“I think you better let the young man have his say,” said Captain Lee.

“If you have something to say, just say it,” Ting-Yan said to Tak-Tam.

“Could we go down to the boat?”

“Just say it here,” she sat down on a pylon, in the midst of the fish blood and water left from their afternoon’s work.

“I’ll be back soon,” said Captain Lee. He took off in the direction of the HKCC.

Tak-Tam squatted down beside her. There was going to be no getting around the awkwardness—he’d just have to push through it and speak.

She stared at him expectantly, refusing to make it easy.

“I …” he said. He noticed one fish, maybe the one intended for the quarry worker, still there on the pavement, alive and gasping.

“Yes?”

“Mo mut yeh,” he said. Nothing.

“Then what was all that fuss about?”

“If you don’t …” he said. “If you don’t … don’t …” He stopped, took a breath, and started again. “I love you, but I won’t marry you unless you really want to marry me.”

The gasping fish on the pavement bucked.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “It’s just how things are.”

Awful. But at least he was in the conversation now. “Don’t be so fatalistic. If you don’t love me, your father and mother will arrange for you to marry someone else.”

That got her. She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “I’d rather marry you than anyone else.”

“But you don’t love me.”

“Is love necessary for marriage? It wasn’t for so many generations before us. You just got what you got, whether you wanted it or not. Besides, I do love you.”

“Not the way you love Tak-Wing.”

“I don’t love that dead dog anymore.”

“Don’t call my brother a dead dog.”

“He didn’t treat me very well.”

“You’re right. He didn’t.”

“Now there’s no one for me but you.”

He turned away from her. Did she not understand how she insulted him? The silence expanded painfully. “I don’t want to marry you,” he said. “Not like this.”

The fish on the pavement gave a mighty heave, but only succeeded in turning itself over.

“I thought you loved me,” she said.

“I do.”

“Maybe we should just get married and move on to the next stage of our lives. I think I’d be content, you know, once I got used to it. There’s just been so much going on lately. Honestly, I can’t imagine marrying anyone else but you.”

“That’s not the same as ‘I’ll love you ’til the end of time.’”

“It’s not. No. But I will love you ’til the end of time.”

“How can you say the same words and mean something so utterly different by them?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m trying my best.”