"What if I can't float?" I asked.
"… "
After entering the sea, as soon as the water covered my head, my heartbeat accelerated, my blood circulation quickened, and I urgently needed oxygen. I breathed in through my nose out of habit, but unfortunately my nose was blocked and I couldn't breathe in anything. I immediately panicked and started to struggle.
Then, Mu Chenghe lifted me up.
I clung to him helplessly, spit out the respirator in my mouth, took a deep breath of the air on the surface, and then said discouragedly, "I don't want to play anymore."
He smiled: "The key is to not be nervous and breathe through your mouth."
After I recovered, I practiced my breathing technique a few more times and then dived down.
This time, it was successful.
Under the water, he kept holding on to me.
Occasionally, I could see small fish swimming slowly by me. I felt like I had become a fish. Although this fish was very stupid and couldn't even swim, it could breathe freely in the water and could clearly see the bottom of the sea.
When I came out of the water, I was so excited that I kept telling Mu Chenghe what I saw, what I touched, how my eyes felt, and how my ears felt.
Mu Chenghe smiled silently.
The eldest brother on the boat said, "Little sister, you will love this feeling."
Later, we took a boat to a farther sea.
"Will it feel different?" I asked curiously.
"Yeah. The water is clearer, there are more fish, and it's colder than where we were just now, so I asked you to wear a diving suit."
"Can I get down to the bottom?"
"It's best to take it slowly. If you can't handle it, make sure to signal me in time. Don't try to be stubborn."
"How deep is this place?"
"More than ten meters."
"How deep did I dive?"
"Three or four meters."
"… "
"How far can you dive?"
"Usually about twenty meters, maximum. I haven't tried it yet. I'll try next time."
"You... better not try it."
"Are you afraid that if I go down too, I won't be able to float up?" He laughed.
"A little bit." I said honestly.
The water in this area is very blue, and except for the slightly wrinkled waves, it looks very quiet. The land is not far away from us, and there is deep water under our feet. Looking ahead, we can see fishing boats at the end of the sea level.
We went into the water first, and then they lowered the oxygen tanks down.
Mu Chenghe held my hand, raised his lips and said to me: "Little girl, welcome to explore the heart of the sea."
I was exhausted, so I had to go on the boat to rest after diving for a while. Then I continued to apply sunscreen and said to Mu Chenghe, "Do you want to apply some? You'll get tanned."
The eldest brother on the boat said, "Men are sexier when they are darker." Then he wrinkled his dark face and smiled, revealing two rows of white teeth.
But the eldest brother B on the boat said to me: "You don't know, Mu Chenghe can't get tanned."
I turned to him and asked, "You really can't get tanned?"
"Don't listen to their nonsense about how you can't get a tan."
At lunch time, I realized that it was not that he could not get tanned, but that no matter how tanned he got, he would turn white again once he shed his skin.
"You must be born in the Year of the Snake." I concluded.
"Then you are probably a crab," he said.
"Why?"
"When I was teaching you how to drive just now, the road was more than ten meters wide, but it was not wide enough for you to drive alone. You had to drive sideways."
"… "
In the afternoon, we went to the island on the other side. There is a natural bathing beach on the island. It is the peak tourist season, and many tourists come here by boat. It only takes us more than half an hour to walk around the island. And I found that except for the public toilet and the pier, the only building on the island is a building that looks like a ship.
"What is this thing?"
"hotel."
"Hotel? Will there be people staying here specifically?"
"Well, it is said that it is often fully booked. And we will stay here tonight as well."
"Aren't we going back?"
"It's too late. If we wait any longer, there won't be any boats left." Mu Chenghe asked again, "Do you want to go back?"
I shook my head like a rattle, how could it be possible.
Mu Chenghe lives next to me. All the rooms on the east side of the hotel can see the sea. Downstairs is a freshwater swimming pool. Children are playing in the pool. The laughter and children's voices mixed together make people feel very happy.
The big beach, which is used as a bathing beach during the day, presents a completely different scene when the sun sets.
Most of the tourists had already left the island, and the remaining ones were hotel guests. There was a seafood food stall on the roadside, and on the other side there was a stage with a projection screen and lights. A band was playing on it, and the lead singer was holding a microphone and roaring at the sea.
Some people sat down and drank.
Some people simply ordered food from a food stall and ate downstairs.
Only then did I realize that there were actually a lot of people staying in the hotel.
I ate something and ran to the edge of the beach, shouting to watch the sunset. Unexpectedly, I was running in the wrong direction, so I chased the sunset and ran around the island.
"You can't see it." Mu Chenghe smiled.
"You'll definitely see it when you get to the other side of the island." I was not convinced, but I didn't have time to argue with him, as I was afraid the sun would disappear in a few minutes. So I took off my slippers and said without looking back, "Hold my shoes for me, I'll go after it."
Mu Cheng and another person were left, following slowly behind.
When I ran to the westernmost end of the island, panting, I suddenly realized that what Mu Chenghe said was true.
Outside the beach is the sea, and on the other side of the sea is the land where we came by boat.
The orange sun was slowly sinking behind the mountain.
It never occurred to me that the entire coastline is on the east side of the continental shelf, so it is generally impossible to see the sunset sinking into the sea.
I am depressed.
Then, seeing him staggering after me with a triumphant smile on his face, I felt even more depressed.
I walked back and took my slippers from him. Suddenly I felt like a puppy and he was the one who threw the Frisbee. I went to pick up the Frisbee, panting, and he watched from behind.
"Next time we go to an island farther away from the mainland, I guess you won't be disappointed." Mu Chenghe said.
We went back to the place where we were just now to have a barbecue.
The grilled corn was golden yellow, and according to my strong request, they sprinkled a lot of chili peppers on it. I took my first bite and was very satisfied.
"It's delicious. I never thought it tasted so good when baked."
I took two or three bites and noticed that Mu Chenghe was staring at me, so I pointed at the corn and asked, "Do you want to try it?"
Mu Chenghe smiled and waved his hands: "How can I eat this spicy food?"
Then, I happily gave the food to Mu Chenghe for safekeeping and went to the beach to play in the water.
A wave came over and the slippers I had placed next to me were dragged down by the water. I screamed and chased the wave, and finally got the slippers back and put them away neatly. After a while, I found that they were sadly taken away by the wave again.
After repeating this several times, I had enough fun, so I sat down next to Mu Chenghe, took the corn and started eating it again.
When I turned my attention to the sea, I suddenly realized that it had become completely dark.
You can see some dots of light at the end of the sea, rising and falling, as if they were a string of luminous pearls floating on the sea.
"What are those lights? Fishing boats?" I asked.
"Seems to be."
The sea breeze dissipates the heat and brings coolness.
The waves hit the beach again and again, gradually getting closer to us.
“It’s high tide,” I said.
"Yeah," he said.
"What are you thinking about?" I asked.
"I was thinking," Mu Chenghe said, "If I smoke a cigarette now, it will definitely feel good."
“…” This person has a craving for cigarette.
"I really don't want to go back. I'll sleep here tonight." I lay down on the beach casually, not caring whether the fine sand would get on my hair or seep into my clothes.
Countless stars hang in the deep night sky.
"It's more comfortable this way," I said.
He looked up at the sky, then followed my advice and lay down too.
"I only know the Big Dipper. I don't know anything about the rest of the stars," I said.
"What's your zodiac sign?" Mu Chenghe asked.
"Scorpio."
"That's lucky, Scorpio is the brightest sign in the summer."
"Can you see it now?" I became interested.
"That bright star is one of the stars in Scorpio." Mu Chenghe raised his hand and pointed at the night sky.
In the moonlight, I saw a scar on the outside of his arm, about an inch long. In the summer, it was covered by short sleeves, so I had never noticed it until this moment, when he lay down and stretched out his hand, and his sleeves slid down, revealing a part of it.
"Ah? How did you do that?"
"Knife wound."
"Knife wound?" I was digesting the word in my mind.
"Someone chopped me down," he said.
I widened my eyes and turned to look at him: "Impossible?" How, how is it possible
"I'm not lying. When I was studying in Russia, three or four kids, all in their teens, attacked me in the passage of a subway station. I blocked the first stab with my arm."
"Why?"
"There are some local groups, especially in big cities, that hate..." He hesitated, obviously choosing his words, "They hate foreigners, so they attack individual foreigners traveling in remote places. I live with your teacher Chen, and he happened to be sick that day, so I passed by there in the middle of the night to buy him medicine."
"and after?"
"Just then the police arrived and they all dispersed."
"They're so dangerous, but I've never heard you say anything bad about them." I couldn't help but stretch out my index finger and stroke the long and narrow scar on his skin.
"I didn't say they were good." He smiled. "You should evaluate things objectively. It's impossible for a person to gain knowledge and valuable life experience in a certain place and then be full of complaints and disdain."
I nibbled on the corn cob in my hand, then suddenly remembered something and showed him my elbow joint: "I also have a big scar here."
Hearing this, he leaned his head closer.
"When I was a child, my father worked in a factory and my mother lived with me in the countryside. She bought a bicycle to take me to kindergarten so that she could learn. There was a ditch in front of our house, which was this wide," I gestured a distance of a little more than a foot, "and I sat on the back seat. The first time she took me home, it was raining, and when we were about to reach the ditch, my mother said, 'Tongtong, I think we can ride across without getting off the bike.' I didn't understand anything, so I just hugged her waist and nodded blankly. Finally..."
"In the end, she rode over, but you didn't?" Mu Chenghe asked.
"Yes, yes, yes. How did you know?" I couldn't help but chuckle to myself.
Mu Chenghe looked at me with interest.
He had been exposed to ultraviolet rays during the day, and now the skin on his nose and cheeks was beginning to turn slightly red.
Suddenly, I realized that our posture was quite ambiguous.
A man and a woman were lying on their backs on the beach. There was some distance between them, but we were so engrossed in our conversation that we unconsciously moved closer together. I sat up quickly and handed him the corn in my hand to hide my embarrassment.
"I haven't eaten that side, you can try it."
I didn't expect that this action of mine would just pick up the fine sand on my arm, and the sea breeze blew it onto his face.
"Sand blew into my eyes." He blinked, and probably still felt uncomfortable, so he reached out to rub his eyes.
"Don't rub it yourself, let me see it." I threw away the corn in my hand and lowered my head to look at his eyes.
In the moonlight and the lights in the distance, I saw a few grains of sand on his eyelashes, so I propped myself up on the ground and blew into his eyes. After observing them, I found that they had not disappeared, so I blew twice more vigorously, and finally said with satisfaction, "It's done."
His eyelashes fluttered first, and then a pair of eyes appeared from behind his eyelids, which looked crystal clear against the night. His eyes swept over my eyebrows, nose, and finally lingered on my lips, not moving away for a long time.
I suddenly had a bad feeling: "What's wrong? Can't you hear me..."
Suddenly, he put his hand on the back of my head and pressed my face close to him. This sudden action deprived me of the words I hadn't said yet.
I was startled and had to lie on his chest, with the hair behind my ears falling down.
He raised his head slightly and kissed me. The first time seemed like a test, he only pecked the corner of my lips carefully.
I was caught off guard, my mouth hanging open, my eyes wide open, my mind frozen like a video player that had been paused. Not only was my thoughts gone, even my heartbeat had stopped.
Mu Chenghe stared at me with his eyes full of emotion, and then he slowly turned his face to the side and kissed me again. The last voice that remained in my mind was him whispering to me.
"Actually, you can just close your eyes."
At that moment, the sea breeze was blowing gently and the stars were shining brightly.