Admiring Dawn's Hue

Lou Chong had a name around the Beijing circle for being born bad, for backing people into corners and taking whatever he decided he wanted. Li Xing needed her grandmother's surgery paid for and had taken online work as a girlfriend by the hour. The two of them met by chance and she went on the clock for him. At a therapy session he threw the sand tray over, got a hand on her throat and shouted that the custom service did not cover prying into his private life. A second later he let go and put a cashmere coat around her shoulders. In a compartment in his study she found posters from performances she had given at university, every one of them marked with the date and a note on how she had been that day. On a night of heavy rain she saw the scars on him and remembered the accident, and that he had gotten her out of it and then dropped out of her life. She asked him why, crying, and his eyes went red. "I would rather you thought I was dead than have you see what I came down to." She put her mouth to the scars and he pulled back from her, saying he had gotten too dirty to stand next to her. The injury had cost him the college entrance exams. His family let him go after that, and he worked as muscle in a casino before he came up into business.