As a child, the narrator tells us, his mother took him to watch the New Year's Eve fireworks display. The doctor told him that his mother has given lip to the surgery and that he has to pretend that he doesn't know about it. The painting that the narrator sees in the window is the work of Lin Feng, a friend of his mother's. The narrator says that the painting reminds him of lintil, a symbol of death, and that death exists not as an opposite but as part of life.