We’re still on A-Di in this section. It surprises me a bit, taking the movie scene by scene, just how much of the middle portion of the film concerns him — this is three of the last four segments.

It starts with another in-car conversation. NJ is giving A-Di a ride home and has some obvious questions: Have you thought of a name yet? Just how bad is the horoscope? Why was Yunyun there? We see the backs of their heads throughout this conversation.

I wrote earlier that maybe these scenes were intended to be moments where characters bare their souls — but A-Di presents a special challenge for that. He’s so reflexively dishonest that he cannot be truthful even when the stakes are low.

So he starts with a lame excuse — it was a setup. But NJ sees right through it. He asks “you haven’t been seeing her, have you?” A-Di says no, it’s just that Xiao-Yan has been pregnant and … he was helping Yunyun out. Out of courtesy.

This makes NJ giggle … and it’s hilarious to experience, because he can’t stop once he begins.

When they get to A-Di’s house, the doorbell chimes and A-Di says “paging NJ, you have a visitor.” He responds: how courteous. NJ says to A-Di, you are a very lucky guy, you have a nice home and a colorful life.

A-Di tries to convince NJ to stay a little longer, but he declines and tells A-Di to go to sleep. He seems to agree with him and calls it the end to a bad day. As NJ leaves, A-Di takes off his shirt and sees to be in despair, saying aloud “it’s over.”

What happens next is purposefully vague. Xiao-Yan returns home the next morning with another young woman, who is carrying the baby. She takes the baby from her and the woman leaves. Xiao-Yan calls out the mess that A-Di left — his clothes in the middle of the dining room, empty bottles all around.

She still has the baby at this point and she goes looking for him. She hears the bath running. Then she exclaims that she smells gas. Then she panics and starts banging on the bathroom door. We don’t see any of this, the camera has panned into the living room and intends to stay there. And a few second later, we see Xiao-Yan, without the baby, racing into the room, trying to find the phone, but then giving up and heading back to the bathroom.

There, she bangs on the door several times and then makes a very loud crack — perhaps smashing the door in. The camera finally switches to a shot from the hallway, into the bathroom. A-Di is laying on the floor wearing only boxer shorts. For an uncomfortably long time, she yells at him — why did you close the window? Why didn’t you open the window?

We still hear Xiao-Yan wailing and the door chime rings again. We know that some times has passed, because the woman who held the baby earlier — perhaps she’s a part time nanny? — is back in the apartment and answer the door to let NJ in. We can hear Xiao-Yan at this moment saying “I won’t fight with you again.”

When NJ gets into the living room, we see that A-Di is now awake as well. He refuses to admit anything — what did I do? Ask the gas company what happened. And he could be right, I suppose, but the scene is bewildering, it’s hard to know what to make of it.

And then it ends on another strange note —A-Di’s pager goes off, but the message isn’t for him, it’s NJ’s office trying to get in touch with him.

Through all of this chaos, something very important happens to A-Di. He’s just shifted the narrative away from his very uncomfortable (and still undisclosed) affair with Yunyun and becomes an object of protection and pity.

So, add it all up, and NJ is right. A-Di is a lucky guy.