I must confess that I have not included him in that fiction although I am not sure if that is the reason why he bumps into me now in this crowd. Even though we have not met for nearly 30 years he acts as if he did not care. He simply ‘hello’ed. Or perhaps it is only a reaction to my nonchalance? I need a mirror to check. But, then, people’s faces are mirrors in which you see the same, and more of the same, or same of the more. If you smile, the faces smile back. If you look glum, they do the same, looking different, always different, unlike this guy who looks like Hong Geli, this guy hosting a TV program on his journey across the Tropic of Cancer. When I commented on how much he looked like Geli, particularly when you only glanced at him, she agreed because we both knew him in our young days. We did not know then, though, that he was to die in a decade.

In a few words, just as we went past each other, Shi intimated that he was back working in the same city where we went to the university together. It was not until long after that that I realized that he was telling me he was working in the tax office. I do not understand what English has got to do with tax. Perhaps he is assisting in the process.

Subsequently, I am embarrassed to find that my pants are smeared with fresh semen, so squashed in their semen-messiness that I have to hide them. The woman comes over and puts them in a trolley. She does not seem to take any notice of the semen but I think she does although she does not want to show it; at least the aroma of the semen is strong in the air, any noses would know it.