Shen Qingqing leaned against the wall, the back of her head resting in the cracks between the bricks. The strip of cloth wrapped around her injured knee had already soaked through with a dark stain.
Huo Yan’s hand still rested above her knee, his palm pressing against the wound through the bandage. Her blood clung to his fingers, drying into a thin crust in the night breeze.
That unfinished sentence was still lodged in his throat.
“Shen Qingqing.”
His voice rose from the deepest part of his chest, hoarse like sandpaper scraping metal, each word carrying weight as it struck her ears.
“What exactly are you trying to gain from this?”
Shen Qingqing was sweating from pain, loose strands of hair plastered across her forehead and eyebrows in damp clumps.
When she heard that question, she tilted her head back and rolled her eyes dramatically.
Halfway through the eye roll, another wave of pain shot through her knee, forcing her eyes upward until she nearly rolled them completely white.
“What am I trying to gain?”
Her voice squeezed out through her nose, breathless and broken like air leaking from a punctured balloon.
“Your eyes alone are going to cost tens of thousands to fix!”
She jabbed a finger into Huo Yan’s chest, right below his collarbone where solid muscle met bone.
“If you break your legs too, I won’t even be able to afford raising you if I sell blood!”
After poking him, she pulled her hand back and wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of it, smearing dirt across her entire face.
“Do you even know how much I made tonight? Four hundred yuan! What’s four hundred yuan enough for? It’s not even enough for one registration fee for your eyes! And you still went and threw yourself at the ground. If those legs of yours snapped too, then add orthopedic bills on top of that, and forget eating for the rest of my life, I’d just spend it all feeding you in a hospital!”
The faster she spoke, the louder she became, words firing out like machine gun rounds. Her voice bounced between the walls of the dead-end alley until it sounded more like an argument than concern.
Huo Yan’s hand remained above her knee.
His fingers curled slightly, nails scraping softly against the rough fibers of the cloth bandage.
He did not move.
His entire body froze as though someone had pressed pause on him, from his shoulders to his wrists to the tips of his fingers.
He waited three seconds.
Then five. He thought she would say something else.
His ears had been waiting for a certain kind of word.
Anything remotely connected to “worry,” “reluctance,” or “caring.” Anything carrying even the faintest trace of warmth, no matter how indirect.
Instead, he got “tens of thousands.”
“Selling blood.”
“Can’t afford it.”
“Orthopedic bills.”
Money, every sentence was about money.
Not a single word of emotion anywhere in it.
The corner of his mouth moved.
Not downward, outward.
His lips tightened briefly, his jaw loosened, his throat bobbed once, and then a sound emerged from the deepest part of his chest.
Short, soft.
Muted deep in his throat, not fully released, like someone secretly letting out a breath while covering their mouth.
A laugh. Huo Yan was laughing.
In this filthy dead-end alley, sitting in pooled rainwater and her blood, the knees of his pants soaked through, tiny glass fragments still embedded between his fingers, traces of fake tears from pretending to be blind still lingering on his face.
He was laughing.
Shen Qingqing still had her mouth open, the last echoes of her rant not yet faded when his muffled laugh cut her off.
“What are you laughing at?”
Her head tilted sideways as she squinted at him in the darkness.
“Which part of what I said was funny?”
Huo Yan did not answer.
He removed his hand from above her knee and rubbed it twice against his pant leg, wiping away half the blood and grime.
Then his hand reached out.
Not toward her injury. Not toward her shoulder.
Toward the hand hanging limply at her side.
His fingers slid between hers and locked tightly.
Palm against palm.
His hand was almost twice the size of hers, the joints rough and knotted with scars like weathered bark. Her hand was small, fingers short, dirt still lodged beneath the nails from repairing the tricycle earlier that day.
Their fingers fit together perfectly.
“Good.”
His voice emerged from between his teeth, carrying the lingering echo of that laugh, the last syllable dropping lower.
“I’m expensive.”
His thumb pressed against the bones on the back of her hand and rubbed lightly once.
“Remember that.”
Shen Qingqing tried to pull her hand free.
It did not budge. His grip was like a steel clamp.
“You’re going to support me for the rest of your life.”
Every hair on Shen Qingqing’s body stood upright.
Starting from the back of her neck, goosebumps exploded all the way down her arms.
“Did you take the wrong medicine or something?”
Her voice jumped up an octave, sharp and stiff as it squeezed from her throat.
She yanked hard at the hand he was holding.
Still no movement.
“Hurry up and help me stand already!”
Her free hand pressed against the damp brick wall for leverage, but her palm slipped, fingernails scraping harshly against the cracks.
“My knee hurts like hell and you’re sitting here talking nonsense!”
Her right leg remained stretched out straight, unable to bend. The bandage around her knee had slid lower, exposing swollen skin beneath. Half the blood had already clotted into dark red crusts.
Huo Yan released her hand.
Shen Qingqing assumed he was about to help her stand, and she instinctively tried to pull her injured leg inward slightly so she could use it for balance.
Then his arms reached toward her.
Not to pull her up.
His left arm slid beneath her shoulders while his right hooked beneath the bend of her knees.
He leaned forward, wedging his shoulder between her and the wall as both arms exerted force at once.
Shen Qingqing’s body lifted off the ground.
“What are you doing?!”
Her voice cracked sharply. Both hands instinctively grabbed his collar, fingers clutching his T-shirt so tightly her knuckles turned white.
“Put me down! You can’t even see, what are you carrying me for?!”
Huo Yan said nothing.
His legs straightened, his back tightening into a firm line. The instant he lifted more than a hundred pounds from the ground, his knees bent by two degrees to absorb the weight before locking straight again.
Shen Qingqing ended up cradled horizontally in his arms.
Her injured leg dangled in the air, the bandage fluttering slightly in the wind while blood continued seeping downward. One drop landed on the back of his hand.
He did not wipe it away. Then he started walking.
First step.
His shoe splashed into a puddle with a loud smack, water spraying across the cuffs of his pants.
Second step.
His left foot curved perfectly around the raised concrete slab on the ground, the angle precise to the centimeter.
Shen Qingqing’s head rested against his shoulder, her nose bumping lightly against his collarbone. She could smell sweat, the alkaline scent of cheap detergent, and a faint metallic rust smell.
Blood! Her blood had stained his clothes.
He walked steadily.
Her body rose and fell gently with his stride, the motion so smooth it felt like riding in a vehicle with perfect suspension.
Nothing like a blind man.
Not even remotely.
Her mouth opened several times, wanting to say, “Put me down, I can walk myself,” but the words never came out.
Her knee hurt too much.
It was the kind of pain that seemed to pry outward from inside the bones themselves. Every movement sent vibrations through her entire right leg until it trembled uncontrollably.
In the end, she kept quiet.
Her left hand clutched his collar while her right hugged the metal cash box against her chest, its hard edges pressing painfully into her ribs through her T-shirt.
“Where are you going?”
“Back home.”
“You know the way?”
“I remember it.”
“How? You can’t see.”
“I counted the steps.”
Shen Qingqing’s mouth opened again.
“We were running that fast and you were still counting steps?”
Huo Yan did not answer.
His footsteps turned a corner, avoiding a stack of cardboard boxes piled beside a trash can at the alley entrance. The tip of his shoe brushed against the edge of one box with a soft scraping sound but never knocked it over.
Shen Qingqing closed her mouth again.
Her face rested against his shoulder, her ear pressed to his T-shirt as she listened to the sound of his heartbeat beneath his collarbone.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Slow, heavy.
Every beat struck solidly against his chest wall, vibrating through her ear.
Steady beyond belief.
“Huo Yan.”
“Mm.”
“You’ve got injuries on your hands.”
“Mm.”
“Don’t they hurt?”
“No.”
“Bullshit! The wounds from the glass you crushed this afternoon definitely reopened. I can smell blood.”
Huo Yan’s steps paused briefly.
“Your nose is pretty sharp.”
“No matter how sharp my nose is, it’s not sharper than yours.” Shen Qingqing’s voice sounded muffled against his shoulder. “Are we there yet? Am I heavy?”
“Eighty-seven pounds.”
“…How do you know that?”
“I estimated it when I picked you up.”
The corner of Shen Qingqing’s mouth twitched.
She buried her face deeper into his shoulder while adjusting the cash box against her ribs. The coins inside rattled noisily as she shifted it from one side to the other.
Light appeared ahead at the mouth of the alley. Streetlamp glow spilled from the residential area, stretching their shadows crookedly across the damp wall, the outline of one person carrying another.
When Huo Yan stepped out of the alley, his left foot cleared the four-centimeter drop in the pavement.
His body lifted subtly, absorbing the jolt so her injured knee would not be shaken.
Shen Qingqing looked up at him.
The streetlight illuminated his jawline. His sunglasses still covered his eyes, lips pressed tightly together, the muscles in his neck visible above his collar.
The tricycle sat beside the bus stop exactly where they left it, the chain lock hanging from the handlebars, half the sack of rice noodles still inside the carriage.
Shen Qingqing patted his chest.
“Put me down.”
“We’re here?”
“Yeah, the cart’s three steps to the right.”
Huo Yan lowered her carefully into the tricycle carriage. When setting her down, his hand remained beneath the bend of her knee until she was fully supported against the bottom of the cart before withdrawing.
The metal carriage was ice cold. Shen Qingqing sat atop the sack of rice noodles with her injured leg stretched along the edge.
She looked down at her knee.
Under the streetlamp, everything was visible now. A massive dark stain spread beneath the bandage around the knee of her jeans, blood trailing all the way to her ankle.
She sniffed once.
No time to care about that now.
She lowered her head and pulled the metal cash box from her arms.
The lid sat crooked from where the thug had smashed it earlier, one corner badly dented. She flipped it open beneath the streetlight.
Inside, wrinkled bills were stuffed together in a messy wad. Tens. Fives. Ones. A pile of coins rattled at the bottom.
Shen Qingqing’s eyes widened.
She reached into the box, thumb and forefinger counting each bill one by one.
Ten. Twenty. Thirty.
Fifty. Seventy. One hundred.
One fifty. One eighty. Two hundred.
Her fingers moved faster and faster as she counted, lips silently forming numbers while her eyes followed each bill.
Two fifty. Three hundred. Three twenty.
Three hundred fifty-eight.
Then the coins.
She dumped them into her palm and counted through the jingling pile of fifty-cent and one-yuan pieces.
Three hundred ninety-three yuan and fifty cents.
Shen Qingqing threw her head back.
The white streetlight shone across her face, streaked with dirt, sweat, and dried blood. Her hair looked like a bird’s nest, and blood still seeped through the bandage on her knee.
Her grin stretched all the way to her ears.
“Huo Yan!”
Her voice exploded through the empty bus stop, echoing several times.
“Three hundred ninety! Those thugs didn’t steal everything! There’s still three hundred ninety left in the box!”
She shook the cash box toward him twice, the coins clattering loudly inside.
Huo Yan stood beside the carriage with one hand resting on the edge.
The corner of his mouth curved slightly.
“What about the money in your pocket?”
Shen Qingqing froze for a second, then hurriedly dug into her pocket and pulled out two crumpled five-yuan bills and three coins.
“Four hundred six yuan and fifty cents!”
Her voice was sharp enough to pierce eardrums, her eyes brighter than the streetlight itself.
“It’s enough! We’ve got enough for the rent!”
Her fingers clenched the money and coins so tightly her knuckles turned white. She bounced once excitedly inside the cart, accidentally slamming her injured knee into the metal wall.
“Hiss!”
Pain twisted her face instantly. She recoiled backward, the back of her head smacking loudly against the metal carriage with a dull bang.
Huo Yan reached into the cart and pressed a hand against her shoulder.
“Don’t move.”
Shen Qingqing clutched her knee, her expression shifting wildly between pain and idiotic happiness before finally settling into a crooked grin.
“Four hundred six yuan and fifty cents, Huo Yan.”
Her voice leaked through clenched teeth, airy and breathless with the manic joy of a pauper surviving disaster and winning the lottery at the same time.
“We’ve even got enough for tomorrow’s rice noodles now.”
She slammed the lid shut on the cash box. The dented corner would not close properly, so she punched it twice until it flattened back into place before stuffing the box into her arms again.
Huo Yan withdrew his hand from her shoulder.
His fingers brushed the rust along the edge of the carriage, rubbing lightly against the rough metal surface.
Four hundred six yuan and fifty cents.
The smallest check he had ever signed in his previous life had been worth five hundred thousand.
The spare change from that amount alone would have been enough for her to fry rice noodles beside that filthy public toilet stall for an entire lifetime.
His thumb pressed against the red cord around his wrist. The knot had stiffened from dried blood, digging into his pulse.
“Pedal the cart.”
Shen Qingqing stuck half her head out of the carriage.
“Who’s pedaling?”
“You.”
“My knee is bleeding!”
“Didn’t seem to hurt when you were jumping around just now.”
Shen Qingqing opened her mouth.
Then shut it again.
Carefully, she pulled her injured leg back from the edge of the carriage, placed her foot against the floorboard, and slowly stood up while bracing herself against the sides of the cart.
“You sit inside.”
“I’m not sitting.”
“Huo Yan.”
“I’ll push, you sit.”
Shen Qingqing frowned deeply.
“You can’t even see. What if you slam into a utility pole?”
“You guide me.”
She stared at him, lips twisting slightly as she hugged the cash box tighter.
“Go straight on the left side, then turn right after fifty meters.”
Huo Yan’s hand gripped the handlebars.
The tricycle chain creaked loudly as the wheels rolled over loose gravel and started forward.
Shen Qingqing sat in the carriage with her injured leg stretched over the sack of rice noodles, one hand gripping the side while her eyes stayed fixed ahead.
“Straight ahead. Don’t drift.”
“Mm.”
“There’s a manhole cover up there. Go half a step around it on the right.”
“Mm.”
Wind poured through the alley entrance, brushing against her injured knee with cold, stinging pain.
She lowered her head and looked at the cash box in her lap.
The lid reflected the streetlight, the dented corner flattened smooth from her punches. It pressed hard against her ribs, uncomfortable but reassuring.
Four hundred six yuan and fifty cents.
Tomorrow at four in the morning, she still had to make another trip to Chengnan Wholesale Market.