“Turn on the light.” Li Wuhui said, still facing away from her. “I won’t look.”
Qiu Yiran’s movements paused.
Through the darkness, she instinctively glanced at Li Wuhui’s sleeping bag—clearly, Li Wuhui was facing away too, with no sign of turning.
Qiu Yiran turned on the light.
Yellowish light instantly filled the entire tent.
Qiu Yiran struggled to remove the prosthetic leg—
Her bare skin and flesh suddenly exposed to the air, which finally made her feel a bit better, less stifled.
And Li Wuhui really did not turn to look.
Qiu Yiran hesitated.
She rummaged in the bag beside her for the ointment to ease the chafing and smeared it on haphazardly.
Then she crawled back into her sleeping bag.
There was no extra space on the other side of the tent.
She had no choice but to place the prosthetic leg right between their two sleeping bags.
The sight was stark and humiliating—like concrete proof that the severed leg would always stand between them.
In the cover of darkness,
Qiu Yiran subtly studied Li Wuhui in her sleeping bag and said very softly,
“Li Wuhui, don’t blame yourself.”
Li Wuhui gave no response.
Just as silent as every other time she had brought it up.
Qiu Yiran sighed.
She rolled over in her sleeping bag, staring at the taut tent fabric with wide-open eyes, lost in a daze.
She had no idea how much time passed before faint rustling sounds filled the air.
Li Wuhui must have turned toward her.
In that instant, Qiu Yiran suddenly wondered if people really had some kind of sensor on their backs.
Because she could feel it clearly—
Li Wuhui’s gaze scraping inch by inch across her back.
Just as she was about to speak and shatter the oppressive darkness, Li Wuhui spoke first.
“Qiu Yiran.”
“Hm?” Qiu Yiran did not turn around.
“Don’t do that.” The wind howled outside the tent, half-hiding Li Wuhui’s voice.
Qiu Yiran’s thoughts were sluggish. She assumed it was about the painting.
But the next second, she knew she was wrong.
Because Li Wuhui said,
“After the divorce, don’t let any other woman touch your prosthetic leg. Don’t let her touch the words I wrote for you.”
Qiu Yiran went blank.
Li Wuhui said no more.
The woman probably looked at her across that prosthetic leg. Less than a minute later, she turned back around, facing away from her.
Her breathing was very slow. The sound was carried into Qiu Yiran’s ears by the wind outside the tent. It sounded very weary.
“Because it would make me sad.”
It was like the edge of an old scar had been torn open.
Qiu Yiran forced out a hoarse breath. Suddenly, she felt like tearing it open a bit more wouldn’t matter.
So, with her back to Li Wuhui, she said,
“Then after you divorce, don’t keep thinking about this leg all the time, and don’t keep feeling sorry for me.”
In a similar tone, “Because it would make me sad too.”
She said it with extreme nervousness, because she hoped Li Wuhui would agree.
They were like two gamblers holding chips in a negotiation. As soon as one made a demand, the other pushed further. But neither would admit defeat first.
Qiu Yiran didn’t know if Li Wuhui had taken her words to heart. She held her breath, waiting for Li Wuhui’s judgment.
After a long time, in the stifling darkness, Li Wuhui’s voice appeared again.
“Got it.”
Qiu Yiran couldn’t tell what tone it was in, or if it was sincere or not.
But she still breathed a sigh of relief. “Get some sleep early.”
–
After that night, Li Wuhui never brought up the painting again, nor did she force Qiu Yiran to confront the past in various ways.
The next day, when Qiu Yiran woke up,
she found that Li Wuhui was no longer in the tent, and the painting was nowhere to be seen.
She thought Li Wuhui still had to deal with the painting.
So, during the stretch of road as they continued toward the border, Qiu Yiran’s mental state remained very tense.
Because she always felt like the painting wasn’t finished yet.
But when they finally arrived at Horgos Port and stayed there for dozens of days, paid a large deposit, finally drove out of the border, crossed the uninhabited zone of Kazakhstan, and were on the road preparing to head to Russia…
Li Wuhui never mentioned it again.
It was as if she had thoroughly learned her lesson and accepted Qiu Yiran’s suggestion that night, ready to pass this journey peacefully and quietly.
But Qiu Yiran felt it wasn’t that simple.
Li Wuhui was a person with very strong drive.
She was tenacious, confident, and never gave up easily on what she wanted.
So, in the days that followed,
Qiu Yiran felt relieved on one hand, but on the other, there was always a faint thorn pricking at her heart.
She always felt this wasn’t complete calm.
This state lasted a long time. Sometimes, she even wanted to just ask Li Wuhui directly what she was thinking.
But each time, she held back—
Wasn’t peace a good thing? And it was what she had always wanted.
Why did she feel restless now that it was peaceful?
Each time she thought of this, Qiu Yiran took a deep breath and forced herself not to overthink.
Amid her swirling thoughts, Li Wuhui remained calm throughout.
Aside from her daily routine of asking about her leg, she made no other demands.
She was also very cooperative with her ideas.
If nothing unexpected happened, they could reach Paris within a month, end this, and part ways completely.
Until this day.
They were still within Kazakhstan’s borders when the car broke down on the highway and wouldn’t start no matter what.
The previous day, they had spent the night camping as usual.
Qiu Yiran drove a stretch to the highway before discovering it.
It was strange. When she discovered the problem, her heart felt heavy, but she wasn’t too surprised—as if the problem she had always worried about had finally happened.
Amid her worry, she calmed her anxiety a bit.
The nearest city was probably still hundreds of kilometers away. She forced herself to stay patient and waited in the car for Li Wuhui to come over.
Li Wuhui had just been organizing the tent and other items they had packed in the trunk.
Now, she had gone back to the camping spot from yesterday to tidy up the leftover items.
It was good weather that day. Kazakhstan’s sky was very blue. Through the thin car window—
Qiu Yiran could see clearly.
Li Wuhui walked slowly toward the car. Behind her was a sky like an oil painting, and endless green hills. Because of the distance, even the hills looked short.
She looked like a figure emerging from blur into clarity.
Actually, during this time, they had been covered in dust from travel.
Li Wuhui had long abandoned her stylish, perfect outfits. She basically wore gray windproof jackets and mid-calf boots, no makeup, and even her skin had been dried out by Kazakhstan’s strong winds. Her hair was always blown messy, unstyled, making it appear even curlier and fluffier.
But at this moment,
Qiu Yiran suddenly thought Li Wuhui was beautiful—like the grand and fearless Mother Earth slowly draped in golden light.
This feeling made Qiu Yiran zone out.
When she snapped back, she looked down at her own disheveled clothes—
She was probably like a shriveled tea leaf, curled up and dried under the Mother Earth’s glow.
Very bedraggled.
Li Wuhui walked over, seemingly holding something in her hand.
The car windows were fogged up from the morning mist, so Qiu Yiran couldn’t see clearly.
Until Li Wuhui got in the car. The first thing she said was to ask Qiu Yiran,
“Is your leg hurting today?”
Qiu Yiran still hadn’t seen what Li Wuhui was holding.
“It doesn’t hurt.” She shook her head.
Before, in Horgos, her leg had hurt for a while. She had even gotten IV drips in the hospital for a few days.
But handling procedures at the port took time too.
She had rested for a while. By the time they set off again, her leg was mostly better.
So, after that, Li Wuhui’s first words every day were,
“Does your leg hurt today?”
And Qiu Yiran always gave the same answer. “It doesn’t hurt.”
Like two robots executing commands, only starting the day after completing the routine.
Today was no exception.
Originally, Qiu Yiran thought—they would continue like this until they parted.
But today there was a special circumstance—the car had broken down.
Qiu Yiran hadn’t explained it to Li Wuhui yet. Unsure if the car was really broken, she tried starting it again.
And at that moment, another special circumstance occurred—
Li Wuhui handed her the thing she was holding and explained simply,
“Happy birthday.”
Qiu Yiran’s movements stopped completely.
The sun melted onto her fingers on the steering wheel. It was very hot, making her suddenly remember—
Today was already her thirtieth birthday.
Thirty years old.
Something that had once felt so distant.
Now, it was like a dusty candle that had burned to its destined point unnoticed.
Qiu Yiran suddenly felt dazed. She hadn’t imagined her thirtieth birthday would be like this—
Stranded on the highway early in the morning because of a dead engine, her residual limb barely recovered after days of IV drips, exhausted like a lost person in a foreign land…
Very blue sky, very green hills. Beautiful Li Wuhui, and her own gray self.
Qiu Yiran gripped the steering wheel tightly.
“I originally wanted to prepare a birthday gift for you.” Probably seeing she hadn’t spoken for a long time, Li Wuhui spoke up proactively.
“But I felt that, with our current relationship, nothing I gave would be appropriate.”
She handed over the thing in her hand. “So I just gave you this.”
Qiu Yiran looked down—
It was that painting.
The one she had painted for Li Wuhui, but with a pair of snow-like eyes.
And now Li Wuhui had given it back to her.
Qiu Yiran was silent for a moment. Her face was lit by the incoming golden sun but remained pallid. She gripped the edge of the painting paper and said softly,
“Thank you.”
“You’re not happy?” The sun climbed in through the side window. Li Wuhui watched her profile.
Qiu Yiran took a deep breath, put the painting in the door’s storage compartment, then slowly shook her head.
“No.”
Li Wuhui didn’t speak but kept staring at her.
More than ten days had passed.
Qiu Yiran slowly realized that the standoff between them had never ended—
It was as if Doctor Li Wuhui had torn open the stitched wound again to carefully observe Patient Qiu Yiran’s healing response.
Even though Qiu Yiran had never signed a consent form before this surgery began.
“I feel like you still haven’t realized—”
Under Li Wuhui’s direct gaze, Qiu Yiran finally couldn’t hold back. She confessed the feelings she had harbored these days after the painting.
“You had me paint that painting, then said it was my eyes. Maybe you just wanted to find the shadow of what you wanted to see in me.”
She hesitated a bit, her tone very soft. “It’s just like covering your ears to steal a bell.”
“Covering your ears to steal a bell?”
Li Wuhui repeated it, as if pondering its meaning. “You think I’m doing something like that?”
