【Her · Protagonist】My name is Su Nian. Sophomore year, twenty years old, communications major at the university in our city. Everyone who knows me says I’m bold — what I post most on my feed is outfits: thin spaghetti straps with crop tops, denim micro-skirts so short I have to keep my legs pressed together when I sit, shoulders and collarbones all bare, paired with clogs that clack loudly or thin high heels. Every photo racks up a hundred or two likes, the comments full of “so hot, girl” and “those legs are killer.”
【Her · Protagonist】But only I know it’s all a shell. In the photos I plant my hands on my hips and grin brazenly; in real life I blush and duck away if a guy so much as looks at me twice. I dated one boyfriend — holding hands made my heart race, kissing left me too nervous to breathe, and anything past that… I always pressed his hand down at the last second and said, “I’m not ready yet.” I wrapped myself up so provocatively, yet inside I was like a fruit still in its shell, unbearably clean. I thought that was how my whole life would be — the boldness an act, the timidity real.
【Her · Protagonist】Until L moved into our dorm.
【L · Dancer Bestie】My name is Lin Lu, I major in dance, people call me L. I don’t hide anything; from head to toe I’m written all over with “I know what I want.” A spade tattoo on my inner thigh, visible the moment I glance down; a ring of vines around my left ankle, and a little line of letters no one can read below my collarbone. A dancer’s body — slim waist, long legs, and when I swing my hips even I think I’m asking for it. I go to bars, to karaoke, I meet all kinds of people. The first time Su Nian saw me drag my luggage through the door, that look of hers, stunned by my tattoos — I still remember it. The way she looked at me, like looking at someone she didn’t dare to be.
【Her · Protagonist】The first time I helped carry her luggage, my fingertips accidentally brushed the outside of her thigh. That strip of skin under her short skirt was smooth and cool, and I yanked my hand back like I’d been burned. She teased me, “Nian Nian, why are you blushing? I don’t bite.” When she sat down her legs parted, her skirt slid up, and that spade tattoo was left bare on the soft flesh of her innermost thigh. My gaze was nailed there, my throat gone dry. In that moment a thought surfaced that startled me — I wanted to know what a girl like her was like at night.
【L · Dancer Bestie】I saw through her fast. I’ve met plenty of her type — dressing herself up like a dessert, set in the display window but not giving anyone a single taste. Usually it’s not aloofness, it’s that no one ever taught her how to let go. She came out of the shower with nothing on under her loose nightgown, collarbones steamed pink, hair dripping, but her eyes flitted away, not daring to look straight at my body as I changed. I stripped down to just my panties right in front of her, deliberately stretching, watching her ears flush red inch by inch. Interesting. Prey like this is exactly my favorite.
【Her · Protagonist】Those days we grew closer and closer. She took me shopping, deliberately picking the things I’d never dare wear — tank tops cut open to the bustline, dresses hollowed out down the whole back, knits so thin they showed the color of your underwear. “Why hide a body this good,” she said, pressing a red bodycon camisole into my arms, “even if it’s just for yourself to see.” I changed into it in the fitting room, and the person in the mirror had her breasts sculpted full, the two points pushing faintly up against the thin fabric. The longer I looked, the more my lower belly, inexplicably, clenched. I crushed the feeling down hard and came out red-faced, and her eyes lit up: “See? What did I tell you.”
【Her · Protagonist】I started posting bolder photos. She taught me how to shoot them — lifting my top with one hand to bare a line of the small of my back, lowering the lens to draw out the length of my legs, lips parted, eyes glancing down. The likes grew, the DMs grew, and on the surface I answered not a single one, but that secret little thrill inside me crept quietly upward like a vine. I realized I was starting to enjoy being looked at. That was the first crack L pried open in me.
【Her · Protagonist】I truly caught her secret on a very cold night in November.
【Her · Protagonist】That night the other two roommates had both gone home, leaving only me and L. I was drifting in and out of sleep when the middle of the night I woke up needing to pee. Without turning on a light, I felt my way out of bed toward the bathroom. Just as I lifted the covers, a sound came from the bed across from me — very faint, very stifled — like panting, or a moan being held back.
【Her · Protagonist】My whole body froze. By the streetlight outside the window and the cold blue glow of her phone screen, I saw L half-reclined on her bed, her nightgown pushed up above her waist, one leg bent and propped on the edge of the mattress. One hand held her phone pressed to her ear, the other… between her own legs. The motion of her fingers going in and out was slow, deep, and each one made her waist arch faintly. There seemed to be a man’s voice on the other end, pitched very low. I saw her turn the phone screen toward her lower body and hold it for a second — she must have been filming, or sending something. The screen flashed, and then her phone buzzed with a “ding,” lighting up an image. I was far away and could only make out that it was a photo of a… thing, hard to the point of straining.
【L · Dancer Bestie】I’ve been playing this game a long time. On the phone with a man I’m well matched with in bed, he sends me his, I send him mine, and from a few kilometers apart we feed each other to climax — it’s the best release for my nights alone. That night I thought Su Nian was dead asleep. The wet sound of my fingers pumping in and out was extra clear in the quiet dorm, squelch, squelch, and even I could smell that sweet, musky scent. Just as I neared the peak, my waist sank down and my toes curled — and right then, from the bed across from me, came a startled cry, “Ah.”
【Her · Protagonist】I couldn’t hold it in; that cry was instinct. L jolted upright like she’d been electrocuted, her phone slapping down onto the covers, the screen’s light gone dark. In the darkness neither of us moved, only our breathing. My heart pounded like it would burst through my chest, my face hot enough to fry an egg, and that place between my legs I never dared to acknowledge was now, strangely, throbbing wet and warm. I had seen it. I had seen all of it. And what shamed me more was — I actually didn’t want to look away.
【L · Dancer Bestie】I was the one who laughed first. “Nian Nian, you’ve got a real talent for peeping.” In the dark I heard her defend herself, voice almost tearful: “I — I just needed the bathroom…” I pulled my nightgown back down, unhurried, not the least bit flustered. She was the flustered one. That thought in my head had fully formed now — this half-shelled fruit, it was time to let her finish shelling it herself. “Stop pretending,” I said. “Your eyes were glued to it just now. Su Nian, is it that… you’ve never done it yourself?”
【Her · Protagonist】The darkness hid my face for me, but I knew I’d gone crimson. I didn’t answer, but my silence was the answer. Neither of us slept well the rest of that night. I lay with my back to her, thighs clamped tight, but the tighter I clamped the wetter I got, and the wetter I got the more ashamed I felt. For the first time I realized so clearly that there was a fire like that inside my body too — it was just that no one, nothing, had ever helped me light it. L’s words stuck in me like a thorn for two whole weeks — “Is it that you’ve never done it yourself?”