After a moment of standoff, I straightened up and thrust the dagger into the leather cushion of the passenger seat.

“Get out.”

At this moment, having rushed around for an entire day yet gained so little, I only felt hungry and frustrated, exhausted both physically and mentally. 

I randomly found a Western fast food restaurant by the roadside, temporarily setting aside my troubles to eat something and replenish my energy.

The shop had a moderate number of customers. 

Only one table by the window remained vacant. 

The two of us went in and sat down. 

At the table in front of us was a couple—they had apparently quarreled; the man was buried in his phone while the woman’s face looked even more sour than mine. 

At the table behind us were three exquisitely dressed young women in their prime, wearing fashionable tube tops and miniskirts. 

On their table sat a plate of soggy fries, a basket of fried chicken, and half a bottle of whiskey. 

Two of them were drunk with hazy eyes, while the remaining one was throwing flirtatious glances at Yu Baijin as he bent down to take his seat.

A server with dyed bright pink short hair, chewing bubble gum, came to our table and asked: 

“Hello you two, what would you like to eat?” 

I said: “Anything’s fine.” 

He said reproachfully: “Bro, don’t mess around.”

In the end we ordered the recommended set meal from the menu. 

I had never been particular about food, nor did I have any real interest or appetite. 

I just felt very empty inside, always wanting to find something to fill myself with—food, bullets, desire, love.

“You can love anyone, Yu Baijin,” I said.

 “What you’re obsessed with is ‘love’ itself. Why must you insist on entangling yourself with me?”

But he avoided discussing this, propping his chin and looking at me.

“Don’t you think this shop’s layout and our seating positions are especially familiar?”

I was stunned, looked around, and after several breaths memories surged forth. 

I couldn’t help but click my tongue.

“Pulp Fiction.”

It was the first movie he and I had watched together.

“Perhaps in a moment a pair of lovebird robbers will burst in, take everyone hostage, and fire at the ceiling,” I shrugged.

“No, the two of us should be those robbers.”

The server carrying plates happened to come over at this moment to serve our food—two burgers, two coffees, one order of potato wedges, one tuna salad. 

Hearing this, his gaze mixed shock and fear. 

But Yu Baijin never cared about others’ sidelong glances. 

Even the beauty mark at the corner of his eye was delicate and lively, like a carefree youth.

“You see, our tastes in food are similar, we like about the same movies, we can guess what the other wants to say next, we’ll always have topics to talk about. Aren’t we suited for a relationship?”

Ever since smoking that cigarette together on the balcony, I had never been alone with that young man named Yu Baijin again. 

I only had instinctive wariness toward him, but no concrete evidence. 

I could only repeat to Rong Wanqing those teachings I had already worn out: be careful of people who approach you for no reason, report to me about friends you plan to become close with, preferably bring me to meet them, drink less, don’t get drunk, stay alert even in public places… 

Each time she would agree with a string of “mm-hmms,” then put on an expression of “I really can’t do anything about you”: “Okay, okay, I’ve got it, cousin, you’re the best to me.”

I couldn’t do anything about her either.

Worried that following too closely would displease the employer, Rong Wanqing and I had agreed in advance that when she encountered professor-led group work or small class instruction, especially situations where every one of the few classmates she spent day and night with had familiar faces, there was no need to monitor her every step.

I had agreed. 

But I still sent her to school according to routine, just without needing to sit by the window for long periods, reading books I couldn’t understand at all. 

On warm, breezy afternoons, I could go to the garden downstairs or the publicly accessible multipurpose classrooms to pass some time.

So that day, in the screening room on the first floor covered in layers of climbing ivy, I encountered Yu Baijin once again. 

He was sitting alone in front of a whitened screen watching a movie, with an ashtray, a can of beer, and a stack of precariously tilting discs by his feet.

He was watching Tarantino. 

Using an old-fashioned DVD player. 

The picture and sound quality could only be called passable, yet the period-appropriate color scheme appeared especially vivid and intense, with a rough texture to the skin. 

The hitman reading the Bible, the man wearing an earring, the boxer throwing the fight, the woman in the motel—they suddenly fell in love and suddenly died. 

Blood plasma splattered on the screen. 

His face also flickered bright and dim, then he turned his gaze, locking eyes with me passing outside through the half-open door crack.

As if possessed, I walked in, closed the door, sat side by side with him, and watched Pulp Fiction to the end.

We didn’t utter a word the entire time.

When the movie ended, gunshots still echoed in my ears. In the enclosed space, the air was warm and dense. 

Two people’s intertwined breaths were like silkworm silk forming a cocoon, imperceptibly binding me, making my throat tighten.

The closing credits scrolled silently upward. 

Yu Baijin stretched, pulled out a cigarette pack from his pants pocket, turned it over and tapped it. 

Empty. 

I turned my head to look at him. 

He licked his lips, as if very thirsty.

Then he leaned closer and kissed me.

“That’s not it,” I shook my head. 

“People don’t decide to love each other for such hasty reasons.”

“Then what is it for?”

I was momentarily at a loss for words, unable to respond, mechanically chewing the food in my mouth. 

The atmosphere at the table was terrible. 

The table in front had perhaps long grown accustomed to this kind of dreariness, but I couldn’t.

I couldn’t stand it. 

Not because of his obsession, but because of my barrenness, my cowardice.

“For me, when I’m with you, I feel like a ‘person’; thinking that I love you, that nonexistent heart beats.”

Yet he was so frank, so wild, never feeling shame for that unspeakable word or for others’ shame.

“Isn’t that enough?”

I drank the last of my coffee, leaving a few ice cubes on the verge of melting at the bottom of the cup, and turned my head with him to look out the floor-to-ceiling window.

“The reason Rong Wanqing specifically instructed that little girl that the token could ‘only’ be handed to us proves indirectly that she doesn’t trust anyone besides us,” he said. “Including the police, Duan Wenshu, even her father, Rong Zheng.”

“And she anticipated, or rather gambled that we would track down the sanatorium. To push even more boldly forward,” I pondered for a moment, “she calculated that you would come find me.”

A silence.

“Is the photo… the one missing from the reading notes?”

I took out that fragment of photo paper with the message written on it from my jacket’s inner pocket, looked at it myself then passed it to Yu Baijin. 

Neither of us could make out the specific content of this incomplete corner—there was no scenery, people, or landmarks at all, merely a mass of unsaturated black, as if blurred, unfocused, with faint double exposure.

Was it the night sky? 

Where and with whom had Rong Wanqing taken this photo? 

If it was taken during her study abroad, why would I have no recollection of it?

During the six months of my employment as Rong Wanqing’s bodyguard, I had accompanied her whenever she went out. 

When she went to private places like restrooms or changing rooms, I also waited outside the door. 

When she wanted to take photos with friends, I was the one holding the camera. I had never taken a photo with her. 

One reason was my profession and her status—leaving a photo together would provoke outsiders’ speculation about our relationship. 

The second was that I had always disliked having my photo taken and couldn’t figure out what expression to make when facing a camera.

I looked at Yu Baijin across the table dipping potato wedges in sour cream, and a current suddenly flashed through my heart: No, I had left her.

Briefly yet endlessly, I had disappeared from her side for an hour.

“…”

I wanted nothing more than to slap myself. 

The more I looked at Yu Baijin the angrier I became. 

The bastard, whether intentionally or not, rubbed my pant leg with his foot, saying: “It’s not polite to be distracted during a date.”

I kicked him away and got up to go to the cashier to pay. 

He followed me out the restaurant door.

I walked quickly several steps, turned around and asked him, why are you still following me?

He said, I have to protect you.

Dusk had fallen completely. 

In the open-air parking lot shrouded by night, I clenched my car keys, almost laughing out loud. 

“You protect me? Are you joking? I’m the fucking bodyguard!”

“You’ve got it wrong.”

He shook his head, hand resting on my car roof. 

“I’m just concerned about the person I like. That’s very normal.”

“You’re not normal.”

Forget it. 

Being able to like him, I wasn’t that normal either.

However, when I self-destructively opened the car door and had just climbed halfway in, he suddenly shoved me into the passenger seat, seized the steering wheel, and said at lightning speed: “Baby, fasten your seatbelt.”

“What kind of madness are you up to now!”

Only after finishing this sentence did I sense something was wrong. 

Glancing at the exterior rearview mirror, two beams of headlights stabbed over with ill intent, dazzling me with whiteness. 

Just as I grabbed the front ceiling handle, Yu Baijin floored the gas pedal, and person and car shot far away.

“See, they came just as predicted.”