He shakes his head, and my heart stops. I knew it, the cruel, ever-present voice in my head declares at once, the voice that sounds like every kid who’s ever bullied me. I knew it was a lie. He doesn’t love you after all. Nobody ever will.

But as tourists squeeze forward to take photos of the shining lake, he turns away from the scenery to face me. “Do you know the Mandarin word for crush?”

I frown. “No. What?”

“Anlian,” he says. “An for ‘darkness.’ Lian for ‘love.’ I always thought it was poetic—that when you secretly have feelings for someone, you love them in the darkness. But there’s this other word. Minglian. Ming for—”

“‘Light,’” I finish for him, recognizing the character. It’s the same word for bright, or luminous, the way the twin pagodas glow against the night sky.

“So it’s not anlian,” he says, his eyes dark and intent on me, and though the rest of his sentence goes unspoken, I hear it as clearly as if he had whispered it into my ear: I don’t love you in the darkness; I love you in the light.

It feels like there’s light in my very veins, blazing through my chest and burning away all the years of loneliness before him. And for just a few seconds, my skepticism takes a break, and the voices in my head go quiet.

“Leah. Do you have a moment?”

I glance back over my shoulder, squinting past the tides of people to find Wang Laoshi waving me forward. There’s a woman I’ve never seen before standing next to him—too old to be a student, too young to be a teacher, one of those bulky, professional cameras hanging around her neck. Her makeup is so perfect that it looks photoshopped, and when she smiles at me, I can’t help noticing how well her shade of lipstick suits her complexion. It’s a dark cherry tint, no gloss, sophisticated but not overdramatic.

“This is Pei Jie,” Wang Laoshi introduces us, raising his voice to be heard above the crowds. “She’s a photographer for Sima Studio. She noticed you earlier and is offering to take a few free photos of you as part of a promotional campaign they’re doing—we would also be able to use them at Jiu Yin He to promote our Journey to the East program for future students.” He clears his throat. “Now, it’s entirely up to you whether you agree to it or not. I thought it might be a worthwhile experience, and you should have enough time before we gather for tonight’s show, but I know not everyone enjoys—or is used to—getting their photo taken …”

I almost laugh at the irony. If only you knew how many photos I’ve had taken of me.