Chapter 22: “Panicked Pulse” Part 1

The train whistle faded with startling abruptness, as if the air itself had frozen for several seconds.

Then came the splatter of water, the next instant swallowing those clear, unmistakable words.

Fu Tingli had lost her composure. A strong swimmer, she nonetheless let herself sink beneath the surface.

Moments later, in the flawless light blue water, a flash of red drifting nearby fished her straight out.

She inevitably choked down several mouthfuls. Once she surfaced, she coughed violently, her already fragile lungs aching with the strain.

She refused to look at Kong Liyuan.

Instead, pale-faced and hacking, she swam toward the edge. Her hair and sodden clothes weighed her down, dragging her relentlessly under.

“The subway… cough cough… I have to catch the subway cough cough… no time left, Teacher Kong.”

She knew Kong Liyuan was staring at her from behind. But Fu Tingli couldn’t worry about that. She hurried to the poolside and hauled herself onto the deck.

Water still streamed from her clothes, and the coughing hadn’t eased. Amid the frantic splashes, she heard Kong Liyuan let out the faintest sigh from behind her.

“Wait a moment,” Kong Liyuan said.

Then came the slow swish of someone swimming closer. Fu Tingli couldn’t escape the grip that seized her, nor could she bring herself to turn around.

She could only hear the water dripping from her own body. It shouldn’t have made a sound, yet it echoed as clearly as if it were coursing through her veins.

And beyond the drips falling from her own skin came more from behind.

It was the sound of Kong Liyuan slowly gripping the handrail and pulling herself up, the sound of her bare feet meeting the tile floor.

The sound of water trickling from the expanse of exposed skin on Kong Liyuan’s body to the ground, mingling with the shallow puddles already there.

The contrast between light patters and heavier splashes was stark, leaving Fu Tingli disoriented. Her favorite pool water now dragged at her like lead, forcing her to hunch over as she coughed, her wet hair plastered messily to her face.

Then, as Kong Liyuan passed by, she draped a towel over Fu Tingli’s drenched form.

“The air outside is chilly. You’re soaked through—how do you plan to get home like that?”

Through the clean, soft towel, she added, “Come with me. At least I’m the one who dragged you in. I can’t just let you leave dripping wet.”

Her tone gave nothing away.

Fu Tingli froze for a moment. By now, all the water she’d aspirated had been hacked up.

She watched Kong Liyuan’s unhesitating steps, glanced at the white towel draped over her, and slowly trailed after her.

The changing area Kong Liyuan led her to was on the second floor. It was an expansive villa: garage on the first floor, pool on the third, living quarters naturally on the second.

As the elevator descended, Fu Tingli watched droplets trail from Kong Liyuan’s long black hair and thought: A residence with just three floors, yet it has an elevator. That fit her image of Kong Liyuan perfectly.

Qiao Lipan had once mentioned installing one in the California house, to make transporting large sculptures and stacks of tools easier.

But Fu Tingli had shot it down. She felt an elevator would turn the home cold and impersonal, make people lazy, and atrophy their legs.

Back then, others had seen her as some ethereal being, convinced that measuring the world on foot was the height of cool—an artist’s ideal.

Her thoughts meandered in a jumble as she followed Kong Liyuan’s twists and turns. Unexpectedly, the second floor’s decor didn’t match her expectations at all.

Beyond a few closed doors, the open space stretched vast, visible end to end at a glance. It wasn’t cramped; quite the opposite—immensely spacious.

Pure white walls enclosed a grand hall devoid of any furnishings one might expect in a home. Instead, several large objects stood shrouded in white cloths.

It was stark, devoid of any warmth, as if isolated from the world. Anyone stepping inside might feel torn apart by the emptiness itself.

Save for that streak of red gliding through it. Kong Liyuan seemed utterly oblivious to it all.

Home stripped bare—those were the words that came to Fu Tingli’s mind as she followed behind.

She shook her head. Or perhaps this wasn’t Kong Liyuan’s home at all.

Warm air from the AC followed them the whole way, so it wasn’t cold—just oppressively vast.

At last, they reached a room. Kong Liyuan pushed the door open casually and stepped inside, leaving wet footprints behind.

The space brimmed with clothes, neatly arranged. This room at least felt lived-in, like a proper dwelling should.

“Shower first, or just change and head out?” Kong Liyuan asked as she gathered a full outfit. No tags or logos marred the pieces, but the fabric and cut screamed luxury.

Fu Tingli knew this was Kong Liyuan’s attempt to accommodate her. No time for coyness now. She accepted obediently.

“I’ll just change here and go. Otherwise, I’ll miss the subway.”

Kong Liyuan hummed in acknowledgment and set out a pair of thick fleece slippers. “Then change here.”

“Okay,” Fu Tingli replied.

Kong Liyuan stepped out and shut the door. Fu Tingli began unbuttoning her thick, sodden clothes. She’d barely undone the first when a knock sounded.

She opened it to find Kong Liyuan there, hair still damp, holding a fresh towel. “Dry off first. Don’t want you catching a cold.”

Fu Tingli took it and pulled off the now-soaked towel from her head. “Thanks,” she said softly.

The door closed again, leaving her in a daze.

This walk-in closet was private territory. Every garment in sight belonged to Kong Liyuan; the faint, elusive scent lingering in the air was hers too—subtle and appealing.

Fu Tingli inhaled deeply, deciding she liked it. Her gaze drifted to the floor, to the footprints nearly evaporated by the warm air.

As she changed, her mind replayed recent events: the train whistle’s roar, losing her balance, plunging underwater… and those perfectly clear words that had slipped from Kong Liyuan’s lips.

Shall we do it?

She couldn’t parse the difference between “you and me” and “us.” Yet she could distinguish that the phrases had come at different times and places—and the unfamiliar sensation that had welled up inside her afterward.

She couldn’t recall where she’d heard it or from whom. But long before turning twenty, Fu Tingli had come across the saying.

The years from twenty to thirty mark the hardest stage of a person’s life.

She’d dismissed it then as vague platitude. Until the reality unfolded slowly, inescapably upon her, striking like a blow to the head.

She’d always seen herself as a rampaging sword, cleaving dilemmas and shattering impasses. But upon looking down, she found her body mottled with bruises.

Like iron wire slowly rusting, silent and insidious, flaking away her outer shell.

Some intangible force had reshaped her without a trace.

She knew she’d changed profoundly. But the transformation carried a delay; by the time she noticed, it had long been weaving through her.

The first inkling came when she sold her car.

She’d handled all the vehicles after returning home. Before that, she’d never imagined such drastic shifts in store for her.

She’d assumed they’d sit patiently in California, waiting for her return—to cruise Highway One again, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, accompanying her across the globe.

But before she could go back to California, she’d offloaded them all through an international broker. Every bit fetched would help fill the hole for Qiao Lipan—even a mosquito’s meat was meat.

Among her prized collection, the last to go was the car that had carried the sun and the flying bird sculpture. She hadn’t meant to save it; it had simply happened.

Once the deals closed, she hung up on the final broker call and thought herself serene, unshaken.

Until she hunched against the rain, weathering Shanghai’s half-baked winter with her unkempt, sun-bleached golden hair she hadn’t bothered to touch up, darting haphazardly through the city.

It had been seven or eight years since Shanghai to California.

The streets, architecture, roadside shops, the city’s kaleidoscope of people—it all felt like another world.

Yet in this world lingered one person from her past.

The first sighting came outside a mall where she’d paused to escape the rain. Looking up, a massive screen caught her eye.

The woman on it smiled with elegant allure, seductive and vibrant. It was a video ad: dressed in a black halter gown, she burst free of the skirt’s trailing hem, sprinting across the sand.

Her black hair flowed smoothly, and at the end, she roared off in the convertible she endorsed, kicking up a cloud of dust.

That was Fu Tingli’s first knowledge of Kong Liyuan—the owner of her incomplete flying bird sculpture.

That same day, she’d taken matters into her own hands at an alley hair salon. For thirty yuan a pop, she’d dyed her years-nurtured pale gold locks jet black.

It had taken real effort to scrub the dye from her hands afterward.

Also that day, lugging her baggage up six flights, she’d moved into a cheap twenty-square-meter rental.

This was the second time she realized it—just moments ago, she had discovered that the buyer of that last car was Kong Liyuan.

When Xia Lai drove that convertible over, she had known it was Kong Liyuan’s car.

And when she slid into the driver’s seat, clearly sensing the familiar aura of the vehicle, she knew:

This was also the car that had carried them to Los Angeles.

It made sense for Kong Liyuan to buy it—perhaps as a memento, or simply to keep it out of someone else’s hands, avoiding any needless trouble from a potential loose end.

This one sale had severed her from that other world entirely.

It was something she had sold out of sheer necessity to survive.

Yet it was also something Kong Liyuan could acquire effortlessly, for whatever private reason.

Was it because Kong Liyuan was a bad person? Of course not. Fu Tingli wasn’t so naive as to confuse right from wrong.

She knew everything had changed from their California days because twenty-four-year-old Fu Tingli had changed. She had grown timid and withdrawn, clinging desperately to her fragile pride and that scrap of face-saving dignity. She could no longer offer the open-hearted honesty she once had.

Even she felt like a stranger to herself.

~~~

Fu Tingli let out a quiet sigh, changed into fresh clothes, and ran her fingers through her hair. The warm air had nearly dried it, leaving only a faint dampness hidden within the strands.

She pushed open the door. The motion-sensor light in the hallway flickered on, followed by a billow of white smoke carrying a familiar, faint scent.

She stood there in the overlapping glow for a moment before stepping out.

Kong Liyuan was leaning against the wall right by the door, still wearing her red swimsuit. A white towel draped over her shoulders, the vivid crimson clinging to her body, her long black hair wet. A cigarette burned between her fingertips. She seemed shrouded in the haze, like a diluted pool of blood.

“Teacher Kong, why haven’t you changed yet?” Fu Tingli said in surprise, hurriedly draping her long down jacket over the woman’s shoulders. “Aren’t you worried about catching a cold?”

“I forgot,” Kong Liyuan replied, going along with the motion. The jacket suddenly covered her, and she coughed unexpectedly from the smoke, hacking out a few clouds of white mist.

“But I don’t really feel cold.”

“You forgot something like that?” Fu Tingli didn’t quite believe her.

“Not allowed?” Kong Liyuan shot her a glance and, without waiting for a reply, reached out to twirl a damp strand of Fu Tingli’s hair.

“Why can you forget, but I can’t?”