From 2019 to 2023, she continuously dreamt about her teeth falling out. In her dreams, her tongue pushed against her teeth with uncontrollable force. One, two, three, she murmured the mantra, realizing for the first time that gums could resemble soil so much and teeth could resemble roots. At the moment of loss, a mushroom cloud of panic exploded in her heart. After enduring the indescribable obsession brought by the repetitive force, she awoke as if from a dream, realizing she had lost a tooth—can someone awaken as if from a dream within a dream? An unwarranted force made her willingly, and with her own efforts, facilitate this loss. In the frequently replayed scenes, she lost count of how many teeth she had lost. When she was young, her mother told her, "Your teeth are very straight, you don't need braces." She peeled back her lips and inspected them, thinking her mother wasn't wrong. Her lips were not attractive, shaped like two meandering banana leaves. From time to time she felt them uncontrollably drooping, trembling, on the verge of falling. Occasionally she holds half of a lip in her teeth for long periods of time, trying to train for the "cherry mouth" favored by Asian girls. This ultimately didn't work. Her banana leaves accompanied her into adulthood, becoming the most prominent area in the geographic composition of her face. Her mother always half-jokingly commented on her lips being too wide and thick, while simultaneously praising her teeth. Once, while dining out, a waitress suddenly told her, "You look really nice when you smile with your teeth, completely different from when you're not smiling." Yes, she was somewhat aware that her face often displayed an eternally unchanged, rippling landscape—stern, tense, unpleasant. She embodied the most stereotypical physical traits of an Asian girl: anxious expression, soft limbs, lacking muscle. Her teeth were the toughest part of her body.
She began to consciously pay attention to her teeth. Unbearable vulnerability and sentimentality run through the vast majority of her life's history. She prayed for her heart to be as stout as her teeth. She used her tongue to caress and outline the shape of them, imagining this was the most dreamlike and combative metaphor in her fate. Moreover, they hadn't been meticulously maintained or corrected—they were naturally grown magical vegetation. Tracing her teeth with her tongue rhythmically became her new habit. She couldn't tell if she was using a strong muscle to shape her teeth or if her teeth were training her tongue. Was this gymnastics? she wondered. But teeth clearly couldn't move. They sat still on their thrones, waiting for another muscle to obey and surrender to them, incorporating the shape of the mouth into their training regimen. One-two-three-four, two-two-three-four, the mantra ticked in her heart like a stopwatch, pounding. Her last baby tooth fell into a trash can at Hong Kong Disneyland. She loathed the ghastly daylight and raucous crowds of the amusement park. Dizzy and bewildered, as she walked along with her cousin, she felt the last connection between her baby tooth and gums vibrate, and then break as if she had struck a brass bell once. She spat it out with her tongue, saliva mixed with blood like onyx. She showed it to her cousin in silence for a moment, then threw it in the trash. After her teeth's maturation was completed in a land of cartoon merchandise, she believed in the strength of her new teeth, like armor. Until one day—a day in college, some distance from her youth—a friend, scrutinizing the mirror, asked her, "Do you think my bite is misaligned?" She asked her friend what misalignment meant. Inevitably, she examined her teeth in the mirror the same way and was horrified to find her condition even worse. The more she researched, the more she was startled and disheartened by the terminology humans had invented for teeth. Sharp edges and neat directions turned out not to constitute total robustness. It also included: smooth enamel, aligned dental midlines, level gums, monthly dentist visits, and insurance bills. From then on, she drifted into anxious and violent dreams. She suspected it was a desire for self-destruction that rhythmically ambushed her teeth in her dreams. She was seething with rage at yet another failure. There is a Chinese idiom that literally means that when the lips die, the teeth feel the cold. She sneered thinking she would kill the teeth before the lips aged. One-two-three-four, two-two-three-four, the force of destruction fascinated her, a new war cry. The teeth too went into a debilitating melancholy, as did her lips, her hair, her heart, her extremities. She shed tears over it.
In the third season of 2023, her dreams about her teeth falling out stopped after she no longer drank carbonated beverages three times a day.
从2019年到2023年，她持续做牙齿脱落的梦。梦里，舌头以不受控制的力道推动牙齿。一，二，三，她默念口号，她从不知道牙龈可以这么像土壤而牙齿可以这么像根茎。在掉落的瞬间，她心中猛然炸起一朵惊惶的蘑菇云。度过重复的力道带来的不可名状的痴迷之后，她如梦初醒般意识到她失去了一颗牙齿——在梦里可以如梦初醒吗？无缘由的力量支使她甘之如饴地，亲手促成了这项失去。在频繁反复播放的镜头片段里，她忘记计算自己失去了多少颗牙齿。小时候，妈妈告诉她：“你的牙齿很整齐，不需要戴牙套了。”她扒开嘴唇端详，觉得妈妈说的不无道理。她的嘴唇并不好看，形状宛如两片蜿蜒的芭蕉叶，她时常感到它们不受控制地垂下，战战兢兢，摇摇欲坠。有时她长时间地用牙齿咬住半片唇肉，试图锻炼出亚洲女孩所青睐的“樱桃一般的小嘴”。这最终没有起效。她的芭蕉叶们伴随着她到了成年，是她脸部的地理构成中最显眼的一片区域。妈妈总是半真半假地评价她的嘴唇，太宽太厚，与此同时赞许她的牙齿。有一次，她在外面用餐，服务员小姐忽然对她说，你露出牙齿笑的时候真好看，和不笑的时候完全不一样。是了，她大概知道自己脸部呈现一种亘古不变的，波澜不惊的景观，肃杀，警惕，不讨人喜欢。她拥有亚洲女孩最刻板的身体印象，神情局促，四肢柔软，缺乏肌肉。牙齿是她身上最强健的部分。
她开始有意地注意到她的牙齿。不堪一击的脆弱和多愁善感贯穿于她人生的绝大部分历史。她祈祷自己的心能和牙齿一样坚硬。用舌头抚摸和描绘牙齿的形状，畅想这是她命运中最梦幻，最战意凛然的一个隐喻。况且，它们没有经过精心的保养和修正，是天然生长出来的魔法植被。有节律地用舌头描摹牙齿成了她的新习惯，她分不清这是在用一块强壮的肌肉塑形牙齿，还是反过来用牙齿教导舌头。这是体操吗？她想。可是牙齿分明没有动弹的能力。它们静置在王座上等待另一块肌肉服从它们，向它们投诚；连同口腔的形状也纳入了它们的训练计划。一二三四，二二三四的口号在她心中滴答滴答，如同秒表，砰砰作响。她的最后一颗乳齿，坠落在香港迪士尼乐园的垃圾桶。她厌恶游乐园惨白的日光和聒噪的人群。眩晕而茫然地随着表妹走在路上时，她感到乳齿和牙龈的最后一根连接像敲了一次铜钟似的，震了一下然后断裂了。她用舌头顶着牙齿吐出来，唾液混合着玛瑙般的血丝。她默默无言地给表妹展示了一会儿，然后扔进了垃圾桶。在她牙齿的成熟完成于一个滑稽的卡通商品构成的谎言之地后，她相信了自己新牙齿的强健，如同盔甲。直到有一天——大约是大学里的某一天，这已经离她的少年期已有距离——她的朋友端详着镜子，问她，你觉不觉得我的牙齿咬合不正？她问了朋友咬合不正是什么意思。她不可避免地也在镜子里用同样的眼光审视自己的牙齿，惊恐地发现她分明情况比朋友还更加糟糕。她越搜索越为人类发明的牙齿术语感到惊心动魄，失魂落魄。锋利的边缘线和整洁的生长方向原来并不构成全然的强健。强健还包括：光滑的牙釉质，对齐的牙齿中线，水平的牙龈，月度牙医会面，医疗保险账单。从此以后，她驶向了焦躁和暴力的梦境。她怀疑是自毁的欲望控制她在梦里一下又一下，有节律地偷袭牙齿。她对又一次的失败怒火中烧。有一个中国成语，字面意思是嘴唇死亡了，牙齿就会感到寒冷。她冷笑着想她会在嘴唇衰老前先杀死牙齿。一二三四，二二三四，摧毁的力道令她痴迷，是新的战争号角。牙齿也进入了一种衰弱的忧郁中，如同她的嘴唇，头发，心脏，四肢百骸。她为此掉下眼泪来。
2023年的第三个季节，她关于牙齿脱落的梦境停止于她不再以一天三次的频率饮用碳酸饮料之后。