This was her first time taking a train with him.
The train had already passed Philadelphia. Time was slipping away; they would reach New York eventually.
Yin Guo had been staring out the window, but when the train made a brief stop to pick up passengers, she turned to look at the man beside her.
Lin Yiyang had Google Maps open on his phone, tracking their location, the remaining kilometers, the estimated driving time to their destination... the data updated in real-time. He didn't even know why he was bothering to look at it.
"Want to say something?" He caught her gaze.
After splurging on his energy the night before—acting as a guide and then getting some sleep—his voice was shot again. It sounded as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper, terribly raspy.
She realized he was starting to be able to read her mind.
Leaning in, she whispered into his ear, "You look good with a beard."
It didn't make him look old; instead, it gave him a rogue-ish charm. He still had that youthful energy, but now it was layered with a hint of world-weariness. That was the man he was right now.
Sitting to her left, Lin Yiyang reached out with his left hand and stroked her right cheek. The movement made it look almost as if he were pulling her into an embrace. However, he had always disliked public displays of affection and wouldn't initiate them himself.
So, he settled for just touching her face and her ear.
A man’s fingertips are naturally rough. As they brushed past her chin, she felt a slight friction. "Is that so?"
Lin Yiyang’s dark eyes lowered, his gaze landing pointedly on something, making no effort to hide what he was looking at.
"Switched to blue?" he asked.
Yin Guo was momentarily confused until she remembered the bra she had put on today was blue. She touched her shoulder; sure enough, a strap was peeking out.
"Can you be any more of a rogue?" she muttered under her breath, pulling her collar higher.
He chuckled, pinched her cheek, and whispered back, "You'll find out next time."
Next time. Naturally, he meant next week, the day they would see each other again.
It seemed that once you’ve shared a bed and spent the night together, the nature of your conversations begins to shift. They always seemed to drift in *that* direction.
She pulled a book from her backpack and flipped through it, staring at the rows of small, black printed characters. In reality, her mind was on yesterday.
When he had come back after washing his hands, he had clearly intended to take their intimacy further, but in the end, Yin Guo hadn't let him do anything beyond kissing. Last night, Lin Yiyang had been a man of his word. Having promised to let her sleep in peace, he had slept with his back to her all night, without even turning over.
According to everyone else’s descriptions of Lin Yiyang, he was a man who didn't follow the rules, yet in bed, he had never truly pressured her. If she wasn't willing, he let it go.
Yin Guo turned a page. Heaven only knew what the previous page had been about; she was just using the motion of flipping pages to pretend she was reading.
Lin Yiyang leaned back as well, scrolling through his phone and picking out a few important messages to reply to first.
"Are you coming to watch my match?" she remembered to ask.
Surprisingly, Lin Yiyang didn't speak. After a long silence, he said, "We'll see. I might not make it."
Yin Guo thought about it and realized he was right; he was so busy.
They arrived at the train station at two in the afternoon.
Lin Yiyang had taken the train to bring Yin Guo back, but for his return trip alone, taking the bus was obviously cheaper and more convenient. However, he didn't plan on telling Yin Guo the truth. He made up an excuse so that his departure from the station wouldn't seem strange: "A classmate of mine is nearby and wants me to take something back for him. I can stay for ten more minutes."
Ten minutes—where could they go?
They found a corner in the station lobby where there were benches to sit on. Yin Guo was very thin and couldn't sit for long periods, or the bones in her thighs and backside would ache. She was already exhausted from the journey back.
So, she stood while Lin Yiyang sat.
They held hands, her arm swinging back and forth as she looked up at the celestial map on the station ceiling, recognizing a few familiar patterns.
"Are those constellations up there?"
"Yeah." He didn't even need to look up to know; he had been to this station too many times to count.
"When is your birthday? What's your sign?" After asking, she felt a pang of guilt. They were already this intimate, yet she didn't even know his birthday. When she had looked at his ID before, she had only noted the year, not the date. Meanwhile, Lin Yiyang knew her details perfectly.
"February 12th. Aquarius," he said.
February 12th?
"Then we already knew each other by then," she said. She had arrived in New York at the end of January. "What was I doing that day?"
Yin Guo pulled out her phone, wanting to check their chat history. "What did we talk about that day?"
It felt so long ago that her memory was a complete blur.
"We didn't talk at all," Lin Yiyang said. "Or rather, before we met that day, we hadn't chatted."
"We met that day?" She didn't remember it at all.
Lin Yiyang smiled and tilted his chin, signaling for her to scroll through the records herself.
Still playing mysterious?
She scrolled through her phone and finally found it.
It was *that* day.
The day they ate ramen. She had just returned from Washington and was convinced Lin Yiyang had a problem with her, which led to ten days of no communication. Their WeChat history had only truly begun after Lin Yiyang dropped her off at the hotel in Queens.
It was all small talk: "Did my watch scratch your ear?" or "Is the chicken broth ramen better than the pork?"
"That day was actually your birthday," she looked up in surprise. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Didn't I treat you to noodles?" he asked back with a smile.
Initially, he had simply wanted to invite her for coffee; he hadn't expected to run into her in Flushing.
A twenty-seven-year-old man who had been drifting abroad for years didn't really know how to celebrate birthdays. His friends were all rough guys; if he didn't say anything, no one would remember his specific birth date. Lin Yiyang hadn't celebrated birthdays since he was a child, and Wu Wei naturally wouldn't remember. So, the two people who had accompanied him for noodles that night had no idea what day it was or what they were celebrating.
"So, asking me and Meng Xiaotian out for coffee... was that because of your birthday too?"
"Just a coincidence," he said.
His words felt half-true, half-false.
In reality, it wasn't a coincidence. He was deliberately doing something—more than one thing, in fact—all on his own, without telling anyone.
He wouldn't notify everyone about his birthday, but he would still treat friends to noodles, have a drink, and chat happily for a bit... Yin Guo looked at him, never having felt so much heartache for someone. She didn't find it romantic that he had hidden it to "trick" her into a bowl of noodles; instead, she thought about how pitiful it was. How could someone not celebrate their birthday?
Unsure how to handle this emotion, she gave the edge of his sneaker a light kick. "Why didn't you tell me?"
He found it funny. "That day on the subway, you were still saying, 'My name is Yin Guo.' Given our relationship back then, don't you think telling you would have been crazy?"
That was true. But she still felt unsettled.
Lin Yiyang checked his watch; it was time to go.
He took her hand and patted the back of it. He wanted to say something, but there wasn't much to say. Anything he wanted to say could be sent via WeChat at any time.
She was still immersed in the guilt of not celebrating his birthday. "You have to go?"
He nodded.
"Tell me when you arrive."
He squeezed her hand as his answer.
Lin Yiyang stood up from the bench, and suddenly his waist felt a tightening pressure. Yin Guo had proactively slid her hands inside his jacket and hugged him. She breathed in the scent on him—a mix of the dusty air from a long journey. It wasn't a pleasant smell, and she figured she probably smelled the same.
She heard his heartbeat and wanted to say something, but the words wouldn't come.
Lin Yiyang sensed she had something to say and lowered his head, accommodating her height.
Yin Guo felt him patting her back. She looked up, gazing at his eyes so close to hers, his high bridge of a nose, and in a moment of heat, she blurted out: "Next time... let's try."
For a split second, Lin Yiyang felt as if he were back in that hotel room in Washington this morning. Yin Guo had crawled out from under the quilt in a daze, trying to climb over him. She had been completely unaware that the angle of her bend made her collar fall wide open. He had watched the snowy white skin of her chest as he held her waist, helping her step over him until her bare feet landed steadily on the carpet...
"Why aren't you saying anything?" Yin Guo stepped on his sneaker, though not hard.
Lin Yiyang smiled, still silent.
However, his hand gave her waist a heavy squeeze. "Okay."
...
The pain was secondary; the location and the gesture were far too suggestive. No, wait—she was the one who had brought it up, yet his response made it feel like *he* was the one teasing *her*.
Yin Guo tried to dodge his hand, but Lin Yiyang pulled her closer instead. His voice was low and husky as he said, "You're really not going to let me get a wink of sleep this week, are you?" There was a hint of a smile in his tone.
Yin Guo buried her face in his chest and went silent.
This was the trouble caused by a moment of heat... as for how to deal with the consequences, she would worry about that next week. Right now, she just wanted to hold him.
The two of them hugged for half a minute by the bench against the wall. Then, Lin Yiyang escorted Yin Guo out of the station and into her booked car.
He stood by the roadside, patiently watching the car carrying Yin Guo turn the next corner and disappear from sight. Only then did he turn around to find the bus station for his return trip; he remembered it was under a nearby commercial building.
It wasn't until nine in the evening that he arrived at the pool hall in Washington.
Sun Zhou, the guy who handled the accounts at the front desk, had to go home for his wedding anniversary, so Lin Yiyang didn't go home; he came straight here to help out.
"The keys are here. There's a box of vegetable salad in the fridge—I didn't have time to eat it at lunch. There's also some sliced bread and an apple," Sun Zhou explained, terrified that his boss might starve to death.
Lin Yiyang sat on a high stool outside the counter.
Seeing that Sun Zhou was about to keep rambling, he waved him off and pointed to his own throat.
The meaning was clear: *Stop talking and go coax your wife.* As for Lin Yiyang himself, he truly didn't have the strength to speak anymore.
"Wasn't it better? You could talk yesterday," Sun Zhou leaned over the counter with concern, glancing at him.
Lin Yiyang couldn't be bothered to explain that his voice was like this because he had put his heart and soul into being a tour guide for Yin Guo, explaining every landmark in Washington. "Tired."
He shook his head again, refusing to speak further.
Sun Zhou didn't know he had made a round trip to New York today, spending over nine hours on the road. Seeing the exhaustion Lin Yiyang couldn't hide, he assumed Lin Yiyang and his girlfriend had been a bit too "active."
The other man gave an ambiguous smile and patted his back. "The sister-in-law worked you hard, huh? These past two days."
Lin Yiyang caught the colorful implication in his words and shot Sun Zhou a look.
Sun Zhou had wanted to ask him about his plans after graduation.
Originally, the Xinhua News Agency branch Lin Yiyang planned to join was in Washington, so he could still look after the pool hall after starting work. But this week, Lin Yiyang had received an offer from Duke. Duke wasn't in D.C.; if Lin Yiyang wanted to pursue a PhD, the pool hall would definitely need to hire another person to help.
However, seeing Lin Yiyang's state tonight, Sun Zhou gave up and decided to talk tomorrow.
Before leaving, Sun Zhou gave one last update on the pool hall: "One last thing, just listen, no need to talk. They left today; they went to New York together."
Lin Yiyang never went to the venues and never watched matches; everyone knew this habit of his. So Sun Zhou was just letting him know that the people from the pool hall participating in the Open had already set off.
Lin Yiyang made an OK gesture and waved him away.
The meaning: *Hurry home and serve your wife.*
After seeing Sun Zhou off, he pulled the iron gate between the pool hall and the elevator door shut and locked it.
Opening the fridge, he took out the vegetable salad and dumped it onto a plate, added the fruit, washed a fork, and sat behind the counter, eating slowly. After a couple of bites, he felt hot and took off his jacket.
A notification pinged—it was WeChat.
His phone was in his jacket pocket. He pulled the sleeve toward him and fished out the phone.
**Red Fish:** Training is over~
**Red Fish:** I realized that watching your demonstrations yesterday and this morning was incredibly useful. Now when I look at the match data for these local players, I seem to understand them better. Their thought processes.
**Lin:** Good to hear it was useful.
**Red Fish:** Student Lin, why are you so different on WeChat compared to when we're face-to-face?
Lin Yiyang smiled. He slowly typed his reply.
**Lin:** Am I?
**Red Fish:** Of course. If I showed our chat history to an outsider, they’d definitely think I’m the one chasing you.
**Lin:** Is that so?
**Red Fish:** Are you busy? Such short replies?
It was just habit; he really wasn't a fan of chat apps.
**Lin:** I'm at the pool hall. Just me.
**Red Fish:** I'm back in my room. Just me too.
**Lin:** Video call?
**Red Fish:** Okay.
Lin Yiyang knew WeChat had a video call feature—he’d seen his roommates use it—but it took him a few seconds to figure out the operation for the first time. Finally, he successfully sent a video invitation. After one ring, she picked up.
However, the signal was poor. He could only hear Yin Guo asking repeatedly, "Can you see me? Is the signal bad?"
The screen was pitch black.
The call dropped.
Soon, Yin Guo sent another invitation.
This time he remembered he hadn't connected to the pool hall's Wi-Fi. Sure enough, the signal improved.
***
Yin Guo had specifically turned on her desk lamp. The lighting was nice—yellow and not harsh, which flattered her features.
Her phone case had a metal kickstand that could stand on the table, so the phone was securely propped up on the desk. Once she had it positioned, she saw the video showed the bar counter of the pool hall.
She could hear the sound of rushing water, but Lin Yiyang was nowhere to be seen.
"What are you doing?" She leaned on the desk, staring at the screen.
Suddenly, the video cut off again.
Was the signal really that bad?
***
Lin Yiyang had been washing glasses. He had wanted to chat with her while tidying up the bar, finishing his chores so he could go home early.
But when Yin Guo spoke, he became acutely aware that his voice was ruined again. He didn't want her to feel bad knowing that, so he cut the connection he had just established.
He hadn't even had time to dry his hands; the screen was covered in water droplets.
Lin Yiyang found a towel and wiped his hands dry.
**Lin:** Most people wouldn't dare; the boss has a bad temper.
Lin Yiyang took his phone and a cloth for cleaning the pool tables. He chatted with Yin Guo, teasing her as he wiped down the tables one by one. Once all dozen or so tables were clean, he neatly arranged the cues on the racks.
Then he found a black cardboard box and collected the chalk scattered around.
Finally, he turned off the lights one by one.
In the northeast corner of the pool hall, there was a lounge area with a few old sofas, a TV, a DVD player, and a simple bed. Usually, when Sun Zhou didn't want to go home or had a fight with his wife, he would sleep here.
Lin Yiyang felt completely drained. He lay down, thinking he might as well sleep here tonight. Otherwise, the long journey back to his apartment would be a hassle.
In the pitch darkness, the only source of light was his phone screen.
**Red Fish:** You're still at the pool hall this late? It'll be so late by the time you get home.
**Lin:** Not going back.
**Red Fish:** Sleeping at the pool hall? Is there a bed?
**Lin:** Yes.
**Red Fish:** Actually, I feel bad for you, taking the train to drop me off and then heading back.
Lin Yiyang tucked one arm behind his head, using his left hand as a pillow.
**Lin:** Do you feel bad? Or do you miss me?
**Red Fish:** ...Both.
**Red Fish:** By the way, take a picture of your tattoo for me. I want to make it my phone wallpaper.
He felt like teasing her.
**Lin:** Want the top part or the bottom part?
**Red Fish:** ...Rogue.
**Lin:** ?
**Red Fish:** Never mind then.
Lin Yiyang smiled and rolled out of bed to find the wall lamp, clicking it on.
He aimed the camera at his right arm and took a photo. Just as he was about to send it, he saw her ask another question.
**Red Fish:** Oh, the match schedule is out. I'll send you a screenshot in a bit. See if you can make it. I studied it for a while; you probably won't make the group stages. Pray that I can make it to the quarterfinals on Saturday.
**Red Fish:** On Saturday, you should be free.
**Red Fish:** 0.0 Where'd you go?
Yin Guo really wanted him to see a match, especially since this was her first professional tournament; it held a different kind of significance.
He could read that.
He had been unsettled because of this since morning. The past was like aged tea leaves—long since dried and sealed away—but now it felt as if someone had poured them into a glass and doused them with scalding water, slowly steeping those fragments of the past...
Lin Yiyang felt around in the dark, found a newly purchased cue on the rack, and picked the nearest table.
The light source was far away, casting a glow on the table where the balls sat—one side colored, the other in black shadow... He tried to aim, but after aiming for a long time, he didn't take a single shot.
In his ears, someone was saying: *Old Sixth, just back down. If you're wrong, admit it.*
Someone was saying: *Sixth Brother, I'm begging you.*
Someone had smashed a teacup, and the tea had splashed all over the floor—cheap concrete that soaked up the water instantly.
Leaving behind a floor of soggy tea leaves.
...
That year, he was also a youth in jeans, though they weren't such a high-end brand; they were scavenged from Jiang Yang's wardrobe. He wore sneakers too, but he only had one pair. He’d wear them for a year, scrubbing them clean when they got dirty, and he’d shuffle to school in flip-flops. Back then, he didn't know what Saint Laurent was; he only knew the word "Street," and he usually misspelled it. His English was so bad he even had trouble getting into higher education.
That year, at the door of that room in Dongxincheng, he had made a vow: he would never return through that door, and he would never enter a competition arena again.
No one had heard those words; he had said them to himself, and he had lived by them for over a decade.
But no one knew that the day he walked out that door, he had crouched outside Dongxincheng and cried.
Lin Yiyang’s gaze fell on the black ball he wanted to sink. He slowly drew the cue back and struck it hard. The black ball flew toward the edge of the pocket, but unexpectedly, it didn't go in.
In the dim, uncertain light, it stopped right on the lip of the pocket.
***
Seeing that he wasn't replying, Yin Guo guessed the signal at the pool hall was bad again.
She rested her chin on her hand by the lamp, waiting patiently. Ten minutes later, a message popped up.
**Lin:** Went to practice.
**Xiao Guo:** Why the sudden urge to practice?
**Lin:** Testing a new cue.
**Xiao Guo:** The cues at your pool hall are pretty good. It's obvious the boss knows his stuff.
**Lin:** Xiao Guo-er.
He suddenly called her by a nickname.
Yin Guo stared at those three characters. It felt inexplicably intimate; she could imagine the expression and tone he would use to call her that. Her eyes were full of smiles she couldn't hide, shining brightly under the lamplight.
**Xiao Guo:** Yeah.
**Lin:** If I ever make a mistake in the future, give me a chance to make it right, okay?
**Lin:** I don't mean the kind like cheating.
| Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 孙洲 | Sun Zhou | A staff member or friend who helps Lin Yiyang at the pool hall. |
| 新华社 | Xinhua News Agency | A major Chinese state media agency; Lin Yiyang was considering a job at their D.C. branch. |
| 杜克 | Duke | Refers to Duke University. |
| 东新城 | Dongxincheng | Literally "East New City"; the name of the place/club where Lin Yiyang trained in his youth. |
| 老六 / 六哥 | Old Sixth / Sixth Brother | Lin Yiyang's nickname/rank among his peers in his former pool club. |
| 巧粉 | Chalk | Billiard chalk used on cue tips. |
| 小果儿 | Xiao Guo-er | An intimate nickname for Yin Guo, adding the "er" (儿) suffix common in Northern Chinese dialects. |
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