The Bank Card

The March wind, laced with a sharp chill, swept past the floor-to-ceiling windows of the street-corner cafe. The wind carried grains of sand, striking the glass with a soft sound, like someone gently scratching with their fingernails. I pressed the warm milk tea cup against my cheek; the curve of the cup perfectly nestled into the hollow of my cheekbone, the sweet, cloying milk fragrance mingling with the subtle bitterness of tea drifting into my nostrils. Mason Young sat opposite me, recounting how the new intern at the Design Institute had mistakenly exported a CAD drawing as a JPG, causing uproar in the office. When he spoke, his eyelashes quivered gently with his tone; sunlight slanted in, casting delicate shadows on his thick lashes, like fresh willow shoots in spring, rippling faintly beneath his eyelids. I gazed at him with a smile, my fingertips absentmindedly tracing the lid of the milk tea cup, where the little bear printed on it had become faintly blurred. The cafe was quiet; by the window sat an elderly couple. The old lady was slowly scooping sugar frosting from her cup into the old man's coffee, her movements as deliberate as counting sugar grains. Behind the counter, the coffee machine hissed as it released steam, fragments of roasted coffee beans falling onto the black countertop, which the waiter wiped clean in slow, circular motions. "By the way," Mason Young suddenly stopped stirring the coffee with the silver spoon; the clinking sound ceased abruptly as the porcelain spoon struck the bone china cup's rim, leaving a faint white mark. He raised his eyes to look at me, his pupils appearing somewhat translucent in the sunlight. "Last time, you said your monthly living expenses were twenty thousand?" The moment I nodded, I clearly saw a gleam flash in his pupils. That gleam was sharp, like a hunter's gaze tightening suddenly upon spotting prey—so swift I thought it was nothing but a patch of afternoon sunlight refracted through the glass. His fingertips traced the rim of the bone china cup, the thin calluses on his pads leaving fleeting white marks on the smooth glaze—marks worn from years of holding a drafting pencil. This was the one place I had always found him dependable. "With so much money, it's easy for you to lose control spending it alone." His voice was soft, as if speaking of something utterly ordinary, like "The weather is nice today." His thumb rubbed back and forth on the cup's rim, lightly, yet inexplicably it reminded me of how he repeatedly erased and redrew on his drafts. "How about I keep your bank card for you? I can give you a fixed amount of pocket money every month and save the rest for you to use later." A faint clink sounded as the bottom of the cup met the table; my fingers holding the milk tea cup tightened slightly. The warmth of the cup's surface crept up through my palm, burning my fingertips with a numb tingle, yet it could not thaw the sudden chill blossoming deep within my heart. We had only been dating three months, and I still instinctively avoided the security guard at the Design Institute's entrance when we held hands—he always said, "It looks bad if colleagues see us." Talking about who owned the bank card now felt like wearing shoes the wrong size—the heel digging into my ankle, the toe cramped against my toes, every bone in my body aching with discomfort. "But..." I tried to find the right words, my gaze settling on the digital watch on his wrist, its paint worn thin. The strap was made of gray plastic, cracked near the clasp, revealing the metal spring beneath. He had been wearing it since we first met; each time he lifted his hand to check the time, the rust-colored edge of the watch face would brush against the cuff, leaving a faint mark—like a stain that could never be washed away. "I'm not after your money." He interrupted me immediately; when his warm palm covered mine, I could even feel the sticky sweat secreted from his palm. It was a damp, warm slickness, like a plastic film clinging to the skin in summer. His knuckles gripped the back of my hand with such force it seemed he intended to brand my skin; the calluses on his fingertips rubbed painfully against me. "I fear you are young and blinded by those luxury goods." "You see those people living paycheck to paycheck? They end up with nothing to show for it." The glass window reflected his face; the shadow of his eyelashes just covered his pupils, like a thin veil being drawn. I suddenly recalled last week at the shopping mall, he stared at the suit in the display window for a full five minutes. That dark gray suit hung on the mannequin, the white shirt collar crisp beneath the cuffs, and the price tag beside it read "1980." At that moment, his Adam's apple bobbed as he said, "I'll buy it when I get my bonus," his finger unconsciously tracing circles on the glass, like a child fixated on candy. Perhaps he truly understood the value of restraint, I told myself obediently, as I reached into my bag for that gilded credit card. The rose pattern on the card's surface shimmered with delicate fragments of light under the sunlight, the veins of the petals worn slightly blurry—this was the gift my mother gave me for my twentieth birthday. The moment I handed it over, it felt as though something had been drawn out from within me, like a rib quietly plucked away.