THE SADDEST GIRL SINCE THE SONG DYNASTY

TRAUMA OF THE HATE-LIKE - PART I

Zhi-Lai shared many vital statistics with Lady Zhao. There was their initials to start with, with Lady Zhao having been born Zhao Lei – indeed, she was only ever called by her false honorific by those, including Ander, who had known her during her time at the summer school, and even then, it was rarely to her face. There was nothing honorable or complimentary in her sham title.

Then there was their ages (they were even born in the same month), their heights (though Lady Zhao tended to wear higher heels), and their educational accomplishments (both as expensively educated as the other). And, by virtue of sharing largely the same prospective-mate pool since they both worked within the same square mile, they had dated roughly the same number of gentleman and scoundrels.

Despite these unlikely credentials, Lady Zhao and Zhi-Lai had only met a few times. The one occasion when it was just the two of them, the silence, to Lady Zhao at least, had felt somehow acidic, like the walls and the furniture of the room were melting, corroding. It had been not long after her most recent appointment with her fortuneteller. And then Zhi-Lai had added her as a WeChat contact.

But it wasn't because those who knew them both would often compare Lady Zhao to being Zhi-Lai's frenetic alter ego that made Lady Zhao angriest; nor the fact that it was 2-1 overall in Zhi-Lai's favor when it came to the same love interest choosing one over the other; what tickled Lady Zhao's hate bone most aggressively was the sporadic and unwelcome acts of liking, in the technological action verb sense, Lady Zhao's status updates. Especially when it involved posting obviously work-related comments on Weibo like, 'Wow, so great ECN donated RMB 100k to kids foundation today.' Double-especially when it was an update not meant to be liked at all, such as the one Lady Zhao posted that Friday at six p.m. from her office – "another two hours, then maybe freedom."

Lady Zhao was certain this was a hate-like. There was no way such an act of public interfacing was meant as sympathy or support. Zhi-Lai had probably shared the post with all her WeChat contacts with a smirk and a fuck-you, and Lady Zhao was convinced this happened even though she had never seen evidence for such behavior – because, she claimed to the only other co-worker still around that Friday evening, a forty-year-old middle manager who tended to agree with everything anyway, she understood the likes of Zhi-Lai, they were of the same cloth, she knew how these creatures thought behind their veneers of self-deprecation and goodwill.