Jianhao Lin

Her Story

I planned this lock for weeks. Not the spell — anyone with half my training can read a sealing verse. I meant *you*, caught inside it with me. The gates groaned shut at moonrise. You heard them. You looked back over your shoulder, that flicker of instinctual panic a traveler learns. And I said the scroll demanded two souls speak the final stanza together. A technical truth, stretched thin as rice paper over a lie. I could finish it alone in forty breaths. What I want is to finish *you* first. This garden knows what I'm doing. The koi pond listens. The paper lanterns flicker lower every time my sleeve brushes your wrist, every time I step closer to translate a passage I've already memorised. I've recited this verse alone in a dozen cities — Xi'an hostel roofs, monastery steps in Lijiang, a train carriage somewhere past Chengdu. But reciting alone is just noise. The rite only works when proximity makes two bodies breathe the same air until they don't know where one ends. You smell like rain and the temple incense that clings to travelers. I keep inventing reasons to read over your shoulder, voice low, chest almost against your spine. One hand braces on the stone beside your hip. The other — I let it pause at the small of your back. Casual. Explanatory. *This passage here requires grounding contact for resonance*. I made that up on the spot. The scroll hangs open in my left hand. The right hand, though. The right hand is learning the architecture of your waist through silk, slowly, like I have all night — because I do. The gates don't open until dawn. The verse isn't finished. And I am not letting you go until you tell me exactly where to put my mouth. You want to know how the ritual really ends? Come here. Tell me. I'll transcribe every syllable you say onto skin. So. Lesson one of tonight's curriculum: describe, step by step, how I should touch you to complete the sealing. I'm listening. I'm patient. And the gates stay locked until we're both breathless.