"Has anyone ever told you that you have sexy lips?"
Cheng Jia traced her fingers across his mouth and smiled. "Turns out it's not just your hair that's soft."
She held his face and leaned in.
Peng Ye didn't pull back or say a word. He tightened his grip.
"Hiss."
She let go instantly.
He scolded her, quiet but firm. "Stop looking for distractions."
He stood, gathered the white gauze coiled around her neck with one hand, produced a pair of shears with the other, and cut through it with a clean snick.
When Peng Ye finished and looked back, Cheng Jia's forehead was soaked in cold sweat.
It landed on him then. She had been enduring the whole time. The teasing, the jokes, all of it had been her trying to keep her mind off the pain.
He felt like an idiot.
He looked at the cut on her hand and felt worse.
He had asked her what happened at the wrong moment, and never once asked whether it hurt. Now her face was drained of color and she was sweating through her shirt.
"I'm sorry," he said.
Cheng Jia blinked. "It didn't hurt when you just touched it."
"I'm not only talking about just now."
"Then it's even less necessary."
He said nothing. She sat and disinfected the wound herself, her expression composed, but her hand shook in small, uncontrollable tremors. Her will had stopped reaching her body.
Peng Ye kept talking, trying to give her something to hold onto, but it stopped working. Her lips were pressed together, her face white. She was too far into the pain to track words.
When the last finger was wrapped in gauze, she was soaked through, barely holding on.
Peng Ye helped her lie down and pulled the quilt over her. "Rest for a while. I'll call you when the food is ready."
She didn't answer. Her eyes closed.
But she couldn't sleep. The pain wouldn't let her.
The moment he left the room, she opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. She wanted a cigarette. Then she heard voices through the wall.
An An: "Why are you dragging me in here? I need to pack."
Xiao Ling's voice was small, pleading. "An An..."
"What? We're having dinner before we leave. You're not going down there alone to face everyone."
"I want to apologize to Cheng Jia. I just don't know how to do it right."
An An's pace slowed. "Sincerely."
"I was only trying to protect myself. But now she's... those men treated her terribly."
"Nothing happened to her. The villagers here are good people. They saved her. My mother-in-law said those things at night to scare you away from going outside. You misread a good person, and you left Cheng Jia behind."
"Since she's fine, why are you still angry with me? We got through this. We're going back to school safe. Can't we just leave all of this here?"
Cheng Jia lay still and closed her eyes.
Her phone rang. She was certain there had been no signal that morning.
She reached for it, her wrapped hand clumsy and hurting. It was Fang Yan again.
She tried to decline the call, but her bandaged fingers fumbled against the screen for half a minute without landing on anything. The phone kept ringing.
Next door, Xiao Ling's voice kept going.
Cheng Jia couldn't help it. The memory came: the slap she'd delivered, and the feeling that had moved through her when she watched Xiao Ling pick up the lighter at the bottom of that snow pit, something cold and absolute, a wanting she hadn't known she was capable of.
The memory blurred into a voice-over, one she recognized:
Cheng Jia, have you been feeling empty and powerless lately, afraid, irritable, wanting to hit something, unable to hold your emotions in, seeking out something extreme, wanting to hurt yourself, wanting to disappear...
It bored into her skull like a drill. She couldn't get it out.
She threw the phone at the wall.
A sharp crack, then silence. The screen went dark and the world went quiet.
She lay back, closed her eyes, and smoothed her face back to nothing.
Downstairs, Peng Ye set the medical bag on the table. Shiliwu looked in it, then looked up annoyed. "You used this much gauze?"
"There were a lot of wounds."
Shitou looked in again. "Why didn't you use any of the eggs?"
"She said she didn't need them."
"I already boiled them."
"Then you all eat them."
"We should save them for her."
Nima asked, "Brother, what actually happened? Who did that to her?"
Peng Ye laid out the whole story from the beginning.
Shiliu said, "Cheng Jia is really brave."
Peng Ye paused a beat. "She was pushed into it."
Nima asked, "When you were cleaning the wound and putting on the medicine, did Jia-jie cry?"
"No."
"She's so strong," Nima said, almost to himself.
Peng Ye didn't respond.
After a few seconds he said, "That madman is suspicious. Something's off about him."
Shiliu frowned. "We know everyone in this village. There's no madman here. Does someone actually have eyes on Cheng Jia? Did she really see the Black Fox's face?"
"We'll ask her later. Let her rest for now." Peng Ye looked around the room. "We leave as soon as we can. Before dark, we reach Nadiqang Ri."
Shitou said, "I'll get dinner going."
"Remember this." Peng Ye's voice was flat. "From here on, she does not leave our line of sight. Not once."
An An came downstairs and found Cheng Jia already in her usual seat, waiting for everyone to sit down before eating. She was smoking again, both palms and all her fingers wrapped in bandages, thick as white mittens.
Two fat bandaged fingers pinching a cigarette. Clumsy and a little ridiculous, set against her cool, blank expression.
An An laughed, soft and quick.
Cheng Jia's eyes slid over. She didn't speak. Her look asked the question.
"You look cute right now," An An said.
Cheng Jia made a cold sound in her throat.
An An sat down, started to say something.
"Don't bother warming up to me." Cheng Jia's voice carried a thin edge of irritation. "At the next stop, they, we, are dropping you both."
An An felt that land and let the conversation go.
Xiao Ling turned to Cheng Jia. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left you behind..."
Cheng Jia looked at her. Her eyes were cold and level, and Xiao Ling couldn't hold the gaze.
"If I were you, I would have run too. Protecting yourself is instinct." Through the smoke, Cheng Jia's face was still. "You don't need to apologize for that."
The forgiveness made Xiao Ling more uneasy, not less.
"There is something you should apologize for," Cheng Jia said.
Xiao Ling understood. Her face reddened. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have taken your lighter."
Cheng Jia said nothing, and turned away.
Peng Ye came over. He saw the cigarette, said nothing, but his eyes said it clearly enough.
Cheng Jia lowered her gaze. "It hurts," she said, quiet and flat.
Peng Ye had no answer to that.
She still wore the same distant expression, but underneath it something heavy had settled over her, low and without color.
There was nothing to say.
Cheng Jia couldn't manage chopsticks, so Shitou had set out a wooden spoon for her. It was thick and oddly shaped, and eating with it was a battle. Rice stuck to her face or scattered from the bowl. After a few bites she gave up, said she was full, and put the spoon down.
After that late afternoon meal, it was time to move.
Everyone was either clearing snow off the cars or hauling luggage. Cheng Jia stood at the fence at the edge of the inn's yard and looked out at the snow.
Nima jogged over. "Jia-jie, I put some clothes down in the seat for you to lean on. When we get in the car, just sleep. You'll sleep right through the pain."
Cheng Jia looked at him. "What if it hurts too much to sleep?"
Nima scratched his head. "Oh. Right. I didn't think of that."
Cheng Jia's mouth curved faintly. "I'm teasing you."
He grinned, then caught her absently poking at the snow on the fence post. "Don't do that. The snow will melt and soak through the bandage."
"Oh." She pulled her hand back.
He looked at her, at the quiet flatness in her face. "Don't be upset, Jia-jie. Next time anyone messes with you, we'll all go at them together."
"Okay."
"I'm glad you're alright. If something had happened to you, I would have..." Nima went red, couldn't find the words.
Cheng Jia watched him for a moment. "Thank you."
He turned redder and bolted.
Cheng Jia dug through her pocket for her cigarettes, but with both hands wrapped she couldn't get one out, tipping the box left and right, getting nowhere. Her brow pulled together. She was close to throwing the whole pack.
"Cheng Jia."
Peng Ye, calling her.
She lifted her head, thought about it, and turned. He was standing a short distance away in the snow, squinting slightly at her, the white light of the field reflecting off his face.
"Yeah?"
"Come here."
"Okay."
She tucked the cigarettes back in her pocket and walked toward him, boots crunching through the snow. The sound was clean and dry and somehow pleasant.
She drew a long breath. The air over the snow smelled cold and faintly sweet.
Peng Ye walked ahead, moving away from the inn and the others. When they were far enough out he stopped and waited for her.
He had brought her to the open center of the snow field. Blue sky, sunlight, white in every direction.
She stopped in front of him, squinting up at his face. He stood in the full glare of the snowfield, his face clear and sharp.
"I'll show you a few ways to find north," he said.
"What?"
"How to identify north."
"Oh."
He looked at her for a moment.
The soft white trim of her down jacket hood drifted against her cheek in the wind. The snow-light made her face look paler, luminous, almost transparent against the brightness.
She was somewhere else. Her voice was flat and her answers came on delay.
"What do you already know?" he asked.
"Polaris and the Southern Cross."
"What else?"
"The sparse side of leaves is north. The tightly-spaced rings on a tree stump, that side is north."
She recited it without interest.
Peng Ye's mouth moved, barely a curve. "That's from primary school."
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye, held the look, and decided he was mocking her.
She took a slow breath of the cool air. "The side of a slope where the snow melts faster is south. Where the forest is thicker is south..."
Peng Ye's hands were in his pockets. He paced in a loose circle around her, eyes down, pressing the snow flat beneath his boots.
When she finished, she added, "That's all for the northern hemisphere. The southern hemisphere is the opposite."
He stopped and looked at her sideways. "Now tell me which direction is north."
She paused. Every method she had just listed required her hands. She heard his voice before she could move. "Don't look at your phone."
She looked toward the sun. It appeared to be in the west. She tilted her chin to the right. "That way."
"Which way?"
She raised her hand, pointing to her direct right. "There. That's north."
Peng Ye was two or three steps away, watching her.
"Is that right?" she asked.
He stepped forward, pulled one hand from his pocket, and closed it gently around her wrist. He guided her arm back forty-five degrees. "This is north. You were pointing northwest."
She looked at her hand, then at him. "How do you know?"
Her attention sharpened.
"Imagine a clock face showing the local time," he said. "Say it's ten in the morning. The hour hand points to ten.
In the northern hemisphere, aim the hour hand toward the sun. The line that bisects the angle between the hour hand and twelve o'clock points south.
In the southern hemisphere, point twelve toward the sun instead. The bisector between twelve and the hour hand points north."
Cheng Jia pressed her lips together and worked through it.
Northern hemisphere. Lay a watch flat. If it's ten in the morning, point the ten toward the sun. The bisector between ten and twelve is eleven. Eleven points south. Directly behind that is north.
She worked it out. Without meaning to, the corner of her mouth moved.
"Try it," Peng Ye said.
She checked her watch. Three in the afternoon exactly.
She thought it through, then asked, "What if your phone is dead and you don't have a watch? What if you don't know the exact time?"
"I'll show you that next. Try this one first."
Cheng Jia faced the sun. She imagined herself standing at the center of a clock face. She aimed three o'clock at the sun. That put twelve to her direct left.
The bisector between three and twelve, forty-five degrees to her left-front, was one-thirty. That was south.
Which put north directly behind her to the right, at...
Without ceremony, wind moved across the snow field, slipping through the valley below them.
She smiled, wide and sudden, and turned, her hand coming up to point.
"North."
Peng Ye was standing exactly there, right in front of her.
He held still, watching her face. His eyes were dark and very quiet.
She was smiling. Her hair lifted in the wind. Her hand hung in the air between them.
The world was silent. The only sound was the faint noise sunlight makes when it falls across snow.
He saw it, just then: the wind had crossed all that open ground and stood still, just for her.