Shui Ling was the only thing I had that was real. That year, my attic bedroom on Tingzhou Road became like a coffin in which I lay awake at night, painfully alone. She was the only one I’d been close to, and now there was no place where my reality converged with the outside world. The look in her eyes, the sound of her voice, snatches of our conversations—those sensory impressions formed a leech that attached itself to me and started sucking my blood. I sealed the leech in a plastic bag and kept it at a distance.
