Love

Nan Changgeng was surprised that she could be so calm at a time like this. The emotions rising and falling in her heart stood out all the more clearly in the dark, as if they had been neatly divided into strands of different colors.

The shell softened by night let her sense something deeper stirring within her, yet it still worked in step with reason. At the same time, she could even guess whether the endless sorrow seeping from the other side came from Yu Mao having recognized that little pill.

“Why?”

She didn’t want to ask too much. She let her body sink back under the blanket, closed her eyes, and lay flat, feeling threads of drowsiness winding around her.

She had asked the broadest possible question, leaving Yu Mao free to answer however she wished.

Listening to the rustle of Nan Changgeng shifting around, Yu Mao blinked lightly, forcing the tears in her eyes to spill out. She edged toward the head of the bed until her body pressed against the bedside table.

“Changgeng... I feel sad.”

Her voice was so soft and close, like a whisper.

“You’re sick, right? Your soul is sick, and I’m very sad. I can’t cure you.”

Her tone was like a child earnestly fretting because a puppy had torn up a stuffed toy. And yet her sorrow ran so deep.

“Your soul?” Nan Changgeng snorted at her wording, lifting a wrist to press over her eyes as she let out a soft sigh. “It’s not that serious. There are plenty of people in this world who lose sleep over all kinds of emotional problems. I’m already not that bad now.”

“Really? But what do other people have to do with me?” Yu Mao frowned slightly in confusion. “I don’t know about other people. I can only see you. There’s no comparison. If it hurts, then it hurts.”

“...Ha.”

Nan Changgeng paused for two seconds, then laughed. After that, she drew the sound back into her chest and gave a muffled little laugh as she turned over to face the girl.

She knew; she had long known how pure those eyes were, how they simply couldn’t hold anyone else.

As if she had received another kind of immense fortune, a human’s love... a human’s love! It was stronger, richer, than the one she had bought, so how had it so lightly been handed to her at her door?

“Who says you can’t cure me? You make me especially happy.” Smiling, she groped out a hand. Following the sound, her fingertips touched the girl’s soft cheek; then they came away cold, stained with wetness.

She froze.

“You’re crying?”

The question had barely left her mouth when warm tears suddenly struck the back of her hand.

“Thank you.”

Yu Mao’s voice was the first time it had broken from its usual steadiness, carrying a faint tremor at the end.

“For what?” Nan Changgeng was caught in a slightly panicked daze, her hand pinned in place by the weight of a single tear.

“For letting me make you happy. For giving me that chance.” Yu Mao spoke solemnly, as if Nan Changgeng being willing to feel happy because of her was a gift; an act of grace.

Nan Changgeng’s mind short-circuited for a moment. She couldn’t understand why, when she was the one receiving something, Yu Mao was the one thanking her so earnestly.

To the point of tears.

The tears on her hand went from warm to cool, as if they traveled through her blood along her arm and reached the tip of her heart, bringing a little condensed clarity with them.

She had never heard of anyone’s love in this world being so absurd.

“Alright... stop talking nonsense.” She felt along Yu Mao’s face with her fingertips and wiped away the tear tracks.

With a little intuition, she vaguely grasped the girl’s temperament, so she didn’t try to say that she was the one who should be grateful, lest she receive another round of fearful sincerity.

How terrifying, this child...

Then her hand was gently taken. Moist tears clung between their two hands.

“Changgeng should sleep now. It’s already very, very late.”

She should have been asleep already. The medication was taking effect, and Nan Changgeng’s drowsiness was growing heavier by the moment. She squinted as she lay on her side. “You’re not going back?”

“I want to stay here until you fall asleep. Is that okay?” Yu Mao asked carefully.

She didn’t say she wanted to stay the whole night, which gave Nan Changgeng an opening to agree.

After a moment of silence, Nan Changgeng gave a low response.

Let her be a clingy cat, lying by the bed to keep her company while she slept.

Sleep came swiftly and without resistance, dragging her down into the depths of consciousness. The moment her eyelids closed, they were no longer easy to open.

The last sliver of hazy awareness barely let her sense a weight on her head, like a hand lightly stroking through her hair and over the side of her face, as gentle as a soft wind brushing the branches of a tree.

A hand still covered the back of hers, warming the lingering dampness and steadily sending heat across.

She fell asleep, and could no longer perceive what Yu Mao was doing. In the final crack before slipping into a dream, she opened the barrier and let a little budding happiness quietly squeeze in.

Darkness became another kind of protective color; Yu Mao couldn’t see her, and so no longer felt she was sacred and untouchable. What filled her memory was only the brief moment before the light went off, the mist-blue softness that had seeped from the woman’s body.

“Changgeng...”

With almost soundless, faint breaths, Yu Mao rested her chin on the edge of the bed. Tears fell one drop at a time down her cheeks, soaking into the sheets.

She couldn’t find the words to describe what she felt at this moment. She could only feel that her body was like ice melting away; her eyes were melting, her nose was melting, her cheeks were melting, her heart was melting, her stomach was melting...

Her transparent body had already been pierced through by the bright light; it had gone soft and fragile, so that with just a little squeeze it would turn to ice slurry.

Her fingers were threaded through the woman’s hair, the sensation smooth and silky like satin. Once the movement stopped, it could no longer keep going; her heart had drained the strength from her whole body, trying desperately not to explode.

At first Yu Mao was still tracing the woman’s features in her mind: the misty gray-blue eyes under the white light, the long lashes after they closed, the shadow cast by the bridge of her nose, the cheek pressed into the pillow, the unconscious pout of her pale pink lips.

And that side-lying silhouette, the slender body quietly wrapped in a thick cotton quilt, like rolling mountain ranges; the high peak of her shoulder slid downward, turned once, and settled again, blunt and soft.

Beautiful. So beautiful it was about to shatter her consciousness, an immense, high-density presence standing in front of her, invading her like fluff expanding in water.

She was finding it harder and harder to breathe; her body trembled faintly and uncontrollably, so she had to cut off her own thoughts.

It hurt too much. By humanity’s definition of the word, this absolutely could not be called happiness.

Too much of... whatever it was, was called destruction.

And after destruction? What would happen? Would she die?

She didn’t know. Her thoughts were blocked within a frame and could not extend any farther.

Carefully, Yu Mao drew her hand back, suppressing the tremor in her breathing. Her catlike eyes opened wide and unblinking, staring at the unseen woman ahead as she felt her through another layer of perception.

Sleeping, vast as a mountain...

She had said it long ago. It was a god.

...

Yu Mao didn’t quite remember what time she finally returned to bed and lay down. Sleeping in the same room as Nan Changgeng was no longer purely rest for her; it had acquired a sense of waste.

So even though she only fell asleep in the second half of the night, once dawn came she still struggled awake very early.

The curtains blocked the light; the room was dim and heavy.

A head emerged from the neatly folded blanket edge, panda eyes glaring stiffly toward the bed opposite. Seeing the little lump under the covers, she knew Nan Changgeng was still asleep and let out a sudden breath of relief.

As usual, she completed her morning prayer for the day, then quietly climbed down from the bed and slipped into the bathroom to wash up. After coming out, she made milk to fill her stomach, then climbed up onto the bed beside the woman again.

Sitting cross-legged, she stared without blinking.

At last she could see the woman’s blurred, peaceful sleeping face in the dim light; black hair scattered across skin as white as snow, somehow sleeping into a kind of disheveled loftiness.

Her chest swelled again. Relying on the short distance between them, it didn’t quite hurt, and at last she could taste happiness.

She stared for more than an hour. Time had become something that did not exist for Yu Mao, but it finally brought Nan Changgeng slowly awake.

Dazed, Nan Changgeng opened her eyes and suddenly caught sight of a pale human shape beside her; she was startled awake in an instant.

After clearly seeing who it was, Nan Changgeng rubbed her eyes with considerable irritation and yawned without much concern for image before sitting up. “You got up this early?”

Yu Mao nodded seriously. “I was waiting for you, to say goodbye.”

Nan Changgeng was startled again, turning to look at her. “Goodbye?”

“Yes. I asked for leave and I’m going back today.”

“Oh, right. I nearly forgot.”

Nan Changgeng ran a hand through her messy hair, sweeping it back, a little embarrassed. “It’s only for one day; why are you being so formal?”

For a moment she even thought Yu Mao was going to quit the competition.

Yu Mao tilted her head, not quite understanding how to be less “formal.” After thinking it over, she said, “Do you need me to do anything today? If not, then I’m leaving now.”

The deliberately cute tone sounded like a robot fitted with a cute plugin; it was still very off.

Nan Changgeng couldn’t help laughing. “Nope. Go ahead. If anything comes up, wait until you’re back to talk about it.”

Yu Mao blinked quickly, fixing the scene in front of her in place.

The woman had turned slightly toward her, her left hand still rubbing her hair, fingers sunk into the black strands. Her gray-blue eyes were dim as a misty sea, a smile on her face, gentle as though it were covered by the filter of an old love film in cool tones.

A whole string of vocabulary she had learned through study stretched through her mind. After careful judgment, Yu Mao picked out the one she thought fit best to describe the scene.

—Ambiguous.

An ambiguous morning.

She really wanted to smile. After much effort, only a bit of glitter gathered in the corners of her eyes.

“Thank you.”

Warmth and pain soaked her chest as Yu Mao got down from the bed and walked toward her, stopping beside Nan Changgeng’s bed. “Changgeng, I think I really love you.”

Her eyes should have been bright, but with so little light in the room, they were covered in a murky tint and not very clear.

This was the first time the girl had ever expressed her love to her so directly and clearly. In the instant of surprise, Nan Changgeng looked into those eyes and couldn’t help wondering whether she really understood what love was.

Like an empty shell carrying a great many emotions...

The thought flashed away in an instant. She smiled, and her tone was sincere: “I like you a lot too.”

She liked this kind of person; controllable, harmless, yet filled with an extremely intense love.

There was no disappointment in this love, no visible expectation, like the purest oxygen with all impurities removed. So thick, so heavy, with a density beyond imagination, as if it had been made by compressing countless stars into a stream of molten fluid.

She had never been able to trust any human love before. But Yu Mao... she was a miracle.

Able to give her a love of the same weight as a human’s, yet not quite like a real human being.

Nan Changgeng almost wondered if this were a gift granted to her by heaven alone, formed in accordance with her desire and fitting her perfectly.

Yu Mao tilted her head slightly and looked at the woman’s gray-blue eyes, where amusement was spreading.

What she sensed was... coolness.