【Her · Gu Zhiwei】At twelve-forty the three roommates were finally fast asleep. Gu Zhiwei lay in her top bunk, eyes open, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the girl below turning over grow steadier, heavier, until even her breathing dissolved into a blur of white noise. Her fingers had been clenched under the thin blanket for a long time; her nails had pressed four faint little crescents into her palm. She knew that feeling was back — like a tiny cluster of fire smoldering slowly in her lower belly, burning until she could not sit still, could not lie still, until only doing something would put it out.
【Her · Gu Zhiwei】By day she was nothing like this. By day Gu Zhiwei was the third-year class rep of the art academy, the student council vice-president, the one her teachers called “steady,” “reliable,” the aloof campus beauty who kept her spine ramrod straight and her knees together in the hallways and smiled with just the right measure. When boys handed her love letters she returned them politely; when girls gossiped she only pressed her lips together and said nothing. No one knew that this girl, who had drilled her poise to textbook perfection, needed her own hand to fall asleep five or six nights a week.
【Her · Gu Zhiwei】She climbed down from the bunk on light feet and fished out the pale-blue plastic washbasin from the storage box under the bed — the one she usually used to soak her brushes; in her hands now it was as quiet as an accomplice. She carried it to the balcony, deliberately leaving a gap when she slid the door open so the curtain hung half-drawn. The balcony was old-fashioned, with a waist-high concrete railing, and beyond it, across dozens of meters of open ground, stood another dormitory building. A scattered few windows over there still glowed a warm yellow; they were far away, the people inside indistinct — but it was precisely that hint of “someone might be there” that sent her heartbeat slamming up into her throat.
【Her · Gu Zhiwei】She sat down into the basin with her back to the curtain and her side to the door, and the cold plastic against her bare bottom made her shiver faintly. She wore only a small black lace camisole cut through with cutouts, the thin straps hanging loose on her shoulders, the openwork over her chest rising and falling with each breath. Below she wore nothing at all — she knew her own body too well, how it trembled at the slightest touch, sensitive as if peeled raw. The night wind slipped in through the gaps in the railing and grazed the skin of her inner thighs, and her knees clamped together on their own before slowly easing apart again.
【Her · Gu Zhiwei】She did not rush to touch herself below at first. She lifted her right hand and rubbed her nipple through the lace. The moment the pad of her finger pressed down, that little peak hardened, jutting sharply against the openwork trim. She dragged her thumb back and forth over it, circle after circle, then suddenly gave it a light pinch — a fine current crackled from her chest down to her belly, and she let out a stifled “mm” before quickly biting down on her lip. Too loud. She turned to glance at the half-drawn curtain behind her; inside it was pitch black, and the roommates’ snoring went on. Her heart was beating so fast it hurt, yet her hand would not stop; if anything it rubbed harder at the nipple she had played hard herself.
【Her · Gu Zhiwei】The shame and the pleasure came together, impossible to pull apart. She was Gu Zhiwei — the vice-president, the good girl who nitpicked even her own posture — and yet here she sat bare-bottomed in a basin used to soak brushes, on a balcony dozens of meters from the building across the way, pinching her own nipple and trembling. The more she thought “what if someone sees,” the more she thought of the flawless self she wore by day, the hotter her body burned against her will, the more it dripped. She could feel that place already growing wet, slick, seeping little by little toward the bottom of the basin.
【Her · Gu Zhiwei】At last she slid her left hand between her legs. There it was smooth, without a single hair — she always kept it clean — and what her fingertips met now was a stretch of scalding, swollen soft flesh, already worked into a mire. Her middle finger slid up along the cleft and found that little bead, already engorged and risen; the instant the pad of her finger touched it, her whole leg snapped straight as if electrocuted, her heel knocking against the rim of the basin with a sharp crack. She froze in fright, even her breath stopping, and only when she was certain there was no stir in the room did she dare slowly begin again.
【Her · Gu Zhiwei】She began to work that little bead up and down, the pad of her finger circling, the pressure rising from light to hard. She knew herself far too well — which angle, which rhythm would carry her to the peak fastest. Her hips lifted on their own, her bottom grinding against the base of the basin, the lace straps slipping to the crooks of her arms and baring a pair of small, pert breasts, the pink nipples hardening a little more in the night wind. She bit down hard on her lip to keep from making a sound, yet the corners of her eyes reddened first, and the few dim yellow lights across the way blurred into halos in her sight. Close, so close — she felt that familiar wave curling up from her toes.
【Her · Gu Zhiwei】When the first climax hit, her whole body snapped taut, her toes curling, her thighs clamping hard around her own hand, a drawn-out, almost inaudible whimper forced from her throat. The soft flesh below contracted in spasms, and a rush of heat spilled into the basin. She went limp, her back against the cold railing, her chest heaving, the lace pressing against and lifting off her scalding skin with each gasp. She thought that would be enough. But it was not — that cluster of fire had only been doused a little, and in a blink it began to lick at her belly again.
【Her · Gu Zhiwei】She could not even explain to herself what was wrong with her. For others once was enough; she was like a hole that could never be filled, wanting more the more she played. She slid her hand back down, this time tugging even the lace straps off, sitting stark naked in the basin, one hand still rubbing that not-yet-subsided little bead while the other pinched her nipple. The second came faster than the first, and fiercer; she shook all over like a leaf in the wind, not even minding when her knees banged against the rim. She bit into the back of her own hand, swallowing every cry back down into her belly, while the tears slid down her cheeks all the same.
【Her · Gu Zhiwei】A light in one of the windows across the way suddenly went out. Her heart lurched, and a thousand images of being discovered flashed through her mind — someone with binoculars, someone holding up a phone, the whole academy knowing by tomorrow that the aloof vice-president had been out on the balcony in the dead of night… but the more she thought like that, the more her body burned to madness, the more it surged and dripped. So it turned out that the very propriety she feared, the one she was always performing, was the thing that aroused her most. She sent herself over the peak a third time, this one done almost sprawled over the railing, the soft flesh of her chest pressed to the cold concrete, cool and scalding tangled together, driving her whole body to tremble.
【Her · Gu Zhiwei】She should have stopped. Reason cried halt again and again in her ear, yet her hand still, as if driven by a ghost — no, of her own willing heart — reached down a fourth time. This time she moved slowly, cherishing it, as if bidding herself farewell, wringing out the last of the aftertaste bit by bit. When the fourth climax finally washed over her whole body, she was already too spent even to clamp her thighs, and only below did she keep twitching mindlessly, spitting the last of her wetness into the basin.
【Her · Gu Zhiwei】She sat on the balcony for a long while, until the night wind had cooled both sweat and wetness and a fine layer of goosebumps rose over her skin. She put the lace camisole back on, carried that basin of shameful evidence to the drain and rinsed it spotless. As she climbed back up to the top bunk, a roommate turned over and mumbled something in her sleep, and her whole heart shot up into her throat again; she froze in midair, motionless, and only after a good while dared lie down. She stared at the ceiling, her face still burning, her heartbeat still in disarray. She knew this was not the last time. She was even already thinking — just the balcony, just her hand, seemed… not quite enough anymore.