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The persimmon hung from an autumn-bare branch, a globule of orange sun. Without meaning to, Zhou Zishu’s feet came to a halt underneath it, the temptation sitting as heavily in his limbs as it did on his tongue. The tree was large, its branches sturdy, perfect for a ten-year-old to swing from.
A small, insistent hand tugged at the fabric of his jacket. “Shixiong,” Liang Jiuxiao sniffled from his back. “Shixiong, what’s wrong?”
Zhou Zishu swallowed thickly and adjusted his grip on Liang Jiuxiao. “I was just looking at the fruits. They’re ripe.”
“I wanna go home.”
“I know,” Zhou Zishu said, reluctantly tearing his eyes away from the persimmon.
A chilly wind was roaming the streets, the herald of a cold spell. When Liang Jiuxiao complained of the cold, Zhou Zishu let him down to take his jacket off, draping it over Liang Jiuxiao’s shoulders. The procedure took longer than it should have because Liang Jiuxiao insisted on holding one of Zhou Zishu’s hands the entire time.
As Liang Jiuxiao clambered onto Zhou Zishu’s back once more, he asked, “Shixiong, aren’t you cold?”
Zhou Zishu lied through the chatter of his teeth. “No.”
It rained the day they buried Qin Huaizhang, a grey veil of sleet that covered the city. It had been a long time coming. The clouds had been gathering in the horizon for several days beforehand.
“Shixiong,” Liang Jiuxiao whispered, pulling Zhou Zishu’s trench coat closer around his body. A gust of wind stole the last syllable away, but Zhou Zishu read the motion of his lips anyway. “Aren’t you cold?”
“No,” Zhou Zishu replied, and tilted his umbrella more towards Liang Jiuxiao.
“Shixiong, aren’t you cold?”
“No.”
“I’m very cold. I don’t think the jacket’s helping.”
Zhou Zishu watched as Liang Jiuxiao’s blood soaked through the jacket he had used as a tourniquet and dripped onto the asphalt. “It’s just—it’s just the blood loss. Save your energy. Help will be here soon.”
“Shixiong?”
“What?”
“Xiao Xue… Is she all right?”
Zhou Zishu raised his head to gaze at the mangled remains of the car dully. Within the compressed metal, there was no room left in the back seat for a breath, even a child’s breath. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he could see red trickling down the gap between the car door and the crushed frame, like juice pulped off a ripe fruit.
“Yes,” Zhou Zishu said.
A shudder passed through Liang Jiuxiao. Above them, branches bore witness and trembled in the wind, shedding flowers. “Shixiong?”
“Shut up.”
“I wanna go home.”
This year’s spring wind was too cold. The peach blossoms scattered before blooming. Under the flowers, people walked with their heads down. There was no meeting to be had, only parting.
Zhou Zishu woke up warm and alone. He had lost his blanket some time during the night, tossing and turning in a sea of dreams, but the summer sun was a syrupy weight on his skin. He rolled onto the centre of the bed and spread his limbs across the king-sized mattress, the king of his domain or a starfish stranded ashore. There he lay as the sun climbed across the sky, watching the pattern of light on the sheets shift. Only when the languid warmth of the morning had bloomed into the prickling of perspiration on his nape did he get up.
He ran himself a shower that was too hot and stood in it for too long, revelling in how the heat turned the pallor of his skin lobster red. Reaching for his towel, he paused. It hung from the middle of the rack by its lonesome.
When he replaced the towel, he made sure to leave some space on the left.
He went hunting for breakfast, making a beeline for the kitchen and bypassing the dining room, which lay cold and empty. Entering the kitchen always gave him pause. To Zhou Zishu, the kitchen was a foreign territory at the heart of his domain. Never mind that he had installed those marble worktops with his own hands. In the stuffy midday heat, their surface gleamed at him with cool disregard. The strange bottles and jars in their wooden racks peered curiously at him. Ignoring their staring, he popped open the handle of the large silver fridge and scavenged his way through a metropolis of plastic containers—each one affixed with a white label bearing a familiar Sharpie flourish—to unearth a can of beer. The pull of the tab echoed across the room, not a little guiltily. Zhou Zishu leant against the fridge and took a long sip of his liquid breakfast, daring the spice racks to tattle on him.
There was a week to go before Wen Kexing could come home. Zhou Zishu polished off his beer in the quiet country of his own kitchen.
For all that Wen Kexing liked to claim that he had grown up to be nothing like his parents, Zhou Zishu thought he could see something of Dr. Wen Ruyu and Dr. Gu Miaomiao in him. Whatever instincts had compelled a thirteen-year-old boy to take charge of baby Gu Xiang and rear her to adulthood had also led to the creation of a herb garden in Zhou Zishu’s backyard, one that Wen Kexing had exhorted Zhou Zishu to water in his absence. Zhou Zishu did so yesterday afternoon, aiming the hose half-heartedly at a series of pots containing various cheerful tufts of green. Once upon a time, Wen Kexing told him which pot contained which herb, how to differentiate oregano from rosemary, but Zhou Zishu had promptly forgot his lesson in botany and might as well have been watering mandrakes instead.
The same instinct had led to the proliferation of “pets” in the kitchen. There was the sourdough starter, sitting under cloth by the warm window, bubbling happily and making the kitchen smell perennially yeasty. There was the kefir, souring full-cream milk (Zhou Zishu recalled from Gu Xiang’s last holiday stay: “If you dare to feed my kefir skimmed milk again, Ah Xiang, I will disown you.”) in a cool, shadowed corner. A jar of kombucha sat in the fridge, gossamer layers of micro-organisms suspended in a sea of sweet tea. Next to the drawers of dried wood ear mushrooms and ginseng, a mini fridge stood guard with the treasure of homemade kimchi in its belly; Wen Kexing had explicitly warned Zhou Zishu from letting anyone open it, Zhou Zishu himself included.
In his absence, Zhou Zishu took care of the things that Wen Kexing cared about. The sourdough starter had been put in a basket containing rye flour and an instruction sheet. Following Wen Kexing’s flamboyant penmanship, he threw out a portion of the culture, added new flour into the mix, and watched as the sticky concoction gobble up the new flour. The flour, he noticed, smelled like his favourite type of bread, the one that Wen Kexing had taken to baking once every week. He ran the kefir through a plastic strainer, letting it drip creamy white into a glass jar and fill the kitchen with a tangy aroma. He washed the grains before submerging them in fresh milk.
Zhou Zishu’s phone rang as he was replacing the milk in the fridge. He pressed the loudspeaker button. Wen Kexing’s voice immediately greeted him. There was an eight-hour difference between them; it had to be some time between four or five in the morning at Wen Kexing’s place. He imagined Wen Kexing leaning against the window of his hotel, watching the city awaken into a grey morning beneath him.
“Is everything all right?”
At the end room, stuffed between the cupboards and the wooden racks, was a postage-stamp window, overlooking a white shoreline spilling into a horizon of perfect aching blue. Idly, Zhou Zishu wondered if Wen Kexing missed this view. “Everything’s fine,” Zhou Zishu replied, slipping his phone into the pocket of ihis shorts. When he pushed the window open, a briny gust immediately rushed into the kitchen and carried off the weight of the trapped heat to the cackling of the seagulls. “I just finished changing the flour of the sourdough…thing. Oh, and I changed the milk of the kefir. I watered the garden yesterday afternoon; I’ll do it again later today.”
The lopsided crown of an aloe plant rested pensively on the window sill. Zhou Zishu gently touched its base, near the soil, where it was missing three or four leaves.
There was an uncharacteristic beat of silence from the other end, sparkling with static. After some time, Wen Kexing laughed into the phone, low and slow. “My dear Ah Xu,” he chuckled. “I was asking about how you are doing.”
Zhou Zishu’s shoulders suddenly tingled, remembering a pair of firm, gentle hands spreading a gel-like substance on sunburnt skin not a week before. The aloe stumps were no longer running sap, but Zhou Zishu still recalled its soothing coolness. “Oh,” he said, suddenly unable to answer. It took another chuckle from Wen Kexing before he could summon the dignity to waspishly say, “I’m fine. You told me to take care of them. I did.”
Perhaps it was the late/early hour of the day, but there was a weary sincerity in Wen Kexing’s next words, as if he did not have the energy to disguise his affection, not even to spare both of their feelings. “Only because they help me take care of you.”
After a beat, Wen Kexing sighed and continued, “I’ll make you your favourite bread when I get back. Don’t forget to drink the kefir; it’s good for your digestive system since you’re on antibiotics. I know you don’t really like it and I’ve been mixing it with your fruit juice, but since I’m not there, just bear with it…”
Zhou Zishu let the words wash over him, like a gentle tide smoothing out the shores of his heart. On the counter, next to the water pitcher, was a pill box. Wen Kexing had neatly distributed his medications into each daily container. The colourful pills looked candy-like in the translucent pink of the plastic.
There was something of the Wen couple in their only son. He might not be able to cure cancer, but he retained their nurturing touch.
“…and don’t sleep with the air-con on for too long. You’ll catch a cold. Dr. Wu said your body is very prone to colds right now. Ah Xu, are you staying warm? Hey, are you listening?”
Zhou Zishu smiled and said, “I am.”
It was warm in the quiet country of Wen Kexing’s kitchen. Taking his medication, counting down the days to when he could see Wen Kexing again, Zhou Zishu bloomed.