“So…” I swallowed my saliva that tasted like minty toothpaste. I thought, maybe he brushed my teeth, too? But if that was the case, why did I still taste him in my mouth? “So did we…?” My voice became quieter near the end as my face shrunk back into the blanket. Pokerface still had his arm behind him like a pillow while watching me steadily. He shook his head in a peculiar angle. So that means, no? I let out the breath that I had been holding. I flexed my muscles down there and surely, it did not feel like they had been split into two, although the entrance felt a bit swollen. It appeared that he was telling the truth. But how was that possible? “You fainted.” I fainted. His expression didn’t change much when he said this but I turned to face the nearby window after quietly processing these two words and slapping myself a hundred times in my head. I knew I shouldn’t have chosen to live in a single house. Just looking at this height, even if I jumped, the most I would get is paralysis—it wasn’t enough. How should I put my feelings? I was not exactly sure whether my urges to jump were from having gone the whole way or not having gone the whole way. Pokerface was, as expected, a gentleman and wouldn’t take advantage of others. So shouldn’t I feel grateful from the bottom of my heart? Yet, as soon as I recalled everything from the previous night—people often say that memory is like a scrolling LED sign: a long tale can be told in a few seconds—I wished I didn’t have such a brilliant memory. But for some reason, I could still remember all the details even though I had been the one who was roaring drunk, so he must have remembered it too. Oh right. I think Pokerface once said he has a bad memory and would forget things too far back in the past. So maybe I can… Then, I was hoisted up by the waist from the awkward spot I was in to another spot that was even more awkward. My eyes flickered all over the place as I lay on top of him. He had one hand on my waist as he asked flatly, “Something on your mind?” Erm, why would he ask that? Warily, I glimpsed at him, thinking that he couldn’t have seen that I was searching for a way to erase his memory, could he? “You were very drunk yesterday.” After a pause, I let out an ‘Ah!’ of realisation. He had meant the drinking. However, my brain went blank at his question and I couldn’t come up with any good reason. After all, I led an eat-and-sleep kind of lifestyle and was far from needing to escape reality with alcohol. My eyes flickered some more before falling on the edge of my bedside table. There were many pictures, laid out in a fan shape. Aren’t those the matchmaker pictures that my relatives forced on me yesterday? I wondered. Why are they here? I lifted my head to discover that Pokerface was looking at them, too. I mauled it over in my head and reached a conclusion: they must’ve fallen out of my pocket when he took my clothes off yesterday. What should I say about Pokerface? Normally, he would not even give two s.h.i.ts if the sky was falling down but he could be meticulous and find your vulnerability without much effort. If it were any other occasion, say the pictures had fallen out when I was walking and he asked if anything was on my mind after picking it up for me, I would surely say, ‘Oh you know, it’s just the elders trying to get me married. Same old annoying s.h.i.t.’ But not even I could convince myself with a weak response like this. I couldn’t just act like we were acquaintances who b.u.mped into each other on the streets. He and I, we were completely naked and snuggled together under a blanket. I still remembered very clearly the question last night that had wound itself around my head like a hunting net and kept repeating itself as my gla.s.s got filled and emptied again and again. I must ask while the going is good. I moved my gaze back and my senses were coming to attention. Only then did I notice just how cold he was. Could it be that he cooled down because I had hogged the blanket to cover myself? “The moon cakes you brought yesterday, you said it was…you know…” I stuttered a bit. I let go of the blanket I had gripped tightly in my hands and clumsily wrapped my arms around him. “I bought it,” he answered straightforwardly. I watched him in confusion. “But I thought you said-.” “The clerk didn’t take the money.” He sounded so matter-of-fact that I first gaped at him before exclaiming, “Woooow.” The moment I understood what he had meant, I started to scream profanities in my head. s...o...b.. That d.a.m.n s...o...b.. I immediately recalled a bet I had made with Fats. The basis was that we garnered a lot of attention from most women—younger ones mostly—who walked past us. Of course, we attracted attention because of the bags and equipment we hauled around, but we also did when we went out for a simple meal. Due to the fact that most of the looks were aimed in my direction, I had thought that the ladies were looking at me. However, Fats was very insistent that they were after Xiaoge, not me, and that it was only because I just so happened to be standing near Xiaoge, so I shouldn’t take credit for someone else’s work. I refused to believe him, of course, thus I made a bet with him. One time, when we were out buying coach tickets, I walked faster on purpose, leaving Pokerface far behind. He just kept walking with his mind on some other planet and even crashed straight into several ladies along the way. Still, their smiles were plastered to his back, as though his confessions of love were written on it. Consequently, I had to pay for a feast at Louwailou. Now, this drunk scandal at Full Moon House… I wished I could have flipped the table last night or at least bit him harder. Although, strictly speaking, he had not lied to me. He had wanted to pay: he bought it. It was just that the clerk didn’t take the money: it was a gift. “So I suppose the clerk was-.” A young lady or a mature obasan. Before I could get the rest of the sentence out, he pressed a finger to my lips. As my eyes followed his finger, I became cross-eyed. In one movement, he pried open my lips and studied them. I couldn’t tell what he was contemplating about. Just as I was about to ask, his fingers crawled up my cheeks like a daddy long leg and pulled. Instantly, the distance between us went from a foot to zero. I gasped and the next moment his lips were against mine, preventing me from breathing. My upper lip was sealed onto him while he sucked on my bottom lip. The only thing I felt was bewilderment but only for less than a second. He let go of me for a fraction of a second before leaning in again. This time his tongue wiggled in, too, and I couldn’t even object. f.u.c.k! Th-this is my first d.a.m.n kiss! I screamed on the top of my lungs from the top of a mountain in my mind. I couldn’t believe the first kiss that I had preserved for twenty-five years was taken like this. He did not ask for my permission—I couldn’t even fathom an accusation like that. Who was he? He was Pokerface, Kylin Zhang! He didn’t even need to get checked for tickets to walk on the path of demon soldiers and enter the gates of h.e.l.l. In the end, he had come back, alive and well, heart warm and beating, and he was lying here, embracing me and kissing me. Was I repelled? Not particularly. Was I delighted? Well, I didn’t have enough brain juice to process that much. I didn’t even know how I should react. This was a man who I thought couldn’t even dial a phone. He had such soft, tender tongue and lips that tasted a bit like vanilla moon cake. It appeared I had a lot to learn from him. As for who taught him these things? It seemed that that was another thing I needed to selectively forget. I moaned as I hooked my arms around his shoulders. Was I going to let go? No, I didn’t want to. Was I going to let him continue? It seemed I had no other choice. This willful att.i.tude of mine had been getting strong since last night under the influence of alcohol. If there was a watch beside us, I would really like to know just how long this kiss had been going for. By the time he remembered to release me, I felt as if he had sucked away three-fourth of the oxygen in my brain. I exhaled with my head tilted to the side, letting him prop my head up with his hand. His hand was still ice cold. I wondered why it hadn’t been melted by my forty-degree fever that had spread up from my groin. He touched my hair. “Any more questions?” The short syllables knocked on my eardrums, making echoes. I was still looking at him dumbly. Mint, vanilla, kind of bitter and kind of salty—an indescribable taste mingled together in my mouth. I pressed my ear to his chest, listening to his heartbeat. It seemed my heartbeat was twice as fast as his. Questions, I did still have, but fewer than before. He combed through my hair with his long fingers, not getting caught once. It seemed that the shampoo that had caused me so much trouble had been thoroughly washed off by him. Just how did he manage to do it? As my head was filled with these random thoughts, my gaze fell on the blank triangle where his neck met his collarbone. Immediately, another memory fragment of my stupidity very rudely resurfaced from the bottom of my mind. I know I’ve asked too many questions but… “Did I ask you anything stupid yesterday?” The atmosphere momentarily froze while I waited for the answer. I was not sure whether I wanted to hear ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ because the more I remember the better and the more he forgets the better. However, Pokerface turned my shoulders straight and gave me an unrelated reply: “How many?” He stuck up four fingers in front of me. I was baffled but soon my memory told me that he had probably done this last night and it was right after I had asked him something stupid. I really said and did too much that I shouldn’t have. Perhaps he was implying a h.o.m.onym of four? Since I was screwed either way, I decided to answer. “Four,” I said with a wavering voice. “Okay.” Okay what? I felt myself getting flipped over like a patty doing a 180 on a barbeque grill. In a blink of an eye, Pokerface whom I had been straddling was now on top of me. I had no idea how he moved. I stared at him looming above me, thinking to myself: Seeing the fluidity and power in his movement, he could have thrown me off the bed a million times over throughout the night, yet he bore with it. His hair was hanging from the pull of gravity and draping on my face. He was gazing at me with his pupils that were like two black lakes when a gust of wind blew through, rippling their surface. I could even see his inner eyelid folds now. “You asked two questions yesterday.” As he said this, that pale spot on his left shoulder drew near and almost blocked everything else from my vision. Maybe I was seeing things or something, but I could make out a few dark green lines rising from his blood vessels to the surface of the skin to form a familiar design. “And I’ll answer them now.” Something hard but also familiar poked at me. His tip and my back door were both a wet mess and I had no idea if it was his or mine. My eyes went wide and before I could react, the design and the scorching rod invaded me simultaneously and conquered my very being in an instant. Where’s the qilin? Do you want me? September 15th, 2008: full moon day of the eighth lunar month. I will never forget this day. I didn’t see Chang’e flying across the sky. But the next morning, a black qilin came riding on clouds and landed in my second-floor bedroom. END