Write your fantasy,
make it real.

Zhou Meng, a twenty-seven-year-old teller at a rural commercial bank, asked one question through the glass: Boss Cao, how much does that money lose you each year sitting in a demand account? Thirty million came in, and her quota was done twenty days early. That day she drove herself up the mountain and locked the door of the tin shack from the inside: Today I’m the one who slides the bolt in, not you.

Three years married, she finds four hundred and thirty-seven nude photos of herself in the locked album on her husband’s phone — and not one of them has ever left it. For two years he has been bragging in a group chat and saying he can’t bring himself to share. She sits on the toilet lid and looks at every one of them, picks out three, and from her own account adds the man who has been waiting two years.

Five years married, two years of watching that scene from the outside. The first time we actually went to meet someone, I set exactly one rule before we left the flat: you can film it, but whether it goes out is mine to decide. At thirty-one I kept the footage locked for three days, and on the fourth I cut thirty seconds myself and pressed send myself. Later that was not enough. I wanted the full one out, with my face in it.

Twenty-nine, head of the advertising department at a TV station, four years married and never once got there. Her husband begged her for two years; she said once. The night the other man walked in, she learned for the first time what she was made of. Two months later there is a fingerprint lock on the bedroom door with three prints registered in it, and none of them is her husband’s.

Married a year. Her husband runs a courier station and hauls parcels till past midnight every night. Lin Shan is twenty-seven, a course consultant at a vocational training school; the group leader post was decided by the school affairs committee on September receipts, passed on Thursday, the announcement already queued. For eight hundred eighty she rented ten hours at a recording studio off campus. The owner is fifty-seven, minds the machines and doesn’t teach, and doesn’t know a single person where she works. The first time, she undid her own buttons.

Zhou Yu, twenty-nine, contract clerk at the district court, her bar certificate locked in a drawer for two years. Getting on staff comes down to one written exam in April, and nobody can lend her a hand. And it is the Political Department that sends her to compile the oral history of Yan Song, a judge two years retired: an apartment full of old case files, and his robe hanging in the wardrobe. The first time, she was the one who put the robe on and climbed on top of him.

Lin Lan, twenty-nine, four years an off-establishment grid worker for the sub-district. The district ran an open recruitment, she came first in the written exam, and on August 21st her name went up for public notice — thirty days with no letter of complaint and the post is hers. But the second week the red paper was up, she found she was not happy at all. On the third evening of the posting she went up to the fifth floor herself, knocked herself, undid the buttons herself. Reading off the roster under the Party flag, the basement, the property monitoring room — and the Tuesday and Thursday slots were hers to schedule.

Qin Lan, thirty-three, head nurse at a top-tier hospital, 85G. Her husband is an attending surgeon: once a month, three minutes. In the night-shift break room she stumbles onto a forum: Old Zhou, a retired PE teacher, takes in married women as bitches, lives by rules, keeps a notebook. The interview is ten minutes on her knees before she’s sent away, and back in her car she tears right through her pantyhose. From then on it’s two hours every Wednesday: call him Master, report before every shower, cut open the pantyhose under her nurse’s uniform and kneel by the exam table swallowing in time with her heartbeat. The notebook grows thicker and thicker. One observer comes, then another.

Song Jia, twenty-eight, a sales consultant six months married, is three units short of her annual target. When Old Jin from Wenzhou comes to see the model unit the director has assigned someone else, so she walks into his office and says: I want this client. In the master bedroom of the model unit the curtain stays open, and she says, whether you buy is your business, and this is this. By year-end she is a manager, and on launch day she walks to the Maybach at the door herself.

Xu Wei, thirty-three, acting head nurse of Obstetrics at the municipal women and children’s hospital, eleven months in the job. The selection is scored by a panel of seven, two of them brought in from another hospital; the department director holds one vote, and losing only means going back to her old post and four hundred a month less. He says all of that to her face first — and then she locks the on-call room door herself. Eleven months of scheduling seventeen people, and the only empty square is her own. The day the roster becomes hers alone, she fills it with seven days of leave.

My husband’s startup owed the chairman three million, and the guarantor line on the loan agreement carried my name. Chairman Shao spoke slowly and never raised his voice. He said: Kneel, and hand me the schedule. From that day on, every morning at seven fifty I reported to the inner room first: strip, kneel, get inspected by his fingers. He sent a photo of me face down on the carpet to my husband, and my husband replied: That’s good. The day the debt was cleared, he gave me the pen.

Feng Chuchu, thirty-three, regional manager at a multinational, skirt suit and black stockings, sees her university-lecturer husband fewer than sixty days a year. Her flight is delayed three hours, and the masseur in the VIP lounge says: Your flight has been delayed. I can help you relax. Fifteen minutes on the neck and shoulders is free; a private room is two ninety-eight. She says: Full body. When the boarding call sounds, she is on her knees on the massage table, stockings torn open, and she does not stop.