The Number Seven bus screeched to a stop in front of the station, the doors snapping open as a wave of heat mixed with diesel fumes blasted out from inside.
Shen Qingqing stuck her head in for one look and nearly got shoved backward by the sight.
The bus was packed solid. From the front door all the way to the back, it was crammed like a jar of pickled vegetables, arms pressed against arms, heads jammed shoulder to shoulder. An old man in a blue factory uniform had one foot squeezed onto the steps and was still trying to force his way in.
The crowd waiting at the stop surged forward.
An auntie carrying a red plastic bag barreled in from Shen Qingqing’s right side, her elbow slamming into Shen Qingqing’s ribs with the force of a bulldozer.
“Move move move! There’s space in the back!”
There was no space in the back. There wasn’t even room to plant a foot.
The hit knocked Shen Qingqing sideways two steps, and the red rope tied around her wrist snapped taut, yanking Huo Yan’s arm forward with it.
Huo Yan stopped dead. His nostrils flared.
The smell pouring out of a rush hour bus was like a stew left boiling for three days straight. Sweat, cigarette smoke, greasy breakfast fumes, the stink of chive pancakes, and the sour odor of someone’s sneakers that smelled like they had fermented for a week all mixed together and flooded into his nose.
His temples throbbed. His molars clenched tight. His breathing turned short and sharp.
Shen Qingqing looked back at him.
His jaw was clenched hard enough to cut paper, veins standing out from beneath his collar one by one.
Something was wrong.
“Huo Yan?”
“Get away.”
The two words scraped out through gritted teeth, low and heavy, like sandpaper grinding against metal.
He was not talking to her.
He was talking to everyone.
Another wave of people shoved forward from behind, and someone’s arm brushed against Huo Yan’s shoulder. His whole body jerked backward as though he had been burned.
His fingers were shaking, not from fear, but from clenching his fists so hard his knuckles looked ready to split apart.
Something exploded in Shen Qingqing’s mind.
She remembered.
The original novel had mentioned it before. Back in the Huo Family, Huo Yan had once been locked in a basement.
That basement had only been three square meters. No windows. No lights. One time they had left him there for seven straight days, eating, drinking, and relieving himself all in the same place. When he came out, he had bitten off three of his own fingernails.
After that, he could no longer stay in enclosed, crowded spaces filled with human smells.
It was not disliked.
He would kill people.
“Get the hell—”
Shen Qingqing slapped a hand over his mouth.
Her five fingers pressed against his lips, her palm covering his jaw. Her hand was small, barely enough to cover half his face.
Huo Yan’s entire body went rigid like a drawn bowstring.
One arm shot upward, fingers spread wide. The wound in his palm strained against the bandages as blood seeped through, his hand hovering in midair less than ten centimeters from Shen Qingqing’s throat.
“Shut up!” Shen Qingqing hissed in a low, urgent voice, her lips almost brushing his ear. “If you start yelling ‘get away’ on a public bus, do you want people calling the cops because they think you’re insane?”
His fingers curled slightly. He neither lowered his hand nor pulled it back.
Shen Qingqing still had her hand over his mouth. She could feel the muscles beneath his lips tightening, his jaw clenched hard, hot breaths forcing themselves through the gaps between her fingers.
“Follow me. We’re going to the back door. There are fewer people in the corner.”
She released his mouth, grabbed his wrist, and dragged him into the bus.
The red rope twisted between their wrists as she forced her way through the crowd with her shoulder. Huo Yan followed behind her, pulled along by the rope. Every time someone bumped into him, his shoulders recoiled slightly, the muscles over his cheekbones twitching visibly.
“Excuse us! Make way! Move a little!”
Shen Qingqing’s voice boomed through the bus like a loudspeaker all the way from the front door to the back.
Someone muttered, “Why are you yelling?” but one glare from her shut them up.
There was a tiny patch of space beside the rear door, tucked against the bus wall beside the barrier next to the last row of seats.
Shen Qingqing shoved Huo Yan into that corner.
“Stay here, don’t move.”
Huo Yan’s back hit the metal wall of the bus. The steel was icy cold through his thin T-shirt.
His breathing was still uneven, the air in his chest feeling as though someone were squeezing it out of him bit by bit.
Every sound around him surged inward, amplified tenfold, twentyfold.
Someone nearby was on the phone, their shrill voice like knives scraping glass.
Someone else was chewing breakfast, teeth grinding together while the stink of chives drilled into his ears.
A child was crying nearby, the exact frequency he could not endure, like an iron nail being hammered through his temple.
His fingers began curling again, nails digging through the bandages into the wound in his palm.
The crowd kept pressing toward the back door.
A fat man in a gray polo shirt carrying a briefcase got shoved toward the corner by the people behind him.
His elbow was about to hit the hand resting at Huo Yan’s side, the hand wrapped in bandages, still bleeding from the glass cuts.
Shen Qingqing saw it. She did not shout.
There was no time.
She spun around and planted both hands behind her against the bus wall beside Huo Yan.
The fat man’s elbow slammed into her back.
“Hiss!”
Her spine bent sharply, teeth biting down on her lower lip.
That elbow had landed squarely between her shoulder blades. Her bones creaked audibly.
She did not move.
Her arms braced on either side of Huo Yan, palms pressed flat against the metal wall, flip flops planted firmly against the floor, knees locked straight. She stood there like a wall, shielding him completely.
“Brother, squeeze forward a little. There’s no room here.”
The words forced themselves out between Shen Qingqing’s clenched teeth.
The fat man glared at her. “You think I want to come over here? People behind me are pushing!”
“Then don’t push this way! There’s an injured person here!”
“What injured person?”
“My man hurt his hand. Nobody can touch him. Can you move over there?”
The fat man muttered under his breath, shifted his briefcase to the other side, and pulled his elbow back.
Shen Qingqing kept her arms braced up without lowering them.
Another surge of people crowded in through the middle door, and the density inside the bus climbed again. Someone stepped on the strap of her flip flop, crushing her toes hard enough to make her suck in a breath, but she said nothing.
Pressure layered against her back from every direction, shoulders, lower back, the back of her head, pressed by other people’s arms, backpacks, and plastic bags.
Still she held.
Her two hands remained planted against the bus wall on either side of Huo Yan’s shoulders, boxing him inside.
Protected by her body, Huo Yan stood untouched. No one brushed against him.
Half a meter.
Inside this metal can packed with more than sixty people, she had carved out half a meter of space for him using her own body.
Huo Yan’s breathing shifted from ragged to completely still.
Her back was right in front of his nose. The faded gray T-shirt had been washed so many times the collar sagged open, exposing the strip of skin from the back of her neck down to her collarbone.
His nose nearly brushed her nape.
Soap! Not the cheap perfume the original owner used.
Soap! The kind of sulfur soap sold in supermarkets for two yuan a bar.
His heightened sense of smell latched onto that scent like a drowning man grabbing onto a rope. The surrounding odors of sweat, chives, and rubber all faded away behind it.
She was panting.
Her back rose and fell with every breath. Each inhale pushed her shoulder blades outward, brushing lightly against his chest.
She was exerting herself.
Not casually, not lightly. Her whole body was straining under the pressure.
Someone shoved into her from the side, knocking her elbow inward. Her arm bent, then forced itself straight again. Her fingers dug into the rivets in the bus wall until her nails turned white.
“Mmph.”
A muffled sound escaped her nose before she swallowed it back down.
Huo Yan’s fingers stopped moving.
The hand that had been digging into his own wound finally went still.
His thumb loosened from his palm and dropped to his side, brushing against the back of the hand she had braced against the wall.
Her hand was trembling.
Not from fear. From muscles pushed to their absolute limit.
A tendon jumped visibly along the back of her hand from wrist to knuckle. Her fingers were pale, nails wedged into the seams around the rivets as she clung on with all her strength.
Huo Yan’s throat bobbed.
He opened his mouth but no sound came out.
The bus rounded a corner, and the entire crowd lurched left. Shen Qingqing’s left arm folded inward from the impact. She gritted her teeth and shoved back, her flip flop skidding across the floor.
“You…” Huo Yan’s voice rolled out rough and heavy.
“Shut up. Don’t talk.” Shen Qingqing forced the words out through clenched teeth. “I’m holding it. You just stay still.”
Huo Yan closed his mouth.
The back of his head rested against the bus wall, face lowered, nose pointed toward the back of her neck.
Her breathing slowly shifted from frantic to steady, each breath held in her chest for two seconds before leaving again, like someone trying to move a stone too heavy to lift.
He could hear her heartbeat.
It came through her back, heavy and steady like a drum.
This heart was shielding him.
Shielding him from everyone.
His fingers slowly lifted and touched the wrist she had braced against the wall.
The red rope was wrapped around that wrist, the nylon leaving a red mark against her skin. His fingertips brushed against that mark.
Shen Qingqing did not notice. Her focus remained entirely ahead.
Another woman carrying breakfast bags shoved this way, and Shen Qingqing blocked her with her shoulder.
“Sis, go that way. You can’t get through here!”
“The bus is this size everywhere!”
“There’s a sick person here, can’t you see?”
“A sick person? Then why’s he riding the bus?”
Shen Qingqing’s voice shot upward, veins standing out on her neck.
“So sick people aren’t allowed to ride buses? If you’ve got a problem, go complain to the bus company!”
The woman froze from the yelling and grumbled her way aside.
Huo Yan’s fingers remained resting on Shen Qingqing’s wrist without moving.
Her pulse beat beneath his fingertips, fast and hard, one beat after another without pause.
The bus rolled onto a rough stretch of road. The wheels hit potholes, jolting the entire bus twice.
Shen Qingqing’s foot slipped.
The strap of her flip flop slid off her foot, leaving her bare sole planted against the slick bus floor with no traction.
The bus jolted again. Her body tipped backward.
The strength left both arms braced against the wall. Her elbows buckled, and her center of gravity crashed backward.
Her back slammed into Huo Yan’s chest.
Not leaned.
Slammed!
Her hundred-plus pounds hit him with full momentum. The back of her head cracked against his collarbone, their bodies pressed tightly together from chest to stomach without a single gap.
Huo Yan’s back hit the metal wall with a heavy thud.
Both his arms froze suspended in midair, fingers spread wide. Blood seeped through the bandages into the gaps between them.
Shen Qingqing’s hair spilled all over his chest, that soap scent exploding around him like someone had shoved an entire bar beneath his nose.
The back of her head rested beneath his chin, her breathing brushing against his throat.
Shen Qingqing froze for a second.
“Fuck.”
She cursed once, trying to push herself upright with her hands against his arms, but her bare foot slipped again. Her flip flop had vanished somewhere beneath the crowd, leaving her bare foot against the sticky floor.
Huo Yan had gone rigid from head to toe. The air inside his chest felt frozen solid, unable to move in or out.
The warmth of her body pressed against him through her back, scorching every inch of his skin.
“Don’t move, I’ll get up myself.” Shen Qingqing’s muffled voice came from against his chest.
Her fingers dug into his arm as she pushed upward.
Then the bus slammed on the brakes again.
Her body fell backward once more, even harder this time. Her full weight crashed into him, dragging his arms forward with her as the red rope tangled between their wrists.
Huo Yan’s hand landed on her waist.