《One Egg, Thirty Million》
The weight of a single egg is 3.5 micrograms. The weight of thirty million in cash is 1.8 tons.
Xiao Tiantian brought this up with me first in Shanghai at Lujiazui. I took it as a joke at the time. Later, she flew to Shenzhen Shekou. Over the phone, she opened with the latter—what she wanted—while pledging the former. Egg retrieval, surrogacy by agreement, and the child landing in 2027—if she still had time, she could even be born under the Year of the Horse, something she herself brought up. When we reached the entrance to the agency, she dropped one line: “If the money isn’t in place, I won’t cross this threshold.”
I booked an entire floor in a Seaview, large-flat apartment in Shekou—thirty days for $700,000, just to have some peace and quiet. She stayed for seven days, then left as suddenly as she arrived, booking a ticket to Tokyo.
With more than twenty days left, the cleaning lady came in as usual every day—replacing towels, wiping the countertops, tucking in the corners of the bedsheets, then closing the door and leaving. The whole floor was finished in a bit over two hours. My assistant happened to run into her once and asked, “Since everyone’s gone, what are you still cleaning for?” The lady said, “The system has it registered—the tenant is still here.”
A sea-side Versailles, with the main character pulled out. I suddenly understood Xiao Tiantian—she likes it just like this: because she empties a place, there’s nothing left, no stories remain.
Hanging in the same empty house was also that business jet parked at Bao’an Airport, with the crew reporting every day as normal. After that phone call in the seventh night, no one ever saw her again.
In the crypto world over these years: during bull markets, no one cried; during bear markets, no one cried. Even when someone backstabbed you, you still didn’t cry. I didn’t cry either—I was waiting for the moment I would.
The weight of a single egg is 3.5 micrograms. The weight of thirty million in cash is 1.8 tons.
Xiao Tiantian brought this up with me first in Shanghai at Lujiazui. I took it as a joke at the time. Later, she flew to Shenzhen Shekou. Over the phone, she opened with the latter—what she wanted—while pledging the former. Egg retrieval, surrogacy by agreement, and the child landing in 2027—if she still had time, she could even be born under the Year of the Horse, something she herself brought up. When we reached the entrance to the agency, she dropped one line: “If the money isn’t in place, I won’t cross this threshold.”
I booked an entire floor in a Seaview, large-flat apartment in Shekou—thirty days for $700,000, just to have some peace and quiet. She stayed for seven days, then left as suddenly as she arrived, booking a ticket to Tokyo.
With more than twenty days left, the cleaning lady came in as usual every day—replacing towels, wiping the countertops, tucking in the corners of the bedsheets, then closing the door and leaving. The whole floor was finished in a bit over two hours. My assistant happened to run into her once and asked, “Since everyone’s gone, what are you still cleaning for?” The lady said, “The system has it registered—the tenant is still here.”
A sea-side Versailles, with the main character pulled out. I suddenly understood Xiao Tiantian—she likes it just like this: because she empties a place, there’s nothing left, no stories remain.
Hanging in the same empty house was also that business jet parked at Bao’an Airport, with the crew reporting every day as normal. After that phone call in the seventh night, no one ever saw her again.
In the crypto world over these years: during bull markets, no one cried; during bear markets, no one cried. Even when someone backstabbed you, you still didn’t cry. I didn’t cry either—I was waiting for the moment I would.
