Chi Qingya felt her eyes burning red.
In her dream, she had dreamed of Su Li again.
She apologized to Su Li, and Su Li forgave her.
The two of them reconciled and became good friends once more.
‘Is that what good friends are supposed to be like?’
‘Even if one person makes a mistake, the other will forgive them.’
Then their relationship would just keep getting better and better.
But dreams were just dreams. The moment she opened her eyes, the scene in the dream would vanish.
She didn’t want to wake up from the dream.
She wanted to stay with Su Li forever and go back to the way things were.
“Good Luck Comes, wishing you good luck, Good luck brings joy and love, Good Luck Comes, our good luck arrives, Greeting prosperity and thriving across the four seas.”
Her phone ringtone sounded in her ear. Chi Qingya slowly opened her eyes. Only then did she remember there was something important she had to do today.
Her younger sister had come to S City to visit her. She was supposed to go pick her up.
“Hello.”
An unhappy voice came from the other end of the line.
“Yao Yao, where are you? I’m coming to get you right now.”
Chi Qingya checked the time and suddenly started to worry.
By the time, Yao Yao should have arrived long ago. She had just overslept and hadn’t gone to pick her up on time.
“I’ve been waiting for you at the station for ages. Chi Qingya, what are you doing?”
“Did you drink again?”
“How did you end up like this?”
“I’m going to see for myself what you’ve been up to all this time, turning into such a mess.”
“Hurry up and come get me!”
The voice on the phone was full of dissatisfaction.
Chi Qingya could already picture her sister’s face, full of complaints, as she grumbled at her.
She stumbled over to the sink. Her hair tie was nowhere to be found.
The person in the mirror had hair like a startled cat’s—the left side plastered in sticky strands from drool, the right side with two stubborn cowlicks sticking straight up.
Her eyeliner was smudged at the corners into black, spidery lines. False lashes hung half off, dangling over her lower eyelids.
Foundation had caked up around her nose in cracked, peeling patterns.
She wiped at the lipstick mark on the corner of her mouth, only to smear a red streak all the way to her earlobe, like someone had slashed a line across her face with a crayon.
The lace edge of her collar was flipped up and caught in the hollow of her collarbone. Her shirt buttons were misaligned, fastened in a staggered ladder.
One side of her hem was tucked into her skirt waist, the other side crumpled and hanging out.
Runs in her stockings stretched from her knees to her upper thighs, and a piece of gold foil was caught in one of the tears—probably left over from last night’s chocolate wrapper.
The way she looked now, there was nothing normal about her.
If her sister saw her like this, she’d probably think she was some kind of monster that crawled out of a cave.
Even Chi Qingya found the person in the mirror a little unfamiliar.
‘This… is this really her?’
‘How did she end up like this?’
No matter how she looked at it, the person in the mirror didn’t match the person in her memory.
This look was like one of those girls who did nothing all day at school, just loafing around and wasting time.
And those girls never took their studies seriously. They only thought about graduating, coming to the big city to work, marrying a local, and just getting by for the rest of their lives.
Back then, even if her life wasn’t going great, she still looked down on people like that.
They could have changed their fate if they just studied hard and lived the life they wanted.
But they chose not to. They pinned their hopes on other people.
Chi Qingya stared at herself in the mirror and felt a strange sense of detachment.
She didn’t know when she had turned into this kind of person.
The person she hated the most.
Chi Qingya quickly splashed some clean water on her face.
The sister in her memory should have been a good girl.
But lately, she had learned to wear makeup and picked up a lot of things she never did before.
Things she used to look down on and despise.
After a quick cleanup, Chi Qingya looked at herself in the mirror and breathed a small sigh of relief.
Now, even though she looked more mature, she didn’t have that flashy, overdone look anymore.
At least when she saw her sister, she would have an excuse to explain herself.
Without wasting any more time, Chi Qingya knew that the longer she delayed, the angrier her sister would be when they finally met.
She didn’t want her sister’s excitement for visiting S City to be ruined because of her.
Chi Qingya hurried downstairs, hailed a cab, and rushed to the station.
It wasn’t long before she saw Chi Qingyao waiting outside the station, her face full of resentment.
As if she had seen Chi Qingya’s message, Chi Qingyao stood on her tiptoes and waved from the exit. Her canvas shoe laces were loose and dragging on the ground.
Her crooked ponytail swung back and forth, with stray strands of hair stuck to her sun-flushed cheeks with sweat.
A blue-and-white striped short-sleeve was tucked into faded jeans, with two unbuttoned metal snaps poking up at the hem.
She grinned, revealing two canine teeth, and her sneakers squeaked against the ground as she shuffled.
Her backpack straps slid down to her elbows, but she didn’t care. She brushed her bangs back with her free hand, exposing a mosquito bite on her forehead.
A canvas bag hung sideways on her hip, its zipper pull still holding a plastic little carp from last year’s temple fair.
“Sis, you’re finally out!”
The moment she saw Chi Qingya, even though she was a little upset just moments before, Chi Qingyao’s face lit up with a happy smile as she ran toward her.
But as soon as she got close, Chi Qingyao’s brow furrowed deeply, and her voice was full of grievance:
“Chi Qingya, how much did you drink? Do you have a death wish?”
“Yao Yao.”
Chi Qingya looked down sheepishly. Her sister had grown up well and was even taller than her.
Sometimes, when she talked, she had to look up at Chi Qingyao, which made Chi Qingya feel like she was the younger sister.
“Alright, do you know how long I’ve been waiting?”
“Let’s go eat. I’m starving.”
“The food on the train was way too expensive, so I didn’t want to buy it.”
Chi Qingyao complained:
“The big city really is the big city. Even the prices are a lot higher than back home.”
“Back home, I’d have to skip several meals just to save up for a game skin.”
“But in the big city, skipping one day of meals feels like I can save enough for a skin.”
Hearing her sister’s words, Chi Qingya tapped her on the head worriedly.
“Why aren’t you eating properly again?”
“Chi Qingya, you don’t understand. Those skins are limited-time offers. If you don’t buy them now, they’re gone forever!”
Chi Qingyao didn’t want to listen to her sister. She just followed behind her, taking in the neon lights and bustling scene of the big city.
“If you had an account with all the skins back then, everyone would have been trying to be your friend and play with you. Nobody would have bullied you.”