Chapter 4: Things That Were Never Said
Her nose began bleeding.
Qiao Zhiyi felt the first drop slide over her lip before Pei Hanchuan did. His thumb wiped it away, leaving a dark smear across his skin.
"Don’t," he said.
"I’m not doing it intentionally."
"I know."
Another drop followed and Hanchuan wiped that one away too.
Zhiyi’s vision blurred. She blinked, but his face remained indistinct above her. She could still identify the line of his jaw and the pale scar near his mouth. She had stitched that wound five years ago with fishing line and a needle sterilized over a candle.
Her stitches had been uneven.
She had disliked looking at the evidence of an imperfect result.
Now she raised one hand and touched the scar.
He turned his face into her palm and relaxed a bit before he started to speak again. "We could have had the house before," he said. "Before all of this."
"We didn’t know each other."
"I would have found you."
"There would have been no reason for you to look."
"I would have found one."
"How do you know that we didn’t live in different cities?"
"Zhiyi."
"Yes?"
"Stop correcting me."
She considered that.
"All right."
"Thank you," he murmured, the heat getting to him. His skin was too hot beneath her palm.
She traced the scar once, following it to the corner of his mouth before he kissed the tip of her finger.
That created another question, one she couldn’t hold on to it long enough to ask.
"In the house," he said, "you’ll have a room with no windows."
"That violates residential building codes."
"The world ended. No one cares about the building codes."
"Liang Shichen would," she replied.
The unfamiliar name came from seven years of Hanchuan’s stories. A boy who could sketch entire buildings before the others chose where to put their fort. One of four friends who had existed so vividly in Hanchuan’s memories that Zhiyi sometimes forgot she had never met them.
His breath caught for a moment. "Yes," he agreed. "Shichen would."
"He died before you reached the first shelter," Zhiyi reminded him. Not like he needed the reminder. He would never forget how his four best friends died.
"I know."
"Qinghe died last."
"I know."
"He shouldn’t have attempted to carry you alone."
"He wouldn’t leave me."
"That was irrational."
"Yes."
"You still miss them."
"Every day."
Zhiyi tried to calculate how many days that meant.
The number should have been simple, but her mind couldn’t finish it.
"In the next life," she said slowly, "if there is one, you should find them first."
Hanchuan’s hand trembled against her hair. "In the next life, I know they’ll still be there."
"You don’t know that."
"They’ll be waiting for me."
"There is no evidence of reincarnation." She needed to point that out, even if she was the first one to mention a next life.
"There wasn’t any evidence the world could drown and freeze in the same decade," Hanchuan replied. "Things happen that we can’t explain."
"Those events aren’t comparable," Zhiyi grumbled under her breath.
"They are today."
Zhiyi wanted to tell him why they weren’t. The necessary explanation existed somewhere behind the pressure filling her skull, but she couldn’t reach it.
Her heart was beating too fast now.
It stumbled once.
Paused.
Then resumed.
Pei Hanchuan felt it. His arm tightened until she could barely breathe, but breathing had already become difficult, so the difference wasn’t significant.
"Stay with me," he whispered against her forehead, his lips brushing her skin with each word.
"There’s nowhere else to go," she sighed in reply. What was she supposed to be thinking about? She couldn’t remember.
"That isn’t what I meant."
"I know."
His face lowered until his forehead rested against hers and Zhiyi could see him again.
His eyes were red from the heat, his pupils unfocused. Sweat had dried in streaks along his temples. The skin across his cheekbones was flushed too deeply, and a thin line of blood had begun leaking from one nostril.
She wiped it away for him.
"Next time, I’ll find you sooner," he announced like it was a sure thing.
"You won’t know me," Zhiyi reminded him.
"I will."
"I’ll be younger. I might look completely different."
Something moved across his face. Zhiyi tried to identify it, but the categories had started slipping. Anger. Grief. Regret. Possibly all three. Probably all three.
"I’ll wait," he said finally.
"That would be inefficient."
"I don’t care."
"You’ll have your company. Your friends. I won’t belong there."
"You belong with me. Wherever I am is where you will have a home."
The answer came before she had finished speaking. Absolute and immediate. There was no question in his mind. If he had a second chance at all this, even if he was reborn as a baby, he would remember her and find her.
Zhiyi searched his face. "You never said that before."
"I should have."
"Why didn’t you?"
"Because I thought we had time."
The red warning light continued flashing behind him.
Fifty-one degrees.
Zhiyi could no longer feel the concrete beneath her. Her fingers had gone numb where they rested against Pei’s face.
"We don’t," she said.
"No."
More tears appeared and she sucked in a deep breath, trying to conserve water.
Zhiyi rarely cried. Crying caused nasal congestion, headaches and dehydration while producing no measurable improvement to the original problem.
But now her body was doing it without consulting her. "I don’t know what to do," she whispered.
Hanchuan gathered her closer.
It shouldn’t have been possible. There was no space left between them, but he found some and removed it.
"You don’t have to do anything," he replied.
"There has to be a next step."
"There is."
"What is it?"
"Stay with me."
"For how long?"
"As long as you can."
She nodded.
That was a measurable instruction.
She could do that.