She woke up briefly once in the middle of her nap.
She felt him applying mosquito repellent lotion to her hands, feet, arms, and legs. In her daze, she heard him murmur that the tent owner had reminded him that the local repellent was the most effective; different regions required local remedies to ward off the native insects.
Yin Guo tugged at the bands on her wrists again; they were too tight.
Lin Yiyang took them off for her. After a moment’s thought, he tucked them into the pocket of her denim shorts as a double layer of protection.
This sleep lasted a long time.
When she woke again, she saw Lin Yiyang sitting on the edge of the bed with his laptop resting on a wooden folding chair in front of him. To avoid waking her, he was only reading documents and hadn't been typing. Yin Guo crawled from the far end of the bed to the edge, slipped under his arm, and lay her head on his lap.
Listening to the croaking of frogs, she asked softly, "What time is it?"
"A little past midnight. We leave at one," he said, his fingers beginning to tap on the keyboard as he composed a long email. "Go take a shower first. We fly out tomorrow afternoon, and you won't have another chance to wash up until we reach New York."
No lights were on in the tent; the only source of illumination was his laptop screen.
Yin Guo looked up from below. In the faint white glow, she saw his Adam's apple and his jawline, which traced a beautiful curve. She wanted to reach out and touch him but feared disturbing his work. After staring dreamily for a while, she sluggishly crawled back from under his arm and onto the bed. Leaning over the edge, she felt around for her flip-flops.
He never once took his eyes off the screen. While still typing, he used his foot to nudge her slippers toward her.
Without a word, she tiptoed out of the tent in her slippers.
All was silent; the occupants of the tents to their left and right were already asleep.
Yin Guo looked up at the sky. Large tropical leaves blocked most of the view, and the small patch of sky that remained showed no starlight, likely obscured by heavy clouds. Seeing this, she couldn't help but feel a sense of trepidation, doubting they would see any stars tonight.
At one in the morning, Lin Yiyang closed his laptop, his business concluded for the moment.
Hearing the pitter-patter of rain outside the tent, he was much more composed than Yin Guo. He placed a tip on the pillow, picked up their two backpacks, and said, "Let's head out first. We'll wait and see if the clouds scatter."
As their car drove away from the small town, a distant crack of thunder exploded on the horizon, making her heart skip a beat.
She thought Lin Yiyang would drive up the mountain, but he followed the GPS through two small towns before veering off the highway onto a narrow side road.
There were no streetlights along the road, and with the torrential rain and the absence of moon or stars, only the car's high beams illuminated a small patch of the world ahead. The car began to jolt incessantly as soon as they left the pavement. She had no idea where they were, and the bumping made her heart flutter with unease.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"To a no-man's land," he replied.
If one wanted to stargaze on the island without going up the mountain, these uninhabited areas—surrounded by black reefs and volcanic sand—were the best spots. However, even during the day, such places felt eerie, let alone at night during a storm. No one else would be there.
After driving for about half an hour, Lin Yiyang stepped on the brakes, intending to wait for the rain to stop.
The engine vibrated slightly; otherwise, there was only the sound of rain. Through the sealed windows, the rain sounded muffled and indistinct.
Yin Guo leaned her head to the side, staring outside for a while. Aside from the puddles of water streaking across the glass, she could see nothing.
She appeared to be focused on the outside, waiting for the rain to stop, but she was actually wondering: if the storm didn't let up all night, would she and Lin Yiyang just sit here? Just sit and wait?
A warm sensation touched her wrist—it was his hand. The man she had been thinking about suddenly responded.
"Come here," he said.
She turned her head and saw Lin Yiyang’s left hand fumbling at the side of his seat. He found the button and slowly moved the driver's seat back, clearly expanding the space. Yin Guo crawled over the center console, and with his hands supporting her waist, he lifted her onto his lap.
Even with the seat pushed back to its limit, the space was still cramped and narrow.
"What are you thinking about, staring out the window like that?" Lin Yiyang asked.
They both knew that no matter how beautiful the island's scenery was, there was nothing to see here. Her staring out the window was entirely pointless.
She answered vaguely, "Thinking about when the rain will stop. It looks like it might go on all night."
She couldn't exactly say she was wondering if they were going to *do it* tonight...
His hand rested behind her waist, his thumb hooked into the waistband of her jeans. As she moved slightly closer, he caught the faint fragrance emanating from her.
She always smelled wonderful after a shower, and he noticed it was always the same scent. To a man, it was somewhat inconceivable—staying in a hotel with free soap and shampoo, yet she insisted on using her own. Only girls were so meticulous. But it was a good habit; in the days to come when he couldn't hold her, he would remember this scent.
Lin Yiyang turned off the engine.
When a person's vision is restricted, their hearing naturally sharpens. The silence in the car was startling. Even the sound of Lin Yiyang clearing his throat was infinitely magnified, reaching Yin Guo's ears as a subtle hint, a rasping itch that teased her heart.
The fact that he hadn't kissed her yet was a deliberate "distancing" on his part. Once something becomes a habit, it can gradually become dull and uninteresting—and that included intimacy itself.
Restraint is the most potent aphrodisiac.
For instance, now, as his face drew close, her heart began to tremble.
"All night isn't bad," he said. "There's no one else here."
"What if there are people like you? People who know this place and drove out here too?"
He chuckled. "We're all adults. If they look at us, we'll look at them."
He added with a smile, "We won't be the ones losing out."
Embarrassed, Yin Guo pushed against his chest. She could feel the muscles of his abdomen tightening under his short-sleeved shirt, as were the arms holding her. Because of this realization, she suddenly went quiet.
In that silence, she felt his warmth on her lips.
Lin Yiyang tilted his head, slowly wetting her lips, his tongue tangling and swirling with hers in a damp embrace. The torrential rain isolated this SUV from the rest of the world as they held each other and kissed in the driver's seat.
Surrounded on all sides by transparent glass, in the middle of the wilderness, the heavy rain felt like the end of the world.
He met her eyes in the darkness: *Do you want to?*
Her heart felt like it was going to jump out of her chest; it throbbed with a dull ache. She had been waiting.
Suddenly, the seat shifted, as if it had been stuck, before slowly reclining backward. With every degree it tilted, her heart swelled. She stubbornly pressed her chin against his shoulder, keeping her eyes tightly shut.
His fingers idly toyed with the zipper of her jacket. He had made her put on an extra layer because it was cold out at night, while he, a man who feared heat more than cold, was still in short sleeves.
He said, "Go on, climb into the back."
Yin Guo used her hands and feet to scramble from the front to the back row. Lin Yiyang adjusted the front seats as far forward as they would go. He stepped out of the car. Yin Guo heard the sound of the trunk opening. She wanted to say, *I bought some too,* but then she realized a man as thoughtful as Lin Yiyang wouldn't have come unprepared. She waited obediently.
One second, two seconds—*thud*, the trunk closed. At the same time the doors unlocked, he entered the back seat, holding a bath towel. He laid it over the old, soft leather of the back seat. Then, he quietly leaned over her.
His breath made her neck feel incredibly ticklish. "I'm really ticklish... I won't burst out laughing, will I?"
He whispered, "You won't. I'm just afraid you won't be able to laugh."
He added with a low chuckle, "You'll likely cry."
At first, they exchanged a few words, but soon her ears were burning, her whole body was burning, and she could no longer spare the thought for speech.
Lin Yiyang was the type of person who spent a long time contemplating things beforehand, but when it came to the real thing, he was decisive and thorough.
The scent of the leather seats and the scent of his body grew stronger and more intense in the confined space. Would they run out of oxygen, or were they already breathless? The windows were pelted by countless raindrops that left streaks as they rolled down the glass in a chaotic, lawless descent.
...
Finally, he said, "Kiss me."
Yin Guo tried her best, but she had no strength left to kiss him. Instead, he lowered his head, trailing kisses from her lips to her chin and then to the back of her ear, his warm breath dampening her skin.
Yin Guo pressed the back of her hand over her eyes, feeling his sweat mingled with hers, trickling down her neck. His chest and back were soaked with sweat, and several rivulets were tracing the lines of his abdominal muscles...
Through the gaps between her fingers, she peeked at the tattoo below his waistline. It turned out there were no hands. Just an empty watch face, without hands.
"What are you looking at?" he teased, knowing full well.
Feeling extremely self-conscious, her mind a mess, she shifted her gaze to the window above her head.
The inside of the glass was completely fogged up.
She reached out, her finger tracing a few streaks through the mist on the window. She found it incredible. "There really is fog?"
"Was your physics that bad?" he laughed hoarsely. "Of course there is."
She knew the principle, of course. She just meant that when she saw it in movies—the first time was probably *Titanic*—she hadn't believed it. She had questioned how so much heat could be generated. Doing this... it really could happen.
She drew a tiny heart on the window, thought for a moment, and drew another one next to it. A pair.
The man's emotions hadn't fully dissipated, and her idle doodling on the window reignited the fire. He looked her over from head to toe and whispered, "Come here, hold me."
***
The rain stopped around four in the morning.
Lin Yiyang pulled a pre-prepared astronomical telescope from the trunk. He told her to wait in the car while he set it up and calibrated it, then he returned to the car himself.
He seemed tired and didn't look like he was going to watch the stars with her. Instead, he said, "Go down and take a look. The volcanic rock is uneven; watch your step or you'll get scratched if you fall."
Wasn't he coming?
But then again, he was so familiar with this place; he had probably seen it many times.
Yin Guo stepped out of the car.
The night wind tossed her hair. She pulled the car door shut behind her and looked up at the vast, distant starry sky. Here, on the boundless black reefs, heaven and earth met, leaving only the bright and dim stars of the Milky Way.
The rugged, uneven terrain felt like a desolate, primordial landscape. She almost felt as if she were standing on the moon watching the galaxy. It was beautiful enough to the naked eye.
When she leaned into the telescope, the Milky Way was magnified infinitely. It felt as though she could reach out and touch it. She studied each star intently. Suddenly, her WeChat chimed. Lin Yiyang?
It had to be him; everyone else was on 'Do Not Disturb.'
Confused, Yin Guo turned back toward the car. He was smiling, tapping his phone screen with his index finger, signaling for her to look.
What was he being so mysterious about?
Yin Guo opened the message. He had sent a photo—a snapshot of the starry sky he had just taken from inside the car. The second photo was of the artistically designed cosmic nebula on the outside of his arm.
Following that was a photo of the distant volcanic mountains, and finally, a photo of the mountain range tattooed on the inside of his arm.
Lin: *Didn't you want a screensaver?*
Lin: *This is it.*
So the prototypes for his tattoos were here? The volcano and the stars?
The designs were artistic; if he hadn't said anything, she never would have made the connection or seen the resemblance. So this wasn't a spontaneous trip on a whim; he had planned this from the very beginning, that night when she had asked for a photo of his tattoos...
But he hadn't said a word. He hadn't told her in advance.
During the day, while looking at the observatories on the snowy peak, the guide had given a detailed introduction to the stargazing sanctuary. She had listened intently and secretly asked him many questions, yet he hadn't mentioned this at all, waiting until now.
Yin Guo stared at him through the glass.
Lin Yiyang sat there with his hand resting on his keyboard, quickly typing on his phone, message after message.
Lin: *On the first night, the band in the bar sang a song. They sang it several times.*
Lin: *Do you remember it?*
Xiao Guo: *Yeah. It was "Yellow."*
Lin: *:)*
Lin: *Think about the first two lines.*
The first two lines?
*Look at the stars, look how they shine for you.*
A song that seemed unrelated was a perfect fit for tonight. This was Lin Yiyang's intentional doing. She thought of what Jiang Yang had told her: *He’s truly put his heart into you.*
The song was about a man's adoration for the girl he loved. He was deeply attracted to her, helpless, infatuated, deeply in love, yet hesitating, not knowing how to approach her, how to get to know her—
What had he been thinking that first night, listening to that song over and over?
She wanted to look up and see him through the window.
...
The phone vibrated in her palm again. It was still Lin Yiyang.
Lin: *There isn't much I can give you.*
Lin: *Thank you.*
Lin: *Thank you.*
He was thanking her for letting him walk back onto the competition floor, even if only as a spectator in the stands. He was thanking her for giving herself completely to him—to a man whose future was still unstable, a man without a home.
Yin Guo was in no mood to look at the stars anymore. Her heart felt as though it had been hollowed out by him. She only wanted to be glued to him every second of the remaining time. She even began to fear returning home.
Lin Yiyang got out of the car, walking over as if he hadn't said anything emotional. He pointed at the telescope. "How's the view?"
Yin Guo threw her arms around him. "Still acting... you're always trying to make me cry." She turned her face, pressing it against his heart, listening to the powerful rhythm through his skin and bone.
Lin Yiyang couldn't help but laugh.
"Still laughing... I don't even want to go back to China. What should I do? Do you plan on returning to China in the future?" This was the first time she had proactively brought up their future. "If you don't want to go back and want to stay here, you'll have to wait for me for a year or two."
Actually, that was an optimistic estimate. Her family hadn't planned for her to settle abroad; getting past them would be like losing a layer of skin.
He gently patted her back.
"I'm going back," he said, those three words only.
For a man to return to his homeland after years of living abroad, all for a girl, and to want a future with her—it wasn't as simple as just saying it. An adult's life isn't lived through flowery words. For those three short words, he would need to make countless arrangements.
*Live your life at your own pace, Yin Guo. I will accommodate you. Let me handle all the difficult things.*
***
**Glossary**
