Write your fantasy,
make it real.

At the Lakeside Hotel on Suzhou’s shore, thirty-two-year-old qipao tailor Shu Man sits by the floor-to-ceiling window in a black lace dress of her own making, saying nothing. The rule is hers: each time she undoes a frog button, the single man Cheng Jun may take one step closer; each time she fastens one back, everyone stops. Her husband Meng Yu stands outside the balcony door, his voice so soft it only ever offers suggestions—until he steps across the sliding track himself.

Lao Lang, thirty-eight, lives out of a suitcase and scores everyone he meets. Behind door C of Haijiao’s Yong’an Building, she opens the door and hands him a laminated course sheet: basic eight hundred, eating her out plus two hundred, tongue kissing plus two hundred, no condom crossed out twice. He orders the cheapest line, and neither of them is into it. On the second night she says please wait. On the third he never looks at the sheet and only asks which one she likes best herself. She turns the paper over. Her name is written on the back.

On the third day in Bali, Liang Zhiyuan and his wife Zhuo Ying walk into the tidal spa by the beach for a ninety-minute couples massage. The front desk makes it clear: no touching between therapists and clients. Zhuo Ying is thirty-three, thin-skinned, never able to say what she wants out loud—but her foot touches the male therapist Yono first, and the condom in her bag is one she brought herself. Her husband sees the condom on the nightstand, but not the moment she put it there.

Lao Lang, thirty-eight, works in foreign trade, second time at that apartment building in Hancheng. Old Park said this time it’s the fourteenth floor, and the doorknob still turns three times. The one who opens the door is called Jisoo, twenty-six, her palm slightly cool, all the mineral water labels facing the same direction. She asks “may I” before every step forward, and the scoring system he’s used for sixteen years can’t fill in a single column. Before leaving, he turns a bottle of water the other way; she turns it back, saying next time he can turn it again.

Lao Lang, thirty-eight, foreign trade, divorced, one red windbreaker. His client Old Park drops him off at an apartment building by the Han River: sixteenth floor, the door at the end of the hall, three twists of the handle. The door opens, and she stands in the light. Soyeon, twenty-seven, hotel front desk, red-orange hair, a little canine tooth. A single “oppa” pulls him back to Eunhee thirteen years ago, and he tries to fall in love in a paid-for apartment, until that single drop of white cream hangs on the tip of her nose.

Thirty-one-year-old Su Wan, a Chinese language instructor at the county workers’ spare-time college, had been passed over for a mid-level title for three years. She deliberately left that button undone, locked the principal’s office door, and made a deal with him: only saying “red pen” meant a real stop—every other “no” was part of the act. Being forced, having no choice—that was the script she wrote for herself. From the principal’s sofa to the section chief’s back seat, then to Room 1806 at the Jinjiang Hotel, she kept crying “no” all the way while delivering herself to their doors.

Fu Yao, thirty, works the night shift on a customer service line. The washing machine at home is broken, so every morning at four she goes down to the self-service laundromat, where Niu Ben, the delivery station manager, is always there. She could still recite her mother’s rules at thirty; now she sets her own: while the drum is turning, anything goes, and when it beeps, she leaves. She never presses pause. Her husband You Kai, a day-shift programmer, fixes the washing machine. She still goes downstairs and presses sixty minutes. One morning at four, he wakes up.

Twenty days of picking season. Yu Lan, thirty-six, runs the kitchen at the family farmstay and feeds twenty workers, and she gives the new kid, Xiao Feng, one scoop more. She lays the rules out to his face: wages are paid by the day and have nothing to do with this; the fruit basket set under the trees means yes, the basket in her hand means no. The row at the foot of the hill ripens late, and nobody goes there. When the fruit is in, Xiao Feng leaves, the basket goes up on the kitchen wall, and her husband sets a half-used bottle of toilet water beneath it.

Yi Shan is thirty-three, a Chinese-lit graduate. When her magazine folded she took the front desk at Binhe Swim Center, teaches the evening adult class, and swims half an hour alone every dawn. Gu Zheng, the lane-four morning member, swam for the provincial team eleven years ago and only ever shows up from six to six-thirty. House rule three: cap on in the water. With the cap on she is the front desk. With it off, she is not. Her husband Lai Xu sells cars, has another woman at lunchtime, and has only one thing to say at night: “Dry your hair.”

Suo Min, thirty-one, plays bass for Low Pressure Trough. Her husband Ying Hao is the drummer, out with a wrist injury, not allowed to touch a single stick. At soundcheck for the Fengkou Music Festival, Da Li, the monitor engineer, pushes her low end up two notches. She sets the rule: with the pass hanging on her neck he can touch her; off and on the console, he stops. After the show, behind the black drape with close to ten thousand people still out front, her husband sits across from her with a bodypack on, listening, counting one two three four over the comms. A month later, at her husband’s comeback show, she hangs the pass on the drum kit.

A downpour strands wedding photographer Yin Duo and his makeup-artist wife Pi Xiaolu at a location base forty kilometers out. The female model never shows, so her husband puts her in a satin gown to be “the bride’s hand” for the sample groom, Hong Jin. When her makeup case is open she’s on the clock; when it’s shut she’s off. That day in the greenhouse she pushed the latch down herself, while her husband pressed the shutter from behind the viewfinder. The sample now hangs in the shop, and every day she touches up its dust.

Mai Qing, who runs a seafood stall, signs up with her husband Sha Cong for Kun Kee’s night-fishing trip, and the list has one extra name on it: Candy, who does nails. Under the white light at the bow, her husband teaches someone to cast with his hands over hers; under the yellow light at the stern, she squats sorting line with A-Kun, the forty-four-year-old skipper. Every time the glow bell on the rod tip rings, they have to stop. It rings three times. The fourth time, she takes the bell off. At dawn they come back to port, each carrying a fish.

Twenty-three below. Yu Fei, twenty-eight, a dental receptionist, is marched onto the slopes by her husband Lang Xiao, thirty-four, and falls twenty-seven times. It is Lao He, the forty-six-year-old guesthouse owner, who carries her off the intermediate run and back to the heated kang. On the kang, her husband makes a proposal: goggles on means yes, and whoever pushes them up calls a stop. She changes one line. If I push them up to my forehead, you both stop. If you push them, it doesn’t count. The walls are thin. Next door can hear everything.

Black Rock Flats campground, 3,200 meters up. Camping blogger Bi Yang lies on the car roof shooting three hours of star trails, and not a single frame can break. In the tent, thirty-year-old coffee-shop owner Jing Lan pulls the door zipper down to halfway. Yue Chuan, the geological surveyor camping alone at the next site, told her: zipped to the top means stay away, zipped halfway means come in, and nobody says a word. Her husband can only listen from ten meters away while she counts zipper teeth. On the second night she says: I’ll leave the zipper for you. You come in.

No tickets together for the holiday rush, so Tong Rui, thirty-four, an administrator at an adult night school, takes the soft-sleeper lower bunk while her husband Qi Yuan sits in a hard seat in another car. On the bunk across is Wen Tao, forty-one, a pharmaceutical rep who lives on long-haul trains. When the lights go out he says: the curtain shut means one thing, open means another. After Qinggang it’s all tunnels, one after another. Before the train pulls in, she hands her husband her ticket, with the number of the man across written on the back.

Luo Xue, twenty-nine, is a nude double at Yunqi Film Studios; her face never goes on camera. Her husband Tian Yifan is the best boy on the lighting crew, and in three years of lighting her every scene, her face has always been on the far side of his black flag. In the Scene 47 bed scene, leading man Ji Bei gets hard through two layers of modesty shorts and says sorry. After wrap she borrows a slate and knocks on his trailer door: it starts when you call action, and whoever calls cut, we stop. The next day there is a tenth take on the lighting playback drive. It was not shot.

Twenty-three days after night one, Lao K makes good on “a different person, a different position”: this time nobody is invited. Xiaoman goes out in a short skirt and black pantyhose with nothing underneath to flash at the riverside, gets dragged into the back seat, her hose torn open and fucked from behind, and sits down in a bar reeking of cum. The terrace of the top-floor pool suite is separated from the one next door by a half-open partition. Lao K has her kneel naked in the shallow pool and spread herself, and A-Yan, the lone business traveler next door, climbs onto his sofa and sees. Lao K nods at him, and then says: the door is not locked.

At the end of Night Two, Lao K said that next time he would not find anyone, she would go by herself. So he books a high-floor room, sends Xiaoman down to the spa on the lower ground floor, and requests a male therapist for two hours. Rose and sweet orange oil, the sound of waves, disposable panties, and A-Sheng’s hands tugging lower each time, asking if she wants the covers off, asking if she wants it pressed there. She comes back to the room and says, “Someone took liberties with me,” and Lao K makes her tell it step by step, his hands following every word. A week later she goes again, alone. This is Lao K’s hotel diary, Night Three.

Night Four almost did not happen: in the days before her period Xiaoman’s mood is foul enough to cancel three times, and Lao K never pushes, waiting until the morning she says go on her own. All three of them work late and meet at eight at the hotel where she and Lao K first took a room, with a full Italian dinner downstairs first. A-Mu is a professional Lao K sought out, explaining each oil, testing one on her wrist, and after the test cards come back clean he says one word: lie down. His hands from the soles of her feet up leave her running down to her thighs while lying face down, she comes on his fingers first, then two cocks take turns front and back, and in the sandwich it is Lao K who finishes first. Hotel diary, Night Four.

After Night Four, Lao K said the next one should be someone doing it for the first time. Two rooms on the same floor, for safety. A-Ning has never done this; he knocks like opening a blind box, and behind the door is Xiaoman, naked in a collar, waiting for him. He flinches from the camera and never even takes the leash. Test cards, the wait, Lao K off to the shower, and she has his trousers down before anyone gives her leave. The leash, one mouthful left and one right between two cocks, her first deep kiss with anyone but her husband, a cushion of flesh beneath her and a big cock behind, and a novice ridden until he begs. This is Lao K’s hotel diary, Night Five.

On a weekday morning Lao K asks Xiaoman to talk about before, and by the time she is done a wide patch of the sheet is soaked. She names three things she wants: a big one, one with hair and a smell, and to be tied up and taken front and back at once. A few nights later she kneels on a hotel bed, tucks a deep red rose into the crack of her ass, and sends the photo to Lao K. The door sounds, and she smells Leon before she sees him. Red jute rope in diamonds across her chest, wrists bound behind her; Lao K beside them calling the angle, while she needs to pee and cannot, convulsing again and again. Then cowgirl, then front and back together, and when the rope comes off the white runs out of both holes at once. Hotel diary, night six.

Xiaoman is twenty-eight. In the car, down in the underground garage, she said yes to her husband K out loud: tonight she would be used by two men at once. A high-floor room with a single lamp on, the river outside the window. A knock, Ache walks in, K gives nothing but orders, and Xiaoman goes from muffled whimpers to filthy words she can’t hold back, her cunt, her ass, her mouth, opened one after another. This is K’s hotel diary. Night one.

Moving day, and her husband is off waiting on a ticket number. Hao Sisi, thirty, a game concept artist, is left in the empty apartment with Da Zhuang, the mover. She sets the rule: boxes sealed with tape are off-limits, open ones are fair game. At the new place the mattress is still wrapped in plastic and the apprentice is unpacking next door when she rips the tape off her finger: “I’m open today.” A week later her husband finds a box in the corner that never got unpacked. The tape on it is new.

Coach driver Lu Qingshan is laid up with a bad back, and the company sends Jiang Dacheng, a night-route driver, to fill in. Three days on a mountain tour: guide Qin Wanqiu looks after all forty-seven passengers, and only the man who never talks looks after her, turning the heater her way, covering her lunch, draping his coat over her shoulders. The night the tour wraps, she pulls the little guide flag out of the dashboard: flag in, it’s the itinerary; flag out, it’s her. The engine at the back of the bus runs hot, and at home her husband listens to it idling in her voice message. When the week is over, she slides out from under the flag base a follow-up slip that has been pressed there the whole week.