I

The glaring-white sun laid its glaring-white love upon her glaring-white face. The world was a transparent white. The electric light flickered; its pallid body was covered in last words. This bulb would soon be replaced; it would be dismembered in the process of being discarded, and he would be mixed in among all manner of garbage, until finally he would lose all connection to the electric light and merge completely with the surrounding filth. This was the remainder of the bulb’s life — I watched it strain with all its might to shine, and still its light could never reach a single strand of her hair. The remainder of its life was as pitiful as the thin light it now cast, yet it made me feel it was painful to look at.

Sunlight spread over this boundless land; there was no room for the bulb’s reflection in the window anymore. She looked at the window. I looked at her.

Mutual silence occupied a large part of both our lives. Watching her, I was always trying to understand her thoughts, her existence. Wind moved her long hair — not sea wind. I had long since grown familiar with the view outside the window, but whenever she appeared in my field of vision, everything turned strange and yet unsurprising again, like a portrait from memory.

She turned over on the sofa, sending her wavy long hair cascading down. She held up a fashion magazine, reading it in the morning sun. She dozed off in the sunlight. The sun caressed her body freely — this was the sunlight I had revered all my life. Pale yellow light filtered through the thin curtains; the porcelain on the tea table caught a golden glow, and the tablecloth was not spared either.

I pushed open the kitchen’s glass door, set down my mug, and prepared to pour a cup of coffee. There was only three days’ worth of the single-serve sachets left; the instant coffee tin was almost empty too. I frowned faintly, hesitated, assessed my current energy levels, and deliberated over whether to drink coffee today. Coffee swirled through my mind, sending up its tempting aroma. Would it be sweet or bitter? This question was suspended, but more questions arrived in quick succession: what kind of coffee would I make? Did I still have the ingredients? Should I give this cup to her? After the coffee ran out, would my erratic schedule still affect my accumulated, sluggish consciousness? Was the coffee I might soon be making also just a placebo? Did I really need coffee? Did I really need coffee to change my life? And why did coffee make me feel it could change my life at all? Was it really only the so-called stimulant effect and the delicious taste? I found my eyes closing on their own, and I swayed my empty mug.

I should cut down the overgrown wasteland of my consciousness and let questions die before they’re born.

The kitchen curtain was drawn, leaving a narrow gap for light to come through. Outside there was little noise; all I could hear was the rustle of wind through leaves. The room faced away from the light, so the space was already cool; my clothes were too thin, and the breeze coming through the gap gave me a shudder. The wrist holding the mug had grown a little sore.

She slowly sat up and went to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. “When was this water from?” she asked me.

I couldn’t quite remember. I also hadn’t noticed when she’d turned over on the sofa, straightened her hair, set down the magazine, and picked up her mug. I set down my mug and made a vague sound. It seemed I wasn’t entirely certain about the answer to her question either. I glanced at the refrigerator; the magnets we’d bought on a trip were still on it. A sudden wave of unease came over me. The raised surface of the magnets caught the light; I noticed one was missing a corner. My stomach ached dully. How quiet it was. She said nothing, and neither did I. Spring morning, two people frozen still, the green outside flowing together. Two people standing back to back and side by side. Faded filter, clumsy film. Why had it stopped playing? Frames jumped; my eyes blinked. Spring — leaves not yet budded, grass not yet thick, shadows crooked and irregular, at odds with the blocky shapes of the buildings.

When she saw I wasn’t answering and raised the glass to her lips, I suddenly remembered the water was from yesterday. She set the glass down; I didn’t hear any sound. I don’t know how much difference there is between a digestive tablet and a placebo, but I swallowed three of them anyway.

II

Afternoon. The stomach was working hard, digesting food and thought.

Finished eating, I left the table and walked to the balcony. The balcony was small; from here I could look out over the whole compound. This compound of mine had never had anything other than an elderly, shuffling pace and the noise of new sounds, but now both were gone. Midday was when the sky cleared and the sunlight grew fierce; the light was pleasant, the same orange-yellow as my living room. When we renovated, I had specifically asked for warm-toned light. Compared to the cold, impersonal white that unnerved me, warm light made me feel more at ease. I rested my arms on the railing.

The breeze was pleasant, but it bleached the view. I looked into the distance and found, behind a woven screen of leaves, a patch of crimson: peonies. Not camellias, I noted to myself.

She came toward me and rested her arms on the railing beside me to look out. The breeze turned back the hem of her sleeve, like a dancing white butterfly. The balcony was narrow; outside was quiet, nothing but the wind in the grass. I could hear her faint breathing.

Words circled inside my head; sunlight fell on her, fierce sunlight, burning sunlight. What was she thinking? When her eyes turned toward nature, what feeling rose inside her? Her skin was white and flawless — what a beautiful color. I couldn’t help lifting my arm, but I only used it to prop up my face.

She turned her gaze toward me. Her expression reminded me of the moment we met beneath the magnolia tree, when she looked up and our eyes met. In that moment, the rumble of cars on the road behind us seemed to amplify a thousandfold, yet the sound felt infinitely far away. The light blurred; the flow of the glare slowed, and I could make out the movement of the vast nebulae in her irises. The pupil at the center of her eyes stayed fixed on my gaze the whole time; I realized her pupils had never moved — everything else was moving. Suddenly, in the universe of her eye socket, I saw myself, and felt all at once how strange and how small I was. A trembling came over me unlike anything I had felt before.

“When will this kind of life end?” she murmured under her breath. I saw her look back out at the view. The words pulled me out of the memory but threw me into a pool of sadness.

When will this kind of life end? I asked myself in return. The fervent sunlight was gone; the wind was still blowing; the pale blue of the sky had dissolved into white. Clouds drifted aimlessly overhead like mirages, my beloved clouds. The coolness was deepening; tomorrow didn’t look so far away anymore, and I faintly felt the moon rising somewhere I couldn’t see. Already I was missing the sun of a moment ago.

I said, out of nowhere: “I feel like as long as you’re still here, there’s a chance it won’t rain tomorrow.” She turned her head and looked at me, stunned, and I found I couldn’t tell whether she’d put on any powder today.

III

In the afternoon, the sky turned overcast and a light rain began. The sound of birds calling gave me a slight sense of relief. But the air didn’t seem to freshen; it was somehow thick and sluggish.

Wind chimes in my mind rang out with a distant, clinking sound; reading a novel was nothing but rehearsing for a comedy, the hook of my thoughts swinging and swaying, and I grew gradually listless, my eyes staring blankly at the mirror of imagination. The lamp laughed dimly, laughed absurdly. In the brightly lit bathroom I sat in a daze, not feeling the softness of the latex seat cushion. I swallowed, and looked at myself in the mirror: my hair disheveled, my stubble unkempt, and I stared at my dark circles, my eye bags, and the dents on my nose from the heavy glasses. This was an ordinary person, an ordinary person without particular qualities. Look at that plastic chair. An ordinary-beyond-ordinary plastic chair, a wholesale plastic chair, pale blue, the back so soft it was obscene, offering not the slightest support. I despised its absurdly short legs. But the bathroom heater’s light was harsh; the latex seat cushion and solid wood armrests were giving me comfort, as if for the first time. A clean fragrance drifted over from the vanity, and the pleasant, liquid sound of it masked the sound of raindrops outside the window; my heart grew lightly intoxicated — but when she arrived, my heart grew infatuated: she was wearing a pale lavender pleated dress, a Givenchy style: clean and simple lines, layered inverted pleats like butterfly wings, light and elegant. The high neckline and side seams set off her skin, luminous and translucent as jade on the verge of shattering… the whole thing was dreamlike, why lavender? I asked her. This dress — I remembered it clearly — this was Givenchy, but why lavender? Shouldn’t it be a floral, pale pink? Shouldn’t it be a pale pink close to her skin tone? I was puzzled; she looked down demurely at her clothes, lightly biting her lip as she examined them. Ten or so seconds later, her innocent, deeply tender eyes met mine, and she asked me: “Why is it lavender?”

Wasn’t that supposed to be my question? I turned my head and looked at the mirror; her skirt billowed there, ethereal as a fairy’s. Startled, I turned back and looked at her pleats, still unnumbered beautiful flowing lines — but the inverted pleats had come apart, the scattered folds and trim joined together, and I could no longer make out the complete picture of the lines; all I could see were countless pale-pink, semi-transparent gauze streamlines slowly drifting before me, swaying with the curves of her body. What? This a moment ago was clearly no gauze petticoat — it seemed she had stepped backward half a century in a single glance. How could this possibly be Givenchy’s style? What had I just seen? This sudden change startled me; she asked: “What’s wrong with you? You look half-asleep.” I waved a hand and said it was nothing, just my eyes playing tricks. She pressed closer to me; the rich fragrance of her body sent another wave of dizziness through my head, and I looked at the dress again, but I only pursed my lips. She saw my complicated expression and laughed once, saying: “You really do look like you haven’t slept in days. Look at your eyes — they seem a bit too pure. Here, let me do your makeup. This is your first time wearing makeup, right? You’ve never had that experience before, have you? Then I’ll be the one to take your first time. 貴方の初・体・験.” I was a little bewildered, but even as I stood there dazed she had already placed her hands on my shoulders and was kneading them gently; my body softened immediately, and I sank into her touch. I could hear her soft breathing clearly; the sound quietly pierced my eardrums and crept into my mind, stimulating the secretion of dopamine, and I felt I was on the verge of something fracturing inside me. My body went numb and relaxed; the hand gripping the armrest held tighter. The air around me kept stirring, yet it seemed not to move at all. I lightly closed my eyes, but I hadn’t the heart to close my eyelids. In the end, the moonlight closed my eyes; I tilted back, and the blue plastic chair back bent backward too.

Hm?

I opened my eyes and saw one of her hands caressing my neck, the other moving through the makeup kit. The bathroom heater’s light was harsh; I felt the noble texture of the latex cushion and the solid wood armrests. Her face looked a little blurred in the mirror — probably the brief eye muscle fatigue of having just opened my eyes; I didn’t think much of it. Her hand moved like a fine breeze across my neck. What a perfect hand. I gazed, transfixed: her hand seemed connected to something sacred and pure — why else would it be so slender and refined? I thought of my own hands; a pang struck me, and the fair-faced lamp flickered a few times. I caught a whiff of disinfectant, but it disappeared when her hand lay fully against my face. I didn’t tilt my head to look at her; I knew that during makeup the head must not move — but I did shift my eyeballs to the left, and felt immediately the near-paralysis of the eye muscles and the blur in my left field of vision, so her face appearing blurred in the mirror really was an issue with my eyes. I felt both a little remorseful and a little reassured, thinking this. But this inexplicable tangle of feeling seemed to always leave a hidden needle in my heart, and by the time I noticed her outline appearing clearly in the mirror she had already cleaned my face.

She dipped a little lotion and patted and smoothed it gently across my face, pressing and stroking my skin and my heart. I felt the sensation, felt her infinitely soft hands pressing against my blood vessels. The vessels in my cheeks were melted by her at a touch; the warmth from her hands conducted through my cheekbones into my central nervous system. I felt the world before me was mixed and radiant; I seemed to become a sleepwalking Alice, a starship cowboy crossing time and music and culture. With my eyes closed, feeling her body and my left elbow brush each other from time to time without intention, the sound of strings began to rise; all around seemed to come a confused, indistinct cacophony of voices and traffic; my heart was the beat, my beat in sync with hers; her breathing was the melody, her breathing answering my reverie.

The hook sat alone on the wall. From primer to setting powder, I only blinked. Blank wallpaper — no, there was no wallpaper. She lowered herself to draw my eyebrows; my shoulders had grown a little numb. Scattered pages were not my focus; my clothes had no zipper. When eye shadow appeared around my eyes, tears appeared in my eye sockets. Were these tears of being moved? Tears of fatigue? Tears of grief? Tears of? When she applied mascara, I no longer watched her figure. The burning along my spine seemed like the greed of ruined petals; I mourned their inability to bloom.

She asked whether I wanted lip gloss; her voice made my heart contract, and I snapped my eyes open. The face in the mirror changed at an impossible speed, like the condensed evolution of the earth. Whenever I made out the red and blue within it I felt a spasm in my brain. The mirror was as calm and tumultuous as a surveillance camera. No sunlight! No moonlight! I nodded; my lips were handed over to her. She kissed me with the lip gloss in her hand, absorbed entirely, lost in it; the skin of my lips and the lip gloss blended together, rain and clouds descending, light shimmering on the surface of water, the air suffused with a thick sweet fragrance of flowers. Rolling peach color enveloped me; through the crevices of the walls, through the fragments of the wallpaper, I fell into that vast and empty lotus.

My face was bathed in golden light. She sat quietly beside me; I looked at the me in the mirror, and I was decomposing, ascending, condensing — I was undergoing the collapse of a theater: my unremarkable face had been made up into someone who did not look like me. My tears seemed to flow from my eyes; my makeup hadn’t smeared. My tears traveled down my cheekbones and jawline and dripped onto the pure white floor; my chair was blue. I wiped away the tears, and now my makeup smeared, my makeup truly smeared — but my makeup bloomed backward; the eye shadow extended onto the marble wall behind me, my blush seeped into the surface of the ceiling. The silent latex cushion and solid wood armrests received my astonishment. She had not spoken. Was she still standing there? She was sitting beside me. The sunset — there was no sunset. The bathroom heater was performing the sun’s proper role. And what color would tonight’s moon be? The blue-green twin tails had not swayed, had not moved; pink pajamas, don’t look at me like that; please don’t; I am unwilling to look at those white, slender legs; I, I should not meet those crystal-blue eyes; those misty, wordless strands of hair; my tangled hair brushed the strings of a qin with no bridges, no bridges…

“Linglong!” That was the sound of an oxygen tank toppling — the oxygen tank was entirely iron, yet it too had colorful reflections.

Her eyes. Her gown, her hands, her face.

I looked at my chair.

The color of the sky! This blue that belongs to the sky! The clearing-weather watercolor that bloomed across the sky seeped into my heart; I lost myself in imagining, embracing the boundless blue-green of a thousand grasses. I sank into the moon-white haze of intoxication; I dissolved away together with the pale cerulean of light smoke and water vapor.

IV

Approaching evening. The breath of dusk grew heavier.

I sat in front of the sofa watching television. The torrent of news was pressing me down, making it hard to breathe; my thoughts were occupied by it. I realized it was impossible for me to watch the news without being guided by the media, and so my mind began to go back and forth endlessly between these two options. My body was tired, and I was sprawled on the sofa; my eyes drifted to the window, ignoring the emotionally charged text on the TV. I glanced at my phone and immediately felt the information on it spinning like a cyclone, making my head swim. I always felt something blocked somewhere, something that wouldn’t flow easily. She came slowly down from upstairs, wearing a thin white garment. Beneath the white, the faint pink of her skin showed through, but her face was still pale. She walked toward me; from the television came the sound of the weather report: “The Shanghai Central Meteorological Station issued a yellow lightning warning at 13:30 on April 25, 2022: influenced by the eastward movement of a thunderstorm cloud cluster, it is forecast that within the next 24 hours most areas of this city will experience lightning activity, accompanied by short-term heavy rainfall of 20-40 mm per hour and thunderstorm-force winds of level 7-9. The Shanghai Central Meteorological Station issued a blue wind warning at 14:30 on April 25, 2022: influenced by a relatively strong thunderstorm cloud cluster, it is forecast that in the next 6 hours most areas of this city will experience northerly gusts of level 7-9. Please take precautions.” She saw the yellow and blue icons appear on the television, then looked at my dark expression and said: “Turn the TV off.”

I turned it off; she lay down on my lap. She picked up her phone; I listened to her breathing and mine, and picked up my phone too.

“Is the bread at home all gone?” she asked.

“Seems like there’s almost no bread left, just a few small rolls.”

“I want to go for a walk.”

“Where would you walk right now? What is there to see in the compound?”

“Yeah, that’s true. So… ugh.”

I gently stroked her hair and her back, gently breathing in her scent. The living room of just two was completely quiet; my thoughts seemed to have left my body; I felt I had retreated into an ocean of thought, but there was nothing in the ocean.

After a long silence, the rain began.

The desolate rain shattered against the balcony; the balcony was empty, nothing but a few iron posts. Thunder rolled again and again, the sky flickering like a broken screen. This rain seemed embedded in my throat; I looked miserably at the trees outside the window, how bewildered those trees were. The tallest one swayed its branches under the assault of the wind, every leaf tilting to the left, as if it might topple at any moment. The laundry racks swayed helplessly on the line; I had mercilessly quarantined them outside the window.

I wanted to hold her; I had her sit on my lap. Her complexion wasn’t great either, looking like she hadn’t slept well the night before, and her dark circles seemed to have deepened. This morning her spirits had been fine, but now she was the same as me, drowsy.

I leaned back and we looked at each other. From somewhere I caught the smell of disinfectant — faint, but I noticed it immediately.

“I want to sleep.” Her eyelids were already falling shut; her chest rose and fell.

“Mm.” I responded coolly, and suddenly felt how detached I was. Why was I treating her with this manner? I wanted to rephrase, but I didn’t know how to continue. Her body was completely relaxed, forming a beautiful curve. I held her; a wave of drowsiness came over me, and I wanted to sleep. I softly lowered my eyelids. Perhaps because my vision had been temporarily switched off, the sounds of this world were amplified. I listened to this world; I listened to her breathing; I listened to the rare sound of a car passing; I listened to the faint sounds of a neighbor’s movement, which stopped before long. I listened to countless drops of rain sliding down the glass panel of the balcony, countless drops of rain dripping from the eaves, countless drops of rain.

This was not what summer was supposed to feel like. Was it summer now?

I fell asleep.

V

I got up from the sofa. She was nowhere to be found. The rain had not stopped; every raindrop seemed to pound against my heart. The wind had quieted, the thunder gone; the sky, which had been a dark gray, was now thoroughly black. The living room light was still on, casting a harsh, pale light.

I found her shadow. I begged hysterically: “Forgive me, forgive me…”

The sour water from my heart flowed out through my eyes; I felt my body filled with cold. The corridor seemed to stretch an infinite distance; its dark corners were waiting for me to arrive, and I didn’t want to go. I felt invisible cameras monitoring my every movement; the dim corridor watched me like a crowd, and I avoided their gazes. Eyes, eyes, eyes! Eyes stretched wide, leering at me. I would ordinarily despise these malicious pupils, but now all I felt was fear. The cold was bone-deep; I walked forward with my head down, trembling.

At the corner, I saw her eyes, like starry sky. She stood motionless, sadly watching my humble, lonely body. Her stance was a little unstable; I felt she might shatter at any moment. I had wanted to embrace her and weep, to hold her and pour out everything, to let her see through my half-rotted heart — and then she would heal it, and then starting tomorrow I would wake each morning to face the rising sun, and then I would warmly and sincerely become part of this world. In an instant my eyes became rivers; countless tears poured from them. I wept loudly; I wanted to give her everything, and then she would give it all back to me; only then could I embrace myself, embrace everything I was, embrace her. Her cheeks were pink — where had I ever seen that color? I thought of the streaks of sunset at the horizon, but those streaks of sunset always hung far above in the sky. I no longer longed for the sunset, because her face surpassed it.

But my eyes did not meet hers.

I found I was looking at a mirror.

The water cup wailed. The sorrowful white garment was silent. The toilet paper had run out; the toothpaste and face wash were caked with accumulated residue. The moisturizer had never been opened; the electric toothbrush had been forgotten and left uncharged; the bathroom heater was dark; and the electric light mocked my tears as they mixed into the running tap water.

The rain had not stopped.