For the past two months, Ga Ling has been working at the Fortune Star textile factory in Causeway Bay and renting a small apartment nearby that she can barely afford. It is draughty, the neighbors are loud, and every hard surface—the walls, the dresser, the window panes—is coated in a filmy grime that she tells Wai Lan isn’t worth the trouble of cleaning as it all comes back after a few days. The girls put up a partition in the bedroom; Ga Ling gets the half with the window. At night Wai Lan hears her friend’s low, deep breathing through the board and smiles at the occasional laugh that bursts out of a dream. If she weren’t so tired herself, she would slip into her friend’s bed and hug her tight like a pillow.

Sing sleeps badly, and starts passing late, humid hours stationed at his bedroom window in a wooden chair salvaged by his father. By draping his forearms over its thin, sloping arm rests and barely moving, he can sit for long periods of time without getting too hot or sweaty. He might resemble a prisoner awaiting interrogation or execution, but he finds that if he’s able to maintain enough composure, he actually starts to cool down. Even so, he can’t sleep.

To help with rent, Wai Lan quits school and goes to work with Ga Ling at the factory where, for eleven hours a day, five to six days a week, they sit at weaving looms in a large, hot room with thirty other workers. A sign on the wall reads “No Loud Talking,” and they have to raise their hand for permission to use the toilet, which they must limit to two visits per shift. For each additional visit, their pay will be docked by five percent.

At the end of the work day, Wai Lan and Ga Ling hurry arm in arm along the dark roads back to their apartment, where they share a meager dinner and a cigarette. Once a week, they wash themselves at the bathhouse.

“You’re so lucky,” whispers Wai Lan, admiring her friend’s figure as she lowers herself into the water.

“You mean these?” smiles Ga Ling, cupping her breasts.

“All of it. You’re really well proportioned. You have a beautiful face, too,” says Wai Lan.

“No. My breasts are my best feature. Everyone tells me.”