My mom had a QR code on her table at Ikea. You wouldn’t have noticed it unless you knew what to look for. It peeked discreetly from under her plate, like a small, secret weapon. Another elderly parent, balancing a plate of meatballs and lingonberry sauce, would walk by and scan it without a word, a quick, quiet transaction. 

This wasn’t her first attempt at matchmaking. My mom used to go to Nanjing’s marriage market with an umbrella advertising my name, age, appearance, major, and future career prospects. She’d even written in bold characters that we didn’t care if a man didn’t own an apartment—my parents had already bought one for me. 

She was frustrated that I wasn’t dating. I was 27, unmarried, and, according to her, wasting the best years of my life. Once, I hid behind some bushes to watch her in action. It was unsettling. She stood there as other parents glanced at her umbrella, dismissed it, and walked away. Her shoulders tensed each time, but she stayed rooted, waiting for the next passerby.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked her afterward. “I don’t need you to find someone. I’m fine on my own.”

But the dates she arranged kept coming. And they were excruciating—me sitting across from equally uncomfortable men, both of us asking obligatory questions like, “Do you want kids?” Neither of us cared about the answer, but we knew our mothers would.

It was on one of these dates that I met Bajin. Unlike the others, he didn’t take the situation seriously either.

“Your mom uses QR codes too?” he asked, incredulous. He leaned back, his fingers tightening around his glass, as if he could squeeze some sense out of it. 

I nodded, and we laughed, swapping stories about awkward encounters and over-the-top profiles curated by our parents. His mom had added a video montage of him volunteering, smiling at babies, and posing with carefully chosen props to suggest success and stability.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I feel like my mom has built this version of me that I can’t live up to.”

I nodded slowly, my gaze drifting to my drink as I twisted the glass in my hands. A sigh escaped before I could stop it. “Same.” 

As the night wore on, we vented, mostly about our families. He gave a wry smile and shrugged. “My parents are divorced. Dad’s moved on, but my mom? She’s like a hamster on a wheel, always running in circles trying to fix my life, but hers hasn’t gone anywhere.” He chuckled, though there was a tiredness in his voice that I understood.

I’d had the same thought about my mom. “Maybe we should turn the tables,” I said, half-joking. “What if we tried finding dates for them?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You’re serious?”

“Why not? They’re already spending all this time matchmaking for us. Let’s give them a taste of their own medicine.”

He hesitated, then grinned. “Okay, but if this backfires. I’m blaming you.” 

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We brainstormed profiles for our moms and strategized about where to find potential matches. My mom spent her afternoons at the gym, so we figured she might be into someone who shared her fitness interests. His mom loved group dancing in a square near his home, but the male participants were few and far between.

The next day, we went to the local gym together. I pointed out a man in his 60s lifting dumbbells. “Think he’s your Mom’s type?”

Bajin grimaced. “Honestly, I don’t want to think about it.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to either.” 

Bajing’s eyes brightened, a grin spreading across his face as if the perfect idea had just clicked into place. “What if we swapped? I’ll find someone for your mom, and you find someone for mine.”

It was a practical solution. We exchanged QR codes, and over the next few weeks, we threw ourselves into the bizarre world of elderly matchmaking. It was equal parts ridiculous and fascinating.

My mom’s QR code was a masterpiece of digital overreach. Along with her photos, there was a well-curated video of her jogging on the treadmill, followed by clips of her in yoga class, looking fit and spry. Bajin’s moms wasn’t quite as nice, but he’s still built her an impressive portfolio, including a photo of her at a traditional dance competition, proudly clutching a trophy.

We spent evenings brainstorming different ways to market our moms and how to get them on a date. At one point, Bajin suggested I film my mom at the gym doing squats. “She’ll look so strong,” he said.

I burst out laughing and reached over to scratch the idea off his list. 

We learned more about each other than we’d expected. Bajin had a way of asking questions that didn’t feel intrusive, yet always seemed to get to the heart of things. “Do you ever get tired of it?” he asked once, his gaze steady. “The whole matchmaking thing, I mean. The pressure.”

It was a simple question, but it felt like a punch to the gut. “All the time,” I admitted. “But my mom… she doesn’t see it. She just wants me to be happy. She’s stuck in her own way of thinking.”

“That’s what my mom does too,” Bajin said. “She’s stuck in the past, but she thinks if I just marry someone, everything will be fine.”

We both shared a moment of silence, both lost in the same complicated feeling of guilt, love, and frustration.

In the middle of all the madness, I started noticing something. Bajin wasn’t just helping me with my mom’s QR code. I found myself telling him things I hadn’t shared with anyone—about my dad’s death, about the feeling of being caught between two cultures, about my mom’s suffocating expectations.

We didn’t realize it, but somewhere along the way, we’d begun to build something that had nothing to do with QR codes.

One afternoon, I suggested a plan. “What if we go to the park and flash the QR codes at old guys? Just see who’ll take the bait.” We’d started speaking in hunting and fishing terms a lot lately. 

“Yeah, let’s do it! We can be like those obnoxious people who shove business cards into doors at night,” Bajin said with a nod. I loved that he was always game for my schemes. 

The first test runs were far from perfect. We spent hours at the gym and at the park, watching the elderly men go through their routines. It felt like a weird scavenger hunt, trying to match our moms with their potential partners.

“What do you think of him?” I asked, gesturing to a man in his 60s lifting weights.

Bajin shrugged. “He looks ok…yeah, let’s try it.” He said with growing confidence. 

Then, the unexpected happened. We’d been spending so much time on the matchmaking project, we hadn’t realized how much we’d started to rely on each other for support. Bajin and I had become friends, allies in this strange and absurd journey. We’d vented about everything from family pressure to the odd reality of navigating love when all we wanted was to lay in our beds and look at our phones.

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But then, my mom pulled me aside. “I know what you’ve been doing,” she said, pulling out the QR code I’d tried to hide in my bag.

I froze. “What?”

“I’m not angry,” she said, smiling a little. “But I’m curious. What’s your plan here?”

I hadn’t expected her to take it so calmly. “I just… I just wanted you to see things from my perspective.”

“And now I do,” she said before handing me my dating profile QR code that she kept in her purse. “But what’s your plan? Because the guy you matched me up with…he seems…well I think I’d like to go out with him.” 

It turned out that our little experiment had done more than just find dates for our moms. It had opened up new lines of communication and for the first time in years, my mom and I were talking about something other than MY marriage prospects.

Meanwhile, Bajin and I were texting more frequently, sharing our progress. He’d set up a date for my mom with a man named Mr. Zhang, who was also into fitness and had similar interests as my Mom. My Mom took to the idea way faster than I expected. 

“I think she’s this guy might be the one,” Bajin said one evening, texting me the update after helping them to arrange a date at my Mom’s favorite restaurant. 

“I’m not sure how I feel about it,” I replied. “I don’t want her to get too attached, but I also want to see where this goes.” 

The dating experiment had become something unexpected. Bajin and I had started out trying to play matchmaker for our moms, but somewhere along the way, we’d found ourselves falling for each other. 

It wasn’t perfect. Nothing ever is. But it felt real, and for the first time in years, that felt like enough.

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As Miranda’s eyes fixated on the blinking red lights of the Level 5 Vernacular Lock, a surge of adrenaline coursed through her veins. The cold, unyielding metal of a gun pressed against the back of her scalp.

Glancing at the reflection of the man behind her, she drew upon her training and harnessed her mimicry skills. With a calculated tone, she spoke, her voice echoing confidence she hoped to emulate. “This gift has always been a part of me, long before these implants. I’m certain there’s a way I can be of value to you.” As the words left her lips, she imagined herself as the embodiment of resilience, mirroring the tough-as-nails persona she perceived in her captor. She could feel the tattoo on her arm, intricately linked to her neural implants, shifting beneath her skin, etching out the image of barbed wire and roses. 

The man with the gun was clad head to toe in black and was having none of her blabber. He only coughed and glanced impatiently at his watch. 

She opted for a different tactic; humour. She needed to test his defences. 

“But what about you?”, she said with a wry smile, perhaps she could mimic the kind of girl he’d go for. “You gonna throw a ninja star at me?” Pursing her lips in a way that her implants suggested he might find appealing, she hoped to disarm him, even just for a moment. 

“You’re not the first Mimic I’ve killed trying to crack this lock”, he coldly stated and pressed the muzzle of the gun even more deeply into her scalp. Thoughts of her own demise flashed through Miranda’s mind as she imagined the grisly aftermath. However, she refused to let fear consume her. 

With a grimace, she mustered her courage and responded, “I don’t doubt that”. Her voice carried a touch of defiance, mingled with a hint of sarcasm. “But perhaps you’re going about this the wrong way. I highly doubt your superiors will be pleased when you’ve splattered all the fancy implants I’ve got in my brain on this lock.” She levelled a pointed gaze at him, her expression daring and challenging. The persona she had adopted, that of a Catholic nun, seemed to be having an effect on him.

As she noticed the subtle change in his expression, Miranda’s mind flashed back to her training days. 

She had been told that the implant only worked on the “gifted”. The ones they chose as agents had exceptionally large temporal and parietal lobes. Her and her classmates had tried to guess which agent in their training unit had the “thickest lobes”.  

“I hate these accents and expressions you’re doing, by the way”, he sighed and sat down cross legged in front of the door, his arm held out in front of him, although shaking slightly. “Try harder!”, he shouted at her. 

She shivered and her mind reached back to all the ways her “talent” had felt like a strange power before she’d become a Mimic. The first time was in her teens when she’d spent a week in the deep south with some distant cousins and came back with a thick Southern accent. The nickname, “Kentucky Fried Chicken”, echoed through the school hallways. Yet, instead of stinging, it only fuelled a strange craving for buckets of savoury fried chicken.

In those days she hadn’t wanted to fall into different accents, but when the accent, dialect or slang was just comfortable enough she fell deep and couldn’t get out again. It was a bit like being sucked into a strong current. She could drown in the tongues of others if she wasn’t too careful. 

And that was part of what had got her recruited, and ultimately why she was staring at a Level 5 lock when she should be in a café drinking a mimosa and sizing up her next target.  

“Taken Away Hemlock Heights”, she said for the ten thousandth time in a flat American accent. She then decided to try a slightly chill and rather friendly Jamaican accent. It was influenced by an interview of a poet she’d once heard, “Taykeen aweey Hemlyck…”

The gunman interrupted her, “Why don’t they just crack this with a computer? It seems like it could make all the same sounds as you and wouldn’t eventually try to kill me”. He spat his words out through a twisted smile. She knew he’d killed the rest of her training unit. She was the last one he’d hunted down. 

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Grief mingled with anger surged within her, but she swiftly composed herself. Meeting his gaze with unwavering resolve, she mustered her strength for what lay ahead. 

“Accents aren’t just about sounds. They’re about emotions. The feeling behind the words and beyond the words is what really gives an accent it’s depth. That’s why you’ll never crack this lock, if we don’t know anything about who set it, even if you had a room full of mimics”, she said thinking that he might see sense, since he was finally starting to ask smart questions.  

The door opened and an older gentleman with a long-twisted moustache stepped in. The Mimic guessed how he would sound before he opened his mouth. As usual, she was spot on. 

“We knew you wouldn’t be enough”, he said in an American West Coast accent. He was a techpreneur meets the dark web type, and he gave her the shivers. The man with the gun seemed to be shocked to be seeing whoever this was in the flesh. 

“A mimic needs to want to crack a lock and that’s why we’re bringing your daughter here”, he stated with a self-satisfied grin like he had her in checkmate. 

“What?”, she roared at him. “You’re bluffing!” 

“Oh really?”, he said and held up his phone to show her an image of her daughter, in real-time, playing with her father.  

“I’m sure you know that children, especially young ones, make the best mimics. If implants go in when they’re 2 or 3 and you set them at a task like this lock, they can crack it 100 times faster than you, but it might take their entire childhood to do it.” The words slipped from his mouth like a knife and he seemed to pleasure in the cuts it made to her psyche. 

“You son of a….”, she started to say, before he cut her off. 

“But if you work a bit harder, I’ll give you another month before we see how your little mimic fairs with this lock”, he turned abruptly and walked out the door. 

“Miranda”, a voice quietly whispered in what she thought was her ear, but suddenly realised was inside her head. She sat down and put her head in her hands, not sure how to respond. 

“You heard the man. You better get going!”, the gunman shouted at her. 

“I need a minute to think!”, she snapped back.  

“I guess it doesn’t matter anyhow, your daughter will crack it faster than you. So, sure, take all the time you need”, the gunman replied, casually picking something from his teeth with his free hand. 

“We’ve hacked your implants, Miranda. It’s me, Major Jones”, the disembodied voice continued. 

“We’ve just learned that the man who made this lock was French. He spent his child in Bordeaux and attended Oxford. His mother was from Gujrati. He was a rather glum fellow who liked to spend all his time in the lab.” 

A smile spread across her face as she realised she could crack this lock. The voice seemed to sense her confidence.

“When you open the door, enter the safe and close the door behind you. We’ll be there to extract you in 30 minutes. The images of your daughter are bogus. We’ve already moved her to a safe location. It was a distraction, something to buy us time”. 

Miranda spent the next few hours trying on all the accents and languages she knew. She spoke them with varying degrees of emotional pitch, but the lock never once responded and neither did the gunman. When she noticed him starting to nod off, she took her chance. 

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Allowing her implants to take control, she whispered the password with a subtle Gujarati lilt, French intonation, and twing of “stiff upper lip”. The door responded with a faint hiss as it obediently swung open.

The gunman jerked up and lunged for the door, but not before Miranda could slip inside and slam the door behind her. 

It was dimly lit and she felt her way around the room. A chair was in the centre and some kind of console was on the other side of it. She tried pushing buttons to create more light. She needed to get a better look at her surroundings. 

“Hello, can you hear me?”, she asked, wondering if Major Jones could contact her from inside the room. “Is extraction imminent?”, she asked the space. As if in response, the door cracked open. 

The moustached techprenuer entered and clapped slowly. “You’ve done exceptionally well. We knew you wouldn’t submit to our test willingly, but this way we really got to see what you could do. You… are…. remarkable. It’s a pity your friends didn’t fair so well.” 

Four men with guns rushed in and strapped her down in the chair. 

She felt like a small child overpowered by any adult and forced to sit in a high-chair. She snarled at the men as they grabbed her. 

“You don’t know, do you?”, the moustached man said, his face uncomfortably close to hers. 

She yearned for the freedom to defend herself. His scrutinising gaze made her squirm, an invasion that sent shivers down her spine.

“The capabilities of a properly trained and implanted mimic are truly astounding”, he continued, a twisted sense of admiration in his voice. “They hold the power to make peace, start wars, derail governments, and even crack locks. There are only a handful of individuals like you in the world, and while I lack the ability to create implants myself, I possess the skill to hack into existing ones. Together, we can accomplish incredible feats. You can become anyone we desire.”

His condescending words were accompanied by an unsettling gesture as he petted her forehead, treating her like a prized, rare breed of cat. Revulsion surged within her at her own chameleon-like nature that so many had called a gift.

“Over my dead body”, she spat at him, defiance dripping from her words. She would not allow herself to be moulded into a puppet for his sinister agenda, even if it meant facing the gravest of consequences.

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“Cap, you got a minute?”, Officer Draves asked as he poked his head in the Captain’s office. 

“Come in, come in”, the grey-bearded captain said. He waved them in and gestured to the two dark blue chairs in front of his desk. A large Department of Natural Resources logo hung behind the Captain’s head. 

“What do you boys need? Finished the December reports yet?”, he said off handedly, but knowing it was the only reason they’d be there. It was the only task most officers had to finish between now and Christmas break, other than dividing up moose meat when the animals got too close to the train or the expressway. 

Officer Draves ran his thumb over his lower lip. “That’s what we’d like to speak with you about, sir. We, well, we wanted to show you something…a video.” He nodded encouragingly at the young Lieutenant. He blushed deeply as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. 

“They were… supposed to be hibernating… sir… the bears… on the far island”, the young lieutenant spat out in chunks like pieces of leathery meat that he couldn’t choke down.

The Captain squinted at the younger man, decided to ignore him and turned his attention to the older Officer. “Now, what’s this all about Draves?”, he said with a grimace. “I sent you two out to check the abandoned Kirimba weather station and you come back talking about bears.”  

“Well, sir, the bears weeerrreeeeee…” Officer Draves strung out the last word as he rolled around other words in his head, trying to figure out which ones would sound right. He thought it was always hardest saying something he’d never said before. He couldn’t find anything that seemed better, so he just got on with it. “They took over the weather station..and they were…erm…dancing.”

“You always gotta be the Department clown, don’t you Draves”, the Captain said as he slapped his knee. He seemed relieved to have something to laugh about. 

“Sir, I’m telling you straight. Those bears down there were dancing and singing. It ain’t no singing like I ever heard before, but I sure as shoot can tell you that they took over that station.” Officer Draves stood up straight and tall like he’d learned to do in the military when he delivered serious news.

“Well, then…”, the Captain said as his smirk grew and his eyes glowed with laughter. “Show me this video then. This is the stupidest prank you boys have pulled yet.” He shook his head a little at that, but the gleam didn’t leave his eye. 

“Take a look, sir”, The lieutenant squeaked and held up his phone with a shaky hand.

He turned the screen towards the Captain and showed him the scene of bears dancing around in a large room. They were spinning on the floor. Some were making sounds that sounded like Inuit throat singing mixed with thumping bass beats. A few sat in the corner, around a phone, where they were watching short videos of people dancing. 

The Captain grabbed the phone out of Lieutenant Dennis’s hand. “Are they…break dancing?” , he said in awe and confusion. Officer Draves nodded gravely and let out a sigh of relief as they all focused in on the small screen on the Captain’s desk.

“We caught this footage on Friday, sir!”, Officer Draves added to the report. 

The video continued to play. Inside the dimly lit station white bears were spinning in circles, tipping their heads back and laughing like bears shouldn’t. One of them sat down in the corner playing a thumping beat from an iPad. He grunted along to the music and bobbed his large shoulders up and down.

“Yes, sir, that’s what we saw. The last team up there left their electronics when they got caught in a storm off base. It looks like the bears got hold of the phones and iPads. It was the damndest thing… Seems to be 15 or so polar bears started up a community in there and…” Before he could continue a deep belly laugh ripped from the Captain.

The captain let his head tip back as he wiped the tears from his eyes, a bit like the way the bears had laughed in the video. “Well, I’ll say, that’s the most convincing prank you’ve pulled off yet, Draves. That’s hilarious! You use some of those Disney animatronic bears? Go try it out on the rest of the Department.” He tossed the phone at Officer Draves, who caught it with both hands.

“No, sir”, Draves went on without a smile. “We shot this video, without any tricks, up at Kirimba.” 

He looked deadly serious which just cracked the captain up all the more.

“What jokers you are”, the Captain guffawed and stood up to shew them out of his office. “A good joker sticks by his story”, he said conspiratorially and grinned from ear to ear. “This even beats that bear calendar you made a few years back, Draves.”

Draves turned red at the mention of the calendar he’d made by dressing up tranquilised bears before they tagged them in the National Parks.

“Sir, I know I’m usually the one making jokes, but we gotta send some scientists out there to investigate this.” A bead of sweat dripped down his forehead, “Something is happening with those bears. They’re supposed to be hibernating, but they seem to be…” He wasn’t sure how to continue.

“They seem to be evolving”, the shy Lieutenant finished what Officer Draves couldn’t seem to bring himself to say.  

The Captain furrowed his brow and looked between the two men before doubling over in laughter and shoving them the rest of the way out the door.

“Well, I gotta give it to you. No idea how you made that. Was this one of those deep fake things?”, he asked before taking a deep breath and announcing to the office. “Attention, everyone, we got something serious to show you. I’ll send it around soon.” 

“Send me that video, boys”, the Captain said quietly, before slapping them on the back and walking back to his desk, giggling to himself as he went. He turned around to tell them, “That was a good laugh, but I need a real write-up on the weather station on my desk in an hour”, he gestured for them to get to it.

The two men stumbled out of the office and back to their cubicles like they’d been lost in a whirlwind. You could tell where the video was circulating in the office as laughter ripped through cubicles like summer lightning storms.

“What are we going to write Draves?”, the shy Lieutenant asked his old friend. They often spent the weekends moose hunting together.

“Well, we sure as hell can’t write the truth can we?”, Draves said. He was used to being the office funny guy, but today he was drained. A joker out of jokes.

“But that’s what we saw. That video…”, the lieutenant said in defeat.

“I know, but nobody believes us. Maybe it was a trick of the light. I mean…a bear playing music? A party. How in the world? In all my years in the DNR I ain’t never seen nothing like that”, Draves said as he shook his head.  

Their colleagues began to appear above their cubicle walls to ask them a jumble of questions through bouts of laughter, “How did you manage that Draves?”, “Can I send that to my daughter?” “You’ve always got the best jokes, Draves.”

After the first couple of guys high fived them and asked their questions, while Officer Draves and the Lieutenant laughed politely, but didn’t quite know what to say, Draves decided to take the bait. 

“This here’s called deep fake technology. You could make it look like the president is dancing butt-naked in your momma’s living room if you wanted to”, he yelled out over the heads around them. The Lieutenant cringed in response, clearly not feeling ready to fake it. 

“Nobody wants to see that. Can you make this bear dance in there instead?”, one of the men yelled back at him over the dim roar of the group’s laughter as everyone played the video on loop.

“What are you doing?”, the Lieutenant said as he pulled at Drave’s arm and tried to get his attention.  “I was there. I know this isn’t fake, man.” He went on insistently, trying to pull Draves back into his orbit.

“Ain’t nobody gonna believe us Dennis, let’s just go with the flow”, he said with a shake of his arm to loosen his friend’s grip on him. He walked out into the break room to answer the guy’s questions and receive their praise for the funniest prank ever. And just as quickly as it had appeared, the truth of the polar bears’ winter jam session was lost forever.

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“How’d it go? Tell me everything. Do you want a smoke?”, Jialing asks rapid fire as she pulls a cigarette out from her pack of Nanjing Reds and tosses it at Rachel. 

Rachel and Jialing are sitting on an old tan coach that is buckling in the middle, forcing them to balance on the edges when they sit there together. Their living room is filled with left behind objects. There’s a guitar covered in AC/DC stickers, a bobbing lucky cat statue with a tiny knife taped to it’s paw, some giant neon pink fans, and textbooks in half a dozen languages. The place has been passed down from one Nanjing University foreign exchange student to another for years. They suspect it’s never been cleaned out and the grime in the corners of the rooms attests to that as well. 

“It was…just…ok. I don’t know. I can’t tell if he likes me or not, but I really like him, so I kind of feel like…stupid”, Rachel says and walks to the fridge to pull out a pitcher of water. She pours herself a glass and slumps down dejectedly. 

“What? What are you talking about? If anyone’s stupid it would be him, not you. What happened?”, Jialing says as she grabs a cracked yellow lighter from the table. 

“That’s the thing. Nothing happened, so I have no idea.”

“Well, forget him. Let’s go out tonight. We’ll find you a hotter guy.” Jialing’s words tumble out with a puff of smoke. She always sucks her cigarettes down in half the time it takes everyone else. 

“I’m not sure if Castle Bar is the best place to meet guys. George, your worst ex yet, was a total jerk. The last time we ran into him there I seriously wanted to kill him”, Rachel says as she clenches her fists and crosses her legs tightly. 

“He’s not that bad. He just doesn’t know how to act when he gets upset. It’s because he cares. It doesn’t matter now…because he doesn’t want to get back together”, Jialing says as a frown spreads across her face. 

Rachel turns to Jialing and almost shouts, “Do not get back together with him”. 

Instead, she takes a second to brush back her hair and inhales deeply before saying quietly, “He called you a witch and then got in a fist fight with the bartender when you wouldn’t come over”. 

Jialing smiles at that. 

“Wait…we haven’t finished talking about YOUR jerk”, Jialing says as she levels her gaze back at Rachel like they are trying to call each other’s bluff in the middle of a hand of poker. 

“Ummm, we are not talking about my jerk. My jerk is great…I mean he’s not a jerk”, Rachel laughs despite herself and Jialing pokes her in the ribs. They both giggle and Rachel, who is annoyingly ticklish, almost causes the couch to collapse.

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 “Josh… what happened with Josh? We all left at like 9 and you stayed there”, Jialing says and holds up her finger as if to threaten Rachel with another poke. 

“We just watched a movie. And that was it. I got home at like 12.”

“What? What went wrong? I thought you really like this guy? You always want to go where he goes and Xiao Shuang has been arranging these dinners so you guys can get closer.”

“I know. That’s the problem. It’s too much pressure. What if he doesn’t like me?”, Rachel says and then takes a long sip from her coffee cup, cradling it like her own insecurity.  

“I’m so sick of this! We find out tonight!”, Jialing shouts and jumps off the couch before rocketing to her bedroom. Rachel shrieks as the futon buckles and folds inward, sucking her into its dusty innards. 

That night they go where they go almost every night; Castle Bar. The place is underground and the walls are painted black, giving one the feeling that you’re in a cave no matter the time of day. They all like it that way. 

“Ugghhhh”, groans Rachel as she watches Josh. He’s wedged in the middle of three women at a table way in the back.  

“What?”, replies Jialing with irritation. When she sees what’s bothering Rachel she replies with a shake of her head, “You need a shot.” She holds up her hand and calls the bartender over. 

“That French chick has been all over him all night. She’s going to housesit for him and watch his cats. And she’s so pretty. And I just feel like I’ve been… friend zoned.” 

“Just tell him that you like him already, if you want him. Why is this one different? You just need to make a move”, Jialing says, without bothering to look in the boy’s direction further. 

“Ughhh. I want him to make a move”, Rachel says before sloshing her drink on the smooth black bar and putting her head between her hands. 

“Let’s make a move on one of those guys over there”, Jialing retorts as she weighs up the guys around the bar. “Those two. Over there”, she says as she bobs slightly to the beat. She doesn’t try to hide that she’s pointing directly at them across the semicircular bar. 

“Yeah, I guess, I just…I don’t know. I really like him. I feel so stupid…” She’s cut off by a round of 10 shots that is plopped down in front of Jialing. 

Jialing smiles charismatically at the bartender like the local legend that she is. She rarely pays for her drinks. Then she taps the guy sitting next to them on the shoulder. 

“Have a shot with us!”, she yells over the music at him. “One for you and one for your friend.” The two guys turn their way, it’s a Chinese guy and a foreign guy, both handsome and clearly surprised that they are being offered free drinks. 

“Yeah, thanks! I’m not used to women buying me drinks, but if you insist.” He is shouting a bit to be heard over the loud music. They all hold up their shots and drink. Time passes and they drink and dance and get drunk. Jialing is always materialising shots out of nowhere. And then more shots. And then some more shots. Rachel is totally plastered by 1am.  

“I think…I neeeed to go homeeee”, Rachel slurs her words and leans on a chair. Her head is involuntarily moving in a circle as she tries, unsuccessfully, to ignore the spinning of the room. 

“I’m not going home now, just go outside and grab a taxi”, Jialing shouts loudly at her. Jialing has somehow burned her liquor off by dancing non-stop for the past 3 hours. 

“I can’t. I’m so dizzy”, Rachel groans. 

“Go puke in the bathroom”, Jialing says briskly and moves back onto the dance floor. 

“Uhhhhh”, Rachel groans as she approaches the bathroom. She has to walk past where Josh is sitting and laughing with the French girl and two of her friends. The girl is delicately drinking a gin and tonic. Josh’s hands are twirling the hair in his ponytail. He’s from Nanjing, but everyone always thinks he’s either an artist or Japanese because of his long hair. 

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“Rachel”, Josh says with concern as she grabs the back of a chair at the table next to them. She was sliding across the room by grabbing the back of one chair and then the next as she tried not to succumb to dizziness. She didn’t want to draw his attention, but she’s too drunk to really focus on who is around her. 

“Are you ok? Come sit with us”, he says as he takes her arm and pulls her to his booth nearby. 

Rachel clings to Josh’s arm and follows him to sit down. “I don’t feel so well”, she says as she clutches her stomach. 

She takes one look at the French girl and starts ranting and flailing her arms, “And she is not a good cat person. I’m a better cat person. I love your cat. So much. Like I’d definitely love the shit out of your cat.  It’s not fair”. 

Rachel leans over and pukes on Josh’s Converses. The French girl and her two friends all jump up as the vomit splatters across the floor. 

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry”, Rachel says as she grabs some tissues and starts wiping his shoes. Josh laughs, “Just rest for a second Rachel, it’s ok. I can wash them when I get home”.  

Xiao Shuang appears from nowhere like a guardian angel. She’s always at the party, so it shouldn’t be a surprise. 

She says to Josh in Chinese, “Can you take her home? She’s really drunk and I don’t think Jialing is going home tonight. She shouldn’t be alone”. She takes a serious tone. 

“Yeah”, Josh laughs and nods his head. “She sounded a little out of it, she was yelling at Solaine about shitting on my cat.” 

Solaine and her friends have left the bar. At this time of night, Rachel is not the only one vomiting under a table or in a corner. 

Xiao Shuang laughs, “She just had too many shots”.  

“Let’s get you cleaned up”, Josh says kindly as Rachel rolls down the seat like a jelly-filled mannequin. 

The next afternoon, Jialing is sitting on the couch in their living room smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee when Rachel walks in. 

Jialing jumps up and says excitedly as she waves her cigarette around, “You’re back, it’s past 2. Were you at Josh’s this whole time? Here, I’ll get you a coffee cup”. 

“Yesss”, Rachel says slowly and giggles a little. 

“Sooooo you finally…, didn’t you?”, Jialing asks as she puts the tiny blue coffee cup down on the table. 

“OMG, yes! It was…It was…perfect!” 

“What? I can’t believe you guys hooked up even after you puked on his shoes!” 

“No, of course not”, Rachel stops her. “He’s definitely not THAT kind of guy. I told him I liked him this morning, after I showered, brushed my teeth and he made me breakfast.” 

“I’m just glad you finally broke the ice. Getting tired of your obsession with him.” 

Rachel’s phone dings. “It’s him”, she smiles widely. 

“Oh no, I have a feeling you’re about to get even more obsessed”, Jialing says and sticks out her tongue. “But as long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters. And when you’re done with this one, let’s find you a hotter boyfriend.”

“Shut up”, Rachel says, her eyes shining brightly as she swots Jialing away and grabs her phone.