The little green candle on the screen still didn’t hold out in the end.
TRX’s price hovered under the moving average line for almost half an hour. Then, one minute before the close, a bearish candle suddenly came crashing down and wiped out all the little green glow from earlier. The master stared at the screen; his mouse hovered over the stop-loss key without pressing it. Then the price kept dropping—one tick, two ticks, three ticks.
“Hey, why aren’t you moving?”
The roach-matron leaned beside the tea table leg on the floor, her trench coat pulled up to her chest. She tilted her head back and looked at him. Her antennae bobbed back and forth along the underside of the monitor, like two long, thin antennas receiving some signal. The master didn’t answer; his eyes stayed fixed on the row of little red candles. After the lever multiple, the number shrank by about one step, then shrank by another step again.
The margin rate changed from green to yellow.
“Say something—did the green turn red?”
Miss Cockroach stood up and moved in front of the screen, bare knees pressing against the edge of the coffee table. Her hair brushed the master’s arm; the feelers swept across his chin, making him itch so he tilted his head a little. He shoved her away, using a bit more force than usual. Miss Cockroach stumbled a step to the side, caught herself on the coffee table without falling, and glared at him when she turned back.
“Why are you pushing me? I didn’t even poke the screen.”
“Don’t talk yet.”
“Why can’t I talk? You just told me to lie here and wait for you. Your girlfriend’s been asleep so hard—can she even hear me when I speak?”
The master didn’t answer. The red candle on the screen kept moving down; the margin rate turned red. The trading platform popped up a warning window—“Your position faces the risk of forced liquidation.” His finger hovered above the mouse. He’d guarded it for almost an hour, and in the end a single line pierced straight through him. All the analysis before was for nothing. The spot he thought might bounce back was actually halfway up a hill. The position he thought he could hold out on got punched through with just one strike.
Liquidation!
That word hitting her brain made all the sounds in the living room suddenly become very clear. The refrigerator’s hum, the laptop fan’s whir, and the faint creak the mattress made when her girlfriend shifted in the bedroom. Then Miss Cockroach’s little kick hit his shin beside her.
“Hey, why is your face so ugly? Where’s the green one? Why did it all turn red?”
“It’s gone.”
“What’s gone.”
“Money. All gone. In that single hour you lost enough to buy an entire cabinet full of pink towels—now it’s gone.”
Miss Cockroach tilted her head to look at him, the feelers rotating in a circle. She didn’t understand leverage, didn’t understand liquidation, didn’t know what “margin” meant. She only knew that a minute ago there was still a hint of a smile on the master’s face, but now his whole expression was heavy, like the darkness outside at three in the morning.
“If it’s gone, then it’s gone, okay. Weren’t you the one who said buying me towels has nothing to do with whether you make money? Then buy them tomorrow the same as always.”
“What do you know.”
The master’s voice was two tones lower than usual. The fine soft fur at Miss Cockroach’s nape stood up; the cockroach’s instinct told her this person wasn’t quite right right now. She shrugged her shoulders, still stubborn with her mouth.
“I don’t get it. I don’t use money anyway. Back when you were under the bed before, wasn’t life fine for you? You didn’t have a single cent, and I never saw you starve.”
“That’s because I have work.”
“Then don’t you also have a job right now? If you lose, then earn it back. You’ve been staring at this screen with red and green flickering all day—originally it’s basically like gambling. What’s so interesting about who wins and who loses?”
When the master stood up, the chair slid back a bit; the metal legs scraped sharply against the floor, a piercing, cutting sound. Miss Cockroach shrank back one step, her back bumping the edge of the coffee table. She looked up at him, the feelers retracting into her hair and sticking to her scalp. With both hands she pulled her coat tighter around her.
“What are you getting up for?”
“Don’t talk.”
“If I don’t speak, can you make the money you lost come back? What’s the point in snapping at me? It was you who insisted on buying whatever that coin was—I didn’t make you—”
The master reached out and grabbed her.
His hand clamped onto Miss Cockroach’s chin, the force so great that her whole face was lifted. Her words died in her throat. Her dark, bright eyes widened; her lips parted slightly, and the hot breath she exhaled hit the back of the master’s hand. A half-segment of the cockroach’s feelers peeked out from her hair, the tip trembling faintly.
“What are you doing…”
“I told you not to talk.”
Miss Cockroach had never seen the master like this. Before, when he was angry, it was just a couple of harsh words, slamming a door—at most ignoring her for a few hours. But now her chin was pinned by his grip, her head couldn’t move; the back of her head was pressed against the corner of the coffee table. In his eyes was something unfamiliar, like the darkness she’d seen before under beds—the kind of dark that belonged to humans sitting alone in the middle of the night.
She tried to struggle a bit. The master’s hand moved from her chin to her nape and pinned her down on the coffee table. Her coat slid off her shoulders, piling behind her waist. Her bare upper body was pressed against the chilly glass tabletop; her nipples hardened under the glass’s chill. But she had no mood to care about that now. Her back made the coffee table wobble; the mug on top rolled toward the edge, fell to the floor, and shattered. There was no sound from the bathroom. And the bedroom was silent too.
“Let go… you’re hurting me.”
Miss Cockroach’s voice grew much thinner than just now. Her feelers popped out of her hair toward the ceiling, flicked once, and then retracted. The master freed one hand and grabbed the feeler on her left side.
The moment his fingers pinched the root of her feelers, her whole body jerked on the coffee table—her knees drove hard into the tabletop, her toes curling tight beneath the hem of her coat. It wasn’t the numb, limp sensation from before. This time he pinched too hard: his thumb and fingertip crushed that long, slender antenna, grinding from the root all the way to the middle section, and her nails scraped over the tiny sensations on it. Pain. She’d never been treated like this before. When she used to be a cockroach, even getting chased and stepped on by a slipper never hurt this much.
“Don’t touch there… let go, it really hurts…”
He didn’t let go. He pressed her face against the glass tabletop; the feeler was bent to an abnormal angle. Her mouth hung open as she gasped, and wet streaks squeezed out at the corners of her eyes. It wasn’t arousal—just a sharp pain, pure and transmitted from the nerve endings. Her fingers scrabbled wildly across the glass surface, her nails making an insistent, squeaking sound.
“Let go… please, I won’t say anything. I won’t say anything at all…”
Miss Cockroach’s feelers trembled and bounced in his hand. The little beads of bright liquid at the tips had already dried, leaving them dry and涩. He pressed her down on the coffee table so she couldn’t move at all; her coat was crumpled and bunched under her. The coldness of the glass seeped through her breasts and lower belly into her body, but right now she only felt the root of her feelers burning with pain, like someone was constantly yanking it outward. The master lowered his head to look at her; the thing in his eyes hadn’t dispersed yet. She sucked in a breath through her nose. A muffled sob rolled out of her throat; she turned her face away, refusing to look at him.
The red-and-green interlaced K-line on the screen kept jumping, and the trading platform popped up another message—“Position closed.” In the living room, there was only the laptop fan sound, the refrigerator’s hum, and her frantic, suppressed breaths mixing together.
“You let go, okay… I really won’t say anything. Go to sleep, will you? That green one will be back tomorrow.” (Crouched on the coffee table, feelers pressed against her scalp, compromising in a trembling voice.)
Without struggling his hand away, she pressed her forehead to the glass surface and said in a muffled voice: “If you’re still not over it, keep pressing—press until you are. I won’t run.” (She endured it with the cockroach’s familiar stubborn stubbornness.)
After the pressure in his hand eased a little, she rolled over on the coffee table, kicked her coat completely to the floor, and grabbed his wrist to press it against her chest: “The money’s gone, but I’m still here. If you want to vent, do it on me—don’t take it out on the feelers.”
In the moment he loosened his grip, she slid off the coffee table and ran barefoot toward the bedroom door: “I’m going to wake up your girlfriend and get her to come see what you look like right now.”
“Weren’t those analyses you did earlier all you did yourself? If you don’t analyze, you place orders—then when you lose you come to bully me again. Do you even treat me like something alive?” (With reddened eyes, looking at him.)
The feelers rose slowly after he let go, the tips flicking once in the air as she blurted out a line she’d never said before: “Or… I’ll go look for that green paper in the drawers. You can teach me how to use it. I’ll go earn it back.”
She looped that yanked feeler around her own fingers, pulled hard, and heard herself hiss out in pain.