“Hey, quick request,” Anqien said, jumbling the syllables as the pair stumbled out the open double doors with their arms around each other’s shoulders. “I went too hard, last train’s probably gone by now.”

“So you wanna crash at mine?” Jinai replied. They nodded vigorously. “Sure, as long as you check out by noon tomorrow.” She laughed and ruffled their hair, some of their locks hanging loose from the ribbon they had tied it in. They wandered out onto the driveway, the earlier crush of cars now thinned out. As their feet met the tar, her head spun lightly and her heart throbbed like the dance floor.

Taxis would be all out and about on an evening like this, and they had no trouble hailing one from the side streets. This one was rickety and old but the driver was stoic and did not bother them for more than Jinai’s address.

She leaned against Anqien on their drive home, having a mumbled, delirious conversation that she could no longer remember by the time they were set down at the foot of her apartment steps. “Watch your step,” she said, as Anqien tripped on the half-step to the pavement, where weeds had sprung up.

“Ow! Too late.”

Jinai had a two-seater couch opposite her bed that her teammate had crashed in enough times, despite being too tall to lie in it without their feet hanging off the armrest. Unlocking the door, she let them inside first, and then shut it behind her.

At her bed, she yanked the coverlet from below her quilt and tossed it at their face. Anqien stumbled backwards as they caught it and collapsed onto the couch. “You sure you won’t need this?” they asked.

“Yeah—it’s been a warm few nights. About time I got rid of it.” She ducked into her bathroom with a change of clothes on her arm and shut the door behind her.

“Spring sure hits fast, huh?” they answered through the locked door. “Soon we’ll be out there, racing the big course again. Feels like a month ago we were just doing that.”

“I heard they were changing the course a little—they moved the third port to Antao.”

“Oh, huh, Antao? I always wanted to visit.”

Stripping down, Jinai turned on the squeaky faucet and splashed her face. She wiped it on her towel, hanging on the rack, and began to pull her pyjamas on. “Did you want to change?”

“Not really, could I have water?”

Jinai poked her head out of the bathroom to find that Anqien had discarded their coat and boots on the floor and was lying on the too-small couch in their buttoned blouse and black pants. She let herself stare at them for a few seconds too long, before shaking herself out of it.

The kitchenette was just outside the bathroom door so she picked a mug off the rack and filled it from the kettle on the stove, cooled after a few hours’ sitting. “Are you comfy?” she asked, turning yet again to find they had shuffled into a vaguely seated position.

“I feel like I’m gonna be sick,” they murmured. When she offered the mug, they fumbled it out of her hand—she caught it before any spilled, and wrapped their fingers around it.

“Yeah, you went pretty hard on the drinks.”

As they sipped the water, she sat down by their bent knees, leaning just enough to feel her back press against their legs. Dim moonlight was streaming in through the window by the bathroom door, and she could make out their features, pensive and disquieted.

“Go throw up in the toilet, alright? I don’t have a bucket.”

“Yeah…yeah.” Their eyes closed, then opened again, lazily, with their gaze still focused on her. “I’m so glad I get to hang out with you. You’re so cool.”

Jinai chuckled. “Is it weird that that’s not the first time I’ve heard that this evening? Xye said I was cool? I don’t feel cool. But coming from her, of all people.”

“I mean, it’s true. You’re a badass. But you’re also, so nice, and so pretty…” They yawned and handed the half-finished mug of water back to her, lowering themself back into a slumbering position.

The talk had brought that conversation back to the front of Jinai’s thoughts. She frowned as she went to her bed. Was that how it looked? Did others see them and think… She was just teasing me, damn it.

Jinai drifted to sleep in a light, floating haze, equal parts delirium and confusion.

Anqien woke from a dream of glowing flowers to find themself staring up at a plain yellow ceiling with an aching neck.

The first thing they noticed was that their feet were hanging off the edge of this strange, minuscule bed. The second thing they noticed was that they were not, in fact, in a bed, but on a couch.

Then they noticed, in the dim, dawning light, that Jinai was still asleep in her double bed, sprawled out and snoring softly with her blanket over her legs.

This was her apartment, and all of it screamed her—the metal shelf hammered into the wall with framed photographs of her faraway parents, the kitchenette with two mugs and two bowls—she ate everything out of bowls—and the woman herself, dozing with a thin ray of light across her legs. She wore a tiny pair of shorts, a faded blue t-shirt and not much else. Her hair was in a net. Her skin seemed gently aglow in the rays.

Anqien dragged their gaze away as a blush surged up their neck. They ducked to fish up their jacket from the floor. No looking when she’s asleep, that’s rude. They shoved their feet into their boots.

As they stood up, the world spun around them as if they were inside a swirled wineglass, but suddenly they felt ashamed standing here, and wanted nothing more than to leave. They strode resolutely towards the front door, and only made it about two-thirds of the way there.

“Anqien?” came a groan from the bed. “Hey, don’t go yet…” Their head whipped around. Jinai had flopped over onto her side at the edge of the bed, rubbing her eyes. She boosted herself upright with her hands and wandered up to them with arms outstretched for a hug.

Their breath caught. “Thanks,” they answered, returning it gingerly with one hand, afraid to commit to it. “I’ll see you at the marina on…Monday?”

Jinai pulled back. “Yeah, that’s happening,” she replied. “Did Telaki say we’d be doing a full-day nav exercise?”

“That’s what the message said, yeah.”

“Alright, gotcha. Have a safe trip back.”

“Thanks—bye!”

They walked out a little too fast, propelled by these nerves that had come from nowhere. Regret brought their feet to a halt halfway down the stairs—but then they shook their head and continued downward.

The streets of Joutien were muted by the secretive light of dawn. The front door of the Liu family home was locked tight from within when Anqien arrived, but they could hear the first sounds of the day’s business faintly echoing from the other side. Sighing, they began down the street in the grey morning chill, on the detour to the other entrance.

The surly house stood two stories tall, gazing on two small streets: the front door with its overgrown porch looked out on the main avenue, and the back—converted into a shopfront, laden with lights and banners—faced a side-alley where the customers entered.

It was on this side that Anqien now approached, dodging gutters and loose slabs, and realising with each step that they would have to contend with their parents' questions, about the fact that they were ten hours later than they’d said they would be.

“…yeah, the world’s gone mad! Next they’re going to smash all our shrines, just you watch!” Each word was underscored by a snip of scissors. A familiar mutter answered.

Anqien stepped under the banners on the backyard gazebo, through the door propped open with a stone rabbit, and into the sunroom that the family had converted into a stylist’s studio. They drew their arms close as they hurried past their mother, poised on a swivel stool with scissors in hand, and her customer whom they now saw was old Madam Chia, here for her monthly trim.

Both women went silent, watching them in the mirror. “Oi, where in the world were you?” their mother muttered, voice cleaving the silence.

They didn’t turn. “I just missed the last train. I was at Jinai’s for the night.”

“Ihir’s sake, An-An! I told you to stop going to those crazy parties. You know my heart can’t take this sort of stress.”

Their throat clenched. Retorts like “I’m twenty-five” and “I know how to look after myself” had long passed their usefulness, so they responded the only way they still knew how to—by saying nothing and walking on, hunching their shoulders against the urge to snap back.

As they left, they caught a mutter of, “An-An used to be so sweet, I don’t know what happened.”

Madam Chia chuckled. “Kids grow up, you know.”

Anqien willed their feet out of the room and out of earshot, away from her words and away from whatever might follow. Step by dragging step, they climbed the stairs, while the two women’s voices faded into echoes behind them.

Their room was to the right of the stairs, but they barely saw the doorway as they passed through. They flung their bag into the pile beside their desk and tumbled onto their bed like a ragdoll, head still spinning from last night’s decisions. It still didn't make sense, how effortlessly their mother could cut them down.