On the train to Avenue du Roi Albert, I knew that this would be the last time I would see her. Feeling time slip over my fingertips like waterflow, I decided I would savor the experience as fully as I could. After a couple minutes of thinking and rethinking, the notepad only registered three lines: “I am so tired. Want to sleep. A little excited.” Men’s sweat blended with women’s perfume and children’s occasional cries as I tried to take in the dull, sultry scent of Shanghai’s July. When the air would brew hotter later in the day, I would be cloaked by the city’s sycamores in their darker shades of green. Under the blazing sunlight I would feel the need to wipe sweat off my forehead, and I would walk quickly to not let sweat ruin my brand new printed T-shirt. She would send me seven messages which I would not answer. I would arrive at the ceramics studio early, make myself comfortable on a high stool, and find myself glancing at the pots and pans in blue, brown, cinnamon and gray and a rural woman in her forties. I would ask the woman some questions which I need not ask. I would start twirling my hair. Footsteps would then set in, grow louder — louder, come to a halt. Crisp knocks on the door. And the door would be pushed open. She was so pretty in pink.

The dress was denim, I realize now, viewing the polaroids. She said hi and complimented my shirt (“It gives playboy vibes”). I tried to picture in my head how I’d talk to my dad and replied: “I’m a very serious person.” The dry, nonchalant remarks could very well be interpreted as a sign of exhaustion, though. I might as well be exhausted from the sweltering heat. I could tell, by the way she smiled cheerfully at me, that my face was not too bad. She started browsing Pinterest on her phone while I sighed and leaned back into a more comfortable position. Then her eyes brightened up to meet mine:

“Why aren’t you looking at what kind of ceramics you want to make?”

“I already know,” I snapped.

“Oh.”

Her voice was noticeably quieter this time. I immediately regretted what I said, or how I had said it. I pulled out my phone to browse Pinterest, but really it was just my finger scrolling. I regained some energy before I noticed her chatting up the rural woman, which made me uneasy. She stood up and left to get her apron; I replayed what they said — they discussed something to do with the color palette. When she returned, I stared into her eyes and wondered if she could see through my eyes whatever feelings I had for her, of which I myself did not know. It might have been lust.

She gave me her phone. “How about this one, the rainbow pot?”

“Soooo cute.” Unnatural.

“So what are you thinking of doing?”

This one. I showed her a coffee mug overlaid by a beige cat, painted in cat paws. “Do you think it’s cute?”

“It is so cute.” Her voice had always been so sweet, since the first time she sent me a voice text three summers ago. “Auntie, I think we’re ready!”

And then, and then what happened?

Did I moisturize the clay before throwing it on the board, or did I pour water on it as it spun?

How many times did I wedge the clay? Was I rough on it?

Did my muddy hand ever touch her muddy hand?

I can’t recall much other than the musty smell of the room that reeks of detergent spray and the hand sweat of men and their girlfriends. On the white wall, there was a Hermes / Paris advertisement featuring a short-haired blonde woman. Her smirk reminded me of my first middle school Chinese teacher, a five-foot-tall woman who had told my whole class of fifty that I didn’t deserve to have friends. Behind the desks, the white wall was filled with knives and brushes—laid out so neatly that they could come from a Soviet laboratory. I notice now, in the polaroids, that our best pictures were taken in front of those very tools, with my smiling awkwardly like a twelve-year-old boy scout.

I remember burying my hand into the mud and found this act obscene. Like Thai oil massage. I caressed it imagining myself caressing something else. I watched her caress her clay and imagined her caressing something else.

I’d like to portray myself as being a little more innocent than that.

As time passed, I felt like I was burning a movie tape as I watched it. Don’t go back, They said. I hoped I had the courage not to, so that everything happened exactly once in life. If something could only happen once, then it became infinitely light, infinitesimal. If something only happened once then it could only happen for the best. It was just that something inside me wished I had watched this movie later in my life.

Better.

I was normally an extrovert, but in a situation like this I just didn’t know what to say. So I stayed silent. She smiled and said stuff, to which I responded with “Hmmm” or “Yeah” or “Right.” Sometimes I would ask her a question, and she would reply with a one-liner and grin. Her smile always lifted my mood. Two summers ago, I drank piña colada in an Avenue Pétain bar with my ex-boyfriend and my ex-boyfriend’s friends and went home tipsy feeling that no one loved him or cared about him. She sent me pictures of cheesecake, matcha ice cream and herself smiling in golden sunshine and twenty-seven messages:

“dude”

“wdym good night”

“do you not want me to text you back haha”

“how about your dad and mom? how come there’s nobody?”

“and then there’s your friends! aren’t we all your friends?”

“you have so many close friends.”

“are they not worth caring for”

[cheesecake]

[matcha ice cream]

[pretty girl in golden sunshine]

“the world is beautiful”

“HAHA”

“like your friend said”

“find happy stuff”

[emoji]

“don’t be obsessed with a single person.”

“i know it’s hard.”

“but everybody hurts.”

“whatever problem you have, it won’t be a big deal three years down the line.”

“it will all pass.”

“what belongs to you will be with you. I am someone who believes in fate —”

Sorry I don’t think I have the mental capacity to write down all twenty-seven messages. Allow me to walk around and cry for a bit.

*

I cried listening to Addison Rae’s Diet Pepsi. I think I will now cry every time I listen to Diet Pepsi.

My palms wrapped around the jar, pulling and pushing, squishing and releasing, feeling its moisture as it gradually took shape. The clay was soggy, the sensation I’d imagine a baby’s skin to be. Sometimes I liked thinking of me and her as a couple. Last April we dined at Conrad, we ordered more than enough Cantonese dishes they could savor and a cream cheese soufflé. I puked and wondered if it would disgust her and make her not want to be friends with me anymore. Fifteen minutes later we talked about how she got slandered at her school and they laughed like we could wreck this building. Without saying anything, we simultaneously took out our phones to take a selfie for each other. I thought about saying, “We could’ve made a great couple.”

I didn’t end up saying it.

“Hold still!” She held up her oversized polaroid. Realizing my smile was just about right, I tried my best to hold it and not mess up.

Polaroid 1: Me leaning my neck forward to the jar. My neck was too long. I judged her boyfriend’s neck to be long. I was probably just judgmental of myself.

Polaroid 2: I looked into the camera holding my jar. I like how my cuban chains shined.

Polaroid 3&4: We held our jars with each other. We were cute.

Polaroid 5: Her.

She seemed really, really happy taking these photos for me. I wondered if she genuinely liked me or if she felt guilty for not treating me well. Nietzsche distinguished between master morality and slave morality. The master defined herself to be good and affirmed herself. The slave, on the other hand, derived value from comparing himself to others.  when she sent me a video of her band playing Charli xcx on Halloween night, I told her that I found her to be the embodiment of master morality. She seemed delighted and asked me what it meant. I told her what it meant. To this day, I still feel proud and honored for having introjected her master morality as a superego into my consciousness.

“OK, so those ones go to you.” She laid out each photo on the mucky tablecloth. “Which one of these two? Your pick.”

“I want this one.”

“OK, so this one goes to me!”

We painted our ceramics for a few more minutes before I said,

“Have you ever not considered me as a friend?”

“No . . . why?” Her voice was as soft as a marshmallow.

“As in, have you ever wanted to push me out of your life?”

“Never! What made you think that?” Softer marshmallow.

“I just think I am a very sensitive person.” I confessed.

“Sensitive how?”

“I get upset easily. I get offended easily.”

“That happens to a lot of people.” Softest marshmallow. “What makes you think you’re sensitive?”

“I get very upset when you don’t reply to my messages.”

“I’m so sorry.” She whispered.

“Are you really sorry?”

“I am really, really sorry.” She pinched her left and right index fingers with a pitiful face. “Can you see? I am really, really sorry.”

“OK.”

“Haha.”

“You’re one of my most important friends.”

“Aw. Do I get to trauma-dump to you now?”

“Go ahead.”

I heard about how she and her boyfriend and her friend and her friend’s boyfriend planned on vacationing in Amoy, and her boyfriend couldn’t make it because a trip to Tokyo, and her friend and her friend’s boyfriend were very mad at her boyfriend and asked her boyfriend to pay for everything, and her boyfriend refused to pay for everything, and her friend and her friend’s boyfriend insisted that her boyfriend should pay for everything and yelled at her boyfriend over text, and she ended up having to pay for everything, and she felt hurt because no one seemed to care about her, and she felt no one really cared about her, and she went with two friends to a bar last night and cried until two a.m. because no one seemed to really care about her.

“I just feel like no one cares about me. You know? Like why does no one care about my feelings?”

“You sometimes also do not care about me.” I snapped.

Pause.

“How did I not care about you?”

“I think that you don’t care about me. I think that you treat me as a substitute for your boyfriend.” I said.

It felt unnatural when this finally came out of my mouth because it wasn’t my idea. It was what Marcus kept telling me (“She’s treating you as a substitute for her boyfriend!”). I’d said it only because the time on my phone was 16:38 and 8 was my lucky number. Sometimes I wondered how much in life was random and how much was fated. We first met in the orchestra graduation show at Nanyang High, a school I didn’t attend. A friend, whom I dated briefly in sophomore year, asked me if I could play the contrabass. I noticed a violinist to be pretty when she said “What a thrill!” in response to the conductor’s proclamation “I will not be conducting onstage.” Thrill. I’d hooked up to that one word, like a motif, like a concept, like a metaphor. Milan Kundera warned us against trifling with metaphors because a single metaphor can give birth to love. I couldn’t agree more. The Unbearable Lightness of Being inspired a love letter in French attached with Beethoven music script (“Muss es sein? Es muss sein!”). And that was three summers ago.

She met her current boyfriend last summer.

At last, with a tentativeness I’d never heard from her, she said: “How was I treating you as a substitute for my boyfriend?”

“When your boyfriend is warm to you, you are cold to me. When your boyfriend is cold to you, you are warm to me.”

“I didn’t treat you as a substitute for my boyfriend. I treated you as a very close friend.” 

I glanced at her face before looking down to my jar. She seemed like she was almost about to cry.

I felt my brush soften under my hands. But I knew I mustn’t say anything. I waited and silently counted seconds. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. I planned on saying “I just feel very uncomfortable about the way you treat me” when I counted to ten.

At nine she jumped in: “I’m so sorry. I am really sorry. I didn’t know . . .”

She kept going and going, saying apologetic things along these lines, more vaguely and more vaguely. I thought I ought to feel happy because I have gotten what I always wanted. I thought I was happy. But at the moment in time my brain was too numbed by weariness to feel any kind of intense emotion.

*

We met again the night before I left for America, when the weather was noticeably colder, at a hotpot place on Bubbling Well Road. I was late and catching breaths before seeing her face in a light smoke beam at me. She asked me about the five girls whom she taught me to flirt with. “I went to a concert with Jenny, and then an arcade. I made out with her at LaFin and another girl.” She chuckled and complimented me on my progress. I could see the blurred faces on leather sofas talking and laughing, like the ghostly images from the burning of incense. I tried to make out the words of each dialogue as they flashed by, clinging onto them like a souvenir I could take from this country. When the street lights turned on, night melted into late summer breeze and the boy hugged the girl goodbye. She said: “I think we’ll see each other again!” They won’t. The last time he texted her, it was on the evening of the Mid-Autumn Festival when he saw the full moon and felt lonely and sad. Then he sent her a Hozier song to which she had no reply. He called her a couple times more; she never picked up or called back. He thinks they’ll soon no longer be friends, but then it won’t matter to either of them anymore.