The eighth time Li Zijian's telescope settled on the edge of the east-facing window on the third floor, Su Muxi was applying her third coat of berry-colored lip gloss in front of the mirror. He had counted how often she changed the soil in the jasmine pots on her windowsill, memorized how she always switched on the glass desk lamp at ten on Wednesday nights, and even written down the little way she bit open the tape on her packages. It was all there in the blank space on page thirty-seven of his notebook.
She had noticed. The white shirt deliberately hung crooked on the clothesline, the lighter's flickering flame on the balcony railing, even the taut line of his jaw that she once caught through her fingers while pretending to water the flowers. Su Muxi pieced these fragments together into a secret. In her diary, she drew the camphor tree where he hid, and ink bled into a blot over the three characters of his name, Li Zijian.
It wasn't until a storm tore down the attic where he had been hiding that Su Muxi picked up a sketchbook from the wreckage. On the last page was a profile of her brushing her hair by moonlight the night before. Beside it, in pencil, was written: "The hundredth time. I think she looked this way."
On the phone beneath her pillow was a photo she had secretly taken: a man in a white shirt standing under the camphor tree, his hand trembling slightly as he held a telescope. The lens reflected the lit window of her home.
This undercurrent, disguised as voyeurism, had long since swelled into a rising tide, as they watched each other sink beneath it.
