They sat very close together.
Song Yu lifted her eyes and caught sight of the man’s high, straight nose bridge and his long black eyelashes.
His head was bowed, strands of hair scattered across his forehead. His gaze burned with intensity as he stared at the black pattern on her neck. Joy flickered in his dark pupils, like Columbus discovering the New World.
“Where did this come from?” Pei Zhi’s voice was low and magnetic, rising a couple of tones higher than usual.
His finger lightly traced the line of the pattern along Song Yu’s neck.
The touch of his fingertip sent an itchy, tingling sensation across her skin.
It was an undeniably intrusive gesture, yet his eyes held no trace of illicit desire—only pure, honest curiosity.
Song Yu, on the other hand, felt her thoughts scatter, her pulse quickening.
She swallowed hard, afraid she might actually throw herself at him.
After a moment’s hesitation, Song Yu leaned back, putting some distance between them.
In the heavy silence, even the faint rustle of fabric sounded strikingly clear.
Pei Zhi came back to himself, realizing his impropriety.
“Sorry,” he said, his voice cool and even.
He met her gaze, his eyes like the clearest ocean on earth or the most transparent mirror, utterly devoid of any hidden motives.
Song Yu looked into those eyes and felt a pang of unfairness.
He had been the one to cross a line first, and yet here she was, ashamed of her own wandering mind.
She turned her face away, cleared her throat lightly, and haltingly explained the origin of the marking on her neck.
Back when she would pitch stories at script readings for films, Song Yu could rattle them off with ease and confidence.
But now, recounting the day’s encounter, she stumbled over her words—whether from nerves under his stare or something else—stuttering through the tale of meeting the Native American old woman.
“Do you know where she went?”
Song Yu shook her head, noting the clear disappointment that crossed the man’s face.
“Is she someone close to you?”
Pei Zhi’s gaze drifted back to the pattern on her neck. “This is a common body-painting motif used by the Apotara Tribe,” he explained.
“My grandmother originally belonged to that tribe.”
If he could meet that old woman, he might finally track down his grandmother’s fate.
Song Yu frowned at the name of the tribe—it rang a bell.
Her memory had always been sharp. She recalled reading about it in a recent issue of Nature, in an article documenting the status of Brazilian Native American tribes.
The Apotara Tribe had vanished decades ago. The last confirmed sighting had been of just the chieftain and his son.
“If it’s not too much trouble, could I sketch it?” Pei Zhi asked.
“Sorry,” he added quickly, aware of how rude the request must sound.
“…” Song Yu raised her eyes to him.
His expression was open and earnest, his black hair neatly framing his clear, gentlemanly features.
Starlight seemed to dance in his pupils, reflecting a deep yearning and passion for the remnants of his ancestors’ legacy.
Song Yu’s breath grew shallow, as if under some spell. Her hand moved to the zipper of her jacket and tugged it downward with a gentle rasp.
The sound cut sharply through the quiet space.
The jacket fell open, revealing the full pattern painted across her body. Black vine-like lines twisted down to the hollow below her collarbone.
Beneath it, a smoky gray camisole hugged her form, baring her flat stomach. The low neckline exposed broad swaths of porcelain skin, smooth as ivory, with the gentle swells beneath her beauty bones teasingly half-hidden.
“…” Pei Zhi froze, his gaze lingering for a dazed moment.
He quickly lowered his eyes, schooling the flicker of emotion from his pupils.
The rain outside pounded harder.
Low spots in the ground had already flooded to ankle depth, and vendors in the market were stirring, hurriedly shifting their wares to higher ground.
Inside the tent, the silence deepened.
Pei Zhi’s hand was steady as he held his pen, drawing a crisp horizontal line across the paper. He frequently flicked his eyes up toward her neck.
“Could you tilt your chin up a little higher?” He flipped the pen around, gesturing with its end.
“…” Song Yu shot him a glance. Pei Zhi had already ducked his head again, sketching away—whether by design or accident, avoiding her eyes.
She tsked inwardly and grudgingly lifted her chin.
The motion thrust her chest forward, arched her back, and hiked the camisole enough to bare her navel: a neat, round dimple, shallow and perfectly formed.
He caught it from the corner of his eye, and his dark gaze deepened.
Like glimpsing something too bright to bear, he snapped his eyes away. His pen hovered, the line on the paper trailing off.
Song Yu held the awkward pose, staring up at the tent’s white ceiling. Light filtered through, revealing the black corpses of insects felled by the rain.
The dimness made the work tricky.
Pei Zhi leaned in closer, squinting slightly at the dark lines.
A faint cedar scent brushed her face.
Song Yu blinked, holding her breath. Heat flooded her ears, hidden behind her hair.
Her back went rigid; her right hand, braced against the ground, had gone numb. She shifted just a fraction.
Thunder crashed with a deafening boom.
Lightning flared at the same instant, flooding the tent with stark white light.
Song Yu startled, jerking—and the soft swell of her chest grazed the outside of the man’s arm.
The contact burned like fire; they sprang apart in unison.
The flash died, plunging the tent back into shadow.
“…” They both pretended it hadn’t happened and lapsed into silence.
Pei Zhi kept his eyes down on the paper, but the memory of that yielding softness clung to his arm, lingering and distracting.
His next strokes warped, ink bleeding across the page.
The pen’s scrape over paper droned on, line after line, grating unbearably. Song Yu regretted it now, her mouth parched.
The kerosene lamp cast a warm, hazy glow, veiling the sealed space in an atmosphere thick enough to stifle breath.
At last, after what felt like ages, Pei Zhi snapped his notebook shut.
“Done,” he said.
A subtle huskiness threaded his voice.
“…” Song Yu let out a quiet sigh of relief. She yanked the zipper back up, hiding the black pattern once more.
The rain kept falling.
Takwar, dead to the world until then, jolted awake from the storm. He clambered out of his hammock in the next tree over and dashed into the downpour, hauling goods to higher ground.
He bellowed for Kasi to lend a hand as he worked.
Kasi stayed burrowed in her own hammock—either out cold or ignoring him—silent as stone.
“Aren’t you going out to help?” Song Yu drew her legs up, flipping open her laptop across her knees.
Pei Zhi stayed bent over his notes, unmoved. “Takwar can manage on his own.” His tone had cooled back to its usual reserve.
That was how it always was in their tribe: never too distant, never too familiar.
No one wanted to brave this weather anyway.
Song Yu shrugged and let it drop. Her fingers danced across the keys as she began to type.
A few drips leaked into the tent now and then, but it beat the torrent outside.
In the raw, untamed rainforest, a dry refuge was cause enough for thanks.
For some reason, amid the patter of rain, inspirations flooded Song Yu’s mind.
She hammered out snippet after snippet.
The keyboard chattered, blending with the pen’s faint scratch.
Lost in their separate tasks, neither disturbing the other, they fell into an easy harmony.
—Until the rain began to ease.
Pei Zhi finished compiling his field notes and raised his eyes. His gaze slanted toward the woman across from him.
Song Yu bent low over her work, lips pursed in unconscious concentration, her raven hair spilling feather-light onto her shoulders.
Her fingers were long and graceful, nails rounded with a soft pink sheen. She chuckled softly at whatever she read, brows lifting in a way that radiated seductive charm.
Pei Zhi saw how her smile transformed her features, her lips blooming like fresh roses in their natural pale blush.
A single glance up at him in that moment, and she could claim his heart without effort.
Song Yu had emptied her burst of ideas onto the page; her fingers hovered motionless over the keys.
“What are you writing?” Pei Zhi asked, his voice measured.
When immersed in writing, Song Yu’s moods swung with the story—she hated interruptions until the end, when elation made her chatty.
“A script. Life in the tribe sparks so many ideas for me.”
He glanced her way, his tone neutral. “So that’s why you came back?”
Not to chase after him, then.
Song Yu skimmed the draft at a glance, tapping a slender white finger to her lips with a soft “Mm.”
She fixed the last misspelling and paused. “Not entirely. On the way back, I read a magazine.”
She turned to the man across from her and faithfully relayed the anthropology report from Nature.
Song Yu especially loved the scholar’s closing words.
Her voice came out warm and languid as she quoted:
“Some tribes vanish in the literal sense—through utter disappearance and death.
“Others begin to fade the moment they enter modern civilization’s vast glass conservatory, where ancient ways go unpassed, and forebears are forgotten.”
Song Yu paused. “Pretty well put, right?”
“That’s why I want to record something before you step into that glass house.”
“Oh, right.” Song Yu added, “This anthropologist is Chinese too.” There was a note of proud boasting in her tone—for her homeland, for her blood kin.
On this foreign soil halfway around the world, it felt like a distant connection had formed across the void.
“…”
A long silence stretched out.
Pei Zhi stared at her in a daze, his gaze falling into the woman’s clear eyes, bright as a glittering galaxy.
This was the first time Pei Zhi had heard someone discuss his research report so earnestly.
Anthropological work wasn’t like research in other fields, where scholars often basked in fame and accolades. Instead, it meant journeying back into the darkness toward the past, sifting through chilly caves for traces of history, enduring the relentless tedium day after day.
When they finally emerged, it was usually into obscurity, their findings rarely drawing any notice.
In the past, Pei Zhi hadn’t cared much whether anyone saw his results. Once a paper was published, that was that. He spent most of his time working in the wilderness and wasn’t even sure when this particular article had come out.
“But if he knew the Apotara Tribe might still exist, he’d definitely be thrilled.”
Song Yu thought of that anthropologist, lost somewhere in a forest at this very moment.
At her words, Pei Zhi lowered his lashes and let out a soft, low chuckle.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice low and unhurried.
He spoke in Chinese, with flawless pronunciation.
Song Yu blinked in surprise.
Then she remembered how Xu Zhouxu had taught everyone simple Chinese phrases back at the tribe. “Thank you” was the easiest to learn and remember, so Takwar and the others used it frequently, tossing it Song Yu’s way from time to time to convey friendliness and politeness.
She had never heard Pei Zhi speak Chinese before, but it sounded even better than the local tribal dialect or his English—a magnetic timbre resonating from deep in his chest.
A tingling itch crept into Song Yu’s ears.
Her ring finger trembled faintly. Without thinking, she pressed down, accidentally hitting the delete key.
By the time the long block of text vanished from the screen, she blinked, realized her mistake, and frantically tapped the undo shortcut.
“Are you still writing that story about the Native American who falls in love with a Chinese girl?” Pei Zhi asked. He remembered her mentioning it before.
“Maybe,” Song Yu said with a shrug. “Not necessarily.”
Once the text was restored, she hit save and looked up at him. The man’s face was handsome, his eyes clear and profoundly deep.
Pei Zhi’s gaze rested on her face. “Why not necessarily?”
Their eyes met.
The kerosene lamp’s glow enveloped them, and for an instant, everything fell still.
Song Yu fell silent for a moment, then abruptly ducked her head, avoiding his gaze.
In a tiny voice, she muttered in Chinese, “But you haven’t fallen in love with me.”
Her words were so soft they seemed to dissolve into the air before reaching anyone else’s ears.
Irritation surged through Song Yu. With a sharp snap, she closed her laptop.
“The rain has stopped,” she said, switching back to English. She flung open the tent flap and scrambled down the short ladder, fleeing as if pursued.
“…”
Pei Zhi froze in place, his profile shrouded in shadow, his expression unreadable. No one could tell what he was thinking.
His gaze lingered on the still-swaying tent flap.
After a long while, he drew in a slow, deep breath, but he couldn’t quell the restlessness stirring in his heart.