Since we are all reborn, let’s arrest the senior!

The morning light in May, like unfiltered glaze, thickly spilled onto the terrace of the Lu family's old house.

Jiang Zimei wore a smoky gray cropped sportswear outfit, kneeling on a yoga mat with her back arched into a beautiful curve. The temporary tattoo on her lower back was a broken ice crack pattern, which stretched out with the downward-facing dog pose, and faint red finger marks left by Lu Mingze's fingertips yesterday were faintly visible between the lines, like glaze flowing unexpectedly during kiln firing.

“Lu Mingze’s treadmill needs to be moved.” She turned to look at the man leaning against the glass railing, her ponytail brushing against his ankles. “Every time he runs on it, it feels like he’s giving me a back massage.”

Lu Mingze put down his bone china coffee cup, the bottom of which tapped crisply on the marble countertop. He was wearing a custom-made dark gray tracksuit, with the smart back brace tailored to resemble a sports girdler. Only when he raised his hand to drink his coffee could the matte metal texture on the Italian handmade belt buckle be seen—a "cracked ice" pattern he had personally designed.

"There's glaze powder on the edge of your yoga mat." He raised his chin, his gaze falling on the arch of her foot. "Did you spill the 'diamond glaze' you mixed last night again?"

Jiang Zimei straightened up and took out a silver pendant from her sports bra. The shards of glazed ceramic, adorned with tiny diamonds, rested against her chest, shimmering subtly in the morning light, much like the ever-burning kiln lamp in Lu Mingze's studio. She leaned forward deliberately, the bra strap slipping halfway down, revealing a cinnabar mole below her collarbone: "Brother Lu, would you like to examine my 'raw form'?"

As Lu Mingze walked over, his slippers left blurry footprints on the cobalt blue powder on the yoga mat. He adjusted her shoulder straps, his fingertips brushing against her warm skin, then suddenly grasped her wrist and turned it over—the pale blue veins on the inside throbbed, much like the mica veins in the clay of Jingdezhen pottery.

"Aunt Jiang said you've been staying up late a lot lately." He pressed his thumb against the Taiyuan acupoint on the inside of her wrist. "You have to drink the fish maw soup she made tonight, otherwise..."

"Otherwise what?" She tilted her head back, her eyelashes casting shadows on her eyelids. "Lu Mingze is going to feed me himself?"

In the distance came the sound of a gardener pruning shrubs. Lu Mingze's fingertips slid to the crook of her elbow, where there was a faint burn scar—left from when she secretly learned how to open a kiln last year. He suddenly lowered his head and whispered in her ear, "Otherwise, I'll tie you to the glaze rack and cover your whole body in 'flowing gold glaze'."

Jiang Zimei laughed and slapped his hand away. As she turned around, she caught a glimpse of herself in the glass reflection: the ice-crack pattern tattoo on her lower back overlapped with the pattern of Lu Mingze's protective gear, much like what he often called "yin-yang clay"—two separate pieces of clay that could be perfectly pieced together to form a complete object.

The torrential rain of the plum rain season pounded against the convenience store glass, much like Lu Mingze's vigorous stirring when adjusting the "rain-after-sky blue" glaze. Jiang Zimei tiptoed to reach the chocolate on the top shelf of the freezer, her thigh muscles taut under her athletic shorts, revealing half a temporary tattoo at the waistband—a "sealing wax stamp" she had secretly applied at Lu Mingze's studio last week, using his treasured cobalt blue glaze.

"Need any help, apprentice?" Lu Mingze's voice came through the rain. He was wearing a black hoodie, the hood covering half his face, but it couldn't hide the stubble that had sprouted on his chin—when she shaved him this morning, she had deliberately left a dark bluish-black mark below his Adam's apple.

"Didn't Lu Mingze say he wanted to give up sugar?" She tore open the chocolate wrapper, the dark brown filling smeared on her lips. "Last time in the kiln, who was it that stuffed dark chocolate into my mouth?"

He suddenly wrapped his arms around her waist from behind and lifted her up to get the chocolate. As her sneakers left the ground, the laces brushed against his calf, where there was a coin-sized scar—a cut she had accidentally made with a potter's knife.

“Sweets can cloud judgment.” He lowered his head and licked the chocolate sauce off the corner of her lips, pinching the soft flesh on her side with his fingertips. “Like right now, your judgment is zero.”

Under the warm yellow light of the convenience store, the red mark on the back of his neck was clearly visible; it was the crescent shape she had scratched with her nails that morning. Jiang Zimei suddenly pointed to the shelf and chuckled, picking up a bottle of gold lubricant and shaking it under the light: "Lu Mingze, look, this color is no more than ΔE 0.5 different from the 'flowing gold glaze' you fired last week."

Lu Mingze tapped the back of her hand, but as he took the bottle, he wrote the character "窑" (kiln) on her palm with his fingertip. She instantly recalled the scene from last night in the studio, when he pinned her against the glaze rack and wrote the glaze formula on her lower abdomen with his finger dipped in gold powder.

"Come to the studio for a trial firing at 3 PM tomorrow." He tossed the chocolate into the shopping basket. "This time, firing the 'crack pattern' requires the help of body temperature to control the temperature."

She raised an eyebrow: "Brother Lu, do you mean I have to lie naked against the kiln?"

“No.” He leaned close to her ear, his breath hot. “It’s me pressing against you, using my body heat to warm the glaze.”

The mosaic tiles by the pool were scorching hot from the sun. Jiang Zimei lay on a white lounge chair, the strap of her silver-gray bikini slipping down to her armpit, revealing a temporary tattoo on her shoulder blade—a star map drawn with Lu Mingze's "shattered diamond glaze" powder mixed with human glue, each star being a numbered fragment of a kiln-fired piece he had made over the years.

"What is Lu Mingze looking at?" As she turned her head, strands of hair brushed against her collarbone, where a little pool water had accumulated, resembling a miniature glaze pool.

Lu Mingze emerged from the water wearing black swimming goggles, his fingertips hooking around the shoulder strap of her bikini and gently tugging at it—it was a specially designed detachable structure, with the strap buckle being a miniature ceramic button engraved with the initials of her name, "ZM".

“Looking at my work.” He surfaced, water droplets clinging to his diamond-encrusted pendant. “Get a skin analysis done tomorrow morning; the marks from your shoulder straps are asymmetrical.”

She hurriedly covered her chest, only to see the surrounding guests drinking at the bar, oblivious to her presence. The blue light from the pool shone on Lu Mingze's back, making the burn scar appear pale pink, much like her newly mixed "coral glaze." Last year, when the kiln exploded, he shielded her from the flying shards of porcelain with his body; to this day, three pieces of porcelain remain embedded under the skin of his right shoulder, making the X-ray look like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle.

Jiang Zimei rolled over and lay down on the recliner, the bikini straps cinching her waist in a beautiful arc. "She wrote your birth date next to my birth chart, using a cinnabar pen from Jingdezhen."

Lu Mingze climbed out of the pool, water droplets sliding from his abs into the waistband of his swim trunks. "What else did she say?"

“She said a ceramic artist’s marriage is like opening a kiln,” she reached out to take off his swimming goggles, her fingertips tracing the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, “Even with cracks, it’s a unique glaze.”

He suddenly lowered his head and bit her fingertip, the pressure neither too light nor too heavy, as if testing the plasticity of clay. The sound of a DJ spinning records drifted from afar, and Jiang Zimei saw Jiang Yun standing on the edge of the terrace, wearing a white Chanel one-piece swimsuit, her wedding ring on her ring finger gleaming in the sunlight—it was cast from a fragment of the "ruby red" clay that Lu Mingze had successfully fired for the first time.

September sunlight slanted through the blinds, casting striped shadows on the glaze rack. Jiang Zimei buried her face in Lu Mingze's white coat, smelling the scent of cedar perfume mixed with iodine—his signature scent, much like the temperature-controlled kiln in his studio, both warm and with an industrial chill.

“Aunt Jiang cried again last night.” She rubbed against his chest to warm him, the rose essential oil from her hair smearing on his collar. “I heard her flipping through your photo album in the study, with glaze samples tucked into every page.” Lu Mingze paused, his hand busy mixing the glaze, the glass rod making a crisp sound as it scraped against the beaker.

“She always says I look like her when she was younger.” Jiang Zimei traced the hickey on his collarbone with her fingertips; it was the hickey she had made that morning with lip gloss mixed with gold powder.

Lu Mingze suddenly turned around and pinned her against the glaze stand. A few drops of "Sunset Glaze" splashed from the beaker, leaving a faint red mark on her lower abdomen. His thumb pressed below her Adam's apple, where there was a pale blue birthmark, its shape strikingly similar to the shadow on his spinal CT scan.

“Next time you rummage through other people’s things,” he lowered his head and bit her earlobe, “I’ll tie you to a potter’s wheel and sew you onto my latest piece using the ‘kintsugi’ technique.”

She smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck, her fingertips slipping inside his white coat to find the small medicine bottle he kept close to his body—it contained slow-release painkillers that Jiang Yun had brought back from Switzerland, the bottle marked "ZM Exclusive" in enamel. The sound of Zhi Xia adjusting the ultrasonic vibrator drifted in from outside the window, and Jiang Zimei suddenly whispered in his ear, "You were still able to lift me onto the enamel shelf today."

Lu Mingze's pupils contracted sharply, then he chuckled softly. He picked up the cobalt blue glaze from the table and used his fingertip to draw an arc on her lower abdomen.

As he spoke, the smart monitoring bracelet sounded an alarm—his heart rate exceeded 120.

The late autumn wind swirled osmanthus petals into the kitchen. Jiang Zimei squatted in front of the oven, her nose covered in flour, like an unglazed porcelain dollop. She wore a cream-colored cashmere apron given to her by Jiang Yun, with "Fragrance of Glaze" embroidered in gold thread on the back, but the hem was slightly charred from baking—a mark left from when she secretly learned to bake macarons last week.

“Aunt Jiang’s car will be here in twenty minutes.” Lu Mingze took out his oven mitts from behind him and deliberately breathed into her ear, “You know what will happen if the cookies burn.”

"Is Lu Mingze threatening me?" When she turned around, her eyelashes were covered in flour, making her look like a clay pottery blank sprinkled with quartz sand. He wiped the powder off the tip of her nose with his thumb, and his fingertip traced her lips, leaving a faint white mark.

“It’s not a threat, it’s teaching.” He gently parted her legs with his knees, making her kneel on the carpet in front of the oven. “Do you remember the ‘coil building’ we learned in pottery class? The ‘coil’ we’re using today is this.”

His fingertips traced her waistline, stopping at the tie of her cashmere apron. Jiang Zimei suddenly laughed and took a baking tray out of the oven—the cookies had tiny cracks on their surface, much like Lu Mingze's most prized "ice crackle" porcelain.

"It looks like it's cooked just right." She shook the baking pan. "Would you like to try some, Brother Lu?"

He grabbed her wrist and pressed her against the counter. The residual heat from the oven wafted from behind, making her cheeks burn. He lowered his head and bit her collarbone, his fingertips lifting the hem of her sweater to reveal a temporary tattoo on her waist—a mandala he had personally drawn with "bone-corroding red" glaze, the vermilion flavor of which she could taste on her tongue with every kiss.

“Cookies need milk,” he said, his voice mingling with the hum of the oven fan. “And you… need my body temperature.”

Jiang Zimei suddenly noticed the reflection in the glass of the worktable: the rhinestone-patterned temporary tattoo on the back of her neck overlapped with Lu Mingze's white hair, resembling what he often called a "kiln transformation miracle"—two incompatible glazes melting into unique patterns at high temperatures. When the oven beeped, she smelled the aroma of burnt cookies mixed with the cedar scent on Lu Mingze, surprisingly harmonious.

The steam rising from the open-air hot spring tinged the distant snow-capped mountains with a pale blue hue. Jiang Zimei soaked in the hot spring, snowflakes landing on her eyelashes. Her bikini straps had long since slipped down to her arms, revealing a crescent-shaped bite mark on her shoulder—left by Lu Mingze in the kiln last winter solstice.

“The water temperature is 42 degrees Celsius, which is suitable for melting the glaze.” Lu Mingze looked at her through the mist. Her bathrobe was loose, revealing the burn scars on her chest, which glowed a pale pink in the heat, just like the “peach blossom glaze” she had just mixed.

She slipped her bare feet into his bathrobe, her toes brushing against the hair on his calves, touching the scar from the trimmer's knife. "Aunt Jiang said hot springs can relieve joint pain."

She suddenly grabbed his wrist and pressed it against her lower abdomen. "Listen, my stomach is protesting. It wants cheesecake."

He raised an eyebrow, his hand sliding down her waistline to the bikini strap knot—he had tied it himself that morning using the "single knot method" from pottery, so it could be easily untied. "Cheesecake needs to be baked slowly at a low temperature." His fingertips traced circles around her waist, "Just like last time in the kiln, it took you three hours to get the 'golden glaze' to the ideal state."

Jiang Zimei laughed and slapped his hand away. As she climbed out of the hot spring, water droplets trickled down her waist and into her bikini strap, scalding the snow and creating tiny dents. She draped a cashmere blanket over herself and noticed the pain pump peeking out of Lu Mingze's bathrobe pocket—a device Jiang Yun had specially ordered from Germany, capable of automatically adjusting the dosage based on body temperature.

“Last year in the Alps,” she suddenly said, “you said that when you get old you would build a studio at the foot of the snow-capped mountains and use snowmelt to make glazes.”

He wrapped the blanket tighter around her, his fingertips gently pressing on her lower back where a protruding bone bore a striking resemblance in shape to the MRI images of his spine. “After Zhixia’s solo exhibition ends,” he said, bending down to kiss her forehead, “we’ll go.”

The snow fell heavier and heavier. Jiang Zimei saw the two people reflected in the glass of the guesthouse: the temporary tattoo on the back of her neck intertwined with his white hair, just like the first ray of light when the kiln was opened—piercing through the high temperature and smoke, revealing the most authentic glaze color.

Spring rain tapped against the blinds, weaving a cold white grid on the floor. Jiang Zimei lay on Lu Mingze's desk, the turtle she had drawn on the back of his hand with red pen had blurred, resembling an unfired clay piece. She wore his white lab coat, the hem dragging on the floor, revealing the "Glaze Formula No. 37" tattoo on her ankle—in cobalt blue that would never fade.

“Brother Lu has more gray hair.” She suddenly put down her pen, straddled his lap, and played with the silver strands at his temples with her fingertips. “Aunt Jiang said that washing your hair with water boiled with Polygonum multiflorum is effective.”

Lu Mingze put down the red pen and looked at the glaze formula book on the table—the latest page read "Improved version of Bone Erosion Red," and the remarks column had Jiang Zimei's handwriting: "Add three grams of bone powder, Lu Mingze's."

“Dyeing your hair is not as good as getting a tattoo.” His thumb traced the thin calluses on her palm. “Just get it tattooed here, so that every time you hold a potter's knife, you can think of me.” (End of Chapter)