One second later, she was staring at his reply. It contained only one word, in English: Fine.

So that was that. A crisp, clear response: Fine. And with that, he would stop pestering her. She glared at the word. Had he really given up? He hadn’t lost any dignity, probably even delivered this with a cold, proud smile: Fine. Maybe sorrow in his eyes. Or maybe not; maybe he thought this was funny—amused by women who make a big deal out of nothing. Just a shrug, Fine, and he walked away, perhaps with some regret, but his self-control was absolute, not to mention his manners. Hands stuck in his pockets, the wind ruffling his full head of dark hair, walking away with forceful, measured steps. A slowly receding silhouette.

Hongmei hadn’t expected such a quick retreat. She was being a killjoy. She didn’t know what she was afraid of. A playboy had walked away and would surely be moving right on to his next conquest, leaving her in peace and quiet.

* * *

After three days of quiet, his messages started coming again. She read them, line by line. He mainly wrote about his daughter and their three days together. There was true fatherliness in those simple words. For three days he’d studied his quiet daughter with unbelieving eyes, saying he felt sorry for her, then suddenly realizing from her silent smile that he’d already said this to her, perhaps more than once. When she was just an infant, he used to hold her in the night and carry her up and down, from the first floor up to the fourth, so as not to wake her mother and the neighbors. He had known her so well back then, when she needed food, a hug, or her diaper changed. Now the girl looked at him with a mysterious expression, hiding her true feelings. She was unreadable, suddenly bursting into giggles. Laughing at how pathetic he was—every father has such riveting memories. Or perhaps she was remembering her mother’s words, that her father’s only investment in her was a single sperm. He took his daughter to see some famous landmarks, taking endless photos, buying her jewelry and handicrafts from Fisherman’s Wharf, bringing her to a Napa spa for a massage, getting her an expensive outfit that her gaze had lingered over merely a moment. And still he could see in his daughter’s smile that he was thoroughly pitiful, no more than a single sperm, a groveling, free-spending giant sperm.