Zhu Yun didn’t rush into finding a job.

Perhaps she had caught it from Tian Xiuzhu — she felt not the slightest urgency about earning money. After returning home, she spent a full half month basking in the unhurried sunshine of her homeland, eating when she was hungry and sleeping when she was tired.

After half a month of living like a well-fed pig, she at last, with no great sense of haste, packed her bags and prepared to set off.

She was going back to that familiar city.

Her parents were in agreement. Their primary reason was that they didn’t want her too far from home. Zhu Guangyi felt that since she had gone to university there, she knew the city well. Her mother’s personal reason was that Tian Xiuzhu was also in that city — she had even taken Zhu Yun aside before she left and urged her to treat him well.

The train station had been renovated three times in recent years, nearly doubling its original size. Zhu Yun remembered from her university days when the train station and the long-distance bus station had stood side by side — but in the interest of management and crowd dispersal, the bus terminal had since been relocated. The facilities inside the station had improved year by year as well. High-speed rail had come to the line last year, cutting what was once a journey of several hours down to just over forty minutes.

The times were changing so quickly.

Zhu Yun rented an apartment not far from the university she had attended, then turned her attention to finding work. Finding a job wasn’t difficult for her — without exaggerating, her skills were strong enough to get her into most IT companies. Her mother had always hoped she would go into a state-owned enterprise for the stability, but Zhu Yun had disagreed, and continued to work independently.

And so another year or so passed.

Since her schedule was relatively flexible, Zhu Yun had room for other things in her life. In the late days of one particular summer, she went to visit an old friend.

Across the entire country, the people Zhu Yun could call “old friends” could be counted on one hand — which, when she thought about it, was rather bleak.

She drove to an upscale villa complex in the center of the city. Security there was strict; she was stopped at the gate and had to call seven times before she managed to rouse Ren Di from sleep.

Ren Di had left university during her third year, setting off with the other band members to travel and drift from place to place. After two years of that wandering life, she wrote the lyrics and composed the music for a song called “Light Red,” which became a phenomenon across the country. The band took its name from that song and had been popular ever since.

Zhu Yun stepped into Ren Di’s villa and immediately wrinkled her nose. The entire house looked like the aftermath of a disaster, and it smelled like one too. Ren Di was often away on tour, and evidence of it was everywhere — luggage piled by the front door, dirty clothes strewn across every surface, takeout containers on the coffee table, and towers of empty wine bottles.

“Ren Di?” Zhu Yun called toward the upper floor.

No movement.

She called again, twice. “Ren Di?”

“Stop yelling.”

Zhu Yun turned around. Ren Di emerged from the kitchen, hair loose and tangled, wearing a baggy white button-up shirt with nothing on below it but underwear, padding across the marble floor on bare feet. She pulled a beer from somewhere near the fridge and downed more than half of it before she could properly open her eyes.

“You don’t even bother drawing the curtains?” Zhu Yun surveyed the room — it was broad daylight, and yet not a single thread of light entered the place.

Ren Di gave a lazy murmur of acknowledgment.

While Ren Di woke herself up, Zhu Yun tidied the sitting area. The house was eerily silent throughout. This villa was at least five hundred square meters, and it sat in absolute stillness — you could have heard a pin drop.

Zhu Yun looked back and asked: “Where are the rest of the band?”

Ren Di laughed bitterly. “No idea.”

She had finished the first bottle and clearly felt it wasn’t enough, reaching for another.

“Don’t drink any more,” Zhu Yun said.

Ren Di’s reactions were a little slow. Zhu Yun crossed the room and took the bottle from her. Ren Di already smelled heavily of alcohol — she must have drunk a great deal the previous night. She looked at Zhu Yun with half-glazed eyes, and perhaps because Zhu Yun’s expression was too stern, she took an involuntary step back.

Zhu Yun shook her head.

She thought back to years earlier, when she had been abroad for about two years. Her grandmother’s eightieth birthday had brought her home to celebrate. At the time, Ren Di’s band had just broken through, with back-to-back performances, and yet she had carved out one full day to spend with Zhu Yun.

That afternoon Ren Di was exhausted — she hadn’t slept properly in days — so Zhu Yun had changed their plans and suggested they go to a hotel instead. They lay side by side on the bed, neither of them able to sleep. After a while, Zhu Yun found herself quietly humming a song, and Ren Di smiled.

“You like that song?”

“I do.”

“Do you know why I gave it that name?”

“I do.”

Ren Di turned her head to look at her.

On the rooftop of the university library, Zhu Yun used to sit writing code and grumbling about Li Xun, while Ren Di strummed her guitar in elegant, composed silence beside her. They had shared countless evenings bathed in that amber-red light. This was one of the few memories from those years that Zhu Yun could think of and still smile.

Ren Di looked at her for a moment, then turned away. They both stared up at the ceiling. It was a fine hotel — pale floral wallpaper on the walls, a crystal chandelier overhead that shimmered in a way that was almost enough to make your eyes water.

That visit, Ren Di had looked worn down, but she was nowhere near as exhausted as she looked now.

“Is it Jin Cheng?” Zhu Yun ventured.

Jin Cheng was Xiao Liuzi’s real name. The person Li Xun used to teasingly call “little girl” had grown into the most popular member of the Light Red band. Times had changed faster than anyone could have predicted — somewhere along the way, Jin Cheng’s androgynous, delicate kind of beauty had become the dominant aesthetic of the age.

At the sound of his name, Ren Di’s face went flat and expressionless. Without alcohol, she reached for a cigarette.

Ren Di and Jin Cheng had gotten together the same year she dropped out of university, which had surprised just about everyone. Ren Di was proud and headstrong — in her worst moods she could be even more difficult than Li Xun — and no one had believed that the slight, unassuming Jin Cheng could ever win her over. And yet there they were.

“It’s been about six years for you two,” Zhu Yun calculated. “That’s a long time.”

Ren Di smoked quietly, her voice entirely without feeling. “People change,” she said, then asked with a kind of smile: “Would you say more people fail the test of hardship, or the test of easy living?”

“Plenty of both. When things have been good for a long time and suddenly turn hard, that’s when trouble starts. And if things have been hard for a long time and suddenly turn easy — that causes its own kind of trouble too.”

“Exactly.” Ren Di laughed softly. “No feeling can survive time and change.”

“Whatever happens, don’t torture yourself over it. Try to see it clearly,” Zhu Yun said.

“Oh, now it’s your turn to counsel me?” Ren Di ground the cigarette directly into the tabletop and twisted her mouth into a smile. “Mind your own life.”

“Try to see it clearly,” Zhu Yun repeated.

“You sound like some kind of wise elder.” Ren Di couldn’t help it. “You weren’t like this before — lately you’re getting more and more like Fu Yizhuo.”

“Don’t insult people,” Zhu Yun said.

If there was anyone among Zhu Yun’s old friends who had fared the best in all these years, it was probably Fu Yizhuo.

Six years on, and true to form, this towering figure of a man still had no steady dance partner — but it didn’t seem to trouble him. He had opened a dance studio on the western side of the city, teaching children to dance.

Zhu Yun had visited once. The studio was in an ordinary residential complex, but his taste showed in the interior — the decoration was done with care. The day she went happened to coincide with a recital. A group of housewives sat on the expensive imported hardwood floors watching their children flail enthusiastically at the front of the room.

As it happened, the fact that Ren Di even knew Fu Yizhuo was partly thanks to Zhu Yun.

Back then, after Fu Yizhuo had clawed his way to graduation, his father had dragged him back home to go into the family business. He soon escaped and quietly opened a dance studio here — a studio that earned him not a single yuan. He barely knew how to look after himself, and when he first started out, he had no idea where to begin. He didn’t know anyone here and had no choice but to turn to Zhu Yun for help.

At the time, Zhu Yun was burning the candle at both ends in America, so she handed the matter off to Ren Di.

“Idiot.”

— That had been Ren Di’s verdict when she first met Fu Yizhuo.

Several years had passed, and her verdict had changed.

“Impressive,” Ren Di said now, pulling another cigarette from the pack and speaking with lazy indifference. “I haven’t seen him that many times, but he’s barely changed — exactly the same every time. The ability to actually make yourself happy is the greatest skill anyone can have these days… Want a drink?”

“No more drinking — how much have you had already?”

“Don’t compare your tolerance to mine.”

Zhu Yun gave her a sideways look and got up to open the curtains, only to be stopped by a shout from Ren Di.

“Don’t!”

“Why not?”

“It’ll blind me.”

Ren Di kept nocturnal hours all year round — her skin was a striking pallor, and she always wore makeup, which had left a permanent kind of darkness around her eyes, as if the pigment had seeped under the skin and never quite come out.

“Do you know what this room, plus you, amounts to?” Zhu Yun said.

Ren Di lay sprawled across the sofa, her long, bare legs crossed loosely. “What?”

“A graveyard.”

Ren Di laughed languidly.

“What’s wrong with you…” Zhu Yun didn’t open the curtains after all. She tried to think of something that would bring a little life into the room, and after a moment, turned on the television.

And immediately regretted it.

The entertainment news was running a segment about the extravagant wedding of a senior executive at a gaming company, whose bride was the actress who served as the face of their games.

The story had been generating enormous attention. For one thing, this actress had a notoriously messy personal history and a long list of rumored affairs. For another, the company itself had been accused of plagiarizing multiple acclaimed foreign titles, cutting every corner imaginable in the pursuit of money, and had earned a vile reputation in the industry. Now that these two were joining forces, it had drawn a torrent of commentary.

Whatever people said, the real outcome was that the company’s upcoming game release had received extensive publicity from the scandal — whether that counted as a benefit or a loss was anyone’s guess.

Zhu Yun stared at the man at the center of the screen — triumphant, in his element — then turned to look at Ren Di.

“Bring out whatever drinks you have. All of it.”

Ren Di glanced at her and rose to fetch the alcohol, unhurried. “Gao Jianhong got the worst end of that deal,” she said.

“How so?”

“I know that woman.” Ren Di’s expression was that of someone watching a drama unfold. “A complete parasite. She had her eye on our keyboard player once — didn’t work out. Gao Jianhong has terrible taste in women.”

Zhu Yun looked back at the television, but the news segment had already moved on. She sat there for a moment, drifting, until Ren Di pressed a glass into her hand.

Over the years, if there was one thing Zhu Yun had tried her hardest at and still failed to make any headway with, it was dealing with that company.

It was a persistent wound — one that ran even deeper than her memories of Li Xun. At least what had happened with Li Xun had a conclusion; his time had been frozen in place. But this company was different. It kept evolving under the banner of “L&P,” and every change it made pulled at something raw in Zhu Yun.

Zhu Yun and Ren Di drank until they were well and truly drunk, then slept until the sun began to sink in the west. Zhu Yun hadn’t drunk like this in a long time. Her stomach felt wretched, and she hunched over the bathroom sink, retching in long, miserable waves. There were no curtains in the bathroom. When she raised her head, she caught sight of the world outside — the sky the same blazing red as her face, burning and hot.

A blood-red sunset stretched across the horizon for miles. In the heart of the city’s most bustling district, one building stood tall and defiant. At its base, an enormous advertising screen played footage from the company’s soon-to-be-released game.

A taxi pulled up outside the building. A man stepped out — tall, dressed entirely in black, a black duffel bag slung over one shoulder. His whole figure seemed to blend into the shadows, like a fog that refused to lift.

It was the height of rush hour. Pedestrians streamed past him in every direction.

The man paused in front of the building for a long moment, then slowly began to walk forward.