Chapter 68: P. The Cold Front Approaches

Su Hui slipped away from the car with no phone, no money, wearing an expensive coat, wandering the streets on memory alone until he found himself standing beneath Ning Yixiao’s office building.

It was the closest place to him. It was where Ning Yixiao was most likely to be at this hour.

He waited downstairs for ten minutes, found the time unbearable, and walked inside. He’d come often enough that the security guard recognized him and greeted him warmly.

“Hey, aren’t you the young man who’s always here waiting for someone? Dressed pretty formally today.”

Su Hui had no patience for small talk. “Uncle, could you let me up to find someone?”

The guard hesitated, then buzzed him through. “Sign in first.”

Su Hui signed in and took the elevator to Ning Yixiao’s floor. The receptionist stopped him and asked if he had an appointment.

“No. I just need to find someone who works here. His name is Ning Yixiao.”

The receptionist looked uncertain. “Is this an urgent matter? We don’t allow visitors without authorization.”

“I only need to see him for a moment. He’s in the tech department. He really does work here.”

As they spoke, someone walked out from inside, glanced at Su Hui, and asked the receptionist, “What’s going on? Someone looking for someone?”

The receptionist nodded. “Yes, Manager Zhang. This gentleman is looking for Ning Yixiao in the tech department.”

Su Hui turned toward the man immediately, but before he could speak, the man said something Su Hui could never have anticipated.

“Ning Yixiao — yes, I remember him. Intern in the tech department. He didn’t pass the probationary evaluation. He already left yesterday.”

The man walked off, leaving Su Hui standing there.

He turned it over for a long time and couldn’t make it make sense. How could Ning Yixiao possibly fail an evaluation?

If Ning Yixiao couldn’t pass, who could?

Su Hui wanted to demand an explanation, but he was afraid that once he lost his temper he wouldn’t be able to stop, that he’d fall apart right there like a person truly out of their mind.

But he could not understand it. Why were they doing this to Ning Yixiao? What gave them the right?

He drifted through the streets like a lost soul, walking until his legs ached, and eventually made his way back to the place he and Ning Yixiao called home. Like the first time he’d run away, he’d come without his keys. He crouched in front of their door, head bowed. The days apart had been too long, and fragments of real memory kept surfacing, one after another, until he couldn’t breathe.

About half an hour passed. Then he heard footsteps in the stairwell.

He looked up. Ning Yixiao’s legs appeared in front of him — right there — but Su Hui couldn’t manage to stand.

“Su Hui?” Ning Yixiao was carrying shopping bags, apparently just back from the market. He came forward and helped him to his feet. “What are you doing back on your own? Where’s your key? I was thinking of going to find you today.”

Su Hui didn’t answer. He waited until the door was open and closed behind them before he finally pulled Ning Yixiao in tight.

He buried his face against his collarbone and breathed him in greedily, that clean, soft scent, the warmth of his skin.

Ning Yixiao stroked his hair very gently, bent to press his lips to the top of his head, and held him. “Did something happen with your family? Are you upset?”

Su Hui shook his head and pushed everything stirring underneath back down. His voice came out rough. “Ning Yixiao, I missed you so much.”

A hint of warmth entered Ning Yixiao’s voice. He didn’t think a few days was nothing — instead he said: “I missed you too. A lot.”

Su Hui knew he’d been unable to reach him and must have been worried for days, so he explained: “They took my phone. I couldn’t contact you. Today I used my grandmother’s phone to call.”

“I guessed as much. It’s okay.” Ning Yixiao loosened his hold slightly and touched Su Hui’s face. He could tell he’d been crying — his eyelids were a little swollen. He bent and kissed them softly.

“Baby. No more being sad, all right?”

Hearing that word, Su Hui almost broke. He thought: even with all those signs, all those brutal examples right in front of him, the moment he saw Ning Yixiao, the moment those arms closed around him, he still couldn’t bear to let go. He was still so selfishly, desperately unwilling to give this up.

“Okay.” Su Hui took a deep breath and arranged his face into something that looked like happiness. He looked down at the shopping bags. “What did you buy? So much.”

“Things you like.” Ning Yixiao said, “I was planning to come find you today. Thought if I could bring you back, I’d make you something good to eat.”

“Then I want steamed egg custard.” Su Hui looked up, smiling at him with the request.

“Done. Whatever you want.”

Ning Yixiao wouldn’t let Su Hui help, wouldn’t even let him into the kitchen, so Su Hui stood in the doorway and watched in silence. The kitchen light fell across Ning Yixiao’s tall silhouette and blurred the edges, and slowly, slowly, his outline shrank in Su Hui’s eyes until he became the small child from his dream — the one who looked like a stray.

Su Hui watched this little Ning Yixiao move back and forth, making food for him, making food for his mother who was hurt and sick, and he felt a sudden urge to pray — to the Buddha, to God, to anyone who would listen — please let everything start again. Let Ning Yixiao be born into a family that loves him. Don’t make him suffer so much.

His life had been so hard. Su Hui didn’t want him to keep suffering.

At dinner Su Hui sat pressed against his side like a clingy cat, eating enormously beside his person, with such obvious satisfaction that Ning Yixiao couldn’t help laughing at him. “Were you starving yourself the whole time? You’re eating like you haven’t had a meal in days.”

Su Hui laughed too, then inhaled wrong and coughed until his eyes watered.

“Slow down.” Ning Yixiao patted his back. “If you like it, I’ll make it again tomorrow.”

“Can you put shrimp in it tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

The apartment was tiny — one bedroom, one “living room” that was smaller than the bedroom itself, barely enough space for a two-seat sofa and nothing else. But for some reason Su Hui felt completely safe here. It was so small that wherever he was, he could see Ning Yixiao. He could always hear his voice.

They did the dishes together. They turned on the TV and watched an embarrassingly clichéd drama, its romantic dialogue delivered with zero conviction — but Su Hui found himself a little envious. The leads had bonds that spanned lifetimes. Even if they missed each other once, there was always another chance. And another after that.

If only he and Ning Yixiao had that many chances.

“Can we change it?” Ning Yixiao apparently couldn’t tolerate the writing any longer.

Su Hui smiled and leaned into him. “You don’t have to watch.” He reached up and turned Ning Yixiao’s face toward him, and kissed him once, lightly. “You can look at me.”

Ning Yixiao actually did it — holding his gaze in quiet stillness.

Somewhere in Su Hui’s mind surfaced something he’d heard once: that two people in love will cry if they look at each other for twenty seconds.

He didn’t want to cry in front of him. So he reached up, looped his arms around Ning Yixiao’s neck, and kissed him deeply.

The cold room filled with warmth, degree by degree. Su Hui closed his eyes. His hands cradled Ning Yixiao’s face as they kissed, and something in it was different from before — there had always been desire, but now there was also a kind of reverence.

The television played out its predictable reunion scene, the lead character suffering from amnesia, unable to remember the one they loved. Su Hui, bare-skinned in Ning Yixiao’s arms, felt a shiver move through him. He kissed Ning Yixiao’s hand and thought: no matter what comes, please don’t forget me.

It isn’t death that ends a life. It’s being forgotten.

The television cut to silence. Ning Yixiao carried him back to the bedroom and laid him on the bed that belonged to both of them, and came down over him like a mountain giving way, and gave him many kisses.

Su Hui was like a flower that had been closed for a long time, sealed shut for days, and Ning Yixiao’s warm hands opened him. He saw the line of tattooed text on Su Hui’s body — because Su Hui had written it following the direction of his own hand, it had to be read in reverse, so they tried a position they’d never used before, and even when Su Hui’s mind went nearly blank, he found himself thinking of an ouroboros.

“More than one night.”

Ning Yixiao spoke the English aloud as he traced the ink.

Not just one night.

He turned back and kissed Su Hui’s face. “Does it hurt?”

Su Hui shook his head first, then quickly admitted that yes, it did — like being split apart.

“It took a long time… the tattoo.”

“Who did it for you?” Ning Yixiao caught his lower lip between his teeth, with some edge in it.

Su Hui’s eyes were wet and glassy. “…Me. I did it myself. In the bathroom, secretly.”

Ning Yixiao stilled. Then he kissed him very deeply.

The night felt extraordinarily long, or so it seemed to Su Hui — he actually lost consciousness at one point, though when he surfaced Ning Yixiao told him he’d only been asleep for twenty minutes.

“Can this be removed?” Ning Yixiao held him partly against his chest and reached under the blanket to massage his lower back. “The tattoo.”

Su Hui shook his head and lied. “No.”

Ning Yixiao wasn’t so easily fooled. “I’ve seen signs in tattoo shop windows offering removal services.”

Caught, Su Hui simply asked without any particular shame: “Do you want me to remove it?”

“No.” Ning Yixiao, in a rare moment, was purely a twenty-something boy in love. He kissed his person. “I’m glad you put me on your body. I’m happy about it. I just don’t want anyone else seeing it.”

Su Hui’s ears went warm. He buried his face in the blanket. “Who said it was you…”

Ning Yixiao pressed harder on the spot he was massaging, just enough to make Su Hui yelp like a startled cat.

“It’s you, it’s you.” Su Hui immediately surrendered. “Lighter, please.”

“I thought you liked it.”

Su Hui had no comeback. He bit his other hand in protest.

When the light went off the room fell dark all at once, and Ning Yixiao held Su Hui the way he always did, arms around him as they slept. It was the first time Su Hui had ever lain in his arms and been unable to feel safe enough, no matter how tightly he held on.

He asked very quietly: “Ning Yixiao, are you asleep?”

“No. What is it?”

The answer settled him a little. He thought for a moment. “Promise me something. Don’t hate your name anymore.”

He didn’t want Ning Yixiao’s only feeling about that name to be the pain of his mother’s hopeless love. Let there be something lighter in it.

Ning Yixiao wasn’t sure what had brought this on, but he went along with it. “I don’t hate it anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because we have more than one night.”

Su Hui was glad it was dark. He cried quietly into it.

Then he heard Ning Yixiao speak again, and call him little cat.

“What if we ran away,” Ning Yixiao said. “Hid on a small island somewhere no one could find us.”

Su Hui smiled. “Ning Yixiao. You’re talking in your sleep.”

Ning Yixiao smiled too. “You don’t want to?”

Su Hui didn’t dare say yes. Couldn’t bring himself to say no. He pulled the blanket over his head. “It’s so cold.”

Ning Yixiao didn’t push him for an answer. He just held on tighter. “Feels like it might snow.”

A moment later: “We’ve never watched the snow together.”

Su Hui hid beneath the blanket, a thorough coward.

He had never thought that Ning Yixiao, who wanted so fiercely to succeed, to make something of himself, would let himself dream something this foolish — like his mother all over again, replaying the same story.

Eloping. That kind of thing had no place in Ning Yixiao’s life. It couldn’t.

Ning Yixiao was meant for the greatest cities, meant to become one of the finest people in the world. He could not be allowed to end up trapped on some small and impoverished island for the sake of love.

Su Hui didn’t sleep at all that night, but he didn’t dare shift around for fear of disturbing him. The dark gradually sharpened his vision until he could see without any light — Ning Yixiao’s face, the lines of his arm, the clean cut of his features and the depth of his eyes.

Su Hui became something ancient and still, an old rubbing-press, trying to memorize all of it, piece by piece, into his heart.

Near dawn he finally closed his eyes, but the shallow sleep lasted only an hour. Half-conscious, he felt Ning Yixiao get up. The bed went half-empty.

Then from somewhere beyond the almost-closed door came a muffled voice. The gap wasn’t enough to block it entirely, and Su Hui was acutely attuned to that voice.

He got up and stood behind the door, listening.

“I don’t understand — you’re saying my visa has been rejected, but it isn’t peak season, and I applied for the kind that allows four months’ advance processing…”

Ning Yixiao’s voice dropped. Silence for a beat. Then: “When can I reapply?”

“Next month… all right. Thank you.”

“Wait — can I ask why it was rejected?”

“Nothing at all you can tell me?”

“…Thank you.”

Su Hui went cold all through, as though he’d fallen into ice. He thought again of what he’d seen at Ning Yixiao’s company.

He didn’t believe any of this was coincidence. The world didn’t hold this many coincidences.

He went back to bed and talked himself into calmness. A moment later, Ning Yixiao opened the door and found him already awake.

“You’re up early. Hungry? I threw something together — come eat when you’re ready.”

Su Hui asked, “Where are you going?”

Ning Yixiao smiled. “Where would I go? It’s Wednesday. Work.”

He looked completely composed. If Su Hui hadn’t already been to the office, if he hadn’t already known everything, he might actually have been fooled.

Ning Yixiao put on his coat, came over and kissed Su Hui’s cheek, then hugged him with some reluctance to let go. “Little cat, why do you look unhappy?”

Su Hui shook his head. “I’m not. Don’t worry about me.” He put his arms around Ning Yixiao’s waist. “Go. You have things to do.”

He knew how panicked Ning Yixiao must be right now, how urgently he must want to rush back to the university and talk to his professors. Sure enough, Ning Yixiao left in a hurry — though not before leaving Su Hui a key.

Su Hui got up. Changed clothes. Pocketed cab fare. Then, face set, took a car directly to the hospital where Ji Tailü was admitted.

As he stepped out, the wind hit him with brutal force. In the hospital lobby, a weather forecast was playing on the waiting room television.

“Due to an upper-level trough and incoming cold air mass, the city will see its first snowfall of the winter over the next two days, with heavy snow expected in some areas…”