“Linlin, you know you’re twenty-five. Girls were married half your age just a few hundred years ago! Now look at you, what’ve you got?”

“Ma, I understand your concern. But I am currently in a steady relationship, and I–”

“You got a fever?” Ma put a hand to Linlin’s forehead. “Why you talking in this voice, ah? And your makeup, I told you so many times to not follow these trends and wear those whatever masks people are talking about. You don’t even have the same nose as me now, you’ve got so much paint.”

“No, Ma, it’s not just a trend.” Linlin smiled, a practiced curve to her lips.

“You see, HP Cosmetics has always believed that showing your bare skin is like wearing your heart on your sleeve; changing masks regularly is but a form of defence, a way to protect your heart.” Linlin’s voice still held inflections, but they were trained, robotic. Her mother looked on in horror as a crack grew at her daughter’s temple.

“HP is an acronym for Huà Pí: painted skin. There goes a story: an evil spirit painted onto its skin a beautiful woman and used the disguise to trick and kill a scholar. After a Taoist priest exorcized the spirit, the wife of the scholar begged him to save her husband. It’s too late, he told her. The only person who can save him is the beggar on the street. So the wife found the beggar, who mocked her and had her swallow his spit; but she endured it all for her husband, whom she loved still. When the beggar did nothing else, she thought all hope lost, but the spit burst from her throat and transformed into her husband’s heart – the one eaten by the spirit.”

“To not become the husband with his fickle, worthless heart seized and spat out, to not become the wife whose faithful heart was taken by an unfaithful husband, to not become,” The corners of her lips tugged up in a cheerless twist, yet her eyes remain dazed, “the child, eager to please, ready to rip out her young heart for her mother’s old dreams, we all have to become the spirit with painted skin.” Her mother blanched, yet Linlin continued reciting, blind to her mother’s discomfort. “Do not let your heart be seen. Do not let your skin be taken.”

“After all…” Linlin turned fractionally, unfocused eyes staring straight past her mother. Ink pooled in her pupils. “Your skin is your heart; your mask is your armor.”

Do not let your mask touch your eyes, Linlin.

Ink drifted into the whites of her eyes. The porcelain mask fractured across her left cheek, the blush there now that of a wilting peony desperate to recover its glory.