Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I had no idea whether Lu Zhi’an, who normally didn’t get to the office until after ten, had actually gotten up early for that appointment, because by seven o’clock I was already packed into a crowded subway car.

Lu Zhi’an worked as an algorithm engineer at a big internet company. The pressure was intense, and overusing his brain often left him with insomnia, so we always rented apartments close to his office so he could sleep a little longer.

The trade-off was that I had to spend more than an hour commuting every day.

Still, an hour-long commute was considered normal in Beijing. This was a city that warped your sense of time and distance.

Clack-clack, clack-clack. The sound of the subway rattling along struck at my nerves, which were especially fragile after a sleepless night.

I hung myself from the subway hand strap and stared at the ad screen, only then realizing that today was my birthday.

I remembered the day we first got together. He held my hand and said to me, “From now on, aside from your birthday, on Qixi Festival, Valentine’s Day, our hundredth day, two hundredth day, three hundredth day, first anniversary… every date worth commemorating, I’m going to give you a present.” And he had kept his word. He’d given me all kinds of things, so many that he had developed actual expertise. Our friends teased him, saying he could start charging straight guys online for gift-giving consultations.

But ever since my birthday the year before last, when he had worked overtime for an entire week straight, Lu Zhi’an had started replacing gifts with red envelopes.

Five hundred and twenty, one thousand three hundred and fourteen-he wasn’t stingy when he sent them.

We had been classmates. After graduation, he joined a big tech company, while I entered a state-owned enterprise. One of us made money; the other secured a Beijing household registration.

Lu Zhi’an had caught the wave of the internet industry’s boom, and his income was already quite impressive.

At the end of last month, he looked at his payslip and laughed. “Man, the taxes I pay are higher than your monthly salary.”

“But you guys really do have it easy. You get off work at five. Must be nice.”

Did I really have it easy? I was the one who handled every trivial matter at home: cleaning, going to the supermarket to buy discounted vegetables, and once a year, painstakingly searching for rental listings before asking whether he was satisfied with them.

Last week, when I had him look at the apartments I’d found, Lu Zhi’an only gave them a cursory glance before complaining, “No, this place is too old.”

“This one’s too close to the road. Too noisy.”

“It’s a twenty-minute walk from my office. That’s too far.”

In the end, he asked impatiently, “Why can’t you find something better?”

Because we were saving up to buy an apartment. We had to cut costs wherever we could. Our rental budget was under four thousand, while rents kept rising with the market.

Even at just four thousand, we still had to pay twelve thousand in one go every quarter.

Although we had agreed from the beginning that he would be responsible for the rent, in those dozen or so seconds when I asked him for the money and he frowned in silence, I still felt my dignity shattering.

When I came back to myself, I saw my reflection in the carriage window: an old, baggy coat hanging off me, my hair neglected for far too long.

And right in front of me stood an extraordinarily beautiful girl.

Glossy black hair, clear dark eyes, delicate hands with pale, exquisite nails.

She looked like someone out of a novel, her shoulders light and unburdened, untouched by the dust of everyday life. If she was on the subway at all, it was probably only because she was in a hurry.

Ashamed by the contrast between us, I took advantage of someone getting off at the next stop and quietly moved away.

In truth, I came from a comfortably middle-class family in a county town. My parents were open-minded and willing to support me, but their life savings were nothing more than a drop in the bucket compared with housing prices in Beijing.

For the faint dream of buying a home and settling down here, I had let myself become this worn down and drab in Beijing.