“Oh, lovely,” your mother said. “Yun kept talking about wanting to see that new one, the American one—”

“I’m not going,” I said. “She’s going with her boy.”

“Oh,” your mother said, looking between us. “Then what will you do, Yun?”

“Stay home and Reforge, I suppose,” I said. Before they could cut in with some compromise or attempt at solace, I shoveled the rest of my breakfast into my mouth and went to the front of the store, intent on drowning my self-pity in pencil work.

When I reached the front, your boy was already there waiting to pick you up, standing outside the locked door. I let him in.

“I know I’m early,” he said. “I can wait here if Meng isn’t ready.”

The first thing I noticed about him was the pencil tucked behind his ear. It was the one I had given him, back when I still thought it a fun way to tease you.

“How is that pencil treating you?” I asked, an idea slowly forming.

“It’s wonderful,” he said, lifting it from behind his ear.

“Let me see how it’s doing.”

He handed it over without a second thought. I brought it to the counter where your mother normally worked. I took out a notebook and made a show of drawing lines of various darkness. I flicked it a few times, held it up to the light, then stooped below the counter and came back up with your mother’s glasses, as if to examine it more closely. It had been the easiest thing in the world, while I was out of sight, to swap his pencil for another.

“It’s flawless.” I smiled, handing him the new one.

He tucked it behind his ear. Somebody like him, who had not grown up in a pencil factory, would never notice the difference.

“I’ll go get Meng for you,” I said.

You left with him shortly afterward. Mother left too, then Mr. Gao came for your mother, and finally I was alone. I wasted no time Reforging your boy’s pencil.

As his heart melted into my wrist, the overwhelming emotion I experienced was sincerity. He wrote poems, like the husband of that woman whose words you had Reforged all those years ago. Did you have a soft spot for poets? His poems kept coming. The early ones slow and elegant, dwelling on the landscape, the rivers, the ocean around Shanghai. But soon they morphed, became fast and feverish, focused on bodies and desire. They brought a heat to my cheeks. His sincerity multiplied my guilt. I had forced open a curtain I should not have, witnessed something intimate and special and private. Yet I could not stop, not while there was still pencil to Reforge. It was like I had stuck my hand in a fire. I couldn’t take it out now. I forced myself to feel every lick of the flame.