Diary of exchange

Chapter 9

Fragile Mirrors

Su Xiao's ankle was diagnosed as a torn ligament. She was put in a cast and needed at least a month of bed rest. The art festival performance was naturally off the table, and the lead dancer role went to someone else.

The news spread through the campus like it had grown wings. The once-celebrated figure had become a "wounded soldier," hobbling on crutches and barely mobile. There were those who offered sympathy, and those who gloated in secret. But more than anything, there was a subtle distancing—a sense that Su Xiao, unable to shine on stage and now in need of care, had lost her greatest worth.

Lin Wan deliberately steered clear of all the chatter about Su Xiao. But that stabbing phantom pain and the scorching mark on her arm were constant reminders of the invisible, pain-laced thread binding them together.

On Friday afternoon, the dismissal bell rang. Lin Wan packed her bag, ready to leave, when her gaze drifted casually out the window—and froze.

Beside the accessible ramp at the side entrance of the school building, Su Xiao was struggling to hoist her backpack onto her shoulder while steadying the crutch under her arm. Her movements were clumsy and labored; she nearly lost her balance several times. A few classmates passed by now and then, casting curious glances but offering no help. Wang Rui and her usual clique of girlfriends were long gone.

The girl once surrounded by admirers now looked utterly isolated and disheveled.

Lin Wan's heart twisted sharply, as if gripped by an unseen hand. A tangle of emotions surged up— a flicker of vindictive satisfaction from the revenge, but mostly a sorrowful kinship, and a thread of... guilt, one she refused to acknowledge even to herself.

If not for that wish of "total isolation"...

She shook her head fiercely, trying to shake off the weakness. Su Xiao deserved this! she told herself. The isolation and humiliation she'd inflicted on Lin Wan had been far worse!

She slung her backpack over her shoulder and hurried down the stairs, aiming for the main exit to ignore the scene entirely.

But when she reached the ground-floor hallway, her steps slowed against her will. The rhythmic thud-thud of the crutch striking the pavement from the side door hammered at her heart like a mallet.

The hesitation lasted only seconds.

Lin Wan drew a deep breath, as if steeling herself for a decision, and turned toward the side entrance.

She stopped half a meter behind Su Xiao. Su Xiao was laboriously adjusting her crutch, attempting to navigate a small step down; fine beads of sweat already dotted her forehead.

"Need... a hand?" Lin Wan's voice came out dry, laced with a faint tremor she couldn't quite hide.

Su Xiao's body went rigid. She turned slowly. When she saw it was Lin Wan, a storm of emotions flashed in her eyes—shock, wariness, humiliation, and a hint of... raw, inexpressible panic.

"No." The refusal was curt, her voice like ice. She tried to speed up, but in her haste, the crutch slipped, and she lurched forward!

"Watch out!"

Lin Wan lunged forward on instinct, steadying Su Xiao's arm with one hand while the other snatched the falling backpack just in time.

In that instant of contact, a faint current seemed to spark between them.

Su Xiao yanked her arm back as if burned, leaning against the wall to catch her balance, her breathing ragged. She glared at Lin Wan, eyes blazing with hostility and confusion. "What the hell are you doing? Here to gloat?"

Lin Wan took in the bravado masking her fragility, the knuckles white from gripping too tight, and any lingering thrill of revenge evaporated. She handed back the backpack in silence, her voice barely above a murmur, like she was talking to herself: "Just... helping out."

Su Xiao clutched the bag to her chest, lips pressed into a thin line. She didn't look at Lin Wan again, didn't offer thanks. She just gripped her crutch and shuffled forward, stubborn step by stubborn step.

Lin Wan stood rooted, watching that limping silhouette, and made no move to follow.

Just as Su Xiao rounded the corner, she halted abruptly. Without turning, her voice emerged—strained, barely holding back a choke, drifting into the cool dusk air.

"Lin Wan..."

Lin Wan's chest tightened.

"...Why..." Su Xiao's words were soft, laced with bewilderment and anguish, "...why have I been dreaming lately... of turning into you?"

With that, as if she'd spent her last ounce of strength, she quickened her pace and vanished around the bend.

Lin Wan felt as if she'd been turned to stone, blood freezing in her veins.

The evening breeze swept through, carrying the chill of late autumn, scattering a few withered yellow leaves.

Why have I been dreaming lately of turning into you?

Su Xiao's question struck like an icy key, unlocking the door to "truth" without warning.

The exchange cut both ways.

It wasn't just Lin Wan absorbing Su Xiao's traits and enduring her misfortunes.

Su Xiao was losing pieces of herself too—and in her unconscious dreams, reliving Lin Wan's life: those isolated, stifled, shadowed days.

They were like figures on opposite sides of a mirror, the glass melting away, their reflections bleeding into one another, overlapping and blurring.

Had she gotten her revenge?

In a way, yes. Su Xiao had lost her friends, her aura, even her health.

But what had Lin Wan gained?

A creeping curse of a mark, a self under siege, and a weighty, inescapable sense of guilt.

And Su Xiao's agonized question.

Lin Wan raised her arm, staring at the bluish-black stain that had climbed past her shoulder, now snaking toward her collarbone. In the dimming evening light, it resembled an ugly, unhealing scar.

She'd thought she was pulling the strings of fate, oblivious to how she and her enemy had long been lashed to the same careening chariot, plummeting toward the abyss.

The fragility wasn't just Su Xiao's body in that moment.

It was the crumbling boundary between them—the one called "self."