She frowned faintly. “You’re not drunk already from just a sip or two, are you?”
“No,” Fu Tingli replied. “Alcohol just makes my head spin and my face flush easily. That’s not the same as being drunk.”
“You sure?” The woman gazed at her steadily.
“Yeah.” Fu Tingli’s voice floated light and airy, carrying a soft lilt she rarely showed.
She took a few more sips. Her head swam, her cheeks burned, but none of it mattered. Today felt singularly special; she needed something—a medium—to etch it into memory.
“I have a secret no one else knows,” she said, words tumbling out unreliably.
“What?” The woman responded patiently, making no move to stop her drinking. Neither of them was much for following rules.
Fu Tingli grinned. “Everyone else forgets things when they drink. But me? Every time I drink, I remember everything crystal clear.”
“Nothing fades.”
“You sure it’s not an alcohol allergy? You always turn everything upside down whenever you drink,” the woman said calmly.
“Maybe.” Fu Tingli kept smiling, her whole body now buzzing with dizziness.
“People say a red face from booze is just an allergy…”
She turned, inching her face closer to the woman’s, and pointed at her own cheek. “Does this count as an allergy?”
In the midst of the cello’s strains, the woman studied her for a moment. “Close enough.”
“Then this allergic reaction…”
Fu Tingli exhaled a warm, boozy breath. Suddenly, the world spun wildly.
She collapsed into something soft, sniffing instinctively. The air filled with a familiar faint scent—one that always soothed her.
She inhaled deeply, then nestled in contentedly. “Totally worth it.”
“How so?” The woman gently combed through her tangled hair.
“Because if I want to remember something,” Fu Tingli murmured softly,
“I just need to down a can of beer.”
The woman seemed tickled by the idea, her laughter shaky and warm, setting Fu Tingli’s entire world trembling.
Once she finished laughing, the woman smoothed the strands behind Fu Tingli’s ear and whispered close,
“Alcohol won’t do it. Pain—that’s the real instinctive memory.”
Fu Tingli didn’t quite follow.
She reached for another sip, but the woman whisked the can away. Fu Tingli blinked up in confusion.
The woman set it on the engine cover, well out of reach.
Fu Tingli tilted her head fuzzily. “What are you doing?”
The woman fixed her with a long stare. Then, abruptly, she lifted Fu Tingli’s chin with gentle fingers and leaned in for a kiss amid the breeze.
The outside world’s sounds dulled and receded. Fu Tingli felt utterly enveloped by a breath that wasn’t her own.
Her thoughts muddled, yet that one line persisted stubbornly—alcohol won’t do it, pain is instinctive memory.
But this woman’s kiss was feather-light, almost as if she didn’t want it remembered.
No, that wouldn’t do. Fu Tingli’s mind rebelled.
She bit down hard. She expected the woman to wince and shove her away. But the woman didn’t; instead, she kissed deeper, even teasingly.
Fu Tingli lost her bearings, unsure what to make of it. She melted against the woman, surrendering the fight, letting go of forcing the memory.
But in a brief parting of breaths, the woman panted softly and murmured,
“Did you forget? I don’t fear pain.”
Fu Tingli froze. The next instant, the woman claimed her lips again as the alcohol surged hotter. Instinct took over, and she bit once more.
Harder this time.
At last, the woman let out a muffled grunt and pulled back. She licked her lip, which now looked fuller, more alluring, glossed with a hint of blood.
The light was dim, Fu Tingli’s head spinning fiercely; she couldn’t make out the woman’s expression.
Right then, the cello-and-harmonica rendition of “California Dream” drew to a close.
Cheers and high-fives erupted around them, followed by a sudden pop—then white flakes rained down from the sky.
Fu Tingli’s thoughts leaped; she glimpsed three blurry figures in the distance, waving spray cans wildly.
She buried herself in the crook of the woman’s neck, her breathing steadying a touch.
She reached out, snatching at the damp white flakes, her words tumbling out of order.
“Like snow. So pretty.”
“Don’t you hate winter the most?”
Through the hiss of the spray cans, the woman’s voice sounded muffled—perhaps from the hard bite, slurring her words a little.
“Yeah,” Fu Tingli replied slowly. “But I’ve always liked snow.”
“Went to the Northern Border once as a kid. It was freezing, snow everywhere.”
“Northern Border where?”
“Around Kanas.”
The woman fell quiet, stroking Fu Tingli’s hair gently. After a pause, she asked,
“I’ve never been. Is it pretty?”
“Such a shame. The snow there’s different from anywhere else—specially beautiful.”
The back-and-forth halted there. No one picked it up again; no one pressed further.
Even through the haze of alcohol, Fu Tingli wouldn’t voice it: “Want to go see?”
Or tack on “together.” That broke the rules of the road trip.
“What Northern Border!”
Zhu Muzi bounded over just then, spray can in hand, blasting fake snow around them as she asked excitedly,
“You two heading to the Northern Border for snow?!”
Fu Tingli shook her head at the words, struggling to lift it from the woman’s neck.
“No, just saying the snow there’s pretty.”
“We’re not going,” she added firmly—though she wasn’t sure who she was telling.
White flakes blanketed everything, swirled by the wind into a slow dance around them.
Dizzy and disoriented, Fu Tingli reached out to catch them. When she snagged one, she beamed. When she missed, she smiled all the same.
Zhu Muzi let out a sigh. “Alright, I thought you were going too.”
“You’re going?” The response came from the woman who had never spoken to her before.
“We’re planning to.” Zhu Muzi leaned against the other two and said casually, “I was hoping that if you were going too, we could head out together since we’re all going the same way.”
“But it doesn’t matter. Fate brings people together, and as long as lovers in the world end up together, that makes me happy.”
This young woman spoke with the formality of an old soul.
~~~
Fu Tingli overheard the comment and thought to herself that they hardly qualified as lovers.
Then, as she took a step back, her foot slipped on nothing. She stumbled wildly backward, only to be caught steadily by a pair of hands.
She was pulled back in and collapsed once more into that familiar softness.
She squinted her eyes. The world was spinning around her like a kaleidoscope whirling before her face. She simply nestled in peacefully and resolved not to stir up any more trouble.
The woman picked up Fu Tingli’s half-finished glass of alcohol and clinked it lightly against Zhu Muzi’s. She said a few words that Fu Tingli couldn’t quite make out.
Amid the noisy clamor, Fu Tingli opened her eyes and gazed hazily at the drifting white snowflakes.
All at once, she was choked by something. She coughed repeatedly, the metallic tang of blood and the burn of alcohol mingling thickly in her mouth.
She recalled the force with which she had bitten the woman earlier and thought that the blood must have gotten into her mouth. How could this woman remain so nonchalant?
She was even gulping down alcohol that seeped right into the wound. This woman truly wasn’t afraid of pain—or even death, it seemed.
In the next moment, Fu Tingli watched as the woman tilted her chin and took another big swig, swallowing the harsh liquor bit by bit.
Then, as if unable to fully suppress the pain, she furrowed her brow ever so slightly.
Fu Tingli reached out with a finger and traced the woman’s lip. Her tone was certain. “You deliberately provoked me into biting you.”
The woman’s hair drifted in the glow of distant lights. She lowered her eyes slightly and gave Fu Tingli a faint, untroubled smile. “Will you remember it?”
Fu Tingli would only learn later that alcohol wasn’t part of her special ability. She couldn’t imprint a memory on someone merely through liquor.
By then, she could no longer recall how she had answered. Perhaps she had said “Not necessarily,” since she wasn’t the one who’d been bitten and it didn’t hurt her much.
Or maybe she had said “Possibly.”
All she remembered was what happened right after her reply.
Amanda had gotten thoroughly drunk. She suddenly dashed to the car parked behind them and clambered on top, facing the light rail train that rushed past with a roar. Straining with the effort, she shouted in Chinese at the top of her lungs, “Zhu Muzi!”
Her cry was nearly lost in the wind whipping around them, but Amanda hunched forward and bellowed it out with every ounce of strength she had. “I love you!”
Fu Tingli and the woman both looked up at the same time. Fu Tingli’s head was still spinning, and the motion took some effort. All she saw was Zhu Muzi—who had been leaning right nearby—racing toward the car.
Zhu Muzi threw herself into Amanda’s arms, panting for breath.
Then she turned toward the light rail train, now nearing the end of the platform, and shouted into the blur of rushing lights and strangers within them. “Zhu Manda! Zhu Muzi loves you too!”
Fu Tingli stared in a daze. For no reason she could explain, she glanced at the woman beside her.
Then, still lightheaded, she watched that pair of lovers locked in a fierce embrace amid the night wind. Their hair whipped wildly about them, their bodies aglow as if they were lit from within.
A flood of vivid, ethereal love stories surged through her mind. Something exploded in her chest like a berserk cannon, shattering her every prior belief in an instant—overwhelming and hitting her dead center.
She had never felt love so intense. In her bewilderment, she murmured, “So this is what it means to be lovers.”
The woman glanced at her through the wind, then at Zhu Muzi and the others. She tended gently to Nicole, who had also looked up and was laughing freely.
She said nothing—or so it seemed.
Yet just as Fu Tingli was drifting toward sleep, the woman lightly pressed the back of her head.
Fu Tingli still remembered how the wind howled in from every direction. Artificial snowflakes drifted down slowly overhead as the light rail thundered past, leaving only a fading echo in its wake.
She couldn’t hold back another cough. A taste of blood that wasn’t hers welled up again. The woman spoke softly. “Then may all lovers in the world end up together.”
Later, whenever Fu Tingli returned to Shanghai, she would cough amid the swirling snow—one time after another—her very organs aching with the force of it, as if it were a long-delayed answer:
Not merely that she would remember, but that she could never forget it, not even in death.
