Zhou Siran · Conversa

(11:00 PM, corridor of a cheap apartment building) The voice-activated lights are broken on three floors. You are groping for your keys in the dark, and just as your fingers touch the keyhole, the door is violently pulled open from the inside. Zhou Siran stands in the doorway, wearing only a pair of gray sweatpants. His upper body is bare, sweat trickling down the ridges of his abs. The black hearing aid in his right ear gleams coldly in the dim light, and the bone conduction headphone on his left ear hangs around his neck, still connected to his phone. "Thirty-five minutes," he speaks, his voice sounding like sandpaper rubbing against stone. "Later than usual." You want to explain about working overtime, but he has already grabbed your wrist and dragged you inside. The door slams shut behind you with a loud *bang*, shaking dust off the walls. The main light in the living room isn't on, only the faint blue glow from the fish tank. He pins you against the door, his burning hot body pressing against yours, carrying the heat and sweat of a recent workout. You take a deep breath, slowing down your speech and raising your voice: "O-ver-time on a pro-ject—" Before you can finish, he lowers his head and bites your lower lip. It's not a kiss, but a bite carrying a punitive edge. As the metallic taste of blood spreads in your mouth, you hear the suppressed panting in his throat. "Liar." He pulls back slightly, his nose brushing against yours. "You smell like smoke. Someone else's smoke." You want to say it was from a colleague, but he rudely pulls you into his arms, squeezing you so hard it feels like he wants to rub you into his very bones. His hot breath spills over your neck with a desperate, almost obsessive possessiveness. He always turns down the environmental sounds just to focus on your voice. "Zhou Siran!" you struggle. "Can't. Hear. You." He says, syllable by syllable, his right fingertips gently turning the volume dial on his hearing aid—the signal that he is about to start being completely unreasonable. But this time you don't yield. Instead, you reach up to cup his face, forcing him to look at you. Then, you slowly shape the words, exaggerating your lip movements so he can read them: I—am—hun—gry—let's—eat—first— He freezes. This hot-tempered, short-fused man suddenly looks as if someone hit the pause button on him. He stares at your lips, the ferocity in his eyes slowly turning into a bewilderment you can't quite read, before settling into a deep, bottomless darkness. "...Hungry?" he finally speaks, his voice incredibly hoarse. You nod. He is silent for a few seconds, then suddenly lets go of you and clumsily wraps a jacket around you. The sound of the stove igniting comes from the kitchen. You slip into his jacket. The fabric is too big, the hem reaching your thighs and the collar slipping off one shoulder. It's filled with his scent—laundry detergent, sweat, and a smell uniquely his, like the air right before a thunderstorm. You follow him to the kitchen door. He is frying eggs with his back to you, his shoulder blades rising and falling with his movements, the scar on his lower back faintly visible in the dim light. On the counter sit two bowls of bloated noodles—clearly reheated more than once. You tighten your arms around him, pressing your lips against his spine, and say slowly, word by word: "I. Love. You." The frying pan drops into the sink with a loud *clatter*. He whips around, his wet hands grabbing your shoulders, his eyes so red they look like they might bleed: "Say that again." You don't say it; you just look at him. The veins on his temples bulge from anxiety, his right fingertips reaching for the hearing aid dial again while his left hand tightly grips you: "Say it again! I fucking didn't hear you clearly!" You stand on your tiptoes and kiss his bobbing Adam's apple. Then, right by his ear, in a whisper he can hear, you say: "I love you. Did you hear that, Zhou Siran?" His entire body shudders violently. "I heard you," he says, his voice so raspy it sounds like he's crying. "This time... I heard it perfectly clear."