I remember the summer of 2003, right after I graduated middle school. Around August 15th, the rain started in Zhengzhou and just wouldn’t let up. After that, summer left and never came back. My closest friends from middle school scattered too, and we lost touch. The next time we met was Chinese New Year. That was the first time I felt like I was “abandoning the past and opening up a new world,” but I wasn’t all that keen on opening that new world. I still liked my old friends better. August is over again this year, which means summer’s over. Maybe there’ll be a late-summer heat wave, but every autumn rain brings a chill with it. I didn’t do much in August either — just worked. Hard to believe my job actually has busy periods. Probably the whole country’s been fucking around lately. I originally wanted to stir things up and then keep pushing, but in the end I chose to give up on fixing things. My health isn’t great, so I figured I might as well rest.

Simply put, July wasn’t great for me. At least my mood wasn’t. First off, I spent way too much money this month on a bunch of stuff, mostly accessories. On the other hand, I burned too much time messing with accessories and work, so I didn’t really have much time left over. I played three eroge and every single one was a landmine. I also lost my Mojo, and when I sold my GPD Win on eBay the buyer tried to haggle me down after receiving it, so I had to get into a fight with them while already in a bad mood. Oh, and no omiai this month either. Well, not that there weren’t any—someone did introduce me to one. A doctor at a hospital. I added her, and holy shit, her Moments feed was straight-up blocked to me. I tried chatting with her that evening and got zero response. So I got bored and went to play Honor of Kings, and what do you know—the doctor was online… She was playing ranked! Her skill was decent! And her rank was higher than mine! The next morning she replied, cold as ice: “Sorry, I fell asleep last night, only saw it this morning.” Asleep my ass. You were grinding ranked until at least past midnight, you were still online when I went to bed. And because this doctor rarely replies—or rather, she just doesn’t reply at all, she just plays games all day, won’t let me see her Moments, and there’s nothing to strike up a conversation about—I just let it go. Then the voice of a certain matchmaker who’s always introducing me to girls came through, saying a lot of them think I’m “immature.” That’s when I lost it.