In the Hot Spring

Lin Yang pulled herself out of her daze and met Xu Zhitong’s gaze through the hazy white mist. Their eyes, still clear, held each other for a moment.

Then Lin Yang said slowly, “Idiot.”

?

Xu Zhitong gave a short laugh, still not quite reacting, when she heard Lin Yang continue.

“Want to kiss?”

Lin Yang tilted her head slightly. Perhaps because she looked so unhurried, her eyes narrowed just a little.

The strands of hair hanging by her cheek were damp at the ends from the steam, a few clinging to her face like some beautiful spirit from a movie, just born from the water and taking human form.

Xu Zhitong instantly forgot what Lin Yang had said a moment ago.

She parted her lips, sitting there without moving like a rookie mushroom just out in the world.

While she was still stunned, she heard Lin Yang laugh softly.

This time, she drew the question out a little, asking lazily, “Want to try kissing in the hot spring?”

Her voice drifted away at the end, light and airy.

Xu Zhitong couldn’t help a soft gasp.

Soaking in the warm water, her body temperature kept climbing too.

A little shy, she could only think that Lin Yang looked so fond of her;

and then think that Lin Yang being this proactive was really, really charming.

Xu Zhitong had no intention of refusing. She braced herself on the edge of the tub and leaned in nervously. Water droplets still clung to her lips from the pool, only to be licked away by Lin Yang soon after.

Ah.

Xu Zhitong had only wanted a gentle, romantic kiss; she hadn’t expected Lin Yang to stick out her tongue first and lick her. Xu Zhitong lowered her head, her lashes trembling rapidly, and soon moved to take Lin Yang’s tongue into her mouth.

The happiest couples in the world should probably be like this: able to kiss fiercely, and also able to kiss softly, entwining just like that.

The rounded edge of the tub was wet and slippery, not very good for support. Xu Zhitong slowly adjusted her posture, bending forward and kneeling beside Lin Yang; then, almost entirely relying on the buoyancy of the hot spring, she ended up half-sitting on her lap.

Her arms were looped around Lin Yang’s shoulders too. In the steaming water, they kissed for a while, then Xu Zhitong lifted her eyes to look at her.

Her gaze was misty, as if she were already not quite clear-headed.

In a low voice, Xu Zhitong asked, “Will we always be this happy?”

When she asked it, even she didn’t seem to know why a thought like that would rise up just when she felt so happy.

Lin Yang said, “Yes. I’ll always like you.”

Xu Zhitong blinked. “Compared to the me before, do you like the me now more?”

There she went again, asking a question with a built-in death sentence.

Lin Yang said, “I don’t like either of you.”

Xu Zhitong got mad and bit the flesh of Lin Yang’s cheek, leaving a faint tooth mark.

She said, “I don’t believe you. You just said you’d always like me. Fine, if you like both versions of me, that works too.”

Maybe the hot spring had finally brought out the alcohol she’d drunk earlier. Xu Zhitong rarely felt this light-headed. She looked at the two faint tooth marks on Lin Yang’s face, her own satisfaction rising.

Marked. That was her wife.

Xu Zhitong hummed smugly to herself.

“If tomorrow you don’t know which way to go, then stay by my side and be my wife, okay? Even my not-so-broad arms can still be your warm embrace~”

So cheesy.

But she hummed it seriously, and it somehow sounded a little moving too.

Lin Yang let out a soft laugh. “You’re ridiculous.”

She bit off the two words slowly.

Xu Zhitong said, “You’re cursing me again.”

Then she lowered her head and bit Lin Yang’s shoulder.

This time she used more force. Lin Yang hissed and tugged her up. “No random biting.”

Xu Zhitong obediently said, “Okay,” then looked at Lin Yang in confusion for a while before tilting her head and leaning her cheek against Lin Yang’s shoulder.

Her posture was a little awkward, like a big koala; her back had to arch, and her breathing fell quietly against Lin Yang’s neck.

Maybe she really had drunk a little too much; neither of them said much after that.

The music and the sound of the hot spring water flowed on in quiet currents.

Xu Zhitong asked, “Then, will you always be with me?”

Lin Yang paused. “…Mm.”

Xu Zhitong lifted her face, frowning at her, determined to squeeze out an answer even from a simple grunt. “What does ‘mm’ mean?”

“..."

Lin Yang stated a neutral fact. “You might not always need me.”

Xu Zhitong took that as slander, or perhaps as the consequences of her own past sins.

She said, “How could I not need you...”

Her tone dropped, and on instinct she first felt wronged, then started to act coquettish.

She leaned closer, almost nose to nose with Lin Yang, and asked in a hurt, clingy voice, “Wouldn’t you always need me too?”

Lin Yang’s heart, which had only just hardened for two seconds, immediately softened right back down.

“...Yes.”

Xu Zhitong snorted. “Exactly. I feel the same about you, too. You idiot.”

She copied the Cantonese tone Lin Yang had just used on her, saying the words “you idiot” with rigid seriousness.

Usually, when she was learning Cantonese songs and matched the intonation, she sounded pretty convincing.

But just saying Cantonese on its own made her sound clumsy.

After she finished, she realized her pronunciation wasn’t quite right and frowned as she repeated, “Idi...ot?”

It was adorable.

Lin Yang’s eyes curved as she looked at Xu Zhitong. “Gan dou ga?”

Xu Zhitong didn’t understand the Cantonese at all. “What does that mean? What does that mean?”

Lin Yang said, “It means you’re cute.”

Xu Zhitong eyed her suspiciously. “Really? Da yi means cute in Cantonese?”

Lin Yang said, “Mm. Very cute; that’s what it means.”

Xu Zhitong repeated after her, “Very cute.”

She pronounced the character for “very” especially crisply, then made herself happy with it. Smiling, she kissed the tip of Lin Yang’s nose and said, “Your Cantonese sounds so nice. Say more.”

Lin Yang raised her brows. “Ngo m zi dim gong wo...”

It was obvious she could say it, but simply didn’t want to say it for her.

Xu Zhitong could understand this sentence. She loved the way Lin Yang sounded when she spoke Cantonese; her eyes shone as she looked at her, falling in love for the eight-hundredth time.

Sweetly, she said, “Say something romantic. Say you like me.”

Lin Yang looked at Xu Zhitong, who was practically about to pounce into her arms, and said slowly,

“Mm, I really like...

a bb pig.”

“Pig?” Xu Zhitong looked baffled. “What does that mean?”

Lin Yang answered in clear Mandarin, “Pig.”

Xu Zhitong’s eyes widened slightly. She stared at Lin Yang for a while, then tried to resist. “I shouldn’t be a piggy? Other people say things like that when they’re being romantic.”

Lin Yang smiled. “How do you say it? Isn’t it... do you know I really like you, bb pig?”

“...” Xu Zhitong coughed lightly, her face going red.

Then piggy it was.

She copied Lin Yang’s tone and said, “I also... really like you.”

After saying it, she lowered her head, her face burning. Pressing her lips together, she told Lin Yang, “I’m done for, Yangbao. I’m going to like you for the rest of my life, cling to you forever.”

Lin Yang smiled.

Though feelings changed in an instant and no one could say what would happen for sure, Xu Zhitong, who had lost her memory and was sitting right in front of her now, genuinely liked her. They were in love.

Even if it was only for this moment, Lin Yang was willing to give Xu Zhitong everything she had, whether it was real or not.

She touched Xu Zhitong’s face. “What else do you want to hear, bb?”

Xu Zhitong said, “I want to hear a Cantonese song.”

Lin Yang laughed helplessly. “You sing so well. I’m just an outsider, I wouldn’t dare show off in front of the expert.”

Xu Zhitong had already turned down the volume on the Bluetooth music.

She said, “There’s one you definitely know how to sing. The one that was playing on the bus during our freshman-year autumn outing. What was it called again...”

Lin Yang remembered.

When Xu Zhitong turned back around, she nudged her again with her wet nose like a little dog.

Lin Yang picked up the wineglass beside her and took a small sip.

Maybe the wine tasted sweet, but its proof wasn’t low; after playing tabletop games for so long, both of them were already a little tipsy.

She surprisingly didn’t resist much, and quietly started to sing.

“May I ride a rocket and take you to the sky; in space, the two of us will live...”

Most people’s singing voice is not quite the same as their speaking voice.

Lin Yang was the same. She rarely sang, so in middle school, probably no one except Xu Zhitong knew that Lin Yang, whose speaking voice was cool and faintly distant, had such a sweet singing voice.

Even with not quite enough breath, her voice trembling faintly, it was still sweet to listen to, like a pool of syrupy water.

It wasn’t hard to hear the inexperience and nervousness, the traces of someone who rarely sang; but it was very, very beautiful.

Xu Zhitong felt like her heart was about to melt from it.

She was almost drunk too.

By the chorus, Lin Yang couldn’t push her voice any higher; it cracked a little, and she blushed and refused to sing any more.

Xu Zhitong said she was cute, her mind getting a little muddled too, and braced herself against the tub’s edge before biting lightly at Lin Yang’s lips, kissing her.

The kiss didn’t last very long, because Xu Zhitong quickly moved on to peck along the fair line of Lin Yang’s neck and shoulders, as if she wanted to leave another mark when the pulse there jumped. Lin Yang’s face was red; she lifted a hand, probably meaning to stop her, but in the end she didn’t.

But Xu Zhitong still didn’t touch her. She kissed her lightly through the swimsuit and said with a trace of regret, “Ah, I promised I wouldn’t eat you tonight.”

Lin Yang was holding onto the tub’s edge, still dazed, when Xu Zhitong lifted her from the water by the waist and placed her on the shore.

Xu Zhitong was probably really a little drunk. Her gaze was fixed and intense, and everything she did seemed to follow instinct. When she hoisted Lin Yang out of the water, she didn’t hold back much, and when she let go, her hand kneaded over Lin Yang’s waist.

But then she turned around, fetched a bath towel and robe from beside them, and placed them behind Lin Yang.

Lin Yang didn’t understand what was going on, but soon she realized from the sensation at her navel; it seemed that she had come out of the water too abruptly, and the feeling of water flowing down her soft lines had been carried with her. Xu Zhitong was drying her off.

Xu Zhitong was probably kneeling in front of the hot spring, half a body-length lower than her, with a very service-minded attitude. But because she was slightly drunk, she couldn’t quite judge direction, and after fussing over her for a while, she fumbled out some fruit from the platter beside them, peeled it, and set the skin aside, staring at the white flesh as if she were either drunk or daydreaming.

A little red.

Xu Zhitong didn’t know that these were marks left earlier when Lin Yang had washed herself and pressed against them before entering the hot spring.

She only thought they were proof that her past self had once shared happiness and sweetness with Lin Yang.

That even gave rise to a jealousy that had no basis at all. She looked up at Lin Yang with a half-wronged, half-defiant expression, tucked her wet hair behind her ear, revealing a delicate and almost aggressive face, then lowered her head and kissed Lin Yang with her tongue before her lips even landed.

At the very first kiss, Lin Yang almost immediately turned her face away, breathing fast and hard.

She fell back onto the soft towel Xu Zhitong had just laid out for her, hugging the bath towel draped over her body. Her body retreated, but Xu Zhitong followed right after to kiss her.

The position was awkward. In fact, the moment they made contact, Lin Yang had already wanted to clamp her legs shut in protest, but Xu Zhitong seemed to have learned this from somewhere; she buried her head down and looped her arms from the lower outside, firmly, unyieldingly pressing down on her hips.

They shouldn’t have drunk and then come soak in the hot spring. It sped up circulation, making them drunk faster and deeper.

After only a few motions, Lin Yang was biting the back of her hand, her upper body arching back for no reason. She wanted to pry Xu Zhitong’s hand away, but even that stopped halfway, hanging over Xu Zhitong’s wet hair.

Xu Zhitong drank water from a cup, loosening the restraint a little as she did; but she was just as limp now, no longer able to let Lin Yang kick the person in front of her away. Lin Yang lifted her legs, opened and closed them again, and in the end planted her foot on Xu Zhitong’s shoulder.

It was deafening, like an illusion born from drunkenness.

Otherwise, why would even the insect songs in the distant mountains, even the English music by their ears, seem to fade in volume? All that remained was their own heavy breathing, and Xu Zhitong’s voice.

It merged with the rumbling in her ears, as if it were all one and the same hallucination.

She had never seen Xu Zhitong this serious before.

When the soak was over, Xu Zhitong became especially fastidious. She carefully cleaned every gap along the mountain-shaped edge of the tub, sweeping away every drop of rain from the night before and every splash from the pool, then covering it all back up.

The cleaning slowed after that; the water no longer splashed so suddenly and violently as it had during the first soak.

The hot spring that Lin Yang could usually clean up in a single, simple round seemed to take longer the second time. She didn’t know whether it was because she had tightened Xu Zhitong’s head first, or because Xu Zhitong was too gentle and made the water wrinkle again.

Lin Yang didn’t even know when exactly her own consciousness had started to blur.

It seemed she had fallen asleep off to the side. After Xu Zhitong finished cleaning, she even woke once in the middle, half-conscious, to kick at Xu Zhitong and scold her for being too slow, saying that if she kept scrubbing that rock any more it would be worn to ruin; she shouldn’t be so obsessed with cleanliness and needed to go to sleep earlier.

After that, Xu Zhitong probably obediently held herself back. She quickly tidied up the hot spring, which they had soaked in for a long time, and carried Lin Yang back into the room.

When she was placed under the blankets, Lin Yang woke again. Her body was clean, but also sore. Xu Zhitong wrapped an arm around her waist and held her close; the two of them lay on their sides like conjoined koalas, and before long, they sank once more into deep, exhausted sleep.