She tapped the keycard and pushed the door open. Beyond the window, the sea lay dark and restless. It was already November, but Xiamen still clung to the heat, white waves lifting and folding gently under the night. She stepped out onto the balcony and looked down. The beach below was being prepared for a wedding the next day: dozens of white satin chairs tied with pink ribbon bows, heart-shaped balloons strung across the stage, floating with a kind of happiness. She went back inside and laid out the sharp black suit she would wear to meet clients tomorrow. She showered, changed into her nightgown, and poured herself a glass of red wine, sitting quietly by the window, waiting, as always in this city, for the knock from him.

Two gentle taps, a brief hesitation. The clock had just passed ten. She opened the door. He stood there with his familiar, careless smile, a faint weariness draped over him. The cuffs of his shirt were damp, carrying the salty tang of seawater, the smell pulled her back ten years, to another night when he had stood before her just as wet.

‘Long time no see,’ he said, though his tone made it sound as if they had parted only yesterday. He stepped inside before she could respond, eyes sweeping the room quickly, as though he belonged there.

She closed the door behind him. When she turned around, she saw him already drinking the last of the wine from her glass.

‘Busy lately? How long are you staying?’ he asked casually.

‘Not too bad. Three or four days. Clients tomorrow and the day after—then a day to visit home.’

‘Not too bad, and yet you didn’t even send a message for half a year.’ He muttered it like a simple fact, though a hint of grievance slipped through.

She smiled. ‘I changed jobs. I’ve been swamped. It’s not like there was any chance for us to meet anyway. Not everyone’s like you: supported by family connections, no pressure to seek promotion.’

‘Who said I only wanted to meet?’ he shot back immediately, ignoring what was beneath the tease. ‘I care how you are. You push yourself too hard. Among the people I’m closest to, you’re the only one so far away.’

‘Is Shanghai that far?’ she asked reflexively, then followed her own thought. ‘You know, it’s been especially cold in Shanghai. It even snowed.’

‘Isn’t it?’ He set down the empty glass and stepped closer, an arm sliding around her waist, unhurried. It felt as though the months between them were only a pause mid-sentence. The long-missed, familiar pull rose in her body; from the firmness of his chest she could tell he’d been working out.

And yet something had shifted. She couldn’t name it.

The body has memory. Where had she read that? She couldn’t recall. His mouth found hers. Her body lifted toward him before thought could catch up.

‘In Xiamen, it never snows.’ he said softly.

And because of that, she began to think of summer in winter.

 

There was a time when they needed to say a great many pointless things before they ever reached a kiss. They had known each other since high school, becoming friends quickly because they came from the same small town. Back then, Xiamen wasn’t yet a city one only returned to on business trips—it was the place where they had grown, close as flowers in the same field. And yet, compared to the stream of girlfriends he cycled through, the rhythm of physical closeness between the two of them had always felt more like a real romance.

After graduating high school, they went on a hiking trip. She was tired halfway up the mountain, and he laughed at her as he held out his hand. A helping-hand kind of touch.

In university, they went to different cities. That first summer, they returned to visit their old teachers, and on the tall rooftop of their former school, he pulled her into a hug. ‘I really miss those days,’ he said, ‘when we’d sneak up here after class to talk. ‘A past-comes-rushing-back kind of hug.

During the holiday of their second year, they were nineteen. He was celebrating finally being allowed to drive the old Land Rover his father once used. After dinner he drove her home. She sat in his passenger seat, thinking how strange it was—sitting next to a boy her own age, in a boy’s car. It felt like slipping into her mother’s heels and wobbling around in them.

And it was precisely then that she realized this boy she so often mocked inwardly for being childish was growing into a man, physiologically speaking. His features had deepened; his shoulders were broad, his arms faintly traced with even muscle. His eyes stared at people like a stray puppy in the rain. She had always insisted that nine out of his ten ex-girlfriends had fallen for him because of those eyes.

Something thickened in the small, enclosed air of the car. The stereo was playing her favorite song. The red light at the intersection stayed red through three cycles; when it turned green only to fade back to yellow, he didn’t try to sprint through those last few seconds. The handbrake dropped with the light.

Maybe he leaned in. Maybe she did. Or maybe they moved at the same time. Maybe it was just a current of air, a momentary lapse, a road that could still, at that very second, have taken a different turn.

At the last moment she asked, ‘You—you’re single now, right?’

He muttered, a little sulky, ‘It’s already been two weeks.’

Then he closed the distance, sealing off her breath, until the car behind them honked impatiently.

They crossed the intersection.

‘So… what was that?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘Nothing. I just wanted to. You?’

‘Same as you,’ he said. ‘Just wanted to.’

A just-do-it kind of kiss.

 

When they were eighteen or nineteen, everything in the world had felt new—unlike now. She thought this as he moved with practiced ease, guiding her to the bed, easing her down, lifting her nightgown and drawing her breast into his mouth like an infant. She had never understood this gesture. Each time, an inner, mocking voice stirred: a woman is always made into a mother long before she ever becomes one. In the beginning it used to tickle; now it no longer did. She lay there, watching the ceiling rise and fall, like waves, and sighed.

‘Didn’t you say you had something to tell me?’

When they had agreed to meet today, he had left it hanging.

‘Later,’ he said vaguely.

‘I often think the world should make it illegal to speak only half a sentence.’

That made him laugh. ‘You’ll regret it. You really don’t want to know—at least not right now.’

‘Why?’ Something competitive flared in her. She refused to back down. ‘Did you run into more emotional trouble again? Are you finally done with that last girl?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Then what stage are you at now? Fighting, breaking up, or back in love again?’

She sighed more heavily, slipping once more into the role of emotional counselor, as she had so many times before.

He fell silent. The hand that had been roaming over her paused briefly. She couldn’t help lifting her head to look at him.

‘She’s pregnant,’ he said.

Her silence lasted no more than the pause of a comma.

‘Planned?’ she asked instinctively—too quickly, too naturally, she realized.

‘I’m only twenty-seven.’ he said helplessly.

‘But you’re keeping it.’

‘Of course.’

‘And… are you getting married?’ After a moment of silence, she asked.

‘Yeah. Our parents want us to do it sooner rather than later,’ he said, ‘So she can still wear the wedding dress she likes, before the months show too much.’

His hand moved through territory it knew well. Her body responded before her mind, a current running through her.

‘Have you checked the sex?’ Her awareness caught up—she already knew the answer, yet she asked anyway.

‘It’s a boy.’

She tugged the corner of her mouth into a soundless smile.

She was carried back to a distant afternoon in high school. She had been sitting at her desk reading The Second Sex when he came over, as he often did during breaks, and asked what she was reading.

‘A feminist book,’ she said casually. ‘There’s an idea in here I find interesting: girls and boys seem to live in the same world, but the environments they grow up in are fundamentally different—’

He cut her off quickly. ‘That makes sense. My grandpa always says girls just need to find a good husband, but he tells us we should have at least two sons.’

‘Why?’ she asked, incredulous.

‘So if something happens to one, there’s still another to inherit the family business.’

She laughed theatrically. ‘That’s ridiculous. Old people are just like that.’

‘But I think he makes sense,’ he said. ‘That’s how my family has always been. I think it’s pretty normal.’

Her smile froze. ‘So you plan to have at least two sons too?’

He shrugged. ‘Yeah.’

‘And if your future wife ends up having several daughters?’ she pressed on.

‘Then I’ll keep trying. My uncle’s family did—seven daughters before the eighth was finally a son.’

‘But that’s son preference,’ she said, almost absurdly.

‘Son preference is aborting a pregnancy because it’s a girl,’ he argued, ‘I wouldn’t abort a girl or treat her badly. I just want a son. What’s wrong with that?’

His voice dissolved into the background noise of the world. She saw the guileless righteousness on his face—how innocent he looked? She stared down at the book in her hands. Beauvoir was born in the twentieth century. They were living in the twenty-first. She had once believed ideas like this wouldn’t survive into their generation.

A flood of arguments crossed her mind. She could try to explain how far birth itself still was from equality for women. Or point out that assuming only sons could inherit was itself an injustice. But the class bell rang.

‘But you know,’ she said at last, quietly but with intent, ‘people without a uterus don’t get to have opinions on this.’

He made a small sound—‘oh’—as if it were nothing important, and slipped into a placating smile. He asked quickly to borrow her English test from the night before, promising to bring her breakfast for three days in return. He was the one who taught her how to open a convenience-store onigiri properly; she used to scatter the rice and tear the seaweed every time, so after that he’d always unwrap it for her beforehand.

 

At that moment she heard the rustle of plastic, he had reached into the pocket of his trousers and taken out a condom. The familiar sound pulled her back to their first time, the first time in any real sense. Seven years ago, when they were twenty. A high-school reunion, a trip to the seaside, drinking games at a beach bar, and at dawn a cluster of boys and girls screaming as they ran into the ocean. She hadn’t wanted to get her clothes wet again, so she stayed onshore and noticed what others didn’t: one of the boys, too drunk, beginning to drown.

‘Stop messing around!’ she screamed. ‘Get Lin out—now!’

Chaos broke out. In the end, he and two other strong swimmers dragged Lin back to shore. They were lucky, Lin had only swallowed seawater, but once on land he vomited, splattering it all over him. Back at the hotel, he said his roommate needed the shower, but he couldn’t stand the smell of vomit and asked to use her bathroom.

She agreed. She knew her roommate wouldn’t be coming back that night.

He emerged half-wrapped in a towel. The briny, fishy tang of seawater and the stench of vomit had been replaced by the clean scent of body wash. The small nightlight was on. He walked over and kissed her.

She didn’t ask whether he was single. She couldn’t remember when she’d stopped asking, whether he was or wasn’t no longer seemed important. She had never interfered in his relationships, only listening patiently as he talked through the problems he had with each girlfriend. Yet no matter how carefully she tried to help him reconcile, he and those women still broke up sooner or later. Photos deleted, then new ones posted again after a while, and never stopped.

‘Is it okay this time?’ he whispered in her ear.

‘Did you bring a condom?’ she asked, half amused.

His body stiffened. Burying his face in her hair, he said guiltily, ‘I had one in my pocket, but when we were pulling Lin out… the waves washed it away.’

She sighed. ‘It’s fine. I have one in my bag.’

He immediately broke into a mischievous grin, leaning in to study her expression, his eyes bright like a small animal in the woods spotting a hunter’s trap.

‘You brought a condom on this trip? So, who were you planning to sleep with?’

‘I always keep one in my bag,’ she said calmly.

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m afraid that one day I might run into a rapist. The last thing I could do, before being violated, would be to make him wear one.’

‘There aren’t that many rapists in the world, ‘he muttered, already rummaging through her bag until he found it.

 

She came back from the memory and heard another wash of waves collapsing onto the sand outside the window, and couldn’t help laughing.

‘What are you laughing at?’ he asked.

She didn’t answer. Instead, imitating the tone she remembered him using, she said, ‘A man whose girlfriend is pregnant, who’s preparing to get married, carrying a condom around, who exactly are you planning to sleep with?’

He thought she was flirting. Lowering his voice, he pressed his lips to her ear, half teasing, half complaining. ‘Other than you, who else would take this kind of thing so seriously?’

‘What about your ex-girlfriends?’ she asked.

‘Many of them liked going without,’ he retorted, then added, ‘though most of the time I did use one.’

She fell silent. So it was only her. Only she insisted. That was why they could accept becoming his girlfriends and she could not. As friends, they were effortless, almost perfectly attuned. In high school, classmates loved to tease them, saying they were a couple. She would only smile. What they didn’t see was that certain fault lines in their relationship had existed from the start. For seven years she had believed that, as long as they didn’t fall in love, those differences would never matter. If anyone asked what they were, she could shrug and say: we don’t want to put a defining label on it.

She had always remembered that ordinary afternoon when they had just started working and, by coincidence, she was in Beijing on a business trip while he passed through the city on a layover from Europe. He picked her up from the hotel, just like so many times before—small talk, dinner, and then back for sex. During the drive, he handed her a bag. Inside were the things she had asked him to buy at duty-free shops earlier. She had made a list of skincare products no man ever seemed to understand. He had complained, yet still gone to the trouble of tracking down every item. In return, she had recommended a trending perfume set said to be perfect for girlfriends.

‘Bad timing,’ he said. ‘I broke up with her a couple of days ago.’

‘Again? Didn’t you just start seeing her?’

‘That’s exactly the problem.’ He shrugged. ‘We’d barely begun and she was already talking about marriage.’

She said nothing. Then he mentioned a cousin who was marrying because the woman was pregnant. She told him to be careful. He replied that he could tell the difference between twenty yuan and two million.

Twenty yuan was a condom. Two million was a child—perhaps not even enough. He sounded so clear-headed that she couldn’t help laughing again. She shared a story about her own cousin: “He married his wife because she got pregnant. Once, very proudly, he told me he never used condoms. God, I don’t understand how someone can be that irresponsible.’

‘I don’t think going without is irresponsible,’ he said. ‘What’s irresponsible is getting a woman pregnant and forcing her to abort. I’d never do that.’

‘What?’ She felt absurd. ‘Do you realize that not using protection is basically trying for a baby?’

‘If she gets pregnant, we have the baby.’

‘Have you thought about whether she wants to? Or whether you’re ready? Having a child when you’re not prepared—that’s irresponsible.’

‘I’ll make her willing,’ he said, as if it were obvious. ‘I’ll marry her. I can pay, or my parents can. Is raising a child really that hard?’

‘Have you ever watched the older people in your family take care of one?’

‘Sure. But my mom said this isn’t something men should worry about. What I need to do is earn more. With money, raising kids is easier.’

She turned to the window, realizing the argument would never end. Luckily, she wasn’t the one marrying him.

‘When you’re with me,’ she said at last, ‘you have to use one. Otherwise there’s no way I’ll say yes.’

‘Got it,’ he drawled.

That night, when they were in bed, he handed her the condom and coaxed her to put it on him. She rolled her eyes but still did it patiently. As she bent her head, his hand brushed gently through her hair.

 

‘What are you thinking? You’ve been drifting off all night,’ his voice pulled her back to the present.

‘I was just thinking,’ she said, ‘about how some people once swore they could tell the difference between twenty yuan and two million.’

He gave a soft laugh. ‘It was a bit sudden. But when you really think about it—if I’m going to have a child anyway, having one a little earlier doesn’t really change much.’

‘Maybe,’ she said.

‘And you?’ he asked. ‘What about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘How long has it been since you were last in a relationship? Don’t you plan on getting married?’

‘People don’t have to get married,’ she said lightly. ‘You never used to push me to date.’

‘Once you fall in love, you’re bound to get hurt,’ he said seriously. ‘You’re too fragile mentally.’

She knew he was right. She’d had a few brief relationships in college, though she never really felt she was in one. She could see through their intentions—sex—too easily, no matter how carefully they tried to disguise it. She never truly believed she loved any of them, despite using the word ‘love’ as routine, and ‘hurt’ as routine. She never shared her affairs with him, as he shared his with her, although she felt he might have been interested in hearing them. She told herself she had never loved him when they first knew each other, just as she had never truly loved anyone else—and not him, in this moment.

‘I can just love myself,’ she said.

‘But you can’t fight—loneliness.’

‘Life is lonely to begin with,’ she said. ‘Even if you love someone deeply, you can’t truly share their pain. When your wife gives birth, even if you love her, can you bear the pain for her?’

‘I can hold her hand.’

‘That’s like giving a scarf to someone standing naked in the freezing cold.’

He didn’t speak.

‘And even if we put all of that aside,’ she added, ‘all relationships eventually end.’

‘All of them?’ he asked.

‘All of them.’

‘Even us?’

‘Of course. For example—’

Confusion surfaced in his eyes.

‘For example,’ she said softly, ‘will we still be like this after tomorrow?’

He fell silent for a moment, then laughed. ‘I’ve noticed you always carry these strange… burdens.’

‘Are you accusing me?’

‘I’m not.’ His voice softened, almost yielding. ‘Can’t you just fuck and not think?’ Then something occurred to him, and he muttered, ‘You were like this the first time too.’

‘Which first time?’ she asked, knowing perfectly well.

‘Tell me.’ He said.

 

There really was another ‘first time,’ earlier than the one by the sea, though not by much. It was his twentieth birthday. He was going to party with his college friends that night, but invited her to lunch alone. After they ate, he asked if she would find a place with him to lie down for a nap. She hesitated, then agreed. Walking down the hotel corridor, fragments of novels flickered through her mind, though the moment itself felt unremarkable.

They made a show of evaluating the room, drawing the curtains, flipping through the hotel guide as if they were busy with something. While he showered, she sat quietly on the edge of the bed. Soon he came out, and before she could say anything, he leaned down to kiss her. She kissed him back, kicking off her shoes before his weight fully pressed down. In her mind, she drafted a metaphor: He moves over me like a rhinoceros in heat. When he bent to suck at her breast, she felt, for the first time, a strange maternal tenderness. She couldn’t stop herself from whimpering, so he softened his movements, reading her expressions.

He pulled his hand out, brought it to his nose to smell the wetness, then held it under her nose. ‘Do you smell it?’

She smelled nothing, but nodded.

‘That’s what a virgin smells like,’ he said.

‘What’s the difference?’ she asked.

‘I can’t really say,’ he said. ‘It’s just… different.’

He guided her legs further apart, trying to push his hand deeper. Pain rose immediately. At first she could endure it, but when he parted her and tried to slide an entire finger inside, her body recoiled sharply.

‘Does it hurt?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said without thinking. She had heard of this pain, but when it truly arrived—even though this was only the beginning—she was already retreating. Perhaps she wasn’t ready after all. She thought she was expectant and desirous, yet she was also anxious and afraid. Or, desire and fear were never contradictory to begin with.

‘You’re so tight down there.’

‘I know.’

His breathing unraveled; his movements sped up. As he squeezed and sucked at her breasts frantically, she felt a distinctly male force surge through him. His body kept trying to collide with hers, like a puzzle piece desperate to force itself into the frame.

‘Can I?’ he asked.

She whimpered softly, ‘Let’s not. It hurts too much.’

‘I’m shaking.’

‘I know,’ she said, gently stroking his hair. She almost said sorry, but realized she shouldn’t. So she simply repeated, ‘I know.’

He glanced between her legs. At some point, it had already gone dry. He gave up and said, ‘Fine. Then help me.’

She wrapped her hand around his cock and said honestly, ‘But I don’t know how.’

‘All those romance novels you read—where did they go?’

In a gesture of revenge, she jerked him hard, up and down. He urged her to go faster, but her arm soon burned with fatigue. She lost strength, let her hand fall still, and looked up innocently. ‘I’m tired.’

A muffled laugh escaped him—she couldn’t tell whether it was exasperation or disbelief. With a touch of resignation, he kissed her forehead and got up, heading toward the bathroom.

She watched his back and said she was sorry—this time, sincerely. He muttered that it was fine, that he would respect her.

‘Even though I really wanted to.’

His voice was very soft, like a lover’s whisper after making love—except they hadn’t had love.

 

That night she lay in bed, recalling the day, gently sliding her hand down between her legs. She was wet. But why had she gone so dry then?

‘Maybe you were just nervous because it was your first time,’ her best friend had said.

‘But I think it might be because,’ she took a breath, admitting, ‘subconsciously I felt like he wasn’t my boyfriend, so I couldn’t do it.’

‘Do you think people can only have sex within a serious relationship?’ her friend asked.

‘Of course not.’

‘Then does it really matter whether he’s your boyfriend or not?’

‘Theoretically speaking, you’re right,’ she agreed.

‘Besides, you’re friends. At least you know each other well. He’s experienced, and he’s got a good body. You wouldn’t want to sleep with an inexperienced boy who can’t even find the right place…’

She burst out laughing, without realizing she had already begun looking forward to the beach trip a few months away.

After the beach trip, he had teased her about it, ‘Who would’ve thought you’d end up giving me your first time?’

She corrected him, ‘I didn’t “give” you my first time. I owned my first time.’

‘What’s the difference?’ he asked, confused.

She didn’t answer. How many conversations had ended because she had chosen to do this? Chosen silence. As if, as long as they didn’t speak their thoughts aloud, they could pretend certain differences had never existed.

 

Seven years ago, they were silent. Now, they were silent again. Seven years ago, the internet had not yet popularized that saying: people do not live a lifetime; they live a few moments. Over time, they became each other’s moments—moments in which desire was poured into silence, moments stolen during brief intervals when work loosened its grip and allowed them to breathe. In most years, they saw each other only two or three times. But they knew one another too well to require probing or explanation. More often than not, they simply let sex trample over what life had bruised and battered, smoothing it down, before parting again—each returning alone to face, once more, the world’s don’t-wants and can’t-haves.

‘I don’t remember,’ she said.

‘Today you were just like that time,’ he said. ‘You were dry down there.’

‘Is that so,’ she said lightly. Perhaps the body knows before the mind does. ‘Then maybe we should do the same as that time.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Stop,’ she said. ‘And forget it.’

He was silent for a few seconds. ‘Is it because I’m getting married?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You do.’ He stubbornly raised his eyes.

‘Fine, maybe I do,’ she said. ‘You’re getting married. You’re going to raise children. Marriage is different from dating. You should take on the responsibilities of a husband.’

‘I remember you weren’t such a conservative person.’

‘Sorry to disappoint you, because I can’t be both a virtuous wife in marriage and a whore in bed,’ she said calmly. ‘In any case, congratulations on your wedding.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ he moved closer, reaching for her hand, and she pulled away.

He lowered his gaze. After a while, he said softly, ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a little afraid.’

‘Afraid of what?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’

She didn’t press further. She turned over, and they lay there in silence, covered by white sheets. Their bodies were like two surging waves, with a hollow between them holding the warmth they had left in each other. She thought she should have known long ago that he, too, could be afraid. He was no longer the carefree boy of high school, as if the whole world naturally spread itself at his feet. She had admired him for a fearlessness that seemed able to break through any constraint, and he had once, sincerely, believed that among all the well-behaved students who studied hard, she was the most different. She held books like clouds, like open fields, nothing like the earnest students he called bookworms. Only later did she understand that his fearlessness was merely the confidence bestowed by family and class. Knowledge, she learned, could only make one aware of the hopelessness of fate, not change it. That fleeting glimpse at the tail end of youth—in the end, they became nothing more than the most ordinary man and woman in the world.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Don’t apologize.’ she said.

‘Can we still be friends?’ he asked from behind her.

She gazed out the window. White waves churned the surface of the sea. Even through the glass, she could smell the salt.

Deeper in memory, there was another beach trip—another, more ordinary one. It was a spring outing organized by the school in their sophomore year. The entire grade gathered densely together like foraging seabirds, and the teachers ordered them to stay on the boardwalk and not run off. She stood quietly at its edge, feeling the sea wind lash her hair, sticky against her lip-glossed lips. In the distance, a tiny golden sun was diving into the sea. Behind her, unfamiliar classmates were talking.

‘I feel so old. I can barely walk.’

‘Don’t you think it’d be really nice to live by the sea when we’re old? Walking along the shore every day with your lover, feeling the sea breeze, listening to the seagulls…’

‘What are you talking about—you make it sound like we’re already an old man and an old woman.’

‘We’re clearly two old women…’

She listened quietly. He watched her gaze, fixed on the sea, wearing that mischievous smile unique to teenagers, his voice raised to overpower the waves. ‘Hey—do you want to run into the sea?’

She narrowed her eyes. The rocks, shells, and gravel ahead already seemed to sting her feet. ‘Sure, but the teacher just said—hey—’

Sixteen-year-old him took sixteen-year-old her by the hand, and they ran—before the sea swallowed the sun, and before the light returned somewhere beyond the horizon, in this summer-like winter.

Waves unceasing, the tide rising.