"Eight a.m class!"
Lan Chu, jolted awake by the eight a.m. alarm, groaned in despair; she had pulled three consecutive all-nighters to finish the hundred-page PowerPoint, and today was presentation day!
"Won't kill me, won't kill me…" she muttered, racing through her routine: folding the quilt, changing, washing up, breakfast, makeup—only to trip on the stairs and scatter her bag across the floor. Cursing her rotten luck, she gathered the mess, then saw her phone screen shattered like a spiderweb. "Heavens! I just bought this yesterday!" She wanted to cry.
But time was almost up; she crammed everything back in and sprinted toward the classroom. She ran with all she had—yet still arrived late.
"Lan Chu! How many times this week?" Professor Wang demanded from the podium. A portly, thick-glasses middle-aged man, he radiated severity and rigidity. Lan Chu loathed him; he concocted endless ways to check attendance, impossible to dodge. His stern face always knotted her stomach.
"In that case, you'll go first!" He stepped aside. Reluctantly, Lan Chu approached and rummaged for her flash drive—no sign of it. "Weird, I swear I brought it… did it fly out when I fell? I'm cursed." She kept digging.
"Professor, could I run back and look? I'm positive I had it."
Professor Wang's brows snapped together.
"All you do is slack off! You're a junior—senior year next! Have you planned your future at all? You'll end up a basement-dwelling leech! Sit down. No grade for you this time."
Lan Chu felt wronged; she wasn't a slacker—she'd just scored highly on the TOEFL and aced the IELTS sophomore year. Only Professor Wang's non-major course demanded the impossible… Her lateness had reasons; this week had been freakishly unlucky. Four tardies meant this grade was vital—without it, she would fail the course. The professor never budges. Clutching her bag strap, Lan Chu walked out.
"Jerk!" she cursed once outside.
Fuming, she returned to the dorm, ordered take-out, and opened her tablet—"I'll be there for you…" Whenever emotions surged, she binged friends; the cozy vibe was everything she craved. Soon, the food arrived.
It was the season-four finale—she'd lost track of how many rewatches.
Even the take-out betrayed her; it tasted awful, and she tossed half. As Ross faced Emily and called her Rachel, drowsiness hit. She shut the tablet, climbed into bed—and the phone rang.
"Hello…"
"How are you doing?" came the familiar line. "What?"
No reply, only laughter.
"Weirdo." She hung up and drifted off, unaware that the room was fading to gray. The powered-off tablet flickered back on, paused on friends: Joey's bedroom. He lay asleep, a girl beside him—as the camera zoomed in, it was Lan Chu!
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