“Lu Yu, there’s something I need to say to you.”
“Miss Su—don’t forget, this is a concert venue. If you don’t mind, we could exchange contact information.”
“Fine.”
Su Die showed Lu Yu her WeChat QR code, then warned him over WeChat: If you dare hurt Lu Na, I will never let you off.
Lu Yu replied: I’m not that kind of person.
Today Lu Na had not only seen her idol, she had met a fine catch like Lu Yu as well. She looked like a contented little cat, her round, languid face wearing both a pout and pure sweetness.
“Lu Na, about dating…”
“I know what you’re going to say. I’m a veteran of romance, and I will not be love-brained. You should think about yourself more—and no being Emo allowed!”
Su Die spent a full, busy day. She was wondering what part-time job to take next, and after thinking for a long while, she remembered what Su Mosheng had told her: Writing, perhaps, can redeem your heart.
She was already eighteen, and her nineteenth birthday was not so far off. Perhaps she could try earning money by submitting her writing.
Su Die decided to write short dramas, which were all the rage lately. She researched extensively online and set pen to paper on the first script of her life.
She tried to sketch out the male lead’s image—but somehow, all she could see in her mind was Su Mosheng.
She knew, too, that she and Su Mosheng had no future in the real world. So in the script, she would become his lover, and give him, on the page, the happiness she couldn’t give him in life.
She finished the first episode of her new script, then succumbed to exhaustion and fell into a deep sleep—until shouting woke her again.
A man and a woman seemed to be quarreling somewhere in the apartment building, loudly enough for the whole building to hear.
Out of patience at last, Su Die opened her door to lodge a complaint with Auntie Li and the others—after all, Auntie Li was the building captain.
“Auntie Li, what’s going on? I stayed up late working last night. All I want is a quiet sleep.”
“Xiao Die, you’ve been staying with relatives, so you don’t know what’s been happening in the building. I’d better not go telling you everything willy-nilly.”
“Auntie Li, is it about the death case in our building?”
“It is. Ever since that college girl killed herself, her parents keep insisting her killer is right here in the building—that someone here murdered their daughter, that she didn’t kill herself at all!”
“How is that possible? Didn’t the police rule that beautiful young woman’s death a suicide?”
“I say losing their daughter has driven the two of them mad. They insist on living in the room their daughter rented—they refuse to leave until they find this ‘killer.’”
Su Die thought of that beautiful college student. She could never understand why the girl had gotten plastic surgery. She remembered her as she was at first—a girl as sunny and bright as Su Die herself.
What happened afterward, Su Die didn’t know. She didn’t know what kind of illness an eating disorder was.
Every time she thought of that beautiful older girl, she thought of the little sister who had vanished into the depths of her memory.
Perhaps, back then, her sister had been as helpless and in pain as this girl—and she had become a cruel bystander, doing nothing for either of them.
She decided to write the stories of her sister Su Zhen and that beautiful older girl into her new work. It was the only help she could offer—because the girl she had been back then was weak and helpless too. If Su Die was a doctor, then when the doctor herself fell ill, what she ought to consider first was herself, not her patients.
The Su Die of years to come decided to be a little more selfish. That, too, was what her sister Su Zhen would have wanted.