Jiang Yun continued, "Eventually, I realized my father’s life is what matters most. Money can be earned back, and I’m still young—there’ll be plenty of opportunities. But my dad only has one life. Five years is five years, right? Who knows, maybe his condition won’t worsen. Besides, with how fast technology and medicine are advancing—people can even live on Mars now—who’s to say they won’t develop a breakthrough treatment in five years? Maybe my dad still has a chance. Two days ago, I came back to list the house with an agent, planning to sell it cheap for a quick deal."
"And what did Wu Zhuo say? She hasn’t bought her own place yet, has she? If the house is sold, will the two of you rent together? Didn’t rents just skyrocket?"
"I was about to discuss it with her, but as soon as I got home, I could tell something was off."
The group immediately sensed the turning point.
"Don’t tell me you caught her in bed with someone?"
Jiang Yun chuckled. "No way. Wu Zhuo isn’t that stupid—she even came to pick me up herself."
"Then…?"
"The problem was with the trash bag."
The others teased, "You didn’t actually dig through the trash for evidence, did you?"
"Of course not. I didn’t even have to. Even without rummaging, I found proof of her infidelity." Jiang Yun dropped a line that left everyone stunned. "The trash bag was tied in a square knot."
The group: "What the hell?"
"Wu Zhuo probably didn’t even realize it herself. She runs a flower shop, so she’s used to tying ribbons into bows. Our trash bags are the drawstring kind, and she always ties them in a bow. But this time, when I came back, the drawstring was knotted in a cross."
"Wait…"
"Clearly, someone else tied it." Jiang Yun pinched the bridge of her nose, her voice growing quieter. "Later, I confronted Wu Zhuo directly. At first, she denied it, but then I told her, ‘We’re not young anymore—we’re in our mid-thirties. If you’ve fallen for someone else, just say so. Why drag it out? A few more years, and we’ll be too old to start over. And if you don’t love me anymore, what’s the point of forcing it? It’s just pathetic.’"
"And then?"
"Then she admitted it. I didn’t press for details—I didn’t want to know. I told her to move out. Today." Jiang Yun sighed.
"I still remember when same-sex marriage was legalized—we stayed up all night. I’ll never forget how we drove from our rented place in the suburbs into the city before dawn. The sun hadn’t even risen yet. We blasted our favorite songs, sang until we were drenched in sweat and hoarse, so happy.
"Back then, all I could think was, ‘We can finally be together openly, legally, for the rest of our lives. No one can tear us apart.’ Who’d have thought that just ten years in, she’d change her mind? No one had to tear us apart—we fell apart on our own."
Xu Youyuan watched Jiang Yun and noticed she wasn’t crying.
All six or seven people in the room noticed.
"Strange, isn’t it? I thought I’d be devastated," Jiang Yun said. "And I am sad. But last night, while Wu Zhuo was packing to leave, I got a call from the real estate agent. They said the housing market is terrible right now—new policies keep rolling out to control prices, and buyers are holding off. Transactions are plummeting. To stand a chance, I’d have to slash the price by another 500,000 yuan. I argued with the agent for a while, and by the time I hung up, Wu Zhuo was already gone.
"I was late today because I met with the agent. My mind is completely occupied with selling the house and saving my dad—there’s no room for anything else." Jiang Yun sounded almost dazed. "A decade-long relationship just ended, and I don’t even have time to grieve. All I care about are the immediate, practical things in life. Why waste energy on what can’t be fixed? I’m only doing what’s useful now. I don’t know how you all feel, but at this point, I’ve become ruthlessly pragmatic."
Someone muttered, "Sounds a lot like what Youyuan went through recently…"
Jiang Yun and Xu Youyuan, who had been silent until then, exchanged a glance. Xu Youyuan grinned.
"Nah, she didn’t have it as bad as me. My disaster was like getting hit by a meteor—divinely ordained."
Jiang Yun’s eyes, which had been reddening, crinkled with laughter at that.
"See? Even Birdie’s still hanging in there. You’ll be fine," Shi Ye said, using Xu Youyuan’s nickname to comfort Jiang Yun.
Xu Youyuan protested, "Hey, hey! Since when am I the go-to cautionary tale? Do any of you have a conscience?"
The somber mood lightened a little thanks to Xu Youyuan’s teasing.
The fabled crises of middle age were beginning to surface—this was perhaps just the tip of the iceberg. The real hardships, the ultimate fears of aging, sickness, and death, still lay ahead.
Someone tried to steer the conversation toward lighter topics. "Let’s not drown in misery every time we meet. It’s suffocating."
But the moment they opened their mouths, the same old grievances spilled out.
At thirty, they hadn’t felt it yet. Back then, they’d dismissed "early aging" and "midlife crisis" as melodramatic.
Two years later, reality hit hard.
No more all-nighters, no more drinking—work the next day demanded sharp focus. Annoying bosses, difficult coworkers—every ounce of energy had to be conserved.
Quitting smoking, once thought impossible, happened effortlessly after a night of coughing half to death. The cravings were rare, easy to ignore. The only noticeable change? The scale creeping upward.
But even without quitting, their weight had been climbing year after year—once up, it never really came back down.
Everyone except Gan lamented their slowing metabolism. In the past, no matter how tan they got, their skin would eventually lighten. No matter how late they stayed up, they could reset their sleep schedule. Not anymore. A tan now was permanent, stubborn even after three winters.
One sleepless night, and they’d feel like death.
One indulgent meal, and they’d gain a pound—even if they skipped the next.
Hair fell out in clumps. Clothing sizes inched up. New fine lines appeared daily. The money they’d worked so hard for vanished into skincare, a painful but necessary sacrifice.
Every month, another menstrual horror story. One hadn’t had hers in three months, her face bloated. Another bled nonstop for three months, "like a river of blood."
Work was endless. Overtime was the norm—no compensation, no time off. Taking annual leave required favors, lest they earn the boss’s glare or coworkers’ scorn.
New aches emerged monthly—a twisted muscle here, a strained tendon there. Wake up with a crick in the neck, spend a week unable to turn their head. Just as they’d recovered, a business trip would leave them with agonizing knee synovitis.
Allergies piled up—spring became unbearable. Doctors, Western and traditional alike, offered no answers. "Why is this happening? I eat well, live normally. I never had these problems before."
The doctor smiled and said, "As age changes, so does the body. Illnesses you never had before might appear now—your immunity isn’t the same anymore."
After turning thirty, the word "anxiety" looms over your head or etches itself into your heart, impossible to ignore.
Many troubles emerge and, shockingly, refuse to vanish. They aren’t the kind you can solve by sleeping it off or "resetting" your body with a good night’s rest.
What’s even more terrifying is facing exhaustion, declining health, or emotional crises while everyone around you is still scrambling upward. The social and economic structures are evolving at breakneck speed, leaving no room to pause.
Thirty is a watershed moment in another sense, too.
You must have built something by now. You must have achieved some measure of success. There’s no more room for drifting aimlessly—there simply isn’t enough time to experiment, let alone make mistakes, because there’s no time left to correct them.
At this stage of life, you must know where your path leads. After all, your peers have already sprinted far ahead on their own journeys.
If you don’t run—if you don’t push yourself to the limit—the next wave will be right behind you, ready to crush you in an instant.
Being replaced happens in a single moment of weakness.
Women and men no longer fight each other for "equality" because they’ve found a new rival: artificial intelligence.
AI, which began its widespread adoption five years ago, is rapidly displacing humans from their roles. Government agencies and public institutions were the first to replace simple, repetitive jobs. Then, in an astonishingly short time, AI infiltrated most industries and social strata, spreading even faster than the internet did at the beginning of the century.
Mass unemployment naturally led to severe financial and social crises. Joblessness soared, marriage rates plummeted, divorce rates exploded, small and medium-sized businesses struggled to survive, and homelessness surged. Arson, robberies, and other crimes became rampant.
Prisons overflowed, police forces were stretched thin, and every time you turned on the TV, all you saw was unrest across the country. The announcements in subway stations and train terminals only deepened the collective dread.
The government implemented countless measures to mitigate the damage, but to little effect.
Some called it a new phase of human civilization, a revival of natural selection. The "inferior"—those deemed lazy, unskilled, or unable to contribute meaningfully to society—were being weeded out to make room for the "new humans" of value on an overpopulated Earth. The current chaos, they argued, was just the inevitable growing pains of progress.
Many agreed with this view. Just as many vehemently opposed it.
Yet one thing was undeniable: the pressure to survive had intensified drastically. It magnified the horrors of a midlife crisis. One misstep could send you tumbling into the grimy, lawless underbelly of society, branding you as one of the "inferior."
Under such overwhelming stress, escapism fueled another explosive boom in the gaming and entertainment industries. The launch of the first fully immersive holographic games, in particular, made developers fortunes overnight.
Xu Youyuan had dedicated the prime of her youth to SQUALL, the industry’s reigning titan. She was a legendary game designer, the mastermind behind the groundbreaking sandbox game *Reshape the Universe*. For 21 consecutive months, it dominated GMS—the largest professional gaming platform—topping both revenue and active users, a record no other game had since matched.
The meteoric success of *Reshape the Universe* catapulted the young Xu Youyuan to fame and became her proudest achievement.
