If You Could See the Sun (25)

No. That’s not for me to worry about. I can’t worry. I’m just here to gather the evidence; user C207 can decide what to do with it.

I’m already planning the trip back to the dorms in my head, thinking of the homework I need to catch up on and the midnight snacks I can grab from the school kitchens if I’m still invisible by then, when my stomach growls.

Loudly.

I freeze. The woman freezes too, the half-eaten lychee falling from her open mouth, and I might’ve laughed at the cartoonish expression on her face if I couldn’t feel my heart jumping to my throat.

“Did...did you hear that?” the woman whispers.

“I—Yes.” The man’s graying brows draw together. Then, in an unconvincingly casual tone, he says, “It must’ve been the air conditioner. Or the people in the next room.”

“Maybe,” the woman says, uncertain. “It just... It sounded so close to me. You don’t think someone might be hiding...?”

The man shakes his head. Makes a tsking sound with his teeth, another attempt at nonchalance. “See, Bichun, this is why I told you to stop watching those creepy detective shows at night. It’s bad for the nerves, and it’s enough to send anyone’s imagination into overdrive.”

“I guess so...” Yet even as she says this, her eyes roam over a spot only a few feet away from where I’m standing. I tense every muscle in my body, afraid to so much as breathe. After a few beats of silence, the woman seems to relax a little, returning to her lychees—

But my stomach betrays me by rumbling again.

The woman jumps in her seat as if struck by lightning. “F-fuwuyuan!” she calls, her voice sharp with fear. “Fuwuyuan, quick, get in here!”

The waitress outside responds almost at once, the doors flying open as she hurries into the room, a heavy menu tucked under her arm.

“Is something the matter, madame? Was the fruit not to your liking or—”

“Forget the fruit!” The woman points a trembling finger in my general direction. “There was a...a noise...”

“What kind of noise?”

I don’t wait around to hear the rest of their conversation. I tiptoe over to the opened door, grateful for the thick carpet masking my steps. Then I’m running—running down the winding stairs, past waiters carrying trays, and out into the open night.

It’s not until I’ve rounded the restaurant corner that I let myself slow down. I’m panting hard. The back of my dress is soaked with sweat, and there’s an awful stitch gnawing at my side, but none of that matters right now. Not when I’ve got my evidence.

Still gasping for air, I pull up the Beijing Ghost app on my phone and find all the photos and voice recordings I took in the restaurant.

Then I hit Send.



* * *



My dorm room is quiet when I walk in, the lights turned down low, veiling everything in shadow.

It’s just past midnight, and usually around this time Chanel’s jamming out to her K-pop playlist or doing some new aerobic workout or laughing hysterically on the phone with her other fuerdai friends about some joke with too much cultural nuance for me to understand. This silence is unexpected, unnatural; either Chanel’s decided to become a monk, or something must have happened.

I drag my feet forward. The sharp spike of adrenaline I experienced at the restaurant has long given way to dizzying, mind-numbing fatigue, and all I really want to do is fall onto my bed and sleep. But instead, I turn the lights on to full brightness and search the cramped space for my roommate.

It takes a moment to spot her. She’s curled up in the far corner of the room, her silk blankets pulled tight around her small frame, covering everything except her hands and face. Her eyes are swollen red.

She sets the phone in her hands down when she notices me standing there—but not before I see the photos flashing across the screen. The same photos I took only a few hours ago.

In my confusion, I think something nonsensical, like: she must’ve somehow taken my phone. But no, I can still feel the full weight of my phone in my own pocket. And it still wouldn’t explain why she’s been crying. What would the photos have to do with her...

Then understanding clicks into place.

Cao. It’s a common enough Chinese surname—there are at least five or six Caos at our school—that I didn’t think to make the connection earlier, yet now it seems obvious. The old man at the restaurant must be her father.

Guilt clamps down on my stomach. This whole time I was fantasizing about all the money going into my bank account, Chanel’s life has been unraveling.

Still, she doesn’t know that I know. The smart thing to do—the safe thing to do—would be to just leave it as that, act like nothing’s wrong and spend the rest of my night catching up on homework. Let her grieve and rage however she wishes. I’m sure she has plenty of friends to comfort her anyway.

But as I stare at her sad, hunched-over form, all alone in the dark, an old memory ambushes me: a few months after we first moved in together, she’d found me lying facedown on the bed, uniform still on, my Chinese test shredded to pieces around me. A hideous 87.5% scrawled across one of the torn corners. We weren’t close-close even then, but she’d plopped down beside me as if it were the most natural thing in the world and cheerily mocked every question on the test until I felt more like laughing than sobbing.