The second spring after they got together.
There was no sweeping confession, no moonlit flowers. One evening, Shen Zhou walked Bai Ping home. When they reached her door, she turned and looked at him.
The setting sun had dyed her face orange-red. Her eyes were bright, the color of the sea in them.
“Are you coming tomorrow?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“What about the day after?”
“I’ll come then, too.”
“And the day after that?”
Shen Zhou looked at her. After a moment, he said, “Every day.”
Bai Ping smiled. It was different from the smile he had first seen in the boatyard. That first smile had been clear and bright. This one was warm, like a wooden plank left in the sun all day, warm to the touch.
“Then come every day,” she said.
Shen Zhou nodded.
When he turned to leave, his steps were much lighter than when he had arrived.
They had three good years.
In those three years, Shen Zhou built six boats. Bai Ping salted more baskets of fish than either of them could count. They never officially married—the fishing village had few such rules. Once two people lived together, everyone knew.
Shen Zhou built a small house beside the boatyard. It wasn’t large: one bedroom, one kitchen, and a courtyard. A banyan tree stood in the courtyard. His father had planted it, and by then it had grown enormous, its branches spreading like an umbrella.
Bai Ping kept the kitchen spotless. The pots, bowls, and utensils were lined up neatly, and a row of salted fish hung along the wall, swaying gently whenever the wind passed through. She put up a drying rack in the courtyard for dried fish. Every morning, she hung the fish up one by one. Every evening, she took them down one by one.
Sometimes Shen Zhou would stop working and watch her dry the fish. Her movements were crisp. Every motion had a rhythm, and she never wasted an ounce of effort.
“What are you looking at?” she asked him once, turning around.
“You.”
“What’s there to look at?”
“You look good.”
Bai Ping’s ears turned red. She turned away and kept hanging the fish, but the corners of her mouth lifted.
Those three years were the best three years of Shen Zhou’s life.
He didn’t know that good days had an expiration date.
In the autumn of the third year, Bai Ping’s father went out to sea and never came back.
It wasn’t a storm. It was the Japanese pirates. In those days, they were especially rampant offshore, raiding the shipping lanes in groups of three or five. Bai Ping’s father had taken several fishermen out to fish. When they reached the open sea, a pirate ship intercepted them.
No one came back alive.
When the news reached the village, Bai Ping was drying fish in the courtyard. When she heard, the fish in her hand fell to the ground. She crouched to pick it up. She tried several times and couldn’t manage it because her hands were shaking.
Shen Zhou ran over from the boatyard. He saw her crouching on the ground, one fish by her feet, her hands trembling. But she wasn’t crying. She simply crouched there, staring at the fish as if she were looking at something very far away.
He crouched beside her and took her hand. It was cold, so cold it didn’t feel like the hand of a living person.
“I’m here,” he said.
She said nothing. After a long time, she finally spoke, her voice barely audible. “My father is gone.”
Shen Zhou tightened his grip on her hand.
He didn’t know what to say. He had never known how to comfort people. He only knew how to make things—boats, tables, chairs. He thought that if grief were a cracked plank, he could mend it with tung oil and hemp fiber. But grief wasn’t a plank. Grief was water. You couldn’t hold it back.
All he could do was hold her hand and let her know she wasn’t alone.
Five years after Bai Ping’s father died, her mother died, too.
She died of illness. The doctor couldn’t say exactly what it was, only that it came from grief held in the heart and blocked circulation. Bai Ping knew her mother had died from missing her father. For five years, every evening, she had stood by the sea and watched to see whether his boat would return. Of course, it never did. But her mother kept watching. For five years.
Five years.
Whenever Shen Zhou thought of that number afterward, a chill ran down his spine.
Five years after Bai Ping’s father died, her mother died.
He kept that fact to himself. He didn’t tell anyone.
After her mother died, Bai Ping changed.
She didn’t become a different person. She simply became quieter. She had never been talkative, but before, she would smile, bicker with Shen Zhou, and stand beside him while he built boats, occasionally saying, “You planed this plank crooked.”
Now she said nothing. She still salted fish, dried fish, and cooked every day, but her movements had become mechanical, like a wind-up doll that moved when the time came and stopped when the task was done.
Shen Zhou saw it all and worried himself sick, but he didn’t know what to do. He tried talking to her. She answered, but briefly, as if she were just humoring him. He tried taking her to the beach for a walk. She went, but halfway there she stopped and stared at the sea for a long time, then turned around and went home.
He knew what she was thinking. She was thinking of her father, her mother, and all the people who would never come back.
One night, they were lying in bed. Moonlight came through the window and fell across Bai Ping’s face. Her eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling.
“Can’t sleep?” Shen Zhou asked.
“Mm.”
“What are you thinking about?”
She was silent for a long time. Long enough that Shen Zhou thought she wasn’t going to answer.
Then she said, “I was wondering if everyone around me is going to leave.”
It felt as if someone had squeezed Shen Zhou’s heart.
“No,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m not leaving.”
Bai Ping turned to look at him. Moonlight shone in her eyes, bright as moonlight on the surface of the sea.
“Promise me?”
“I promise.”
She said nothing more. She buried her face against his chest and closed her eyes.
Shen Zhou held her and felt her breathing gradually grow even. She fell asleep.
He didn’t sleep. He stared at the ceiling, thinking about what she had said: “Is everyone around me going to leave?”
He thought of Bai Ping’s father. Gone.
He thought of Bai Ping’s mother. Five years later, gone too.
Five years.
He didn’t know why, but the number made him uneasy. It was as if something were hidden behind it. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it.
He held Bai Ping a little tighter.