Chapter 5

Third week, Chen Mo brought headphones.

Jiang Tang was already ready. The treatment outfit she wore today was different from the ones before: black, with less fabric, pulled tighter against her body. She stood by the bed and let him look.

"Visual stimulation," she said. "Some people like this. If you think it helps, I can keep wearing something like it from now on."

He glanced at her, then looked away.

She smiled, climbed onto the bed, and knelt beside him.

"Put the headphones on," she said. "Listen to your music, close your eyes, and don't think about anything else. Just listen."

He put them on and opened the playlist. Chopin's Nocturne in D-flat major, Op. 27 No. 2. The piano spilled out slowly, gentle and low, with a trace of melancholy.

He closed his eyes.

He felt her lips touch his skin.

Light, soft, moving down little by little.

Her movements were very slow, slower than the first two times, as if she were keeping time with the music.

Every note of the piano, every touch of her lips, blended together until he could no longer tell whether the music was guiding her or she was guiding the music.

He could feel her breath, her warmth, her presence.

But all of it melted into the music, no longer making him tense, no longer making him embarrassed.

He just lay there, listening to the music and feeling those touches.

She worked on him for a long time. Lips, tongue, hands, body. She changed positions, angles, rhythms. Her movements always stayed with the music, soft, slow, and deep.

He didn't know how long had passed. Maybe twenty minutes, maybe half an hour. One piece ended, then another, then another. His body had completely relaxed, as if he were floating on water, as if he were drifting on clouds.

Then he felt her take him inside her.

Not her mouth, not her hands, but that place.

Her body, the deepest part of her, wrapped around him.

He could feel her warmth, her contractions, her trembling.

But even those sensations were no longer stimulation. They had become part of the music, part of the nocturne, part of Chopin himself.

She rode him, her movements soft and slow, like waves.

He could feel her body growing hotter and wetter, her contractions becoming stronger.

She started panting, started trembling, started making sounds.

But those sounds blended into the music like another voice beyond the piano.

"Almost there..." she whispered in his ear. "You push... we'll do it together..."

He listened to the music and pushed.

The feeling surged up from deep inside him. Not all at once, but little by little, like a tide slowly rising. It gathered, and gathered, and gathered until it reached a certain point, and then--

It opened.

A door deep inside his body opened.

He felt liquid surge out, hot, a lot of it, continuous.

It wasn't a shot, but a flow, an overflow, a release.

With his eyes still closed, he listened to the music and felt that release, felt it spilling out and into the depths of her body.

On top of him, her body was shaking violently.

She could feel every drop he released, feel it flooding into her deepest place.

Her body contracted with it too, over and over, as if answering, as if taking it in, as if welcoming it.

She stayed sprawled over him, gasping for a long time.

He didn't move either, just lay there with his eyes closed, listening to the music.

Much later, she got off him. He heard her rustling around beside him, then felt the sample collector touch him. She was taking a sample; he could tell.

Then he heard a soft "mm."

He opened his eyes and took off the headphones.

She was standing there, holding the small container up to the light to look at it.

Inside was what he had just released, milky white, thick, with a faint sheen under the lamp.

She brought it to her mouth, tipped a little in, held it there for a moment, then swallowed.

"All right." She turned back toward him, the corners of her mouth lifting. "The taste is right, the consistency is right, and the amount is right. Your course of treatment is over."

He lay there, looking at her smile, not knowing what to say.

She came over and handed him a towel.

"Wipe off the sweat and get dressed," she said. "You don't need to come next week. If you have any problems later, you can always make a follow-up appointment. But I don't think you'll have any problems now."

He sat up, took the towel, and wiped the sweat from his body.

She started cleaning up the equipment, throwing the used disposables into the trash, sealing the small container, labeling it, and putting it into a special box.

He got dressed and stood by the bed, watching her.

"Thank you," he said.

She looked up at him.

"No need to thank me. I'm getting paid," she said, lowering her head to keep tidying up. "Take care of your body, eat less spicy food, exercise more, and keep a regular schedule. This illness is becoming more and more common. It's the environment; there's nothing we can do. If it can be treated, that's already good enough."

He stood there and still didn't leave.

She looked up at him again.

"Anything else?"

He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but didn't manage it.

She looked at him, waited a few seconds, and then said, "You want to ask what it's like when I taste that every time?"

He froze for a moment, then nodded.

She smiled, and the smile lasted longer than it had before.

"At first, it was a little hard to get used to," she said. "But later I got used to it. Everyone tastes different. It has to do with what you eat, whether you sleep well, and how much pressure you're under. The longer we do this work, the quicker we can tell what's wrong just by tasting. With someone like you, the first time it was a little sweet, which meant damp heat. The second time it was sweeter, which meant the fluid had reached the doorway. The third time it was thicker and the taste had faded, which meant the door was almost open. Just now, it was completely normal, which means it's fully cleared."

As she spoke, she pointed at her mouth.

"This is the most accurate," she said. "More accurate than a machine. An old senior in our department worked for more than thirty years. With one taste, he could tell whether someone smoked, drank, stayed up until what hour, and whether they'd been running themselves down lately. I'm not at that level yet, but after a few more years, I should be able to do it too."

He listened, not knowing what to say.

She lowered her head again and kept packing things away, saying as she worked, "Don't think it's strange. Our department has been around for more than thirty years. In the beginning, people cursed us out, said we were perverts, illegal, against ethics. But later everyone realized this illness kept getting more common, and none of the other methods worked. Only we could treat it. Little by little, people accepted it."

She put away the last piece of equipment, straightened up, and looked at him.

"We're professionals. Just remember that. Don't overthink the rest."

He nodded, and finally said, "Then I'm going."

"Mm. Take care. I won't see you out." She was already washing her hands by the sink, her back to him. "Close the door on your way out."

He opened the door and walked out. The corridor was still the same: frosted glass cubicles, faint silhouettes, low voices speaking. He walked down the hall, out to the waiting area, through the front door, and onto the street.

Outside, the sunlight was bright enough to make him squint. He stood at the entrance, eyes narrowed, watching the cars and people moving past.

He thought of what she had just said.

"We're professionals."

He repeated it to himself, then started walking toward the subway station.