That year Ningxu was still in high school. During summer vacation she went alone to Xining. The road from Xining to Qinghai Lake was under construction, and the dust flew everywhere. After several hours on the bus, it felt as if everyone's lungs had been shaken loose. The moment they stopped, Ningxu jumped off the coach, desperate to crouch by the roadside and catch her breath, only to reach into her pocket and discover she had left her cigarettes back at the hotel.
It was probably the first time the boy had ever had a girl ask him for a cigarette. He looked startled and shook his head furiously, like a rattle drum. Innocent was written all over him. Kamiya Karyu, I think, only learned to smoke after he met Ningxu. Back then, when she asked whether he had a cigarette, he only stared. Ningxu couldn't help teasing him. "What are you afraid of? I'm not trying to pick you up." He went red at once. Ningxu thought, This is actually kind of fun. What a pure-hearted boy. She meant to keep teasing him, but just then the guide started shouting for everyone to go into the restaurant. Ten people to a table, names called one by one. When it was the pure-hearted boy's turn, she heard the guide call out, "Kamiya Karyu." The name, she thought, was almost as delicate as his face. At the front desk Ningxu bought a pack of local cigarettes, harsh enough that she dipped the filters in tea before smoking them. Kamiya Karyu leaned over curiously and asked what she was doing. She told him the climate there was too dry, and wetting the filter made the cigarette taste better. Then, showing off, she blew from the other end so that the water puffed out in little bursts. Kamiya Karyu looked at her in awe, entirely taken in. It made Ningxu think of a line from a film: If I don't admire you, how can I love you? Unfortunately, the older women at the table were not nearly as friendly as Kamiya Karyu. They complained that she was flicking ash everywhere, and that smoking during a meal was bad for people's health, especially secondhand smoke. Ningxu ignored them and kept smoking. Kamiya Karyu tugged at her sleeve. "Put it out." Ningxu glared at him. "If somebody's unhappy, they can say so to my face. If they insist on going in circles and want me to take the hint, then that's too bad, because I'm not blessed with subtle understanding." One of the older women slammed her chopsticks down at once, and several others sighed theatrically about young people these days. Ningxu rebelled on the spot. Same speech her mother used. From the bottom of her heart she hated those stale old lines about this generation and that generation. Weren't they all Chinese in the end? Why divide people into categories like ranks on a shelf? Every age has good people and bad people. To her mind, this was nothing but a human weakness, naked jealousy. They were no longer young, no longer had the right to be foolish or reckless or make mistakes, so they envied those who still did. Ningxu snorted inwardly, then put both feet up on the chair and squatted on it, smoking even harder. As a result, when they got back on the bus, none of the older women would sit with her. They started arguing, and the guide came over and suggested, "Why don't you just sit alone in the back row?" Ningxu said, "Why should I?" The guide smiled and said, "Young people should respect their elders." Ningxu snapped back, "I'm younger than any of you. Why don't you make room for me?" Just then someone tapped her shoulder from behind. She turned. It was Kamiya Karyu. "I'll give you my seat," he said. "Come sit with me." His smile was like a heater blowing warm air through her whole body. Ningxu thought that if he hadn't been so tall, if she hadn't had to tilt her head up to look at him, then she would already have cried grateful tears. Later Ningxu told Kamiya Karyu that she'd fallen in love with him at first sight. Kamiya Karyu didn't believe her. Smiling, he said, "Did you forget? We saw each other plenty of times before that." Yes, they had met many times, and spoken too, so why had that one moment suddenly been different? Ningxu thought that must be what people meant by fate. Like Sanmao said, the things you go looking for on purpose are often the things you never find. Everything in this world has its own time to come and its own time to go. When the time came, Cupid lifted the little arrow on his back and shot it from his heart into mine.
At the end of the trip Ningxu asked Kamiya Karyu for his contact information. He obediently wrote it down and handed it to her. Ningxu refused to take it and glared. "That's it?" Kamiya Karyu nodded and scratched his head. She called him an idiot in her heart, though what she actually said was more instructive: "If I never contact you, are you just going to pretend you never met me?" "How could I?" he said, grinning, but still failed to take action. Ningxu got so irritated she kicked his suitcase. "What, there's room in that huge bag for everything except my contact details?" At last Kamiya Karyu understood. "Right. Then tell me your number and I'll call you when I get back." Ningxu was delighted, but didn't want it to end with her reciting a few digits and him tapping them into his phone. So she tore off a strip of cigarette carton, carefully wrote down her address and name, and shoved it at him. "Lose this and you're dead." "I won't, Chief. I swear." Standing to attention, Kamiya Karyu saluted her. Ningxu touched his hair and felt deeply pleased. All her life people had called her things like little Ning, baby, darling, sweetheart. No one had ever called her Chief before. It made her feel important, the way a title can make your heart turn sweet with the sense that you matter. Kamiya Karyu called her the day he got back, and after that they contacted each other constantly by phone, computer, letters, anything that could possibly be used. To borrow an advertising slogan: if you could think of it, they would use it. That year Ningxu was a high-school senior, newly learning what it meant to miss someone. Kamiya Karyu was a twenty-one-year-old engineering student. Like every couple forced to love at a distance, they threw themselves into the future. Kamiya Karyu wanted Ningxu to pass the entrance exam for his university. Then they could go to class hand in hand, eat together, go to the supermarket on weekends, and live side by side like a little married couple.
Ningxu lost herself in the beautiful future he described. "How long can you love me, Kamiya Karyu?" she asked. "A lifetime," he said. "And how long is a lifetime?" "A very, very long time." "And how long is that?" Helplessly, he laughed. "One life. One world. The next life too." It was enough to move a girl to tears. Before the entrance exam he mailed Ningxu a whole carton of cigarettes. Every pack was a simple, elegant blue and white. The English on the boxes translated roughly as Moonview Hall. Kamiya Karyu said he liked the meaning of the name and hoped it would bring her luck. At once Ningxu thought of old Kobe in cheongsams and foreign concessions, of Zhang Ailing's old Kobe. Everything except her own life.
Later, Ningxu made up a lie. She called and said she'd fallen and injured her arm, so she had done badly on the entrance exam. Kamiya Karyu was sorry to hear it, but he comforted her all the same. "It's all right. Heal properly. University isn't going anywhere, and neither am I." As soon as they hung up, Ningxu cried for a long time. She regretted not meeting someone like Kamiya Karyu when she first entered high school. Then she might never have learned to play at rebellion, skip class every day, and ruin herself so badly that now she couldn't get into any university at all. She had failed. The huge red list with all the names on it was only one page long, and Ningxu stared at it for two hours without finding her own name. She hadn't even made it into the worst university in Kobe. Of course, her whole family had expected that result already. Her mother was vain to the core. Before the exam she had already told all the relatives that if Ningxu failed to get into anything, they'd spend some money and send her abroad so she wouldn't stay home embarrassing the Ning family. But Ningxu refused. She ran back from the airport and demanded one more chance. She wanted to repeat the year. The life of a repeater was miserable. Endless practice problems and test papers cut her time into tiny little squares, and she could scarcely breathe inside any one of them. Only in the brief gap after dinner, when she chatted with Kamiya Karyu online for a few minutes, did she feel anything like relief. He supported her just as steadily as ever. He said he would wait for her under the tallest, broadest phoenix tree on campus. He said he would take her by the hand and walk every street in Kobe with her. He said he would bring her to Moonview Hall, and they would sit together on the steps and smoke Moonview Hall cigarettes. He said he had mailed her piles of revision materials, and even a huge jar of brain tonic so she could eat "whatever she needed to make up what was lacking." Kamiya Karyu said so many things, and every one of those words raced across the screen and across her heart. Those words were better nourishment than any tonic. They injected strength into her at the hardest point in her life. Whether it was the placebo effect or the brain tonic, Ningxu really did begin to like studying. Sometimes she would spend a whole night struggling through a single equation, then shout in triumph when she got the answer right. Even her mother, who had never had much faith in her, said Ningxu had finally grown up. Only Ningxu knew it was the power of love. Love really can change a person, grind down their sharp edges, all so that they fit better into somebody else's heart. She began to believe the saying nothing is difficult if you put your heart into it, and on the phone she often joked with Kamiya Karyu, "You'd better hurry up and get rid of any flirtatious girl students around you before I get there, or you'll be sorry." Kamiya Karyu would laugh and answer, "Don't worry, Chief. No enemy situation here." And just when everyone thought the story must be headed toward a perfect ending, Ningxu really did get into a car accident. On her way home from school, a motorcycle hit her. It wasn't life-threatening, just a broken right arm and right leg. It was as though the heavens had decided to play the cruelest possible joke on her, one too big even to cry over. Staring at the plaster on her arm and leg, Ningxu thought for the first time that life really was uncanny. As though so many people and so many things had already been arranged in the dark, and there was no dodging any of it. With her left hand, she texted Kamiya Karyu: Maybe I'm just not fated to go to university.
Ningxu spent three months in bed. At the end of that, her mother used connections to arrange a job for her in a bank, a safe iron rice bowl, easy and quiet. Her mother said it was no good having Ningxu drifting around the house all day. She needed to get out into society and learn something of the world. Everyone thought this time Ningxu had no excuse left to refuse. Yet once again she disappointed them, because she knew exactly what she wanted. She was going to Kobe to find Kamiya Karyu. Only by being with him could she ever reach the Moonview Hall meant for her. Ningxu acted recklessly and stubbornly. She gave up everything, left everything behind, and fled her home with nothing but a simple, obstinate love. She didn't tell Kamiya Karyu she was coming, because she knew he would always be there waiting for her. Coming out of the station, she hailed a taxi and told it to drive straight to his campus. Kobe was so prosperous. One tower after another. So many cars, so many people, as though all of China had flowed there. It was paradise. A greenhouse. Even the wind and soil seemed suited to love. Sitting in the taxi, watching the buildings and people stream past the window, Ningxu thought she was hurrying to a date. A beautiful reunion, not just a brief encounter. A brief encounter was like getting caught in the rain. Anyone had the right to forget an umbrella, but no one could stand in rain forever. What she wanted was one life, one world, this life and the next. All the way there she imagined how shocked Kamiya Karyu would be to see her under the phoenix tree, how happy he would be after the shock, how he would run toward her. The thought made her want to smile. But the moment the smile began to appear, the guard at the school gate blocked her coldly with a gloved hand. "Show your school badge, please." "Lost it." "Then your student ID." "Didn't bring it." "Then tell me your department, your class, your homeroom teacher." She tried giving him the name of her high-school teacher, but naturally that got her nowhere. With no other choice she dialed Kamiya Karyu's phone. It started ringing behind her. She turned. There he was, strolling up with a plastic shopping bag in hand. Kamiya Karyu looked exactly as shocked as she had imagined. Shocked nearly to death, because a girl had her arm looped through his, and that girl very inappropriately asked, "Xiaojia, who is this woman?"
Kamiya Karyu told Ningxu the girl's name was Xi Feifei, a classmate. In an engineering school where girls outnumbered boys one to seven, being pursued by a girl was certainly tempting. "Call it vanity," he said. "Xi Feifei is just a medal to me." "Then what am I?" Ningxu asked carefully. Kamiya Karyu lifted his eyes to hers and said very softly, "You're a dream I can see but never reach. I was afraid that the moment I opened my eyes, the dream would end, so I chose to avoid it." His voice was like a breeze, skimming over the sharpest point of her heart, and she believed him instantly. She wanted to believe him, just as she had wanted to throw away everything and run toward her love. There was no reason. No intelligence involved. It was simply obedience to her heart. Sometimes the heart shows the way. Sometimes it loses the road. That night Ningxu stayed in Kamiya Karyu's tiny rented room. At first he didn't dare touch her, because he knew she was a virgin. But Ningxu clung to him desperately until refusing her was no longer possible. She felt like someone dying of thirst, trying to draw every last drop of nourishment out of his body. For the first time she understood how wild her love for him was. It was the kind of fierce love that made a person throw herself in and sink willingly. Once, when they were watching a nature program together, a segment came on about salmon swimming upstream. By the time the fish leaped the waterfalls, their whole bodies had turned a deep, bloody red. The narrator explained that their blood vessels burst from the strain of the journey and dyed them through. Once the salmon completed the act of spawning, their lives ended. Watching that, Kamiya Karyu unconsciously let out a sigh. "That's terrifying." Ningxu turned to look at him at once. There was something naturally soft in the side of his face, something that made people want to cherish him from the bottom of their hearts.
That night Ningxu lay in Kamiya Karyu's arms but kept thinking about the girl who had been hanging off his arm. The more she thought, the more wronged she felt. I haven't even called him that intimately, so what right did you have? Then, after the grievance passed, she felt stupid. To be worrying over something so petty. She looked around Kamiya Karyu's room. It was less than ten square meters, stuffy as a steamer. Damp had marked the walls, and an old fan squeaked endlessly while it spun. "One day we have to leave this place," she said. "We'll live in a big room with floor-to-ceiling windows, bright and spacious, with European-style furniture." At that, Kamiya Karyu abruptly got up, bare-chested, and went to smoke. The smoke rose, curled, and was instantly chopped apart by the fan, scattering her beautiful fantasy with it. "When did you start smoking?" she asked. "When I missed you," he answered at once, without even looking at her. His face wore a stern, melancholy expression. Watching him, she suddenly remembered the first time she'd asked him for a cigarette, back when he had still been a boy who blushed when he spoke. Now he could say tender things so naturally it was hard to tell whether that was good or bad. Perhaps it was time that made her sad. Or love. She couldn't tell. She only knew that once she had despised this kind of dependence, this loss of self. The old Ningxu had believed she could control love, pick it up and set it down again. The old Ningxu, it turned out, had simply never lived through real love. Years later someone asked Zhang Hanzhi why she never remarried, and she said that after you have crossed the sea, you can never go back to swimming in a stream. Ningxu had swum into Kamiya Karyu's sea. Everyone else, beside him, wasn't even a stream.
Ningxu became Kamiya Karyu's live-in girlfriend, but not openly. Kamiya Karyu said that if the school found out, he would be finished, never graduate. Ningxu half believed him, half didn't. After all, next door and next door to that, the whole building, the whole alley, was filled with student couples just like them, walking in broad daylight and airing their happiness without shame. Ningxu felt that Kamiya Karyu was hiding something, maybe about her, maybe about someone else. More than once she begged him to get her a school badge so she could wander around his campus during the day, but though he kept promising, he never brought one. In the end she found one herself outside the school gate, pinned it to her white dress, and walked in. At first, because it wasn't really her place, she was convinced everyone was staring at her, so she smoothed her hair, straightened her hem, and tried to blend in. After doing it a few times she grew used to it. Soon she spent her days roaming the campus as if she'd slipped back into high school, only this campus was much better. The sky was bluer, the trees taller, even the fallen leaves more beautiful when they crackled underfoot. Lying on the grass and staring up at the peaceful, faraway sky, Ningxu suddenly felt lonely. Autumn was a season for warmth, so why was her love growing colder and colder? Kamiya Karyu hadn't come back to the room for several nights. Whenever she called, he said he was busy. Ask busy with what, and he said that even if he told her she wouldn't understand. Ningxu wanted to cry. That's exactly why I asked. She had never told Kamiya Karyu that if not for him she'd probably be studying in England or France by now. Were the skies there this blue? Were the trees this tall? Did the leaves there rustle this way? She didn't know. The one thing she did know was that if she'd gone abroad, she and Kamiya Karyu would never have crossed paths again. There were many things she hadn't told him. But she wasn't in a hurry. She thought they had plenty of time, a whole lifetime to say them slowly. That idea used to comfort her. Then one evening she looked at her watch, saw it was already dusk, and thought that even a busy person had to eat. So she bounced off toward the boys' dorm. Boys kept turning to look at her along the way. With a ratio of one girl to seven boys, how could they not? Especially when the girl was strikingly beautiful and still so young. Ningxu felt rather pleased with herself, and once pleased, she forgot to behave. She forgot Kamiya Karyu's repeated instructions to keep her head down. Quiet was never her nature. So she stood under the dorm and shouted his name at the top of her lungs, full of feeling: "Kamiya Karyu! Kamiya Karyu!" Heads stuck out of windows everywhere. The more of a scene she made, the happier she felt. Love is beautiful, she thought. It ought to be shown off. Especially for someone as flamboyant as I am. How could I possibly hide it? Kamiya Karyu clearly disliked it. He came storming down the stairs, furious, and scolded her on sight. "What exactly do you think you're doing?" "I missed you." Ningxu clung to his arm like a spoiled child. "I missed you so much I couldn't sleep." Kamiya Karyu grabbed her wrist and said harshly, "Go. If the security guards come, they'll throw you out." "I'm not afraid." "I am," he said. "I don't want people talking behind my back." Ningxu froze, tears flooding her eyes. Lips trembling, she turned to leave, but he chased after her and caught hold of her. By then there were even more spectators. Students passing through kept stopping to watch. Kamiya Karyu couldn't bear it and lowered his voice. "I'm sorry. Can we go back and talk?" "Do you have time?" Ningxu said miserably. "I've waited for you three days, and all you've said is busy." "But I really am busy." "Busy dating Xi Feifei?" Ningxu burst out. "You still don't believe me?" Kamiya Karyu dropped her hand and turned away angrily. "Even if I were dating someone, that would be none of your business." "Not my business? Then whose business is the baby in my stomach?" Ningxu shouted. "Kamiya Karyu, do you know I'm pregnant?"
Actually, Ningxu hadn't planned to tell Kamiya Karyu. She knew there was no point in it. It would add nothing but trouble, and at a time when neither of them had the strength to bear it, the truth would only sound like blackmail. She did not want him to think she was using it to force promises out of him. Promises are fake. A strong wind comes and blows them away. Better to hang on to happiness a little longer. But that day, one word ran into the next, she got angry, and it all spilled out. Kamiya Karyu stood there stunned, unable even to move until Ningxu tugged at his sleeve and brought him back to himself. He looked exhausted, like someone who had just lost a war. He said he was overwhelmed and needed to be alone, and told her to go back first. Ningxu had meant to tell him she would handle it herself, that he needn't worry. But before she could say it, he had already turned and left. The crowd dispersed too, leaving Ningxu standing alone on the slowly emptying campus. She looked truly desolate. The next day she went to the hospital. The form for the operation required a family member's signature. She hesitated for a very long time, then finally switched the pen to her left hand and wrote, I agree. Lying on the operating table, she felt a little afraid. When Ningxu was afraid, she talked too much. She kept asking the doctor, It won't hurt, right? They say it's painless. It really won't hurt, right? The doctor said, "It won't hurt. Go to sleep and it will all be over, just like a dream." Later Ningxu thought of those words countless times and felt they had been an omen. More than the abortion, life itself was what felt like a dream. For some people it was a sweet dream. For others it was a nightmare. Ningxu, at that moment, would almost rather never wake up. During the operation she suffered massive bleeding due to anemia. They saved her in time, but the doctor said the consequences were still severe. Her uterus had been removed. Ningxu's mother fainted on the spot. No one in the Ning family could understand it. How could Ningxu be anemic? She had never told Kamiya Karyu that her father was a wealthy businessman. She had grown up dressed beautifully and fed well, cherished like a princess. She had never told him that she was the only child in the whole Ning family and that everyone doted on her, that apart from her mother's nagging she had never suffered a real grievance. She had never told him that to come to Kobe for him, she had argued with every single person in her family, and that even when her mother threatened to cut ties, she still walked out of the house feeling like a tragic hero leaving on a mission from which there was no return. There were still so many things she had not had time to tell Kamiya Karyu. She had thought the future was long, that there would be endless days, that she could keep all these secrets in some black box at the bottom of her heart until the proper moment came and she could unfold them for him, slowly and elegantly. But fate turns like a wheel, and after it runs over one thing, it comes rolling over the next. No one knows what tomorrow will bring. No one knows whether tomorrow's wheel will crush them.
Ningxu did not go straight home after leaving the hospital. Her father owned a villa in Kobe, a Gothic place with a pointed roof and a beautiful garden, and she recovered there. Every day she sat in the sun and drifted. Doing nothing at all, and yet time sped by faster than ever. Ningxu began to age with frightening speed. Wrinkles appeared on her face and neck. She was only twenty, but looked forty. Her hair lost its shine, her skin its elasticity, even her eyes went dull. Once she had loved mirrors and dreamed of having Snow White's magic one, so she could ask every day who was the fairest in the world. Now she smashed every mirror in the villa because what they reflected was no longer her, but the rapidly aging creature she had become. She had grown as old as the women she used to mock. Her periods stopped. Because of the trauma in her mind, while still in the very bloom of youth she had withered. She was almost no longer even a woman, never mind a girl. Her depression became severe. She wanted nothing from life. She cut herself off from the world completely. She threw away her phone, pulled out the internet cable, and sank into the cruelty of her own reality. Kamiya Karyu tried over and over to reach her by phone, by message, by online留言. He wrote: Ningxu, you've gone. Why did you leave without even saying goodbye? Are you angry with me? What you said that day about being pregnant, was it true or were you lying again? Don't blame me for not believing you. Do you know that after your first failed entrance exam I once went to your house? You told me you'd broken your arm, and I was sick with worry, but the instant I got off the plane I saw you bounding around the airport as lively as ever. I was devastated. I didn't know why you lied, but I told myself maybe you were too proud to let me know you'd failed, so I chose to believe you anyway. Then I waited and waited, hoping to meet you the next year. I went mad hunting down exam prep materials, doing them all myself first and selecting the ones that would really help you before sending them on. I thought this time we would finally meet, that I could take your hand and walk you through every place I had ever wanted to show you. I'd even bought those Moonview Hall cigarettes already, waiting to see you dip them in water and blow little bubbles like the adorable fool you are. But just as I was happiest, you told me you'd been hurt again. Hurt again. Was it true or false? I couldn't tell anymore. I tried to convince myself to believe you, but I couldn't stop asking whether someone with a broken arm could still text. I was disappointed, furious, and hurt. Disappointed that I had spent two years waiting to be with you only to watch you erase it all with a few light words. Furious that this time you couldn't even be bothered to invent a new excuse. And what hurt most was suspecting I had loved the wrong person, a girl with no true heart. So when I started trying to accept another girl instead, you suddenly appeared in front of me again. At the sight of you I felt as if I'd crossed whole worlds. Do you remember the story of the salmon? I said it was terrifying because I realized my love for you was exactly like theirs: willing to burst blood vessels and shatter itself, yet still unable to give up or turn back. I remember the first night we were really together, when you talked so happily about wanting a bigger room, beautiful floor-to-ceiling windows, elegant European furniture. The light on your face when you said those things made me ashamed, because I couldn't give them to you then. So I worked desperately, took every job I could, and these past days I only neglected you because I was rushing to finish a cost estimate for a company. I never imagined that because of a few days, you would doubt me and accuse me like this. I never imagined we didn't even have the most basic trust between us. That hurts more than your showing up at my school and making a scene. But whatever the truth, you can't just disappear. Is this really how carelessly you treat love? Come when you're happy, leave when you're angry, without so much as a word? These days you won't answer your phone, you won't answer my texts, and I don't even know if you've read what I posted online. I don't know whether what you said that day was true or not. Honestly, this time I would rather you were lying. Because I don't want my mistakes to have hurt you. But if it was true, then how can I rest easy when you've vanished like this? Ningxu, we're adults now. I want you to deal with this rationally. Whatever it is, let's talk face to face. Please don't act out of temper.
After he hit the send key, Kamiya Karyu lit a cigarette and waited for her reply. For a long, long time nothing came back. Only silence. He felt his heart go cold in the waiting, withering like a late-autumn leaf. Without meaning to, he remembered the instant he first saw Ningxu, the way she narrowed those long eyes and slowly walked toward him. It was the first time in his life he had truly felt what nervousness and heart-stopping attraction were. He knew he had fallen in love with her at first sight, exactly as she later said. It was fate. When fate arrived, it arrived, and no matter how far apart they began, they would still find each other in the sea of people. He had simply never expected that fate to be so brief, so thin, like cigarette ash. One light flick, and it shattered. One little breeze, and it vanished. If cigarettes are supposed to be fragrant, then why was the only thing left in his mouth bitterness? Bitterness, and the taste of loneliness.