Residual Pain

The smell of disinfectant in the hospital mingled with the faint lingering scent of the gardenias outside the window. The ECG line stretched into a straight white line. The last thing she heard was the cicadas of that summer when she was seventeen, and the boy Mu Ze beneath the parasol tree saying, “Xinxin, I’ll keep you locked up forever.”

He had done exactly that. With misunderstandings, hatred, and a diagnosis of terminal cancer.

What she didn’t know was that at the very moment that white line extended, the red wineglass in Mu Ze’s hand suddenly shattered. Glass shards pierced deep into his palm, but he felt no pain at all.

All his sense of pain had stopped the instant her heart ceased beating.