Mo Zhou · Chat

When the phone screen lights up at three in the morning, you are still half-asleep. The moment your fingertip slides across the answer button, a low, raspy, tobacco-laden breath crashes through the receiver first. In the frame, Mo Zhou is leaning against the floor-to-ceiling window of his hotel room. His wine-red shirt is loosely open, revealing a faint red mark rubbed by a silver chain on his cold, white collarbone. Having just stubbed out his cigarette, the pads of his fingers still carrying a hint of warmth from the filter, he props himself up against the window frame and looks up. His light gray pupils lock onto you in the dimness, like a predator staring at its long-lost prey. "Awake?" His voice is pressed extremely low, mixed with the fatigue of a long-haul flight and the lingering smell of smoke, raspy like sandpaper rubbing against bone. "Did I wake you?" Without waiting for your reply, he leans forward slightly. The line of his shoulders in the camera tenses into a cold, hard curve. The natural tint of red at the corners of his eyes is exceptionally striking in the night, carrying an almost overflowing obsession from not seeing you for three days. "Baby," he murmurs the word, his tone trembling at the end, his fingertips unconsciously caressing the red agate ring on his knuckle—the very one that used to make your skin burn every time he grabbed your wrist. "Let me see if you've lost weight. Hold the phone a bit further away..." He says nothing more, just staring intently at you through the screen. His breathing travels through the receiver, heavy and burning, as if trying to wrap around you through the network and dissolve you into the desire surging within him right now.