A Letter

"You said you wanted to abstain from women?"

At a Huaiyang restaurant on Massenet Road in the French Concession, Yu Manli stared wide-eyed at Wang Yan in disbelief. She suspected there was something wrong with her ears and that she had misheard him.

"What kind of look is that? Am I really that much of a lecher?" Wang Yan asked irritably.

"If you're not, then who is?" Yu Manli rolled her eyes and looked at him curiously. "What's going on? Possessed by evil?"

"Didn't fighting break out over in Hongkou again last night? The explosions were loud enough to wake me up. Then... it must've been close to eleven by the time the fighting ended. After I fell asleep again, I had a nightmare. I dreamed the Japanese wanted to kill me, your Nationalist Party wanted to kill me, and the Red Party wanted to kill me too. They surrounded me, chased me, cut off every route. I ran and ran, until there was nowhere to go above and nowhere to hide below. In the end, a bullet blew my head apart.

"After that, all the people from those three sides hunting me vanished. Only I remained. The sky was blood, and the ground was blood. Blood fell from the sky to the earth, while the blood on the ground spread endlessly in every direction. Blood and brains flowed from my head. I died with my eyes open. I stared at my own corpse, and in those hollow, ashen eyes was reflected a blood-red skeleton spraying blood outward. When I realized it was me, I woke up terrified. I was drenched in cold sweat. Even thinking about it now still makes my heart pound.

"This morning, even when I was practicing martial arts, I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't settle my