We lay together on the bed again. Pei Zi had calmed down somewhat.

　　She looked into my eyes some seven or eight seconds, and finally spoke: "Now we can begin to know each other."

　　I also looked into her eyes a long time, then hugged her shoulder. From there, my hand wandered over her collarbones, down the valley between her breasts, to her smooth belly and her soft hair. In the wee hours of that late autumn night, I could feel every part of her trembling, shaking from a deep loneliness and anguish, bereft of a haven in which to take shelter. Her solitude and torment seemed to come from the very depths of the earth, rising from an abyss far beyond the reach of mortal men. Such feelings are hidden from the sight of our superficial, ostentatious world; they arise from a far different source. Now I had penetrated to their secret core. Overwhelmed by her uncontrollable trembling, I felt an abject terror.Pei Zi held me tightly.....

　　After we had made love once more, Pei Zi fell asleep in my arms, but holding her sleeping form, all drowsiness left me; I lay by her side, unmoving. She seemed to be asleep, but I knew that she was somewhere else. Left with no place to land, her consciousness was floating in circles above the city. She could hear the grating of locomotive wheels on distant rails, perceive the cries of infants in their cribs, follow the vagrant footsteps of the sleepless pacing the streets back and forth.

　　Just before dawn, around five o'clock, I quietly got out of bed. Though I felt that leaving like this was sheer cowardice, I also knew I had to go. At the front desk I borrowed some paper and left Pei Zi the following message: "Pei Zi, no matter what happened yesterday, today there are many, many people in this world who will love you. You can see, the first person to love you has already written you a love letter."

　　But even as I wrote this, I knew quite clearly that I could not continue in this relationship with Pei Zi: I was but a transient guest in her life. The night before, I had responded to Pei Zi's need, but the part I had played was a borrowed one: my true self had not appeared on the stage. Today, our relationship was over. I sincerely hoped that Pei Zi would recover from her loss, hoped that she could start a new life, but that new life of hers had no part in it for me to play. I had only been there to open the curtain on her new life's prologue.

　　You are sad, because you arrived too early.

　　You are the first, because you have come the farthest.....

　　Women

　　I have three women

　　One is my older sister

　　One is my younger sister

　　One is my mother

　　Older Sister, my older sister represents suffering

　　Younger sister, my younger sister represents sorrow

　　Mother, my mother is disaster's fountainhead

　　When I think of my older sister

　　It's like thinking of the sky

　　When I think of my younger sister

　　It's like thinking of the earth

　　When I think of my mother

　　It's like thinking of deep sleep,

　　As well as deep sleep's relation to dark night and daybreak

　　Above the dark night's gloom

　　We are together; older sister, younger sister, mother, and I.

　　We are of one family.

　　I embrace my older sister,

　　Then younger sister,

　　And then mother.

　　We will ever stand together.