Bellies full and lips still slick with broth, the midnight snack was done.

It was Yexiaobai’s turn to clear the battlefield; he stacked pot, bowls, and plates like nesting moons, cradled them toward the kitchen.

Yexiaokong, in breezy summer clothes, sat on the sofa, her long pale legs folded like cranes. She stared at the eternal soap opera on TV, but her ears pricked like a cat’s.

She listened to her brother’s brown plastic slippers rasp across the wooden floor, the sound ebbing like a tide, swallowed at last by the rush of water.

A fox’s grin unfurled across her face; she laughed without a sound. She slid toward the smaller side sofa on her left, body skimming the cushions, posture lithe as a willow.

A light hook of her arm, and she snagged Yexiaobai’s backpack, reeling it into her arms like a hooked fish.

Before she could unzip it, a shadow poured over her crown like a cloud.

She turned with a guilty smile. Her little brother stood there, expression blank as a shuttered window.

“Uh—this backpack—” Yexiaokong deflected, “—very cutting-edge.”

“I’m guessing it’s the zipper’s cutting-edge design you like, Sis—so much you had to pull it,” Yexiaobai said, face like ice.

At that familiar “Sis,” Yexiaokong knew he was mad. She stuck out her tongue and handed the bag back.

The moment it touched his hand, Yexiaobai hid it behind him like a squirrel guarding a nut. Yexiaokong muttered, “You used to bring it to me yourself.”

He pinched his brow. “I’m almost an adult.”

“Adult or not, you’re still Xiaobai,” Yexiaokong said, face tilted up like a moonflower.

“Adults deserve at least a little privacy, right?”

“What privacy? You’re hiding things from your own sister? What about you do I not know?” Her brows danced, her laugh tinkled—then froze.

Yexiaobai just stared, unsmiling, the edge of his brows sharp, his eyes winter-clear.

“Wha—” The look rattled her. She shrank bit by bit, like a leaf curling in frost.

She hid behind the sofa back like a child, only her black-and-white eyes showing, timid as fawns. “Come on… you’re really mad at your sister.”

Yexiaobai ignored her. “As punishment, you wash the dishes tonight.” He grabbed the backpack and turned toward his room.

“Hey?!”

Yexiaokong flopped onto the sofa, face buried in the soft cushion. After a long sulk, her voice seeped out, muffled and mournful.

“He used to cling to me. He said when he grew up he’d marry me… That little brat couldn’t even tell marry from wed, and now he wants ‘privacy.’”

“Who’s the wild woman that spoiled him? He even looked at me like that—like that—first time ever since he was tiny.”

Huff. With her long legs clamping a pillow, Yexiaokong wriggled on the sofa, unwilling as a cat denied fish.

Suddenly she sat up, fierce and bristling like a little tiger. “If I find which stray kitten it is, I’ll skin her.”

…

“Good thing… I reacted fast. I forgot to stash the backpack in my room today.”

He snapped on the desk lamp. The light pooled like warm tea. He pulled out a chair and sat, then fished a black-wrapped notebook from the innermost pocket.

Yexiaobai brushed a thumb over the three fluorescent letters on the cover: Suzhiaoyao. He let out a breath. “If Sis found this, that’d be real trouble.”

He pictured Yexiaokong exploding on the spot, and silently praised his own quick wits.

“Though I probably did upset Sis,” he admitted, recalling her timid, guilty face. A prick of regret rose—why did he stare at her so coldly?

He shook it off. “No. Don’t fall for those looks. I always take the bait, then they lead me by the nose.”

They weren’t just Yexiaokong. There was also Xu Yanfang, that “college girl.”

“But still—how did I make that face?” No matter how he reasoned, a splinter of remorse stayed in his chest.

He grabbed the small mirror from the nightstand. His gaze met his own, and his mind drifted like a leaf on water.

They say no matter how often you look in a mirror, your own face keeps a hint of strangeness, like a moon behind thin cloud.

“Is that why—” He touched his cheek. “—this face sometimes feels foreign to me?”

“What did I look like just now?” He tried to recall. In the mirror, his features shifted, slow as dusk.

His always-lifted brows sank level. His black-and-white eyes lit with cold starlight, a thin frost kindling there. His lips pressed, a faint strange smile tugging at the corner—

Snap.

A surge of malice blasted up from his toes, raced along bone and blood, and burst in his skull. Cold washed him. He slammed the mirror face-down on the desk.

For a heartbeat, a shadow seemed to flick past the window.

“Who?”

He yanked open the curtain. From the third floor, the whole street lay like a quiet riverbed.

Nightfall was a gray veil. Across the way, a long-broken streetlight sizzled—zzzt, zzzt—its cold-white breath flickering like sleep.

The late street was empty. Under the lamp, moths flew headless and wild.

All was fine. As usual.

He let the curtain fall, rubbed his temples, then set a hand on the notebook and sat. So many strange things these days; sleep ran thin, and his spirit frayed like old cloth.

“Let’s just—”

He glanced down. The notebook held “personal data” on the prettiest senior girl. His heart jumped, more a stab than a beat.

Curiosity tangled with the raw flutter only a teenage boy knows. His chest stung, and he convinced himself, poorly, “—take it as a break.”

He opened the notebook.

…

When Yexiaobai opened his notebook, countless others, at that same moment, were opening or closing theirs.

No need to look far. Within a few blocks, two girls did the same.

Both were classmates he knew well, their relationship with him delicate as silk: Mu Xiaowei and Zhaomingming.

On this star-pricked night between spring and summer, the two girls lived different scenes.

Fresh from a shower, in cool pajamas scented with soap, hair damp against her cheek, Mu Xiaowei sat on the bed.

A tiger-shaped pillow rested on her lap, and a white-covered notebook lay on the pillow like snow.

A breeze slid through the window and riffled the pages, stirring the girl who’d paused, pen hovering, thought drifting like mist.

She woke as if from a dream, saw the lines she’d written in her trance, and her cheeks bloomed red. She snapped the notebook shut.

She hugged it tight with the tiger pillow, kneading it as if to wring the heat from her burning face.

And in that same instant—when, kilometers away, Yexiaobai opened his notebook—

Here, lost in shy confusion, Mu Xiaowei felt a sudden pain in her chest.

Not the stabbing twinges she sometimes got while talking to Yexiaobai these days, but an empty drop, like something precious had evaporated.

The emptiness jolted her awake. She let go of the pillow, pressed her left chest. Soft beneath her palm, a girl’s heart thumped on.

Her face showed helpless confusion. “So weird… it feels like something’s gone.”

…

Thud.

“Ow.”

High exterior walls narrowed into a long slit of alley. Sight got swallowed; both lamp and starlight were refused by the dark.

Only crushed cans and stray paper wandered into that corner.

At the alley’s dead end, beneath a round moon, a girl in a school jacket and backpack cried out in pain.

Zhaomingming clutched her belly and crouched down, breath hissing through her teeth. “So—pain—ful.”

Her brows knotted, teeth bit her lower lip, fists clenched; her whole body trembled like a leaf in a night wind.

Just watching her hurt.

Her thin back met the rough dead-end wall, and she let herself slide to the ground.

“It really hurts.”

Cold sweat fell like rain. After a long shiver, the storm eased.

She yanked out a towel, wiped her face with practiced motions, and sat on the cold ground, letting darkness bathe her. She looked up at the bright moon.

“What a hassle.”

She sighed. “And I still have school tomorrow.”