“After 30 years I was back in Macau, where I had spent my childhood. A little more than a week before, in Lisbon, I had received an e-mail from a friend who I had not seen for ages. I knew that Candy had gone to Asia, attracted by its exoticism, or an easier life, I don’t know which… In any case, I had lost touch with her. In her e-mail, she said that she’d yet again got involved with the wrong sort of men, but now there really was going to be trouble: a very good friend of hers had been killed in a quite harmless game of paintball. She thought she might be the next victim and that I was the only person she could still trust. She begged me to come to Macao where, to quote, ‘weird and disturbing’ things were going on. Tired after the long flight, I approached Macao on a jetfoil ferry that brought back memories of the happiest time of my life.” João Rui Guerra da Mata