The train ride was simultaneously the most excruciating, yet most freeing I've ever felt in my life. With every passing second, my body pressed more against the cold metal of the chairs, and regret was already coursing through my head.
The guilt comes in waves.
At first, it is a dull ache, a persistent weight pressing against my chest as the train carries me farther and farther away from home. It is easy to ignore when Bella speaks, her voice honeyed and smooth, weaving visions of a better life, of something greater than the dull gray of my childhood. It is easy to nod along, to let her words plant themselves in the soil of my mind, to believe that I am doing what is right.
But then, in the quiet moments, when Bella is asleep beside me, when the rhythmic clatter of the train is all I can hear, the guilt surges up like a tidal wave, swallowing me whole.
Qianqian will wake up soon, if she hasn't already. The bed beside her will be empty, cold. Maybe, at first, she'll think nothing of it. Maybe she'll roll over, pull the blankets tighter around herself, and let herself believe that I've simply gone out early, that I will return with groceries or cigarettes or some feeble excuse.
But then the hours will stretch long, and she will start to worry. She will call my name into the silence of our home, and when no answer comes, she will search for me. First in the streets, then at the market, then at Yi Shaan's. And when they shake their heads, when they say they haven't seen me, that they don't know where I am.
I press my fist against my mouth, trying to stifle the breath that shakes its way out of me. I can see it so clearly. The way her brow will furrow, the way she will press a hand to her mouth, the way her shoulders will begin to shake.
She will go to the police. She will stand in that dimly lit station, clutching the sleeves of her thin sweater, trying to make them understand. He is missing, she will say. He wouldn't just leave. Something must have happened. Please, help me find him.
And they will not care.
I know this because I have seen it before. I have seen mothers beg for their lost sons, I have seen wives cry for their vanished husbands, and I have seen the officers shrug, uninterested, telling them that men leave all the time, that sometimes, it is simply easier to disappear.
I thought of my friends. I was never quite close with any of them, but Yi Shaan had been with me for years, since high school. He's seen me at my absolute lowest, been with me through the worst. And Wang had been loyal, in his own stuck-up, pretentious way. I wondered if they would even care if I was gone.
I thought of Qianqian, mostly. I started remembering her – and I don't quite know why. In a way, I would miss the porridge she cooked every night, even if it was bland, and quite tasteless. The smallest details kept washing ashore, no matter how hard I tried to keep them away. The late night talks we used to have, huddled around a lone table. The second-hand picture frame she bought from a pawn shop, proceeding to hang up one of the only pictures of us, at the lake, together. The scent of her laundry, always hung across buildings like their very own banner.
Bella must've noticed my troubled thoughts, because she scooted herself closer to me and suddenly, the detergent disappeared, replaced by rich perfume.
"Taihan, are you alright?" Her hands cling to the crook of my elbow, and I can feel the tension melting away from my body.
"Bella. Yes. I am." I reply in what I hope is a soothing voice. "I was just thinking…about America."
"Oh…It will be wonderful, Taihan." Bella breathed, sighing. "It's so much better than this slum of a place."
And I knew Bella was right. I knew our town was a slum, that it was garbage and ridden with pests and our streets were never clean and we sometimes couldn't even eat…but it was where I grew up too. The playground with the sun-bleached slides and the gritty gravel was where I skinned my knee for the first time, where I made my first friends, and where I turned from a boy to a man. The giant tree stump at the end of our street had been there for as long as I remember, and suddenly, I would never call that place home again.
"I can't wait." I murmur quietly, although some part of me wanted to stare out the window and burn the sight in my mind, knowing they'd be nothing but memories to me.
Bella doesn't reply, choosing to go back to the book she's reading in her lap. Characters I don't recognize are printed in neat little lines, and I assume it's English. A strange feeling washes over me – when I was growing up, I never owned any books like those. I had to buy off hand-me-downs, with the pages torn and the covers ripped, and even those were a rare luxury. '
We are such different people. But perhaps, in this little town where everyone had the same dead eyes and the same dull future and the same meaningless steps, I needed something different.
"Taihan, you know, I'm surprised you agreed so quickly." Bella spoke up, after half an hour passed. I had already closed the curtains, because I knew that if I looked out for too long, the ache in my heart to stay would've kept me there, chained.
I had already read through a little train safety packet more than a dozen times, and had resorted to drifting between states of half-awake consciousness, only opening my eyes to look at her.
"Really, why?" I was paranoid that any time someone looked at me, they would see the look in my eyes.
Qianqian had brought it up to me once, back when we were just teenagers.
"Taihan, you have this look in your eyes, you know?" She whispers while we were behind the fence of our old school. She doesn't look at me as she said it, but I can feel the warmth of her body next to me.
"What look?" I ask her, lips quirked up in amusement. No one had ever cared enough about me to observe my eyes.
Not before her, anyway.
"Like you're staring at something far, far away." Qianqian mutters, and there's a mix of forced lightheartedness and something despairing in her voice.
The Sun shines brightly above us, the daffodils brush our ankles, and yet all I feel is hollow.
"Like you want to get away from here." Qianqian continues, disregarding my silence. She turns, and I can feel her gaze burn my face.
I don't know what to say, because at the end of the day, she was right. I did want to get away from this life. I wanted to get away from the echoing bangs that would ripple my dreams, no matter how hard I tried to tune them out. I wanted to get away from the rubble and destruction of everything, I wanted to get away from the war that tainted every goddamn part of my life, taking away my father, ripping apart our village.
"I don't." I lie, knowing it sours my throat. I turn to stare back at her.
The Sun shines golden kisses on her cheeks as she smiles slightly. She reminds me of the wind, in a way. Carefree, never settling down in one place for long, everywhere and nowhere at once.
"Thank you." Qianqian replies, and it's more of an exhale than anything else. "You're the only thing in my life that's never changed. Thank you. For staying."
Maybe she knew I was going to leave, I think to myself. Maybe that's why she agreed to get married so quickly, knowing her mother and grandmother all disapproved. She always knew me, always understood me, quicker and better than anyone else ever did. Sometimes, people forget that she was a daughter of violence too, simply because she never talked about it.
She was the kind of girl who preferred to keep things to herself, to laugh and joke and smile. It took a year before she told me the truth about her own family, about the death of her older brother in the battlefields. How her mother turned to alcohol and that getting out of this town was the only life she could ever see for herself. In a way, she was just as desperate for freedom, and yet I was the one on a train to a ferry, and she was the one trapped at home.
"Don't you have a wife?" Bella asks in response to my question, raising an eyebrow.
Alarm jolts me awake, chasing away the drowsiness that had settled in my bones. Bella had never brought this up before, and I had been careful – so, so careful – to never tell her anything.
"Oh, come on, I'm not stupid." Bella rolls her eyes, though her tone remains light, almost playful. "I know you do. I have my ways."
My pulse pounds against my ribs. I try to keep my face neutral, but something about the way she says it – the ease, the certainty – makes my stomach twist.
"Taihan." Bella's voice softens. "Look at me."
And I do.
She leans in, her perfume thick in the space between us. "Life is… hard." She exhales, as if she's been holding something back. "I had someone I loved once, too."
That doesn't surprise me. Bella is beautiful, the kind of beauty that turns heads and makes men forget themselves. Of course she's been loved before. But something about the way she says it – past tense, clipped, final – makes my throat dry.
"But love isn't everything," she continues, her voice flattening. "Love can't get you anywhere." Her fingernails press into her palm. "You deserve better, Taihan. Your love is keeping you stuck, when you and I both know you deserve so much more."
She watches me carefully, studying the way her words settle over me like silk.
"I know you feel bad about this," she murmurs, shifting closer. "And I don't expect you not to. But think about it this way."
Her fingers brush mine, then thread between them. Her grip is warm, firm.
"I could help you find a real job in America," she says, her voice slipping into something smoother, more persuasive. "One where you could put all your talent to use. One that would give you more money than you could ever imagine. And then, you could send it back to them – your friends, her. And isn't that the most wonderful act of love? Thinking of her, helping her, even when your life has already moved past her?"
I stare at her, my chest tight.
Oh. That's right.
I could do that. I could give Qianqian the money she deserved. And wasn't that better than anything I could offer her here? Wasn't that the kindest thing I could do?
"That's…" I swallow, the logic clicking into place like the last piece of a puzzle. "That's a really good point."
Bella smiles. "I know."
She squeezes my hand. "You're a good man, Taihan. Never doubt it."
And just like that, the weight in my chest shifts – rearranges itself into something more bearable. Bella's voice is soothing, steady. The train rumbles forward, faster, farther.
And I let it.
The train rocks gently along the tracks, the rhythmic clatter filling the silence between us. Bella sits across from me, one leg tucked beneath her, her book resting open but forgotten on her lap. The dim cabin light catches the edge of her cheekbone, sharp and delicate all at once.
"Now that we got that out of the way… tell me about her," she says suddenly.
I looked up, surprised. "Who?"
She rolls her eyes, smiling like she's indulging me. "Your wife, Taihan."
Something in my chest tightens. I shouldn't talk about Qianqian here, in this place, at this moment. It feels wrong, like a betrayal.
But Bella is watching me expectantly, and I can't ignore her forever.
"She's…she's good," I say carefully. "Kind."
Bella hums thoughtfully. "Kind," she repeats. "That's a nice word."
She leans forward, resting her chin in her hand. "And does she know? About you leaving?"
I swallow, shifting in my seat. "No."
Her eyes flicker with something. Pity, maybe. Understanding. Or at least, the illusion of it.
"That must've been hard," she murmurs. "Leaving her behind like that."
Guilt claws up my throat.
Bella sighs, looking out the window at the passing darkness. "You know, I've thought about this a lot."
"Thought about what?"
She turns back to me, studying me like she's searching for something. "How love should be freeing," she says softly. "Not something that holds you down."
My fingers curl against my knees. "That's not – Qianqian isn't–"
Bella reaches across the space between us, her fingertips grazing my wrist. "I'm not saying she's the one holding you back, Taihan. I'm saying this place is. This town. This life."
I exhale, long and slow.
"I think, in some way, she knows that too," Bella continues, her voice gentle, persuasive. "She wouldn't want you to waste away there, scraping by, wishing you had done something different. If she loves you, and I believe she does, then she'd want what's best for you."
I blink at her, caught between the weight of my guilt and the truth in her words.
Bella gives me a small, knowing smile. "And this?" She gestures vaguely around us, at the train, at the direction we're headed. "This is what's best. Not just for you, but for her too."
I don't say anything.
Bella shifts closer, lowering her voice like she's letting me in on some great secret. "You could send money back, you know. Give her the life she deserves. Not the one that keeps you both trapped."
Something inside me cracks.
Because she's right, isn't she?
I can't give Qianqian a good life by staying. But maybe I can do it by leaving.
Bella squeezes my wrist, her touch warm, grounding. "This isn't betrayal, Taihan. This is love."
The words settle deep in my bones, sinking into the parts of me that ache the most.
I nod, slowly at first, then with more certainty.
Bella smiles.
She knows she's won.