Inside the pitch-black room, the curtains were drawn tight, allowing only a sliver of light to leak through the crack in the door, illuminating the cluttered mess on the floor.
Over a dozen takeout bags were piled into a small mountain, the red oil from the malatang congealing into dark red gelatinous blocks inside the plastic bags.
The leftover rice noodle soup had dried into spiderweb-like patterns on the floor, making her soles stick to the ground when she stepped on them.
Milk tea cups were jammed haphazardly into the gaps of the sofa and the bed, the straw openings still stained with the dried residue of pearls.
The air was thick with the putrid stench of accumulated takeout.
Chi Qingya was slumped over the table, which was covered in wine bottles.
She hadn’t used to be one for heavy drinking.
She would only drink a little when she was out with her sisterhood.
Back then, she couldn’t understand why anyone would enjoy drinking something that tasted so awful.
But now, she realized that wine was a wonderful thing for numbing oneself.
She had already forgotten how many days of leave she had taken or how long it had been since she last went to school.
Going to school no longer seemed important to her.
Aside from when she was sick, she had never skipped a class before.
Even back when she was still a student in her hometown, she was the first person to arrive at school every day, sitting in the classroom early to begin her studies.
She had wanted to study hard and leave the small mountain village where her home was, all for the sake of getting out and getting into a good university.
But now that she was at a good university, she couldn’t focus on her studies at all.
She didn’t know what the point of all those years of hard work had been.
Even if she had gotten into a good university, what did it matter?
It still couldn’t change the fact that her life was like a puddle of rotting muck.
She had thought her life would get better, but it hadn’t.
Whenever Chi Qingya closed her eyes, Su Li’s expression from that day would drift through the darkness.
Those eyes, which used to be so gentle, were now like the surface of a frozen lake.
When they swept over her, not even an eyelash flickered, as if she were nothing more than moldy wallpaper in a corridor.
She had originally thought she was special to Su Li.
But in the end, she realized she wasn’t special at all.
The way Su Li looked at her was no different from the way she looked at anyone else.
It was as if the sweet life they had shared in the past was nothing more than a dream.
Chi Qingya was unwilling to accept it, but she was powerless.
She remembered the way Su Li’s lips moved when she spoke; every word was like a small ice cube smashing onto concrete, carrying a crisp, cold edge.
Even now, those words echoed in her mind like a curse, leaving her at a loss.
She didn’t know what she was supposed to do.
The most piercing thing was the stranger-like quality in that gaze.
In the past, if she had knocked over a water cup, Su Li would have immediately knelt down to see if she was burned.
But now, even as she stumbled and nearly fell while running away, there wasn’t the slightest ripple in Su Li’s pupils.
The light from the corridor’s overhead lamp shimmered on Su Li’s eyelashes, yet it couldn’t penetrate the layer of ice that separated the two of them.
Between them, there seemed to be a wretched, thick barrier.
Chi Qingya’s fingers unconsciously picked at the peeling crack of her canvas shoes. The red oil stains from the malatang still stubbornly clung to her sleeve.
It was as if they were telling her that everything that happened back then was real.
She suddenly remembered the corner of Su Li’s clothes fluttering as she turned around.
That sliver of snow-white fabric made her eyes ache.
When Su Li used to help her clean up the trash, she would always carefully roll her sleeves up to her elbows.
Now, those hands would only brush the dust off someone else’s shoulder.
She wasn’t willing to let go. She really wasn’t.
Where exactly did she fall short compared to Bai Huizi?
Chi Qingya felt a wave of sadness. She had studied so hard just so she could be like the people in the city.
But in the end, the massive gap between the two of them was something she simply couldn’t cross.
She didn’t even have the courage to face Bai Huizi directly.
She had lost completely.
There was no way she could snatch Su Li back from Bai Huizi’s side.
Chi Qingya looked at the account on her cell phone. The 50,000 yuan that Su Li had transferred to her back then was still sitting coldly in her account.
Even when she had treated Caixiangxiang and the others to dinner, she had used her own private savings.
Chi Qingya stared blankly at her account. It turned out that the little bits of happiness between her and Su Li were actually so fragile.
They couldn’t withstand the devastation of reality at all.
50,000 yuan…
Perhaps it was a lot to Su Li, but to Bai Huizi, it was absolutely nothing.
After all, this entire building belonged to Bai Huizi.
50,000 yuan might not even amount to a single day’s income for Bai Huizi.
‘What could I possibly use to compete with Bai Huizi?’
Chi Qingya felt as if a great mountain was weighing down on her.
It seemed that aside from knowing Su Li a bit earlier, she had no advantage at all.
In the past, Chi Qingya had heard stories about pure campus love eventually losing to naked materialism and reality.
Even the sheen of the silk shirt Bai Huizi wore made her eyes ache.
The pearl earrings the other woman casually toyed with were worth more than a dozen of her malatang meals.
She unconsciously rubbed the faded threads on her sleeve, remembering when she had first arrived in S City and was looking for a room to rent.
She remembered the manicured finger Bai Huizi used when she handed her a business card.
She didn’t know the exact cost, but she felt that the money Bai Huizi spent on maintenance alone was enough to cover her living expenses for several years.
The smell of mold in the home suddenly became pungent. She pulled back her pant legs, which were stained with oil.
These clothes, which she had spent half an hour haggling for at a street stall, weren’t even worth a single button on Bai Huizi’s shirt.
It wasn’t that she was unwilling to spend money on expensive clothes; she just felt it wasn’t necessary.
The habits she had developed since childhood meant she wasn’t someone who spent money lavishly.
Except…
Chi Qingya suddenly flipped through her recent invoices. Since getting to know her sisterhood, she felt like her spending had started to increase more and more.
‘This clearly isn’t like me…’
Chi Qingya felt an inexplicable surge of sadness again. She picked up a wine bottle and began pouring it into her mouth.
Even though the wine spilled from the corners of her mouth, it still couldn’t suppress the sorrow in her heart.
What should she do?
What could she do to win back Su Li’s heart?
Chi Qingya was miserable.
She desperately wanted to go back to the past.
Back to the day she first met Su Li.
But there was no way back.
“Good luck brings you good luck, good luck brings joy and love, good luck to us, let’s welcome good luck and prosper across the four seas.”
The cell phone ringtone went off. Chi Qingya dizzily picked up the phone.
Usually, aside from promotional advertisements, no one called her.
Except for her family.
Seeing the caller ID “Younger Sister,” Chi Qingya groggily answered the call.
“Hello? Sister?”
Seeing that no one spoke after the call connected, Chi Qingyao said with some dissatisfaction:
“Chi Qingya, speak!”
“I’m here.”
Chi Qingya felt her head spinning. Through the haze, she seemed to hear her younger sister’s voice.
“Sister, I’m taking the car to visit you tomorrow. Remember to come pick me up.”