The Cleaners (Faraway Collection)

by Ken Liu

Gui waited, holding her gaze. He had found that being only twenty-one meant that customers didn’t always trust him

right away. If he said nothing and allowed the awkward silence to stretch out between them, taut and brittle, customers tended to interpret his reticence as the gravity of experience.

“You can’t relive a memory that you didn’t have a part in creating. But you can still be affected by the moods and emotions in a stranger’s deposits.”