Dry leaves rustled beneath his feet.
He wasn’t entirely unafraid. After all, he was only eighteen. But—
Qin Siyu’s nerves were taut, his mind intensely focused, and he kept watching his surroundings.
He held the torches high. Whenever he approached a bend in the path, he made a little noise, coughing softly a couple of times or letting his footsteps sound evenly. He had read that it was important to let bears know a person was about to appear, doing everything possible not to startle them.
The journey was fairly peaceful.
Qin Siyu had thought it through. If Lucy and Lily were truly in danger, say, because a black bear had been startled, he had his torches, and Lucy and Lily were brave girls. At the very least, they could throw stones to help him. Surely they could get away. Bears were solitary animals.
He searched according to a deliberate pattern. Before long, he noticed a light shining through the dense forest ahead.
He approached cautiously—
It really was Lucy and Lily!
At that moment the girls’ bodies were rigid and their breathing rapid. They gripped the steel fork they had used for feeding the bears and stared fixedly ahead.
Qin Siyu followed their line of sight—
His heart nearly stopped, too.
A brown bear!
A species that had once been plentiful but was supposed to be extinct in Yosemite by now!!!
Elio’s Notes: This 1933 grizzly encounter is a fictional exception to the historical record. According to the National Park Service, the last known grizzly in Yosemite was killed in 1895, and the last known California grizzly was shot outside the Yosemite region in the early 1920s. The story’s encounter is retained without alteration. Sources: NPS, Yosemite Stories; NPS, Bears.
Why?
The brown bear was enormous, more than eight feet tall, and seemed ready to attack. When Qin Siyu appeared, its eyes slowly shifted toward him.
It looked hungry.
His heart rose and fell with heavy thuds, one after another, and blood surged through his body.
They were very close.
Qin Siyu felt as though his fingers were trembling. When he glanced down, however, they seemed steady.
Keeping his breathing under control, he held the bear’s gaze and motioned to the girls to try retreating.
The two looked at him nervously. Lucy took a step back. The bear didn’t notice, or perhaps didn’t care. They took another two or three steps, and still it did nothing to stop them.
Lucy and Lily watched him anxiously.
Qin Siyu made an “OK” gesture and indicated the way back. He silently mouthed “Rangers,” meaning the rangers should be over there and the girls should bring them here.
The girls understood the situation and quickly withdrew to get help.
Keeping his eyes on the brown bear, Qin Siyu also edged one step backward.
The bear moved and followed him one step forward.
Qin Siyu: …Shit.
They faced each other for a little longer, perhaps a dozen seconds. He took another step back, and once again the bear moved forward.
Aaaaah, shit!
How long would he have to hold out before the rangers arrived? Qin Siyu did some mental arithmetic and realized it would probably be a very, very long time…
He raised the torches and watched the bear.
It appeared to be an old bear, perhaps already feeble with age. It had only just emerged from hibernation and was still weak. Qin Siyu held burning torches, so although the bear was hungry, it didn’t attack immediately. It was sizing him up, perhaps not intending to let this “food” escape so easily.
Just as Qin Siyu stood frozen, he suddenly heard a low, cold command: “Get down!”
The voice was intensely familiar. He obeyed instinctively, dropping into a crouch at once!
A gunshot cracked, and a bullet tore through the air. Then came several more tremendous reports, bang, bang, bang, bang. Birds exploded upward from the forest, and only after a little while did everything become still again.
Footsteps sounded behind him. Qin Siyu: “…”
He raised his eyes and looked at the bear.
Its face had been shot to pieces.
The cold, dangerous face from moments before was now nothing but a bloody, hollow ruin.
The shooter had emptied his magazine.
“…” Qin Siyu turned his head and looked behind him.
Against the moonlight, Aston came toward him, changing to a fresh magazine as he stepped over fallen branches.
He wore gloves on both hands and held a hunting gun in his right. His face looked extraordinarily composed and stern in the pale light, with an almost uncanny beauty, as if he had come from some desolate, dangerous place and was now walking toward them one step at a time.
When he reached Qin Siyu, he lowered his lashes and looked at him. After a long pause, he held out a hand. Qin Siyu studied it for a moment, then reached out and clasped it, allowing Aston to pull him up.
Aston withdrew his hand but caught Qin Siyu by the chin, holding him still. His gaze traveled over Qin Siyu’s brows, eyes, nose, and lips. After confirming that nothing was wrong, he took Qin Siyu’s chin between two fingers and turned his face left and right to inspect both sides. Only then did he let go.
While Aston inspected him, Qin Siyu obediently raised his torches to illuminate himself. He even separated them, taking one in each hand so their light fell over him from both sides.
Whenever the dimness made it hard to see, Aston stepped closer, drawing one side of Qin Siyu’s face directly beneath his own eyes and studying it closely.
Qin Siyu could even smell gunpowder on Aston’s fingertips.
The scent of leather mingled with gunpowder.
Still seeming slightly uncertain, Aston slid the tip of his thumb along the outer corner of Qin Siyu’s right eye, stroking it once, while the other four fingers curved gently around the back of his head. When the glove brushed his skin, Qin Siyu actually shivered; his scalp tingled.
Once Aston released him, Qin Siyu asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Hunting,” Aston replied.
Elio’s Notes: Hunting inside Yosemite National Park was prohibited under U.S. law by this period, apart from exceptions involving dangerous animals threatening life or injury. The novel does not specify whether the fraternity’s hunting grounds were outside park boundaries; Aston’s shooting of the bear is depicted as protecting Qin Siyu. The narrative is preserved as written. Source: 16 U.S.C. § 60 (law enacted in 1920).
In the empty forest, his voice sounded even deeper.
Only then did Qin Siyu remember that he had once overheard some fraternity members discussing a hunting trip here. Apparently the two outings had happened to coincide.
Aston added, “We went to the campground just now. We met some of your classmates. They said you were somewhere in this direction, looking for two missing girls. As I came this way, I heard something nearby. That must have been the two of them making noise on their way back.”
Though Aston was speaking, he didn’t seem interested in receiving an answer.
Qin Siyu managed only, “Yes, the two of them…” before being interrupted.
The gloved thumb resting against his face actually slipped into his mouth and pressed down on his tongue, as though Aston couldn’t bear even another second. “Shh. Please don’t talk about anyone else right now, all right?”
Qin Siyu fell instantly silent.
“All right?” Aston asked.
“…” With his tongue pinned down, Qin Siyu lightly bit Aston’s finger to indicate that he understood.
The glove was real leather, and it felt rough and astringent against his teeth.
Even after Aston withdrew his thumb, Qin Siyu’s mouth was filled with the scent of leather and gunpowder.
After finishing his inspection, Aston’s face remained expressionless. Yet he gently drew the person before him into his arms, wrapped his arms around Qin Siyu’s waist, and held him close. The soft skin of his chin rubbed against Qin Siyu’s forehead, again and again.
To his own surprise, Qin Siyu didn’t move. He simply stood there. After a little while, he raised his arms too and wrapped them around Aston’s waist and back.
He even secretly sniffed the opening of Aston’s collar.
They held each other quietly for a while.
Qin Siyu looked back at the bear’s corpse and sighed. “It’s actually rather pitiful.”
It had wandered the forest alone, with no others of its kind, grown so old, and come out searching for food, only to have its face shot apart before it had even done anything.
“What’s pitiful about it?” Aston’s voice was utterly flat. “It wanted to attack you. It deserved to die.”
Whether it had already acted or not made no difference.
Qin Siyu: “…”
Aston’s blue eyes looked unnaturally beautiful and cruel in the moonlight and firelight. He added, “You can pity it. I’ll kill it.”
“…” Qin Siyu looked up and smiled. “All right, then.”
He hadn’t exactly been pitying it, anyway.
He extinguished his torches first, since they might still need them later.
Aston lowered his gaze toward him.
He still wore no expression, and the moonlight made his face look a little pale. But there was something different in his eyes. All at once, Qin Siyu felt that this would be a suitable moment for a kiss.
The forest was deserted, the mountain wind cold, the moonlight chilly, the stars dim. The air smelled of gunpowder and blood. Everything was bleak. And Qin Siyu suddenly thought that this bleak setting would be perfect for a passionate kiss.
Amid all that desolation, what was missing was two people kissing.
The thought frightened him.
Kissing? With whom?
…The two of them?
He looked up at Aston’s lips, two thin, vivid, moist curves, and became even more certain that this bleak setting would be perfect for a passionate kiss.
Their lips could meet and their tongues entwine. From time to time they could open their eyes and look at each other for a second from close range, confirming the other’s presence, then close them again and draw warmth from each other even more intimately.
Amid the pervasive sense of death, the other person would be his entire world.
He had never felt such an impulse before, and its strength appalled him.
…Stop.
What on earth was he thinking?
He couldn’t explain this feeling.
His parents loved him, but Qin Sanfu wasn’t truly the sort of father one could rely on. He dreamed of making a fortune and was forever fantasizing. Lin Xiangmei, meanwhile, revolved entirely around Qin Sanfu. Qin Siyu had always believed his mother was the cleverer of the two, but she herself insisted that the man was responsible for running the household.
So Qin Siyu had always relied on himself. In fact, Qin Sanfu, Lin Xiangmei, and Lin Suyu all relied on him, too.
Everyone praised him for being mature and dependable. Yet he was “mature and dependable” only because he had no one to lean on.
He had begun doing odd jobs in Chinatown when he was eight. From fourteen onward, he worked every school holiday in laundries or restaurants. At sixteen, hoping to earn a little more, he went to the neighboring Italian district as an apprentice. After the Depression began, during the hardest days, he even went to the docks every day of his holidays looking for work. If he found none, he went elsewhere, until he finally landed a temporary job cutting asparagus at a restaurant.
Being so firmly protected, the way he had been tonight, was an unfamiliar experience.
Aston, too, was looking at Qin Siyu’s lips.
Qin Siyu had no idea what Aston was thinking at that moment.
Under the moonlight, in the scent of blood, they stood there with little expression, staring at each other’s lips for a very long time. Each imagined that, in this setting, they might forget everything else, embrace each other as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and kiss.
Several minutes later, Qin Siyu looked away and glanced in the direction of the campground. “It feels like we’ve been gone a long time. We should probably get back.”
After a long while, Aston nodded. “All right.”
With a click, he opened the gun’s action, checked it, and closed it again. “Let’s go back.”
“Mm,” Qin Siyu said.
So they set off side by side toward the campground.
Sometimes one walked ahead of the other. Aston, carrying the gun, always went first around turns. Whenever Qin Siyu lost sight of him, his heart instinctively tightened and he hurried around the bend to follow.
After several such instances, Aston naturally noticed. He reached out, gripped Qin Siyu’s wrist, and led him along.
Beneath the leather glove, his fingers were steady and strong.
When the campfire came into view, Aston released him. Qin Siyu raised his wrist and looked at the slender place that still seemed to ache faintly. He suddenly felt empty. His whole arm grew restless. It wanted to be gripped, to be pulled along, to obey someone else. It didn’t want to belong to him.
Before they separated, Aston asked, “Is that all you’re wearing tonight?”
“Yes,” Qin Siyu replied. “I’m not cold.”
In truth, the temperature up in the mountains was low. San Francisco itself was relatively mild, though, and Qin Siyu was poor. He would never buy clothing he couldn’t wear often.
Aston casually shrugged off his overcoat and draped it over him. After entering the campground, he looked at no one. With a calm expression and without turning back, he headed straight toward the fraternity’s camp.
Cliff seemed to be asking him where he had gone.
Wrapped in the overcoat, Qin Siyu returned to his classmates.
His thoughts were a mess.
He kept remembering what had just happened.
Under the pressure of extreme fear, each moment had become extraordinarily vivid.
He stepped back, and the brown bear stepped back as well. Then came the command to “Get down!” and the gunshots. Afterward, that person came toward him with a hunting gun, stepping over fallen branches.
In that instant, Qin Siyu felt his heartbeat reach its peak.
He didn’t know whether it was fear or something else.
All he knew was that his heart seemed to have climbed into his throat and his whole body had begun to tremble slightly, even more than when he had first seen the brown bear.
Then Aston had examined his face from both sides, even touching it.
He had held him gently in his arms, and Qin Siyu had quietly embraced him in return.
Aston had said, with complete calm, “It deserved to die.”
Remembering it all made his heart pound again.
It felt as though his life, his body, and his soul would forever after carry the mark of Kingsley Aston.
He suddenly understood something of a very old emotion. At a time like this, a person really could inexplicably think: Kingsley, I would do anything for you.