Chapter 12
Hua Qingyang
Northern Song dynasty. Qingyang, who adored luxury, was reprimanded for disobeying the new sumptuary laws in the capital.
Heart note // Higher tolerance for daily irritations
Base note // Myrrh
Rafe knocks again, but I cannot deal with him or anyone at this moment.
“Go away,” I yell.
“Please, Lucy.” His voice is soft. “Just…let me in.”
I’m not ready to be weak in front of Rafe, but I need the company. I’m tired of the empty room. Tired of trying and failing. I’m too tired to keep saying no, and although we may be estranged, we’re not strangers.
The wine means I struggle with the locks and, because I haven’t put down the glass, spill more on my clean shirt. Finally, I crack the door open and step back.
Rafe stands in the doorway and we stare at each other for what seems like an eternity.
He’s in a gray zipped hoodie—worn, frayed, and faded, like the one he wore almost every day when he was seventeen.
I could be convinced it’s the same one, except there’s no way the hoodie that had draped over his angular teenage frame would fit the man in front of me.
He’s also in jeans and bare feet with ratty slides.
He must have been putting the garbage out or something equally domestic.
No, a square white bag hangs from his hand. He met a delivery person in the lobby.
I step aside, then turn around and walk into my apartment. Behind me, Rafe closes the door and sets the locks.
“Wine?” I ask, sitting on the couch.
“I’ll get it.”
I listen to Rafe move around the kitchen and try to guess what he’s doing.
Getting plates down; that’s easy. There’s the click of a lighter; is one of the burners not working?
Why would he need the stove? I could turn around to see, but that seems like so much work when I can barely lift the glass to my lips.
It takes only a minute or two before he comes into the living room and puts a cup down in front of me. “Water,” he says.
As I sip, he opens the bag to reveal Korean fried chicken and tteokbokki, and what look like corn dogs but with an oddly textured exterior. “You should eat,” he says. “Luckily, I bought too much because I didn’t know what I wanted. Is there anything you don’t eat? Meat?”
“No, but I’m not hungry.”
“Lucy, don’t let the food go to waste.” He pulls on the translucent gloves that came with the food and picks up a chicken wing.
He’s halfway through the chicken when I give in and grab one of the corn dogs, its surface cratered with what looks like hash browns. “Does this have potato on it?” I ask, hefting it in my hand by the wooden skewer stuck through the center like a handle and turning it around curiously.
“It’s cheese with potato.” He pushes over the white Styrofoam tub of tteokbokki. “Dip it in this.”
I do, the weight of the food making my hand slip on the skewer, and take a bite.
The coating is soggy from the delivery, the cheese congealed from cooling, but this is a comfort food par excellence.
I take another bite, then another, and before I notice, I’ve finished it without offering any to Rafe.
Mom would be deeply unimpressed with my greed, but all Rafe does is hand me the second, this one covered in what looks like toasted ramen noodles with a half–hot dog, half-cheese interior.
I drink down the rest of the water—the food is salty—and Rafe pours me another glass from the carafe he brought out.
I can already feel the headache coming and rub my temples with my fingers to try to alleviate some of the tension.
Then I drink some more wine. Might as well put off the hangover for as long as I can.
I’ve settled into a miserable and introspective drunk, not a happy, hyper one.
“What’s going on, Lucy?”
I screw my eyes tight. “You know when people say they want something so bad it hurts?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever wanted something so bad that it went beyond pain? So deep that it almost numbed you?”
There’s a short silence, and then Rafe says, “I have.”
“I want something like that, but it’s something I never had. I thought I did and I was wrong. What’s wrong with me that I can’t let go? Why can’t I accept the loss of something that was never mine in the first place?”
My eyes squeeze shut to keep in the tears the wine has loosened, but I hear Rafe rise and then feel the dip of the couch when he sits next to me. He’s close enough that I can sense his presence. “What did you want?” He sounds severe, but when he reaches out to lay a hand on mine, it’s gentle.
I can’t stop, because deep down, I desperately want to tell someone. “I want my power. My moli power.”
“What do you mean?” Rafe sounds a little staggered, as if he hadn’t expected this. Which—fair.
When I don’t answer, he examines me, his bottom lip caught between his teeth before he speaks again. “Lucy. Are you telling me that you don’t…that something happened to your moli? I thought you were taking time for yourself before you joined your mother. That’s what we were told.”
I still don’t say anything.
“I promise I won’t say a word to anyone, including Mom.” Then he adds, “Swear on Stevie.”
I had forgotten about Stevie. It was the name we gave a little harbor seal who liked to swim around the beach rocks when we were exploring, recognizable by a perfectly round dark patch between the eyes. Swearing on Stevie had become our inviolable code for promise-keeping and truth-telling.
“That was a lie, about me taking time.” I force it out. “I don’t have my moli. I never did. Mom came up with that story to cover it up.”
“What happened?”
I spread my hands in my lap. “No one knows. The power might have skipped me. I might not be doing it correctly. There might be some other reason we haven’t thought of.”
Rafe’s face is intent. “How can you tell?”
“Well, nothing changed for my first client. So that was a big indicator. But there’s a feeling. My mother asked if I was sure I felt it, and I thought I did. It’s a little tug. Every woman in the family felt the same thing.”
“You didn’t?”
“No, but I thought I did.” I curl deeper into the couch. “When I was younger, I expected the power to work for me like it did for everyone else.”
“Like the sun coming up in the morning?”
“Exactly. It never crossed my mind that it wouldn’t. Then it didn’t, and I couldn’t bring myself to try again.”
“Why not?” The words are gentle.
I lie on the couch and talk to the ceiling. “Because this way I still had hope. Deep down, I could tell myself maybe that initial failure had been a fluke. That if I tried again, it might work. The possibility kept the hope alive.”
“I assume you tried again.”
I sigh. “Yeah, a while ago. I don’t have it. I never did.” My eyes drift down to the discarded remains of our meal. “You know what’s at stake. Mom was depending on me to rebuild the family fortune. The moli fragrances are the moneymakers.”
“People pay a lot for love.” He leans back. “I realize I don’t know how this even works. I never asked. How did you find out your family could do this in the first place?”
It feels a little strange to share my family’s history. “The original Hua woman—her name was Aiai—gave some incense to a maid, who fell in love after she burned it. Aiai’s mother realized her gift was to call someone’s true love, to make their hearts whole.”
“Can you test it on yourself?”
“It doesn’t work on us. Mom can make people happier, but have you met a more miserable woman?”
“That’s not fair,” he reprimands me gently.
I press my lips together, embarrassed and resentful that he’s called me out, and Rafe looks over at one of my candles. “It’s perfume, though. Wouldn’t everyone who smelled it be falling in love or feeling happier?”
Somehow, it relaxes me to chat about the logistic side of what we do. “Some moli are more inward and only affect the wearer. For instance, Mom’s does that. It wouldn’t make all the people who smell it happier as well. Some are more outward, and they cause changes in others.”
Rafe looks fascinated. “Like what?”
“Like my great-grandmother seven or eight back, who could make the wearer look more attractive to others. The moli’s impact was on those who came in contact with the one who wore the perfume but didn’t change the wearer’s mood or perception at all.
” I consider this. “Although I guess they’d be happy everyone thought they were hot. So it had a secondary impact.”
“What about the true love?” he asks.
“I suppose that’s the only one that does both,” I say, surprised I haven’t thought of this before. I’ll need to add that into my transcription as a note. “True love goes both ways and needs to be reciprocated. If it’s one way, it’s only an obsession.”
I let my voice trail off at the end, realizing I’ll never be able to see that impact firsthand. I’ll never witness two people achieving their love thanks to me.
Then Rafe touches me softly on my arm like the hundreds of times he’d wanted my attention when I was reading or zoning out.
It’s been so long since someone touched me like that, and never someone who knew the truth.
Humiliatingly, I start to cry again. I can’t help it.
All of this has been stuck inside, and that touch has drilled a hole in my flesh where it can leak out.
Rafe doesn’t hesitate. He wraps his arms around me and tucks my face into his chest to simply hold me until my tears fade and dry.