Leave Me Alone by Murong Xuecun

repel demons. Sneering, I asked if it had once contained thepiss of Laozi, creator of the world. My blasphemy earned me a kick from Zhao Yue.
    On our way back to Chengdu Zhao Yue acquired a new nickname from me: Pisspot Master. I joked that she belonged to the third generation of the Emei school but she stared tearfully out the window. When I asked what was wrong, she said something that moved me deeply.
    ‘It doesn’t matter if the jar has magic powers or not, Chen Zhong. You know that what I want isn’t this jar but your heart.’
    I patted her hand and reassured her. ‘Don’t worry, my heart is in this jar.’
    For about a year after that she bowed and muttered to that pot every two weeks. I mocked her superstition and got glares and punches in reply. Finally I couldn’t put up with it any longer and ‘accidentally’ dropped the jar. Zhao Yue cried and claimed I’d broken it on purpose. From then on, she brought it up every time we quarrelled.
    As I climbed our stairwell that night, I was thinking that even if that jar hadn’t been broken, there was no way for any of us to avoid fate. Certainly, when it came to the crunch moments, fate seldom listened to me. This situation reminded me of ‘Zhao’s Family Rules’, drawn up by Zhao Yue shortly after we got married, namely: ‘Tiny things can’t be decided by Zhao Yue, while big things can’t be decided by Chen Zhong.’
    According to Zhao Yue’s guidelines, only the first three reports on the evening national news counted as ‘big things’. In those early days she’d read out her rules every night at bedtime, and then jump into my arms, laughing just like a kid.When did we forget those rules? At what point had our life together lost its hope and laughter?

    The TV was on but the screen was a snowstorm and a harsh sound came out of the speakers. I was irritated: why hadn’t she turned the TV off? I did a tour of the whole apartment and found the lights on in every room but nobody there. Where was she?
    The balcony door was wide open and I shivered as I felt the cold wind from outside. Looking down, I saw only the endless night. All the hairs on my body stood on end at a suddent thought: had Zhao Yue jumped?
    In our last year of university, there’d been an aura of death hanging over our group. First Zhang Jun from Qiqihaer who lived in the dorm opposite died of lymph cancer. When his girlfriend came to collect his stuff she cried until she collapsed. Then, one beautiful spring night, Qi Yan, a talented girl, jumped from the sixteenth floor of the teaching building. Qi Yan was idolised by most of the guys in our dorm. She looked like the film star Rosamund Kwan and was good at singing, playing the piano and hosting parties. It was a true pleasure dancing with her. The day before her body smashed bloodily to the ground, she sat with us in the canteen, picking the slices of greasy fatty meat from her meal and dumping them on the table. When I said it was a waste, Qi Yan glared at me and said, ‘If you want to eat them, just take them.’
    There was a retort on my lips, but Zhao Yue steppedheavily on my foot so I shut up at once. The next day Qi Yan killed herself: she was three months pregnant, it was said.
    During our last month at university, we all felt that our lives were like dreams. Alcohol, mahjong or tears — the empty days flashed by. Li Liang wrote a poem:
    You are atoms
    Your smile illuminating dawn’s feast
    What God owes you
    is recorded
    What you owe God
    must be paid back soon.
    I understood that somehow we’d started to believe that nothing in the rest of our lives mattered. The main task of life was to be happy. God would break that jar at the moment of truth, and we would not care if the final scene was happy or sad.
    Now I was worried. When I called Zhao Yue’s cellphone, it rang forlornly beside her pillow. Her bag was there too, and her lipstick lay on the dresser, reminding me of her red lips that had kissed me many times. It