“Stop messing around,” said Hongmei. “This person found a picture of a girl online and pretended to be her, and you fell for it.”

Nini said at the very least they ought to find out the name of the girl who killed her father, then Google articles about her.

Hongmei said, “That’s enough. Stop being crazy. If you really have nothing better to do, go join in the antiwar protest.”

On the tenth day after she cut the secret talker from her life, Hongmei was in a terrible mood from writing her thesis and had given up—she was slumped in her swivel chair, playing solitaire. It was late at night. Her feet scrabbled beneath the desk for her slippers. She was chewing a half-eaten apple, thinking it was time for bed. A minute later, she realized she was staring at her inbox.

A message from a name she didn’t recognize.

Her heart seemed to stop beating; her lungs felt stuffed full. She didn’t know if she was more afraid of the secret talker or of the self that these prying eyes would see through. Her listlessness these last few days had been because she was missing this person’s secret words.

Don’t ask how I got your new email address. I’ve known for a while how to break into your artificial sanctuary, but I didn’t. I wanted to see whether, if I didn’t have you, I could still drink coffee, read the papers, watch TV, listen to music, breathe, eat . . . live. I also wanted to see, if you didn’t have me, how you’d behave, speak, look around. Who would you make eyes at? It’s been ten days, and the conclusion is that you and I can’t do without each other, especially you. In these ten days, you’ve done everything as usual, but your soul is gone.

Hongmei wanted to snap back, How could you be so shameless and full of yourself? But she didn’t. This was not the time to be quibbling about who was chasing whom.

I knew you wouldn’t give up so easily. Let’s do this properly and set up a meeting. Then we can talk to our hearts’ content and know exactly where we stand. We’ll take it from there. I could never love a woman, just as I could never be friends with a man.

Are you so sure you couldn’t accept a woman?

One hundred percent.

So let’s say I’m a man, the way I first appeared—wealthy, idle, eclectically well informed, enough for some gentlemanly embellishments in my conversation. Could you accept a man like that?

I don’t know what you’re babbling about.