When I signed that contract, the tip of my pen scratched the paper. Wang Zhenhai said this was a "special labor agreement," but we all knew it - what I was selling was not time, but dignity.
During the day, I am the most decent Secretary Li in the foreign trade company, and my shirt is always buttoned to the second button; at night, I become a doll in Mr. Wang's personal collection, letting him burn cigarette butt-shaped marks on my skin. He said this to make me remember: "You are alive now only because of my charity."
Zhou Chengyang's ward became my only pure land. Every time I went to see him, I would put on three layers of concealer in the bathroom and practice smiling forty-seven times. The doctor said he was recovering well, but I saw my rotting soul on his increasingly rosy cheeks.
Until the moment the escape train started, I naively thought the nightmare was over. Until Zhou Chengyang's cell phone lit up, the recording of me barking like a dog suddenly echoed in the carriage, mixed with the snickers of the passengers. He looked at me like he was looking at a puddle of filth: "You make me sick."
And when I fell down on the platform, the screen of my mobile phone lit up with a new message from Wang Zhenhai: "The game has just begun." On the scanned copy of the attached medical record, a date that had been stained by tears suddenly became clearly identifiable...
