This chapter's epigraph comes from a poem by the famous American poet William Faulkner, "A Small Tragedy," in which he describes a young woman who has a congenital heart disease and is dying. The young woman begs her friend, a classmate named Tingyue, to come to her aid. She tells him that she is married to a duan man, and that she wants to divorce him, but that she fears that if she makes him angry, he will kill her. She begs him not to leave her alone, and he agrees.