“Ling is a woman now. She knows what she wants from her life.”
“True, true.” Nan yawned aloud, checking her phone. “Oh, one o’clock already. Let’s sleep.”
Nan soon snored. Mei seemed sound asleep. Groping my way along the zigzags, I entered the void of darkness. Yet, I wasn’t afraid. I was ready to embrace the darkest of the dark. This strange feeling was rightly interrupted by another stranger feeling - when I eventually turned on the light in the shower room to find the toilet, I was afraid. The light scared me. It brightened every detail of the midnight silence. The showers were dead without naked women. The sauna became an autopsy room. The poor mother was bleeding on the fl oor, fainted. The poorer baby was breathing in a black plastic bag on the top of a trash bin. And the black plastic bag was heaving slowly. Paradise turned into hell. The other side of paradise was where the people were trapped, exactly where I stood barefoot. Everything became vividly transparent, including me. I was peculiarly naked.