Mr. Lu had a long dream.
In it, he returned to that morning.
He lowered his head, profoundly exhausted.
The last time he had awoken felt as distant as the primeval age.
As the weather turned from summer to winter, the old man's passion gradually cooled.
On the subway to the Xierqi station, packed like sardines in a can, every static sound from the friction between the girls' down jackets and coats sounded to him like the shattering of dreams.
From then on, he began to understand a principle.
The office was merely a ridiculous theater for pretending to be respectable.
But it was the bed where the true battleground of male competition lay.
For his thirty-fifth birthday, he gave himself tequila.
Two bottles, certainly not because the second bottle was half off, but because he wanted to feel more of that surging vitality.
He even managed to rationalize it, often telling himself so.
Young people always aim for the climax.
But life, precisely, is an endless foreplay.
