The Eleventh Fallen Leaf
Wu Yu waited for a long time, but received neither a refusal nor an agreement.
After a long silence, Ji Shiqiu took hold of the hand she had laid against his face.
Wu Yu struggled a little, but he did not let go. Instead, he turned his face and began to peck kisses along the inside of her wrist. Gradually, almost as though venting something, he became more and more forceful, kissing and rubbing against it heavily and urgently. There was a pulse there, blood flowing beneath the thin skin.
Wu Yu’s breathing became disordered.
Being kissed like this was, unexpectedly, even more liable to stir desire.
“Ji Shiqiu...” she called his name helplessly, her voice thick and clinging.
The young man stopped and pulled her back into his arms, his chin resting against her forehead, not moving at all.
Wu Yu almost thought he had fallen asleep. Just as she was about to raise her head to check, she heard him ask in a low voice, “Which number am I?”
Wu Yu thought for a moment. “I’ve never counted.”
Ji Shiqiu lowered his head, his lips passing lightly by the corner of her eye. “What happened to those people before?”
Wu Yu half-joked, “Heavy casualties.”
At that, Ji Shiqiu gave an ambiguous little laugh.
Wu Yu glanced up at him. “What, you think I’m bragging?”
Ji Shiqiu said, “No.”
Of course he would not think she was bragging. The woman before him was the Black Queen and the witch. During those earlier two days, he had had countless opportunities to leave this place, to leave this village that would soon be covered in autumn colors, to leave this world where there was nowhere to go and no road by which to retreat, yet he would always, as though bewitched, find himself tripped up by her.
When Wu Yu saw him fall silent again, she asked, “Scared?”
Ji Shiqiu said, “Scared of what?”
Wu Yu said, “Scared to join my adventure.”
Ji Shiqiu rarely looked so relaxed as he curled the corner of his lips. “Not scared. Besides, I’ve already died once.”
Wu Yu was momentarily dazed by how close Ji Shiqiu was.
His smile was exceptionally pure. For the first time, he revealed before her the guileless awkwardness unique to a young boy, possessing the courage of someone who feared neither Heaven nor Earth, along with a little of that simple-mindedness that came from not knowing any better.
He was like a piece of translucent glass, with a spent shell lodged inside and filled with cracks, yet still whole, capable of refracting equally moving light and shadow.
Wu Yu scratched his chin. “Is having died once something to be proud of?”
Her competitive spirit followed close behind. “Who hasn’t died before?”
She adjusted her sleeping position and rested her head on her own arm. “People are dying again and again all along. They kill their past selves spiritually, once and again, repeating the cycle until old age or illness takes the physical body away.”
Ji Shiqiu touched the hair she had spread beside his hand. “Did you ever think about dying before?”
Wu Yu said, “Many times.”
Ji Shiqiu was slightly surprised. “Why?”
Wu Yu countered, “What about you? Why did you want to die?”
Ji Shiqiu answered, “I couldn’t find any meaning in being alive anymore.”
Wu Yu said, “That’s too broad. The meaning of being alive... what is the meaning of being alive?”
“A goal...?” Ji Shiqiu could not summarize or articulate it with any precision, but his suddenly dejected emotions were unusually full. “I always wanted to take my mom to the hospital, take her traveling through the mountains and rivers, but unfortunately, I didn’t make it in time.”
The corners of Wu Yu’s lips curved almost imperceptibly. “You really love your mom?”
“Don’t you?”
“I only want to kill her.”
Ji Shiqiu looked at her in surprise.
Wu Yu propped herself upright, felt around on the bedside table for the cigarette pack and lighter, lit one, and took a slow drag. “But I know I can’t do it...”
The white smoke blurred the woman’s brows and eyes.
“You must have gone to elementary school, right?”
“Mm.”
“Which grade did the girls in your class start developing?”
Ji Shiqiu was bewildered. “I never paid attention.”
“You paid very clear attention to me, though,” Wu Yu gave a soft scoff, the implication unmistakable. “I started developing in fifth grade. No one told me there was such a thing as underwear. In summer, I still wore old clothes that didn’t fit. They were stretched tight against my body. When my mom saw it, she slapped me and cursed me for being shameless.”
“Another time, my mom went out to play cards, and my younger brother was asleep. I was doing my homework in the bedroom when my stepfather came and sat beside me, saying he was going to help me with my studies. While reading through the problem, he put his hand on my shoulder.” Wu Yu bit down on the cigarette filter and demonstrated with a light, matter-of-fact gesture, as though rubbing her shoulder: “He squeezed it like this, then reached underneath the clothes on my back.”
“You guess what happened afterward?”
“Although my whole body was trembling, I don’t know where the reaction and courage came from. I immediately took the utility knife from my pencil case, pushed the blade all the way out, fixed my eyes on a problem in the book, and warned him, ‘Let go.’”
“He was terrified. He cursed me with all kinds of vile things, then finally slammed the door and left. And even now, I still remember that problem: After cutting a one-meter-long cylindrical steel rod into three sections, the surface area increases by 7.16 square decimeters. Find the volume of the steel rod.”
Wu Yu’s tone was calm and without fluctuation, as though the protagonist of the story were not herself, as though she were merely describing some tragic novel she had once read. “At that moment, I felt that I was that steel rod too. I had been cut in half at the waist.”
There was no movement from the person beside her. Wu Yu turned her head in confusion, then immediately teased him, “You should take a look at your own expression.”
Ji Shiqiu listened to every word without missing a single one, completely immersed in it. He unconsciously clenched his teeth, and when he came back to himself, both cheeks were already somewhat stiff and aching.
Wu Yu tossed the remaining half of her cigarette butt back into the ashtray. “Feeling sorry for me? I’ve got another eight hundred stories more or less like this, specially kept for tricking men.”
Ji Shiqiu did not respond to her. He merely gave a few numbers: “17.9.”
Wu Yu: “Hm?”
Ji Shiqiu said, “The volume is 17.9 cubic decimeters.”
Wu Yu froze, her eyelashes fluttering a few times before she shoved his shoulder. “Look at you, so capable. Someone else is telling a story, and you’re doing mental arithmetic over there?”
Ji Shiqiu pulled her back in front of him and held her tightly so she could not move around. “It’s just an elementary-school math problem. What’s there to be capable of?”
Wu Yu lay against his chest, listening closely to the solemn rhythm of his heartbeat, and could not help laughing. “All right, then. Calculate this too. When will Ji Shiqiu finally be truly tricked into falling into my hands?”
The space above her head was quiet for a moment before two words came back:
“Now.”
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