Chapter 48: “Unity of Opposites” Part 1

Even many years later, on another sweltering, humid summer solstice night like this one,

Fu Tingli would still think back to the summer solstice night in 2022, sinking into a mood of deep, irreparable regret.

~~~

She felt that, at the time, she should have held Kong Liyuan even tighter, even more fiercely—best if Kong Liyuan had no strength left the next day to leave this place.

Or even more boldly, more recklessly: wait until Liyuan fell asleep, then before dawn broke, under the cover of a moonless, windy night…

Even if it cost Fu Tingli her own life, she would set a blaze of green fire, silently burning everything to red ashes that scattered on the wind.

In short, she shouldn’t have let anything happen the next day. Or at the very least, when it all did happen, she shouldn’t have left Liyuan’s side.

Yet even then, the night wind had been rattling clangorously against the rickety windowpanes, like some unpredictable signal, giving Fu Tingli a powerful intuition.

~~~

If she didn’t hold onto Liyuan tonight, she would spend the rest of her life in endless regret, returning to this moment countless times in her mind, wishing she had held her tighter.

Just like in California, on that blood-tinged twilight evening, when she had felt so acutely that they were about to part ways.

But this time, twenty-five-year-old Fu Tingli was no longer as young and forthright as before. She was timid, repressed.

After a full minute of hesitation, with her eyes unknowingly heating up, she finally spread her not-so-broad arms and gently embraced Liyuan’s bony shoulders.

The moment she heard “Hug me,” Fu Tingli had been utterly bewildered. She had forced her eyes wide open.

Yet she still couldn’t make out Liyuan, huddled in that old T-shirt—a woman as elusive as mist and smoke.

In the second that followed, she parted her dry, aching lips, so many words bubbling up, so many questions.

She wanted to ask, How did you end up like this, Kong Liyuan? Isn’t today your twenty-ninth birthday?

She wanted to ask, Liyuan, you’re so strong, so capable—what could possibly reduce you to this?

She even wanted to blurt out, heedless of everything, Liyuan, do you want to be with me? If you do, if it would make you feel better, then let’s do it. Worst case, we’ll hide away afterward, be a pair of secret lovers, not exactly out in the open.

She wanted to grab Liyuan’s wrist and say resolutely, How about we go back to California? Or to the Northern Border, Hewatu, Chongqing… Anywhere that makes you happy, I’ll gladly go with you to any corner of this earth.

But she could barely make a sound.

The night wind howled mournfully. Outside, everything was black. Wind whistled through the window cracks, making the photo on the stand sway gently.

So she could only think scattered thoughts, trying to detach herself from her body, looking down from above at the two of them curled under a thin blanket—the shapes of two young people whose dreamlike encounter had both been born on this summer solstice day.

They wore thin old T-shirts, carried the scent of cheap bath gel, and shared a blue-tinged thin blanket. Their limbs sprawled casually together, shoulders narrowed and pale and slim, like two animals huddling for warmth on a summer night.

Their damp black hair tangled messily, impossible to tell whose was whose. One breath cold, one hot—they mingled the same way.

Silent and tender, harmonious and still, utterly devoted, locked in an embrace from which there was no escape.

Her nose tip pressed to her forehead, quietly inhaling the faint, smooth scent of her hair; her nose tip buried in her collarbone, as if drawing some vital essence from her.

This brief embrace no longer felt like one of those cinematic shots meant to highlight stark Paradox.

No contrasts—just two young people, not entirely innocent, yet survivors of calamity.

Everything around them spun and blurred in the course of that hug.

Until a sharp, enormous crack echoed from outside the window, like a glass bottle shattering from a great height.

It startled Fu Tingli into lifting her chin slightly.

Liyuan barely reacted, still with her nose buried in that slender collarbone. A bit of sweat had beaded on her face now, making it slick.

Then came a shrill, throat-straining woman’s voice—impossible to tell from which floor—

“You bastard! Can’t I even love you?!”

The raw scream pierced the quiet summer night. Soon, the snoring from next door cut off abruptly, followed by a chorus of windows banging open in the whole building, murmurs turning to noisy chatter.

Narrow old alleys like this were prone to such spectacles; bold words could turn them lively in an instant.

Fu Tingli had no interest in the drama. She just lay quietly on the bed, listening. But that voice, thick with tears, sounded so familiar.

“Come back here, you bastard!”

With the thudding of footsteps in the stairwell, the woman’s voice moved downstairs, sounding more distant, more hollow.

Fu Tingli vaguely recognized it as the Hair Salon Boss Lady.

Then came sharp, fierce slaps, sending the rundown building into an uproar.

Trailing after was a low, mumbled voice—gender unclear, no doubt the “bastard.”

“Fu Tingli.” Amid the earth-shaking commotion over that tumultuous love affair, the woman buried in her neck suddenly spoke.

In the midst of the buzzing gossip, Liyuan’s voice was especially soft, mingled with her breath like a murmur.

“Yeah?” Fu Tingli tuned out the chaos below, focusing entirely on Liyuan.

She rubbed her chin against Liyuan’s forehead. Her arms had gone stiff and numb from holding on so long.

But she didn’t mind. She just asked softly, “What’s up? Is it too noisy here?”

The sudden disturbance had only deepened her embarrassment.

In the past, she might have had the nerve to dash downstairs, join the spectacle, or drag the woman away to somewhere quieter.

Fu Tingli thought in silence. She’d expected Liyuan to ask about it, but instead, Liyuan only said,

“What is love?”

“Whoa,” Fu Tingli was caught off guard, but suddenly wanted to laugh. “That’s way too abstract a question.”

And she really did laugh a little, her chest vibrating faintly and making the woman in her arms quake along with her heartbeat.

“I’m serious,” Liyuan said, though she seemed to be smiling too.

Fu Tingli figured Liyuan’s state had improved a bit since earlier. She finally relaxed, letting out a yawn, as the argument downstairs quieted.

Then she drawled, “Love is, of course—”

She stretched out the words on purpose, and amid Liyuan’s soft chuckle of recognition, she delivered her conclusion.

“A really great thing.”

She still held to that belief, even after such a thunderous quarrel. She could picture the Hair Salon Boss Lady—fierce as she was—often smiling softly on the phone.

Liyuan laughed again, not too light or heavy, at Fu Tingli’s playful tone. Her breath stayed even against the collarbone, just a little hot.

“Do you still think so now?”

Fu Tingli considered it, then repeated firmly to emphasize, “I still think so now.”

Liyuan let out another soft laugh, said nothing more, asked no further.

In a way, Fu Tingli breathed a sigh of relief. She wasn’t sure if Liyuan kept pressing—if she asked whether Fu Tingli loved her—if she could still dodge with a vague “maybe.”

Because this was no longer a question she could sidestep, leave blurry, let drift.

Though maybe she should ask Liyuan? What did Liyuan think love was?

~~~

Fu Tingli fell asleep with that question lingering.

That night, she slept more deeply than usual, but still had a hazy, disjointed dream—one connected to past dreams.

It was the first time her dreams had a continuous plot, like a movie that had been paused and now resumed play on this unusual night.

Only now, through bizarre, abstract editing, it had a new protagonist.

The setting shifted to Chongqing, a city brimming with vigor and fiery spirit.

Fresh from healed wounds, she flew in from Los Angeles with an empty suitcase, to see a sculpture exhibit themed “Summer Flying Birds.”

It was nighttime. She held her camera, descending an impossibly steep slope, navigating stairs that seemed endlessly long and arduous.

She snapped shots of the bizarre, cyberpunk cityscape, then accidentally stepped in a puddle at the bottom of the old street. In the splash, she encountered a woman wearing a blue scarf.

The woman was still shaped like those California girls, though her aura had undergone a tremendous shift—sometimes sultry and alluring, other times innocently pure.

She had swept her into a whirlwind romance in this fiery, passionate city, letting her taste the thrill and danger of raw emotion.

They fled together amid the frenzy of pursuit, falling in love through rivers of blood and suffocating madness.

In the end, the woman executed her intricate plans to perfection. She gathered all her sculptures, still wearing that blue scarf, and the two of them clasped hands, lost in a daze of ecstasy as they escaped to the other side of the world.

Just before dawn broke, the woman gently stroked her hair, tracing every inch of her skin, and left a kiss on her forehead brimming with hidden affection—before slipping away early to avoid burdening her.

She opened her eyes and, in a dawn that blazed like white flames, kissed the woman who meant to abandon her with unrestrained fervor.

She declared firmly that this world was too insignificant. As long as two lovers existed, they would find each other no matter what.

—What a vivid dream. It felt just like a movie she had lived through herself.

When Fu Tingli woke, her heart was still pounding wildly. In a haze, she wondered why, out of all those stories, all those identities, all those blurred memories of truth and fiction, only this one ended on a happy note.

The daylight spilling right under her eyelids pulled her thoughts from that deep indigo dream. Her mouth dry and parched, she dragged herself out of bed and glanced around the room in a daze—

Sure enough.

Kong Liyuan was gone. It seemed to be this woman’s signature habit.

Whether in California, Hewatu, or Shanghai… Fu Tingli had never seen her sleeping peacefully in bed. Was it because sleep left her at her most vulnerable and unpredictable, so Kong Liyuan refused to let anyone watch over her like that?

Fu Tingli pondered groggily.

Then she threw off the thin blanket, got out of bed, and instinctively touched her forehead. The smooth skin still seemed to hold a trace of warmth that wasn’t her own.

Had the forehead kiss from the dream really happened? Or had the dream been so lifelike that even after waking, she suffered such intense withdrawal?

Fu Tingli pressed her lips together and sat on the edge of the bed for a while, utterly adrift.

The room felt emptier without the woman who had only stepped inside once before, yet somehow fuller too—and missing so much all at once.

What was added was the sunlight pouring in so brightly under her eyelids, the neatly folded old clothes placed by the bed, and the lighter that had been used yesterday to light the birthday candles.