The Road Home Chapter 24

Why Lu Chen actually has no grievance—and has never had any—about the breakup…

This story was translated with the express permission of the author for hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com only. All forms of reproduction, redistribution, or re-posting are not authorized. If you are not reading this from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com, the copy is unauthorized and has been taken without consent of the translator.

Inside the room there was only a trace of light.

Outside, separated from them by only a single pane of gla.s.s, were temperatures of minus ten degrees Celsius and lower, but the bed sheets were still damp and hot from being wrapped around the both of them.

That night, when he arrived at the scene and watched as some people arranged the evacuation of the crowds, Lu Yanchen had stood smoking beside the window in a corner of a second-floor corridor. By his feet had been a garbage can stuffed full with different kinds of household and day-to-day trash. Into his lungs he had inhaled a deep drag of smoke, which had felt as if it was making its rounds through every part of his insides. He had been thinking about her, and what he had thought about were actually some vivid, sensuous images. Prior to heading down, he had recollected that pleasure for a little while. After he had done so to his heart's content, he had gone downstairs and then no longer dared to even think about her in the slightest. Gui Xiao, this name and the person, was too able to distract his mind.

The scent of her hair and its ends. The curve of her lips. The tones of her light moans and their several changes in pitch that slipped forth when certain places on her were touched… And occasionally, she would be overtaken by the moment and involuntarily reach her hand downwards and touch his body.

He could not let himself think about it, for the instant he did, he would regret it—regret that he had not taken things to that final step. From when she was young to now when she was an adult, from when she was a young girl to now when she was a grown girl, he had never known what it felt like to seek those sensual pleasures and make love with her. If he truly were to die, this would almost be the greatest regret of his life.

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But now, since his luck had not been so bad as to end up being killed in the line of duty with his military boots still on, there really should be nothing to have qualms about.

How to do the deed is something all grown adults know.

When they really were doing it, though, it was not as easy and wonderful as one would imagine.

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The ends of Lu Yanchen's hair were drenched with sweat, and the mark on his shoulder was still there from when Gui Xiao had bitten down fiercely on him. He leaned his right palm into the wall at the head of the bed, his throat feeling as if it had been scoured by sandpaper, aching and dry as he tried to call her name.

Pleasure that he could not restrain soared up abruptly in him. It was their first one.

Gui Xiao's eyelashes were completely dampened, and gently they fluttered. Every finger of her hands, which were hugging his nape, quivered slightly. All the strength in her entire body seemed suddenly to have been sucked from her. "Lu Chen… Lu Chen." Aside from calling his name, she did not know what to say.

Lu Yanchen brought his face down and nuzzled it against her sweat-covered one, quietly asking, "You really did cry?"

"Mm-hmm…" It had hurt crazily.

Gui Xiao turned over in the bed. Having just recovered from a great illness, this tiring-out that she had received was utterly equivalent to getting every bone broken and then reset once again. Everywhere ached. She did not know whether she hurt more inside or outside. In any case, just like when they were young and she had simply sat, waiting for him to finish cooking so she could eat, and then, after the meal was finished, been in charge only of staying by his side and acting cute or chatting with him, she now did not lift a finger or bother to take care of anything.

Lu Yanchen picked up his pants and slipped them on. With his upper body still bare, he was coming and going beside the bed. He washed and warmed a towel and wiped her body down from top to bottom with it. With napkins, he as much as possible wiped the bed sheets clean. Then he went and had a hot shower himself. When he came back, he saw Gui Xiao curled up and leaning against the head of the bed, looking at her mobile phone.

He took out a cigarette and, rubbing its end where the filter tip was, blew out a light breath. In a husky voice that carried mirth in it, he remarked, "When I saw you crying so hard earlier, I didn't dare keep going. From the looks of things now, though, it's like you were faking it."

Her eyes red, Gui Xiao threw a glower at him.

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She had thought that Lu Yanchen had left and come back all in the same night. To her surprise, when she checked her phone a moment ago, she saw that Xu Yao had called twice and also sent over a text message asking her if something had happened. As a result, she had looked closely and discovered that a full day and night had pa.s.sed already.

Gui Xiao sent a text in reply, saying that everything was okay and also informing him that she was currently out of town and would get in touch with him when she returned.

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Lu Yanchen had taken only a few pulls from his cigarette when his eyes took in her bare arm lying on top of the quilt and her hair, half-dampened and a little tousled, tucked haphazardly behind her ears. All he could feel was that his throat was tight and dry. He worked out the amount of time in his mind. They still could do it another time. And so, stubbing out the cigarette, he did not pay any heed that Gui Xiao was still fiddling on her mobile phone and simply bent over her, kissing and fondling her while Gui Xiao mumbled, "So tired. No more fooling around."

He pulled over his watch, which he had tossed onto the bedside table. "We'll get it done in forty minutes."

Saying this, he turned her over, and they did it another time.

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This time was finished as well.

Gui Xiao truly was unable to fiddle with anything now, and very docilely she tucked herself up against him and fell into slumber.

She slept until daybreak. When she felt at the spot beside her, there was no one.

At once, her mind cleared and she started up into a sitting position. A shadowy figure climbed onto the bed. "I didn't leave."

Her heart hammering wildly, Gui Xiao felt his hand touch her shoulder. He told her, "I'm used to getting up early."

The scent of cigarette smoke clung to him. He should have stepped outside for a smoke and then just come back in. Even his b.u.t.ton-up shirt carried a chill on it. Gui Xiao nudged him towards the outside of the bed. "Take off your clothes first and then come back on."

Lu Yanchen let out a chuckle. Using one hand, he unfastened the b.u.t.tons one at a time, from top to b.u.t.ton, and then tossed his shirt onto the bedside table.

He pulled off his pants as well. Inside, he was wearing nothing.

The light was dim, but the contours of his body could still indistinctly be seen. When he had pulled her into his arms and against his chest, Gui Xiao asked in a small voice, "You… don't like to wear underwear inside?"

"Sometimes I don't wear any."

Then, back when they were young…

She remembered their first kiss, when the two of them had been swathed in the quilt, kissing here and rolling together there, their bodies covered in perspiration from being wrapped up. At the time, he had only been wearing a pair of pants… That had happened so long ago; why was it that when she thought back on it now, it was still so…?

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Lu Yanchen did not know that she was having these sorts of thoughts. Just earlier when he was smoking in the stairwell at the end of the hallway, he had recalled the circ.u.mstances surrounding their breakup back then. He was contemplating how he could wholly explain his actual thoughts and considerations to her. This was completely different from the ideological education that he would give his squadron members. Each person's values are shaped by the environment that he or she grew up in.

From how far back did he have to tell this story?

"In the first couple of years after I arrived in Erenhot, I had three options." Lu Yanchen wound the long strands of her hair around his finger. "When it was time to select people, two of the leading officers here went and brought everyone they wanted directly into a cla.s.sroom, where they played a full three hours' worth of videos. They were all internally-made doc.u.mentaries with images from the last few decades of counter-terrorism efforts in the border areas."

Less than twenty soldiers had been barricaded inside a compound by several hundred people…

Those corpses backs had been against the wall and their fingers had all been evenly chopped off. Even their bullet-filled submachine guns had been taken away from them because they could not open fire…

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"Halfway through watching, no one could bear it anymore, and we asked those superiors to turn it off." Lu Yanchen gave a little laugh. "Afterwards, the best and most capable people in that room all up and left with that superior who had played that 'horror movie.' " Including him.

When they were leaving, those two leading officers had even grinned and told them, things in this day and age were good. Years ago, conditions weren't as good and not everyone had had a bulletproof vest. Everybody had scrambled to try to get a vest. What was the reason for that? Because those who wore a bulletproof vest were required to be at the front line of the charge. One of those leading officers who had gone that day to recruit people had later left the military for a career change, going into the Public Security Bureau[1]. After he had been promoted up to the position of vice bureau chief, during a pursuit mission, he died while providing cover for a comrade. As for the other leading officer from that day, that was his old squadron commander.

The rhythm of Gui Xiao's breaths was even and steady as they spilled against his collarbone. Softly, she remarked, "It's not often that you say so much."

Lu Yanchen carried on playing with her hair, not speaking.

Back then, he had been the one who had been adamant about leaving. All at once, such a huge distance separated them, and there had been no known date of return for him. He had made a young girl wait for him and, moreover, with absolutely nothing in which she could put her hope. If anything happened, she would need to bear the burden herself, and in crucial moments, if she wanted some warm words of comfort, she would not even be able to get any… Everyone says that it is hard being a military wife, but that at least is something that a grown, adult woman is to cope with. But she had been a girl in her teens. What right had he had to request that she wait for him, that she endure through it, and furthermore, in her most difficult times, to bear through and fight through?

It was just that, it had been so hard for him to let go of her.

Before their breakup, no matter how tired he was or how hard things were, once he thought about the fact that there was still a girl waiting somewhere for him, he would not feel that any of that was anything

But after they broke up, he could not let himself think too much. When he did have a lot of thoughts, they had all been about what her future husband would look like. Then he would think, perhaps when he was living permanently in Erenhot and went back to Beijing one day to visit family, he would b.u.mp into her in town. She would be holding the hand of a little child who was just as pretty as her, or maybe there would be a slight bulge in her belly and she would be eating in Meng Xiaoshan's restaurant when the two of them by chance encountered each other…

Let their eyes meet and then smile at her? That was something he was unable to do.

No one should request that he always, in everything, hold himself at such a high level of conduct.

Each time he pictured her marrying someone else, he had been unable to reconcile his heart to it. He would feel that he was a joke. For so many years, he had dedicated his youth and spilled out his warm blood, yet his little girl would wed another, would become another man's wife… Of course, this type of extreme thinking was something he should not have. Therefore, that girl—Gui Xiao—he could not let himself miss her or think of her even one little bit. Otherwise, he would feel resentful and bitterness would rise in his heart. This was wrong, and it should not happen.

In one year, he would let himself think of her just those few times, and that would be enough. He truly had not dared to do it too much.

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One of them had just recovered from being terribly ill; one had just gone two nights without sleep.

The two of them slept until three or four in the afternoon. After they woke, Lu Yanchen went out for a while.

Inside the bathroom, Gui Xiao stared into the mirror for quite some time, touching here and scrutinizing there, examining the marks left on her body when Lu Yanchen's hands had used too much force. There really were quite a few. But she no longer had any recollection of the pain of last night. When the sound of the door was heard, she at once neatened her shirt, and fishing out a lip stain from her makeup bag, she swept it lightly across her lips. Lu Yanchen leaned his shoulder against the doorframe and gazed at her. Gui Xiao was like a little girl who had been caught sneakily learning how to put on makeup, and she felt even more self-conscious. "Don't watch me doing my makeup…"

"The guys in the squadron want to see you."

Gui Xiao mind was blank. "See me?"

"Didn't you say you want to marry me?" A faint smile touched Lu Yanchen's lips. "They want to see their sister-in-law. After we leave this time, we likely won't have any chance of seeing them again."

Remembering that night and what had happened in that restaurant, Gui Xiao asked, "Haven't… they already seen me?"

"Last time you were bristling with aggressiveness. Didn't you notice they were all afraid of you and didn't dare go over to say hi?"

Just how had she been "bristling with aggressiveness"? In a aggrieved tone, she refuted, "It's only because you were mean to me that I was mean back."

Lu Yanchen chuckled. "Going? Or not going?"

All of him exuded an air that declared he did not care what the answer was. The meaning was very clear: you'll go if you say you're going, and you'll go if you say you're not going.

Gui Xiao pressed her lips together, allowing the colour of the lip stain to spread evenly, and answered, "… May I wear a skirt?"

Lu Yanchen narrowed his eyes.

"I look nice in a skirt," Gui Xiao explained.

Lu Yanchen really wanted to say, "Do you know what the temperature is outside?"

But seeing her slightly upturned eyelashes and her sparkling eyes, he considered briefly and then ended up feeling that this was no big deal. If his girl liked looking beautiful, then he would let her look beautiful. She could be so beautiful that she was ethereal, but she was still his wife.

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[1] 公安局. In China, a public security bureau is a government office that essentially acts as a police station.

This story was translated with the express permission of the author for hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com only. All forms of reproduction, redistribution, or re-posting are not authorized. If you are not reading this from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com, the copy is unauthorized and has been taken without consent of the translator.

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