Wandering Zhou made an appointment with the doctor for them to return three days later to have the breast surgery. After the two left the clinic, Wandering Zhou gazed at Song Gang delightedly and said, "If you really did become a woman, I'd marry you, and I'd love you like the male leads in Korean soaps love their women. I'd love you like life itself."
Song Gang, who usually never cursed, glared at Wandering Zhou with an ashen face and screamed, "Go fuck yourself!"
Then, one drizzly morning, Song Gang followed behind Wandering Zhou as they left their old, rundown hotel and walked out into the wet street. Zhou waved at the taxis that drove by, and Song Gang gazed out at the misty ocean. He could hear the cries of the seagulls but couldn't see them. Three hours later he was lying on the operating table as the doctor drew two purple ovals on his chest. He closed his eyes under the spotlight, and when he received the full-body anesthesia, a single seagull suddenly appeared in his mind's eye, soaring in the dense fog over the ocean, but he couldn't hear the gull's cry.
Although the doctor told Wandering Zhou that men's and women's chests have certain anatomical and physiological differences and therefore Song Gang's operation would be more complicated than a standard breast enhancement, the operation was nevertheless very successful, and within two hours it was all finished. Song Gang stayed in the hospital for observation, and when he left the next day it was still drizzling. He endured the pain of the incisions under his armpits as he and Wandering Zhou took a taxi back to the little hotel by the ocean. When he got out of the taxi, as Zhou was paying the driver, Song Gang once again gazed spellbound at the misty ocean, but nothing was there — neither gull cries nor the gulls themselves.
Song Gang spent six days recuperating in the hotel, during which time it drizzled continuously. The bra-wearing hunk on the billboard flickered in and out of view in the rain. Every time Song Gang saw the image he felt a rush of shame, as if the man in the billboard were himself. Wandering Zhou meticulously looked after Song Gang. Every day he would conscientiously ask what kind of food he wanted to eat, then would go out to several nearby restaurants, copy out their menus, and take them back to Song Gang, telling him to order whatever he wanted. Song Gang would always select only the cheapest dishes. Wandering Zhou would then call the restaurant on the phone and ask them to deliver to the hotel room. On the phone, Wandering Zhou would always roar vigorously, "Our Boss Song is tired of eating abalone and shark fin, so please send us some tofu and vegetables."
Song Gang thus became Boss Song, a Boss Song with a pair of women's breasts. After Song Gang had his stitches removed, Wandering Zhou happily went out to buy him a bra. He told Song Gang that this was a D-cup bra, and those able to wear a D cup were genuine Boobs Queens. Then he told Song Gang ingratiatingly, "You are also a Boobs Queen."
Song Gang saw that Wandering Zhou had bought him a red bra just like the one on the billboard. He took it and threw it to the floor. Wandering Zhou picked it up and said, "The red one is so good, it really catches the eye."
Song Gang said, "Fuck your mother!"
"I'll go exchange it immediately," Wandering Zhou replied. "Song Gang, I know that you are a low-key person, so I'll go exchange it for a white one right away."
Five days later the rain finally stopped and the sun came out. Song Gang wore a white bra under his shirt, and he and Wandering Zhou took a ferry to Hainan Island. Having sold so little Boobs cream in more than seven months wandering through Canton, Wandering Zhou had decided that Canton was an inauspicious place and resolved to travel to Hainan Island to make a new beginning. With his new fake breasts, Song Gang would often lose his balance while walking, as his body would pitch forward, to the point that he gradually became hunchbacked. When Song Gang climbed aboard the ferry, he stood on the deck gripping the railing, feeling the weight of his fake breasts. He gazed out at the Canton coast, feeling empty inside and not knowing what the future would bring. Amid the sounds of the waves and the rays of the sun, between the sky and the ocean, he saw a seagull soaring and heard its cries. He thought of Lin Hong's exhortations over the phone that he return home immediately. As the waves jostled the ferry, and with the breeze blowing through his hair, he began to hear Lin Hong's exhortations in the seagull's cries. As they gradually faded away Song Gang couldn't help weeping, out of a sense of desolation. It had already been a year since he left home. When he left Liu Town, he imagined that he would be home by now, but instead he was traveling farther and farther away.
On Hainan Island, Wandering Zhou and Song Gang once again began selling their bust-enhancing cream. As they had done while selling artificial hymens in Liu Town a year earlier, the two stood on the street surrounded by men and women. Song Gang stood there like a model, without saying a word — his shirt unbuttoned, revealing his white bra and D-cup breasts. Wandering Zhou kept wagging his tongue, tirelessly singing the praises of their Boobs cream, saying that it was made up of 35 percent natural vitamins and 65 percent genetically engineered human growth hormone. The growth agent could make breasts mature X times over the course of just a few days, X times faster than weeds. The vitamins not only helped make the breasts supple but also kept the skin soft and tender, and furthermore, "it doesn't contain any steroids and is completely safe and reliable."
When Wandering Zhou finished introducing the bust-enhancing cream, he then turned to Song Gangs breasts. He introduced Song Gang to the men and women crowded around them as Boss Song. Wandering Zhou expounded on how, in the city, breast-enlargement creams were as plentiful as the hairs on a cow, but truly effective ones were as rare as a single hair out of every nine cows. Therefore, in order to determine whether or not the cream was truly effective, Boss Song used some himself, never expecting that two months later … Wandering Zhou then pointed to Song Gangs chest and said, "As a result, our Boss Song now no longer has a mans strapping build but, rather, the supple and graceful figure of a young woman."
The crowds started laughing uncontrollably, crowding around and staring at Song Gang curiously as though he were an alien. As Song Gang blushed with embarrassment, a petite young woman pinched his nipples. Song Gang angrily swatted her hand away, and one of the men reprimanded her, saying, "Where do you get off, thinking that you can fondle a mans sexual organs?"
"You call this a sexual organ?" the woman asked in surprise.
"As long as it is a breast and fondling it can bring on an orgasm, then it is a sexual organ." The man pointed at the woman's petite breasts and added, "I assume you consider these to be sexual organs, don't you?"
As he was speaking the man also pinched Song Gang's nipples, and Song Gang exploded. He grabbed the man's hand and pushed it away. The women in the crowd were pleased, saying that anyone with such big breasts must be considered a woman. Therefore, they collectively criticized that man, saying, "Who do you think you are, fondling a woman's breasts like that?"
"Is he a woman?" the man asked in surprise.
"If she weren't a woman, how could she have such big breasts?" the women all replied in unison.
"Regardless of whether you're a man or a woman" — Wandering Zhou lifted his Boobs bust-enhancing cream high in the air—"the important thing is that whoever uses this will become a modern-day Queen Boobs."