She seems propelled by some unknown mission, one in which she has somehow decided he is her accomplice. Sometimes her eyes flash with jealousy when he mentions things she’s never experienced or hasn’t learned in school. She makes him sneak books from the schoolhouse or from his father’s room for her. When the Ming Pao begins serializing The Return of the Condor Heroes, they spread the newspaper out on the blanket and read it together. Sometimes they read the stories aloud, though she prefers it when it isn’t her turn. She says she likes his voice, but from her occasional hesitations before a word, he suspects that she is also a little self-conscious. When she does read, he rarely follows the story; instead he observes her slender stroke of body upon the blanket, her pale lick of nose, the steely quiet of her gaze. He wonders what dark gods of mischief have brought her to him.

V.

Wai Lan doesn’t feel like going fishing. She expresses her desire for a bowl of sweet beancurd instead; it’s the perfect thing, she says, to have on a hot afternoon. When she sees him hesitate, she sighs and places her hand on his arm.

“Just come and have a bowl with me, then you can go. I promise, the fish will not pine for you too much.”

The two of them sit on the plastic stools at the Brother store in the shade, not noticing the lizard scurrying chaos in the dust around their feet. The owner sets the bowls of tofu down and holds up his hands when Sing tries to give him money, asking that he find out what’s taking so long with the permits instead. Sing waves him away, muttering okay, okay.

“Together?” says Wai Lan, raising her spoon.

Sing waits for the owner to go back inside before acquiescing.

“Remember,” she says, “no chewing on the first bite. One, two—”

They each put a spoonful into their mouths; the beancurd slips down their throats and sends a cold shiver down their spines.

“Good?”

“Good.”

They eat in peaceful silence, heads bowed over their bowls.

She was sixteen. from the city. He’d thought at first it was a trifle, a foolish vanity, a fleeting, insubstantial attraction. You mean, she would say, You thought I was a trifle, a vanity, insubstantial.

He would later realize how mistaken he’d been about her; and she, over years, would impress upon him the extent of his mistake.

Digging her toes into the sand, Wai Lan gazes out into the distance at the coastline of Clearwater Bay. Beyond it is Ha Yeung Bay, and even farther out, the city. Sing shakes open the blanket and lays it on the sand.

“I’m glad to be far from home,” she says.

He sets down the newspaper and a small bag of fruit. “Why did your mother send you here?”