We came out of the restaurant when it was already close to dawn.
This meal had lasted a very long time.
Most of the time we had just been talking in the private room, as if we had stored up half a lifetime of words that had never had the chance to be said.
After leaving home, we had simply wandered around the festival for a while.
Crowds surged back and forth across the plaza.
I did not like environments that were too lively, and Gu Fan was the same.
So we left the plaza quickly and went to a nearby restaurant for dinner.
There were hardly any people on the street.
The streetlights stretched our shadows very long, very long.
The two shadows overlapped, then separated, then overlapped again at the next fork under another streetlight.
Gu Fan walked on my left.
Occasionally his arm would brush against mine.
He did not pull away, and neither did I.
The festival fireworks had long since finished.
From far away came the occasional scattered crack of firecrackers, muffled, like someone knocking on a door in the distance.
“Let’s walk for a bit.”
It was not a question.
It was a statement.
But when Gu Fan said it he glanced at me, and that look meant if you want to go back, that’s fine too.
I nodded and said, “Okay.”
We kept walking along the road.
At some point our hands found each other again.
The motion was natural.
By the time I noticed, our fingers were already laced together.
We passed several intersections, passed the dessert shop we used to visit often as children.
It was already closed.
The rolling shutter was down, a red paper pasted on it that read “Son getting married, returned to hometown for the wedding, reopen on the fifteenth of the lunar month.”
We reached a small bridge.
The water beneath it was black, reflecting the moon in the sky, shattered into pieces of light.
Gu Fan stopped on the bridge, leaned against the railing, and stared at his hands.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked.
“Nothing much,” he answered, then paused and added, “I was thinking the fish-fragrant eggplant tonight was a bit salty.”
I froze for a second, then could not help laughing.
It was not the kind of laugh that meant that’s funny.
It was the kind that meant how can you say something like that at a time like this.
Gu Fan glanced at me, and the corner of his mouth curved a little too.
Very faint, but there was a clear arc.
He was that kind of person.
He rarely said those especially sentimental things.
He would not hold me under the fireworks and talk about a lifetime.
But he would tell me on a bridge at dawn that tonight’s food had been a bit salty.
I did not know why, but I felt this was better than any love confession.
When we reached the elementary school gate, it was my turn to stop.
The heavy iron gate was locked.
A thick iron chain was wrapped around it several times, leaving a gap in the middle.
Gu Fan did not ask why I had stopped.
He measured the width of the gap, then turned sideways and slipped through, holding out his hand for me.
I took his hand, palm against the back of his hand.
His hand was larger than mine, the knuckles distinct.
When he held it there was a certain certainty, a strength that would not let go.
When he pulled me through the middle of the chain he used a little force.
My whole body tipped forward.
My forehead almost bumped his chin.
He did not dodge, and neither did I.
The playground was pitch-black.
Only a little light leaked in from the distant streetlamps, throwing the shadow of the basketball hoop onto the ground, a dark lump like a crouching beast.
I stood at the edge of the court and stepped on the concrete.
Fine gravel rolled under my soles.
Basketball… I had not touched one in a very long time.
When I was little in the village, Big Sis used to take me to play.
She always stood under the basket and blocked people for me.
I only needed to stand outside, catch the ball, aim, and shoot.
No confrontation, no collisions.
For me, basketball was just the matter of sending the ball through that iron ring.
After moving to this small county town I almost never played basketball.
More often I sat under the big tree by the playground wall, hiding in the shadows, hugging my knees, watching Gu Fan play.
When he shot, his wrist would give a light flick.
The arc of the ball was flat, but it always went in.
When it went in the net would make a swish, like a very small wind passing through leaves.
I liked that sound.
Back then I thought that was enough.
Watching from far away was fine.
I did not say any of this.
Gu Fan did not ask.
We walked across the playground in companionable silence and reached the small woods behind it.
The ping-pong table was still standing there.
The surface was as broken as I remembered.
The paint had all peeled off, exposing gray-white wood, several cracks running across it.
The longest one stretched from the middle all the way to the edge, like a dried riverbed.
The net was long gone.
Only two iron poles stood bare on either side.
Most of the table legs were rusted.
It looked ready to collapse at any moment.
As if the moment someone sat on it, it would fall without a word.
But it would not collapse.
I knew.
Because I had been pressed down on it before.
Those hands had pressed the back of my head, pinning my upper body to the tabletop.
My face had been against that ice-cold, rough wood.
I had smelled the mixture of dust and rust.
The first thought that jumped into my mind then was not pain, not fear, not why me.
It was… this table is actually sturdier than I imagined.
“Zhi Nian.”
Gu Fan’s voice came from beside me.
I came back to myself and realized I had been staring at that table for a long time.
“That matter,” he said. “You never told me.”
It was not an accusation.
It was a statement.
Like someone who already knew the answer, confirming one last small detail.
I opened my mouth.
I wanted to say that back then I thought if I just endured it would pass, wanted to say I did not want to trouble you, wanted to say I did not know how to bring it up, wanted to say…
But the only thing that came out was this.
“I know,” I said. “But…”
“I was afraid you would think I was too much trouble.”
Gu Fan was silent for a few seconds.
“I would not think you are trouble.”
But I could not control it.
Could not control that thought of I should not bother other people with this kind of thing.
Could not control that inertia of I can just carry it alone.
Could not control that fear that once I said it, if the other person’s response was not what I wanted, it would have been better not to say anything at all.
I did not say it out loud.
But Gu Fan seemed to understand.
He did not say anything like “why don’t you trust me.”
He walked over and stood in front of me, very close.
Close enough that I could smell the laundry detergent on his clothes, faint, like a cotton quilt that had just been dried in the sun.
“Zhi Nian.”
“Mm.”
“From now on, no matter what it is—”
He reached out and took the hand hanging at my side.
It was not a light hold.
It was the kind of grip that wrapped the entire hand.
Palm against the back of my hand, his warmth seeping in bit by bit, warm, steady, like placing a warm stone into icy river water and, against all reason, warming the entire river.
“I will be the first to know.”
I lifted my head to look at him.
His expression was very calm.
Not the kind of calm that was deliberately suppressing something.
It was genuine calm.
Like a person saying something that required no hesitation.
He spoke, his tone very light, but every word clear.
“Not ‘you can tell me.’ It is ‘I will know.'”
“Whether you want to say it, whether you dare to say it, whether you can say it out loud—I will know.”
“Because I will watch.”
“I will keep watching you.”
My eyes grew hot.
Not because I was sad.
It was because I had been soaking in the water for so long that I thought I was born to stay in the water, and then someone reached out, pulled me onto the shore, and draped a dry towel over me.
At a time like that, you want to cry even more than when you were still in the water.
Because you know you have been saved.
I sniffed and nodded.
When we came out of the elementary school, the sky was still not fully light.
We sat for a long time on a newly built bench beside the trees.
Staying next to Gu Fan, looking at the campus that was both familiar and strange, a wave of sleepiness surged up.
I leaned against Gu Fan’s shoulder and fell asleep.
I did not know how long I slept.
When I woke, Gu Fan was also leaning against the back of the bench with his eyes closed, resting.
“Let’s go. It’s about time to head home,” he said.
“Mm.” I nodded.
Gu Fan said the church nearby that we used to visit often was being renovated, and we could stop by to look on the way.
His house was not on the way to the church.
Maybe he had noticed it when he was out with other people?
He always noticed things other people did not pay attention to.
The church was not far.
We walked along the sidewalk for a while and arrived quickly.
The outer walls were white, probably freshly painted, giving off a faint silver glow in the morning light.
The arched windows were set with colored glass, dark, letting no light through.
The cross on the steeple was half-enclosed by iron scaffolding, but it did not ruin the overall beauty.
Instead it looked like some unfinished, still-growing miracle.
There was a quiet beauty that did not disturb anyone.
The intricately patterned main door was open.
A very dim light was on inside, probably a night lamp left by the workers.
The air smelled of lime and wood mixed together.
It was not pungent.
Instead there was a clean, newborn feeling.
Several rows of pews stood in the nave, covered with white dust cloths.
Beside the pulpit at the very front was a piano.
Black, the lacquer wiped very clean, giving off a soft sheen in the dim light.
The lid was closed, a small patch of moonlight falling on it, leaking in from a high window.
Gu Fan walked over and lifted the lid.
He sat on the piano bench.
He did not play.
He only pressed a few keys with his fingertips.
The sound was not loud, but it echoed through the empty church, a hum, like a butterfly beating its wings somewhere far away.
He pressed them very slowly.
One note, a pause, then another note.
He was not playing a piece.
He was only testing the sound.
Like a person greeting an ancient object, saying softly, “Hey, are you all right?”
I sat on the first-row pew, took off my shoes, pulled my feet up, and curled my whole body into the seat.
The dust-cloth-covered pew was softer than I had expected.
The fabric felt rough but dry.
Stepping on it gave a sense of ease.
Gu Fan played a short passage.
Not a complete piece, only a few fragmented measures, intermittent, like a person skipping across the surface of water, toe tapping once, tapping once, splashing up tiny ripples.
I did not know what piece it was.
Maybe a song he had learned as a child, maybe a melody he had heard somewhere, maybe it was nothing at all, just notes he pressed at random.
But that sound, in the church at dawn, in the smell of lime and wood, in the faint moonlight—
Made me feel that there were still some things in this world that were beautiful, clean.
Things that had not been dirtied.
Gu Fan finished the last few notes and left his hand on the keys without lifting it.
He turned his head and glanced at me.
Morning light had begun to seep in at some point.
From outside the colored glass windows, from outside the arched doorway, from the gaps in the unfinished scaffolding.
Bit by bit, like someone in the sky slowly turning on a lamp.
The pitch black was slowly eaten away by pale golden light, a clear, distinct line of light advancing in order.
The light fell on the side of his face.
His eyelashes, the bridge of his nose, his slightly pressed lips.
Everything was just waking up.
Including me.
Including that little girl I thought had already died, the one who would never believe anyone again, the one huddled in a corner trembling.
She had only been asleep.
She had not died.
Now she was awake.
Gu Fan stood up from the piano bench and walked in front of me.
He bent down, reached out and brushed the hair from my forehead, his fingertips cool as they grazed the center of my brow.
“Let’s go,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”
I shook my head.
“Sit a little longer.”
He looked at me for a second, then sat down beside me.
The dust cloth on the pew made a fine rustle when we sat.
His shoulder rested against mine, body heat passing through the thin fabric.
I did not speak.
He did not either.
Outside the church, the sky brightened little by little.
The morning light was faint, beautiful as the beginning.