Later, We All Cried (4)

If you don't provoke me, I won't provoke you. But if you do, I'll pay you back double.

Karasawa Rin said, "Luozhi, don't worry. The important thing now is for you to calm down first. Things with Mizuhara Chu can be handled. Even if Nagasawa Nao really goes to the police, all Chu's father has to do is lift a finger and he can get her out. Besides, Nagasawa Nao isn't stupid. She knows what matters." I stood by the window and let out a long breath. From the eleventh floor, the flowering trees below looked startlingly white and lush in the weak evening light, just like the years when we were young. The truth was, I wasn't worried about Nagasawa Nao calling the police. I was only worried that what I'd said just now had hurt Mizuhara Chu. The way Chu and I became friends was the kind of thing that starts with a fight.

Back in our first year of high school, she had been a true little delinquent, swaggering all over Aoran High on the strength of her father's money. Everyone kept a respectful distance from her. In time, because no one dared provoke her, she got bored and started creating amusement for herself. If nobody picked on her, they always picked on one of her friends, and the instant that happened she would light up like she was marching onto a battlefield. Once, all I did was accidentally step on a girl's shoe in the restroom. I apologized, but she still clutched at me and demanded that I polish it for her. I ignored her and walked away. That evening, during supervised study, a whole gang of tough girls stormed into our classroom. Their leader was a cropped-haired girl with a fierce stare and brazen swagger. It was the New Year celebration day, and the room had already been decorated for the party. When my classmates saw the intruders, whispers broke out everywhere. Everyone was waiting for a show.

All eyes speared toward me. I had no idea what was going on and asked, "What is it?" The short-haired girl raised a brow. "Come outside." The moment I saw the girl whose shoe I'd stepped on hiding behind her and smirking at me, I understood. I stayed seated, calm, and said coolly, "Why should I?" Clearly the short-haired girl had never met anyone who refused to play along. The instant I blocked her, her face darkened. Through clenched teeth she spat, "Damn. Too proud to accept a favor, huh?" The next second the chalk box from the lectern flew toward me like a meteor in a perfect arc.

The principle I had always lived by was simple: if people didn't touch me, I didn't touch them. If they did, I paid them back double. I had never been some greenhouse rose. Growing up in storms had taught me how to survive. A scene like that might have been dazzling drama to the pampered sons and daughters at Aoran High, but to me it was trivial. Just before the chalk box reached me, I picked up the book on my desk and swatted it away as lightly as if it were only an annoying mosquito. The box burst on the floor. Chalk snapped and scattered everywhere. I looked at the girls on the platform in disgust, then suddenly stood, seized the chair beside me, and hurled it straight at them. They shrieked and scattered. Even the arrogant cropped-haired girl flinched and sprang aside. The chair smashed into the blackboard and crashed down. The whole class sucked in a breath. If she hadn't dodged, blood would have been splashed all over the place. I had not fought in a long time, and that atmosphere stirred something fierce inside me. I looked at the short-haired girl and said lazily, "Cut the crap. If you've got the guts, fight me one on one. If you're scared, you're my grandson."

The noise of another class's New Year party drifted faintly through the air, but our room was dead silent. Nobody spoke. Everyone stared. Looking back now, I think I really was fearless then, hard-boned and reckless, all lonely courage. If time could turn back, I think I would pat that younger self on the head and tell her to walk more slowly. The older I got, the more easily that courage thinned away. In time, the courage disappeared and only the loneliness remained.

Much later, after Mizuhara Chu and I became friends, she told me, "Hayashibara Luozhi, you shocked me back then. I had never seen a girl's eyes look that sharp. They made people afraid." Yes, the cropped-haired girl had been Mizuhara Chu. From the day I met her, I had never once seen her soften toward anyone. Part of that came from her background, and part of it came from all the coldness and betrayal she had already been through. She had very few friends, but once she accepted someone as a friend, forget climbing mountains of knives or diving into seas of fire for them, she'd strap bombs to her ribs without blinking. Just like now. Even though I had lashed out at her thoughtlessly, she had only swallowed her hurt in silence.

She said that what happened with Nagasawa Nao was between the two of them and had nothing to do with me, but the sadness in her voice was impossible to miss. She probably never imagined there would come a day when she would stand up for her best friend and be pushed away for it instead. That kind of sorrow seemed like standing alone on a boundless wasteland while a cold wind swept over everything.

Everyone is a flea on a one-way road. Everyone worships a faith of their own.

That whole afternoon I was too restless over Chu to settle down. A book I had been shepherding through publication was nearly finished. Only the final review remained, and as long as nothing went wrong, it would be done. I opened the document and watched the printer slowly spit out page after page. Blank sheets of A4 paper filled with ink. When people are born, they are white and clean like that too. Then fate lays its hands on them and paints over them however it pleases. The disasters we cannot avoid turn into punishment from heaven. The love we cannot escape becomes destiny. Karasawa Rin said, "Luozhi, if you're not feeling well, don't force yourself. Go home and rest. I'll watch things here." I hesitated, then nodded. In that state I could not focus on work at all, so I asked her to cover for me, got leave from the chief editor, packed my things, and left the company.

Once outside, I had nowhere to go. I wandered the streets aimlessly, brushing past strangers. I had known that kind of leisure before when I skipped class, except that in those days Mizuhara Chu was always with me, talking endlessly, cursing this melodramatic life, complaining about her father whose conscience had been eaten by dogs, about rich boys throwing money around in bars, about the motorcycle-riding kids on West Street. Back then I thought she talked too much. Now, standing alone, I found the silence enough to drive me mad. The city's brightness and bustle passed me by like a soundless old movie, unrelated to me in every way.

I pulled my clothes tighter around me and suddenly felt cold all over. The sky was as leaden as that stifling afternoon when my mother's sobs came through the phone, when I rushed to the hospital and saw my father's shoulder drenched in blood and his face tight with pain. After thinking for a while, I decided to buy a ticket and go home to see him. At the station the crowd streamed north and south, every face wearing the same habitual numbness. A singer I loved once sang: everyone is a flea on a one-way road; everyone worships a faith of their own. Some people grow old together, some lose their youth, some smile inside memories, some fret over tomorrow. The ticket seller asked coldly where I was going. I was just about to answer when my phone rang. Kamiya Retsu's name flashed on the screen. I picked up in a hurry. The ticket seller shot me a displeased look, signaling that if I wasn't buying a ticket I should step aside and stop blocking the line. I didn't argue with her the way I normally would. I just walked out of the ticket hall with the phone in my hand and a leaden heart.

"Where are you?" Kamiya Retsu asked.

"At the station. I wanted to go back and see my dad."

There was a pause. Then she asked, "Luozhi, are you running away?"

Leaning against the railing outside the ticket office, I discovered that I had gone mute. She ignored my silence and said, "You've already taken the first step. Are you really thinking of shrinking back now? The Hayashibara Luozhi I know isn't like that."

"Then what kind of person is the Hayashibara Luozhi you know?" I asked.

Kamiya Retsu fell quiet for a moment before answering slowly, "The Hayashibara Luozhi I know has always dared to love and hate, dared to take responsibility, and never feared anything she faced. Even if tomorrow were the end of the world, she would still finish everything she had to do today. She always protects her soft soul with a hard posture. She keeps herself lucid and alive, and faces everyone with pride."

Maybe I had cried too much these past days. Hearing her say that turned my heart upside down, yet my eyes were so dry that not a single tear would come. I wanted to tell her that I was not nearly as fearless as she thought, that I was afraid too. I said, "But Retsu... what do I do now? What am I supposed to do?"

Her voice on the other end stayed calm. "What great disaster is there? You've lost Matsuda Ryo, and you've had a fight with Mizuhara Chu. That's all. Luozhi, trust me. Chu won't stay angry with you. You're not really going to lose your love and then turn your whole life and your friendships into a mess too, are you?"

I nodded through a choking throat. She couldn't see it, but I knew she would feel it anyway.

She went on, "I just got a call from A-Che. He couldn't reach you. They found Mizuhara Chu and Nagasawa Nao already. Nao is fine. Ryo picked her up. Tonight is on me. Don't think about anything right now. Just take a cab over to my place."

After I hung up, the far sky took on a pale gray-white cast. The earlier gloom was spreading outward now, layer by layer through the dusk clouds. Far off, the stone forest of high-rises still sank in the dry air of the city. I stood there watching the crowds, my heart settling a little because of Kamiya Retsu's words. Retsu, you will never know how much courage you gave me that day. Even later, in all those nights surrounded by loneliness, just thinking of your words would warm me all over, as if I were in the frozen Arctic and you were the light that reached me there.

I couldn't help wondering whether Shirakawa High had borrowed a few sumo wrestlers from Japan.

Kamiya Retsu drove Chihiro and me straight to the Haoting Hotel. Only someone like Retsu could sweep into a place that luxurious with the air of someone walking into her own kitchen. By the time we arrived, A-Che and Mizuhara Chu were already there. Chu looked up at me once from her seat, then lowered her head and went back to fiddling with her phone. I stood there awkwardly. In the old days, Chu would have lunged at me and punched me in the shoulder by now. Chihiro tugged me down into the seat beside her. Kamiya Retsu sat next to A-Che. He was good at keeping things lively, and he launched into one dramatic account after another about his latest romantic triumphs. Chihiro gave him a sideways look. A-Che immediately put on a guilty face and tugged at her sleeve with a grin. "Emotional expert, every time you look at me like that, I feel like I don't have any clothes on."

"Then I guess you've been streaking for years," Chihiro replied with a smile.

Halfway through the meal, Mizuhara Chu got up to go to the restroom and did not come back for a long time.

Kamiya Retsu said, "Luozhi, go check on her."

After hesitating a moment, I stood and headed for the restroom, rehearsing all the ways I might apologize. I knew Mizuhara Chu would not blame me. She had once said, "Hayashibara Luozhi, you're my best sister. With sisters, there's only this life, not another one. Whatever happens to the two of us from now on, I'll accept it." There was an idiom for that, wasn't there? A prophecy fulfilled.

Ever since Chu and I met, we had never really had a quarrel. The year we became close was the year of the girls' basketball match between Aoran High and Shirakawa High. Before any game, the coaches always told everyone, friendship first, competition second. But when you're young and hot-blooded, nobody is willing to lose. As the game went on, it turned into enemies glaring at each other with reddening eyes.

The girls from Shirakawa High were built like tanks. I couldn't help wondering whether they had temporarily borrowed a few Kansai football players. Every time one of them "accidentally" body-checked a girl from Aoran High, the smaller one would go flying two meters. I had not known Mizuhara Chu was on Aoran's girls' basketball team. She had that same unruly air, yes, but with her thin arms and legs, she looked far too delicate to be reassuring. Yet by the end of the first half I found myself cheering for her. She was the core of Aoran's team, quick on her feet, and she dodged every malicious collision the other side tried. Aside from Chu and one girl who was good at stealing the ball, all the other players on Aoran's team were bruised blue and purple.

Girls fear scars most, but those players had already gone red-eyed with competitiveness and no longer cared about the bruises on their arms and legs. Because the match was supposedly about "friendly exchange," the coach could not say much. At halftime Aoran had already used up two substitutes. Most of their best players were still on the court, and only one slot remained open. The coach stood there thinking. I was watching from the side while Chu, stripped of her usual hooligan swagger, frowned and cursed, "Damn it. What kind of game is it when you bring in a bunch of thugs from outside school?" The coach looked helplessly at a lightly injured player, and she volunteered, "I can still go on in the second half. Otherwise we'll be short."

I hesitated, then stepped forward and said calmly, "Coach, I'm Hayashibara Luozhi from Year One. I used to play basketball. Let me fill the gap."

The coach and players looked at me in surprise. Chu looked at me too, puzzled, then tugged on the coach's sleeve. "Teacher, let her try." With nowhere else to turn, the coach nodded. At the end of the road, even a dead horse gets treated like a live one.

From the moment the second half began, Chu and I fought to turn the game around. At first she seemed to be testing me, sending a few trial passes my way. Except for one that got intercepted in a crowd, I did not disappoint her. I drove forward, dodged, shot. All the while I had to keep an eye out for opposing players charging at me. It was a brutal game. The girls on the other side quickly noticed how well Chu and I worked together, so they kept assigning people to guard us. The fluency of our opening drive turned into a grinding stalemate as two defenders crowded one of us at a time. We had to think of ways to feed the ball to our other teammates instead. Little by little, we were closing the score.

Some of the opposing girls seemed to know Chu from outside school. Whenever they brushed past her, they sneered, "Let's see who saves you this time." Their defense became tighter and tighter, every move vicious, but all of it aimed at Chu alone. Across the court I looked at her through the shifting bodies. She only gave me a calm nod. Then, in the middle of another collision, she went down.

Blood crept over her shin like tiny insects. Her knee was swollen black and blue. Her lips had gone white as she curled up on the floor. My teammates and I rushed over in panic. Amid the commotion, Chu gripped my hand hard and signaled for me to lean down. I bent close and heard her whisper, "Hayashibara Luozhi, there are only ten minutes left. Lead them through this game. Even if we lose, lose beautifully. I know I'm the one they're targeting. Once I'm off the court, they won't go so hard on the rest of you."

The late sun laid a gold wash over every corner of the gym. Through the shifting crowd, the pale face of Mizuhara Chu still seemed faintly lit. In that moment something hot rose behind my eyes, and I nodded at her like a warrior receiving a final command.

After Chu came off, a lightly injured teammate replaced her. Once the other side saw that Chu was gone, they eased up on us too. There were only ten minutes left. They probably thought a fifteen-point lead meant the game was already theirs, and two of Shirakawa High's obvious body-checkers had already been thrown out, so the players still on the floor had begun to lose heart. I seized the chance and led my teammates in a desperate chase, unwilling to surrender a single ball. Chu stood at the sidelines cheering us on with the cheerleaders. We fought like giants. We were knocked down, got back up, and kept playing. Every girl's face wore the same reckless courage of someone who had already made peace with defeat.

But when the final whistle blew, the scoreboard read 52 to 51. We lost by a single point.

The crowd drifted away. On the lonely court, basketballs lay scattered everywhere. One of the girls turned away to wipe her eyes, and then I heard quiet sobbing. Mizuhara Chu limped over, patted me on the shoulder, and said, "Thank you." I rubbed the scrape on my arm and forced a smile, but my nose stung. That match has stayed in my memory forever. It was the fiercest game I had ever played and the one I have never forgotten.

That was how Chu and I became close. Maybe because our friendship began in a match that felt like a bloodbath, it always seemed especially unbreakable.

From then on, life could only be traced from memory.

By the time I finished replaying all that, I had reached the restroom. Mizuhara Chu was leaning against the sink smoking. From one of the stalls came a strange sound, something between a moan and ragged breathing.

I stared at Chu in horror. She flashed me a wicked smile as if we understood each other without words, stubbed out her cigarette, and strode over to the stall door. Then she began pounding on it and crying in a voice full of grief, "Honey, honey, are you in there? How could you do this to me? How could you sneak around with another woman behind my back? If someone hadn't called me, I'd still know nothing about it. Boo-hoo, honey, honey!"

Instant silence fell inside the stall. The bizarre noises stopped at once.

Chu grinned at me in satisfaction. Still pretending to sob, she wailed, "I'll be waiting for you at home," and walked back out with me. The moment we were outside, we grabbed each other's hands and ran down the corridor laughing.

All the tension between us seemed to vanish with that sprint and those laughs. "You're unbelievably shameless," I told her.

She rolled her eyes. "They're the shameless ones, okay? They could have gone upstairs and gotten a room, but instead they had to test the patience of the general public. The fact that I didn't kick down the door means I was being merciful."

"Big talk. Why didn't you kick it down a few years ago then?" I said with a laugh.

That made me remember the days when Mizuhara Chu and I had still been innocent flower-bud girls going out to bars together. She looked like a delinquent, but when it came to matters of love, she knew almost nothing. One time we went to a quiet bar before the crowd came in. Chu said she was going to the restroom. She didn't come back for ages, so I went to find her, just like now, and found her standing at the door in a complete panic.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"There's a girl in there who sounds sick," she said. "When I came in, she was gasping and crying out. But when I knocked, everything went quiet."

I thought that sounded serious and turned to get the owner. But before either of us reached the restroom, we ran into Chu on her way back, looking furious.

"Damn it," she said. "What a pair of cheating bastards."

The owner understood at once what had happened. Only innocent little me kept tugging at Chu and asking sincerely, "What happened? What happened? Did the girl come out?"

"She did," Chu said. "Not only did she come out, the scumbag she was cheating with came out too."

The two of them had been a mess of disheveled clothes, staring awkwardly at Chu standing guard outside. The man even rolled his eyes at her, which she had never gotten over. Thinking back on it now still makes me laugh. We were young then, and youth is sharp as a knife. Love and hate were clean and simple. But now it feels as if we grew old in an instant. With some people, the feeling is still love, yet it is touched by a trace of hate as well.

Chu shoved my head lightly. "Idiot. Why do you keep talking like you're old these days?"

I only smiled. There was a song that went, love makes a girl grow up overnight, overnight. Plenty of people can endure time changing their face. Plenty can endure a life falling apart. What they cannot endure is a love they've lost. I was exactly like that. I had never learned how to be graceful about it. Whenever I thought of Matsuda Ryo, despair settled over me like ash.

Beloved: the one who loves, the one beloved, the one cherished, the one inside love.

After dinner, everyone had let themselves go completely. A-Che declared that the reconciliation banquet in honor of me and Mizuhara Chu had been a tremendous success. Everyone was in high spirits, so they decided to continue at a bar. A-Che called some mystery girlfriend, summoned a few of his usual friends, and the whole crowd rolled out in force. Dazzling lights, intoxication, and excess: this was the city's earthly paradise. Men and women swayed everywhere in a haze. I leaned against Kamiya Retsu's shoulder watching Mizuhara Chu exchange meaningful glances with the DJ, while Chihiro, A-Che, and the others played dice. Chihiro drank with the swagger of a man, which drew the attention of several dissolute rich boys at the next table. I tipped back a glass in one shot. The bitter liquid spread through my mouth. The truth was, I didn't like drinking. Retsu once said that an alcohol-allergic girl turning into a battle-hardened drinking machine was a miracle in itself.

I only smiled bitterly. If miracles truly existed in this world, then mine had been born from love.

Ever since I discovered I was allergic to alcohol, I had never once tried to change it. The doctor told me that an allergy was not something you could simply overpower. Everything changed in my first year of college. By then Matsuda Ryo's family business had collapsed, and the shock put his father in bed almost overnight. Luckily college classes were not too heavy, so besides studying, Ryo could also take care of his father and learn the family business at the same time. The boy who once wore nothing but white T-shirts put on suits and ties and began racing from one hotel to the next nightlife venue with clients in tow. Drinking became unavoidable.

"Aren't all business deals settled over drinks?" A-Che used to say. "As the future girlfriend of a businessman, how can you not know how to drink? You'll be a killjoy at the table. A lot of the people signing contracts are northerners. Northerners are straightforward. Leave business aside for a second and just go a couple rounds at the drinking table. Once they see you drink openly, they'll sign openly too."

Although Matsuda Ryo rarely took me to actual business dinners, what A-Che said made sense to me. So for a time, I sneaked behind Ryo's back and dragged Mizuhara Chu, Kamiya Retsu, and Chihiro to bars over and over. I drank until I staggered and saw the world swimming, went to the hospital the next morning for shots and medicine, then repeated the whole thing again a few days later. And somehow, after a month of that, I stopped being allergic to alcohol at all. Even the doctor was astonished. He said, "You little girl have a lot of nerve. You're being irresponsible with your own body. It's lucky your constitution is strong. If it had been even a little weaker, you'd have ended up hospitalized."

I only smiled. When you truly like someone, you become capable of extraordinary bravery.

I ignored everyone's worry and went to find Matsuda Ryo. At a business dinner, when a client raised his glass and said, "Here's to the two of you newlyweds staying happy forever," Ryo immediately tried to block the drink for me. I caught his hand and laughed boldly. "Thank you, President Qin." Ryo glared at me, and I squeezed his fingers to tell him not to worry. The contract was signed smoothly that night. Later he asked me how I had stopped being allergic. I told him it must have been fate. After that he went about in polished suits and I dressed sharply too, both of us fighting our way upstream through negotiations and verbal battle. We were no longer the clean-smiling boy and lively little girl from school days. But I never told him a word about that month of shuttling between bars and hospitals. There are things I would rather let rot inside me forever. I hate describing what I have given for someone, because it makes it feel less like love and more like coercion.

When A-Che dropped me home, I was already lightheaded, my feet sinking as if I were walking on cotton. Mizuhara Chu and the others deposited me at the door and fled as a group. Before leaving, Kamiya Retsu turned and asked whether I wanted her to stay with me. I waved her off and said that tomorrow was the weekend and she should go on her date. Once the apartment fell quiet, I collapsed on the living room sofa in a haze.

I like darkness. It gives me a strange sense of safety. In darkness I can cry as recklessly as I want and no one sees. Not even I can see how red my eyes have turned. I remembered the first time I had an allergic reaction after drinking. Matsuda Ryo brought me medicine every day. He would stand below the girls' dormitory in a white shirt, graceful as some old-fashioned young nobleman, with pale blossoms opening silently over his head while I came running down under the envious stares of the other girls.

All my memories were of Matsuda Ryo smiling at me gently. Light filtered through branches, dappled and blurred, pouring over his face like liquor. How long ago had that been? Why, after all these years, did tears still rise in my eyes whenever I remembered? Sometimes I wished I had never learned to drink. Then perhaps I would not have lost my boy in white. He would still be bringing me medicine. He would still be smiling at me.

I drifted off inside tears and exhaustion. When I woke, it was because nausea hit me hard. I rushed to the bathroom and threw up all the alcohol I had drunk that night. When I switched on the living room light, it was already after midnight. Faced with the empty apartment, I was overwhelmed by loneliness. Maybe it was the cold blowing in through the window, but grief surged up so suddenly it left me helpless. I missed Matsuda Ryo with an almost violent ache.

I sank onto the sofa and took out my phone. His name was the first in my contacts. I had saved him under "Beloved." Chu once laughed at me for it, saying the word was so old-fashioned, something only our parents' generation used. People our age were supposed to prefer "honey," "hubby," "darling," "baby." But I insisted on keeping it. First because the pinyin would always put it at the top. And second because I loved those two characters. Beloved: the one you love, the one who loves you, the one you cherish, the one inside love. To me it was the most dependable name in the world.

I turned over again and again, unable to settle. I wanted to call him. I wanted to hear him say, the way he always had before, "Luozhi, why are you still awake so late?" But I was afraid. I moved from the sofa to the floor. I turned on the television. I went into the bedroom and threw myself across the bed. I even wandered into the kitchen and put porridge on to cook. I spent nearly an hour tormenting myself like that. In the end I still surrendered. I went back to the sofa, picked up the phone, and dialed with shaking fingers. I only wanted to hear Matsuda Ryo's voice. I was only lonely. I was only... a little afraid.

"Hello?"

When a sweet female voice came through the line, my heart finally dropped as if it had at last accepted its fate, plunging straight into an endless abyss. Cold wind seemed to wrap itself around me. My whole body went limp against the sofa. I closed my eyes and asked in a trembling voice, "May I speak to Matsuda Ryo?"

Still bearing a grudge over what had happened the day before with Mizuhara Chu, Nagasawa Nao gave a coy laugh and said, "He's asleep. If you need something, you can tell me." Maybe it was because my former place as the official girlfriend had been too firmly established. Maybe Nao simply wasn't afraid that I could stir up any trouble.

"Could you please let him answer?" I asked.

After a long while, his familiar voice finally came through the line.

"Luozhi?"

I had once thought that losing Matsuda Ryo would be painful. But I had never imagined it would hurt enough to tear the heart clean out of me. Somewhere inside me I had always kept a foolish faith: that if I only spoke, he would still say the way he used to, You always love making trouble. Don't be sad. I still like you. Then he would come back to my side and spoil me, indulge me, bear with me, just like before.

Instead, all he said in a low voice was, "Luozhi, don't call me anymore."

Don't call me anymore.

Don't call me anymore.

The phone slipped from my hand. The whole world collapsed.

Four years earlier, a girl with terrible dark circles under her eyes complained that she could never sleep. A boy told her, "Then call me whenever you can't sleep. I never turn my phone off." He kept that promise. Every time she stuck out her tongue and said, "I called you again," he would laugh softly and say with endless patience, "Silly girl. You're still awake this late?" That boy was Matsuda Ryo. That girl was me.

They happily looted the mall, and A-Che and I trailed along so miserably it felt like the place was turning into a massacre.

By the time a phone call woke me, it was already noon. Mizuhara Chu and Chihiro were asking me to go shopping. Since I had spent half the night throwing up, I crawled out of bed starving. I made Chu and Chihiro buy me lunch first, then tagged along while they wandered the mall. In the shoe section, we unexpectedly ran into A-Che and his girlfriend.

He came bounding over from a distance shouting, "Hello, wives! This... this is destiny!"

Chu punched him at once. "Keep running your mouth and I'll cut your tongue out."

A-Che's girlfriend stood smiling beside him and didn't get angry at all. Chihiro said, "I was just thinking it felt a little emptier than usual today, and then I ran into you." A-Che asked where Kamiya Retsu was. Chihiro shrugged. "Who knows? She's mysterious all day long." With that, the group merged and started shopping together. A-Che was always saying that as long as your hoe swung well, there wasn't a corner you couldn't dig up. Looking at him now, that hoe really was excellent. He acted flirtatious and suave in front of us, but he was truly good to women. The instant his girlfriend took a liking to a pair of shoes, he hurried over and said attentively, "Try them on. If you like them, I'll buy them for you." Hearing that, Chu and Chihiro pounced with shrieks. "Really? Really?" A-Che grinned. "Really. But I was talking to my girlfriend."

Chu smacked him on the head. "So all that 'wives' stuff just now was you taking advantage of us for free?"

With a long-suffering sigh, A-Che surrendered. "Fine, fine. Pick whatever you want." Chu and Chihiro's eyes lit up instantly, sweeping across the mall like machine guns. Passing one store, we saw a news report playing on the plasma television inside: a man had jumped to his death after being unable to bear his girlfriend leaving him. Chu snorted. "A heart that weak deserves to get dumped." A-Che immediately cut in. "I know a hundred ways to commit suicide. Want to know the quickest?" "What?" I asked. "Marry any one of your four-girl squad. I guarantee it'll be both painful and fast."

Chihiro noticed how low I seemed and tugged at me. "Come on. Buying a pair of shoes will fix it." Chu turned and said, "Luozhi, if you're out having fun, then be happy. Stop thinking about that bastard all the time." Then she hooked an arm around A-Che and asked, "You and Matsuda Ryo used to be so close. What the hell would you call what he did?" A-Che said, "After Ryo got together with Nagasawa Nao, he and I barely kept in touch." Chu frowned. "You really don't know why? Don't you think it's weird? I used to think even if Hayashibara Luozhi cheated on him, Matsuda Ryo would still hold her hand and say, if he's not good to you, I'll wait forever."

I shot Chu a look. "What kind of thing is that to say?"

A-Che turned to me as if the question had just occurred to him. "Luozhi, you didn't do anything to betray Ryo, did you? He's not the kind of person who turns cold without a reason. Something must have pushed him."

I rolled my eyes. "You've all been around me this whole time. What could I possibly have done?"

"Well, you never know," A-Che said.

"Get lost. You've got something between the lines there. If you know something, say it."

"I just feel like there has to be some misunderstanding between you two. No matter how much I asked, Ryo never explained."

"What misunderstanding could there be? You can't stop someone from deciding they love somebody else," I said coolly, though the words hurt the moment they left my mouth.

The image of Matsuda Ryo lying in bed holding Nagasawa Nao's hand rose before me again. I shook my head. There was no point telling everyone about that. If I did, Chu would explode all over again. A breakup was still a breakup. There was no simple right or wrong. Matsuda Ryo, the only thing I could still do was protect your reputation. You had loved me too well once. Even after breaking up, I could not bear the thought of you being hurt.

By the time we left the mall, dusk had already fallen. Women shopping are truly formidable creatures. From the first floor to the sixth, from shoes to women's clothes to lingerie to men's clothes to even the children's section, Mizuhara Chu, Chihiro, and A-Che's girlfriend swept through every last area. They happily looted the mall, and A-Che and I went along in such misery it nearly felt like blood running through the place. Then A-Che drove us to dinner in his Mercedes, a spectacle in itself. One man leading four beautiful women into a hotel was not an image just any man could produce. Chu walked in front like the rightful wife. A-Che's girlfriend was gentle and easygoing. Maybe because she understood Chu's personality, she didn't mind any of it and chatted happily with all of us.

At that moment Kamiya Retsu called and asked what we were doing. I told her we were eating and asked if she wanted to come. She said no. Something in her voice sounded off. When I pressed her, she said only that work had gone badly.

"Then come eat with us anyway," I said.

She still refused and said she just wanted to be alone for a while. She was always like that. If she didn't want to talk, nobody in the world could force her.

But after dinner, after I said goodbye to Mizuhara Chu and A-Che, Kamiya Retsu called me again. At first there was only the sound of quiet sniffing on the other end. Then little by little it turned into open sobbing.

I listened in silence, saying nothing, just as I had years ago when she first started working. Back then I was still in school, and every time she was wronged at the office, every time a coworker bullied her or stole one of her accounts, she would call and cry like a child. In those days she was still a girl with innocent eyes and no understanding of the world. Thinking of it now, I realized it had been a very long time since I had heard Kamiya Retsu cry. At some point she had turned from a fragile lily into a wild rose with claws and thorns.

The taxi ran through the city's empty roads. Streetlights flashed past the window, bright and dim by turns. Retsu's crying made my mood sink too, until everything outside the window seemed washed in gray.

Then she told me a story.

"He said, 'Hayashibara Luozhi, hello. My name is Su Yang. In terms of blood, I'm your older brother.'"

Back then I had been innocent, old enough to know better and still foolishly naive. I stared at him blankly and said, "But my mom and dad never told me I had a brother..."

He smiled a little and said, "That's because they aren't your biological parents."