Yu and Jing - Chapter 7

It was hardly surprising that Brother Chen Shi fell for Lu Jing at first sight. When Lu Jing wore women’s clothes, every glance and smile seemed seductive even when he intended nothing by it. He had once told me that the women running the brothel taught the children how to captivate men. After so long in their company, he had picked up some of their manner without meaning to. Yet I suspected women were hardly immune to him either.

Or perhaps twenty years of living as a man had given me a man’s way of thinking.

I spent the afternoon entertaining such nonsense. After dinner, I brought medicinal wine to Lu Jing. He reached to take it and apply it himself, but I refused. “Your abdomen is injured. You shouldn’t bend over.”

He slipped his foot out from under the quilt. It was pale and clean, with the angry swelling around his ankle standing out sharply.

Once I saw an injury, there was no room in my mind for anything else. “Have you washed it?”

“Just now.”

“Good. This may hurt a little. Bear with me.”

I sat at the foot of the bed, rested his foot on my thigh, rubbed medicinal wine onto my hands, and began to massage around the swelling.

“Tell me if it hurts.”

“It’s fine. It doesn’t.”

To anyone looking in, it was merely one man massaging another man’s foot. Candlelight swayed. Outside, a stray cat cried.

It was spring. The cats were in heat.

The air grew strange again.

Fortunately, Lu Jing spoke first. “Have you never thought of marrying, Doctor Jiang?”

I looked up. He smiled. “I was conscious for a while during the day. I heard what Second Aunt Chen said.”

Ah. After Chen Shi arrived, she had reminded me on her way out not to forget my meeting with that girl in a few days.

“Not really. I’m alone now, and I’m doing well enough.”

I had been lonely when Father first died. But after three years, I was used to living alone. Besides, I was a woman passing as a man. Marriage was a fantasy for someone like me.

Lu Jing gave a soft laugh. “You’re wrong about one thing, Doctor Jiang.”

“What?”

His quiet voice was like the evening breeze. “You’ve taken me in. How can you say you’re alone?”

My palm felt slick. I could not tell whether it was the medicinal wine or his skin.

The cat cried again outside. It made me restless.

I heard myself say, “That’s right. You still have to work off your debt to me.”

The same absurd dream came that night. I lay over him with our necks entwined. He panted again and again by my ear while the stray cat called again and again outside.

When I woke the next morning, a vivid red stain marked the bedding.

My monthly bleeding had started. No wonder the spring dreams kept coming.

As I hung the sheet to dry in the courtyard, I glanced around like a thief, afraid Lu Jing might see it and ask a question. Then I remembered he was recovering and could not come out, so he would see nothing.

It did not occur to me then that his bedroom window looked straight onto the courtyard.