Song Yu gazed at the hazy gray sky in the distance and the crystalline blue glacier looming right in front of her. She let out a long sigh.
For some reason, Pei Zhi’s face had been dark the entire journey. Even after they pitched the tent, he hadn’t said a single word to her.
With nothing she could do about it, Song Yu got on with her own work. She set up her photography equipment on the cliff edge of the small island.
But the wind was howling fiercely. No matter what she did, the tripod refused to stay steady, wobbling as if it might collapse at any moment.
When Pei Zhi hauled the last batch of supplies up from the snowmobile to the cliff, he spotted Song Yu still fiddling with her camera. His thin lips pressed into a line, but he walked over anyway to lend a hand.
He rounded up a few heavy objects and positioned them deftly around the base of the tripod. It stood firm at last.
Song Yu looked at him. Before she could voice her thanks, Pei Zhi had already turned away to get back to his own tasks.
“…” She pouted and muttered under her breath, “Is that really necessary?”
Such a temperamental guy.
Song Yu put him out of her mind and turned back to the camera. She fine-tuned the lens, aiming it squarely at the vast expanse of glacier.
Now all there was left to do was wait.
Timing a glacier calving was notoriously tricky. Back at the Ice Station, Song Yu had only caught it twice—and from a great distance, too blurry to make out clearly. The sharpest view she’d ever had was the one from the helicopter earlier that day.
After an hour of waiting, the sky began to darken.
Song Yu wasn’t confident she could capture what she wanted over the next day or two.
While there was still some light, she cradled her camera and snapped a bunch of close-up shots of the glacier.
Pei Zhi wasn’t idle, either. He crouched on the ground with an array of detection gear she couldn’t even identify, collecting frozen soil samples from the island.
Time passed, and night fell completely. The temperature plunged even lower.
Song Yu switched off the camera’s power supply. In this extreme cold, batteries drained at an alarming rate; she had to ration them.
She scanned the surroundings. In the distance, a cluster of white light glowed—Pei Zhi was still at work, with no sign of heading back.
Song Yu jammed her hands into her coat pockets. Her right hand closed around the old man puppet inside. She stared at that beam of light piercing the blackness for a long while, until the biting cold drove her to action. She yanked open the tent flap and crawled inside alone.
To travel light, she hadn’t packed her laptop this time. Instead, she reviewed the day’s photos straight from the camera screen.
It was the same DSLR she’d taken to the rainforest. The lens edge bore the scars from when Kasi and Takwar had argued—Kasi hurling a bunch of bananas at Takwar and accidentally clipping Song Yu in the process.
Even after all this time, those scratches stood out vividly, a record of her rainforest ordeal.
Song Yu traced the white marks with her index finger. She twisted her wrist to check her watch.
Eleven at night already.
At last, footsteps crunched softly outside the tent, the telltale rasp of boots on snow.
Song Yu’s eyes flicked up. Her fingers froze on the camera button as she stared at the tent flap.
Then came the clatter of equipment being stowed away.
Through the tent’s glow, she watched a shadow draw nearer before the flap lifted.
Song Yu’s eyelashes fluttered. She jerked her gaze away, feigning nonchalance as she studied the camera display.
The tent was cramped, just big enough for two sleeping bags. It wasn’t much warmer than outside, and Pei Zhi’s entrance ushered in a fresh blast of frigid air.
Song Yu lay toward the back. Pei Zhi’s eyes brushed over her indifferently before he settled in the spot opposite.
Outside, the wind howled across the Arctic tundra. Inside, the air hung thick and still, heavy with awkward silence.
Song Yu kept her eyes fixed on the screen, but not a single photo registered. At last, she couldn’t take it anymore. She cleared her throat lightly and broke the ice.
“What time does the sun come up tomorrow? I’ll set an alarm.”
With polar night closing in, every dawn in the Arctic slipped later by the day.
Pei Zhi drew up one long leg, balancing his notebook on his knee. He fished a silver pen from his chest pocket and scribbled away at something.
“No need. I’ll wake you at first light,” he replied curtly, eyes on his work.
“You sure you’ll be up?” Song Yu pressed.
“I won’t be sleeping.” Pei Zhi kept writing his field report, adding by way of explanation, “Nights here get brutally cold. I’ll rouse you every two hours to ward off hypothermia.”
“You roll around a lot when you sleep, too. Try to stay still—curl up tight to conserve heat.”
Song Yu blinked in surprise. “How do you know I roll around in my sleep?”
“…” Pei Zhi set his pen down, slipping it into the notebook as a placeholder. He looked up at last, locking eyes with her.
His index finger tapped a slow, silent rhythm on the brown leather cover.
He just stared, saying nothing.
A beat passed. Song Yu blinked again, and it hit her like a thunderclap.
Oh.
They’d shared a bed.
She ducked away from his gaze in embarrassment, her earlobes flushing pink beneath her hair.
Pei Zhi’s lips quirked in a sardonic smirk. “You forget fast.”
Song Yu: “…”
He’d been icy and aloof all day long. Finally, she threw up her hands. “Can we just talk like normal people?”
Pei Zhi shot her a glance but didn’t budge. “That’s exactly how you’ve been talking to me for the past month.”
Song Yu: “…”
She studied him. After hours outdoors, tiny ice crystals dotted his thick eyelashes. His lips were pursed in a childish sulk.
Somehow, amid the tension crackling between them, she sensed their distance shrinking.
“Fine, my bad,” she conceded, offering him the out.
Song Yu shifted position and fished the old man puppet from her pocket. She tossed it across to him offhandedly.
“For you.”
The puppet landed with a soft thud on the sleeping pad.
Pei Zhi paused, then leaned forward to retrieve it. Still warm from prolonged contact with her body, it carried her heat.
He turned it over in his hand, idly toying with it as he met the old man’s hollow black eyes.
After a long moment, he let out a soft huff. “You’re pretty slick, passing off someone else’s gift like that.”
“Gave it to you, did they? And you’re just handing it over to me?”
Song Yu frowned. “Who said it was from someone else?”
“Wasn’t it?” Pei Zhi’s face remained impassive, though a petulant edge crept into his tone. “Zhou Yan shelled out a fortune for it.”
From the way he said it, Song Yu knew he’d misunderstood the charity gala auction. Zhou Yan bidding on the puppet for her had sparked a frenzy online; she’d wired the money back to him later but never gotten around to clearing things up publicly.
She had a modest profile in the entertainment world but hated hyping herself up. Her social media was handled entirely by her team—she never posted herself.
As long as the gossip stayed out of her face and didn’t mess with her life, she didn’t care what people said.
She’d figured Pei Zhi’s world wouldn’t overlap with that celebrity rumor mill. Apparently not.
“What are you even talking about?” Not wanting the mix-up to linger, she dove into an explanation. “At the auction, I was bidding on that puppet to give to you.”
“Then Zhou Yan jumps in and outbids me. Cost me a small fortune, and I never asked him to buy it for me.”
To head off any lingering rumors, she added, “He’s not my boyfriend, either.”
Pei Zhi’s gaze dropped to the old man puppet in front of him. He listened to her explanation in silence.
In her rush to set things straight, Song Yu’s voice took on an unintended lilt of petulance, soft as a brook.
For reasons he couldn’t quite name, the weight that had clogged Pei Zhi’s chest all day melted away in the gentle murmur of her words.
She went on for a good while with no response from him. Pouting, she grumbled, “Forget it if you don’t want it.” She’d hate to let it go, truth be told.
Back when the puppet sat gathering dust at home, Pei Zhi hadn’t given it a second thought. It was just another knickknack; as a kid, he’d even found those glassy eyes creepy. Now it struck him as oddly endearing, almost familiar.
Slowly, the corners of Pei Zhi’s mouth lifted. He closed his fist securely around the puppet. “A gift once given can’t just be taken back.”
The strained air thawed between them. Neither was much of a talker, so the tent fell quiet once more—but this time, it felt easy, comfortable.
Song Yu snuck peeks now and then at the man bent over his report, remembering his sulky demeanor from earlier and finding it rather endearing.
Drained from the day’s exertions, she soon gave in to exhaustion and burrowed into her sleeping bag.
Pei Zhi switched off the main light, leaving only a small one that wouldn’t bother her.
Eyes shut, she savored the sleeping bag’s meager warmth. The wind roared outside, mingled with the faint scratch of pen on paper. Lulled by the sounds, she drifted into a deep sleep.
Some time later, in the haze between sleep and waking, Song Yu heard a soft murmur by her ear. Someone gently nudged her shoulder.
She felt bitterly cold all over, the sleeping bag wrapped around her offering scarcely more than a thin layer of protection. She couldn’t even pry her eyes open.
Song Yu frowned and buried her head deeper into the sleeping bag.
“Song Yu.”
“Wake up.”
The person nudging her was persistent, even patting the side of her face as he called her name. His voice was low and husky, rich and pleasing to the ear.
At last, she blearily cracked her eyes open, squinting sleepily.
A strikingly handsome face came into view—high nose bridge, sharp jawline—casting a shadow over her. Even after being roused from sleep, she couldn’t bring herself to be angry with him.
Pei Zhi extended a single finger. “What’s one plus one?”
Song Yu blinked in surprise, mumbling the answer on instinct. “Two.”
Satisfied, Pei Zhi swept the thermometer gun across her forehead. Her temperature was normal. He tugged her sleeping bag higher. “Good. Go back to sleep.”
Song Yu: “……”
She was so exhausted that her eyes drifted shut again in moments.
It was only after she’d drifted off that awareness slowly seeped back in, chasing away some of her drowsiness. She opened her eyes once more and peered at her watch in the faint light.
The time read four in the morning.
Song Yu’s memories gradually sharpened. Two hours earlier, Pei Zhi had woken her the same way, asking absurdly simple questions to gauge whether she was truly alert.
Rubbing her eyes, she poked her head and arms out of the sleeping bag and sat up.
Only after emerging from its warmth did she register how frigid the tent was. A thin layer of frost had even formed on the fabric.
Pei Zhi was half-reclining in the corner, cocooned in his own sleeping bag, his head bowed slightly as he pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers.
He noticed her stirring and slowly raised his head, his movements visibly sluggish.
Song Yu spoke softly. “You get some sleep. I’ll take over the watch.”
Pei Zhi shook his head, his voice hoarse. “No need. You sleep.”
In the dim light, she could see the prominent red veins in his eyes, exhaustion etched into every line of his face.
“Then neither of us will sleep,” she said.
Pei Zhi met her gaze. Her bright eyes burned with stubborn resolve.
He let out a helpless chuckle. He was bone-tired anyway, so he didn’t argue. “Wake me in two hours.”
Song Yu watched as he settled fully into his sleeping bag, nothing but his dark head poking out. Before long, his breathing fell into a steady rhythm.
Pei Zhi was an excellent sleeper. Once he lay down, he didn’t stir at all—unlike her, who had to wrap herself up tight just to keep from fidgeting.
The night dragged on interminably. Barely ten minutes into her watch, Song Yu was already growing restless, glancing at her watch every few moments. She had no idea how Pei Zhi had managed to stay awake for nearly the entire night.
Two hours later.
Song Yu shifted her stiff, numb legs and rolled onto her side. Reaching across, she gave Pei Zhi’s shoulder a gentle push through the sleeping bag.
At the lightest touch, his head popped out—like a reflex ingrained in his body. His eyes remained closed, and he let out a low hum.
Song Yu stared at his face. His skin was pale and cool-toned, long black lashes fanning shadows across his cheeks.
A faint cedar scent lingered in the air.
Holding her breath, she posed a simple question in English to test his responsiveness.
“Who am I?”
Pei Zhi’s eyes fluttered open slowly. He blinked a couple of times, his voice warm and languid, still half-lost in sleep.
“My sweet berry.”