The instant Huo Yan’s toes slammed into the concrete slab, his cerebellum had already issued the correction command.
Core muscles tightened. Spine adjusted by two degrees. Center of gravity pulled back. Knees bent to absorb the impact.
His body had practiced this entire sequence for nineteen years. Faster than a heartbeat. More natural than breathing.
The command had already been sent.
His muscles had already begun to execute it.
His abdomen tightened by half a centimeter.
Then he heard Shen Qingqing’s voice.
“Huo Yan!”
That sound did not come from her throat. It was squeezed straight out of her lungs, breathless and cracking at the end, carrying the rush of wind from her turning back toward him.
She let go of the tricycle.
The handlebars jerked out of control, and the cart slammed crookedly into the wall on the left. The metal carriage scraped harshly against the bricks, the sack of rice noodles tumbling out and landing on the ground with a dull thud.
She let go of the tricycle.
The tricycle she had just shouted about, the one she claimed had cost her half her life and that she would never abandon, she let go of it.
Both hands lunged toward him instead.
Huo Yan’s abdominal muscles had already tightened halfway. In another fraction of a second, his body would have completed the kind of perfect balance correction no blind man should possess.
Too late.
The force of Shen Qingqing crashing into his chest shattered the tension already gathering in his core muscles.
Her arms slid beneath his shoulders, both hands locking tightly around his back. Her fingers clenched the fabric of his T-shirt at his waist so hard her knuckles bent white.
Her body hit the ground before he did.
Not because she fell, but because she deliberately forced herself downward first. Her back struck the stone pavement before anything else, the back of her head tipping backward, chin angled toward the sky, her entire body spread flat across the bluestone slabs as she wedged herself between Huo Yan and the ground.
The combined weight of both of them came crashing down.
The back of her head struck the stone with a dull impact, numbness exploding across her scalp as her vision flashed white for an instant.
Then came her knee.
Her right leg had bent underneath her, her kneecap pressing directly against the ground. The cheap denim of her jeans was as thin as paper, offering no protection at all.
Broken glass was embedded between the cracks in the stone pavement.
Beer bottle shards. Brown glass with razor-sharp edges. Several pieces stood upright inside the gaps in the stone, their jagged points aimed upward.
When her knee came down on them, the glass did not shatter.
The skin on her knee did.
The shard sliced through flesh, cut into the layer of fat beneath, scraped against the membrane over the kneecap, and lodged there.
“Hss…”
Shen Qingqing’s mouth opened, teeth biting down on her tongue as she sucked in air sharply through clenched teeth. Her whole body trembled once.
She did not cry out in pain.
Not because she did not want to, but because she could not. This was not the sharp pain of a simple cut. It felt like something drilling into the cracks of her bones, pain shooting from her knee all the way to the roots of her thighs and lower back until every muscle in her right leg twisted tight.
The color around the knee of her jeans was changing.
Dark blue became dark brown, then almost black as blood soaked through the fabric. Blood seeped from the torn denim, streamed down her calf, slipped between the toes of her bare right foot, and dripped onto the stone pavement.
Huo Yan was pressed on top of her.
His chest lay against hers, separated only by two thin T-shirts, her heartbeat hammering violently against his ribs like a war drum.
His hands braced against the ground on either side of her body as he tried to lift his weight off her. His right palm pressed into something wet.
Warm, slippery and sticky.
His fingers curled slightly against the slickness. The temperature of the liquid was two degrees cooler than body heat, cooling rapidly, and a faint metallic scent crept between his fingers.
Blood! His hands were covered in her blood.
That smell rushed into his nose, through his olfactory nerves, and slammed directly into his brainstem.
He recognized that scent.
For nineteen years, he had smelled it countless times. In the basement of the Huo Family. On construction scaffolding. Every night the original owner pressed cigarette butts into the back of his hand. The smell of blood had always been as ordinary to him as water.
But this time was different.
This was not his blood.
It was hers.
She had used her own knee to shield him from broken glass, her own head to cushion him against the stone pavement, her body that barely weighed ninety pounds as a human shield, all so he would not hurt when he fell.
Huo Yan’s throat bobbed once.
His fingers clenched tightly in her blood.
“You…”
Something clogged his throat. His voice forced itself upward from the deepest part of his chest, and the first word emerged broken.
“Shh!”
Shen Qingqing’s hand shot up from behind his waist and clamped over his mouth.
Her fingers were ice-cold, but her palm burned hot, sweat and dirt smearing against his lips.
“Don’t talk!” she whispered at the lowest possible volume, her lips almost brushing his ear as her breath struck his skin.
Footsteps! Coming from the neighboring alley.
The slap of rubber slippers against concrete. Two sets of footsteps with a dragging rhythm in between, fast, slow, drag.
The sound of the stocky tattooed thug being supported.
They were right next door. Only one wall away.
Shen Qingqing kept one hand over Huo Yan’s mouth while the other wrapped around the back of his head, pressing his face into the hollow of her neck. Her entire body curled into the corner of the dead-end alley, back pressed against the damp brick wall. Her right leg was bent awkwardly, blood still dripping steadily from her knee onto the ground, each drop echoing clearly through the silent alley.
She bit her lip, afraid to make a sound.
Her teeth pressed so hard her lower lip turned pale, leaving deep bite marks.
The pain in her right leg climbed upward from her knee to her hipbone. Her whole leg trembled uncontrollably from muscle spasms, the kneecap burning hot as the shard remained lodged inside. Every heartbeat brought a fresh wave of throbbing pain.
She had bitten her own lip until it bled.
Blood mixed with sweat on her face and trickled down her chin.
Slap, slap! The footsteps drew closer.
Shen Qingqing stopped breathing altogether. Her chest froze still while her hand covered Huo Yan’s mouth, fingers gripping so tightly her knuckles turned white.
Huo Yan’s face remained buried against her neck.
He could smell her.
Sulfur soap. Sweat, cooking oil smoke and blood.
The scent of blood was strongest, rising from her knee and mixing with the rough fibers of denim, metallic and thick around her.
He could feel her trembling.
Her chest pressed tightly against his, their heartbeats colliding together. Hers was frantic. He remained steady. Her rhythm was chaotic. Not a single beat of his wavered.
His right hand still rested on the ground, her blood coating his palm.
His left hand hung at his side.
He still remembered the exact position of the bamboo chopstick inside his pocket.
If those three men turned into this dead-end alley, he would need only zero point three seconds to pull it out.
But he did not move.
Because the pressure of her hand against the back of his head was impossibly gentle, as though she was afraid of hurting him. Her fingertips slid from the back of his head to the nape of his neck, rubbing lightly along his hairline like she was soothing a frightened animal.
She herself was trembling in pain, blood still pouring from her knee, her lip bitten open, yet her hand remained steady.
The hand pressed against his head was steady beyond reason.
Slap, slap, slap!
The footsteps passed beyond the wall.
Passed by, without stopping.
The sounds grew more distant, more fragmented, blending into the tangled echoes of the urban village alleyways until they disappeared beneath the occasional barking dog and the faint noise of televisions somewhere far away.
Ten seconds.
Twenty seconds.
Thirty seconds.
Finally, Shen Qingqing’s chest moved again. She released a huge breath through her nose onto Huo Yan’s hair, her whole body collapsing weakly against the wall as though all her strength had drained away.
“They’re gone…” Her voice leaked out hoarsely, filled with the exhaustion of surviving disaster. “They left.”
Her hand finally moved away from his mouth. Her fingers were drenched in sweat, leaving a damp mark against his lips.
Huo Yan lifted his head from her neck.
He could not see.
But he did not need to.
His right hand rose slowly from the ground, her blood still clinging to his fingers, once warm but now rapidly cooling.
“Your leg.”
His voice was half an octave lower than usual, every word sounding difficult, as though something heavy sat inside his throat.
“Your leg is bleeding.”
“I’m fine.” Shen Qingqing answered so quickly it sounded rehearsed. She tugged at the corner of her mouth without managing a smile. “Just scraped it a little.”
“Scraped it a little?”
Huo Yan reached out.
His fingers touched her right knee, touched the soaked denim, touched the swollen skin beneath it, then touched something hard embedded inside the flesh, sharp-edged and unmoving.
Broken glass, his fingers stopped.
“Is this what you call scraped a little?”
His voice changed. Not trembling.
Hoarse! Like someone had scraped sandpaper through his throat from the inside out.
Shen Qingqing’s leg jerked instinctively as she tried to pull her knee away. His fingers closed around the outside of her knee without force, but she still could not move it.
“It’s really nothing. I’ll just put a bandage on it when we get back.”
“There’s glass inside your knee.”
“…Just a tiny piece. It’s not a big deal.”
“Not a big deal.”
Huo Yan repeated those three words softly.
Then he withdrew his hand from her knee.
Raised it.
Blood clung to his fingers, her blood mixed with dirt and tiny fragments of debris, cooling little by little in the night breeze.
His hand hovered in the air for two seconds.
Then he turned it over, palm facing upward toward himself.
He could not see. Could not see anything at all.
But he knew what color it was.
He had touched his own blood too many times to forget the texture and temperature of fresh blood.
What coated his palm now felt exactly the same.
Exactly the same thing she had bled for him.
“Shen Qingqing.” He called her by her full name.
All three syllables were pronounced clearly, each separated by a pause.
Shen Qingqing leaned against the wall, her injured leg stretched straight because she no longer dared bend it. Blood had already soaked through half her pant leg. Hearing Huo Yan say her full name made her freeze briefly.
“What?”
Huo Yan did not answer immediately.
He stayed silent for a very long time.
The dead-end alley fell so quiet only their breathing remained, one rapid and shallow, the other deep and steady.
A stray cat cried somewhere two streets away. Even the distant loudspeakers of the urban enforcement officers had faded into the sparse nighttime noise left after the market shut down.
“Why?”
He finally spoke. His voice was so low Shen Qingqing had to lean closer just to hear him.
“Why would you risk your life for me?”
His hand tightened into a fist. Her blood squeezed between his fingers and ran down his wrist, staining the knot of the red nylon cord dark brown.
“Your cart. The seventy-five-yuan cart. You let go of it.”
His voice echoed faintly through the alley, brushing against the walls before drifting back.
“Your knee. Your blood. Your…”
He could not continue. Whatever was lodged in his throat blocked the rest.
Shen Qingqing leaned against the wall, the back of her head resting on the cold bricks. Sweat and dirt streaked across her face, her hair stuck messily to her forehead. Her right leg shook continuously from pain, the injury throbbing and burning as though someone were pressing a branding iron beneath her skin.
She lowered her head and glanced at her knee. It was hard to see clearly in the darkness. Only a little light from a distant streetlamp reached the alley. The fabric around her knee had already darkened into a massive stain.
She sniffed softly. “You’re asking me why?”
Her voice had become hoarse too, rough like sandpaper scraping against stone.
“Because what if I couldn’t catch you when you fell?”
When she said it, her tone lifted naturally, full of righteous certainty, as though the answer should have been obvious.
“You can’t see, your hands are already covered in injuries, what if you hit your head? What if you broke your arm? Those hands of yours, I spent three hundred yuan enrolling you in that massage class. If you ruined your hands falling down, who’s going to reimburse me?”
The more she spoke, the louder and faster she became until she sounded like she was scolding him.
“My cart only cost seventy-five yuan. My knee doesn’t cost anything!”
She smacked his shoulder with one hand. The slap was light, the sound louder than the force behind it, her fingers recoiling immediately afterward.
“What’s wrong with you anyway? I told you to run properly. If you kicked something, you should’ve called out to me. You suddenly pitched forward without a sound, I thought you were dying. You scared me to death, do you know that?!”
Her voice cracked apart on the last few words.
Not crying. She was not crying.
But her voice split in two, one half lifting sharply upward while the other sank and caught inside her throat.
Huo Yan sat opposite her.
The ground of the dead-end alley was damp, the knees of his pants stained with moisture, impossible to tell whether it was dirty water or blood.
His hand rested on his own leg, palm facing upward.
Her blood had already cooled completely, turning into a thin sticky film over his palm lines.
He heard her say, “My knee doesn’t cost anything.”
He heard her say, “You scared me to death.”
His throat bobbed twice.
His lips parted, then closed again.
His fingers curled, nails pressing into the dried blood crust in his palm.
His mind was in chaos.
From being locked in a basement until the age of seven, to being publicly removed from the Huo Family registry at the clan meeting, to hauling cement at construction sites until the bones in his hands cracked, all the way to this filthy rental room in the urban village.
Nineteen years.
Not a single person had ever said, “You scared me to death.”
Not a single person had ever used their own knee to shield him from broken glass.
Not a single person had abandoned a seventy-five-yuan cart just to catch someone as worthless as him.
His thumb pressed against the red cord around his wrist. The knot was stiff from dried blood, cutting against his pulse.
Her pulse beat at the other end of the cord.
Separated by half a meter of red nylon string, it pulsed rapidly, chaotically, vividly alive.
“Shen Qingqing.” He called her name again.
This time without pauses. The three syllables flowed together, a faint breathiness caught in the final sound, as though something inside him had lodged there.
“Your knee.”
His hand reached out, touching her calf, sliding upward until it reached the soaked denim and the swollen skin around her knee.
“That piece of glass. I’ll pull it out for you.”
“Don’t touch it! It hurts…”
“Bear with it.”
His voice steadied again, still low and hoarse but firm now.
His fingers found the edge of the shard embedded in her flesh. Thumb and forefinger pinched it carefully, adjusting the angle by two degrees to match the direction it had entered.
“Three, two…”
Before he reached one, he pulled the glass free.
“Hiss ah! Huo Yan, you bastard! You said you’d count to one!”
Tears sprang from the pain, hanging on Shen Qingqing’s eyelashes without falling. She smacked the back of his hand hard.
Huo Yan did not dodge.
He tossed the bloodied shard aside, then tore a strip of cloth from his pant leg and awkwardly wrapped it around her knee. One loop, then another.
His hands were trembling.
Not from the cold.
Shen Qingqing lowered her head and stared at them, at those scarred hands ruined by cement and broken glass, now clumsily bandaging her knee. The cloth wrapped unevenly and crookedly, too loose in some places and too tight in others, but every movement was unbearably careful, as though he feared hurting her.
“Huo Yan.”
“Mm.”
“Wait until your hands stop shaking before tying it like that. It’ll fall apart the moment I walk.”
“Shut up.” Shen Qingqing froze.
This was the first time Huo Yan had ever told her to shut up.
Her mouth opened slightly, but no words came out.
Huo Yan tucked the end of the cloth beneath the knot and pressed it down to make sure it would not loosen.
His hand remained on her knee.
Palm resting over the bandage. Beneath the cloth was her wound. Beneath the wound was bone.
His thumb brushed lightly across the fabric.
Very lightly.
“Next time.” His voice sounded muffled, squeezed upward from the deepest part of his throat.
“You’re not allowed to use your knee to break a fall.”
Shen Qingqing leaned against the wall and looked at him, at the way his head remained lowered, at the half of his face visible beneath the sunglasses.
The dim glow of the streetlamp outlined his jaw. She could see his clenched teeth and the taut tendons along his neck.
She smiled faintly. The corner of her mouth lifted into a crooked little curve.
“Fine! Next time I’ll land on my butt instead.”
Huo Yan’s fingers paused on her knee.
Silence stretched for two seconds.
“…Do whatever you want.”
There was the faintest crack in his voice.
And through that crack leaked something no one had ever heard from him before.
His hand tightened around the red cord, her blood staining both his fingers and the string dark.
He had no intention of letting go anymore.