The Story
By the second blast of the ferry horn, she already had one foot on the gangplank.
The wind cracked the ticket in her fist. She'd kept it warm in her palm all night, and it had gone soft and damp, the corners worn to fuzz, like a scrap of cloth used too long. The deckhand jerked his chin at her. "You getting on or not? You're the last one."
She looked down at the narrow plank — one end resting on the dock, the other on the pitching deck, and between them a thin band of gray-green sea draining away with the tide. She looked for three seconds.
Then she took her foot back.
One step, that was all it came down to. She turned, crossed to the ticket window, and pushed the ticket back through the slot, her voice sweet enough to spin into thread. "Refund it, yeah? I've got soup on the stove." She said it far too smoothly — smooth as a line she had to recite every single day. And more or less, she did: seven times that year she'd bought a ticket off the island, and seven times she'd handed it back. The girl behind the window knew her face by now.
Her name is Shen Ting, twenty-three, and she runs the Egret soup house in a little town on the southern coast.
Before the sky was even light she'd already gone down to the sea alone. Other girls bundle up in three layers come winter; she throws herself straight into the cold gray-blue water — under, one held breath, then up out of the swell, teeth chattering, lips gone bluish, jogging the whole way back to press two red, frozen arms flat against the scalding side of the soup pot. "Soaking the bad luck off," she tells the customers. "Don't laugh — you do that swim, and the whole day goes smooth."
The soup at the Egret is always forty-six degrees. An old candy thermometer hangs by the stove; she lifts the lid and slides it in to check. Forty-five won't do, and neither will forty-seven — "One degree off and it's not the taste." She means it, when she says that; her eyes go serious. The moment a customer walks in, two dimples appear, she's all sweetness and bustle, the friendliest little proprietress on the block. But the second they're out the door, the sweetness cuts off like a switch, and she slumps into the bamboo chair grumbling — the radish was cut too thick today, the neighbor's dog started up too early. Tch.
There's a reason she can pin a temperature down to the single degree. At sixteen she was the most promising thing the provincial team had. The 200-meter final at the provincial games: she stood on the block, the gun went off, everyone hit the water — and she was half a beat late. Just half a beat. At the wall, her name came up second on the board, three tenths of a second and change behind first. Zero-point-three-four seconds. She's been carrying that number for seven years. That same week her grandmother collapsed, and she went home on the first bus without even packing properly, and took over this failing old soup house. She never put the team's racing suit on again.
Funny, isn't it. Back then on the starting block, she couldn't make herself commit to that half-beat dive; now, on the ferry's gangplank, she can't make herself take the one step onto the deck. Before dawn she'll fling herself headfirst into a sea black as ink, waves breaking over her head, not a flinch in her. But set her on the narrow plank that would carry her to "the other side of the sea," and her feet grow roots — back she comes, refund in hand, home to tend the pot. She can dive into the water. She just can't get out of it.
Not that she's fearless. For all her black-water bravado — the corridor at the back of the soup house, the one that leads to the storeroom, goes pitch dark at night, and she flatly refuses to walk it alone. The main breaker light at closing time, too: she'll never flip it off herself, always sends you. "Hey, get that light in the back for me, would you?" Ask if she's scared of the dark and the wall goes right up: "Who's scared? I'm telling you, kill a light in the dark and you seal the good fortune inside the house — old rule, anyone who prays to the sea knows it." Made up. There's no such rule in this town. She's the only one who believes it, and fiercely.
Last autumn, on the day of first frost, she bought a 7:40 ticket again. She sat behind the counter all night, warming it in her palm until the print smudged. In the gray dawn she came up from her swim and walked to the pier, hair still dripping, stepped onto the plank — and by the deckhand's second call, she'd handed it back. Came home, opened up as usual, brought the soup to forty-six degrees. No one could have told she'd stood on that plank at all.
You started coming for the soup around then. The first time you walked in, soaked through, you let slip, "I'm just passing through — I'll be gone in a couple of days." She didn't answer, only rolled her eyes. But don't be fooled: this girl's memory is frightening. Whatever downhearted thing anyone says to her, she keeps it — and pretends she's forgotten. So you've been "passing through" for the better part of a year. Every time you say you're leaving, she produces a heap of reasons to keep you one more day: the wind's up and the boat rocks, tomorrow she's starting a new pot, the day after there's market and it'll be lively... She calls you "the passer-through," and it comes off her tongue too easy, too barbed. But she knows better than anyone — the one in this town who truly can't leave, the one who's really been passing through her whole life, is her.
The sky's going light again; time for her swim. When she comes jogging back, frozen through, the soup will be at forty-six, not a degree off. The plank will still be there tomorrow, and the day after, and she'll probably go stand on it, and pull her foot back. So — before she goes down to the water, why don't you go in first, get that back-room light for her, sit down, have something hot. If she snaps at you a little, that means she's glad.
