Chi Qingya froze at the corner of the stairs, her throat feeling as though it were stuffed with a wad of cotton soaked in vinegar.
The words she wanted to say and the longing she wanted to express were suddenly trapped, unable to be voiced.
She worried that if she apologized, Su Li wouldn’t even care.
She feared that the relationship between them had become like two parallel lines that would never intersect.
When Su Li turned her head, her eyelashes didn’t even quiver.
The way she looked at Chi Qingya was as if she were looking at moldy wallpaper in a hallway.
Or rather, there was no difference between that gaze and the way one looked at a pile of discarded takeout bags.
That gaze swept over her lightly, passing over the corner of her clothes stained with boiled fish oil and the trash bag she had gripped until it was deformed.
Finally, the gaze moved away indifferently, as if she were nothing more than a piece of old furniture blocking the way—or perhaps a clown performing in a circus.
The overhead light in the hallway cast a small shadow across Su Li’s profile.
Chi Qingya suddenly realized that even the curve of Su Li’s brow when she frowned was different from before.
In the past, whenever Chi Qingya knocked over a bowl of congee, Su Li’s tightly pursed lips would twitch slightly, and she would carefully ask if Chi Qingya had been burned.
She would handle the spilled bowl while simultaneously tending to Chi Qingya’s wounds.
But now, her breathing didn’t even falter. Her nose didn’t even wrinkle at the sour stench of the trash.
Even though Chi Qingya had nearly fallen just now, there was no change in expression in Su Li’s eyes.
Chi Qingya could even see her own wretched reflection in Su Li’s pupils.
Her messy bangs were stuck to her forehead, and her sleeves were still stained with the red oil that had splashed on her during lunch.
That gaze felt like a bucket of ice water poured over her head, leaving her fingertips numb.
‘So true heartbreak isn’t being pricked by a needle; it’s being thrown into a deep freezer until ice shards form in the marrow of your bones.’
She opened her mouth, but only half a sob rolled out of her throat.
Su Li had already turned back to speak with the Landlord.
Her profile was illuminated by the light from the window, making her look utterly like a stranger.
The musty smell of the hallway suddenly became pungent.
Chi Qingya looked down at the stains under her fingernails that she couldn’t wash away.
She finally understood that what stood between them wasn’t a pile of stinking takeout boxes, but the ice wall in Su Li’s eyes that would never melt again.
“This girl really is something. She’s already back, yet she’s not hurrying to deal with the trash.”
“Exactly. So many of us are waiting on her.”
“It’s such bad luck to be her neighbor. I keep my own home spotlessly clean, yet because of this neighbor, my place is a total mess.”
“Look at this girl, dressing herself up so flamboyantly, but she’s like this behind the scenes. Who knows how her parents raised her?”
The whispering in the hallway felt like a steel wool pad dipped in salt, scraping against Chi Qingya’s eardrums until they ached.
An older woman in floral pajamas pinched her nose and backed away.
“Ugh, this smell is stronger than a toilet! A young girl being this sloppy is just disgusting!”
Amidst the sounds of mocking laughter, Chi Qingya’s nails nearly dug into her palms.
She stared at Su Li’s hand hanging at her side. Those hands had once cleaned up a spilled bowl of congee for her, but now they rested quietly against the seam of her trousers, motionless.
“My Little Bao has been scared to tears by cockroaches three times now!” a woman with permed hair suddenly barked, poking Chi Qingya’s back.
“Do you think this is a trash recovery station? Have some civic-mindedness, will you?”
“What are you standing there for? Hurry up and clean it!”
Chi Qingya spun around and saw a photo of the mountain of trash piled at her door flash across the woman’s phone screen.
The moldy takeout boxes were intentionally magnified, the soup congealed into brown stains like ugly scars.
She opened her mouth, her throat feeling as though it were stuffed with dry sponge.
“I… I’m sorry.” She heard her own voice sounding like a crushed soda can. Perhaps she really was like a crushed can on the side of the road—just a piece of trash. “I’ll do it right—”
Before Chi Qingya could finish her sentence, she was interrupted.
“Oh, now you know how to clean up?”
“Where was this energy earlier?”
“Isn’t taking out the trash something you do in passing?”
“What, do you have some kind of hobby for collecting trash?”
“You specifically saved it up for this long?”
“Other people save money, but you? You save trash.”
“Can you even sell this much for money?”
Chi Qingya stumbled half a step back, her lower back hitting a rusted fire hydrant.
She looked toward Su Li as if pleading for help, but she found the other woman chatting with the Landlord, not sparing her a single glance.
This person who once would have knelt to pick up broken porcelain shards for her now seemed like a total stranger, even down to the hem of her clothes.
Tears blurred the faces of everyone in the hallway.
Chi Qingya suddenly felt as though all those pointing hands had turned into sharp fish bones.
She trembled as she reached for a trash bag, but the plastic tore open with a large rip in her panic.
Stinking soup splashed onto her newly bought shoes.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry.”
She looked down at the liquid rolling down the stairs, feeling utterly at a loss.
It was the same feeling as when someone first arrives in a massive big city, knowing nothing at all.
She hoped Su Li would look in her direction, yet she was also terrified.
She was afraid of Su Li seeing how pathetic she looked right now.
The thing she wanted least… was for Su Li to see her in this wretched state.
Chi Qingya kept her head down, silently lifting the large trash bag she had prepared.
When she passed Su Li, she didn’t even dare to look up.
Under the scrutinizing gazes of the crowd, she silently packed all the trash into the large bag.
The eyes of others felt like a great mountain, weighing on her until she couldn’t breathe.
But she should have been able to adapt to such looks by now… Why? Why did it still hurt this much?
Chi Qingya kept her head down, carrying the bulging trash bag as she slowly walked downstairs.
She didn’t even notice when her shoes stepped into the spilled liquid.
“Finally, it’s gone.”
“Landlady, look at this. You shouldn’t let someone so unclean be our neighbor, okay? I don’t want to wake up in the morning and find a cockroach lying next to my pillow.”
“Last time my drain was clogged, it was because of her!”
“So sloppy. It’s one thing to ruin yourself, but to ruin others too!”
“Whoever is her neighbor really has the worst luck imaginable.”
“No wonder that little girl who used to live with her didn’t want to stay anymore.”
“If it were me, I wouldn’t want to either.”
“I bet only her parents can tolerate a personality like hers.”
“I saw that other girl carrying a dozen trash bags downstairs every day. I thought she was the one who was messy.”
“Good grief, it wasn’t until cockroaches got into my house that I realized the sloppy one was someone else.”
“I really don’t know how she had the nerve to keep ordering someone else to throw away her trash.”
Hearing the gossip, Chi Qingya wanted to quicken her pace and leave.
However, she had accidentally kicked a step earlier, and a throbbing pain still radiated from her toe.
She wished Su Li would help her. But… she didn’t dare look at Su Li.
She was afraid of meeting that cold gaze again.
Chi Qingya dragged the trash bag down the stairs, the soles of her shoes sticking to the steps with a “creak” sound.
Over a dozen pairs of eyes in the hallway stabbed into her back like hooks. She could even hear someone stifling a giggle.
Sweat slid from her temples into her collar. The stinking soup from her hand dripped and leaked all the way.
Every step felt like treading on red-hot coals.
She regretted it so much. She regretted not taking the trash out when she left this morning.
If she had, she wouldn’t be facing this ridicule.
She didn’t know if she should move out. She could already imagine the mocking looks from her neighbors when she ran into them in the future.
At the corner, a child in Crocs stuck out his tongue at her and suddenly raised a toy gun, firing two “bang-bang” shots.
It was as if she were a heinous criminal and the child was a hero punishing her.
Chi Qingya’s knees buckled, and she nearly collapsed.
As the plastic bullet whizzed past her ear, she had a sudden vision of ink splattering against the back wall of her junior high school classroom.
That day, right after her school uniform had been ruined, others had mocked her just like this. Even though she hadn’t done anything wrong.
The sounds of laughter made Chi Qingya think of scenes on TV where criminals were punished while bystanders threw cabbage leaves and eggs at them. But she wasn’t a criminal…
A mop hung out to dry by an old woman on the second floor was dripping.
The cold sensation of a water drop hitting the back of her neck was exactly like the ice water someone had intentionally splashed on her back when she was on cleaning duty years ago.
Her fingers tightened around the trash bag. Her nails dug into her palms through the plastic.
The sour smell of rot mixed with the musty scent of the old building filled her nose.
She suddenly couldn’t tell if she was 23 or 13.
She didn’t understand why, after all these years of trying to climb out, she had simply fallen from one deep abyss into another.
She didn’t understand what she had done wrong.
In the hallway, a woman’s voice called out about “bad luck,” and Chi Qingya tucked her head in, quickening her pace.
The moment her yellowing canvas shoes slipped on an oil stain, the burst of laughter behind her startled the sparrows on the power lines.
She wanted to run. She wanted to escape this place! She wanted to get far, far away…
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She hadn’t been like this before. She used to love being clean.
Why had she turned into this? When did it start?
Chi Qingya felt her memories becoming blurred. She couldn’t remember.
The things she tried so hard to forget were branded into her mind, refusing to fade.
Yet the things she wanted to remember and recall were like sand gripped tightly in her hand—the tighter she squeezed, the faster they slipped through her fingers.
The stairs seemed endless.