My Youth Begins With Loving You - CH 36

“Chen Mo!” Miao Yuan mustered up her courage. “I need to talk with you about something!”

“Hmm?” Chen Mo raised his brows in surprise.

“I want to know why you won’t let me touch your belongings. Didn’t you say you liked me? Yet I can’t even look at your guns. Even if it was too dangerous for me to handle, why won’t you even allow me to touch the scope? What danger could I possibly be in with this baton of yours? You let people you don’t know do whatever they want with your things, yet I alone can’t touch them.” Miao Yuan squeezed her hands together behind her back, feeling more and more upset as words tumbled out of her mouth. “I once borrowed your knife to cut a pear, but you refused and had me eat it whole. It’s not like it was an apple…”

“Do you really want to know why?” Chen Mo stared at her, the solemn look in his eyes containing a seed of desperation and blood-thirst.

Though Miao Yuan was shocked by the look in his eyes, she nodded firmly. Chen Mo, I want to know everything about you.

“Let’s find someplace to talk. I’ll tell you everything.” Chen Mo turned and looked around – the black silhouette of Beijing’s Drum Tower were stark against the sky. He scooped her hand up and said, “Follow me.”

It was too late to go up the Drum Tower. Chen Mo made his way through the bustling traffic and busy downtown to take her to the city wall.

It wasn’t easy to find somewhere quiet and deserted in the city. The dark brick of the ancient city wall blended into the night, just like the expression in Chen Mo’s eyes – earnest, yet desolate.

“Chen Mo, if… if it’s really something difficult for you to say… you don’t have to. I don’t have to know.” Miao Yuan took in Chen Mo’s solemn countenance, and somehow timidity seeped up in her.

“It isn’t difficult to say,” Chen Mo replied. “I’m just afraid of making you uncomfortable.”

He took the ASP baton out and placed it in her hand. “I didn’t buy this thing, but confiscated it. The man who owned it had already been handcuffed at the time, and his gun handed over with no serious injuries among us. As we were tying him, he darted up to hit me on the head. I was talking to someone else at the time, and my guard was down. He hit me right here…” Chen Mo spread his palm over his right shoulder. “The two bones there were shattered.”

Miao Yuan exclaimed, “And then?”

“And then I retired. The injury was too severe to ever completely recover. I left it there to remind me to never again let my guard down.” Chen Mo looked down, meeting Miao Yuan’s gaze. “Before this thing fell into my hands, who knows how many people it killed? After it became mine, who kept count of the lives it has taken? That’s why I don’t want you to touch it. It looks innocent and inconspicuous, but it’s a tool of murder, one that can take a a human life in the blink of an eye.”

At that moment, Miao Yuan felt like she had been blinded, and let herself fall into the depths of his eyes. Her hands were shaking, so she clenched them tight. Chen Mo took hold of her other hand, rubbing her soft palms against his callused ones. “My knife is just as dirty. It isn’t that I don’t trust you, it’s just that your hands are so clean…”

Your hands are so clean!

Soft and warm, white and flawless, with the sweet aroma of honey and cream, and fingers flowing with milk and honey. These hands should never touch weapons stained with blood. Chen Mo sometimes felt like the two of them were in different worlds. Those two worlds should not intersect, just like the two sides of the heart, just like day and night.

Just the thought of the two overlapping made him sick in fear.

Chen Mo was once fearless, his heart like a rock. Once, nothing could shake or scare him, but now… Chen Mo thought, Perhaps I just never wanted to see her and danger together. I was afraid !

Just like a moment ago, when a small, simple thing made him nervous. He was afraid. How fragile she looks, how easily broken. Chen Mo couldn’t bear to imagine what might have happened if he had been a little slower just now. If that man had jumped Miao Yuan, what might have happened? It was the irrational fear that Miao Yuan would die if she was touched but lightly by another.

A terrible fear.

“I’m sorry.” Miao Yuan’s face scrunched in chagrin. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper with you.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Chen Mo tried to smile as he stroked her hair.

“However, I can take it.” Miao Yuan’s brow was knotted, and she looked both anxious and distressed. “Although I… I know that of course I am… of no use to to you, even I am able to endure something like this. I’m not that timid.”

“That isn’t what I meant!” Why can I never explain these things clearly? Chen Mo wondered.

“I don’t know, I just, I was just wondering, if…” Miao Yuan tried to put her feelings into words while tears rushed to her eyes. “You said you loved me! If you do, don’t you understand that we will be a family in the future? I mean, we… even if you think that I’m useless, that I can’t do anything to help you, why… Why would you think that I couldn’t bear such a thing?! At the very least, I can accept you… ah…that is, I mean, as long as it is yours, I can accept it. Do you understand?”

She grabbed onto Chen Mo’s hand and looked at him eagerly.

Chen Mo opened his mouth. He wanted to say Actually, I didn’t really mean it like that, but… it seemed like she was right.

“Chen Mo?!” Miao Yuan tugged hard at the hem of his clothing, tears filled with irritation, frustration and hope falling from her eyes.

“I know… I know.” Chen Mo hurriedly wiped her tears from her face, the gently pulled her close to press her head to his chest. Miao Yuan did not fight him, leaning into his embrace and encircling her own arms about him.

Some things had not yet been made clear, and others, it seemed, were no longer so important. Chen Mo’s instinct told him that he must have found some crux this time. Unlike simply eating and watching movies, it was the key to how two people could be together.

Miao Yuan had said if we had a future together, we would become a family.

That night, Chen Mo sent Miao Yuan home. The sound-activated lights lit up one by one as their footsteps approached. When Miao Yuan took out her key to unlock the door, she found that it was dark inside, reminding her that her roommate had said this morning that she would be staying over with her boyfriend that day. Miao Yuan hesitated over whether or not to invite Chen Mo in. Momo had wanted her stay aloof, but today she did not feel aloof at all. Her hesitation stretched out, and when the sound-activated lights timed out, Miao Yuan leaned against the door and looked up at Chen Mo.

Chen Mo saw her eyes gleaming in the dark, saw her teeth nibbling on her lip, releasing it, and then smearing on a light layer of water. He leaned forward a little, his fingers lifting her chin.

“What are you doing?” she asked. Her voice was soft and weak, and Chen Mo said nothing, simply kissing her.

A kiss, a light probe, tips of the tongue reaching out for each other, a tiny tremble, a tender twining.

Chen Mo’s palms settled on Miao Yuan’s neck and waist and slowly tightened until she was completely locked into his arms. Touching Chen Mo’s lips again, feeling the heat of his body through a few layers of cloth, Miao Yuan got flustered and allowed him to press her to him and and kiss her, over and over again, moving slowly from tenderness to a savagery that left them unable to breathe.

Panting for breath, he kissed her forehead and called her name. “Miao Miao…”

“Ah?” she replied faintly.

“Let’s start over.”

“Oh.”

His embrace slackening a little, he looked into her eyes and asked, “Really?”

Her face full of heat and her ears thrumming with the sound of rushing blood, she shyly bowed her head and agreed. Chen Mo smiled and brought her into a big hug. “Take care, sleep well!”

Miao Yuan nodded in a daze. She shut the door and collapsed against it, gasping and dizzy. Ugh, how embarrassing, to not be able to stand up to even just a kiss. What a waste!

Who knew how much time passed before Miao Yuan heard the phone ringing. Dizzily, she picked up the call and asked, “Who you are looking for?”

It was Chen Mo. “Have you gone to bed?”

“Not yet,” she replied vaguely. “Is there something?”

“No, nothing, I just wanted to confirm again. Were the words you just said true?”

The heartbeat that had just leveled off spiked again. Her face was hot and it seemed like all the blood in her body was boiling. Feeling like her heart was boiling over, Miao Yuan bit her lip and said, “Oh!”

“Don’t keep saying ‘ah’, and ‘oh’. Could you give me a definite answer?”

Miao Yuan became even more speechless, her throat silent as if blocked by something. Anxious, Chen Mo told her, “If you don’t say anything, I’ll take it as an agreement.” She could only continue staying silent.

The room was quiet but for the sound of breathing coming through the microphone, heavy and messy, indistinguishable in the chaos of who was making a mess of whose heart.

“Open the door,” Chen Mo said all of a sudden.

“Which door?” Miao Yuan asked in surprise.

“I’m right outside your door. I never left. Open the door and let me see you again.”

As soon as Miao Yuan opened the door, he caught her in an embrace. Before swooning, she fell back on her backup logic to steady herself; Don’t be so melodramatic. Haven’t you been looking forward to this day?

Chen Mo chased after her soft lips in the dark, warm and gentle as jade, sweet and fragrant. He felt almost a hunger and thirst for her, as if all kinds of fantasies, be they intentional or not, had come true. He kept kissing the bright, sweet smile in memory and reality, trying to taste every subtle feeling. Miao Yuan’s misty eyes were shy and tender, her tongue inexperienced, her movements gentle.

Holding onto his neck, she whispered breathlessly in his ear, “Come pick me up from work tomorrow.”

“Why for?” he asked in surprise.

“Aren’t all men like this? You don’t cherish what you don’t work for.”

Chen Mo smiled. “Hypothetically, if we were married and I didn’t pick you up tomorrow, wouldn’t we still be married?”

Miao Yuan grieved. “So if we were married, you wouldn’t pick me up?!”

“I’d lock you up at home to do housework and be bullied,” he laughed.

Feigning anger, Miao Yuan pushed him hard. “Then I won’t marry you.”

Chen Mo took the opportunity to sit down on the sofa, his hand clasped about her waist pulling her into his lap. In a suppressed voice, he laughed in her ear, “Does that mean that as long as I pick you up from work every day, you’ll marry me?”

Miao Yuan clenched her fists, and with glittering eyes, declared, “Of course there’ll be other tests!”

Brushing aside her bangs to look into her eyes, he whispered, “What are they? Tell me all of them.”

“Well…” Miao Yuan cleared her throat and spoke very fast. “From now on, you can only love me. Indulge me, never lie to me, promise me that you’ll accomplish everything I ask you to. My every word is your truth. Don’t bully me, don’t yell at me. Believe in me – if someone hurts me, rush out to help me the first time it happens. When I’m happy, be happy with me. When I’m unhappy, be unhappy with me. Always think of me as the most beautiful. Only dream of me. In your heart, let there be only me.”

“That, uh, please slow down, say it slower…” Chen Mo was dumbfounded.

“Haven’t you ever seen “The Lion Roars”? It’s a really good old film with Cecilia Cheung.”

“I haven’t seen it. I don’t really watch movies,” he said, shaking his head.

“Argh!” Miao Yuan turned to face with him, holding his face in both hands. “Why don’t you have any entertainment in your life? You’ve had no childhood, no youth, no young adulthood…” Breaking off her list, a smile in her eyes, Miao Yuan laughed, “So let me take care of you in your middle and old age.”

Chen Mo smiled and nodded in a very well-behaved manner, and Miao Yuan heard her own heart thump loudly. With that one sound, she knew it was over. Though Momo had already told her that the most important thing was not to fall into the trap of treating him too well, how had it come to this? Miao Yuan just couldn’t understand. Why was she so desperately convinced that Chen Mo was so in need of her concern and solicitude, that he was the most pitiful person imaginable, that he was her rarest and most treasured child?

Wasn’t it the strangest misconception? Yet it was her obsession.

“I thought about the things you said. Everything else is fine, but if you aren’t happy, I can’t guarantee I can make you happy.”

“But you still have to try.” Miao Yuan stopped laughing, instead looking gentle and serious. “You must make me feel like I’m important to you. You can’t make me feel…”

Though Miao Yuan had many strengths, they did not include what men call perseverance, that patented unwavering steadfastness.

Meeting his eyes in what was almost fear, Miao Yuan whispered in a choked little voice, “Don’t drive me away again.”

“It won’t happen again. Remind me of it.” Chen Mo lifted his face to kiss her lips. They had been kissed until they were red and swollen, smooth and glistening as if to urge others to indulge. Chen Mo found his fingers moving on their own, hoping to explore further, and he loosened his grip on her somewhat awkwardly, clasping his hands together behind her.

“Hmm?” Miao Yuan looked at him with a confused, slightly delirious look.

His blood was burning in his veins, and parts of his body were changing subtly. In a tremendous fluster, Chen Mo set Miao Yuan aside. Pressing on her shoulder, he told her in a hurry, “It’s getting late. Rest. I’ll come get you tomorrow.”

Miao Yuan sat still obediently, utterly confused by his sudden defeat and retreat. What happened?

When the sun rose the next morning, she suddenly awoke from her dreams. Looking at the light shining through her curtains, she felt wide awake. Her mind had unconsciously been processing all the events of last night throughout her sleep, and she wanted to look back in the bright light of day to see if she had made any mistakes. Although she was conservatively looking forward with hope, she wanted to step forward with caution, hoping that she could do it.

Yet all of a sudden, Miao Yuan’s round apple-cheeked face flushed red. She buried her face in the quilt, rolling in laughter.