Peng Ye had no answer for that.
He studied her face. Her expression was flat, almost bored, as if she had asked nothing more than "So what do you think of me?" But something in her tone told him she was needling him, really asking: "How much did you miss me?"
Either way, he said nothing.
Cheng Jia sipped the ginger soup slowly. Some color came back into her face.
When she seemed steadier, Peng Ye asked, "What happened to your neck and hands?"
Cheng Jia pressed her lips together, a wave of pain moving through her forehead, but she turned away before he could see it.
"After they pulled me out, I walked to the post station," she said. "I ran into a madman on the way."
Peng Ye's brow creased. "A madman?"
"He had something wrong with him mentally." She paused, turning the memory over. The man had been muttering to himself, his eyes moving over things in a way that was wrong. She had tried to go around him. He spotted her anyway, lunged, and locked his hands around her throat. He was very strong and would not let go.
She kept her voice level and moved past the worst of it. "He had a dagger. I was scared he'd cut my throat, so I grabbed the blade instead."
She stopped. Her body shook once with pain. She tucked her hand back under the quilt, held still until it passed, then continued quietly.
"He dragged me a long way before we slid down the hillside. I couldn't climb back up, so I just ran. I ran for a long time. Snow in every direction. My phone was dead and I couldn't find my way back. That's what took so long."
"What happened to him?"
"I jabbed him in the eye, kicked him in the crotch, and I think I broke one of his fingers."
Peng Ye sat with the image of her alone out there, the fear she must have felt, the helplessness. He didn't know what words would reach her. He pressed her wrist through the quilt. "It's over. You're safe."
Cheng Jia was quiet for a long moment before slowly shaking her head. "I wasn't really afraid of him. There was no room for thought. I just wanted to stay alive."
The real fear came while running, terrified he would catch up.
Peng Ye said nothing.
A madman. A mentally ill person.
He knew this village well. Not one family here had a member like that.
He filed it away and kept his face still.
"When you came back," he said, "you were in such a state you frightened the others. Sangyang, the sixteen of them. They thought you were..."
Cheng Jia looked up. "Just frightened?"
He didn't answer.
"You thought so too," she said. It wasn't a question.
Peng Ye pressed his mouth into a line. "I did. When you came back, Shi Tou said, 'She's alive, that's all that matters.'"
Cheng Jia gave a short, dry smile. "For me, breathing isn't the same as living. If a man comes at me like that, there are only two ways it ends: I fail to kill him and I die, or I kill him."
She understood the logic of survival. She simply wasn't made to swallow that kind of wrong.
"I can't let people walk over me. No one gets to beat me without paying for it. Anyone who tries, I'll make them regret it."
"Xiao Ling took my lighter, so I hit her. She slapped me first, so I hit her back. That's just how it is."
Peng Ye looked at her and said nothing.
"What are you staring at?"
"I was thinking," he said, "that not even a madman could fix you."
Cheng Jia gave him a cold look. "I'm taking that as a compliment."
He had meant it as one.
"Of course I went after her," Cheng Jia said. "Even if I had to crawl out of the ground, I would take back what's mine."
He had figured out long ago that her priorities were different from other people's.
"Don't you blame Xiao Ling for leaving you behind?"
Cheng Jia was calm. "She could run or not run, that was her choice. There was real danger and she couldn't have saved me by staying. What she did wrong was come back and not tell anyone to look for me, and leave with my things. That's where she failed."
She picked at a loose thread on the quilt. "Honestly, if those men hadn't shown up, Xiao Ling would never have abandoned me. And if my lighter hadn't fallen out, and she hadn't gotten that impulse to grab it, she would have gone back and sent someone to find me. After I fell into the snow pit, she kept trying to pull me out. She really did. It's just..."
Cheng Jia found it almost funny. "People usually go wrong at the very start, over something tiny. Sometimes it's fate. Sometimes it's a moment of stupidity. Sometimes it's circumstances pulling them somewhere they didn't plan to go."
"You see it clearly," Peng Ye said.
"I have eyes."
He glanced at them, reflexively. Same as always, hollow and deep, like the lens of a camera.
He watched her a moment. "But if you had been her, you wouldn't have run."
"No," she said simply. "I wouldn't."
Then: "Whoever saves my life, I pay that debt with my life."
He had nothing left to ask. Her earlier question came back to him. "How do you think of me?" She and he were the same.
He watched her finish the soup, took the bowl, and stood to go.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
He looked back at her. "To get medicine and bandages."
"Oh." She settled back against the wall. A second passed. "Then hurry up."
The post station was quiet. Every word she said came through clean and clear.
Peng Ye smiled briefly. "Alright."
The moment he left, Cheng Jia let out a long breath. The pain had nearly cracked her back teeth. She wiped the cold sweat from her back and forehead with a tissue, then eased herself into the bedding.
She tried to give her mind something else to do. She thought about the smile he had given her before walking out. What had it meant?
She was still turning it over when Peng Ye came back. She pulled herself upright and looked straight at him.
"What?" he asked.
"You smiled when you left. What were you smiling at?"
"Did I?"
"You did."
"I don't remember."
Cheng Jia pressed her lips together and let it go.
Peng Ye pulled out a cloth bag of boiled eggs. "Roll these over your face. It'll bring down the swelling."
Five or six of them, peeled, soft and white, still steaming.
She looked at them. "You all eat them. Don't waste them." She had no desire to touch anything. Her hands hurt too much.
"Shi Tou boiled them for you."
"He was willing to part with them?"
"He said," Peng Ye told her, "that besides feeding them grass, you have to let sheep out in the sun. Otherwise they won't be in good spirits."
Cheng Jia didn't try to work out what that meant.
"Is my face very swollen?" she asked.
Peng Ye considered. "Like baby fat."
She raised an eyebrow. "So getting beaten up made me look younger?"
"You could think of it that way."
She looked around the room and muttered under her breath, "God, there isn't even a mirror in here."
She rose up on her knees suddenly, and Peng Ye turned at that exact moment. Their faces nearly collided.
Silence.
Cheng Jia didn't move. She looked at her own reflection in the dark clarity of his eyes. Their noses were almost touching, their breath meeting in the narrow space between them.
Peng Ye stood at the edge of the kang, remarkably still, and let the distance stay.
After a moment, she sat back. She had seen herself in his eyes. The anger she had been holding down started working its way up.
"The nerve of them, hitting my face." She bit down on the words. "Next time I see him..."
She held that thought, then let it drop. "I didn't want everyone to see me like this. Then you had to yank my hat off, and now Sangyang and all of them have seen me beaten into a mess."
Peng Ye said, "They rarely see women, so whatever you look like, you're the best thing they've seen. You're royalty to them."
Cheng Jia stared at him. "You have a real gift for comfort. Thanks so much."
He picked up a cotton ball and the alcohol. "Take your coat off."
At those words, the pinched line between her brows, set there by pain and wounded pride, loosened slightly. A small, dark amusement moved across her face. She pulled off her down jacket and said, "You're the first man who's ever spoken to me like that."
He gave her a look. The meaning was clear: behave yourself.
Cheng Jia tilted her chin up, baring her neck to make it easier for him. Her head was swimming with the pain, so she fixed her gaze on his face, his eyes, and didn't look away.
Peng Ye paused for a moment before moving closer, sitting beside her, lowering his head toward her neck.
Her skin was very pale, very smooth.
He thought of Maiduo saying "She's so fair, like the snow at the top of Tianshan."
Now her neck was crossed with several cuts, like cracks in a white jade vase.
He pressed his lips together and cleaned the dried blood from her neck as gently as he could. His hand was not quite steady.
"Why are you shaking?" she asked softly.
He looked up. She had her chin lifted, watching him from under lowered lashes.
"I'm not shaking," he said.
"You are."
"Your neck is numb. You can't feel anything."
"I said," she told him, "I felt it."
He said nothing.
A few seconds passed.
"I'm worried about hurting you," he said.
A slow, knowing smile spread across her face. "It only hurts when the technique is bad."
He looked at her. The warning in his eyes was plain.
It had no effect on her. Her smile widened.
He stopped engaging and went back to work.
Gradually he became aware of her scent. She had been outside for a long time. The cold had stripped away her perfume and what was left was something warmer, natural, fuller after all that running, a softness like warm milk.
Something about it reached him in a way he hadn't expected.
He realized the distance between them was becoming a problem.
He shifted back slightly and found himself meeting her calm, steady gaze. She had been watching him the whole time.
He had the feeling she could see through everything.
He finished cleaning the blood, then worked the alcohol-soaked cotton across each wound. She never made a sound, but now and then a deep breath would lock in her chest as the pain hit her, every muscle drawn tight.
He could see how much it hurt her. He leaned in and blew gently across the cuts to ease the sting.
The cool air gave her a faint shiver, almost an itch.
His breath moved past her ear. Without thinking about it, he murmured, "If it hurts, say so."
She laughed without a sound. She leaned forward until her lips were close to his neck, and a slow exhale, barely a whisper, curled against his ear. "Then... be gentle."
His whole body went rigid.
He turned to look at her. His expression was severe. She wasn't afraid of him. She had never been afraid of him.
The afternoon sun came in at an angle, falling softly across both their faces, hazy and cool.
Her eyes were light in that brightness, her loose hair drifting in and out of the shadows.
His cheek was close enough that she could feel the warmth of it. His lashes were long, his nose straight, his lips pressed flat. She had the urge to pry them open.
So she raised her hand, and the pad of her finger touched his lips.
"Has anyone ever told you," she asked, "that you have a very attractive mouth?"