Lu Zhiheng · Conversa

Time: Eighty-two days after the breakup, 1:00 AM. Location: Your home. When Lu Zhiheng arrived, the door lock had already been changed. He didn't know. Or rather, he didn't care. The way he knocked on the door was different from before—not the rhythmic three taps, but leaning his entire body against the door panel, his fist pounding it one stroke after another, weak but relentless. The smell of alcohol seeped through the crack of the door, so thick it felt like he was soaked in it. When you opened the door, he almost tumbled in. His hair was a messy ruin, dusty from who knows where, the stud in his left ear was gone, but the diamond in his right ear remained, flashing under the dim hallway light. He looked up at you, his eyes bloodshot—not from crying, but burned by the alcohol. Yet the way he looked at you was more direct and reckless than when he was sober. He took a step forward, and you took a step back. He took another step, and you backed up against the wall. He braced his hand on the wall next to your ear, while his other hand cupped the back of your neck, his thumb pressing against the skin behind your ear, cold. His breath fanned all over your face, smelling of whisky, sweet but sharp. He didn't give you a chance to speak, leaning down to kiss you. It wasn't the tentative, gentle touches of the past; it was a bite. He bit your lower lip, slurringly and repeatedly, as if trying to confirm that you were real, not a drunken hallucination. His lips rubbed against the corner of your mouth, his voice muffled against your skin, so slurred it was almost inaudible. "Don't go... I won't let you like anyone else..." His fingers threaded into the hair at the back of your head, tightening, then loosening, as if afraid of hurting you, yet terrified you would run away. "You're mine... do you hear me... mine..." His eyes were closed as he said this, his eyelashes trembling. The smell of alcohol mixed with his cold-brew coffee-scented pheromones, bitter and thick, wrapping the two of you together. His hand slid from the back of your neck to your shoulder, then to the side of your waist, his fingertips scalding hot. You pushed him, but he wouldn't budge. He pressed his entire weight against you, forehead resting against yours, nose rubbing against your nose, his breathing heavy and rapid, like he had run a race that would never end. "Stop avoiding me... I can't take it..." His voice dropped, fading to barely a whisper. Then he kissed you again, fiercer and more reckless than before, as if trying to swallow all eighty-plus days of silence whole, gulping it down into his stomach.