After the breakup, I was taken in by a group of trendy young women.

Lin Ye leaned against the wall outside the master bedroom door and lit a cigarette.

Huang Mao came out of the master bedroom and gently closed the door.

Her honey-brown hair was loosely draped over her shoulders, and the hem of her silk nightgown brushed against the door frame.

She walked to Lin Ye's side and leaned against the wall, her shoulder against his arm.

"The guy with bangs is asleep."

Her voice was very soft, as if she was afraid of waking someone.

"She cried herself to sleep, so Sister Shen Qing gave her half a cup of warm milk. Now she's sleeping like a little pig. The tattooed man and woman are still inside with her, afraid she'll wake up and cry again in the middle of the night."

Lin Ye nodded without saying anything.

The blond-haired man tilted his head back, his deep brown pupils gleaming in the dim light of the cigarette butt.

"Brother, the sentence you just said to Qi Liu Hai—'You have a home now'—she kept repeating it before she fell asleep. She repeated it several times, and while repeating it, she would laugh, and then she would cry."

She paused for a moment, then tilted her head to look at him.

"You're really good at talking. Not the kind of fancy talking, but the kind that knows exactly what people need to hear."

Lin Ye flicked the cigarette ash into the trash can in the corner of the corridor.

"Just telling the truth."

The blond-haired man lowered his head and remained silent for a long while.

She reached out and took the cigarette from between his fingers, put it in her mouth, and took a drag.

Smoke billowed from her nose, dispersing into two pale blue streams in the dim corridor light.

She handed the cigarette back to him and then spoke.

"Brother, there are six of us—no, now with Sister Shen Qing and Sister Shen Na, it's eight—all eight of us come from less than ideal families. Either our families don't care about us, or they treat us like ATMs. Do you know why Qi Liu Hai's mom forced her to go on blind dates? Because that hardware store owner promised a dowry of 280,000 yuan. 280,000 yuan, he sold her off."

When she said the word "sold," her tone was very flat, as if she were stating a fact that had nothing to do with her.

"My mom is pretty much the same. I sent all my first year's wages back home, but the second year she complained it wasn't enough, saying that so-and-so from the next village earns 8,000 a month in an electronics factory and sends it all home. I said I wanted to keep some money for rent, and she said, 'Why pay rent? Just find a man with a house and marry him.'"

She took the cigarette out of her mouth, stubbed it out on the wall, and threw it into the trash can.

"After that, I stopped contacting my family much. Whenever I called during holidays, she would start asking about my salary, my boyfriend, and when I would send money after only a few words. I would say that I was doing fine, and she would say that if I was doing well, why didn't I send money home? I would say that I had my own life, and she would say that what kind of life did a young woman have? Getting married was the most important thing."

She leaned against the wall, looking up at the spotlights on the corridor ceiling.

"Her family background was even more outrageous. Her father was heavily in debt from gambling, her mother remarried, and she grew up with her grandmother. She started working in a factory at sixteen, and her father took her wages every month to pay off his gambling debts. Once, she hid two hundred yuan to buy herself a cotton-padded coat, but her father found it, beat her, and accused her of stealing money from the family."

"That's why she got a full-sleeve tattoo so early. She said it made her look fierce and no one would dare to bully her. Actually, she was more of a coward than anyone else and never won a fight, but she always had to be at the forefront because she said—nobody cares about her anyway, so if she died at the front, so be it."

Lin Ye leaned against the wall and put the cigarette back in his mouth.

"Where are the floral print legs?"

"Her family is slightly better off, but her parents favor boys over girls. She paid for all her brother's schooling, bought all his clothes and other necessities, and even paid for his girlfriends' meals. Her parents thought this was only natural, that it was their daughter's duty to support the family. The rose on her leg was a design she drew herself on her eighteenth birthday, and an apprentice tattooed it for free—because nobody remembered her birthday."

"Both Green Hair and Pink Hair come from single-parent families. Their mother raised them alone, which was really tough. But after their mother remarried, their stepfather didn't like them. He said they were a burden, freeloaders, and told them to go out and work as soon as possible. They haven't gone back since they left."

Huang Mao paused here.

She turned to face him, her deep brown eyes shining brightly in the dim light.

"Before, when we were out in the world, people looked at us with such disreputable looks—our hair was dyed in all sorts of colors, our bodies were covered in tattoos, and we could scare away the neighborhood committee ladies on the street. They all thought we were frivolous. But they never asked us why we dyed our hair, why we had tattoos, or why we couldn't even scrape together five yuan."

"I dyed my hair blonde because I once saw a girl with really pretty pink hair in front of a bubble tea shop, and her boyfriend was carrying her bag. I thought to myself, if I had a boyfriend and I dyed my hair this pretty too, would he carry my bag for me too? So I dyed my hair blonde because it's the cheapest."

"Then you found me." Lin Ye stubbed out his cigarette.

The blond-haired man paused for a moment, then laughed.

He laughed so hard his eyes narrowed into slits, and he almost slipped off the wall while leaning against it.

"Yes, that's when I found you. You were squatting on the curb smoking, your eyes were red, and your phone screen was still lit up with a breakup message. I thought to myself, this person looks so pitiful, just as pitiful as me. I might as well take him back, since we don't have anything to lose anyway."

She took a step forward and looked up at him.

"And then I stumbled upon the greatest luck of my life."

Lin Ye looked down at her.

Her eyes reddened again, but the smile on her lips wouldn't go away.

He reached out and tucked the stray honey-brown strands of hair from her forehead behind her ear.

"Alright, go to sleep."

The blond-haired man nodded, took two steps, and then turned back.

"Brother, you just said 'You have a home now'—you weren't just saying that to Qi Liu Hai, were you?"

Lin Ye didn't say anything.

Without waiting for his reply, she turned around and shuffled back to the master bedroom, her bare feet making soft pattering sounds on the hallway floor.

The door to the master bedroom closed gently.

Lin Ye leaned against the wall, and he was the only one left in the corridor.

The spotlights overhead emitted a very faint hum of electricity, and in the distance, the faint snoring of someone with tattooed arms could be heard.

He glanced down at his phone screen—2:40 a.m.

He put his phone back in his pocket and was about to lie down on the sofa in the living room when the door to the second bedroom at the other end of the hallway suddenly opened a crack.

Shen Na peeked half her body out from the crack in the door.

She wore a light blue cotton nightgown that reached her calves, with a thin knitted cardigan draped over it.

Her black hair wasn't tied into a low ponytail like it was during the day; instead, it was loose and draped over her shoulders, with slightly curled ends that gleamed with a healthy sheen in the dim light of the corridor.

She was taken aback when she saw Lin Ye still standing in the corridor.

"Brother, you're still awake?"