Tsu has had and still has an imaginary friend, Wen. Wen is a character who sometimes possesses incredibly dark thoughts, but somehow, Tsu would still very much like to befriend her.
The other day, Wen’s then-boyfriend died, from a murder. Tsu sent her deepest condolences.
“What’re you talking about, Tsu?” She looked at the man lying on the bed. “My boyfriend never left. He’s here 24/7.”
……
“Have you slept at all these past couple of days?”
“Sleeping is for the dead only.”
“Do you know who the perpetrator is?”
“I do.”
“What are you going to do to her?”
“ I will either knock her out or impair her vocal cord before I do something to her just so she doesn’t make an annoying sound of suffering when I do something to her. If I have not been able to make a single sound out of her, then that means I’m doing something right.
If I still have a shred of humanity inside me, I will make sure her parents are dead also to spare them of their pain in coping with their loss. And then, I’m gonna go back in time in the only way I know how.”
“Wen, don’t.”
“You made it sound like I’ve got a choice. I’m only one woman. I have no money, I have no love life, I can’t bear to see my mother’s shriveled face in her selfie, you would rather I get slowly murdered by life itself?”
“Everything is going to get better if you set your mind to it.”
“I have been telling myself that for the past 30 years, I’m done.”
“A lot of people in this world know you are talented.”
“I might be somebody to some people, but then, I’m just a nobody to many more people too.”
“What about the people around you who love you?”
“Their love is a little too late to make me feel they truly care about me. Needing the love of other people to give me strength is too uncertain and dependent, it’s better if I get my strength from my altruism.”
“You are selfish to be altruistic.”
“I will not dignify that with a response after the way you behaved. If you can’t write, you can just be a critic; if you can’t be impartial , you can just be a critic. I could even blame you for your selfishness of being unsympathetic, which makes you the worst. Is there really much of a difference lying between you and me?”
“Wen.”
“Don’t Wen me.”
“Let’s not play the blame game now.”
“Tsu, if you don’t get ahold of this opportunity now, I will. In fact, today already look like a nice perfect day to end myself. In fact, the best birthday gift I can give myself this year is to cross over the bridge.”
“Our lord, the Buddha, would strongly disagree.”
“I know this may seem cruel to Buddha, but then again, life always is, and life always finds a way to be cruel to Buddha.”
But enough about me, Tsu. I think you and Z should have an honest talk about your feelings. You have eaten chips made in every which way so you’re not getting any younger, and this forty-year-old is not getting any more alive.”
“What do you think of Z?”
“He’s crap! Sorry, as your therapist at this moment, that was unprofessional of me.”
“No unprofessionalism taken. But you did get a little too dramatic. Who died and made you queen of drama, haha! Besides, what did he do this time?”
“I will miss this drama in heaven. He didn’t “do” do anything, I just don’t like him is all.”
“But then again, he did forget to pick up my tub of gummy bear on his way to my place as he promised.”
“Ugh! Would you give it a rest! I’m going to buy you ten tubs all at once now so that I don’t have to hear about this stupid thing from you again for another ten years.”
“So you will be giving me a gift, haha?”
“Sure, it’s a gift, but it’s more of a farewell gift.
Have you ever thought of letting Z move in with you if things get serious? But then there’s an off chance that you two will break up and it might be hard to get rid of him then.”
“If I like him, my house will be a cozy den to him, if i don’t, then it will be a death trap that he could not leave quick enough.”
“But to be honest, if someone ask me whether I am fine with marrying some guy who’s significantly older than me , I probably would tell her ‘at least not in this f*ing lifetime’.”
“I would’ve guessed you would be fine with it.”
“You would’ve guessed wrong. I would only want fatherly love from a much older man, not ‘couplely’ love.
“Then I guess I’ll give you ten days tops before your divorce if you were ever put in that situation, haha.”
“Make it five.
Remember that Anhui boy Y吗?”
“He’s uncontrollably hot, he’s rich, he’s tall吧, he’s just.... not for me. I feel like he doesn’t approve of my values. And sometimes he was so proactive towards furthering our relationship that it was almost intimidating, sometimes he can’t take a fing hint and things had to be spelled out for him.
Plus I can’t be with a guy who doesn’t know what Phub is, haha.”
“Or he loved your values, he just hated your delivery.”
“Wen!”
“Well, I can’t blame you for trying to fall in love with him, they don’t make this in Shenzhen.
You didn’t get too attached to him in the end, did you?”
“I can assure you, my relationship with him was purely non-platonic after I gave up on him. After what he did to me, sometimes I just really wanna screw him up. I want to siphon money out of his pocket the way he siphoned the gasoline out of my car.”
“Well, there were a thousand ways to f* him up and you just had to choose the most pleasing one to him.”
“I got what I wanted. Come to think of it, the only thing we really had in common was our sexual desires and even that wasn’t a perfect match.
You know, the other day, he suddenly told me that just within the year, his job turned smooth , and his relationship with me also went well. And I thought to myself: “Well...one out of two ain’t bad.”
There are people around me who keep telling me that after a certain age I will grow dumber and dumber so I need to make decisions, like choosing a husband, fast. And having slept with him should help me expedite that decision in a great way, plus what my mom really needs is just a warm body to marry me. But my intelligence did not peak on my 25th birthday, it reaches its pinnacle when I tell it to, the way the intelligence of an experienced doctor does. Therefore, I don’t want to sell myself short, before I really have to.”
“Of course.
Tsu, can I really be salvaged?”
“Of course.
If you’re gone, must not the heavens itself cry with rage?”
“Stop waxing poetic.
It’s just, when I look at my old pictures, I looked so happy and I don’t think I will ever be that happy again. I don’t care about the future anymore because there holds no future for me anymore. There isn’t even a future to begin with.
Sometimes I get so lonely I just want a warm body to cuddle at night.
No wait, a warm tall body.
I want things to get better and better and not the other f*ing way around, I do. People tell me that if I do certain things I’ll be on easy street but that’s just because I do as command and will not cause any external conflicts therefore problems except with my inner self.”
“Wen, you are the future, you just don’t know it yet.”
“Or maybe everything in this universe is just a mere projection of the reality behind it , that what we believe is reality is nothing more than a computer simulation of it, which makes whatever you’re attempting to say a complete waste of time and energy since nothing in our world really is real?
“To be frank, I never thought we were ever going to have ‘the talk’.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
“Crap in my shit, that’s for sure.”
“I believe I just died and made you the next queen of drama, haha.”
“I have always been a drama queen and I know I am a drama queen, because I know my mom used to be a drama queen even though she doesn’t show around the house, because I can feel it in my blood.
Sometimes I’m so embarrassed of what I did I just want to dump any ‘incriminating evidence’ into a black hole.”
“You don’t need a black hole. Just dump everything in a body of water that is deep enough, you can’t see what’s in it from above the surface either.
Are you going to quit your job?”
“That company is a dump, every one of my colleagues agrees with me. Some people in the company just takes forever to say nothing. Some people thinks my job is easy.
If you don’t know what I’m capable of, then I advice you best to shut up.
I think, in the end, it’ll all come down to me to give it the ultimate screw-up before I leave the company.
Every single day I try to rationalize to myself, but deep down, I know this will never work. I don’t think I’ll be able to look my neighbors in the eye and don’t care that they think I’m forever stuck to this lousy job.”
“And what will happen to the work that you will leave to your co-workers?”
“I think they will vaporize the turd that I call my leftover work and turn it into gas to spread it across the entire office.
But I’m also scared to bring up my resignation in front of my superior.”
“Geez, if I may add, for f’s sake, grow a pair, otherwise I will stop you from eating chips for a whole week! ”
“You can’t take away my chips! They are everything to me! If I can’t eat the chips, I’m also willing to f them just to be in their presence!”
“I strongly believe your remark would be the funniest saying of the year, and this year is not halfway through yet.”
“You know, my Wechat work group was awfully quiet this morning, it almost felt like everyone just got too exhausted to maintain that fake dynamic work vibe for the morning.
Let me tell you, it was eerily beautiful.”