I once cried. This year, when I came home for the holidays, I found that I was eager to return to my apartment, where I knew which screw on the twin-size bed was loose. One night, on that bed that no longer squeaked, my mind was filled with clips of text messages, papers, and people’s faces. All of them were calling me to look at them. But the only thing I could hear was the low hum of the refrigerator.

I tried to find something that could comfort me. The people I like? He was the main part of the clips. Papers? I could not think of anything that might drive me to get up immediately to revise them. Mom and Dad? It seemed okay. I tried.

Dad told me that it was normal to worry about things. My mom was sleeping at the time. When I was a kid, she always said, “Let’s play a game. Whoever falls asleep first is the champion.” I smiled in the night. And I cried out loud.

I was exposed once. I was sitting with a friend and her boyfriend on the metro. They were sitting silently. All of a sudden, she turned to him and said, “Dillie had a dream about her ex-boyfriend last night.” That was something I had told her thirty minutes earlier, when we woke up together, still half-asleep under the same covers.

I kept silent once. During a conversation, a man asked me what my favorite lipstick color was. I shook my head. “I don’t wear makeup often.” He nodded. After ten seconds, he asked, “Are you really a straight woman?”

I was once asked why I insisted on speaking English when there was a group of people, including both Chinese and foreigners. I just smiled.

But the questioner did not give up. “Don’t you have any sense of belonging to this language?”

We choose to stay with something, somewhere, someone. That is belonging. One thing that gives me a sense of belonging is my research. I chose it when there was a so-called “notorious grade-killer course.” I chose it when I was standing at the gate of an international flight with bleary eyes. I choose it as I write this sentence.

The research is about “collusion.”

Collusion is a situation where no one wants to deviate or has a reason to. One of the most debated questions in a collusive case is “intent.” We can find “intent” in judgments where illegal coordination is established. But the most interesting part is that, when we look through the analysis, we find that “intent” is the result inferred from the market environment, conduct, and effects, rather than the starting point.

What can be seen from the outside are traces of choice in the environment. In the market, conspirators can use pricing algorithms to coordinate prices and punish anyone who lowers them.

In daily life, we choose when to pick up the phone, open TikTok, or Instagram. What pops up are advertisements, the same ones we searched for on Google hours ago. Then the content is pushed to us, the same as what our friend sent us minutes ago. We click on lower prices in the ads and respond to our friend, “HAHAHA, I’ve already seen it.” Or we don’t respond at all.

I “like” a post sometimes. Sometimes it is about the author, so I go to their profile and look at other posts. Sometimes I just scroll down and switch from one app to another, and find that the same things appear everywhere. Sometimes I think the content is inspiring, but the comments say, “Don’t be silly. It’s AI-generated.”

What am I looking for when I open an app first thing every morning? What will I see? What can I see?

I don’t know.

There is a button to exit, and a button to move on.