As soon as Little Professor and Ning On entered the hotel room, he wrapped his arms around her from behind, kissing her hair at the nape of her neck. He drew his nose close, inhaling the faint fragrance of her skin, then exhaled softly. It sent goose bumps rippling across her flesh. He said he missed her; that he’d been thinking about her. Ning On couldn’t tell if those were just sweet nothings. She ceased thinking. The tip of his tongue was grazing her ear now, teasing it with dampness. She always got queasy when he did this. Her body shuddered in a wave of tremors. Just as she was about to turn around and kiss him hungrily, she caught a whiff of a light but acrid smell emanating from him. It made her wince. She stiffened. She didn’t want to know where the smell came from.
Little Professor must have observed this mood shift. He looked at her, sorry as a scolded pet. “I already rinsed off once. Is it still too strong?” He began to explain. Ning On didn’t want to hear more. She bit his shoulder, cutting him off.
In the wide world outside, a hail of tear gas and rubber bullets rained down. It had become the new normal in the past months. Inside the elegant confinement of this room, she just wanted to concentrate on making love, pure and simple. She was so tired. She wanted to disappear into a strong, muscular body. Why did everyone have to express themselves? Why the rush to open their mouths, repeating their scripts? Ning On locked these thoughts tight in her throat. She clenched her legs firmly around his solid, lean waist. Lost in the animalistic frenzy, she moaned in scattered bursts. She submerged herself in the moment. She feared that sharp, biting complaints might slip past her lips as soon as she let up. No, she was just ignorant and uncomplicated Ning On. At least, that’s what he seemed to believe. That’s what everyone—her clients, her daughter, her ex-husband—expected her to be.
Perhaps she believed it too. Better to be ignorant. Ignorant people were the happiest.
Ning On was thirty-five and divorced. She saved up to open her beauty salon on her own. Her daughter had just started high school. These were things she never told her clients. Sharing personal details or political views with them was a bit of a gamble. It might appeal to some customers and help her lock in a loyal clientele. It might also rub some people the wrong way. She didn’t want to risk not only losing out on business but also becoming fodder for gossip. The last thing she needed was the kind of politely packaged advice steeped in condescension. Hence, she became a quiet listener.
The customer was king. Many people had been saying that capital was the lifeline of Hong Kong, so resistance didn’t necessarily have to mean blood and sweat. Consumption, too, could be weaponized to express allegiance or mete out punishment. The public scrutinized every business—the decor, the staff’s remarks—to figure out their stance on the pro-democracy movement, sorting them into categories for support or boycott. This raging tide seemed to sweep away the practical considerations for service, quality, and price. The primary standard for evaluation became Do you share my politics?
It had occurred to Ning On that perhaps it was not her body or her personality that kept Little Professor coming back to her. Sometime after they met at the gym and began hooking up, he told her that he had studied social science in college and his classmates called him Little Professor because he spoke in an old‑fashioned way and loved to lecture. He never became a real professor, but the name stuck. Ning On could see this now. He liked to give her fitness tips and offer his opinions on the news. In these chaotic times, he needed an obedient listener. And she played the part well.
When Little Professor fell asleep, she propped herself up and watched him. She softened, remembering the night his calf was injured by a rubber bullet at a protest. In a deluge of messages, he begged her to meet up with him at a nearby hotel. After she arrived, he curled into her embrace and whimpered softly as he gently suckled her breast, begging her to kiss him, to wrap her arms around his neck. She ran her fingers through his hair. He was much taller than her, but he seemed so small, so delicate. His eyes were misted and his palms were trembling. He asked her to hold his hands tight and not to let go. They clung to each other tightly, as if nothing remained on Earth except the two of them. They were both desperate and only anchored to this life by each other’s warm bodies.
Tonight, Little Professor didn’t have nightmares. Gently, Ning On’s fingertips glided over the broad, solid surface of his skin. When it came to imperfections on the skin, she understood them better than anyone. Her clients came to her, lay on her tiny treatment bed to endure various tortures: she used a needlelike tool to extract blackheads; lasers to treat spots and marks and for overall brightening. When the laser machine is switched on, it made pop pop sounds like an electrical bug killer. Sometimes, she felt she could smell scorched skin.
Maybe she’d use it on Little Professor one day. She looked at his perfectly toned and tanned left calf. There were several jagged dark brown scabs. They clustered together in a tight little group. Some of them were curved like a hook. Others were merely a dot. One was particularly large, in an irregular arc shape. Its purple black center was surrounded by blotches of varying shades and textures, raised or sunken at places. Tiny beads of blood had seeped out and dried into tiny specks. Along the edges, fresh pink flesh had begun to grow, forming a dull white border where it met the scab. They appeared like a dried-up patch of terrain stitched onto his body, ghastly to look at. The largest among them had stiffened as if it were an unyielding, parched island. She and her laser machine couldn’t touch this territory until the scabs were fully healed and had become scars.
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From Everyday Movement by Gigi L. Leung (translated by Jennifer Feeley). Used with permission of the publisher, Riverhead Books. Copyright © 2026.
