【Soft Soft · Her】
This morning when Mom zipped me into this red qipao, her fingertips paused for a moment at the back of my neck and she said Soft Soft has grown up, twenty-two this year, you look so pretty in this, do not run around at their place, just sit with the aunties and uncles. I nodded obediently and said I know, Mom. The person in the mirror had a clean, clear face, a smile without a single impurity — the role I have played since childhood, the child that two families of old friends, four households, trusted most. No one knew I had hitched the high slit of the qipao up by half an inch because I was thinking of how he would look. And no one knew that under all this red, my heart was pounding as if it would burst straight out of my chest.
【Him · The Boy】
The new place was only handed over last year, a two-hundred-seventy-degree wall of floor-to-ceiling glass; standing on the second floor you can gather the lights of the whole street into your eyes. Four families were crammed into the living room downstairs, cards and melon seeds on the table, New Year’s songs playing on the TV. I carried two cups of fruit tea upstairs and, passing her, deliberately brushed her with my shoulder. She lifted her eyes to me, and that look I knew too well — I have recognized it since we were very small: in front of others she is every grown-up’s good girl, but the moment no one is watching, her eyes go soft on their own, as if waiting for me to give the word. I lowered my voice and said, come up. Her lashes trembled once; she picked up her own cup of tea, told the elders she was going to see the new room on the second floor, and walked faster than usual.
【Soft Soft · Her】
The instant that second-floor door closed behind me, the laughter downstairs, the clatter of mahjong tiles, the off-key singing, all suddenly fell away to somewhere very far off. The room was very bare, only a bed and that wall of glass framing the whole city’s night. He did not turn on the overhead light, leaving only a dim amber wall lamp. I stood with my back to him and could hear the sound of myself swallowing. He leaned in from behind, chin resting on my shoulder, hand feeling my waist through the qipao, his voice low and slow: with so many people downstairs, they all think Soft Soft is a naive little girl. I said nothing; my face had already begun to burn.
【Him · The Boy】
This red of hers was worn on purpose for me to see, I knew it at a glance. The slit was outrageously high; even standing still you could see a dazzling stretch of pale thigh. I slid my hand in through the slit and up, her legs trembling, yet the two of them did not clamp shut — instead they parted a fraction on their own. Pressing to her ear I asked: do you know who is sitting downstairs? Your dad, your mom, all of them are there. She let out a small mm, a voice tiny as a mosquito. I laughed: then who do you want to know that you are this wet right now? Her whole body shook harder, and yet she pushed her bottom back toward me.
【Soft Soft · Her】
When his fingers traced up the inside of my thigh to the deepest place, I could barely stand. I had not dared wear thick underwear today, only a thin scrap of fabric, and it had long since been soaked through by me; when he pressed lightly through the cloth, that place made a wet sound that made me want to die of shame. I bit my lip, not daring to make a sound — if any auntie downstairs came up and knocked, my whole life would be finished. Yet the more I thought that way, the more that place below clenched in waves, swelled in waves, as if my body were confessing on my behalf: this is exactly the moment I had been longing for. He pushed me toward the floor-to-ceiling window and made me brace both hands on the icy glass.
【Him · The Boy】
I lifted the hem of her qipao up to her waist; those two halves of her bottom were shining pale, with a faint mark pressed into them by the thin underwear. I tore that scrap of cloth off in one pull, and she gave a strangled ah before quickly clapping her own hand over her mouth. When my palm came down, the sound was so crisp it even startled me — smack. Her body lurched forward, forehead almost touching the glass. Again I struck, each blow heavier than the last, and two patches of red soon rose on her clean pale flesh. I asked her: what do you call me? She choked, and after a long while spat out two words: husband.
【Soft Soft · Her】
When the word “husband” came out of my mouth, even I found it strange and scalding. Downstairs I am the one everyone calls “sweet Soft Soft who has never even dated”; before this window I call him husband, sticking out my spanked-red bottom and begging him. His palm landed on my burning-hot rear, again and again, and every blow sent that current of pain and numbness to the deepest place inside me. I heard myself begging with a sob in my voice: husband… gentler… but the thing running out from between my legs had long since trickled down my thigh to the back of my knee, coating his fingers, all wet, squelch squelch, impossible to hide even a little.
【Him · The Boy】
I pinched her chin and made her turn her head to look at herself in the glass — her eyes gone red, tears clinging to the corners, her mouth half open and unable to close, a face soaked through with desire. I said, look clearly, this is that pure good girl from downstairs. She stared at herself in the glass and her face flushed all over in an instant, yet her body went even softer and hotter. I pushed in from behind, driving inch by inch to the deepest point, and her whole body went taut; a long moan with a trailing tail rolled out of her throat before she hurriedly buried her face in her arm and bit down. Inside she was tight and slick, wringing me, as if she had waited a very long time.
【Soft Soft · Her】
The moment he came in, everything went white before my eyes. Outside the glass were the lights of the whole street, other families’ New Year’s Eve reunions; inside the glass was me, pinned from behind by him, my bottom smacking against his hips in one dull thud after another. Each time he pulled back to the entrance and then slammed hard to the bottom, my chest swayed with it, the qipao’s stand-up collar chafing my neck, and all I could do was tip my head back and pant in small breaths. He lay against my ear and cursed me: slut, with a house full of people you are still this wet. That sentence was like a needle, jabbed right into the place where I felt most shame and most pleasure — I actually grew more excited. In a small voice I confessed: yes… Soft Soft is a slut… only husband’s slut.
【Him · The Boy】
Downstairs someone had won a hand, and a burst of loud laughter came muffled up through the floorboards. In that burst of laughter I quickened my pace, thrusting deep and fast, until she could not string a sentence together, only leaking soft little mm, mm, ah, each higher than the last, and each time biting it fiercely back down herself. She had taken the pill today; she had told me. So at the end I gripped her waist, pressed my whole body against her, slammed hard to the very deepest point, and released everything inside her. She trembled and clamped down on me, and that one squeeze wrung me until my scalp went numb.
【Soft Soft · Her】
When he came inside me, my legs went weak, and it was only his arm around my waist from behind that kept me from crumpling to the floor. Hot fluid flooded me; I lay against the icy glass gasping for breath, a patch of white fog on the glass from my own breathing. From downstairs came Grandma’s voice calling “Soft Soft, come down and eat dumplings.” I hurriedly wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes and let the hem of the qipao fall back down, but between my legs was still sticky and warm, and with every step his fluid slid down my thigh. He straightened my collar for me, as if nothing had happened. Going downstairs I hung that good-girl smile back on my face, took the dumpling Grandma handed me, and said “thank you, Grandma.” Only I myself knew that my legs kept going weak and my heart kept pounding — so this is how addictive it is, falling into ruin right under everyone’s eyes.