The first step is the easiest, if mentally the most challenging. The sinking of the heart into the wrist. She has always been strong mentally though. How else could she have studied so well after her parents left? To push a pencil heart into a wrist—well, you know the feeling. She winced when her skin broke, her eyes widening as her body absorbed my words. When she looked back up at me, we were both smiling.

The difficult part is the second phase. Like I said before, I do not want her to resort to the knife. So I asked her if she had ever pleasured herself, to which she faltered and stumbled and turned an incredible shade of red. I believe she must get this from Torou or from her mother’s side. She pretended she did not know what I was talking about, but I came prepared with both the English and the Chinese and a description that could not be mistaken. Still, she stammered and looked away, as if she wanted to sink through the floor.

Eventually, she told me she had never done so. I was surprised, considering all the time she spends alone in her room. I guess she really is just using her computer. I almost hope she was lying to me. The next logical question was whether anybody had pleasured her before, to which she became even more red, something I did not think possible.

She eked out a no. That I was less surprised by, seeing how she has been pining after your girl and done absolutely nothing about it. I think of Louise as your girl now. Not only because she was the one who reconnected us. Having met her in person, I see ghosts of you in her. Oh, she is much happier, more joyful than you ever were, and I would not have seen the similarity had she not stood up to me the other day.

She offended me, as you once offended my father. She wants my story for reasons I cannot comprehend. Merely because there is a lack of stories from people who fled Shanghai, she thinks I should share mine with her? And then what? What difference would it make, and what would she gain? Maybe she plans to include it in some book no one will ever read that will sit on a dusty library shelf. Or worse, she wants to publish it on the internet, one of millions, billions of pages. The people of their generation—they have so many resources that they think they need to use them all. Perhaps some stories are not worth saving.

If she had told me it would help her personally in some way, I might have relented. I do like her, and it is easy to see Monica does as well, and I always try to do whatever I can to help Monica. But my story is not one I willingly share with just anyone.