Finally, at 4:15, I could speak again. I told him I had brought him enough misfortune for one lifetime, let alone all that was yet to come, that it hurt to even think about what he and Monica and Edward would have to go through. He shook his head and waved his hand.

“The only thing I would change about our next lives,” he said, “is that we choose a house without stairs.”

And we both laughed until tears came, and my body ached, all too aware of the truth of his words, my whole body grateful for him, for everything about him.

When I began my relationship with Torou the second time, I made sure he knew the truth, for it was my hiding that had driven him away initially, all the way to America. He did not press me to reveal my secrets to him. I wished to anyway. Above all, without you or Mother in my life, I was feeling very lonely in this power.

But there was the complicated matter of my having disappeared from the Nationalists’ watch, having unceremoniously burned down their house. If Torou were to even mention to his parents he was seeing me, word would no doubt spread through that small Taiwan community and eventually into the ears of Mr. Gao. So I told him he could not let anyone from home know he had found me and, ideally, nobody in America either.

“Tell me what you have to hide,” he said when I made this request.

And I was ready to tell him. I had it all planned out—a ridiculous series of events, really, now that I think back on it. The plan combined the truth by making it more palatable, or so I hoped, via seduction.

“Take me to your room first,” I said.

He lived in a small dormitory room with a bed for one.

“This is what I bleed,” I told him, holding up a new Phoenix Pencil Company pencil. He smiled at first, thinking it a metaphor. Then I kissed him and pushed him onto the bed.

I still had the pencil in my hand even as my legs wrapped around him, even as our breathing quickened, and he traced his lips along my neck. When I pushed the pencil into his hand, he broke away from me.

“What do I do with this?”

“Write something.”

“Write what?”

“Whatever you’re feeling.”

“Can it wait?”

“No.”

He fumbled with a notebook on his bedside table, distractedly flipping it open as I turned his face back to me. As he entered me, the scratching of the pencil heart against paper thundered, the paper crinkled, and I almost forgot what the next step was supposed to be.

“Press it into me,” I remembered.

“Mm.”

“I mean the pencil.”

“What?”

“Into my wrist. Don’t worry. Just push it in.”