Diary of exchange

Chapter 3

The Manifestation of the Cost

The next two days passed for Lin Wan in a fog of distraction.

That black line on her wrist had become her deepest secret and recurring nightmare. She no longer dared to look at it, binding it carefully beneath a light-colored sports wrist brace she'd rummaged from her mother's sewing kit. To anyone who asked, it was just a sprain from gym class. Even in the shower, she averted her eyes as best she could; the water cascading over the line registered no sensation at all. It clung there like a birthmark she'd been born with—neither painful nor itchy, yet glaringly impossible to ignore.

Su Xiao took a day off. Her onstage loss of voice had exploded into the school's top story, spawning endless variations. Some whispered of stress-induced breakdown; others speculated on some bizarre affliction. Naturally, Wang Rui and her crowd fanned the flames with their ridiculous claims: Lin Wan was jinxed, and anyone who got too close was doomed to misfortune.

Lin Wan met it all with silence. She even flinched at the sound of Su Xiao's name, as if uttering it might summon something far worse.

On the third day, Su Xiao returned.

She was still striking, laced into the newest canvas sneakers, but the sharp edge of arrogance in her features had dulled a fraction, her complexion faintly ashen. She made no move to bait Lin Wan anymore. When their eyes met by chance, Lin Wan caught a fleeting glint in the depths of hers—a tangle of suspicion laced with some emotion too murky to name.

It wasn't remorse. It felt more like... the cold appraisal of an affronted gaze.

A shiver prickled along Lin Wan's spine; she looked away fast. Su Xiao's quietude rattled her more than the old barbs had—like the hush that falls before a gale.

The unease crested on Friday, during the in-class math quiz.

Math was Su Xiao's stronghold, Lin Wan's Achilles' heel. Midway through, as Lin Wan wrestled with a knotted function problem, a faint, sharply irritated tsk cut the air from the seat beside her.

Su Xiao.

Her brows were knotted, pen gouging the scratch paper in harsh, rasping scratches. This wasn't her; she always unraveled problems with cool precision.

Lin Wan pushed it from her mind and bent back to her struggles.

Moments later, glancing up by accident, she saw Su Xiao slap her pen down on the desk—subtly enough, but laced with raw frustration. The proctor flicked a glance her way; she ducked her head at once, shoulders locked rigid.

That odd sensation stirred in Lin Wan's chest again. She dropped her gaze to the yawning blanks on her own sheet, the old helplessness swelling like a tide. If only... if only she could scrape a passing grade this time, even by the skin of her teeth...

The thought darted through her exhausted mind like an eel through dark water.

She didn't even register the wish buried in it.

Scores came back the next day.

Lin Wan: 61.

She gaped at the red-circled figure in the corner—teetering on the pass line—and could scarcely trust her eyes. She tallied it twice, thrice, half-convinced the teacher had misadded. By her reckoning, fifty would have been a gift from the heavens.

From the lectern, meanwhile, came Teacher Li's voice, edged with surprise: "Su Xiao, 85."

A ripple of stifled intakes swept the room. Eighty-five was solid for most, but for Su Xiao, it was rout. She seldom dipped below ninety-five in math.

As she rose to claim her paper, not a trace of color warmed her face, her lips a bloodless s***h. She snatched it from Teacher Li's hand, balled it unread, and gripped the wad like a vise on her way back—each step a knife's edge underfoot.

Wang Rui sidled close with murmurs of comfort and earned a sharp shove away.

Lin Wan watched Su Xiao's back heave in fury, then eyed her own improbable pass. Her heart plunged into icy depths, chilling and sinking slow.

Not coincidence.

Once might pass for chance. Twice...?

The flesh beneath the brace began to smolder faintly once more, threaded now with a prickling itch—as if something stirred and burrowed sluggish beneath the skin.

Terror seized her in its jaws. In the crush of break, when eyes slid elsewhere, she bolted to the bathroom's end stall, bolted the door, and wrenched the brace free with shaking hands.

The line had changed, just as she'd feared.

No longer a dormant inch, it uncoiled like quickened vine, climbing a full notch higher, breaching the wrist's fold. The hue had sharpened too—from smoky gray to vivid blue-black.

"Ah..." The yelp died muffled against her palm.

She sagged against the chill partition door, limbs gone liquid, sweat blooming cold and instant through her uniform shirt.

It was true. The diary... it truly bent wishes to reality. But each one exacted this uncanny toll, etching its claim into her flesh as bargain.

Her plea to humble Su Xiao had bought the first black stroke.

This stray hope for a pass had fed the line's creep—and Su Xiao's downfall.

Next time, then? The one after? Where would it snake to in the end? Cloak her arm entire? Or... swallow her whole? What shape would she twist into by then?

Panic crushed the air from her lungs. No more. She had to quit it. Quit now.

Locking the diary away—that had been wise.

But as the tremor ebbed and she fumbled to rebind the brace, her eyes snagged on the journal, flung careless to the sink's edge. In her frenzy, she'd yanked it from her bag and hauled it in here.

Its dark leather binding caught the fluorescent glare, yielding a sullen sheen.

She fixed on it, rigid as if before a serpent coiled to lunge.

Then, peripheral flicker: on the flyleaf—blank before, faintly jaundiced—something... eased into view.

Not her script.

An elder hand, stranger still: as if a spider's brush had supped deepest ink, each character seared deliberate and stark into the page.

Lin Wan's pulse stuttered.

Breath trapped, she inched nearer, tugged by phantom cords, measure by measure.

The fresh inscription: three words alone, yet laced with glacial verdict, unyielding as law.

[Exchange, begun.]

...

Lin Wan couldn't recall reclaiming her seat.

Her face was ashen as vellum, fingers numb with frost; she cradled the diary to her ribs like ordinance—or sole buoy in the flood.

"Exchange, begun."

What verdict was this? Caution? Or ironclad truth, beyond repeal?

Had she... even in halting now, unleashed a trade that wouldn't unwind? Were she and Su Xiao's threads now braided by force, fates knotted beyond untangling?

She raised her eyes, adrift, to the casement.

The sky had soured unseen, thunderheads massing thick, the weight of it throttling breath.

Gales brewed in the peaks.

And she stood snared at the heart of the maelstrom she'd loosed herself—unforeseeable, her own hand the key. The blue-black creep along her wrist, those five frozen glyphs on the leaf: all bore silent witness.

The devil's diversion, once struck, heeded no cry to cease.