt. One hour there cost eight thousand yuan, and even the massage therapists barely dared breathe too loudly.
After waiting a long time without getting a response, Shen Qingqing assumed he was unwilling and immediately grew anxious.
“Don’t be so ungrateful. Massage work is great. You make money sitting down. It’s a hundred times better than carrying cement.”
“What exactly is inside your head?” Huo Yan finally asked, his voice low and muffled from deep in his throat.
“How to stop you from ruining your hands,” Shen Qingqing replied matter-of-factly.
Huo Yan raised his head, those gray, clouded eyes aimed in her direction. Something seemed to churn inside that empty gaze.
He opened his mouth, then closed it again.
He wanted to ask if she had hit her head.
He wanted to ask what medicine she had accidentally taken today.
He wanted to ask why she had stuffed the money back into his pocket, washed his hands, torn her clothes to bandage him, and signed him up for a massage class.
But he asked none of it.
Because when the clean scent of soap lingering on her drifted into his nose, he realized that for one brief moment, he didn’t want to expose her.
“Are you going or not?” Shen Qingqing pressed on.
“I’ll go.”
The moment the words left his mouth, even he found them unfamiliar.
Shen Qingqing let out a sigh of relief and dropped onto the plastic stool beside the bed. One of the legs was uneven, wobbling twice beneath her.
“Good, then it’s settled. Tomorrow morning at eight, I’ll take you there. Go down East City Alley to the third shop inside, the one with the red sign outside—”
Before she could finish—
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Someone slammed hard against the door three times from outside. The entire wall shook, and flakes of plaster rained down.
“Shen Yaning!” a man’s rough voice roared from outside, loud enough to shake the room. “Pay the rent! It’s been three months already! If you keep pretending to be dead, I’m tearing this damn door off today!”
Shen Qingqing shot to her feet.
Who was Shen Yaning?
She desperately flipped through the scattered memories in her head, but found nothing.
Another heavy kick crashed against the door, rattling the lock violently.
“I’m giving you ten seconds! If you don’t open up, I’m bringing people over!”
Shen Qingqing turned to glance at Huo Yan.
He sat quietly on the bed, his lace-wrapped hands resting on his knees, his head angled toward the door.
The corners of his lips pressed downward slightly, and a low sound rumbled from his throat, as though he were about to speak, or perhaps laugh.