Chapter 3: The Misunderstanding
The morning-after silence had stretched into days, a cold, thin thing between us in every shared space. I was trying to learn the contours of it, this new distance she’d built where her skin had been. So when Ben from my Econ class fell into step with me in the courtyard, his easy chatter about the problem set was a relief. I laughed at something dumb he said, the sound too loud in my own ears. His hand landed on my shoulder to emphasize a point, a casual, weightless touch. I saw her then, across the sun-dappled stones, a still figure beneath the ginkgo tree. Our eyes met for a fractured second. Her face, usually so carefully composed, went blank, then hard. She looked from my eyes to Ben’s hand on my shoulder, and her own hand, holding her phone, dropped to her side. She turned away so sharply her bag swung against her leg. She didn’t walk; she retreated. Ben’s voice faded into the hum of the courtyard as I watched her go, every step a door closing. “Vy? You okay?” Ben asked, following my gaze. “Fine,” I lied, the word ash in my mouth. The ghost of her touch from the dorm, so specific and knowing, screamed against the ordinary imprint of Ben’s fingers. She was already disappearing around a corner of worn brick, a flash of dark hair and straight shoulders. The text notification on my phone buzzed against my thigh a moment later. The preview on the screen showed a single line from her: I think we need to be clear. It was followed by the stark, punishing ellipsis of her still typing, then stopping. Then nothing.
Then nothing.
The ellipsis hung there, a digital breath held. I stared at the screen until the courtyard’s sunlight blurred into a bright, meaningless haze. Ben’s voice was a distant radio frequency I couldn’t tune into. “I gotta go,” I said, not looking at him, already moving toward the shadowed archway she’d vanished through.
My thumb hovered over the keyboard. What was there to say? It was just a classmate? You’re the one who left my bed like it was a crime scene? The stone path felt unstable under my feet. A gust of wind shook the ginkgo, a shower of fan-shaped leaves skittering around my ankles like discarded thoughts.
I turned a corner into a narrower walkway, the library’s stained-glass windows looming ahead. My phone vibrated, a sharp seizure in my palm.
The preview was gone, replaced by the full message. It was not the careful, poetic Chinese she used in her notes, but harsh, transliterated English, each word a stark pebble dropped into a still pool.
Her: That looked cozy.
I stopped walking. The words were simple. They were a knife. I could see her composing it, her jaw tight, stabbing at the screen. This wasn’t a clarification. It was an accusation.
Me: It wasn’t.
The reply was instantaneous.
Her: It wasn't what?
A challenge. I leaned against the cool brick wall, the smell of damp moss sharp in my nose. I typed slowly, forcing my fingers to be precise.
Me: It wasn't cozy. It was nothing. He was talking about a derivatives worksheet.
Three dots appeared. They vanished. Reappeared. The tension coiled in my shoulders, a physical ache. The memory of her mouth, the salt-taste of her, the way she said my cunt, clashed violently with this brittle, distant text.
Her: You looked happy.
My breath caught. There it was, the raw thing beneath the sharpness. I closed my eyes, seeing her turned back, the rigid line of her spine. Jealousy. It wasn’t indifference pushing her away; it was this. This hot, possessive burn I hadn’t dared hope for.
Me: I was pretending. I’ve been pretending since I left your dorm.
I sent it before I could dissect the risk. The dots danced, then settled. A full minute passed, the silence so complete I heard the rustle of a bird in the ivy. My heart was a frantic thing against my ribs.
Her final message came through, just five words, and it changed the axis of my world.
Her: Don't pretend. The library. Tonight.
Tonight.
The library after hours was a cathedral of shadows and solitary pools of light from study lamps. The stained-glass windows were black, holding the night at bay. I found her not at our usual table, but in a secluded carrel at the very back, hidden by towering shelves of political science journals. She was a silhouette against the warm glow of her laptop, her profile sharp enough to cut. She didn’t look up as I approached, my sneakers silent on the worn carpet.
“You came,” she said, her voice flat. Her fingers remained poised over the keyboard, unmoving.
“You texted.” I dropped my bag at my feet. The air between us felt charged, brittle. “Was there something you wanted to be clear about?”
Finally, she swiveled her chair to face me. The lamp light carved deep shadows under her eyes, her cheekbones. Her beauty was severe now, a weapon. “You know what,” she said. Her gaze dropped to my lips, then back to my eyes. “Who was he?”
“Ben. From Econ 101.” I crossed my arms, a feeble defense. “It was nothing, Shuting. Less than nothing.”
“‘Less than nothing’ doesn’t make you laugh like that.” She stood up abruptly, the chair rolling back to bump softly against the shelves. The movement was controlled violence. She took a step closer. The scent of her—ink and clean sweat—wrapped around me. “His hand was on you.”
“It was on my shoulder.” My voice sounded small. “It meant nothing.”
“It meant something to me.” The admission ripped from her, low and guttural. She closed the final distance, her body not touching mine but radiating a heat I felt in my bones. “I saw it and I wanted to walk over there and break his fingers.”
A shudder, hot and immediate, went through me. Her eyes were black, fathomless pools of a feeling I’d never seen in them. It wasn’t just anger. It was a raw, claiming fury. It made my breath catch.
“Say that again,” I whispered.
“Why?” Her hand came up, her fingers hovering beside my jaw. They trembled. “Does it excite you? To see me like this?”
“Yes.” The truth was a blunt stone I dropped between us. “It does.”
Her hand snapped forward, fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of my neck. She didn’t pull, just held, a possessor examining her claim. “You are a problem, Vy Le.”
“I’m your problem.” I leaned into her touch, my heart hammering against my ribs. “Aren’t I?”
For a long moment, she just looked at me, her chest rising and falling with a quick, shallow rhythm. The quiet of the library pressed in, heavy with the scent of old paper and this new, dangerous electricity. Then her other hand came up to cup my face, her thumb stroking my cheekbone with a terrifying tenderness that contradicted the fire in her eyes.
“You have no idea,” she breathed, her voice rough. “What you do to me.”
Her mouth crashed into mine. It wasn’t like the dorm, all exploring heat. This was a conquest. Her teeth caught my lower lip, a sharp, punishing bite before she soothed it with her tongue. I opened for her, a surrender, and she took what she wanted. Her grip in my hair tightened, tilting my head back to deepen the angle. I kissed her back with everything I had, my hands fisting in the front of her shirt, pulling her closer until not a sliver of light could pass between us.
She broke the kiss as suddenly as she’d started it, leaving me gasping. “This,” she said, her forehead pressed to mine, “is not a game. Not for me.”
“It’s not a game for me either,” I managed, my lips swollen and sensitive.
“Prove it.” The challenge was a whisper against my mouth. “Meet me. Tomorrow night. Not here. Somewhere that is not this… this cage.”
“Where?”
“The longtang off Zhongshan North Road. Number 27. The green door.” She released my hair, her hand sliding down to grip my wrist. Her pulse thrummed against my fingertips, a wild, trapped bird. “Nine o’clock. Don’t bring your American smile. Don’t bring your ‘Ben’.”
“Just me,” I promised.
She searched my face, her fierce gaze softening by a degree. She leaned in, her lips brushing the shell of my ear. “Just you,” she echoed, her breath warm. “And tonight, when you go back to your room, I want you to think of my hands. Not his.”
She let me go, turning back to her carrel as if I were already gone. I stood there, my body humming, the phantom pressure of her grip still bright on my scalp. She sat down and opened a textbook, the picture of academic focus. I was dismissed.
I walked out of the library on unsteady legs, the cool night air doing nothing to douse the fire she’d lit. My skin felt too small. The memory of her jealousy, that searing, possessive glare in the courtyard, replayed in my mind. It was a dark thread woven into the tapestry of her—the kind scholar, the tender lover. It was a side that did, indeed, make me go crazy. I wanted to unravel that thread, see how deep the color ran. I wanted to meet the green door, and whatever waited behind it.
The green door was an unblinking eye in the weathered stone wall of the longtang, its paint the color of moss and shadows. I stood before it at 8:58, my pulse a frantic counterpoint to the slow drip of a leaky faucet somewhere in the narrow alley. This wasn’t the university’s curated beauty; this was old Shanghai, breathing through cracked tiles and the scent of fried garlic and damp concrete. My knock was too loud in the quiet.
Footsteps approached from inside, soft but deliberate. A lock clicked, a heavy metal sound. The door swung inward just enough to reveal her, framed by a dim, golden light. Shuting looked different. She wore simple black linen pants and a soft grey tank top, her hair loose around her shoulders. The severe, scholarly beauty was replaced by something more tired, more real.
“You’re late,” she said, but there was no bite in it.
“I’m two minutes early,” I countered, my voice barely above a whisper.
A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “Come in.” She opened the door wider, and I stepped past her into a small courtyard garden, a hidden square of tranquility enclosed by high walls. A single persimmon tree stretched towards a square of night sky, and a stone path led to the sliding door of a traditional single-story house. Paper lanterns glowed warmly from the eaves. “My aunt’s place,” she said, locking the door behind us. “She’s in Hangzhou for the month.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, turning a slow circle. The air was sweet with night-blooming jasmine.
“It’s private.” She walked past me towards the house, her bare feet silent on the stone. “I didn’t… I couldn’t think in the library anymore. Every corner felt like someone was watching.”
I followed her into the main room. It was sparsely furnished: a low wooden table, floor cushions, a built-in bookshelf overflowing with titles in Chinese and English. A single ceramic vase held a sprig of bamboo. It felt like her—ordered, beautiful, but holding secret life. She stood by the table, not looking at me, running a finger along its grain.
“So,” I began, the word hanging in the still air.
“So.” She turned, her arms crossed loosely over her chest. The defensive posture from the library was gone. She just looked… present. “About yesterday. In the courtyard.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“I want to.” She took a deep breath. “I saw his hand on you, and I felt… erased. Like everything from the other night was just a dream I had. It was illogical. It was unfair. I know this.” She uncrossed her arms, letting her hands hang at her sides. “But knowing doesn’t stop the feeling.”
I moved closer, stopping a few feet away. “It surprised me, too.”
“What did?”
“How much I liked it.” I held her gaze. “Seeing you feel something that strongly. Even if it was jealousy. It was real.”
She laughed, a short, surprised huff of air. “You are a very strange person, Vy.”
“You’re not the first to tell me that.” I took another step. “Is this why you brought me here? To tell me I’m strange?”
“No.” She reached out, her fingers lightly brushing a strand of hair from my temple. Her touch was so different from yesterday’s possessiveness—it was questioning, almost reverent. “I brought you here to apologize. For my… intensity.”
“Don’t apologize.” I leaned into her touch. “I’m not here for an apology.”
“Then why are you here?” Her hand stilled, cupping the side of my face.
“You know why.”
She closed the remaining distance, her body aligning with mine, and kissed me. It was nothing like the library. This was slow, a deep, searching communication. Her lips were soft, her tongue tasting of green tea. It was an apology and a promise and a question, all in one. When she pulled back, her forehead rested against mine. “I made dinner,” she murmured. “It’s probably cold.”
“I don’t care.”
We ate the cold dan dan noodles straight from the cartons, sitting on the floor cushions, our knees touching. She told me about her aunt, the professor, who’d bought this little house years ago. I told her about my mom’s terrible cooking back in Chicago. We talked about everything except the heavy thing hanging between us—the fact that I had a plane ticket home in six weeks, and she had a master’s program starting in Beijing. The future was a wall we carefully avoided.
Afterwards, she cleared the containers and returned with two small cups of clear liquor. “Baijiu,” she said, handing me one. “For courage.”
“To do what?”
“To be honest.” She clinked her cup against mine, and we drank. The liquor burned a fiery path down my throat, settling in my stomach like a lit coal.
The lantern light softened the edges of the room. The silence grew comfortable, then thick. She was watching me, her dark eyes reflecting the flickering light.
“You asked me to prove this isn’t a game,” I said, swirling the remaining baijiu in my cup.
“I did.”
I set the cup down. “What does that proof look like to you, Shuting?”
She mirrored me, placing her cup carefully beside mine. “It looks like you knowing this has no future.” She said it plainly, the words crisp in the quiet room. “It looks like you knowing I can’t promise you anything beyond right now. It looks like you accepting that, and still choosing to be here anyway.”
The coal of baijiu heat in my gut flared. “That’s a lot to know.”
“It is.” She didn’t look away. “So maybe we stop talking about knowing. Maybe we stop talking at all.”
She stood and offered me her hand. I took it. She led me not to a bedroom, but to a sliding door that opened onto a small, enclosed section of the courtyard. A deep, Japanese-style wooden soaking tub sat sunken into a deck, steam rising gently from its surface into the cool night air.
“I filled it earlier,” she said, her voice low.
She turned her back to me, pulling her tank top over her head. The smooth planes of her back were illuminated by the moonlight. I undressed too, the night air raising goosebumps on my skin. We stepped into the near-scalding water together, a shared hiss of breath between us. She settled across from me, the water lapping at our shoulders. The heat seeped into my bones, a luxurious ache.
“This is…” I began, but words failed.
“A different kind of conversation,” she finished. Her foot found mine under the water, a point of warm contact. We sat in silence for a long time, watching the steam curl towards the stars. The city’s sounds were a distant hum here, a world away.
“Vy?” she said finally, her voice barely a whisper.
“Yeah?”
“I think I could miss you.” She said it to the surface of the water. “And that frightens me more than anything else.”
Her admission hung in the steam between us, fragile and monumental. I had no words that wouldn't shatter it. I slid through the water, the movement sending ripples across the surface, until I was beside her. I didn’t kiss her. I simply took her hand under the water, lacing our fingers together, and rested my head against her shoulder. We stayed like that until the water began to cool, speaking without speaking, in a language of shared breath and tangled legs beneath the surface.
Later, wrapped in thick cotton robes, our hair damp at the nape, we sat on the deck. She leaned her head against my shoulder. The earlier fear in her eyes had softened into a quiet, melancholic peace. It felt like we’d crossed into something new, a place beyond jealousy or possession, into a raw, honest kind of ache.
“Stay,” she whispered into the skin of my neck. “Not forever. Just tonight.”
The rational part of my brain, the part that knew about plane tickets and futures, flickered once and went dark. “Okay,” I said.
She stood, took my hand, and led me back inside, through the main room to a small, Spartan bedroom. A futon was laid out on the tatami mat floor. We sank onto it together, a nest of robes and damp hair and warm skin. This time, there was no frantic hunger, no claiming violence. She kissed me like she was memorizing the shape of my mouth. Her hands on my body were slow, mapping me with a reverence that left me breathless.
I touched her with the same deliberate pace, learning the flutter of her pulse at her wrist, the precise curve of her hip, the sound she made when I traced the line of her spine. We moved together in the near-darkness, a slow, deep current pulling us under. When I finally slipped inside her, her eyes were open, locked on mine, and she held my gaze as we found a rhythm that was less about culmination and more about fusion, a desperate attempt to blur the lines where she ended and I began.
Afterwards, she curled into me, her head on my chest, her arm thrown over my waist. “When I leave for Beijing,” she whispered, her words muffled against my skin, “this will have been a dream.”
“It’s real right now,” I whispered back, my fingers stroking her hair.
“That’s what makes it a dream,” she said. “Beautiful and impossible to keep.”
I woke once in the deep night to find her awake, propped on an elbow, just watching me sleep. The moonlight through the paper window painted her face in silver and shadow. “What are you doing?” I mumbled.
“Making sure you’re real,” she said softly.
I reached up and pulled her back down to me.
In the morning, the light was different—clear and practical. We dressed in silence, the magic of the night retreating before the day’s logic. She made tea in a small pot. We drank it standing in the courtyard, the steam mingling with our breath in the crisp air.
“I have to go to the library,” she said, not looking at me. “To actually study.”
“And I have a class with Ben,” I said, testing the waters.
A flicker of the old fire crossed her face, but it was tempered now, muted. She nodded. “Go to your class.” She set her cup down on the stone bench. “I’ll see you… around.”
It wasn’t an end, but it felt like the beginning of an ending. I left through the green door, back into the noisy, waking longtang. The city felt different, layered now with the secret memory of her hidden courtyard, her skin, her quiet fear. I walked towards the campus, the shape of her loneliness and her longing now a permanent part of my own anatomy.
SHE WAITS INSIDE.
She waits inside. I knew it. I felt the weight of her watching through the paper window as I walked down the longtang, each step taking me back into a world that now felt flimsy and false. The morning’s clarity was a lie. My skin still hummed from her touch, my mouth still held the faint, metallic memory of the baijiu we drank for courage.
The campus courtyard, where the ginkgo tree stood, felt like a stage where I was performing the role of ‘Vy, the study abroad student.’ Ben waved me over before Econ, his smile easy. “You bolted yesterday. Everything cool?”
“Yeah,” I said, arranging my face into something pleasant. “Just remembered something.”
“You seem kinda spacey.” He nudged my elbow with his. It was a friendly gesture, the same kind that had lit the fuse in Shuting. I felt nothing but a vague annoyance. My whole consciousness was a kilometer away, behind a green door. The professor’s lecture on market derivatives was a distant, buzzing radio.
My phone, face-down on the desk, vibrated. A single, seismic tremor. I didn’t flip it over. I stared at the back of it, my throat tight. It could be my mom. It could be a spam alert. It was her. I knew it in the hollow of my stomach.
Five minutes passed. Then ten. The vibration had been a statement, not a question. It said: I am thinking of you. It was more unsettling than any words. When class ended, I finally looked. The notification was just an app update. The disappointment was a physical sagging in my ribs. I was furious at myself for the letdown. This was the game, wasn’t it? The one she said we weren’t playing.
I wandered to the library, not to our carrel, but to the main stacks. I needed the smell of books that held no history with her. I pulled a random volume on Shanghainese architecture and slumped in a chair. The words blurred. All I could see was the silver moonlight on her face as she watched me sleep, her expression so naked it hurt.
“Looking for better hiding places?”
Her voice came from behind the shelf. It was low, meant only for me. I didn’t turn. My heart slammed against my sternum. “Maybe. You’re a good seeker.”
She came around the end of the stack, leaning against it. She wore her librarian uniform—a simple blue dress, hair in its careful bun. But her eyes were the ones from the soaking tub, dark and unresolved. “I have a skill for finding problems,” she said.
“Is that what I am?”
“You’re a shelving error.” A faint, tired smile. “You don’t belong in the right section.”
“Where do I belong?”
She glanced down the empty aisle. “I finished my work. I’m going to get congee. The place on Zaozhou Road.” She said it to the books. “It’s quiet at this time. No one from the university goes there.”
It wasn’t an invitation. It was a plotted point on a map. A chance to collide. She pushed off the shelf and walked away, her footsteps fading on the linoleum.
I waited exactly four minutes, my blood thrumming. Then I followed.
The congee shop was a tiny storefront steamy from huge simmering pots. She sat at a small table in the back, two bowls already steaming before her. I slid into the seat opposite. She didn’t look up, just pushed a bowl and a spoon towards me.
“I ordered the preserved egg and pork,” she said. “You’ll eat it.”
“I will?” I picked up the spoon.
“You will. It’s good. It’s real.” She finally met my eyes. “I sent you a thought today. In class.”
The confession, so blunt, made my spoon halt mid-air. “My phone didn’t show a thought. It showed an app update.”
“That was the carrier. The thought was mine.” She broke a doughnut stick, the crack sharp. “It was a weak thought. I dissolved it before it could transmit properly.”
I stirred the congee, the chunks of egg and meat swirling. “What was its content?”
“It was a question.” She blew on a spoonful, her lips pursed. “It asked: ‘Are you still sore from the tub?’”
Heat flooded my neck, remembering the scalding water, the press of her foot over mine. “The water was hot. My skin was tender for hours.”
“I know.” She ate her spoonful, watching me. “That was the point of the thought.”
We ate in silence for a while, the congee warming a path through my center. It was simple and profound. “This is good,” I admitted.
“I know,” she said again, but softer. She looked around the shabby, friendly shop. “This is my real life, Vy. Not the library, not my aunt’s quiet house. This. Cheap food, noise, fluorescent lights. This is the life you’ll leave.”
“You say that like your life in Beijing will be any different.”
“It will be the same. Just colder.” She put her spoon down. “And you won’t be in it.”
The words hung in the steam between us. There was no bitterness in them, just a stark, surveyor’s fact. “So what are we doing, Shuting?”
“We are eating congee.” She looked at me, her gaze unwavering. “We are, for a few more weeks, placing our realities side-by-side. They don’t fit. They won’t merge. But we can look at them together, here, for a little while.”
It was the most heartbreakingly honest thing anyone had ever said to me. It refused the easy fantasy. It denied the romantic delusion. It acknowledged the finite, precious collision of our orbits.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Okay.” She resumed eating.
When we finished, she paid for both bowls before I could move. We stepped out onto the bustling street, the sudden noise a shock. She turned to me, people flowing around us like we were a stone in a stream.
“My roommate is back tonight,” she said.
“Oh.”
“So the green door is… complicated.” She shifted her bag on her shoulder. “But my seminar ends at eight tomorrow. The courtyard. By the stone lantern that’s cracked.”
“You want to study?”
“No.” She shook her head once, a quick, decisive movement. “I want to kiss you where anyone could see. And then I want to walk away. I want to practice that.”
The challenge was brutal. A public claim, followed by a deliberate abandonment. A rehearsal for the end. My mouth went dry. “That’s cruel.”
“It’s necessary,” she said. “Will you meet me?”
The crowd seemed to blur around her still, focused face. She was building a memory for us, a specific and painful one, on purpose. She was trying to armor us both. It was the kindest, most terrible thing I could imagine.
“Yes,” I said.
She nodded, turned, and vanished into the river of people. I stood there, the taste of preserved egg and pork and her inevitable leaving on my tongue. She was engineering our heartbreak, layer by layer, with the precision of a scholar. And I, the willing subject, would show up for every step.