It felt as though no matter how much she walked, she would never get out.
She gasped for breath as scenes flashed through her mind.
A backward, impoverished village.
A bumpy, muddy road to school.
A dilapidated school.
Exercise books her parents had bought from the town.
And a school uniform was washed until it turned white…
She blinked. She felt like she had clearly made it out. And yet, it felt like she hadn’t.
When Chi Qingya pushed open the building door, the sunlight made her squint.
The asphalt road was so hot it made her soles feel soft.
She stumbled toward the trash can downstairs and tossed the garbage inside.
The moment the lid of the trash can slammed back into place, she caught a fleeting memory of a bucket of dirty water she had knocked over during cleaning duty in junior high school.
Those laughs and the current gossip in the hallway overlapped in her ears.
The sunlight felt like needles pricking her eyelids.
Her knuckles were white as she gripped the empty bags, sweat sliding through the gaps in her fingers.
At the entrance of the alley, the freezer of a small shop hummed with cold air.
The moment the proprietress looked out, Chi Qingya turned away in a panic, her head nearly hitting a rusted mailbox.
She blinked. There was no small shop in front of her, and no mailbox.
There were only the endless stairs and the sounds of laughter and accusations from the hallway.
She had accidentally bumped into an electric scooter’s charging post.
The smell of rust mixed with the sour stench of trash entered her nose. C
hi Qingya stared at her distorted shadow on the asphalt road.
The gossip and accusations from the hallway continued to flood her mind.
She stood there in a daze, looking at the seemingly endless hallway, her eyes filled with confusion.
She suddenly remembered her school uniform that had been stained with ink that year.
She had washed it for three days, but the collar remained greenish.
She could never get it clean, just like the sense of shame she couldn’t wash away now.
The sun made the asphalt road glisten, yet she felt a chill down her back.
From the end of the alley came the cry of a junk collector.
Chi Qingya suddenly wished she could be stuffed into a sack and dragged away, sold by the pound along with her stinking past.
She didn’t know how to go back. Her legs felt as heavy as lead.
If it were before, she might have been able to pretend nothing had happened.
She would do what she needed to do and continue to immerse herself in her own world.
She only needed to work on problems and study hard to escape her predicament—to flee the life she didn’t want to live.
But now, she didn’t know what to do. She had no exercise book in her hand, nor a vocabulary book.
She had nothing. She could imagine that once she went back, she would face a scolding from the neighbors and the Landlord.
It was just like how, in the past, she would be bullied by classmates but still be the one lectured by the teacher.
Sometimes the teacher would even call her busy parents to lecture them as well.
She wanted to run away. Maybe if she ran now and came back quietly to pack her things later, no one would notice?
Even if her things were thrown out, she could just buy new ones.
Chi Qingya stood in place, her steps heavy. She didn’t move forward, nor did she choose to run.
She just stood there dazed. Her fists were clenched so tightly that even the pain of her nails digging into her flesh didn’t snap her out of it.
She must look so pathetic right now, right?
She missed her mom, her dad, and her younger sister. She wanted to go home.
But she didn’t want to return to that mountain village she loathed so much. She wanted to bring her family out of that village.
Yet she couldn’t even take care of herself; she had no place in this vast city. Let alone finding a place for her family to settle.
In the afternoon, she had been looking forward to seeing Su Li and properly apologizing to her.
She had even fantasized about their relationship returning to what it once was.
But at this moment, Chi Qingya was at a loss. She didn’t dare face Su Li, and she feared that cold gaze even more.
She was terrified of Su Li seeing her in this wretched state…
“It’s been so long. Why isn’t she back yet?”
“If she doesn’t come back and clean up the soup on the floor, who will?”
“Is she leaving it for us to deal with?”
The hallway was scattered with sunflower seed shells. The woman in the floral pajamas leaned against her doorframe and clicked her tongue.
“Maybe she’s hiding outside and crying?”
The woman with the permed hair leaned over the railing to look down, her phone screen still glowing with the photo of the trash heap.
“If you ask me, she’s probably too ashamed to come back. Smell this…”
She suddenly raised her voice toward the floor above. “Landlady! Did that girl just dump the trash halfway and run away?”
A dull thud of a plastic basin hitting a windowsill came from the second floor. An old woman wearing a headscarf leaned out.
“I just saw her heading for the trash can at the end of the alley. Her pace was slower than a snail’s.”
She gestured with a hand stained with vegetable leaves.
“She even hit a charging post under the telegraph pole. It made a loud bang; sounded painful.”
Bai Huizi looked at the mess around them, her frown deepening. She spoke to comfort the crowd.
“No need to worry. Her things are still in the room; she can’t run away. Besides, she just paid this month’s Rent. She won’t flee now.”
As she spoke, she looked at Su Li standing beside her. Su Li’s face remained devoid of expression.
“Was she like this when you lived with her?”
“Not at first,” Su Li replied calmly.
Hearing this, Bai Huizi became thoughtful. “Do you want to go inside and look? You haven’t been in for a long time, right?”
Su Li looked at the familiar door. Once, when she was homeless, Chi Qingya had provided her with a place to stay.
If she had moved out sooner, perhaps they could have parted on good terms. But she had been a bit too greedy.
The balance of an equal transaction had been broken, allowing the conflict to escalate until she was eventually kicked out.
Actually, whether it was the cooking or the things Chi Qingya had said, Su Li didn’t mind.
No matter how much she did, she could maintain her energy, so those tasks were nothing to her.
But because the service she provided to Chi Qingya didn’t match the returns in terms of cost-effectiveness, living with Chi Qingya became exhausting.
And perhaps she had been greedy back then, choosing to stay—a decision that was extremely lacking in cost-effectiveness.
She had thought Chi Qingya would be like a cat.
But Chi Qingya wasn’t a cat.
She wouldn’t wait for Su Li to come home. She wouldn’t act affectionate after being fed.
And she wouldn’t treat Su Li with endless patience. The transaction between them had ultimately become a deal devoid of value.
If Chi Qingya hadn’t told her to move out, Su Li would have eventually moved out anyway.
While doing more work had no physical impact on her, she would not tolerate doing a losing business.
Moreover, through her own efforts, she could find a better place to stay.
She wouldn’t stay in one place forever. Water flows downward, but people must climb upward.
Even if a cat hadn’t existed, she would have sought a better life.
Looking back now, not withdrawing in a timely manner was indeed a foolish mistake.
Not only had she worked for free, but she had also paid back 50,000.
Mixing emotions with money was a truly troublesome affair.
“If you need me to, Sister Bai, I can go in with you.”
“I don’t know if her room is cleaner or if the hallway is.”
“I’m a little afraid that once the door opens, the room will be full of trash.”
“You have no idea—last time the downstairs pipe was clogged, I saw the state of that room! There wasn’t even a place to step.”
Feeling Bai Huizi gripping her arm tightly, Su Li knew she was someone who loved cleanliness.
Actually, during the time she lived with Chi Qingya, the room wasn’t that dirty.
Su Li just had to deal with whatever mess Chi Qingya made whenever she returned each day.
Because she cleaned daily, the room stayed relatively tidy.
However, standing in the hallway now, there was at least some ventilation. The door in front of them was like Schrödinger’s Door. No one knew if what lay behind was a clean room or a landfill.
“Let’s wait a bit longer. Chi Qingya should be back soon.”
Su Li had realized Bai Huizi’s purpose for bringing her along—to make her appear in front of Chi Qingya.
But Su Li didn’t care about Chi Qingya’s current situation.
In her heart, Chi Qingya was no different from Jin Ke’er, whose transaction had ended.
She didn’t owe Chi Qingya anything. She had helped her keep the house clean and even paid her several times the Rent.
“Okay.”
Seeing that Su Li was unwilling to enter the room, Bai Huizi didn’t push. She waited patiently in the hallway for Chi Qingya to return.
Chi Qingya finally began to climb the stairs that seemed endless to her.
It was just like in the past, after being scolded by a teacher, when she would slowly walk toward her home.
The journey was incredibly long—long enough for her to remember the muddy road from her dilapidated primary school to her house.
Back then, her mind was always filled with various thoughts.
She thought that once she left her mountain village, she would surely have a better life.
She imagined she would be like the protagonist in a book, living a carefree, worry-free life.
Lost in those thoughts, she would arrive at her front door.
But this time, no one was waiting for her at home.
“Oh, our Big Miss actually knows how to come back!”
The woman with the permed hair waved her phone in front of Chi Qingya’s eyes, the moldy takeout boxes on the screen enlarged to an extreme.
“Look at this soup flowing all over—”
Her words were drowned out by a sudden burst of laughter.
Chi Qingya felt her lower back hit the rust of the fire hydrant, the coldness piercing through her thin shirt and into her skin.
She hurriedly looked down to roll up her sleeves, but she only ended up smearing the chili sauce from lunch even further.
When Chi Qingya looked up, she saw Su Li talking to Bai Huizi out of the corner of her eye.
Su Li’s profile was hazy in the sunlight, the curve of her eyelashes exactly as it had been when she helped treat Chi Qingya’s burns.
Except, Su Li’s tenderness no longer belonged to me. I was the one who pushed her away.