Diary of exchange

Chapter 11

Omen of Collapse

Chen Mo's warning echoed in Lin Wan's ears like a final tolling knell. Nowhere to run. No way to stop it. The realization sapped the last of her strength, leaving her a hollow shell stumbling through the motions.

She stopped fighting the "exchange" altogether, observing the changes in herself and Su Xiao with a numb detachment. She felt like a specimen pinned to a lab table, wide awake as some alien substance called "Su Xiao" seeped in bit by bit, reshaping her cells, her nerves, her very soul.

Su Xiao's decline, meanwhile, plunged headlong.

The foot injury hobbled her, stripping away any chance of slipping back into the group's rhythm. The art festival performance had been a smash hit, the new lead dancer basking in waves of applause and acclaim—no one spared a thought for the injured predecessor who'd bowed out. The people once orbiting her had formed fresh cliques, new chatter filling the void. She was like a discarded doll, shoved into a corner and gathering dust.

Isolation, defeat, the throb of physical pain, and those garish, lurid dreams that twisted her into Lin Wan... The pile-up began to gnaw at Su Xiao's mind. In class, she'd drift off, her stare vacant; when the teacher called on her, she'd freeze for several beats before snapping back. Her grades cratered, teetering on the edge of passing in pop quizzes—a unthinkable slide from her old form.

More disturbing still were her moods. One moment, she'd seal herself in silence, not uttering a word all day, crutches propped as she shuffled along like a ghost; the next, some trivial slip—a classmate knocking her pen to the floor, or the cafeteria lady's hand trembling on the ladle—would ignite her into a frenzy, shrieking and sobbing hysterically, sending everyone scrambling away in alarm.

She'd grown hypersensitive, paranoid, brittle as a wire stretched to snapping.

Lin Wan watched it all unfold from the sidelines, no schadenfreude in her chest—only a chill kinship, the fox mourning the hare's death. She knew Su Xiao's unraveling was a preview of her own fate. They were grasshoppers bound by the same thread: one plummeted, dragging the other into the abyss.

That afternoon's Chinese literature class had the teacher dissecting an essay on "knowing thyself." The prose was dense, elusive, but one line struck like a needle, catching the low-headed girl in the back row off guard.

"...When the labels we wear are stripped away one by one, when the clamor of vanities falls silent, can we still recognize that most authentic self staring back from the mirror?"

Su Xiao's head snapped up.

Her face was ashen, lips bloodless, but her eyes blazed with a terrifying fervor, flames of near-madness licking at the edges. She locked onto the teacher, mid-lecture at the front, her breaths heaving ragged.

"No... not..." The mutter escaped her, soft but slicing through the classroom hush.

Heads turned. The teacher paused, frowning her way. "Su Xiao? Everything all right?"

"It's not me... that's not me!" Her voice spiked, laced with a sob and primal dread. She jabbed a finger at her own face, nails digging into flesh. "This isn't me! Who am I? Who the hell am I?!"

She thrashed like one possessed by nightmares, control shattering. She shoved the desk aside and lurched to her feet, toppling her crutch in a metallic crash.

"Those dreams! They're lies! I'm not her! I'm not Lin Wan!" The screams tore out, tears carving rivulets through her once-flawless makeup. "I'm Su Xiao! I'm Su Xiao!"

The room froze in stunned silence.

Everyone gaped at the spectacle—the once-haughty girl unraveling into frenzy.

Lin Wan sat rigid in her seat, a glacial numbness flooding her veins. Watching Su Xiao claw at her face, wailing "I'm not Lin Wan," amid the classmates' stares of shock, pity, even a glint of fear—a colossal wave of absurdity and terror crashed over her.

Su Xiao, teetering on the brink, had screamed her name.

She'd fused those eerie dreams with Lin Wan herself.

The secret, laid bare in the most brutal fashion.

"Su Xiao! Calm down!" The teacher jolted into action, hurrying from the podium to soothe her.

"Don't touch me!" Su Xiao recoiled like a cornered animal, eyes wild with distrust and panic. "You're all out to get me! You're in on it with her! You all want to turn me into her!"

She babbled through sobs, staggering backward, chairs clattering in her wake.

"Quick—get the homeroom teacher! The nurse!" the literature instructor barked at a dazed boy by the door.

Chaos erupted in the room.

Lin Wan ducked her head, eyes glued to her desk. She felt the stares rake over her—probing, speculative, laced with something unspoken. Wang Rui and the old entourage fixed her with monster's glares.

Su Xiao's wails droned on, raw and forsaken, looping "I'm not Lin Wan," "Who am I?"

Each cry gouged Lin Wan like a dull blade.

She knew Su Xiao's breakdown stemmed not just from worldly blows, but from the horror of self being wrenched away, crammed full of something foreign. A horror Lin Wan knew all too well, inching through her own bones.

They were both adrift.

One flailing in the open glare, the other rotting soundlessly in the shadows.

The homeroom teacher and school nurse burst in soon after, coaxing and half-dragging the hysterical Su Xiao from the room. As they went, she twisted back, those tear-glazed eyes—brimming with lunacy and ruin—piercing the melee to pin Lin Wan.

The look held no hatred, no questions.

Just a raw, infernal accusation, dripping gore.

As if to say: Look what you've made of me.

Lin Wan couldn't bear it. She collapsed onto her desk, scorching cheeks buried in the chill of her arms.

On her left arm, the blue-black mark smoldered beneath the skin, as if toasting another soul's demise.

The omen of collapse had tolled.

And their destruction had only just begun.