I’m Lin Mo, twenty-five, single, a planner at an advertising agency, an ordinary office worker stuck in the same daily routine. I rent a one-bedroom apartment measuring thirty-two square meters. For seven nights in a row, I dreamed of dying in different ways.
Falling from an overpass, a microwave exploding, being electrocuted in the bathroom, falling from a window...
Each dream was more real than the one before. So real that I could remember the gum stains on the tiles and feel shards scraping painfully across my throat.
I recorded each death in my notes and took precautions in real life: no overpasses, no microwave, and I cut the power before bed.
I thought that if I was careful enough, I could make it through the eighth day.
Until, in the dream on the seventh night, the “me” in the mirror turned around. Its face had no features. It said:
“One day left.”
On the eighth day, my phone rang.
Caller ID: my own number.
I answered. My voice screamed from the other end of the line, shouting a name...
My own.
