Kiss

Zhao Yu did not celebrate birthdays.

Whenever that day arrived, she only had to close her eyes to see the raging inferno.

And after the fire was extinguished, the fingers protruding from the charred, peeling walls.

Three fingers in total, each one white bone.

It was her mother.

The mother who had been missing for six years.

She had lost her mother when she was very young.

It wasn’t a loss defined by a final parting of life and death, but rather a simple “Mama is gone; from now on, it’s just the two of us depending on each other.”

She didn’t know why her mother had left so suddenly without a single word.

She didn’t know why her father had abruptly sent her to a full-time boarding primary school.

And she certainly didn’t know why, when she returned home a week later, a thick new wall had appeared in the house.

It wasn’t until her twelfth birthday, when Zhao Yu—who had forgotten to blow out her candles—went to the town’s convenience store to buy watermelon candy, that she saw her mother’s body.

Sealed within the wall, revealed after a great fire.

Her father was sentenced to life imprisonment, and she was reduced to an orphan, moving into a welfare home.

At fourteen, her aunt came to take her home.

The man from before was her adoptive father; the aunt now was her biological aunt.

From then on, she grew up living at her aunt’s house.

At eighteen, she met Liu Huisheng.

By her nineteenth birthday, they had already confirmed their relationship.

She had tested into Liu Huisheng’s university and spent every day waiting at the classroom door for her to finish class.

She didn’t want Liu Huisheng to know about her past.

Nor did she want to mention those memories that were comparable to the Avici Hell.

She tried her best to play the role of someone carefree, laughing heartlessly just as she usually did.

She believed her performance was flawless, her acting skills compelling.

And yet, the very first moment Liu Huisheng saw her, she had asked:

“What’s wrong? Why are you so unhappy?”

“Smiles come in many varieties. Sneers, joyful laughs, bitter smiles…”

“My mentor categorized them into thirty-two types.”

“Each one has a different movement of the eye muscles, eyebrow shape, and lip contour; it’s very detailed.”

In an ignored corner of the barbecue restaurant, a lesson regarding smiles slowly unfolded through the explanation of the profiler, Liu Huisheng.

She tapped on a picture—the cover of the courseware from her last exchange lecture at Harvard.

When zoomed in, the right half of the screen showed the thumbnails of the thirty-two types of smiles she had mentioned.

“We have a saying in the industry—look at the eyebrows for sadness, look at the eyes for smiles.”

“To distinguish whether someone’s smile is real or fake, the most critical thing is to see if their eyes are smiling.”

“The eyes are smiling? What does that mean?”

“When a person fakes a smile, the muscles around the eyes barely change, but the corners of the mouth expand to both sides.”

“Some will even reveal a standard eight teeth.”

As she spoke, she clicked on a trending video of a celebrity.

“This is behind-the-scenes footage of the entrepreneur Huo Yan accepting an interview.”

“When facing the camera, she smiles as well, but her eyes don’t change; only the corners of her mouth turn up slightly.”

“This is a professional fake smile. There is no actual happiness or joy involved; it’s just a polite smile displayed because of work.”

The circle of people listened with great interest.

“It does seem like that.”

“It reminds me of flight attendants; they have that same kind of smile.”

“But Huo Yan doesn’t seem to smile much to begin with. With a range like that, could that count as a big laugh for her? Even if she’s truly happy, I expect she’d be very subtle.”

“No, true joy can be seen.”

Liu Huisheng continued playing the video, pausing it at the 2 minute and 39 second mark.

“Here, her wife comes to visit the set.”

“The moment she sees her wife, although the curve of her lips is similar to before, her eyes have crinkled up, and fine lines appear at the corners.”

“This is a smile from the heart.”

Chen Doudou leaned forward. “It’s true! Brother Zhong, look! She’s really smiling.”

The short four-minute video allowed the group to personally feel the difference between a real and fake smile.

They couldn’t help but repeatedly praise Liu Huisheng’s professionalism.

“Huisheng, that’s impressive. Looking at it this way, your field of study goes quite deep.”

“Sister Sheng is truly amazing!”

“You all better pay attention now. No one is allowed to fake a smile in front of me from now on, or I’ll see right through it in a glance!”

The high praise came from all sides, but Liu Huisheng did not seem to enjoy it.

Instead, her eyelashes drooped halfway, and her voice held a hint of sorrow:

“Actually… if someone you are very familiar with suddenly makes a fake smile—even forcing their mouth wide open to make you believe they are happy—it means something upsetting has happened to them, but they don’t want you to know.”

“At a time like that, it’s best for you to be a listener.”

“If she wants to speak, she naturally will. If she doesn’t, then don’t keep interrogating her.”

The speaker was intentional, and the listener was mindful.

A firefly carrying a faint light passed through layers of branches to find the firefly waiting for her at the other end of the forest.

Zhao Yu listened the entire time but never spoke.

She only took a heavy gulp of buckwheat tea, the taste of which had turned strangely different in her mouth.

The same bitterness spread in another person’s heart.

If she could return to that moment in the past, Liu Huisheng would not have self-righteously asked “What exactly happened?”

She wouldn’t have said “Is there anything you can’t tell me?” or even “If you have things to hide from me, then don’t be my girlfriend.”

She wouldn’t have been so arrogant, so overbearing, and so aggressive.

“We’re here.”

Returning home that evening, Liu Huisheng still took Zhao Yu’s car.

They parked at an open-air parking lot near the apartment building.

When getting out, Liu Huisheng’s steps were unsteady from the alcohol.

Zhao Yu went to support her, but Liu Huisheng stumbled and crashed right into her embrace.

In an instant, the familiar scent of her body rushed into her nose, making her dazed with its intoxication.

The so-called pride, the so-called distance and awe—in that moment, all of it lost its voice.

A faint whimper escaped from the depths of her throat.

With her eyelashes trembling, Liu Huisheng said hoarsely:

“When we were young, it seems we did many things wrong.”

Zhao Yu draped Liu Huisheng’s arm across her shoulder, her other hand encircling her waist to support her as they walked forward.

“If every single thing was done correctly, time would have no meaning.”

There was no point in dwelling on the past.

Especially since there was no right or wrong to speak of in love.

Liu Huisheng asked her: “What about you? Have you done anything wrong?”

“Mhm.”

“To me, or to someone else?”

“What do you think?”

“Then it must be someone else. You’ve always been good to me; you were never wrong.”

“Liu Huisheng, you’re drunk.” Zhao Yu’s eyes darkened.

Liu Huisheng didn’t seem to hear her.

Lost in a torrent of emotions, she murmured:

“It’s a pity, isn’t it? To do wrong means to fail someone. To fail someone means to owe them. And to owe…”

“Means to be entangled for the rest of one’s life.”

Zhao Yu, if you’re going to do something wrong, do it to me. Don’t do it to anyone else.

Clack!

Zhao Yu stopped her tracks.

The hand at Liu Huisheng’s waist tightened, and words choked in her throat, yet she could say nothing.

Buzz—

The streetlight overhead made a noise, and the surroundings were suddenly plunged into pitch black.

“Ugh!”

Liu Huisheng shrunk back reflexively, her knees buckling as she crouched down—a reaction to severe shock.

“The streetlight is broken, it’s fine.”

Zhao Yu helped her up again and started to walk, only to find that Liu Huisheng’s movements were exceptionally labored.

What she feared wasn’t the sudden extinguishing of the light, but the darkness itself.

“Since when did you become afraid of the dark?” Zhao Yu asked.

After the fright, Liu Huisheng sobered up slightly.

She squeezed out the professional fake smile she had explained at the dinner table—extremely distant.

“I have night blindness.”

“Liar.”

“It’s true.”

“You didn’t have it before.”

“Heh…” Liu Huisheng was speechless. She accused, “Zhao Yu, you could just pretend you don’t know.”

Zhao Yu lost the patience to play along with her.

She tightened her arm around her waist, forcing her to face her, and questioned:

“All these years, what exactly happened?”

What could make the Liu Huisheng who used to love walking at night—who said it was the only way to feel the sound of the stars—end up terrified of the night?

The dull words ground against her eardrums like a blunt knife.

Liu Huisheng frowned in pain, but only for a moment.

When she looked up again, she looked as bright as a spring breeze, as if she didn’t care about anything.

She slowly leaned forward until their noses were only a centimeter apart.

Their breaths tangled, indistinguishable from one another.

“Captain Zhao, then can you tell me why you don’t eat meat now?”

The Zhao Yu of the past had never been happy without meat, saying that one only had the strength to fight after eating it.

But whether it was at the previous group meal or the barbecue earlier, Zhao Yu hadn’t touched a single bite of meat.

Zhao Yu fell silent.

Liu Huisheng finally had her way. She bit Zhao Yu’s lower lip, neither lightly nor heavily.

Her voice was bewitching:

“If you want my secret, exchange it for your own.”

“That’s only fair, right?”