Chapter Two: The Living

“Zhou…” He looked at the name and felt a piece missing from his chest. “Who is that?” Lin Wan tore a fading page from her notebook and wedged it into a metal seam. Then she produced an old voice recorder. “Say the saddest thing you feel right now.” “I don't know.” “Say that. Emotion refreshes more slowly than fact.” He closed his eyes. The face was gone, but he remembered someone stealing the last fish ball from every hot pot; someone sitting with him on a roof until dawn before his thesis defense; a cup of coffee to his right, leaving a wet ring on the desk. “I lost someone,” he told the recorder. “I don't know who he was, but I lost him.” Reality completed its update in silence.