China DOS Union

Chapter One

Maybe, in this world no one is clean.
　　When Zhang Qian said this, she was looking into my eyes. The wind blew past us, and her hair lifted up.
　　That year, I had just turned twenty.
　　Zhang Qian was my senior. When she said this to me, it was also the first time I had met her. It was an autumn afternoon. I was lying on the rooftop of the dorm, bored out of my mind. Senior said that when she climbed onto the rooftop and saw me at first glance, she stood there stunned for a long while. Sky-blue jeans, orange T-shirt. Head tilted as I stared at the sky, two bare feet propped on the rooftop railing, like a naughty child. Almost every time Senior wrote to me after that, she would mention that scene, and then always ask, junior, do you still remember what I looked like then?
　　What did Senior look like then? I couldn’t remember long ago. Because I was completely woken up by her noise, and for quite a while I just stared at her chest. Senior smiled.
　　 “Hey, big, right?”
　　 “Mm.” I blushed a little.
　　 “Heh, every man looks at my chest first thing. Looks like you’re a normal man.”

　　Senior had the nicest speaking voice of any girl I had ever heard growing up. Maybe it was because she was the first girl whose voice I had really noticed. When she smiled, the corners of her mouth lifted slightly, and the ending of every sentence stretched out just a little, as if that small delicate mouth might produce magic at any moment.

　　 “What year are you?”
　　 “Class of 96, anesthesia.”?
　　 “Oh, then you’re a sophomore. Then you should know me, right? I’m Zhang Qian from 94 clinical.”?
　　 Sure enough, I had heard that name before. Because of that name, I looked carefully at that magic-filled mouth again.
　　 “What’s wrong, is there something on my mouth?”
　　 “No, very pretty.”
　　 “You should know how the senior guys talk about me, right?”
　　 “Mm.”
　　 “What do they say?”
　　 “They say Zhang Qian from 94 clinical will give you a blowjob for ten yuan.”
　　 Sure enough, Senior lifted one leg over the rooftop railing, pulled back on it with both hands, and leaned forward in a flying pose. The sunlight at three or four in the afternoon hit her hair and reflected a intoxicating halo. I couldn’t help staring in a daze. Suddenly she whipped her head around.
　　 “Hey, little junior, no classes this afternoon?”
　　 “I do, regional anatomy lab.”
　　 “Why aren’t you going?”
　　 “Watching the corpse being taken out of the formalin is disgusting. It looks kind of dirty.”
　　 “Dirty...” Senior repeated it. Then she turned her head, looked up at the sky, and said.
　　
“Maybe no one in this world is clean.”
　　

　　 I was jolted awake by a burst of phone ringing, and when I looked up I saw Wang Yao’s half-smiling eyes.
　　 Dr. Du the anesthetist, asleep on duty again.
　　 I ignored her, rotated my arms that I had numbed by lying on them, and took my cellphone out from my arms.
　　 Hello...
　　 It turned out to be a classmate from my old college dorm. I fobbed him off with a few words. He probably hadn’t expected that after several years since graduation, I would still be as cold as before. There were a few seconds of silence on the phone, then he suddenly said in a very mysterious tone.
　　
“Du Ming, did you know? Zhang Qian from 94 clinical, the one who stayed on at school, killed herself last week...” The phone dropped to the floor, the battery and body splitting into two pieces. I bent down to pick it up, but several times I couldn’t even grab the phone lying right by my hand. Wang Yao was sitting on the desk, swinging her long legs.
　　 “Yo, what’s wrong, Du Ma? Whose call has you all shaken up?”
　　 “Lean a little farther this way and I’ll tell you.”
　　 Wang Yao lowered her head toward me a little, bringing her ear close.
　　 “This okay? Go on then.”
　　 “Mm, I’ll tell you. From this angle I can see your pink bra exactly.”
　　 “Hate you.”
　　 Wang Yao straightened up at once, but her eyes were still curved in a smile.
　　

　　 “Junior, what book are you reading?”
　　 A 1975 Japanese forensic medicine book.
　　 Senior wrinkled her nose as she looked at me.
　　 “Why are you reading something so weird?”
　　 “It’s pretty interesting. I can now roughly tell how many ways there are to kill yourself.”
　　 “Du Ming, you’re really strange. You don’t seem like someone studying medicine. Do you know how I see the men in our medical school?”

　　 “Slugs soaked in formalin.”
　　 “What?”
　　 “Slugs soaked in formalin.”

　　 Senior laughed. She looked beautiful when she laughed. She seemed to like talking with me, because ever since that first meeting, I often ran into her on the dorm rooftop. And she always wore an expression like she had known I would be there. But our conversations were limited to the rooftop. Every time I met her in the corridor of the teaching building, she would pretend not to know me and walk past, and I was too lazy to greet her. Maybe Senior thought that was better for me, because she was one of the rare star figures our medical school had seen in nearly twenty years. Among the nearly thousand male students on campus, almost none didn’t know her. When I had just enrolled, upperclassmen from every year came around spreading the word: Zhang Qian from 94 clinical was a slut. It was said she had slept with countless men, even including teachers in the department. Every time the school had important visitors, Zhang Qian would go entertain and stay the night with them, and so on. The name Zhang Qian appeared almost every night in the bedtime talk sessions in the male dorms of the medical school. Our dorm was no exception. Every night I listened to the guy in the bunk above me telling different versions of the details of Zhang Qian in bed with men. The most outrageous story was that some guy from the class of 95 once cried out Zhang Qian’s name while masturbating at night, and that lots of boys had asked girls in the women’s dorm to steal Zhang Qian’s underwear. Hard to know who the real cheap sluts were.

But all of it was only rumor, because Senior’s beauty was truly intimidating. That face like carved ice drew countless men while also destroying countless men. Though the rumors never stopped, no one had ever seen a man who truly claimed to have gotten out of Zhang Qian’s bed. But in medical school, whether men or women, behind Senior’s back everyone would say only one thing: look, that bitch, Zhang Qian.
　　
“Hey, junior, what kind of death do you think suits me?”
　　 It was late autumn then. Willow leaves were drifting one by one in the wind. Senior wore a thin high-collared sweater, a dark small-check knee-length wool skirt, and her long hair fell past her shoulders. Without lipstick, her lips looked a little pale.
　　 “Hanging. Suspended from a willow trunk with leaves flying everywhere, your body swaying with the willow branches. Your hair covering your whole face, both hands hanging naturally at your sides, like a doll. It would be beautiful.”
　　 “Du Ming, you really can say things like that. But I like that way of dying.”
　　 “Senior, do you know how many kinds of hanging there are?”

　　 Du... Ming!

Doctor Du, you’re sweating so much, are you okay?
　　This was already the third time. The hand holding the epidural needle had started to shake, and still I hadn’t gotten it in. Wang Yao was asking me nervously from the side. Her gaze made it impossible for me to focus. I had seen that kind of gaze before.
　　Today Wang Yao was the scrub nurse. She still hadn’t gone to wash up. The sterile gown on her body, after countless rounds of high-pressure disinfection, was a bit small and stretched tightly over her figure. I had a very strange feeling. Wang Yao took out a piece of sterile cotton and carefully reached over to wipe the sweat off my forehead. Gently she said,
　　 “Don’t be nervous, Du Ming.”
　　 “Wang Yao, help me call the director.”
　　After the director finished sterilizing, he took the epidural needle from my hand and sat beside the patient. I let out a deep breath, turned back to look at Wang Yao, who had been staring at my face the whole time, then smiled at her. The moment I walked out of the operating room, I collapsed onto the bed in the lounge.
　　
　　Come to think of it, it had been a long time since I had received a letter from Senior. Before, she wrote to me almost every month, but I rarely wrote back. Every time I got a letter, I would call her instead. Senior had stayed on at school as a teaching assistant. Every time I called her dorm, during that stretch of waiting for her to walk from her room to the mailroom, I always felt as if the world suddenly went quiet, as if I had been placed in a completely enclosed space, with only me and the receiver in my hand left inside it. Then from the receiver would gradually come the sound of plastic slippers striking the floor. As that sound grew louder, the space I was in seemed to grow wider and wider. Only when I heard Senior’s breathy “hello” would I return to reality.

I asked Senior why she didn’t get a mobile phone, why she had to keep running around that old dorm building every time. Senior smiled and said she didn’t like them. She liked lying on the bed and hearing that sentence from the loudspeaker by the door: “Zhang Qian... phone call.”
“Every time I hear someone call me like that, I feel like I’m still alive,” Senior said. After she said that, both of us fell silent.
My calls with Senior always ended hastily like this. I didn’t know what to say, and she never asked me anything either. We never talked about our respective jobs, because we both knew the other didn’t like their work. That much had already been clear back when we were in school. Senior also wasn’t good at talking. Sometimes her words were so simple she seemed like a child. Even in her letters she was the same. The same manuscript paper every time, simple language. There were neither beautiful fantasies nor brilliant insights about life, which felt somewhat out of proportion with her beauty.

What she wrote most about in her letters was the changing of the seasons and the days we had spent together at school, all little trivial fragments. Sometimes after reading her letters I still didn’t know what she had really wanted to tell me. But almost every time, at the end of the letter, Senior would say that the only thing in college worth remembering for her was knowing me. On the phone I once asked her what I was like in her heart. Senior was silent for a long time before saying to me, one word at a time: clean, very clean.
　　

　　I slept heavily for a whole day, and it felt as if my body no longer belonged to me. When I got to the hospital, I saw Wang Yao sitting alone by the windowsill, looking a little strange. I walked over and patted her on the shoulder, but she violently shook me off, gasping as she looked at me, her nostrils flaring. She was crying. I thought I had startled her, so I asked what was wrong, but she broke free from my hand and ran out. By the time I came out from the director’s office and wanted to look for her again, I found that she had already gone home. It turned out she had been on the night shift yesterday. I didn’t think much of it. I grabbed a few things and left the hospital, asking the director for a day off, saying I was going home to prepare for applying to graduate school.

　　
　　Medical school was less than a hundred kilometers from home. Riding a motorcycle, I could get there in three hours. Senior always found it strange that when I was in school, I never went home on weekends. What’s so strange about that? Your home is even closer to the school. Why do you still live on campus then? Senior would snort and not answer, then start chatting idly again. Very strange—I was the only man who could talk back to Senior and not make her angry.

Once Senior said to me, “Du Ming, do you know you have a kind of magic that makes people really want to get close to you. You have very regular features, and your smile is so cute. Especially your eyes—frighteningly clear, yet they always make people feel so comfortable. If you didn’t like to act cool, a lot of people would definitely like you.” As she spoke, she moved her face closer to mine, her fingers tracing down from my eyebrows along the edge of my face. Her fingers were slender, her fingertips like drops of cold water rolling across my skin, stopping only at my lips. Her breath blew across my face, heavy with alcohol. It made me start blushing. Her lips parted slightly, revealing two cute rabbit teeth. At the moment our lips were about to touch, she pushed me away. It was one of the very few times I was ever that close to Senior, yet it still makes my heart pound to this day.
　　

　　When I got to the school, I parked the motorcycle in front of the library. That old dorm building looked especially shabby beside the library. This was the place that had once accompanied me through several years of college life. After the new dorm buildings were built, this place became the dorm for young unmarried teachers who had stayed on. And so it became the place that stayed with Senior all the way to the end of her life.

　　 “Hey, who are you looking for?”
　　 “Aunt Wang, I’m a former student from class 96. I want to see Zhang Qian in room 406.”
　　After hearing that, the old woman suddenly raised her head, took off her glasses, and looked at me hard. Then she came out of the guard room and pulled me inside.
　　 “I remember now, you were a student here. What, you still don’t know?”
　　 “Know what?” I asked even though I already knew.
　　 “Zhang Qian is dead.”
　　 Though I had long prepared myself mentally, my heart still hurt as if it had been struck with a hammer.
　　 “How could that be? I was still in touch with her not long ago.”
　　 “It was just last week. By the way, student, were you close to her? Hardly anyone has come looking for Zhang Qian these past two years.”
　　 “No, we were just schoolmates before. I happened to come back this time for something, so I thought I’d stop by and see her. Can I go look at her room?”
　　 “No, that room was shared. The girl living there thought it was a bit unlucky and has gone home. She won’t be back until this weekend.”
　　 “Oh, all right, then I’ll come another time.” As I walked out of the dorm, I turned back and asked the old woman,
　　 “Aunt Wang, how did Zhang Qian die?”
　　 “Suicide, hanged herself...”
　　My head felt heavy, sweat running down from my forehead. It was the same feeling as in surgery—vertigo. I grabbed hold of the willow tree by the dorm and kept vomiting.
　　
　　The campus still looked as lifeless as ever. Even with a few new buildings added, it still had the smell of decay.
　 Senior, can you hear the crying of resentful spirits in the wind?
　 Resentful spirits?
　Mm, the souls of all the mice, frogs, and dogs we killed, and the souls of all those bodies that can’t be reincarnated because they never got buried. They’re all circling above our school.
　That’s right, an unclean school.
　Senior had a strange standard for judging things: only clean and unclean. Sometimes when we sat on the rooftop looking down into the distance, we would comment on the masses wriggling back and forth below on the ground. The people I commented on were all kinds, but in Senior’s eyes there was only one kind of person—unclean people. If I pointed out a pretty girl, she would quickly say her eyes were unclean. If I made her look at a handsome guy, she would say brows like that looked unclean at a glance. Then who is clean in your eyes? You! Senior answered without thinking, but immediately avoided my gaze. Then what about you, Senior? She lowered her head and said nothing. Senior, what about that person over there? Senior looked once, and then the two of us spat out the same sentence together. Trash!!

　　That fat man was the director of our school’s anatomy teaching and research group, Wang Lianpu, who later became Senior’s superior.

　　Everyone in the school knew what a vile person Wang Lianpu was, a living Yue Buqun straight out of Jin Yong. Every year he served as the anatomy lecturer for the new students. It was said that every year, just from the red envelopes students gave him over exams, he made tens of thousands of yuan. But even sending money wouldn’t always save you from his claws, because in class he had told us very plainly that his grading standards depended entirely on his own mood—if he didn’t like your face, you failed. No one could do anything to him. The school knew full well what he was like, yet never dared touch him. No one knew what his relationship was with the dean, and no one who caught his attention could escape him. The fact that I finally got my diploma was a miracle among miracles. In the second month of my freshman year, I threw the systematic anatomy textbook at his face from across five rows of desks.

Wang Lianpu was a dirty little man. During lectures he would always use obscene questions based on things in the textbook to put female students on the spot. Back then, in a large classroom of more than 120 people, one girl was being questioned by him until her face was flushed, at a loss and completely flustered, and he still wouldn’t let up. Seeing that she was about to cry, I casually threw the book over and said, are you done yet or not? Maybe he hadn’t expected anyone to dare do that to him. He stood there awkwardly for quite a while. Then he picked up my book from the floor. You’re Du Ming from 96 anesthesia, right? I’ll remember that. And just like that, in the first semester my systematic anatomy exam paper mysteriously disappeared and naturally I was counted as failed. Then, just as I had expected, I failed the makeup exam too, so I got a major fail in systematic anatomy. When Senior heard me tell this, she tilted her head and looked into my eyes, saying she really wished she could have seen it with her own eyes—at the time I must have been very handsome. By the way, what happened to that girl? I said in confusion, who knows? After that I hardly went to class anymore. I’d long forgotten who she was, anyway she wasn’t from our department. Senior laughed so hard she swayed all over. A perfect hero-saves-the-beauty story, and our Du Ming acting cool went and lost the beauty. Maybe that girl had already fallen in love with you. Women just like this kind of childish fantasy, and Senior was no exception. Actually, I really liked Senior’s laugh. It was so innocent, nothing like the rumors at all. Every time I saw her laugh, I had the impulse to ask her about those rumors, but in the end I never said it.

　　When Senior decided to stay on at school after graduation, I was shocked for a long time. Because she was going to stay in the anatomy teaching and research group as a teaching assistant, and under Wang Lianpu at that. I asked her why she would do that. Senior told me that since she didn’t like being a doctor, staying on at school was easier and more relaxed. But you didn’t have to become that old bastard’s assistant, did you? She patted my face. This is the only position left at school. Besides, didn’t you finally pass systematic anatomy in the end? At least Wang Lianpu still gave you your diploma. That’s already rare enough.
I had nothing to say. After thinking for a while I finally said to Senior, Senior, today is also the first time I’ve ever made a wish. For you, I’m making a wish to the sunlight. That bastard Wang Lianpu will disappear on his own the day you start working. Senior suddenly kissed me on the cheek. Du Ming, you’re so cute. But when she turned away, something crystal clear and icy landed on my lips. It tasted salty.

I found the number in my cellphone of the classmate who had called me. He sounded somewhat surprised when he answered. I asked him whether he knew why Zhang Qian had killed herself. He said he didn’t know either. He had heard that the bureau had investigated too, but Zhang Qian had always been by herself, and even her parents didn’t know what was going on with their own daughter. And judging from all the signs, it looked like suicide, so the case was closed that very day. I said oh. That friend started to sound a little excited. You tell me, how could someone as pretty as Zhang Qian just die like that? Our medical school really is cursed. After Wang Lianpu disappeared, Zhang Qian committed suicide too... I hung up before he finished.
　　
　　Actually, Senior and I graduated in the same year. I was only in the anesthesia program for three years. In Senior’s words, I had wasted two fewer years of youth than she had.

“What is youth?” I asked Senior.
Senior stammered at my question. “Youth? Youth means being able to live in clean sunlight, and being together with the person you like, I guess.”
“Then now you have sunlight. Senior, do you have someone you like?!”
“Maybe.” Senior never seemed to like talking about herself. Whenever it came to that, she refused to answer by falling silent. We were both used to that by then.
“Du Ming, have you found a hospital yet?”
“Mm.”
“Really?” Senior sounded very happy. “Not bad. What hospital?”
“Ha, over there. Yeah, that mountain.” I stood on a chair on the rooftop and pointed into the distance.
Senior looked at me in confusion. I jumped down from the chair and sat on the ground, toying with the book in my hand.

“There are only three months left till graduation. I’m someone who may not even be able to get a diploma. What hospital am I supposed to look for?” Without waiting for Senior to speak, I went on talking to myself. “Actually it doesn’t matter. I don’t like medicine anyway. I hate medicine.”
“Then why do you still bring medical books to the rooftop every day?” Senior stared at me.
“I’m only reading the things I like to read.” I avoided her eyes.

Senior brushed my hair aside. “How about this, Du Ming. I never make wishes, but for you, today I’ll make one to the sunlight. Du Ming, you’ll definitely get your diploma. So you also have to promise that once you get your diploma, you’ll definitely become a good doctor. All right?”
I thought Senior was just teasing me, but it seemed like the first wish a person ever made really could come true. I got my diploma. The reason was that that year there were too many people with major failures in anatomy, so everyone was pardoned—though some “handling fees” had to be paid.
But when I told Senior, she only smiled as if she had already expected it.
“When are you leaving school?” I had thought she would still pat my face like the two times before, or smooth my hair for me.
But that day she was unusually cold.
“In a couple of days.”
“Oh...”

Then another long silence....

“Write to me,” Senior suddenly said to me.
“Mm. Senior, I’ll teach you how to use email.”
“No, just letters.” Senior was like a willful child, so I had no choice but to agree. She smiled.
But at that moment I felt that Senior’s smile was so unreal. Suddenly everything around me seemed to have entered a dream, all of it becoming unreal. Maybe it was because I had graduated from college.
　　
　　At eight in the morning, I had just arrived at the hospital. The director pulled me aside. “Du Ming, wanting to take the graduate exam is a good idea, but I still hope you’ll do your regular work properly. Our hospital is small, and we don’t have many anesthetists. Even though there aren’t many operations, if you don’t do them, scheduling becomes very tight for us.” I gave the director a couple perfunctory replies, then changed into a sterile gown and went to the operating room to see Wang Yao.
　　
For some reason, Wang Yao always made mistakes at the operating table. She didn’t look well either. Under the cap and mask, her eyes had no brightness in them at all. When she was free for a moment, I quietly walked up behind her. She seemed not to have noticed I had come in at all. I lightly traced a finger across her waist. She gave a cry that startled everyone in the operating room. Luckily the patient was under general anesthesia or he might have been scared awake. The thoracic director shot Wang Yao a vicious glare, and the head nurse came running in panic into the operating room.
Wang Yao turned to look at me. Unlike before, she didn’t pout at me in mock annoyance. Her eyes were full of something I had never seen in them. I put both hands on her waist and lightly pressed my forehead against her back, whispering sorry. I felt her body trembling, and I hurriedly slipped out of the operating room.

　　At noon, I ran up alone to the hospital rooftop to zone out. The hospital rooftop was very small. I spread my white coat on the ground and lay on it. Looking up at the sky, that deep blue—if you stared at it long enough, it felt as if it were slowly pressing down on you. Just as my mind was starting to drift, someone suddenly jumped down from the side and landed heavily with her butt on my shoulder. Ouch. Wang Yao held my shoulder with one hand while fixing her skirt with the other. I tilted my head to look at her, and she was looking at me too. Suddenly she threw herself onto me and started crying.
　　On the day I left school, the whole class went out for a farewell meal. Halfway through, more than ten of the boys were already drunk, and the women weren’t exactly pretty drunks either. Only then did I realize that women were not all the same. I hadn’t expected ugly women to look even uglier when drunk. The restaurant looked like a dance of demons, so I ran out and wandered around the campus by myself. The campus was dark. It should have been nearly nine in June. I climbed up to the rooftop with a bit of anticipation, only to discover unexpectedly that the person I had been thinking of was still there among the dim lights.
A little night glow enveloped Senior’s body. Her hair drifted as it usually did. With both hands on the railing, she raised her head. I stood behind her and copied her, taking a deep breath. Then I made the only decision I ever made in that university. I stepped up and grabbed both her shoulders. Her body gave a violent shiver. Zhang Qian. It was the first time, and never had I imagined it would also be the last, that I called her by name facing her directly. She didn’t answer me. She just stood there quietly, just quietly. I rested my head on her shoulder and kissed her hair. Senior had just washed it; her hair smelled like morning dew. I wrapped my arms around her, feeling for the first time how slight her shoulders really were. Senior lowered her head. I felt drops of water running over my arm.
“Come away with me.”
Senior suddenly laughed, brushed my hand away, turned around and said to me, “Do you remember how you judged me when we first met?”
“That was what other people said. Why do you care about that?”
Senior walked toward me step by step. Fine, then now I’ll tell you the truth. She crouched down and started groping between my legs.
Looking up at my shocked face, she said, “Today I’ll give you a **.”
I shoved her away. She sat on the ground, supporting herself with both hands behind her, opening her legs toward me.
“Look, I’m exactly this kind of bitch. So? Still interested?” Her face was so pale, and her laugh so shrill. She raised her head. Her laughter started trembling, and her body trembled too. “Du Ming, you’re too clean. I can’t be with you.”
I couldn’t listen any longer. I rushed off the rooftop...
When girls cry, I always become completely helpless. I gently patted Wang Yao on the back. After a while, the shaking in her shoulders grew smaller and smaller. I touched her hair. Her hair was very much like Senior’s, equally smooth.
Wang Yao raised herself from my body and looked at me. “Du Ming, why aren’t you asking me why I’m crying?”
I wiped the tears from her face with my hand. “If you want me to know, you’ll tell me.”
Wang Yao made a sound of assent and leaned her head on my shoulder. “Why weren’t you beside me then? Why did that have to happen?”
I shifted downward a little so she could lean on me more comfortably.
“Du Ming, do you know? Something happened the day before yesterday. I can’t tell anyone about it, but I can’t bear this pain alone. I’m in so much pain I feel like I’m dying. What am I supposed to do?”
I patted her face. She clutched my arm tightly, the nails of both hands seeming ready to dig into my flesh. Her head pressed against my shoulder.
　　 “I was **.”
　　 “What!” Her body shrank back a little. In a small voice she said, “No, it should count as drugged rape maybe. Because I have no idea who did it.”
“How could that happen?”
“I don’t know either. It was the night before last, when I was on duty. A little after five in the evening, I had just finished eating. The head nurse and Dr. Peng were listening to storytelling in the lounge. I don’t like listening to that stuff, it’s annoying, so I took a novel and went to the men’s lounge, lay on the bed in the outer room and read for a bit, then fell asleep. When I woke up... I...”
I didn’t know what to say, so I could only look at Wang Yao.
She sniffed and went on. “My head was all fuzzy. At first I didn’t feel anything. But when I became clearer, I noticed down there felt very wrong, and it hurt a little. Only then did I realize my underwear had been taken off and left beside me, covered with blood and semen.”
“Wang Yao, could it be that you were mistaken?”
“How is that possible? You think someone wouldn’t know if they’d been **?” Wang Yao shouted, making the conversation suddenly awkward.
After a long while, I asked her, “Wang Yao, who do you think did it?”
“Song Yang. It had to be Song Yang. He was on duty that night. On the whole third floor he was the only man. And these last two days he’s still been grinning and joking around with me. I really want to stab him to death with a scalpel,” Wang Yao said bitterly. Her upper body was stiff and straight, and her gaze was full of something terrifying.
After another long silence, I asked again, “Wang Yao, why tell me all this?”
Wang Yao’s body softened and leaned against me.
“I don’t know. I don’t dare tell my parents, and I don’t dare report it to the police. It’s too humiliating. I just want to forget it, but I can’t forget it at all. It was my first time, and I lost it under these circumstances.” Wang said faintly, “Du Ming, I don’t know why, but when you’re by my side I feel a little better. I wanted to tell you this. Maybe after this you’ll look down on me, but I still wanted you to know. Because keeping it all to myself is just too unbearable.”
I slipped my hand around behind her and held her.
“Wang Yao, let me help carry some of it for you.”
Wang Yao slid from my shoulder into my arms. “Du Ming, do you like me?”
“Mm.” I shifted a little and held her tighter.
Du Ming, ever since you came into our operating room I’ve liked you. But now that this happened, otherwise I would have been with you. I rocked Wang Yao gently, and slowly she fell asleep, asleep in my arms.

After I graduated and went home, I always thought maybe that was how everything would end. But not long after, I received a letter from Senior. It really excited me. There was only one sheet of letter paper. Senior’s handwriting was very neat, and the letter itself was written in a proper, orderly way, so proper it seemed to contain no emotion at all. In the letter, Senior told me she had already started work, and every day she sat in the anatomy lab waiting for that moment when the evening light came through the window and shone onto her. She said that when she had time, she still went up to the dorm rooftop. That old dorm had become the quarters for her and a few other teachers who had stayed on. On the rooftop there would never again be that barefoot big boy in sky-blue jeans and an orange T-shirt. At the end of the letter, Senior wrote: Du Ming, I want to hear your voice, want to chat with you. And I also need to tell you that your first wish has come true too. Wang Lianpu really has disappeared.
　　That night, after taking Wang Yao home, I had just gotten back myself when Wang Yao called. Her voice on the phone sounded like a child’s. She said she wanted to hear my voice. I told her I was going to take a shower and would call her back in a little while. She happily hung up. Lying on the bed, I sorted through the things I had brought back from the hospital. Holding the phone between my shoulder and neck, I dialed Wang Yao’s house. On the other end, the phone had barely rung once before Wang Yao’s voice came through. Her voice sounded a little strange—she must have been clutching an extension phone and hiding under the blankets. We chatted idly for a few moments. I didn’t say much, and then Wang Yao started crying again. I didn’t know whether I ought to comfort her. Suddenly, from the other end came one fierce sentence: I hate Song Yang. Are you sure Song Yang did it? Mm, I’ve thought it over and over these past two days. It must have been Song Yang. I just don’t understand why I slept so deeply, that even then... even then I didn’t wake up.
“It was probably ether. Last month Song Yang asked me for some isoflurane, said he needed it for surgery on a dog.” I said it while fiddling with the bottle of isoflurane in my hand.
Wang Yao began to get agitated. “I’m going to report Song Yang!”
“There’s no evidence. Even if I testify for you it won’t do any good. It would only let everyone know about this.”
Wang Yao thought for a long while and said she could never stay in the same hospital as Song Yang again.
“Then let Song Yang leave the hospital.” I said it casually.
Wang Yao asked, “How do we make him leave? He has family in the health bureau.”
“Then make him disappear. Once he disappears, everything is solved.”
By then Wang Yao had stopped crying. She repeated my words: Once he disappears, everything is solved.
　　As soon as I got Senior’s letter, I called her right away. Her voice sounded somewhat calm, which inevitably cooled some of my own excitement. Senior asked me how the hospital I worked at was. I said it was very good. The hospital was out in the suburbs. Behind the main building there were all mountains, and inside the grounds stood more than ten big trees thicker than a meter around. Squirrels often ran back and forth on them. Beautiful, right?

Senior sighed on the other end of the receiver and said, Wang Lianpu disappeared. He just vanished completely. I said oh. Senior continued: His wife reported it to the police, said he didn’t come home for a whole day, and never called back either. She paged him, and no one responded. From then on, Wang Lianpu was never seen again. Isn’t that good? Then you won’t have to be his assistant anymore. Even though I said that, I could feel that Senior wasn’t happy. Why? I didn’t know. I was beginning to realize I had never understood women at all.
　　Wang Yao’s eyes were red. Clearly she hadn’t slept well the night before. At noon I took her out behind the hospital for a walk. She was like some frightened little animal, hooking her fingers tightly around my sleeve. Nervously she asked me, Du Ming, what are we doing in the back yard?
“Just taking a walk. Look at yourself right now.” I pulled her hand over and held it in mine. Then I led her up the slope and pointed behind the hospital building. “See those chrysanthemums over there? Pretty?” She looked very happy.
“Mm, I’m going to pick a few.”
“Hey, better not. Know why those wild chrysanthemums grow so well?”
Wang Yao shook her head. “Because the patients in the TB building always dump their pleural fluid and blood-streaked sputum out from upstairs onto those chrysanthemums.”
“So disgusting.” Wang Yao punched me hard once. I cried out as if I were really hurt, and we walked to the far side of the slope.
“Wang Yao, do you know what that is?”
“A furnace?”
“Right. That’s our hospital incinerator. Every Monday they throw in used disposable equipment, and things like chunks of thigh meat cut off in surgery, and burn them in there.”
“That’s what it is. No wonder the hospital always has that weird smell on Mondays. Du Ming, let’s go. This place is too deserted, I’m a little scared.” Wang Yao tugged me back.
As I followed her back, I said, “That incinerator uses high-temperature burning. Anything thrown in gets burned till there’s nothing left in no time.”
Just as we were about to reach the hospital entrance, Wang Yao suddenly said, “By the way, Du Ming, I’m on night duty this Sunday. I think Song Yang is in surgery again too. Can you switch with Dr. Peng and stay on the night shift with me?”
“No problem.” I nodded. Wang Yao smiled, then gently withdrew her hand from mine. I put both hands in the pockets of my white coat and said,
“Oh right, Wang Yao, can you get me a set of general surgery instruments? I’m operating on a friend’s dog on Saturday. Just don’t let the head nurse know.” Wang Yao made a sound of assent and skipped happily back upstairs. She looked as if she had no worries at all anymore.

Early Saturday morning, I rode the motorcycle back to the school. All along the way, the wind blew past my ears, and my mind kept repeating all the things of the past. I stopped the motorcycle in front of the apartment building across from the school. When I swung my leg off the bike, I realized I was actually hard with excitement. I pressed it down with my clothes, slung the backpack from the bike onto my shoulder, and walked into the school. Since I had been there the week before, this time I didn’t have to say anything; the dorm guard lady let me in. Before leaving, I asked her the name of the girl who had shared the room with Senior, then went upstairs.

　　This old dorm building had only three floors. In the past, the stairs divided it, with the men on the left and the women on the right. Now the men’s dorm side on the left had become storage rooms. As I walked across the wooden floor, it creaked from time to time. The whole building smelled of mildew. The corridor walls always seemed covered with a layer of dampness. In the main hall on the second floor there was still a lost-and-found notice posted from my own student days. In the toilet at the corner, the door still stood open, and toilet paper was still piled up like a mountain. The broken faucet in the washroom still hadn’t been fixed, only wrapped carelessly in strips of plastic. Water still kept running out through the cracks. I went into the washroom and splashed some water on my face. In one of the basins in the sink I saw a woman’s white underwear soaking there. It looked as if it had been worn for a long time, with yellow stains on it that no washing could remove.

　　I knocked on the door of room 406. There was no response, but the door wasn’t locked. I pushed it open. A woman in a purple nightgown sat up on the bed, rubbing her eyes. That day I was wearing dark blue European-cut jeans, a Baleno small-check shirt with the hem untucked, and a light-colored jacket over it left unzipped. A silver-gray shoulder bag hung diagonally across me. I smiled at that girl. You’re Zhao Ying, right. Whether you know me or not, I went on, I came today to ask about Zhang Qian. Zhao Ying said irritably, who are you? She’s dead already, what’s there to ask? My name is Du Ming, I was Zhang Qian’s high school classmate. Her sudden death really surprised me. Zhao Ying didn’t doubt my words. She said oh and sat back down on the bed. Then she pointed upward. “Upper bunk, that was Zhang Qian’s bed. All her stuff is still there too. Her family didn’t take any of it when they came. I’m planning to have the guard throw it all out. No problem, right?”

I stood by the bed, my hand slowly brushing from the pillow to the sheet. The wrinkles there had all been left by Senior. Every time, Senior would run down from this bed to answer my calls. I buried my head in the quilt. The dusty quilt almost suffocated me. My tears slowly soaked the cover.

After a while, I felt something touching my leg. I looked down. Zhao Ying was lying there in a big spread-eagle sprawl, kicking at me with her right foot hanging off the bed.

“Hey, are you really her classmate? What kind of relationship did you two have?”

“Actually, I chased after Zhang Qian in high school, but she refused me. Then I went abroad, and only came back this year. And by the time I did, she was already dead.”

“Really?” Hearing that, Zhao Ying sat up straight at once and looked at me seriously.

“No way. You’re this handsome. How could Zhang Qian possibly refuse?”

“Because I’m two years younger than Zhang Qian.”

“Really? That explains why you do look pretty young. Are you still thinking about Zhang Qian even now?”

Zhao Ying looked at my reddened face and didn’t say anything. She thought I was just shy. She got up and rubbed her way over beside me along the edge of the bed.

Smiling, she said, “You should just forget Zhang Qian. Even if she hadn’t died, she wasn’t worth this from you.”

　　My breathing grew heavier and heavier. Sweat had already started running down. My ears were humming, and the things before my eyes had begun to blur. Zhao Ying noticed the change in me and asked what was wrong. I said maybe I was a little carsick. Zhao Ying didn’t miss the chance and reached out to support me, her chest intentionally or unintentionally brushing against my arm.

“I want to lie down on the bed for a bit, okay? I pointed at Zhang Qian’s bed.”

“That’s a dead person’s bed.” Zhao Ying looked at me in disbelief.

“It’s fine.” I took off my shoes and climbed up. The bed was a little small.

“You’ve got guts. You really should study medicine.”

“Maybe. Aren’t you the same, not scared at all, still living here without even changing rooms?”

Zhao Ying laughed. “That’s just how medical people are. What’s there to be scared of? Besides, the dorms are so tight. Hard to get a room all to yourself.”

I asked Zhao Ying what happened on the day Zhang Qian died.

　　Being from medical school, whether male or female, people took life and death very lightly. Zhao Ying spoke about it just like idle chat. But if death were to happen to her herself, would she still be this calm?

“Actually, it was pretty strange. On the day Zhang Qian died, there was nothing unusual about her at all. She still arranged her clothes, read, wrote notes, went out once in the afternoon. After I went out with my boyfriend at night and came back, she was still lying quietly on the bed. Then the next morning, when I woke up, I saw her sitting on the bed. It wasn’t until I went to the bathroom and came back and opened the curtain that I realized she was already dead. She had hanged herself sitting down.”

She paused, as if waiting to hear me sound shocked.

But I only turned over and lay flat, saying, “How is that possible? How can someone hang themselves sitting down?”

Zhao Ying was a little disappointed, but she kept talking.

“She threaded the rope through the ring on the ceiling where the mosquito net hung, then crossed both legs around each other and sat on the edge of the bed. The rope was exactly the right length so that when her body leaned forward, she wouldn’t fall off the bed. The police said she had taken a lot of sleeping pills while hanging there. She must have waited until she felt herself about to lose consciousness, then slipped the noose on. That way she died with no pain at all.”

Zhao Ying paused again. Seeing that I said nothing, she said, “Well? Scared stupid, huh?”

I looked at the iron ring above my head and asked, “What was Zhang Qian wearing when she died?”

“Huh? Why would you ask that? That day she was wearing a white gauze dress, sitting on the bed, the noose over her head. At first I didn’t even see the rope she hanged herself with. Her head was hanging so low, and her hair covered her whole face. Both hands were bent naturally and resting on her legs. Who would have thought that bitch would still look so holy even in death.” Zhao Ying seemed to realize what she had said, so she stopped talking and quietly got up to look at me. She thought I had already fallen asleep, so she said nothing more.

“Junior, are there really this many ways to hang oneself?”

　　“Mm. The most comprehensive explanation of hanging methods is in China’s first edition forensic medicine book. Chinese people seem to be very superstitious about hanging as a way to die. Especially in the countryside. The book says some people even believed that if you died by hanging while sitting or lying down, you could preserve your soul—what they call the soul leaving the body and attaining immortality.”

　　“But how is it possible to hang yourself while sitting?”

　　“Actually it’s just a matter of angle. I put my left hand on my head—look, this is the rope tied around my neck, and then I sit like this. At that point, as long as you lean forward, gravity will make the rope produce tension. As long as you don’t break that balance, that is, as long as you keep the posture you’re sitting in, it works.”

　　“Hey, Du Ming, you study this stuff every day. Don’t you have nightmares at night?”

　 From that day on, Senior strictly forbade me from talking about such things anymore. Senior didn’t have many views on life and death. “There isn’t much meaning in living, but I also have no reason to die. If the reason were sufficient, I would kill myself.” That was what Senior once told me. I once told Senior that the reason I studied death was because I feared death. Looking at these things was only to make my fear of death more real to myself, but the result was always unsatisfying. I had also pressed Senior more than once about what kind of reason could make her lose her faith in living, but Senior never answered me.

　　Lying on Senior’s bed, I covered my eyes with one hand, because they had started tearing up again. My other hand groped unconsciously along the wall beside me. The wall was rough and pitted, and as my fingers brushed across it, more flakes of plaster fell. My hand stopped around the level of my waist. There were many scratch marks here, line after line, marks left by fingernails. Very fresh—the broken edges were still snow white. These were nail marks left by Senior. I could imagine Senior lying on the bed the way I was now, her left hand scratching hard across the wall while her face remained expressionless.

　　Half-dreaming, I saw Senior again—the Senior who had first climbed up to the rooftop, the Senior who had first walked into my life.

She wore that white gauze dress, pink strappy sandals. Senior’s toes were very pale; through the translucent skin one could vaguely see bluish veins. Just like our first meeting, she sat beside me hugging her knees, her head resting on them, tilting her head as she looked at me. The hem of her dress swayed softly, but I could no longer hear what she was saying to me.

　　I knew Zhao Ying was staring at me. I opened my eyes and met hers. She made no effort to avoid my gaze. On the contrary, she raised her brows and said, handsome guy, you even look good when you sleep. I was going to steal a kiss, actually. Oh, then make up for it now. I reached out and touched her ear. Zhao Ying immediately pounced on me. After a heated kiss, she caught her breath and said, come down. I don’t want to be on a dead person’s bed.

　　The women in medical school were either frigid or sluts—that was the unanimous opinion of us medical school boys. Several times I wanted to shut Zhao Ying up. What are you scared of? School hasn’t started yet, and the other teachers haven’t come back. She flung my hand off carelessly, then took a condom from the bedside table and told me to put it on. Once disguise is torn away, human nature shows itself completely. Zhao Ying exaggerated her movements as she gasped and cried out. I pinned her shoulders and called her a slut. She stopped and looked at me. Do you know? Zhang Qian was a slut just like me, a bitch. Beneath me she said indignantly, ever since I came to school I knew about that bitch. She put on an act of being pure on the surface, but deep down she was horny as hell. Back then all the boys in school paid attention to her. Seeing how untouchable she acted really pissed me off. Living in the same room with her pissed me off even more. Now that no men chase after her anymore, what’s she still pretending for? Zhao Ying giggled. She raised herself and clung tightly to me, biting my ear. On the very afternoon Zhang Qian killed herself, my boyfriend and I were right underneath her, fucking just like this.

　Time passed quickly. Before leaving, I asked Zhao Ying for her phone number. Zhao Ying happily gave it to me, then told me that her boyfriend usually only came to see her on Wednesdays and Fridays. When I went downstairs, I greeted the old lady in the guard room. The old woman looked at me a little strangely. Maybe she had heard something just now.

I wandered around campus. There was still a week before school started, and there was almost no one on campus. I went to the anatomy lab building. The IC card phone was still downstairs. I remembered that two years ago I had also made a pager call there. I picked up the phone. Zhao Ying sounded a little surprised to hear my voice. I said I missed you. She laughed very brazenly and said all you men are the same, then asked where I was. I said right downstairs from you. She told me to wait for her and hung up. I stood in the anatomy building looking outside. Before long, Zhao Ying came out from the dorm building. She was wearing green cropped pants and a white T-shirt. Zhao Ying wasn’t especially pretty, but she had a very good figure. As she walked toward the school gate, she kept looking around in every direction.

When she reached the anatomy building, I pulled her into my arms in one motion. She cried out, but when she saw it was me, she hugged me back tightly and kissed me. I said, how come you came out without wearing a bra? She blinked mischievously. Such a bother. I’m going to take it off again in a minute anyway.

I grabbed her hand and ran upstairs. As she let me pull her, she said, hey, do you even know where this is, running upstairs like this?

I turned and asked her, where is this?

She went ahead of me and made a face at me. “This is our school’s anatomy lab building. There are human specimens all inside.”

“Really?” I stuck out my tongue.

Very pleased with herself, she pulled me along. “Come on, let me show you around.”

After two years, nothing had changed. The familiar place, the familiar smell. Even that broken lock still hadn’t been replaced.

Zhao Ying pushed the door open and said, “Well? Never seen anything like this, huh? Everything here is one hundred percent real. The things on the tables are all small specimens. In that little room next to it there’s a big locked tank, and what’s soaking in there are all corpses.”

I smiled and held her. Zhao Ying spread the white coat hanging by the door over the table. She lay there with both legs tightly clamping my body.

I looked into Zhao Ying’s eyes. “Zhao Ying, do you know where you went wrong?”

She looked at me in surprise. While covering her mouth and nose with a handkerchief soaked in isoflurane, I said to her, “What you did wrong was living in the same room with Zhang Qian.”

　 Zhao Ying’s body went completely limp. Out of humanitarian concern, I still strangled her first. If I had strangled her without anesthesia, then in a person’s death struggle the sphincters would lose control, meaning fecal and urinary incontinence. It would be very dirty, so I wouldn’t do something that stupid. I didn’t need to take her clothes off, because she wasn’t wearing any. To die in passion—maybe that would be something happy. At least I hadn’t let Zhao Ying suffer any pain. I put her on the floor, then took the epidural needle out of my bag. One end of the needle was connected to a medical rubber tube. I fed the tube down into the floor drain of the lab, then aimed the needle at Zhao Ying’s carotid artery and drove it straight in. Maybe I should have inserted another needle into her femoral artery too. That way she would have lost blood faster, and there wouldn’t have been too much blood flowing out all over the place in a while. I stripped off all my clothes. The memorial ritual officially began. Senior, everything I do is for you. I won’t let you live alone in that world. I found someone to keep you company.

Zhao Ying’s skin was very smooth, full of elasticity and luster, only now there was no color left in it. The cold body felt like a marble statue. My hands lingered on her breasts for a long time. I knew I was a little reluctant to destroy such an exquisite thing.

People have no power to choose being born; this is our eternal sorrow. And those who cannot choose their own death suffer an even greater sorrow. But why, when one chooses death oneself, must one still leave sorrow behind for others? With the scalpel I cut from Zhao Ying’s jaw all the way down to her mons pubis. Then I made several transverse incisions in her neck, armpits, rib cage, groin folds, and both ankles. The next stage of the work began from the head. First I used a retractor to hook the incision in Zhao Ying’s jaw and pulled upward hard, separating the skin of her head from the skin of her neck. Then with scissors I cut open the scalp at the back of her head. Kneeling over Zhao Ying, I seized both her ears and tore hard. And just like that, the mask Zhao Ying had worn in life came away into my hands. Looking at her face full of muscle fibers and blood, I cried. Without eyelids, Zhao Ying’s eyes were wide open and staring. I looked at them, then picked up the needle beside me and stabbed it in.

　　By the time I had completely freed the subcutaneous tissue from the torso of the corpse, the sky was already starting to darken. Maybe it was because of the two times we had had sex during the day, but I felt very tired. Beside me lay the flayed skin. Zhao Ying’s corpse still had the skin on the limbs not yet removed, which made it look rather ridiculous. I decided not to continue for the moment and fell asleep on the floor. If you had passed by that anatomy lab that night, what you would have seen under the moonlight, on the floor of the lab, was two naked bodies: one a corpse with only the skin on the limbs still attached, and the other a person holding himself tightly, his head lowered toward his legs, both hands curled in front of his chest, like a fetus in a pregnant woman’s womb. That person was me.

In the middle of the night I was awakened by the wind. My whole body had broken out in goosebumps from the cold. It was very uncomfortable, but I still couldn’t put my clothes on. My body was covered in Zhao Ying’s blood. I started to grow irritable and hastily stripped all the remaining skin from the limbs. Fortunately Zhao Ying was very thin, with almost no body fat, so that once soaked in formalin there wouldn’t be those annoying floating particles. Looking at my work, the technique was not as perfect as a butcher’s, but the speed was still enough to leave a surgeon far behind. With the scalpel I cut away the large pieces of residual fat and lymph from Zhao Ying’s body, but there was always still a little mammary tissue and lymph that I couldn’t clean off properly from her chest. Carelessly, I had already sliced through several pectoral muscles, so I simply gave up. The corpse, full of fat chunks and bloodstains, looked very unclean. I found a rubber hose in the lab and attached it to the faucet in the corner. The cold water striking my body made me shudder all over. I turned the flow down low and let the water run over the face of the corpse. Red blood, white fascia, yellow fat—little by little they swirled away and disappeared in the current. Disheartened, I stood before the mirror looking at myself. My hands and chest were covered in blood. At some point, my lower abdomen had also become caked in blood. My pubic hair was glued together with blood, and my penis had shrunk into a tight knot against my body, abnormally cold. The blood on my legs had already dried into a layer, the edges starting to curl. I gently peeled it off, put it to my lips. Sticky, it melted into a lump, still with that same fishy taste. The water on my body was a little cold. I took the key from my bag and unlocked the little room. The plastic protective clothing and hooks were still there. Because the new lab building had been completed, it seemed this side hadn’t been used in a long time. But the thick dust still showed traces that someone had been there. The lid of the formalin tank had not been sealed properly. No wonder you could smell formalin even downstairs. I shifted aside that dead-heavy lid and peered into the tank. Hi, I came to see you.

　　Putting on the protective suit, I hooked Zhao Ying’s corpse with the hook. Let us read out the original name of this corpse one last time, because now only a DNA test could tell who she is. But the police would never imagine that a missing person would shed her outer human skin and lie inside the corpse tank. Therefore I, Du Ming, declare according to law that Zhao Ying is now missing. I lifted the corpse and threw it into the tank. Sure enough, useless thing that it was, the body floated half up. I jumped into the tank, turned over a few corpses below, and covered Zhao Ying’s body with them. The corpse on top seemed to do it on purpose and rolled over, revealing its face to me. It had been soaking for over a year, and the muscles had long since lost their bright red color and sheen. In the eye sockets there was only a deep hollow. Its mouth seemed to have been pried open by someone; many muscle fibers around its mouth were torn. I kicked its head aside with my foot. In the morning sunlight, I saw something gleaming inside its mouth. It was a gold tooth. That gold tooth gave off the same earthy yellow light as the corpse itself. I jabbed down hard with the hook, smashing the corpse’s jaw to pieces.

　　After finishing all this, I hastily rinsed off my body and the floor of the lab with water. I chopped the peeled skin into tiny pieces with a knife and flushed them down the toilet in several batches. With one press of the flush, those fragments went cheerfully down into the sewer. All that remained in my hand was the piece of facial skin with hair still attached, and two heavy lumps of flesh—Zhao Ying’s breasts. I held that hood-like face for quite a while, thinking of things from martial arts novels. Standing before the mirror, I compared it against myself left and right, but couldn’t seem to come to any conclusion about the possibility of disguise. So this kind of human-skin mask really must not be fake after all. Looks like Jin Yong couldn’t put theory into practice either. Holding Zhao Ying’s face skin in my hand for so long gave me a strange feeling. I put her breasts and face skin into a plastic bag together with my tools and Zhao Ying’s clothes in the shoulder bag, then got dressed. Very carefully, I left the lab building. I didn’t go out the main entrance, but jumped out over the wall beside the building. When I reached the residential compound next to the school, I found that two cuts had been slashed into the back seat of my motorcycle, and there was someone’s vomit beside the tire. For some reason I was in an excellent mood. I felt that last night someone had done the same thing I had—only he had been drunk, while I had been sober.

Junior, give me a present.

　　Mm.

　　Why don’t you ask why I want you to give me a present?

　　It’s your birthday, right? Next week.

　　Senior smiled. “I didn’t expect you to know.”

“Actually, Senior, I know far more than you imagine. Your birthday, your measurements—even your menstrual cycle, I know it all.”

When I said that, Senior was silent on the phone for a long time, then softly said, “Du Ming, I’m very happy, really. I used to hate it when people asked me these things, but I still wanted someone to know. That person was you.”

Listening to Senior, I felt she was cruel, because she was not only tormenting herself, but tormenting me too.

“Then that day...” Hearing this, Senior cut me off at once. “Du Ming, don’t say any more. I won’t be with you.”

Why?

Because you’re too clean.

I gave a dry laugh and said, Senior, I know you that well. How much do you really know about me?

Senior said, “A lot. You’re very simple, your thoughts are always very beautiful, and you’re more suited to the kind of girl who’s sweet and dependent. I’m not right for you.”

I sighed. “All right then. Senior, what kind of gift do you want?”

“Anything is fine, as long as it’s from you.”

　　Those days I really was a bit restless. I began to believe that everything had causes and connections. I knew that everything that had happened could no longer be laughed off the way our chats used to be. This result was caused by me, caused by Senior, and we had to bear all of it. The actor cries on stage, yet the people below are always so cold. I could no longer change my lines, and my play had already reached its climax. Even if met with nothing but jeers, I had to go on. Senior, in your one-woman play, the prince may be the clown from another play. Maybe you’ll discover it the moment you turn around—and the thing that makes you turn will certainly be that prince’s summons.

　When I drove to the gas station, I took a turn off the highway. I went onto the uneven little road. In the countryside in early autumn, the morning already had a thin mist. Hitting my face, it was as cold as someone’s tears. Half a tree branch stretched slantwise out from one side of a wall, with a few scattered apples on it. I casually picked one and bit into it. It was green, mouthful after mouthful of bitterness and astringency. Several dogs darted and jumped around my feet. My body seemed to carry some pleasant scent. They circled me again and again without making a sound. I reached back into the bag on my back and threw a piece of meat among them. The dogs sniffed at it with great interest, then began barking excitedly. Just like that, that 34D breast was eaten up by those stupid dogs in less than a minute. The bit of skin left with the bright red nipple on it was something the dogs couldn’t swallow. Two dogs tugged at each other desperately, fighting over that little dessert after the meal. I picked up a branch and struck at them. The dogs gave a few low barks, let go, and ran off sulkily. I hooked up that layer of skin with the branch and flung it hard, tossing it into the dry pit toilet by the roadside. As I left, I hung Zhao Ying’s clothes on the apple tree as payment for the apple. The other half of the breast, Zhao Ying’s face skin, and her underwear I threw separately into the manure pit and trash bins I passed along the road. By the time I got home, the sky was already bright. It was a little after eight in the morning. I took a quick shower and fell asleep.

　　When I opened my eyes again, it was already past three in the afternoon. No dreams. It was the best sleep I’d had in a year. Unfortunately the phone kept ringing beside my ear. Unwillingly I picked it up. Wang Yao’s voice came through immediately, thick with tears. “Du Ming, why aren’t you here yet? It’s almost shift change.”

“Yesterday the dog surgery took too long. I was tired and only just woke up.”

“Hmph, for a dog of all things. You forgot what you promised me?” Just holding the phone, I could imagine the way Wang Yao must be pouting right now.

“I didn’t forget. I’m supposed to keep you company tonight.”

“Can’t you ever be serious. Are you coming or not?”

I smiled and said, “Of course I’m coming. By the way, Wang Yao, what color bra are you wearing today?” Wang Yao gave a little cry, but still answered softly, the same one you saw last time. I didn’t tease her further, only asked her what she wanted to eat.

Wang Yao shouted, I want Nestlé ice cream.

　　When I got to the hospital, there was a package for me in the guard room. Senior had mailed it to me. I looked at the slip. It was Senior’s handwriting, very scrawled. Unfortunately today was Sunday, so I’d have to wait until tomorrow to pick it up. When I got upstairs, Wang Yao called out noisily the moment she saw me. She wanted to feed me ice cream, wanted me to play cards with the nurses. I knew she was forcing it, but I did my best to go along with her. After dinner, she secretly took my hand and pulled me into the men’s changing room. I want you to stay up and talk with me tonight, I’m a little scared. Sure, I said with a smile. She smiled brilliantly. Wait for me. When she came back, she was carrying a cup of drink. Coffee made specially for you. I don’t want you falling asleep in a little while—we’re going to talk all night. Mm. I took the cup and drank a sip. When she turned around to get something, I casually poured the contents into the flowerpot on the windowsill. Wang Yao stared at me for a while. Once she was sure I had fallen asleep, she quietly stepped over me, opened the window, and jumped out. When the sound of her footsteps disappeared from my ears, I sat up, moved the flowerpot on the windowsill to another sill, and pushed open again the window she had casually shut behind her, because there was no handle outside that window. Wang Yao had no way to open it again.

　　I lay on the bed in my white coat, and the sky was already starting to darken. The wind kept blowing in through the open window, faintly carrying a few chirps of crickets. In this season there should no longer be any crickets. But nothing is ever absolute. Actually, as long as the method is right, you can live quite well. When you feel you cannot live, it only means your way of living is wrong; it has nothing at all to do with society. If you do not believe in facts, you shouldn’t run from them. That way facts are still facts. You can only change them. Only then can facts become history. In my left hand I held the package slip. My right hand kept rubbing between my thighs. Only this way could I make the night easier to endure. I kept imagining Senior’s mouth, Senior’s waist. I kept masturbating. As my bodily fluid burst out, I bit the back of my hand so I wouldn’t cry. After a long while, the wind in the room suddenly grew weaker. A soft body had appeared beside me. Her hands wrapped around me from behind. I softly called Senior, and then sank into sleep.

　At the morning meeting the next day, Sun Yan, the nurse who had been on duty opposite me, looked at Wang Yao and me with a sly grin all over her face. Wang Yao seemed a little embarrassed. Under the table, I lightly squeezed Wang Yao’s hand, and Wang Yao smiled at me. After handover, before I had even finished changing clothes, Wang Yao burst in. She threw her arms around me. I hurriedly shut the changing room door. What are you doing? Wang Yao buried her face in my chest, not daring to look at me.

“Du Ming, I’m coming to your place later. I don’t want to go home today.”

I stroked her hair. Be good, we’re both tired. Go home and rest today first. I’ll call you tonight. Wang Yao lifted her head and looked into my eyes for a long time, then nodded, smiled, and stepped out of my arms. At the instant she turned to close the door, she quickly kissed me on the cheek. Wang Yao’s lips were moist, warm with a trace of coolness. I stood there touching my face, listening to the sound of Wang Yao’s plastic slippers striking the floor fade farther and farther away outside the door. In my ears there was a faint echo. I felt as if I were in a dream, a dream I had once had before. That same unreality appeared again. I walked out of the operating room. Downstairs the surgery department was noisy. It seemed the doctor on duty from yesterday still hadn’t shown up.

I went to the post office. A worker behind the counter handed me a box about the size of a shoebox. It had my address written on it, and under contents it said: books. I took the package, turned around, and heard my own heartbeat.

　　Back home, facing that package, I didn’t know whether I should open it or not. In the end, I did. At that moment my heartbeat and breathing both stopped. It seemed time itself stopped too. I moved very slowly, afraid that something inside the box would suddenly appear between my fingers and then vanish. Opening the box, I found on top several letters I had once written to Senior and two postcards. Beneath them was a diary, with a very pretty cover. I opened it. The title page was pink, but there wasn’t a single word on it. I kept flipping through. It was still blank, no writing, only dates printed at the top.

I set the diary aside. In the box there was only one thing left: a black pager. I pressed the switch. The pager still had a little battery power left. There were several saved messages inside. The newest one said: “Teacher Wang, come to the anatomy lab immediately after work. Zhang Qian.” I went through my letters again, but there was still nothing. So I lay on the bed, the things from the box spread around me. I stared at the ceiling without moving. Time passed painfully bit by bit beneath my eyelids. That crack in the ceiling slowly widened in my vision. Suddenly I remembered something. I sat up, opened Senior’s diary, and counted the dates on the pages. Finally, at the very end of the diary, I found Senior’s handwriting. It was written very messily. Some places had been soaked with water, the characters running together. The date written in the upper left corner was July 4th, Senior’s birthday.

Junior, this is the first time I’ve ever kept a diary, and it will also be my last.

The original purpose of buying this diary was to remember every day I thought of you, but every time I picked up the pen, I didn’t know how to begin. Funny, isn’t it. Du Ming, every time I think of you, I feel dizzy. It’s a terrible feeling. Every morning when I get up, when the first ray of sunlight shines onto me, it feels like I’m receiving your gaze, so warm. Every day I sit in the office, holding the glass ring and looking out the window, looking at the rooftop of the dorm building opposite, looking at the sky across from me—it all feels as if it were right in front of me. Every night is the hardest for me. Lying in bed, I cannot stop thinking of you, thinking of your gentle smile, your lips so soft, your arms so strong. Every night I wake up in fright. I keep carving your name into the wall, then scratching it out, but the next day I still can’t control myself. I imagine my own fingers are yours. I use them to caress my body, caress my legs. How I wish you could really be beside me, really kiss my breasts, stroke my skin with your fingers, enter my body. Du Ming, tell me none of this is real. Why did I have to meet you? Why did you have to go up to that rooftop that day? Why did you have to let me meet you? Why let me, in my despair, glimpse a bit of light, only to find that the light was the candle in death’s hand, there only to illuminate my road to heaven?

　　I came to this school in 94. Back then I was full of fantasies, imagining the sacred image of myself one day wearing a clean white coat and curing patients of their suffering. Doctor was the profession I respected most, and also my dream for many years. I really was naïve then. Every day I was so happy, proud that I could live in a medical school. And just like that, pretty and lively Zhang Qian quickly became the focus of attention for the men in medical school. At first I didn’t dislike the boys there. They all looked energetic, healthy, and clean. So many classmates and upperclassmen gathered around me that I felt like a princess.

Once the princess was happily living her life, the prince appeared very quickly too. In my freshman year I joined the publicity department, and there I met Li, who was student union chairman at the time. Junior, I don’t want to mention his full name, so I’ll just call him Li. Li was my senior. He was a very handsome young man, with thick dark hair and a sunny smile, very much like you, junior. Back then we organized activities together, hosted evening events together. Everyone said we were a perfect pair. And before long, I fell for him in my heart too. When he held my hand on the way back to my dorm after one event and asked me to be his girlfriend, I nodded quickly before I even had time to feel shy or happy.

That year was the happiest time I had had since starting college. He and I were always together on campus, going to the library together, eating in the cafeteria together. For a while I spent all day weaving beautiful dreams of the two of us marrying and having children in the future. Thinking back on it now, how ridiculous it is.

Every beautiful dream has its moment of shattering. In the second half of freshman year, he and I had already known each other for more than half a year. One afternoon he suddenly came to my dorm. Very strangely, that day there was no one else in the dorm at all. I was the only one left there reading. At first I was happy he could come keep me company, so I let him sit beside me. But then he held me tightly.

Actually, by then I already liked him very much. Giving myself to him had also always been my hope. But he was in such a hurry that it made me very afraid. So I refused him. I only wanted to tell him not to do it in the dorm room. At that moment there was a terrible look in his eyes, like a wild beast, and he began hitting me. He pinned me under him. I wanted to cry out, but he covered my mouth with a pillowcase, and I could only cry and shake my head, trying to stop him from continuing. But in the end he still did what he wanted to do. I had never imagined that under his handsome exterior there was something so terrifying. I curled up at the head of the bed and cried nonstop, while he touched the blood on the bedsheet and smiled, saying to me, Zhang Qian, I didn’t expect you really were a virgin. I made a bet with them that you weren’t one anymore. Now you made me lose a meal. I screamed like a wild beast and hurled everything within reach at him. As he dodged, he still said, Zhang Qian, quit putting on airs. After you’re done crying and making a fuss, won’t you still have to stay with me?

What he never could have expected was that I would report him to the school. After he found out, he brought several classmates and charged into my dorm building. The girls in the dorm held them back. Only then did I understand why the dorm had been empty that day—he had given my roommates two hundred yuan to go see a movie. My whole body felt cold. I realized that the people I had lived side by side with for more than a year were all so unfamiliar. When my family learned what had happened to me, my father slapped me hard across the face, just because I had actually told the school such a disgraceful thing and made them unable to hold up their heads.

And the school, for all sorts of reasons, only expelled Li and hastily left it at that. When the school announced Li’s expulsion, the reason given was just one line: violating school regulations. Only then did I truly recognize myself. I had always thought I was a princess, yet I never expected I was actually so helpless.

I was the victim, I was the one left isolated and without help, and in the end I was also the one punished. After leaving school, Li came to see me. He said viciously to me, Zhang Qian, you bitch, I’ll make sure you won’t have it easy at school either. The very next day every classroom desk was piled with all kinds of vicious and filthy things written about me. Facing all that, I instead began to grow numb. I truly began to understand the people around me—these future doctors, these future angels in white. They were all hypocrites, disgusting trash that made one want to vomit. Each of them held slips of paper and looked at me with eyes full of ambiguous, malicious mockery. From then on, there were only two things left around me: endless rumors and men’s gazes. I became the object of the men’s sexual fantasies in medical school. I walked among them like a living corpse, without the slightest feeling. Until you appeared, Du Ming.

　　I had always thought nothing would ever move me again. But the sight of you on that rooftop still made my heart race uncontrollably. You were like an angel descending from the sky, sunlight surrounding you. I felt that sunlight had been born only for you, scattered down into the human world. Your glance back, your smile, your soft voice—none of it let my heart stop pounding. You have no idea how, back then, I sat beside you pretending to be casual while my face burned so hot my lips went dry and I had to keep wetting them with my tongue. My heart was beating so hard I had to hug myself tightly. But one absent-minded movement from you, one careless joke from you, still shattered me so easily. That night I could not sleep. Whenever I closed my eyes, there was nothing but your smiling face, nothing but your eyes. From that day on, I fell in love with you, Du Ming. Every day I would pretend to pass by your classroom by accident. Every time I would pretend not to know you as I walked by your side. Every time I saw your brows lift and the corner of your mouth twitch slightly, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to control myself. It was as if I had already been poisoned, poisoned by you.

You were so tolerant, never asking me about my past, and yet your clear gaze kept encouraging me, washing away my sins. I knew that only when I was with you could I find that purity, that clean feeling. At that time I had only one thought: how wonderful it would be if it could stay like this forever. But you would never belong to me alone, and I had no right to possess you. How many times I held you in my dreams and wept in your arms, only to wake and still go on disguising myself as before.

I was afraid you would reject me. I was afraid of the days when I could no longer speak to you.

I was afraid. I was truly afraid of losing you.

Graduation was coming. You would soon no longer be my junior. I didn’t know whether I should be happy for you or sad for myself.

I thought I would put on a happy face and see you off, but instead I saw your gloom. We are the same kind of people, junior. We have done nothing wrong, yet life still forces us to bow our heads. Life is a tyrant—only by meekly yielding can one be happy. We are both unhappy people. So, junior, for your sake I decided to go beg Wang Lianpu.

　　I put five hundred yuan on Wang Lianpu’s desk and explained why I had come. But Wang Lianpu smiled and said, I don’t know what your relationship with Du Ming is, and I don’t want to know. But I won’t take this money. He picked the money up and put it back into my hand, but his hand kept holding mine. His palm was covered in sweat. My hand felt as if it had been thrust into a dead person’s organs, sticky enough to make me want to vomit. Then he said, this afternoon the anatomy group will be taking one person from the graduating class. Zhang Qian, I think highly of you. As long as you know what to do, staying on at school and Du Ming’s anatomy grade will both be no problem. It was only a little after three in the afternoon then. Outside his office people were still working. I had never expected Wang Lianpu to say those things with a smile on his face, just as if he were lecturing from the podium. I smiled and said, all right then, Teacher Wang, I’ll come to the lab tonight to ask you some questions about my graduation defense. Wang Lianpu smiled meaningfully and let go of my hand. Only then did I fully see the face of men. No matter what kind of man he is, given a chance he still turns toward a woman’s thighs. By then I no longer cared at all. That night, I lay on the classroom table in the lab while Wang Lianpu pressed down on me like a pig. His fat face covered in sweat shook back and forth before me. I saw the gold tooth in his mouth shining yellow. I turned my head away so I wouldn’t cry. Not for myself, but for you, junior. Du Ming, it was I who smeared your diploma with the filthy bodily fluids on Wang Lianpu’s body.

　　Junior, the moment you held me, I truly wanted to turn around, hold you tight, kiss you. But I knew I didn’t deserve it. I was only a woman who could sleep with someone else just for a job staying on at school. I was the bitch everyone called me. Everything about me would only make you unable to hold your head up before others because of me. I didn’t want that. My junior was the noblest man in the world. No one could point fingers at him. He would always be the cleanest. When I turned back and mocked you, junior, I was actually mocking myself. What you didn’t know was that the pitiful woman sitting on that rooftop later cried herself unconscious. I thought I had left you behind just like that, but during those days, the memories of being with you tormented my nerves like a nightmare. In bed I kept stimulating myself with my fingers, only wanting to use a brief spell of dizziness to forget you, but after climax I only felt even sadder. When I wrote you that first letter, I was like a prisoner waiting for execution, living every day between hope and despair. When I heard your voice on the phone, I fought desperately to keep my breathing under control. I didn’t dare speak for fear you would hear my voice shaking. I was already crying. I didn’t even know what I was saying, but I knew I had come alive again. Junior, you had returned to my side again, even if only with your voice.

　　Junior, why were you so cruel? Why did you come to shatter my dream? You were so perfect in my heart. Why did you still have to disappoint me?

From the very beginning until you gave Wang Lianpu’s pager to me as a birthday gift, I had never imagined that Wang Lianpu’s disappearance had anything to do with you. Only now do I realize that the only truly innocent one was me. After Wang Lianpu disappeared, the people in the anatomy group all said behind my back that it had something to do with me, and I changed from being a bitch into a little vixen who worked evil spells in the mouths of those middle-aged women. At that time I had still been optimistic enough to think that heaven must have been punishing Wang Lianpu for all his evil. I never expected it still had to do with me. Maybe I really am nothing but a fox spirit who brings trouble. Looking at the message on the pager, I felt a chill run down my back.

That night, I went back to the lab where I worked every day. Every step I took there matched one heartbeat. My instinct made me open the morgue door and open that tank. Yellow particles floated all over the surface. Fighting the urge to vomit, I used a hook to lift up the corpse soaking by the mouth of the tank. That corpse faced me, staring at me fixedly. Trembling, I opened its mouth. Inside, that gold tooth shone with an earthy yellow light. I couldn’t take it anymore. I ran downstairs and vomited over and over, my eyes full of tears. Knowing Li made me understand this society. Knowing you, Du Ming, made me understand myself. Du Ming, you didn’t do anything wrong. I just couldn’t accept it. Now I finally know: in this world no one is clean. Maybe the only thing clean is my own soul. I know the time has come to release it.

It is too filthy here. I feel suffocated. I gasp for breath, but it is useless. How much I want to forget all this, but I can’t do it. Everything has already been branded into my mind. Maybe there is only one way left to free myself.

Junior, I truly do not blame you. I only blame myself. All of this was caused by me. Now there is nothing clean left?

Only me. There is nothing else anymore...

By the end, Senior’s handwriting had become a blurred mess. I touched the irregular water stains on the diary. My tears hit my hands and splashed onto the pages, the writing on them running together. I gently closed the diary, put those letters, that pager, and the diary back into the box, and didn’t dare look at it again.

　　At noon the next day, I went up the back hill behind the hospital and buried the box deep beneath a big pine tree. After packing the earth down firmly, I spread my white coat on the ground beside it and lay there. Everything was over now—the medical school, the rooftop, Senior and her junior. I picked up some small stones beside me and quietly piled them there.

Senior, you will never know that there had once been a pair of eyes secretly watching you from behind, that he skipped class in order to get close to you, secretly followed you only to find out which dorm room you lived in and which road you took to class, that every day in the cafeteria he bought the same dishes you ate, every day in the library he borrowed the books you had read. Every day he wandered beneath your window, only hoping the wind would blow down the panties and stockings you hung there. Every time he ran panting to your side of the road just so he could brush past you. And that first beautiful encounter with you on the rooftop was no coincidence at all,

that plan had already been buried in his heart for a very long time. He knew your taste in food, your taste in clothes, he knew everything about you. In his heart, you were a goddess. So that day, outside the lab door, when he saw Wang Lianpu pressing his body over his own goddess, he told himself that for the sake of his goddess, that pig had to die.

What he wants to tell his Senior now is this: you are forever the goddess in his heart, forever.

　　Just as I got back to the door of the operating room, Wang Yao pulled me away. The two of us went up to the rooftop. Holding my hand, Wang Yao stared into my eyes. Where did you go at noon? I went to the back hill. Wang Yao gave a little cry. What did you go to the back hill for? You’re not allowed to go there again. I smiled and agreed. Then she asked me, what happened to your eyes? They’re red and swollen again. Embarrassed, I rubbed them. I got sand in them when I was on the back hill just now. Then sit down, quick. Wang Yao pulled me down to sit. She gently opened my eyelids and blew into them. My nose was almost touching her blouse. There was a sweet smell on Wang Yao’s body. The air she blew out was moist and warm, making me feel very comfortable. My hands slipped inside her unbuttoned coat. Wang Yao, be my girlfriend. Wang Yao immediately stopped blowing, lifted her body, looked at me, then suddenly threw her arms around me and held me tightly, tightly.

　 After a while, Wang Yao lay on my lap, toying with the buttons on my white coat.

　　Du Ming, I’m not a virgin anymore.

　　I know.

　　Du Ming...

　　Mm?

　　The bureau talked to you today too, right, about Song Yang?

　　Mm. I said I was with you the whole night that night.

　　Actually, Du Ming, I don’t want to lie to you. That night, I called Song Yang out. I took him to the back hill...

　　I know.

　　I covered Wang Yao’s mouth with my hand.

　　Don’t be afraid. Song Yang was already burned up on Monday. The police won’t find the body and they have no evidence. You’ll be fine.

　　Wang Yao grabbed the hand I had over her mouth, raised her head, and stared at me in shock.

　　How do you know that?

　　I smiled but didn’t answer. I only squeezed her hand. Actually, I knew far more than just that. I also knew that the first time Wang Yao was on duty, the weather was very hot. She slept in the men’s changing room with only a white coat over her. She looked very pretty asleep, curled up like a kitten. Her hair spread beside the pillow, both hands tucked like a boy’s between the insides of her thighs. She had unbuttoned her blouse and the clasp at the back of her bra, and the cups had slipped down from her breasts, exposing pink nipples.

Her butt was arched up hard, and beneath the thin skirt the lace edge of her underwear showed. That time I had originally meant to leave as soon as I finished, but in the end I still tenderly used her underwear to wipe her clean. Wang Yao’s body had been soft then, full of allure.

　　Wang Yao lay in my arms, drawing circles on my chest.

　　Du Ming, I’m already unclean. Why do you still like me?

　　I rested my head on my hand, tilted it back, and looked at the sky.

　 Once, someone told me that in this world no one is clean

(The End)