She changed positions three times in a row. In a second-class seat on the high-speed train. Something must have been digging into her waist; otherwise she would not have changed positions three times in a row, like a ping-pong ball rebounding, like a crucian carp jumping on a chopping board. All right, now her waist fit the seat perfectly, but her head had begun to feel uncomfortable. So she started twisting her neck, first attempting a slight adjustment to the left and then a larger one to the right. Clearly, the ergonomics of a second-class high-speed train seat were defective, especially seat B, wedged between two people and allowing the body less margin for positional error. Perhaps this was a deliberate feature of second-class seating, intended to produce a perceptible difference from first class, so that its designers had brainstormed in the direction opposite comfort. They had reserved a special malice for seat B. Because it was trapped between seats A and C, the unfortunate passenger in B would be more likely to buy first class next time, where no seat was trapped between two others, and where one could only hope for seats that were normal and ergonomic.

She, the restless person, did not find a comfortable position by adjusting the angle of her neck. Instead, she awakened further unrest in the body. Clogged sensations scurried like whack-a-moles among various points in her arms, chest, and thighs. Sometimes they reached her throat, allowing her briefly to sense that the food from lunch had already become stomach acid. But she could no longer remember what she had eaten, because the restless person could not clearly recall things that happened to her. One thing was quickly diluted by the next. She could not tease out the important events of a day. She could describe only that clogged sensation, the blockage now scurrying through her arms, chest, and thighs. Incidentally, her waist had begun to hurt again. Fitting perfectly against the seat had not made it any more comfortable, especially considering that she occupied second-class seat B, with 0.5 of a thigh from each of the two men beside her extending into her territory.

The restless person therefore resorted to psychic morphine, the secret weapon with which she survived every day: Douyin. When she scrolled Douyin, she paid no attention to the content (which made it difficult for the recommendation algorithm to guess her preferences). She was entranced instead by the act of refreshing. She swiped upward through short videos as if practicing quantum speed-reading, staying on each page for less than three seconds on average, making the narrators who promised to explain an entire blockbuster in one minute sound unbearably verbose. Naturally, she could repeat this gesture without end, letting one thing dilute another. A day contained only twenty-four hours, which meant that the total quantity of events was fixed. If she could not pass clearly and smoothly through any event, without disappointment, disgust, regret, doubt, or compulsive forgetting, then let the event be as short as possible. That was the charm of psychic morphine. Its dosage depended on your need, and you did not have to beg, steal, or rob for an additional injection like those addicts (the swaying, vacant, babbling, friendless creatures somewhere between human beings and stray cats or dogs). All you needed to do was swipe a finger, as she did. With self-respect. With control.

Sometimes she became stuck on a page (and the recommendation algorithm inferred that she enjoyed such content, a randomness that left even the algorithm rather perplexed). The failure alerted her that her thumb had not landed on the screen, which alerted her that she did not possess the ability to control her finger and make it touch the screen, which led her to discover that her thumb was trembling—faintly and rapidly enough that, for an instant, she thought she was dizzy or that the high-speed train was shaking. But she could not control the thumb. It seemed remotely operated by some faraway magnet. She observed it. Her thumbnail was long. She had not deliberately neglected to trim it, but her mother and grandmother had the same habit. Two green meridians ran through the joints. Green railway tracks. They crossed the dense lines of her skin, a thick forest changing shape with every tiny tremor, and vanished before the nail.

Certain moments surfaced in the restless person's impressions. When she shared a bed with her mother. Summer. A hard bed pressed against a window, inside a crowded old residential compound whose layers intersected and shifted. The window was open a crack. Every few dozen seconds, a frail current of air came in, gently swelling the plastic curtain patterned with small flowers, then letting it fall vertically again. Mother was asleep. Hardworking Mother. Mother who worked as a helper in the work-unit canteen. Mother sleeping beneath the gaze of Louis Koo, Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung, and her own wedding portrait against a red background. She lay on the bed in the opposite direction from Mother. She was a little shorter, so her toes rested in Mother's armpit and her head lay beside Mother's ankles. Mother carried the particular body smell of a woman who had grown older and submitted to aging. It made her think of baggy sweaters, glossy permed hair, flesh-colored stockings. The restless person—who did not yet know the taste of restlessness—discovered that Mother's feet, hands, and body jerked suddenly every few dozen seconds. One, two, three, four. She counted the seconds and calculated the frequency of Mother's trembling.

The restless person knew her own restlessness well. She feared that the people around her would scrutinize her for it, despise her, take her for a clown. So she carefully confined every movement to the boundaries of her second-class seat B. Her range of motion was the area properly belonging to seat B, minus 0.5 × 2 = one male thigh. A sleeping male thigh. An unconscious and therefore deontologically unaccountable male thigh. A thigh venturing like an explorer deep into foreign territory. The restless person first arranged a smile on her face, then turned toward seat A to test whether her latest adjustment had offended him, only to discover that he was already fast asleep. A's head tilted upward. Combined with a seat back reclined extraordinarily far—farther than the restless person would ever have dared—this placed his head parallel to the horizon. His mouth gaped. Saliva quivered at the back of his throat, giving his faint (for now) snore the pleasure of a uvular trill.

The restless person knew this sleeping posture from her husband. The restless person's husband was not a restless person. Except when he ejaculated. After ejaculating, the husband blamed her. He believed something was always wrong with her position, making him restless as soon as he entered her, making him easily affected by her, making him unable to last, making him not himself today. At all other times he was very good. Very self-contained and steady. He did not hit her. Sometimes he mopped the floor or ordered takeout for them both. Perhaps this absence of restlessness had hurried her into marrying him. After all, she could not say what there was to hurry about. They had met on a blind date. He was a little older. He paid her family the bride price he had promised—not much, but at least the promised amount, and more or less equal to the figure her relatives had calculated as the cost of raising her from childhood.

After ejaculating, the husband blamed her. He did not often blame her, express emotion to her, or even speak to her, but ejaculation was the exception. After less than a minute inside her, after a faint “uh,” he would blame her. Then he would raise the subject of children and suggest that she have a gynecological examination. He believed a child could ease her restlessness, settle her heart, bring hope, bring, uh, happiness, and solve many problems. The husband slept. His mouth was open, very wide. Sometimes his saliva choked him awake and he said, Ah, fucking hell. The restless person was restless beside him. Strangely, the bed in their bedroom was arranged much like the one in her childhood home. Again in a small room, pressed against the wall with the window, the breeze beyond the screen stirring the curtain. The restless person leaned her back against the wall and masturbated facing her sleeping husband. Masturbation made her less restless. Until it ended, she had to think only of sex. It required more concentration than sex with her husband. She did not use the sleeping husband for sexual stimulation. She carefully controlled the range of her arm while watching him, so that he would not wake and discover her masturbating, then despise her and take her for a slut. She was not a slut. She was not a clown. She was not the things she thought they thought she was. She was better now. She permitted herself a faint “uh,” like her husband's. The husband choked on his saliva and woke, mumbling, Ah, fucking hell. He gave her a fright. All right. At last. Time to sleep. But her feet, hands, and body began to jerk beyond her control. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Twenty-four hours in a day.

Black railway tracks. Scenery flying past. A phone, a cup of hot water, sunflower seeds on the sill of the second-class carriage. Several children crying and raging at the elderly. Several families playing PAW Patrol aloud. Everyone who is awake watching psychic morphine. The restless person, trapped in seat B, is tapping every button on her screen that can be tapped, browsing the top comments and pop-ups she is fed. One thing connects to the next. One moment becomes a springboard into another. Where was she going again?