After returning home from the deafeningly loud bar, Chi Qingya felt as if a long, metallic echo was reverberating in her skull, making her scalp tingle.
Even when she stood in front of her own door, she still felt weightless—nothing felt real.
Instead of opening the door, she leaned against the wooden frame, motionless.
There were still no new friend requests from Su Li.
Their chat remained frozen on the last messages Su Li had sent: a money transfer and a question—whether she’d be coming back.
And yet, the messages that once made her feel sick to her stomach… could no longer be received.
Staring at Su Li’s last message, Chi Qingya gently brushed her fingers across her phone screen, then slowly sat down on the doorstep.
There was no lingering warmth left from where Su Li had once sat.
Only a biting chill.
The group chat also had no updates about her girlfriends arriving safely at school.
Since they were all boarding students and didn’t plan on staying at the hotel overnight, they had taken cabs back to campus.
After they split up at Happy Valley, Chi Qingya had sat alone on a bench near the roller coaster, dazing out until it was time to regroup.
Then they went to the Starry Sky Rooftop Bar, where everyone drank a lot.
At first, they brought up Su Li briefly, but soon the conversation drifted to school gossip and idle chatter.
While her friends blended easily into the bar’s ambiance, Chi Qingya simply stared at her phone, rereading her chat history with Su Li over and over again.
Most of the messages were from Su Li— dozens of them. She had only replied to a few.
The atmosphere around her felt eerily silent, almost surreal.
Even when she was paying the bill, that sense of unreality lingered.
She had spent nearly twenty thousand yuan that day, hanging out with her friends.
And drank many kinds of alcohol she had never dared to try before.
Chi Qingya sat outside her door for a while longer.
Still hearing no movement inside, she finally fumbled her key into the lock and let herself in, dazed.
The house was pitch-dark, save for the faint moonlight leaking through the curtains.
Leftover food from the day’s delivery orders was still scattered across the dining table, the floor, and the coffee table in the living room— untouched and uncleaned.
Autumn was gradually arriving in S City, and the wide temperature difference between day and night made the food decay during the hot day, then congeal under the night’s chill.
She could even hear the low hum of flies buzzing in her ears, making her dizzy and increasingly irritable.
The putrid stench assaulted her nose, making her want to vomit.
“Su Li!!”
Chi Qingya frowned, just about to explode— only to find the words caught in her throat.
Su Li had already moved out today.
Clenching her phone in frustration, she pressed a hand to her forehead, breathing heavily, trying to regain her composure.
After calming down a bit, she groped around for the light switch but even after fumbling for a long while, she still couldn’t find it.
She had no choice but to turn on her phone flashlight and finally located the switch in the living room.
But the moment the lights flicked on and revealed the complete mess in her home, her barely stabilized emotions spiraled again into agitation, with nowhere to vent.
The nauseating stench in the air felt like invisible fingers reaching into her throat, pulling at the alcohol swirling in her stomach.
A wave of nausea hit her so hard she stumbled toward the bathroom.
Barefoot and foggy-headed, she accidentally stepped on a discarded chicken bone— no idea who had tossed it there.
A sharp pain shot through her foot, which was now covered in a sticky mix of congealed oil and sauce.
“Ugh—bleh—”
The violent nausea overwhelmed her.
As her stomach churned and rolled, Chi Qingya collapsed to her knees and dry-heaved onto the floor.
She didn’t even notice that her hand had landed on a piece of rice cake that had fallen earlier, now smeared with thick salad dressing that left her fingers a filthy mess.
The undigested takeout and the alcohol brewing in her stomach mixed with the foul stench of spoiled food lingering in the air.
It was as if some disgusting chemical reaction had taken place, filling the entire space with a sickening, acrid smell.
“Shit—ugh—”
Chi Qingya cursed under her breath.
She was just about to yell at Su Li for not cleaning up the house—
Then remembered, again, that Su Li had already moved out.
Another wave of nausea surged straight to her head. Chi Qingya instinctively reached up to cover her mouth, but then realized her hand was still smeared with sticky salad dressing.
Ignoring the pain from her foot, she used her other hand to clamp her mouth shut, forcing herself to hold back the urge to vomit as she stumbled toward the bathroom.
She had definitely drunk too much today.
Whatever was strong, she drank it.
Even vodka— something most people wouldn’t dare touch— she downed without flinching.
At first it didn’t seem like much, and her friends had all whistled and cheered, calling her “Ya-ya baby, such a badass!” None of them expected the delayed backlash to hit so hard.
As she passed by Su Li’s old room, Chi Qingya paused.
Through the crack in the door, she saw the lights were off.
Whatever thoughts that gave rise to were quickly drowned out by another brutal wave of nausea.
She staggered to the bathroom, steadying herself against the wall.
The floor tiles felt icy against her feet.
A strong stench of urine assaulted her nose, adding to the sensory overload.
The floor drain had been left unattended since last night.
It was already clogged with hair, and the cold, stagnant water was mixed with foamy residue from shampoo and body wash.
Chi Qingya suddenly remembered— someone had taken a shower here recently.
She collapsed over the toilet, only to find it filled with unflushed urine, making her dry-heaving even worse.
She didn’t even get the chance to flush it before the full force of her nausea overwhelmed her.
Seeing the urine-stained bowl and the soapy water pooling on the floor, she turned her head at the last second, trying to avoid it.
She immediately regretted the decision.
As the water shifted, her vomit and stomach acid mixed with the standing water and began swirling toward her bare feet.
Another violent wave of retching seized her but thankfully, the toilet was now flushed clean.
The choking, acrid stench in the air kept hitting her over and over again.
Chi Qingya remained half-kneeling on the floor, letting her clothes soak through with the grimy water.
It clung to her skin, but she couldn’t be bothered anymore.
One hand clutched the edge of the toilet seat, while her body convulsed again and again in helpless retching.
Her stomach roared like distant thunder. Chi Qingya’s face went pale.
She clenched every muscle, fighting off the sudden and urgent need to defecate— desperately trying to purge the nausea first.
The air was thick with the overwhelming stench of vomit, waste, and spoiled food.
Even though she kept gagging, there was nothing left to bring up.
Tears welled at the corners of her eyes.
She sniffled, her gaze filled with exhaustion and humiliation.
The urge came swiftly and faded just as fast, buried under the tide of nausea.
She tried a few more dry heaves.
Aside from a sour burn in her stomach, there was nothing left to expel.
Just as Chi Qingya braced herself to finally stand up and take care of her bowel emergency, she noticed something strange— her knees seemed to be stuck to the floor.
And there was a faint, metallic scent of blood soaking into the liquid beneath her.