FLEUR

Half past one. Sunlight bleeds through the blinds like molten tin, scorching the room with hot metal. I rest my chin on the desk's edge and watch her silver-grey hair spill in the breeze—old snow, wrung too many times. The ends of it lie across the cracked wooden sign that says “Philosophy Club,” like a cold blanket laid over it.

She curls in the chair, her eyelashes two crescent moons about to burn out. Her grey eyes are still hazy with sleep, like a lake sealed off by morning fog. I count her breaths. Ten seconds each. Next door, the Anime Club’s The Forbidden Boundary Line blasts into its chorus. Her brows tighten slightly. Her fingertips tap the desk in a silent rhythm—tap, tap, tap—each one tapping against my chest.

“Mn… next door’s a bit loud.”

Her voice sticks together with the saliva of just waking up, like the sea at four in the morning, before the tide retreats. Without a word, I hand her my earplugs. My fingertips brush her earlobe. For a moment, our temperatures exchange—like two coins brushing past each other, each carrying the other's rust.

The world goes quiet. Only my heartbeat, amplified in my ears. She curls back down. Her hair falls like a curtain, shutting the world—including me—out of her dream.

I stare at the dark blue bow pinned to her chest. I imagine it's a butterfly nailed in place, its wings still twitching faintly, trying to escape her force field, trying to let me see deeper into her.

“Hey,” she says suddenly, her voice so low it almost gets absorbed by the dust along with the sunlight struggling through the window gap. “What do you think—the relationship between sex and love?”

I freeze. The sunlight sharpens at this moment, slicing the air into transparent sheets. I hear myself say: “Sex is the encouragement of the flesh. Love is the resonance of the spirit. They have different ID cards. They don't have to pass customs together.”

She doesn't lift her head, but her fingertips stop tapping—like a philosopher who's finally found the suspicious premise. Then—

“Which one matters more?”

“Sex.”

The answer comes without hesitation. I hear my soul let out a low, suppressed growl from deep in my chest—but I'm sure this is what she wants to hear. So I keep resisting that suppression, and I answer: “Love is a deity invented by humans. Sex is humans invented by a deity.”

Finished with this clipped, scribbled answer, my soul shrinks back into my heart.

She tilts her head slightly. Her hair sweeps across the desk like snow brushing against an iron railing. In her grey pupils, my silhouette is reflected—thin, like a piece of paper soaked through.

“Without love, only sex—what happens?”

“Sex grows its own bones. One day, in the dark, it will knock on love's door.”

“And the reverse?”

“Love without sex is like a tree without rings. It still looks like a tree. But you no longer know how to count its years.”

She suddenly looks up—she's found it—

“So sex is the sublimation of love?”

I counter: “What do you think?”

She props her heavy chin on the back of her hand, like propping up a cold moon: “They're two sides of the same coin. Missing one side, the other gets worn down.”

I laugh. The sound echoes in the empty classroom: “Then our relationship—is it complete?”

She blinks. The haze clears, revealing the cold riverbed beneath—

“Between us, there's no love, only sex. Right?”

The answer isn't surprising—for sex partners with no emotion mixed in—

“When did we have sex?”

“Not long after we got together?—”

“No,” I cut her off. “That first night we met.”

Memory opens like a drawer being pulled out. Dust and moonlight rush up at once. After lights-out in the dorm, the narrow balcony at the end of the hallway. The night pressed the sky so low it felt like we could touch the stars if we stood on tiptoe. She was in her nightgown, her silver hair coated with tinfoil by the moonlight. The wind blew. I was holding a water glass. Across the night, our eyes met.

But it was only for a Planck length. Our breaths grew tiny tendrils in the dark, hooking around each other's ankles.

No greetings. No names. We were two shells washed ashore by the same tide, each holding a similar echo inside.

Wet tongue twining around dry tongue,

Soft lips meeting cold lips,

Saliva mixing and exchanging in sticky three-dimensional space,

Our teeth clashing like two cowries mating, still carrying the sea; like girls stealing glances at each other in class, trembling with rawness; but the pain was just right, like a knife sliding into a keyhole—the door creaked open. Back in the room, the latch clicked shut. The world was cut into two halves—inside and outside. The moment the glasses were taken off, the lenses reflected two trembling silhouettes, like two plants born to intertwine, madly shooting up where no one could see.

“Wanna do it?”

“Mm. Okay.”

The sheets wrinkled into waves. We were a small boat swept into the river of desire, sweat and breath as oars, pushing through waves made of rank juice and honey. No love talk. No promises. Only the most primitive Caesar cipher, shifting and changing on the roulette wheel beneath us, fingers parting her vagina, smoothing out every fold.

Delicate moans, the collision of fingers and flesh, unbearable pleas… amplified infinitely by the night's moon reading, pouring filthy nectar over this sudden sex.

Moonlight leaked through the curtain gap, covering us with a thin silver blanket. When it was over, she curled her back to me into a question mark. I lit a cigarette. The flame bloomed briefly in the dark—a short-lived orange. Ash fell into the tray, like snow falling on an abandoned altar.

The memory stops here. Her fingertips start tapping again, half a beat faster than before, as if trying to tap that night back into darkness.

“So… that's how we started?”

I nod. My throat rolls out a raspy tail: “Okay. Pack up. Let's go. Probably no one's coming to our club anyway.”

She stands. The dark green pleats of her jumper skirt brush against her calves. Like a late-summer leaf stubbornly clinging to its branch, I hand her the “Philosophy Club” wooden sign. The crack cuts my fingertip. A bead of blood wells up—like a cherry ripening in secret. I wipe it quietly on the hem of her skirt. Like planting a flower for her.

The hallway lights are old and dim. Our shadows stretch impossibly long. At the corner, I suddenly stop. The back of my finger presses against her waist. The button of her skirt trembles slightly under my fingertip—like a startled bird, letting out a thin cry.

“Let's do it here.” Without waiting for her answer, I've already flicked open the clasp.

I like her, because her heart, filled with the desire to fuck, is connected to mine without words. She presses against my chest, turns me to face the wall. The cold of the late-autumn wall is burned away by both our desires. Her grey hair falls, revealing the curve of cold white at the nape of her neck—like a curved blade polished by moonlight. The air is mixed with chalk dust and cheap disinfectant. Our breaths stir them into a thick fog.

Her fingers slide in. Her voice is low and steady: “You're getting really good at this.”

I close my eyes. Let the dark shrink the world to one point for me. Her fingers are cold—like a coin slipping into a wishing well, stirring rings of hidden ripples. The moment she finds that spot, I hear my throat let out a short sob—like a nightingale caught by the neck.

“A little deeper…”

She moves slowly, then faster. The pumping of her fingers goes from slow to urgent, like a philosopher's layered argument after encountering Russell's paradox—each step stepping on the most fragile premise…

“Mmhn…”

Fluids drip down between my legs, pooling into a clear spring between us, like it could grow bright flowers any second. Broken breaths struggle out of my mouth, pushing my tongue weakly into the dark—crystals of desire, hanging with a little glisten.

Tempting her,

She takes it in,

Sucks,

Eats it all, not a drop left.

The haze in her eyes builds slowly. I can barely see her desire-filled eyes anymore. The trembling whiteness of her chest is the last thing I see before I drown…

“It might hurt a lot~”

The moment her nail presses against my cervix, my toes curl. The world shatters into white noise.

“Ngh—!”

When that stream gushes out, I think of the word “sublimation”—so this is what it means. Turning liquid into light. Then turning light into a sigh.

She pulls out her fingers. Wipes my taste from between them with a tissue. Her movements are calm, like wiping a rusty coin. I close my skirt. Breathe deep. Press the remaining trembling back into my chest.

“Okay. Let's go.”

She nods. Her silver hair gleams cold in the dim light. We walk side by side through the empty hallway. Our footsteps echo—one after the other—like two coins tossed into the air, spinning, not yet landed, heads and tails still undecided.