Lin Wan was a girl raised on rules. Her parents kept her on the tightest leash: no coming home late as a student, nothing revealing once she was working, and the word ‘dating’ was all but forbidden in her house. Born in ’99, into her twenties, the so-called relationships she had were nothing past holding hands. She stood five foot eight, shoulders straight and firm, but that figure could not be hidden no matter where she planted herself — her chest was a full, honest E cup that pushed a gap open between the buttons of even the plainest work shirt; her waist cut inward, and below it swelled a round, heavy pair of cheeks that set the fabric swaying as she walked. She hated the way it drew eyes, so she always wore loose, baggy gardening clothes, bundling her body up proper and prim.
She was a gardener. All day she crouched in the flower beds, black soil packed under her nails, her knees pressed into the damp earth as she bent to prune the climbing vines. When she bent, her gardening trousers pulled taut, drawing that heavy pair of cheeks into a full curve, the cleft sinking into a shallow furrow beneath the cloth; the male workers passing by would let their gaze catch there before hurrying it away. Her thighs were full too, the flesh squeezing outward when she squatted, straining the legs of her trousers tight. She had grown used to those looks, and used to pretending she saw nothing — she was a woman with a home, a proper woman, near-blank before her wedding.
Two years ago she married. Her husband, Zhou Yu, was a steady, dependable man, and the wedding was done with dignity. In the first few months of the marriage she tasted that thing for the first time, clumsy and shy, but sweet too. A body raised so strictly, so tightly reined in, was like a room locked shut for years, finally pushed open a crack. But before she could truly step inside that room, the crack slowly sealed again — Zhou Yu took on a big project.
【Zhou Yu · Husband】That project was the chance I had waited years for. I threw myself in headfirst, out early and back late, one work dinner after another. I would get home past midnight most nights, the liquor still not gone from me, and drop straight to sleep. I knew I was neglecting Wanwan. It was not that I did not want to touch her — who would not? I knew exactly what kind of woman I had married: that figure, that chest, that ass, the things my buddies had quietly envied. But once you are worn down to the bone, that little urge cannot hold out against exhaustion. I kept telling myself it would be fine once this stretch of the project passed. I kept telling myself that — one month, two months, half a year.
【Zhou Yu · Husband】Sometimes in the middle of the night I would turn over, half-asleep, and brush against her back. Her skin was so soft, so hot. I would reach out and pull her in, and she would press into me, that soft, heavy chest resting on my arm. Something in me would warm too. But on a day when I had drunk enough to churn my stomach, my mind still running the numbers on tomorrow’s contract, that warmth could not last ten minutes. I would pat her and say another day, say I was tired. I said another day far too many times. It never occurred to me that a woman’s ‘another day’ piles up and ferments.
It was not that Lin Wan had never felt the sting. The first few times she leaned toward her husband on her own, only to be pushed back by that weary ‘another day’, her face would burn a while, and then she would roll over and swallow it herself. But the body cannot endure the way a face can. In that half-year after the wedding she was like a fire just lit, blazing, with no one to feed it wood. At night she lay alone on the wide bed, and that place inside her that had only just been broken open would go strangely empty, empty enough to itch, and the harder she tried not to think of it the clearer it grew.
【Lin Wan · Inner Voice】The first time I bought that thing, I placed the order hiding in the bathroom. My hands were shaking. On the day it arrived I stared at the delivery box by the door a long time before I dared open it, like a thief. The first one was small, pink, and when I used it I buried my face in the pillow from shame, tears coming out — not from sorrow, but from that strange pleasure I had never felt before, the kind I pushed myself into inch by inch, and it frightened me. Me, a woman who barely let anyone hold her hand before marriage, and here I was in the dead of night, alone on an empty bed, doing a thing like this.
【Lin Wan · Inner Voice】But the small one stopped being enough fast. The body has too good a memory; once it remembers what it feels like to be truly filled, it refuses to settle again. So I placed another order, one size up. And later the boxes kept getting bigger, and where I hid them moved from the drawer to a shoebox in the very back of the wardrobe. Every new box I opened, I told myself this was the last one, but every time I came so hard I convulsed and lay limp on the bed gasping, that place was still empty — what it wanted was never plastic, but a living, breathing person, one who would breathe, press down on me, call my name.
It was at a time like this that she met him. It was a trade training seminar on new methods of garden upkeep. She sat in the back row, taking careful notes. During the break, the man beside her struck up a conversation, talking about a certain disease that afflicts climbing vines, and they clicked. Before the seminar ended, the two of them exchanged contact details, saying it would be good to consult each other on professional matters down the line. At the time she truly meant it that way. A married, proper woman adding a colleague — nothing more natural in the world.
【Gu Shen · The Man Online】That day at the training I saw her at a glance. Back row, dressed so plainly, but plain could not hold that figure down — she bent her head over her notes, and that gap at the collar of her shirt, I looked at it the whole afternoon. I moved over and started with pests, with fertilizer, with the most unremarkable, upright talk. The tighter a woman wraps herself up, the straighter she sits, the more there usually is pressed down inside. When she added me, her tone was all polite, all strictly-business. I smiled. Strictly-business women, I have met plenty. You just take it slow.
At first it really was only consulting. She would photograph a diseased leaf and send it to him, and he would reply quickly, clear and orderly, even pressing for details. Bit by bit she grew used to trading a few words with him every day. He knew his trade, and he was funny, his words measured yet always stepping lightly right up to the edge of that measure. When she sent a work photo of herself crouched in the flower beds — only the flowers in frame — he said, ‘That pot behind you is blooming so well; you yourself must be quite the sight too.’ She stared at that line a long while, deleted her reply three times, and in the end sent back only a smiley face.
【Lin Wan · Inner Voice】I knew it was wrong. A married woman, chatting with another man into the night, waiting for his messages until my heart raced — that was wrong. But I could not control it. Zhou Yu was hardly ever home in those days; I had to think hard just to recall the last time we had done it. And the person on the other side of the screen, every word of his landed on my heart, landed in all the corners no one bothered with. He would ask if I was tired today, would remember what I had said last time. These little things, my husband had long stopped having room for. I was like a plant too long without water — whoever gave a single drop, toward them I bent.
【Gu Shen · The Man Online】You know yourself when the heat is right. One night we talked late, and I steered the words in that direction, testing — asked whether she got lonely home alone. She was silent a long time, long enough that I thought I had misstepped. Then she replied with one line: ‘I do.’ Just that one word. I knew it was done. A woman willing to admit to you in the dead of night that she ‘gets lonely’ is admitting to more than loneliness. I did not rush to press further; I pulled back and talked of other things, of flowers, of the weather. Let her turn that ‘I do’ over and over on her own. A person starved a long time — you do not need to feed her, you only need to let her discover for herself how hungry she is.
【Lin Wan · Inner Voice】After I answered ‘I do’ that night, I did not sleep the whole night through. I kept thinking, what on earth am I doing. I reached into the shoebox for the newest, biggest one, and used it in the dark, but this time it satisfied me less than any time before. Because for the first time there was a specific face in my mind, a specific voice. I was using a cold thing while thinking of a living man. When I was done I lay there, tears sliding into my ears. Only then did I understand — buying those boxes that kept getting bigger had really been, all along, an excuse I made for a thought I did not dare admit.
【Zhou Yu · Husband】During that stretch I even thought Wanwan had grown more docile than before. She no longer leaned in at night, no longer looked at me with something on the tip of her tongue. I even felt relieved, thinking she understood how busy I was. One day I got home early for once and saw her smiling at her phone. I asked who it was, and she hurriedly turned the screen face down, said it was a colleague asking about something in the trade. I believed her. Why would I not? She was the Wanwan I married, so proper you could set your heart at ease. I patted her head and said thank you for putting up with it, I have not had time for you lately. She let out an ‘mm’, her eyes not on me. Back then I just took her for tired.
Their talk grew more and more explicit. He would ask how she comforted herself when she was alone; at first she would not say, but coaxed line by line she even typed it out and sent it, her face flushed. He came to know about the boxes, came to know they kept getting bigger. From the other side of the screen he said, ‘However big a plastic thing is, it is still cold.’ She stared at that line, her palms slick with sweat. She knew what he meant, and she knew she had little retreat left. That night he sent a message: ‘Why not — I could come over and take a look at those flowers you grow?’ She held the phone and sat in the dark a long, long time, and in the end she replied with a single word: ‘Okay.’