A killer’s safe house—circulated in non-private form throughout the killer network, a shelter providing temporary rest and emergency refuge, capable of effectively resisting gunfire, forced entry, and satellite positioning. 

Open to all registered colleagues, “it’s public property. Everyone has the right to use it, but no one may privately occupy it.”

Yu Baijin closed the door behind me. 

The instant it locked, an electronic timer began counting down. “There’s a time limit on how long we can stay,” he bent down to look at the regularly changing luminous numbers on the dial. 

“Twenty-four hours. Enough for us to stay a day and a night.”

“What happens if we overstay?”

“The door lock will automatically pop open and will no longer shelter the people inside.”

“…How magical.”

I was dubious. 

The sound of the door locking was like a command, transmitting the signal of “someone has checked in” to the independent water and electricity system equipped inside the room. 

The exhaust fan in the corner started on its own, emitting a humming background noise.

Surveying the entire small room of at most twenty square meters—a shabby one-room apartment—the so-called furniture consisted only of five-drawer chests occupying all four walls, surrounding a double mattress in the middle. 

There was no bed frame, only the mattress, laid flat on the ground, its surface covered with a layer of pallid sheets, as if what should be lying on it wasn’t people but corpses.

A faint smell of disinfectant drifted through the room. 

“The last guest apparently had a cleanliness obsession,” he wrinkled his nose, sat down on the mattress, and demonstrated with his own actions what it meant to feel at home everywhere. 

“There are also some unwritten rules among killers. 

For instance,” he casually pulled open the drawer nearest to him, taking out a gun without a magazine like it was a toy. 

“Everyone defaults to replenishing and exchanging supplies in safe houses, bartering, all voluntary.”

“Unexpected,” I said. “Your profession is quite chivalrous.”

“Corporate culture,” he said modestly.

“You’ve stayed here before too?”

I couldn’t help but imagine, fabricate, fill in what he had been like—the young him, the fugitive him, the him covered with wounds, the brutal him, the down-and-out him, the him with nowhere else to go who could only shelter here—saying to me with his usual nonchalant smile:

“Yeah.”

I leaned in to look at that stuffed drawer. 

Its contents were all kinds of things, like a flea market: guns missing magazines, used knives with bloodstains still not wiped clean from the handles; silencers, incendiary bombs, brass knuckles, gauze, painkillers, adrenaline, unknown colorful pills packed in transparent sealed bags, looking very ominous.

Earrings, rings, jewelry and other valuable items could offset currency here; compressed biscuits, smoked meat cans, and energy drinks were basic survival necessities. 

As for data cables, portable hard drives, idol posters, fashion magazines, condoms, sanitary pads, lipstick, sexy lingerie… these reflected the most basic humanistic care and life interests, adding some intimacy and inappropriate stereotypical impressions about this group of killers: everyone was quite sick.

In the corner was also a basket of clothes, presumably left by killers who had changed and disguised themselves here to confuse pursuit and escape capture. 

Men’s and women’s clothing were all available, like a store having a sale—this was the source of that disinfectant smell in the room. 

“This colleague is somewhat exaggerating,” Yu Baijin pulled out a dark-colored jacket from among them, held it up against himself to compare the size, then tossed it to me and picked another one.

“But thank him.”

He stood up, took off the hoodie I had given him with its worn front and hem, still muttering quietly: “Don’t want to throw it away though, baby’s first time giving me clothes…” 

I also turned my back to him, grabbed the cracked and fraying collar, and pulled it over my head.

My back was exposed to the slightly cool air, yet there was clearly a kind of ambiguity gradually warming up, burning between silence and friction. 

This room was too small, so small I couldn’t avoid him, too narrow, so narrow that his rising and falling breath was clearly audible, so vivid and lively, as if it would touch my skin in the next second.

“Yu Baijin.”

I turned around and our eyes met.

The lighting was dim, smearing the upper half of his body with a layer of dusky yellow haze. 

His shoulders were relaxed, his waist and abdomen firm, the proportions and lines of his muscles impeccable. 

Despite scattered scars of varying depths, before such a body, morality and reason were as easy to break as hair.

And I averted my gaze, before his shadow fell upon me.

“Let’s… stop here.”

He made no sound.

“We’re not suitable.”

I turned off the light. If this could bring me closer to him.

“Not only because you’re a killer and I’m a bodyguard—faced with clear positions and missions, we’ll only be obstacles to each other, regardless of whether we… love each other, sleep together, overcome difficulties together, whether there’s even one second when we forget our own and each other’s roles.

“And you and I have lived for these roles since childhood, so every day we live from now on, we’ll be enemies.

“Do you understand what I mean?”

He lowered his head, I didn’t know if he was looking at the gunshot wound on my waist. 

I reached out my hand and sincerely gripped his arm.

“Next time we shoot at each other, don’t miss again.”

He still gave no response. 

And this time I would no longer wait, whether for death or for love.

I grabbed my clothes and went directly to the safe house’s small partition.

A five or six square meter bathroom, with the toilet bowl right under the showerhead, a wall-mounted storage basket hanging between the two, stuffed full of what was probably the most disposable toothbrushes, soap, and bagged body wash I’d ever seen in my life—it felt like fanatical stamp collecting of hotel souvenirs from across the country. 

I stood before the stain-covered sink, using a compressed towel soaked in clean water to wipe my face and visible external injuries, looking in the cracked mirror. 

On the counter remained tweezers, iodine, and cotton swabs used by the previous resident. 

I thought about it but didn’t touch them.

Having changed into clothes belonging to who knows whom, I used the showerhead to rinse the sink and floor in succession. 

Perhaps the next resident would also thank me for this—listening to the gurgling sound of the drain leaking, I only then realized how silent it was inside the room.

As if no other person existed.

But I knew he was there. 

Just uncharacteristically well-behaved, sitting cross-legged in the darkness. 

His back was extraordinarily beautiful, like rocks washed by seawater for many years, still retaining residual heat from scorching sun exposure when touched.

I said to him: “You can use the bathroom now.”

“Oh.”

When he spoke, however, he had recovered his usual tone. 

He stood up and walked, brushing past me. 

I didn’t look at him, lying down on my own on the floor beside the mattress, closing my eyes, listening with cocked ears to the rushing water sound from the partition, like summer showers, continuing and pausing, but it didn’t matter—it would always stop one day.

When Yu Baijin came out and saw me lying stretched out on the floor, he laughed: “What are you doing?” 

I didn’t open my eyes and said: “Taking responsibility for my decision about you and me.

“I don’t like ambiguous things, so until our problem has a solution, I need to maintain distance from you.”

“I don’t need you to take responsibility.”

He stepped over my body and lay on his side on the mattress, his body emanating turbid heat, neutralized by the green soapberry scent, mixing into a strange, hormonal fragrance. 

His palm patted the empty half of the mattress, saying: “I won’t do anything to you, but you can do anything to me. I’m willing.”

“That’s not fair to you.”

“Love was never fair to begin with,” he said.

“That’s not logic, it’s sophistry,” I said. 

“You can’t use it to explain everything.”

“Love of course isn’t logic, it’s feeling.”

He lay prone, gazing at me half a meter away. 

“I can’t sleep. Looking at your back I’ll cry.”

“Cut it out.”

“Such a hard heart, so hurtful.” 

He sighed deeply, performing as if making great lamentations, questioning heaven and earth. 

“Jian Mai, did you ever love me or not?”

I was irritated and agitated, sitting up angrily: “How have I not loved you?”

“Then did you fall in love with someone else afterward?”

“From beginning to end there’s only been you! Believe it or not.”

“Oh, then I’m relieved.” 

He satisfyingly turned over. 

“Thank you baby, I’ll love you forever.”

I lifted my foot and kicked his back.

“You tricked me?!”