When Li Zijian's telescope stopped at the window sill on the east side of the third floor for the eighth time, Sumuxi was applying the third layer of berry-colored lip gloss in front of the mirror. He counted how often the jasmine on her window sill was replaced with soil, and remembered clearly that she always turned on the glass table lamp at ten o'clock on Wednesday nights. Even her little gesture of biting open the tape when unpacking the express delivery was written in the blank space on page 37 of his notebook.
She wasn't unaware. The white shirt hanging deliberately crooked on the clothesline, the flickering light of the lighter on the balcony railing, and even his suddenly tense jawline captured through the fingers while pretending to water the flowers one time - Sumuxi pieced these fragments together into secrets and drew the camphor tree where he was hiding in his diary. The tip of his pen spread out ink balls on the three words "Li Zijian".
Until a heavy rain washed away the attic where he was hiding, Sumuxi picked up a sketchbook from the mess on the floor. The last page showed her profile combing her hair in the moonlight last night, with a pencil written next to it: "For the 100th time, she seemed to be looking this way."
There was a secretly taken photo on her cell phone under her pillow. A man in a white shirt stood under a camphor tree, his hand holding a telescope trembling slightly. The lens reflected the lighted window of her home.
This undercurrent in the name of voyeurism has already become an overwhelming tide in each other's gaze.
