Qin | Part 6

Every time they hung out together, Qin texted someone every now and then. As he approached, she flinched, hiding the phone screen, as if he was a voyeur peeping at her verbal flirtation. She hung up some incoming calls. Persistence of the annoyed callers obviously taxed her patience. "Don't you understand?" she complained of the inconvenience. He'd prove an incorrigible fool if he couldn't have understood what her aberration adumbrated.

He came to realize she had grown sophisticated to ask for bribes from her wooers and seduced them through a slow and piecemeal process to become bogged down in sunk costs. A handful of lollipops this time, a bag of marshmallow plus two cans of bonbon next time; sometimes purchasing a gym card for her would do the trick, while other times only treating her to breakfast for an entire week should make up for her. And she reserved every right to charge against a pool of her crooked fuckers: "So selfish, so pushy, you all are. I'll pick none of you."

Her manipulative predilection set fire on his inflammable urge to possess her. A glimpse of her, and his libido was raging. He seized every opportunity to tug her into his arms, smelling into her hair, cut short with above shoulder length, the scalp of this roe emitting her unique whiff of pheromone. He grabbed her from her back, shoving his nose right into her neck, inhaling the intoxicating musk from this doe in rut.

But every time he attempted to feast on her, Qin almost always managed to break free and pushed him away. Her lukewarm reaction was slowly driving him paranoid. The biting venom of jealousy, the boiling twinge of qualms, the gnawing pain of unrequited infatuation, all came together to whip him to spy on her, patrol room after room, sniff here and there, and heed all her words and deeds during every break between his classes.

"A boy said he really needed talk to her." A student snitched to him. He searched his mind for a possible location and soon pinpointed an empty classroom at the moment.

Viola! There you two!

Qin and a chubby boy, they put their arms around each other, hugging, fumbling, fondling, kissing.

What a coincidence.

Qin panicked, pushing away that boy, who, without saying anything, trotted out of the classroom awkwardly.

"He said he needed a farewell gift. And he'd bother me no more if I give it to him now." She was even laughing at her own pretext, "...and here you are".

She lifted her arm to grab his hand, a gesture of apology. He yanked back his hand:

"Don't. Disgusting."

She bowed her head, like a damsel caught right in the middle of touching herself.

He said nothing more. No sooner did he walk out of that room than he squatted down and buried his face into his knees, the only way he could quench his tumultuous emotions.

Later, she sent him a text message: "I know you won't let me explain. Perhaps I have a character problem."

She didn't even try to wrangle out a compromise with him. He could have launched a fusillade of atrocious yells at her. But he didn't. He couldn't.

That night, constant chills and intolerable fever took turns to rack his body. He measured his temperature and it was over 38℃.

One thing was crystal clear: What they had here was nothing more than a false intimacy, an irrelationship: Qin never cared about what he felt, or what he wanted deep inside. She didn't even try to be more tuned in to his needs.

Nor did he.

He sent her a message: I have a high fever. Answer me: Was it my fever that pushed you away?

After a while, he received a call from her:

"You all right?"

"I'll live."

"Good. Bye."

She hang up, as if nothing had ever happened.

That night, he had a dream: he was locked in the KTV room. He didn't even try to break out. A bunch of faceless gangsters rushed in, tackling him down onto the ground. Volleys of punching and stomping were pouring upon him. And they pulled him up, wrapping around his stripped body with multiple layers of firecrackers and dynamites. They lit the fuse. With continuous explosions deafening his ears, he could saw his flesh being ripped apart into bloody minces. A roaring firework shrouded in scarlet frog was more dazzling than all adultery combined a most voluptuous nympho could ever imagine.