$PI You said it would rise in two days, and I waited—until more than a year went by. I counted the days in the candlestick chart, counting until my account fell asleep. Those red-and-green lines, so exactly like the way my mood would swing back and forth again and again—thinking that once it hit the bottom it should rebound, only to find there was still a basement.

One year ago, that same night, the moonlight was just right, and you crowded into the square saying, "Wait a little longer; before dawn, the darkness is the thickest." I believed you. Only later did I understand: some darkness isn’t the prelude to dawn—it’s just the night working overtime.

Over this past year, I learned to read MACD, KDJ, Bollinger Bands, and I learned to refresh the US stock market at 3 a.m.; I learned to dress up "long-term holding" with a decent translation into "being trapped." I became half an analyst, but I lost the version of myself who was willing to believe in "two days."

The numbers in my account rise and fall like a one-person show with no audience. Sometimes I’m exhilarated, sometimes I’m frustrated, sometimes I’m numb. Until one day, I realized I was no longer expecting the price to rise—not because I’d come to terms with it, but because waiting had worn me out.

Now when I look at this curve again, it’s like the 80th chapter of Journey to the West—Trapless Cave at the Void-Empty Mountain. I’ve already forgotten why I bought it in the first place. Maybe what I was waiting for was never profit, but an answer: among those "two days" I bet on, and the "more than a year" that drifted away for nothing—which one is the real market of life?