‘You’re a much better kisser than Taurus. She uses far too much tongue.’
Zhinu snorted and her eyes drifted away from him as she noticed that Taurus had wandered off, bored and probably jealous. She turned back to him and traced his profile with a finger.
‘Hey. Thank you.’
He gently leant into the pressure of her finger. ‘For what?’
‘Letting me sing my song to you. It felt good.’ Zhinu smiled. ‘Really good. I felt like a star. For real.’
Niulang looked at her with glinting eyes. ‘I mean . . . you are one, Zhinu. Your soul is bright. I knew it as soon as I saw you. Lit my whole world up.’ He paused as realisation flitted across his face, ‘。 . . and you’re leaving in an hour.’
Zhinu wasn’t about to let disappointment sour the moment. She had gone through too much to let something as mundane as time impede on her happiness. She reached out to capture his chin and whisper against his lips. ‘So we better make the most of it. Any special requests?’
Niulang’s eyes darkened in a way that made Zhinu’s blood stir with something molten and ravenous. ‘An encore.’
‘Song or a kiss?’
Niulang pulled away and put the guitar between them. He leant forward and pecked at the space between her jaw and her neck, making her heartbeat speed up as he smiled against her skin. ‘I’m a groupie. I’m here for both.’
Zhinu laughed. She brought the sun up with her song.
‘Are you on drugs?’
Zhinu stared at her mother in the reflection of the vanity mirror as she applied her lipgloss.
‘Mother, just because I decided to do my own make-up today doesn’t mean I am on drugs.’
Her mother shook her head and squinted at her daughter. ‘It’s not just that. You seem different. Why were you already up and showered and dressed this morning? Why were you staring out the car window and smiling on the way here like an idiot?’
Zhinu bit her lip as memories of that morning flitted across her mind. ‘I’m just excited about my job, Mother. I thought that was what you wanted?’
Bingwen was sat on the green-room couch and Zhinu saw him slide his head to the side as he analysed her. Today he was wearing lens-less glasses. ‘Definitely not weed. Is it a special kind of shroom?’
Zhinu laughed. ‘Bingwen, I’ve always thought of you as the evil big brother I never had.’
The smirk dropped from Bingwen’s face. He looked genuinely frightened. ‘Oh my God. She is having a mental break. Should I call someone?’
‘Zhinu? You’re up next!’
A production assistant with a clipboard peered into the green room with the five-minute call.
Zhinu turned and gave her bewildered mother a kiss on her cheek. ‘I love you. And I’m grateful for the opportunities you’ve opened up for me.’
As Zhinu walked out of the green room, she heard her mother cry, ‘Bingwen, what am I going to do? I can’t afford rehab!’
‘Thank you so much for talking to us this morning, Zhinu!’
The presenter’s voice was eerily sing-songy, contrived and artificial. ‘And now, here at Channel 77, we’re pleased to have Zhinu performing her latest single, “Lost at . . .”’
Zhinu leant into her microphone. ‘Actually, I’m not performing that song.’
The smile that was fixed on the presenter’s face jarred slightly with this revelation. Auto-cue couldn’t help her now. ‘Oh . . .’
Zhinu turned and took the guitar from her band and beamed, ignoring the distant sound of her mother’s squawk. She adjusted the instrument against her, closed her eyes and inhaled, hearing the crickets, hearing the birds, hearing Niulang. She opened them again and smiled at the camera. ‘This song is called Magpie.’
Thisbe
The music throbbed through the walls of Thisbe’s dorm room, permeating the stuffing of the pillow folded over her head. Loud and unrelenting, it filled her room, filled her ears, filled her head. She growled into her mattress. There was a chance that the music could have been described as ‘good’， but what does ‘good’ have to do with any-fucking-thing when it is three in the morning and you have a seminar on the feudal system in less than six hours. Not forgetting the fact that she’d have to walk twenty minutes to get there in winter. In the North. Surely, she couldn’t start her collegiate life with homicide. Her parents would be so disappointed. Also, murder had the potential to derail her plans for being the next Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama.