Chapter 43: “Long Time No See” Part 1

Long time no see.

~~~

Fu Tingli suddenly wanted to say those words. But they didn’t quite fit. School had only let out on the twenty-eighth of the twelfth lunar month, and Kong Liyuan hadn’t left Kanas until the evening of the twenty-seventh.

Now it was New Year’s Eve, less than three full days later, yet it already felt like they were reuniting after a long separation.

And even on the day they would truly reunite after a long parting, she probably wouldn’t say “long time no see.”

“Why are you still smoking that pack?”

A gust of wind rustled past. She caught sight of the cigarette pinched between Kong Liyuan’s fingers, its tip glowing a bit brighter red before fading again as the wind died down.

Slim and snow-white, with a pale purple filter.

She remembered clearly that it was the pack she’d bought for her at the little supermarket here—seventeen yuan and eighty fen. The boss hadn’t had change and had given her two face masks instead.

“Couldn’t smoke on set, so it stayed in my pocket. Touched on it today.”

Kong Liyuan was still wearing the down jacket Fu Tingli had dug out for her that day, but it looked like she’d washed it properly. It was cleaner now than it had been those few days.

“Fair enough. Don’t waste it—it’s still seventeen yuan and eighty fen.” Fu Tingli said.

Then she stomped through a few patches of snow and lowered her voice to ask, “Why’d you come back all of a sudden? Didn’t you just leave yesterday?”

“Had some business.”

Trekking across mountains and through heavy snow while leading a white horse wasn’t easy, so Kong Liyuan kept her focus on the horse in her hand.

She said it simply like that, then glanced at her. “What are you doing out here all alone on a holiday, perfectly fine otherwise?”

“Lying out here is fun,” Fu Tingli said sincerely. “I was just about to head back anyway.”

“Did your roommate go home?”

“She went back for the New Year. She’ll return when filming starts up again.”

“Then why didn’t you go home for the New Year?”

“Going back, it’d just be me anyway. Nothing worth going back for. What about you? Not going back?”

The white horse kicked up a spray of snow. Kong Liyuan tugged harder to hold it steady. After a long stretch of ambient silence broken only by the wind, she answered slowly,

“Nothing worth going back for. Don’t want to.”

Fu Tingli nodded into the wind, not pressing further with a “Why not?” Instead, she crunched through the snow toward Kong Liyuan, staring at the white horse she held by the reins.

The sky was an icy blue tinged with gray, draping the snowfield like a divine sanctuary forbidden to all but them—no third person in sight.

The white horse Kong Liyuan led looked extraordinarily pure. Its hooves were planted firmly in the snow, its coat sleek, its muscles taut, adorned with a vivid red silk ribbon. Its black eyes were clear and bright, spirited enough to deserve the description.

Like a visitor from another world—and so was the woman leading it.

Seeing Fu Tingli approach of her own accord, Kong Liyuan seemed to smile. Then she obligingly tugged the horse a bit closer. Its head swung forward, nearly bumping Fu Tingli in the face.

A puff of warm, steamy breath steamed through the frigid air. Fu Tingli didn’t know what gave her the courage; she didn’t even flinch, just locked eyes directly with the spirited white horse.

A burst of fresh vitality scattered through the icy snowscape.

The horse’s nudge made Fu Tingli’s eyes curve in a grin. She slowly reached out, stroking its sleek back, then turned her head to gaze at Kong Liyuan with open curiosity.

“This isn’t that horse from the set, is it? Did you steal it?”

“Am I some kind of all-powerful figure in your mind?” Kong Liyuan laughed too. Her laughter carried on the vast wind, somehow wild and uninhibited.

“You think I could lead a horse all the way from Shanghai to the Northern Border?”

“True.” Fu Tingli found her own question amusing now, her eyes squinting into slits from laughing. Once she caught her breath, she asked, “So where’d you get this little horse from?”

“Ran into an Apa on the way. She asked me to lead it for her a bit.” Kong Liyuan didn’t correct her “little horse” label for the tall steed.

Fu Tingli thought she was spouting nonsense. “What kind of Apa does that?”

“It’s true. Apa went off for the holiday and asked me to hold it for two hours.” Kong Liyuan said it with utter calm, as if such a thing really happened in the world—like a warm, bizarre twist of fate.

Fu Tingli almost believed her. Then she heard Kong Liyuan chuckle lightly and add,

“Long as she got thirty yuan for it.”

Fu Tingli laughed so hard her eyes squeezed shut, the ear muffs on her felt hat flapping wildly in the wind. “Who pays to help out like you do, Teacher Kong?”

Then she sighed, half-joking. “Making another bad deal, Kong Liyuan.”

At least this time it wasn’t bartering away her own things. She wasn’t discarding everything on her person anymore.

Kong Liyuan stared at her with a smile. “Ride it a few laps, and it’ll be worth it. Want to?”

“Huh?” Fu Tingli wasn’t surprised by the offer—Kong Liyuan had brought the horse here, after all. Amid the howling gale, she glanced around hesitantly.

“You not riding?”

“Nah.” Kong Liyuan exhaled a plume of white smoke, her whole face vanishing into the haze, looking almost ethereal.

“Filming starts after New Year. Can’t risk an injury right now; wouldn’t know how to explain it to the crew.”

“Fair point. Better not take chances, Teacher Kong.” Fu Tingli had called her “Teacher Kong” a few times that evening already.

She eyed the white horse, now prancing eagerly with its hooves. Then she looked around again.

“Don’t worry.” Kong Liyuan’s voice cut through clearly. “I checked when I got here. All clear around—no one to bump into.”

With that, she handed over the reins neatly and stepped back smartly. In the distant, lingering wind, she watched her, her smile thinned by the breeze.

“Since you’ve come all the way to the Northern Border, blow some wind on horseback for a few laps. I’ll wait here.”

Her offer brooked no argument, but accepting it felt like tumbling into an inescapable abyss.

The white horse’s red silk ribbon fluttered wildly between them, like a cluster of crimson flames.

Fu Tingli had no way left to refuse.

She glanced at Kong Liyuan, feeling the whirlpool in her eyes pulling her in—like a dream on the verge of fading.

Even after she mounted up and the wind roared louder in her ears, the moment she settled in, her relentless heartbeat vanished into the gale.

Yet those profound eyes in the snow still gripped her tight, making her feel it all the same.

Before she could dwell further, the white horse beneath her pivoted.

It was Kong Liyuan, standing firm in the snow, who had briskly grabbed the reins and turned both her and the horse around.

The view from her high perch opened wide and boundless. Before Fu Tingli could take it in, a light laugh floated from behind.

“Go a bit faster.” It was Kong Liyuan’s voice, laced with amusement.

Then came a sharp crack echoing emptily across the snow—like from her sixth winter here in the Northern Border.

Six-year-old her, in a fuzzy felt hat, its ear muffs rattling in the massive wind.

She’d ducked her head low, one hand itching to hold down her warm hat, the other clinging desperately to the little horse carrying her, afraid it’d stumble.

The gale snatched her hat away. The horse’s hot flesh and blood surged beneath her, carrying her through the thunderous wind toward a realm of freedom.

From heart-pounding fear to exhilarating clarity.

Everything suddenly made sense: endless sky above, endless earth below.

The weariness crammed into her bones from dust and despair, all the hardship and loneliness of this winter—they rang out clear and bright in that towering wind, blown clean away.

All that remained was openness and thrill.

Someone laughed behind her.

That year at six, it had been Qiao Lipan. This year at twenty-four, she looked back to see Kong Liyuan.

She twisted on horseback to look back. Hatless now, the wind whipped her hair into a tangled frenzy, roaring in her ears like the earth’s furious breath.

Behind her, in that vast, serene deep-blue snowfield, stood a solitary figure, receding farther and fainter.

The woman sank into the dim light and shadow, shrinking to a tiny silhouette. The only vivid color on her was that faint red glow at her fingertips.

The wind swirled everywhere, ready to swallow her whole, but Fu Tingli could still see it—she felt Kong Liyuan smiling at her.

It had to be a hearty, joyful smile.

Fu Tingli thought so. She breathed in deeply and freely atop the horse, expertly handling the reins as she rode.

With that hazy smile at the center, the woman who’d launched her into this wild expanse, and the lone crimson spark at her fingertips.

Across the open snowfield, she traced circles—like war drums pounding—with hooves kicking up snow shards, with the massive gusts.

Modern folks rarely get the chance to ride horses, so once you’re actually up there, all sorts of wild, fanciful thoughts come to mind.

~~~

For a moment, Fu Tingli felt that she wasn’t being whittled thinner by the fierce winds of the Northern Border—instead, she was growing thicker.

She was burning hotter and hotter, exhilarated in a way that felt utterly freeing.

The winding path she had traced had transformed into flesh wrapping tightly around her bones, adhering swiftly to her body. Layer by layer, it drew closer to the woman at the center, molding her form into shape.

Riding a horse was such a joyful thing.

Bouncing along on the horse’s back, borne up by the grand, sweeping winds, Fu Tingli sensed that horseback riding could squeeze every good thought, every bad one, every tangled mess inside a person right out of them in a single exhilarating instant.

And so the rider became purely, simply human.

It was like plunging into a vast, breathtaking landscape of swirling beauty—or like transforming into a wisp of utterly free wind herself.

“What a shame. You really should try riding here sometime. Then these thirty bucks would’ve been an even better deal.”

That was the first thing Fu Tingli said to Kong Liyuan after pulling to a stop, her breath coming in short gasps.

When she halted in front of Kong Liyuan, she was still astride the horse. Her wind-tossed hair floated in the air like the lingering echoes of some unresolved passion.

A snowflake landed on the tip of her nose, instantly chilling the heat radiating from her body.

She exhaled a plume of white breath and tilted her head back to gaze upward. Snowflakes swayed and drifted lazily from the sky.

Unnoticed, it had begun to snow again.

Her eyes followed the flakes ahead. The white horse reared up in front of Kong Liyuan, kicking up a flurry of snow—but it did nothing to obscure the woman’s face.

The cigarette had burned out completely now; its fiery glow had vanished into the snow.

Kong Liyuan held the felt hat that the wind had knocked to the ground. A thin layer of snow dusted her down jacket. Her brows arched slightly as she smiled up at Fu Tingli, clear and unmistakable.

“That happy, huh?”

“Happy as can be.” Fu Tingli swung down from the saddle with nimble grace, her boots crunching into the solid snow. The heartbeat that the wind and snow had hijacked now thrummed steadily in her chest.

She already felt lighter, as if the wind had swept away every stray bit of clutter from her life.

“I’ve always thought riding a horse is one of the most joyful things out there.” Maybe it was because she’d had to shout back on horseback, but even now off it, Fu Tingli’s voice bubbled with excitement.

“When I was little, my mom wanted to buy me a pony. But in the end, I said no.”

“Why not?” Kong Liyuan cradled her felt hat in her hands, her smile unwavering even in the wind.

Fu Tingli took hold of the reins. She opened her mouth to answer, but a gust blew the hair hanging by her cheek straight into it.

She spat out a sharp “Peh!”—but the strand stayed put. Instead, she heard Kong Liyuan’s laugh ring out, rich and unrestrained.

It tickled. Fu Tingli scrunched up her face and reached to brush the hair aside.

But Kong Liyuan beat her to it. Warm fingertips brushed her cheek once more, gathering the wind-frizzed strands and tucking them neatly behind her ear.

The other woman’s breath grazed her ear, sending fresh shivers through her.

This woman’s hands were always so warm whenever they touched her.

Fu Tingli thought, a little dazed.

Tucking away that one lock wasn’t enough for Kong Liyuan. She smoothed all of Fu Tingli’s windblown hair, her touch like a caress—or perhaps like a lingering gaze.

Finally, she brushed the snowflakes from the felt hat and settled it back on Fu Tingli’s head. Just like old times, she gave the back of her head a gentle pat and drawled lazily,

“You look good in a hat.”

The warmth lingering in the air slipped away. Fu Tingli kicked at the snow along with the white horse at her side and asked abruptly,