Xi Yu looked down at his own pale hand, faint veins visible beneath the skin, resting on his knee beside Que Zhi’s large, calloused, bronze-colored palm—the contrast stark between them.
Que Zhi’s fingers brushed over the red marks on his knuckles, the touch so light he could barely feel the roughness of the calluses.
“There,” Que Zhi said, releasing his hand.
“You’re hurt.” Xi Yu was staring at his arm.
On the outside of Que Zhi’s forearm was a gash from a flying stone—not deep, but long. Most of his sleeve was torn, blood and sand mingled into a dark red crust. Que Zhi followed Xi Yu’s gaze to his own arm and shook his head. “It’s nothing.”
“Sit still,” Xi Yu said. He rummaged through his pack and pulled out his own faded green robe—the one he’d washed and dried just last night—and without hesitation, tore off one sleeve with a sharp rip.
The sound of tearing fabric was especially crisp in the silent Gobi. He shredded the sleeve into strips, poured water from the waterskin to wet them, then took Que Zhi’s arm and began carefully cleaning the sand from the wound.
His fingers were those of a writer—slender, pale, nails clipped short—yet he handled this task of tending a wound with surprising deftness: light when wiping away sand, firm when winding the cloth, wrapping it in neat, even layers, and finally tying a small knot at the wrist.
Xi Yu kept his head down, his lashes casting faint shadows beneath his eyes, his expression focused—as if he were writing an important letter.
When the bandaging was done, he patted the knot and said, “There.”
Que Zhi looked down at the neat little knot on his arm, then at the remaining half-sleeve in Xi Yu’s hand. Xi Yu’s robe now had only one sleeve left, the right cuff hanging empty and fluttering in the wind, revealing a pale slender forearm beneath. A one-sleeved scholar—he looked both comical and pitiful.
But his bandaging skill was truly good—the cloth was wrapped neither too loose nor too tight, and the knot on the side wouldn’t press against the wound. Que Zhi spoke, his voice slower than usual, as if weighing each word before letting it out: “Your robe.”
“It’s just torn.” Xi Yu stood up, brushed the sand off his knees, and turned his back to pack his things, a light smile flickering at the corner of his mouth as he tossed out casually, “You can buy me a new one later anyway.”
He turned a little faster than usual, presenting his back to Que Zhi.
That silhouette—the empty half-sleeve of his green robe fluttering gently in the evening breeze, his spine straight, the small patch of skin at the nape of his neck dazzlingly white in the fading sunset glow.
Xi Yu was bent over, reattaching the waterskin to the camel saddle, his fingers still trembling slightly—whether from gripping the blanket too hard earlier, or from something else, he couldn’t tell.
Que Zhi watched that back, and what sprouted in his heart was no longer merely “this person shouldn’t be locked away.”
Moments ago, he had been curled up in a small ball amid the endless yellow sand, clutching the waterskin desperately to his chest, the red welts on his hands stark against his skin. Yet when he poked his head out from the blanket, red-rimmed eyes first looking not at his own injuries but at his arm. His fingers had still been trembling while bandaging him, but not a single strip had loosened.
This man probably had no idea how irresistible he was—tearing off a sleeve, saying “you’ll pay me back,” turning away so his expression couldn’t be seen. He probably thought these were ordinary things, things he would do for anyone.
Que Zhi thought of that bronze mirror behind the counter at the inn in that border town. The face reflected in it—peach-blossom eyes, a tear mole at the corner, a faint blush at the outer edges of his eyes—so beautiful it didn’t seem real. The innkeeper had said he’d sat at the entrance watching the street for days, always polite and gentle with everyone, yet with no warmth behind it.
He’d looked at the caravans through a veil, at the neighbors through a veil—except when he was by the campfire, ordering him to pour water for his feet. Except just now, when he was bandaging his wound without that distance.
Some people’s willfulness is a weapon, but his wasn’t—he seemed genuinely unaware that some things didn’t have to be carried alone, genuinely unused to being cared for, which was why he demanded it so boldly.
That boldness wasn’t being spoiled—it was eighteen years of careful concealment, finally finding someone worth speaking to.
Not “I care about you.” It was “I care about you”—the person. Not wanting to get anything from you. It was already taking you as one of his own.
Que Zhi ran his fingers over the neatly tied cloth knot on his arm.
He had never owned many fine clothes in his life, and he had received more wounds than gifts. This was the first time anyone had tied a bandage knot with such care—as if the act of bandaging itself was something worth taking seriously. He tucked his curved blade back into his belt and swung onto his camel.
“Xi Yu.”
“Hm?”
“Your sleeve.” He shifted his gaze from that empty cuff to Xi Yu’s profile, his voice low but unable to fully suppress the molten current running beneath it. “I’ll repay you.”
Xi Yu was just shaking sand out of his hair ribbon. His hand paused at the words, then he lowered his head and continued shaking. The tips of his ears, hidden beneath his loose hair, showed a faint blush—indistinguishable from the dying sunset glow on the horizon.
After the sandstorm, the Gobi was eerily quiet.
The wind had smoothed the surface of the dunes—no footprints, no camel tracks, no trace of anyone having passed through.
The desert had become a blank canvas, as if the storm had been meant to erase everything so they could start from scratch.
Xi Yu rode on his camel, watching the tall figure ahead, still clutching the now-cool waterskin in his arms.
The sunset spilled from the west, casting their long shadows—one behind the other—across the freshly smoothed sand.
The two camels were half a length apart, their shadows on the dunes sometimes overlapping, sometimes separating, like two ink characters blown by the wind, always staying close together.
After the sandstorm, heaven and earth seemed to have been washed anew. All the scattered traces on the Gobi had been erased—camel prints, withered grass, shattered stones, the charcoal remnants of yesterday’s fire—all gone. The dunes had been reshaped by the wind, their surfaces smooth as satin, their folds uniform, as if someone had combed the entire desert with a giant comb. The sky was an unreal blue—that transparent, crystalline clarity that only comes after a heavy rain—not a single cloud in sight, as if yesterday’s storm had not only swept away the sand but also all the impurities from the heavens.
Xi Yu rode atop his camel, gazing at this cleansed world, and suddenly felt something swelling in his chest.
Not tension, not lingering fear, not even the relief of having survived.
Yesterday’s sandstorm—he had curled up under the blanket and counted over three thousand heartbeats. Sand had lashed against his hands through the fabric. The wind had roared as if the sky were falling. He had bitten his lips until they cracked, tasting the metallic tang of sand on his tongue.
But he hadn’t been afraid. Not the kind of “forcing myself not to be afraid” courage—he truly hadn’t felt fear.
Because he knew that outside the sandstorm, there was someone.
That someone had said, “When the storm passes, I’ll come find you,” in a tone so flat it sounded like a statement of fact—like saying the sun rises from the east.
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