Chapter 2

That night, I fell into a bizarre, kaleidoscopic dream.

I dreamed of the first time I met Xu Qing.

It was a long, dim rainy season.

Back in elementary school, I was often mocked by classmates as the “parentless black loach.” After saving up travel money for a long time, I secretly took a long-distance bus to the city.

Following the vague address my grandmother had repeated, I found my mother’s new home.

I hid behind a flowerbed, watching the woman in a beautiful dress, holding a little girl’s hand, smiling as they walked out of the corridor.

I didn’t cry, just felt cold-so cold that even my bones were shivering.

With nowhere to go, I wandered aimlessly, finally sheltering from the rain under the eaves of a small supermarket.

Rainwater streamed down the eaves like a curtain.

Then, I saw him.

He was truly good-looking, like someone from the posters I’d seen on the neighbor’s old TV.

Fair skin, slightly long hair, long eyelashes, a high nose bridge.

His fingers held a cigarette with a hint of awkwardness.

In the moment when the smoke was scattered by the wind,

I saw the faint redness at the corners of his eyes, and shoulders that seemed to tremble slightly from holding something back.

There was a breathtaking, fragile beauty about him.

I didn’t know why, but I felt so wronged.

Thinking of my mother’s smiling face just now, the classmates’ mockery at school, my grandmother’s hunched back, my own drenched, miserable self with nowhere to go…

My throat felt clogged with a lump of sand, swelling and aching.

Then, I burst into tears!

Mixed with the rain dripping from my hair, salty and bitter.

He was startled by my crying, looked up at me.

Through the rain and mist, our eyes met.

The boy quickly stubbed out his cigarette, stood up, seeming ready to leave.

But I, as if finding some kind of anchor, or the comfort of shared misery, followed him on impulse.

Like a stray dog.

He walked faster, I walked faster.

He stopped, I stopped.

Finally.

He turned around at last, frowning, “Why are you following me? Go home!”

I stubbornly stood there, silent.

My face was wet all over, impossible to tell rain from tears.

He glared at me for a while, then irritably rummaged in his pocket, pulled out a shiny coin, and tossed it to me.

“This is the only coin I have.”

“Take it, go home.”

The coin traced a faint silver arc.

Instinctively, I reached out and caught it.

It still carried the faint warmth from his fingertips.

I gripped the coin tightly.

When I looked up again, he had already turned and walked away, his figure swallowed by the hazy curtain of rain.

I jolted awake from the dream.

Outside, the sky was just beginning to lighten.

The room was so quiet I could hear my still-unsteady heartbeat.

It seemed my palm still held the cold touch of that coin from the dream.

And the burning, aching illusion left by his fierce kiss last night.