The Ferris Wheel Light

The room was completely dark, with only the cold wind slamming against the glass. I looked around carefully and thought everyone in the house must already be asleep. Good. Shiraishi Jiansheng wasn't here. My tense mood relaxed, and I strode forward in relief, only to trip over something in the dark. I bent down to look. It was Shiraishi Jiansheng, sprawled across the living-room floor like a dead crab. I crouched beside him. Moonlight lay across his face. Time had never managed to steal his handsomeness or his easy elegance. Even with his eyes closed, he was good-looking. This was my father, a father who looked nothing like me. He had probably just come back from one of his lovers and was still in high spirits. I patted his face and said, "Hey. Don't sleep in the living room. It's ugly." Shiraishi Jiansheng half-opened his eyes and struggled upright. He reached out to stroke my hair and said, "Qing'er, did you come to see me?"

The moment he heard me say I was Momoko, his large hand began squeezing my face this way and that. With a smile that looked more tired than amused, he asked, "Momoko, why do you always fight your father? Why can't you just behave for once? You hate me, don't you? You hate me, is that it?" He had asked me that question many times before, and I had never felt any need to answer. But tonight he held on to my hand with eyes full of sorrow. Then he pulled me into his arms.

Shiraishi Jiansheng had not hugged me in a very long time. I often saw him on the street with all kinds of beautiful women in his arms, which was precisely why I hated being embraced by him. I pushed at him, but he would not move. So I tried diplomacy instead. "Daddy, you're going to strangle me." I only ever called him Daddy when I was joking. He always said that was far too Westernized and that I should call him Father instead. But tonight Shiraishi Jiansheng suddenly cried like a child. Still crying, he said, "Qing'er, Momoko called me Daddy again. Do you know how long it's been since she last called me that? Qing'er, I miss you." Dear God. Dear God. Was he really going to act out his devotion in front of his own daughter like this? And yet, for reasons I could not stop, I started crying too, tears and snot all over myself. He had the same faithless, beautiful face as always. This whole day of the Ferris Wheel Light slipped quietly past us. No one knew what had happened in it, or what had changed between yesterday and today. But I knew one thing: Shiraishi Jiansheng still missed my mother, just as I did. That had not changed.

After I framed Xu Xiaomei, she was shunned by her classmates the same way I had once shunned her. Every day she glared at me ten thousand times. Of course I wasn't afraid. I even took her hand on purpose and said warmly, "Xiaomei, let's go shopping this weekend." Xu Xiaomei was both afraid of me and disgusted by me. She didn't dare oppose me openly, so she only said in a deeply depressed voice, "My brother's going to tutor me this weekend." One day, in the television at school, Jin Yahui's face appeared, dignified and proper. The teacher told us we ought to watch legal-advice programs more often to develop our legal awareness. "That lawyer is gorgeous," everyone said. Setting prejudice aside, Jin Yahui really was beautiful. Willow waist, fine brows, eyes that seemed always on the edge of speaking. She was the sort of woman who could grace a drawing room and manage a kitchen with equal ease, the ideal practical wife. In an ordinary family she would have been fought over. But who had told her to fall so stubbornly for a fickle man like Shiraishi Jiansheng? Did she really want his enormous fortune that badly? Was marrying into wealth, becoming a stepmother, and sacrificing all dignity worth it to her? Slumped over my desk, I suddenly noticed that the left side of her face seemed a little more swollen than the right. Even the way her expressions moved looked wrong. I didn't think much of it. After school, I packed up my things, but the moment I reached the gate I was hauled into a black car. They looked vicious. I yelled, "In broad daylight, under the clear heavens—" Then they sealed my mouth shut and all that came out was muffled noise. My first thought was kidnapping. Were they planning to blackmail Shiraishi Jiansheng? One million? Five million? Ten million? I quickly began assessing my market value.

"Slap her twice," the man in front ordered. One of the thug-looking men beside me hit me across the face twice so hard I saw stars. "I want to see what kind of expression Shiraishi Jiansheng makes when he sees his daughter beaten." The pain made it clear to me that this was one more of Shiraishi Jiansheng's sins, and I cursed him roundly in my heart. Then the man in charge glanced at me in the rearview mirror and his expression changed. I had seen that face before. He was the man from the ferris wheel. "So you're Bai... Shiraishi Momoko?" he asked, turning around. He gestured, and the tape was torn from my mouth. "Who did you think I was, Yu Shaoshao?" I glared at him. My face was already swelling. Those men were professionals. If I ever needed people beaten in the future, I'd hire two like these. One round and anyone would come out looking fat. The man sprang from the front seat into the back, shoved the thug aside, and reached a hand toward me in alarm. "Does it hurt?" His hand hung in midair.

Of course it hurt. I was a girl with thin skin and tender flesh. Two slaps like that and my looks were almost ruined.

"What exactly do you want?" I asked. "What did my father do this time that got me dragged into it?" "Do you know Jin Yahui?" he asked. "Not well." "She's my god-sister. I went to see her a few days ago and found out she'd been hit. Later I learned it was your father's doing." "She deserved it," I answered. "You..." He glared at me, and he looked terrifying when he was angry, but I wasn't afraid. "Who told her to keep trying to become my stepmother? I hate her." "Say that one more time." His hand came over and clamped around my throat. He slammed my head against the car window. "Do you believe I'll strangle you to death right now?" "I hate her, I hate her, I hate her..." I was almost unable to breathe, but I still refused to yield. A book somewhere said that the mighty cannot make one bow. "Stop the car," the man barked. The car stopped in the middle of a barren nowhere. He dragged me out. "Say something nice and I'll take you home." "In your dreams. You're all filthy bastards."

I hated Shiraishi Jiansheng. I hated Jin Yahui. None of them were any good. When they were flirting and carrying on, I was supposed to clap for them. When they quarreled and made trouble, I was the one left to take the blame. And then there was that man called Lu Huaqi. Never mind that I had cried in his arms for over twenty minutes after he hit me. He still dumped me out in the middle of nowhere. If I really died out there and came back as a ghost, he would be the first person I haunted. Little by little the sky darkened. I walked for what felt like forever without seeing a single person, only trees spreading across the wilderness in every direction, the kind of landscape that slowly breeds terror. As I walked I cursed them all. I cursed Shiraishi Jiansheng for not being human. I cursed Jin Yahui for being a fox spirit. Most of all I cursed Lu Huaqi. Bastard. Scoundrel. Turtle-born piece of trash. One of my shoes fell off. I was hungry and cold. For the first time in my life, I felt true despair. At last I crouched down where I was and could not go another step. Let me go see my mother, I thought. After all these years, I miss her so much. The moment I thought of her, my eyes went red and I began crying aloud. Gradually, in the blackness, I saw the faintest light. Someone was coming toward me, slowly drawing nearer. "Who's crying?" the voice asked. It sounded so familiar, exactly like Kamiya Iori's voice. Then he came close enough for the beam of his flashlight to fall on my face, and there he was, Kamiya Iori. He always seemed to appear out of the night like some fox spirit in a ghost tale. "Momoko? How is it you?" he said in surprise. I threw myself at him and clung to him brutally hard. The moment I saw him, all the fear and terror vanished. He was my angel, the angel God had given me, the lighthouse my mother once told me about. I never wanted to let go again. Kamiya Iori had come camping there with classmates. Two off-road vehicles, tents, a bonfire. He had only gone out for a walk and heard my crying from far away, following the sound until he found me. I held onto his arm and refused to release it even for a second. His classmates were all very kind. They brought me food, and I devoured it. Gently patting my head, Kamiya Iori said, "Slow down. No one's going to steal it from you." One of his classmates asked, "Kamiya Iori, is this your sister? You don't look alike at all." "Not my real sister," Iori said. "She's that girl I told you about, the one who let white mice loose at Lantern Festival." "That interesting little girl?" They all came over to look at me. I went stiff with embarrassment. Kamiya Iori had mentioned me before, and not as a good example. I half-hid behind him because only there felt safe. Someone with long hair and a drifting scent of perfume handed me a damp towel and sat down beside me. She smelled faintly of Anna Sui's Dolly Girl, the same fragrance Kamiya Iori had once bought. I remembered that delicate, girlish smell. The way Kamiya Iori looked at her was tender as water. Then I understood a little. They assumed, since I wasn't answering questions, that I must have gone through something terrible. Kamiya Iori said, "All right, you're fine now. With all these brothers and sisters here, no one will dare bully you again." They were all third-years from Churui Academy. That was the day I learned Kamiya Iori was already twenty-one. He was good to everyone. He could sing. He could tell jokes. The girl he liked was called Han Lin, his college classmate. Standing together, they were perfectly matched, and the way their eyes met held a soft, unmistakable tenderness.

I only went home the next day. It was Saturday. The moment I reached the house, I saw Shiraishi Jiansheng sitting outside chain-smoking, his gaze drifting. The second he saw me, he threw away the cigarette and rushed over to hug me.

"Momoko, are you all right?" "I'm not dead," I said, shoving him away and heading upstairs. From the landing I heard him talking to Kamiya Iori. Iori was saying, "Momoko was badly frightened, but she's fine now." "Thank you. A little something for your trouble..." Shiraishi Jiansheng loved solving everything with money. "Uncle, if you give me money, you'll only be insulting Momoko. I really do think of her as a younger sister." "Then... thank you. What was your name again?" I pressed myself to the door and listened to the essentials of their exchange before collapsing onto my bed and falling asleep. I felt exhausted, filled from head to toe with that sensation of having climbed back from the edge of death. I remember thinking: if I died, what would become of Shiraishi Jiansheng? A vast estate with no heir? A lonely death with no children at his bedside? What did it matter if he possessed every beauty in the world? He was only a rich man impoverished in feeling. I hated all of them. Everyone except Kamiya Iori. In the whole world, he alone treated me best.

The reason Shiraishi Jiansheng had hit Jin Yahui was that they had argued and, in the middle of it, she had accidentally knocked over my mother's framed photo. In a rage, he slapped her. Originally the right had been on her side. But after what happened to me, even her being right turned into being wrong. She apologized to Shiraishi Jiansheng and came to our house every day, ingratiating herself by cooking and washing clothes, all in the hope of being forgiven. Shiraishi Jiansheng had made up his mind to throw her out. I once overheard him say, "Don't you have underworld connections? Why don't you find someone to kill me? What's the point of scaring Momoko? You vicious woman. I never want to see you again." Through a crack in the door, I saw Jin Yahui weeping as she knelt on the floor, clutching his leg. "Don't drive me away. I was wrong. I swear this wasn't my doing. Believe me. Believe me." Thinking of how dignified she looked on television, I suddenly found her pitiful. What kind of thing can make a person cast aside all dignity and bow that low to a man? One day when I came home from school, I saw her kneeling half on the floor polishing mine and Shiraishi Jiansheng's shoes one pair after another with grave concentration, stray wisps of hair falling over her face. She looked so humble that, for one moment, I felt something dangerously close to pity. She smiled ingratiatingly at me, but I still ignored her. I could not forget who had pushed me into that boundless pit of darkness. Even remembering the feeling frightened me. Once I asked Shiraishi Jiansheng, "Can't you forgive Jin Yahui?" He answered, "Haven't you always disliked her?"

"If you want to dump someone, don't use me as your excuse," I said. "What kind of father does that?" Shiraishi Jiansheng went silent for a long time, and little by little he began allowing Jin Yahui back into his orbit again. Later, from Lao Ba, I learned the history between Lu Huaqi and Jin Yahui. Years earlier, Jin Yahui had once handled a criminal case. At the time, Lu Huaqi's father had been convicted and sentenced to death. No lawyer in the city dared to take the case. Saving the life of a mafia boss was one thing; failing to save him was a way to get yourself killed. No one wanted the risk. Jin Yahui had just graduated from university then, young and reckless, but because several generations of her family had been lawyers, she had some backing. She took the case, greased palms, swallowed insult after insult, and in the end the death sentence became a suspended death sentence, and the suspended death sentence was reduced again to a prison term. A few years later the old man died in prison, but not before reminding his son never to forget Jin Yahui's great kindness. That was how Lu Huaqi came to call her his god-sister. After that case, though, Jin Yahui stopped taking criminal work and only handled economic cases. She never touched another criminal trial. So when Lu Huaqi heard that his god-sister had been bullied, the first thing he wanted was revenge. But Shiraishi Jiansheng was no ordinary target. He was the one Jin Yahui loved most. More than once Lu Huaqi tried to find someone to deal with him, and every time Jin Yahui threatened to kill herself if he did.

That was what Lao Ba told me. In his mouth, Brother Hua was Lu Huaqi, the same man for whom Lao Ba had once nearly had his guts torn out. I told Lao Ba, "Sometimes I wish he had been the one with his guts hanging out." Lao Ba stuck out his tongue and said, "Never say that in front of Brother Hua."

What I fear isn't having no friends. What I fear is loneliness.

Lonely Shiraishi Momoko ran into bad-tempered Lu Huaqi again in the blue music of bar street. That day I had meant to go see Kamiya Iori, but just before I reached his school I saw him walking out hand in hand with Han Lin. He kissed her forehead and helped her into a car, his gaze full of reluctant tenderness. Perhaps in his eyes I was still only a child. I lowered my head, let my bangs hide my eyes, and slipped away on my own.

The Blue Music bar was full of handsome men and women, and the drinks were mild, all brewed by the owner himself. When I walked in, I saw Lu Huaqi. He was like a cup of mellow liquor, ringed by beautiful women who all looked ready to drink him down. He rubbed the ring on his finger, a gesture he was used to making, his enchanting eyes sweeping lazily across the crowd. I took up a microphone and asked the band to play an old song, "Sneaking Around." Why are you always sneaking around, sneaking around to date somebody else? You hide it from me, you dodge me, but still you run into me... I sang a lively song as though it were heartbreak. Lu Huaqi picked up the other microphone and sang opposite me. What do you mean by sneaking around? Is sneaking around really a crime? Think about it yourself, say it yourself. If I wasn't on a date, why would I run into you? I knew this man was mercurial enough to kill me whenever the mood struck, so once the duet ended I didn't dare keep teasing him. I went to the bar and ordered rice wine instead. Lu Huaqi sat down beside me and asked, as if casually, "Still angry at me?" "Who would dare?" I took a drink. "I'll do a magic trick for you. Then will you stop being angry?" He held his hand out. "Give me yours." I did. His palm pressed against mine. "Don't blink. Whatever you do, don't blink." His voice had a kind of spell in it, and I wanted to see what game he was playing. Then suddenly he kissed my cheek, and at the same time the ring from his finger appeared on mine. Everyone around us burst into applause. I froze. Our hands were still pressed together. His mouth brushed my ear as he whispered, "Have you forgiven me?" Lu Huaqi was very romantic, but my heart did not race and my face did not flush. I only smiled and gripped the ring tightly. "Then this belongs to me now," I said.

When Lu Huaqi was twenty-four, I was eighteen. Once school started, I entered my last year of high school. When I was in elementary school, I used to think elementary school would never end. I never imagined I would one day be on the edge of graduating from high school. Eighteen-year-old girls are supposed to study hard and fall into discreet little romances. I, Shiraishi Momoko, refused absolutely. If I was going to fall in love, it would be a love everyone in the world could see. I wanted to tell the whole world I was in love, that my boyfriend was Lu Huaqi, a man feared by both the black world and the white. I only let him pick me up in a cheap Alto. Every week we rode the ferris wheel together. We kissed brazenly in the street. The whole world said I'd gone mad. I simply believed they did not understand me. Lao Ba once asked whether I loved Brother Hua. I shook my head and said I didn't know. I only knew that once, the person I loved most in the world had been my mother, and then she died. I came to like Kamiya Iori, and he got a girlfriend. I wanted Shiraishi Jiansheng to love me with his whole heart, and instead he changed girlfriends one after another. Love had left me exhausted and lost for too long. Now I only wanted not to be lonely. I wanted less and less, and I hoped I would not be denied even that little bit. Shiraishi Jiansheng had already given up on me. He sent Jin Yahui to persuade me, and she told me, "Sometimes I can't even persuade myself. I only hope you won't regret this." I heard Jin Yahui even went to talk to Lu Huaqi, though I never knew how it ended. Lu Huaqi had plenty of business and was often very busy. I didn't mind. I had never once imagined he would love me. At most, what he felt for me was a kind of liking, a sense that I amused him. I strung his ring on a red cord and made a bracelet out of it. I told myself I would get through my final year of high school properly. I had no extravagant hopes for the future. I only wished the lighthouse inside me would never go out.

I went to Kamiya Iori and Han Lin's engagement. That day I saw Xu Xiaomei, and that was how I learned she was Kamiya Iori's actual younger sister. One had their father's surname, the other their mother's. Xu Xiaomei and Kamiya Iori were people from completely different worlds. She was pampered, ordinary, timid, and had no mind of her own. But I could understand all of that as the result of how deeply Kamiya Iori had loved and indulged her since childhood. When she saw me, she was so astonished she could barely speak. "How do you know my brother?" "That's a secret," I teased. Xu Xiaomei really wasn't hateful at all. What we had mistaken for mutual dislike before was only the result of how fiercely we had once rejected each other. She helped me carry a piece of cake, and we sat together on the grass. She said, "Later I thought about what you told me. I really shouldn't have blamed you." I smeared cake onto her nose.

"Didn't you used to worry all the time that I'd kill you?" Xu Xiaomei smiled sheepishly. "My brother said you aren't bad, only kind. It's just that you've sealed yourself inside a hard shell." I looked over at Kamiya Iori. He had an arm around Han Lin, smiling with the kind of innocence that can wound. Suddenly my heart hurt terribly. I had lost another portion of my love, and it hurt so badly I could hardly breathe. When I got home, Shiraishi Jiansheng brought me tea. Out of nowhere I asked him, "How long does it take to forget someone you love?" Shiraishi Jiansheng said, "What's wrong? Tell your father."

"The person I like is going to marry someone else," I said. "It hurts so much. I can't give him my blessing." "Aren't you with Huaqi?" I shook my head, and tears fell. Shiraishi Jiansheng hugged me and said, "Father knows. It's that Kamiya Iori, isn't it?" Kamiya Iori, who once released a sky lantern with me. Kamiya Iori, who once gave me a beam of light. He was getting married. How could I not be heartbroken?

For some time after that, Jin Yahui remained sunk in depression. I didn't know what had gone wrong between her and Shiraishi Jiansheng, though there had always been something wrong between them. At the dinner table she would suddenly sigh, and I asked, "What's with you? Menopause? Or senile dementia?" "Your father has someone new," she said honestly. "His affairs never stop," I answered, not thinking much of it.

"But this time, you know the woman too." That got my attention. "Who is it?" "Han Lin." The bowl dropped straight from my hands. "That's impossible. It has to be another Han Lin with the same name. Didn't she just get engaged to Kamiya Iori?" But the very next day I saw Han Lin get out of Shiraishi Jiansheng's sports car, and he even leaned over and kissed her cheek. The diamond ring on her hand flashed brilliantly. I knew Shiraishi Jiansheng was generous with gifts. At his grandest he had once given away a whole villa with a garden. I had thought Han Lin was different from those vain, greedy girls. I had never imagined she could be that vulgar too. I felt terribly sorry for Kamiya Iori. Xu Xiaomei told me her brother had been in a dreadful state, drinking in the middle of the night. She asked me what she should do. What could I possibly do? The person who tied the knot ought to untie it. So I went to find Shiraishi Jiansheng and ask him to show mercy. When I arrived at his company, I found everyone crowding outside the chairman's office. Kamiya Iori had seized Shiraishi Jiansheng by the collar like a madman. Shiraishi Jiansheng was already forty, but calm without seeming to try, a composure honed by years in the business world. When he saw me, he said, "Momoko, come in. Close the door." "You want to talk to me about Han Lin?" Shiraishi Jiansheng asked Kamiya Iori. "You dirty old lecher!" Kamiya Iori shouted, losing all control. Shiraishi Jiansheng merely smiled. "I only wanted you to see clearly whether this woman was worth your love. The facts are obvious enough. All it took was a ring worth fifty-eight thousand, and she left you. That is the charm of money. The hypocrisy of human nature." Red and white kept passing over Kamiya Iori's beautiful face. "I can judge my own woman for myself. Who asked for your concern?" Shiraishi Jiansheng looked up at him, then at me. "I only wanted to make my precious girl happy. Not just fifty-eight thousand. I'd spend five hundred and eighty thousand and still think it worthwhile." Kamiya Iori turned and looked at me with naked hatred. Shiraishi Jiansheng said, "Don't look at her like that. This has nothing to do with her. This was my idea alone." After Kamiya Iori left, I looked at Shiraishi Jiansheng. He smiled lightly and asked, "Momoko, shall Daddy hire a French chef to cook at home for you this week?"

I followed Kamiya Iori for a long, long way, until we reached a line of plane trees. He braced himself against one of them and kept pounding at it until his hands bled. I watched from a distance, drowning in guilt. If not for me, perhaps he and Han Lin would still have been living a beautiful life. Their future might have remained perfect. His world never needed to become this cruel. Then he turned, saw me, and crossed the distance in a few quick strides. Before I could react, he yanked my head toward him and crushed his mouth against mine, hard and merciless, without an ounce of tenderness. A voice inside me screamed, This isn't Kamiya Iori. He is the gentlest person in the world, the one who understands me best. Even when tears slid from the corners of my eyes, he still did not let me go. It was Lu Huaqi who finally knocked him down. "Who gave you permission to kiss Momoko?" Lu Huaqi demanded. Blood at the corner of his mouth, Kamiya Iori laughed wildly. "When I kiss her, she doesn't know how happy she is. You think she's with you because she loves you? She's only with you because no one else is there. The one she loves is me. Unfortunately, I hate her." Kamiya Iori had gone mad. The beautiful world he believed in had been overturned by reality; the shock was too much for him. Lu Huaqi pointed at him. "What right do you have to hate a girl who loves you and gave you her whole heart? Do you think I don't know she doesn't love me? But I love her. I want her never again to cry because she's lonely, never again to cry because of you. I want her to be happy every day." Looking at Lu Huaqi then, I had never seen him so tall. For the first time, real seriousness shone in his alluring eyes. I wanted desperately to turn away and cry again. At ten, I had believed I owned nothing. At eighteen, I discovered I had the whole world. The light of the ferris wheel had always been there. In the end, it shone inside me on what was good and beautiful. Lao Ba once said that in a person's life there are always some people who come only to teach you something. I thought about that for a very long time. At last I was able to sit peacefully with Jin Yahui over a meal and ask her, "Why do you stay beside Shiraishi Jiansheng?" "Waiting for a prodigal to come home." "And if he never comes home in this life?" "Then I'll keep waiting." "Until when?" "Until I stop loving him." Much later I learned that the reason Jin Yahui stopped taking criminal cases was Shiraishi Jiansheng. Criminal law was hard, high-risk work; handle one case badly, and you might end up getting yourself prosecuted. After meeting him, she began to feel life was precious and shouldn't all be spent in struggle. And Shiraishi Jiansheng? He numbed himself with business dinners and beautiful women.

Once, all I wanted was vast, endless love. But I had never looked carefully at what love really meant. Later I read in the Bible that love is patient and kind. Love does not envy. It does not boast, and it is not proud. Love never fails. The truth is, if you love someone with all your heart, they will understand. They will know.

After the entrance exams, I chose to head south. Lu Huaqi came to see me off with a whole troop of brothers, and the spectacle was magnificent enough to make passersby stare. Lu Huaqi said this was his usual style: if he did something, it had to be done at full volume. Lu Huaqi was truly good to me. Whether or not that was love, it was real. Holding me in his arms, he said, "After I left you there that day, I kept following you from the shadows, wanting to see just how stubborn you'd be. I never imagined you'd keep cursing me the whole time. You infuriated me. Later I was just about to go to you when Kamiya Iori showed up and got in the way." Warmth flooded my heart. So no one had ever truly abandoned me. I had only failed to feel how they cherished me. The train started moving. Lu Huaqi's tall figure stretched into a long bar of light on the platform. I leaned out, hoping to see another beautiful face too, but there was no one there. Other than Lu Huaqi and his row of brothers, the platform was empty. I switched on my phone and saw a text from a familiar number. Once, I made a wish on a sky lantern: that every wish of yours would come true. Momoko, forgive the harm we've done each other. I wish you a safe journey. Kamiya Iori. Gently, I tipped my head back and forced the tears that were about to fall to flow upward instead. Thank you for your love. Thank you for your forbearance. Thank you for leading me to the ferris-wheel light that belongs to me.