Bing was the same Bing.
Mei spiritually transformed herself into a wall.
Without even reading that wall, she walked the same way back.
Her steps advanced like a wheel within a wheel. Time was running backward. The state of her mind was tremendously unstable, sometimes a mess, sometimes a button.
Bing looked light in a neat set of blue and yellow and famously branded sport suits. With such lightness, his purple bruises and white bandages seemed less than nothing; instead they looked a good decoration on his face. He was at least twenty minutes late, but for him it was not a man’s tradition to apologize to a woman for being late. And Mei, as a traditional woman, always took things as they came. She suff ered from injustice, but was incapable of making a complaint in that situation. After all, she was not independent. She was most unfortunately and desperately dependent upon him. She craved his love and thought her children needed their real father. Seeing his unnatural even artifi cial smile, she passed the bag without bothering to utter a word. Bing received the money with only one phrase, not “Thank you!” but “Go home!”.