Surprisingly, Carrie felt a strange lightness in her chest after throwing the script away.
It was the relief of a person who had finally stopped fighting a losing war. She didn't need the script anymore.
Since she was going to die anyway, she didn't want to leave behind a record of her pain. She wanted to leave behind silence.
That way, no one would remember her.
She turned away and headed for the bench. Her fingers instinctively traced her forearm as the air grew colder now.
Carrie sat on the hard plastic bench, feeling the ache of the fatigue of her illness she had been suppressing.
Bzzzt. Bzzzt.
She pulled out her phone from her tight jean pocket, expecting a final "you're fired" text from Han or a notification from her bank.
Instead, it was an email. No sender name. Just a string of characters that looked like corrupted code.
Subject: We have reviewed your submission.
"We are interested in experiencing your tragedy firsthand. Are you prepared to pay the ink's price?"
Carrie stared at the screen, a frown creasing her brow. "What kind of sick fucking prank…"
Before she could finish the sentence, the shadow of a person fell over her.
She paused, looking up slowly to the figure in a heavy looking black, unmistakenly Doupeng, walked past her and sat down on the other end of the bench.
The movement was so silent, Carrie's finger hovered over her phone's screen.
Were they practicing for a play?
Carrie didn't look away immediately—she was used to the strange characters that haunted the city's transit at night—but the air around the stranger felt... different.
She wanted to make sure they weren't playing any pranks, because the children around usually play these sorts of pranks where they film and post on the internet.
Though the person smelled of wormwood and cinnamon, a contrast to the city's scent of rain and grease.
Looking away, she gripped her phone tighter. Wait. The script.
That's right.
If she could reach out to other webnovel apps, maybe they would appreciate her work. She couldn't let her months of crafting go to waste when she could apply to another company, right?
Standing up–though her legs felt wobbly, but she fought it–Carrie walked towards the bin.
She had leukemia.
Translation: her white blood cell count was a joke to infection. Digging through a public trash bin was practically a suicide mission, but thinking about starting a whole nother journey of tragedy novel resurrected laziness–her biggest motivation right now.
It made sense she needed money to sustain her father's health… hers too.
Hence, her script needed a second chance to show Han people do love tragedy.
Carrie began to scavenge through the trash.
"你从未问过我是否愿意过悲惨的人生."
The voice was lowly melodic and spoken in perfect Mandarin.
Carrie stopped. She turned back to the bench. From the silhouette, the curve of the chest, she could tell it was a woman. Carrie assumed she was a lost tourist asking about the delay.
"Bus. Coming. Soon," Carrie said slowly, gesturing with a hand covered in grime. "Just. Sit. There."
"执笔成悲者,必与悲同血."
The woman whispered again in Mandarin, making a chill that had nothing to do with the night air race down Carrie's spine.
What?
Bzzzt. Bzzzt.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. When she pulled it out, she saw ten missed calls from the hospital.
Furrowing her brows, she swiped up.
A text from the hospital: "Hello, this is Prime Medical. We are pleased to inform you that your father, Mr. Howard Smith, has regained consciousness and is currently awake. Please contact this number or visit the front desk for visiting arrangements.
Thank you,
Medical Staff"
The mundane warmth of the message made Carrie's eyes sting. So her father had finally woken up from the coma.
Carrie smiled, looking back up for a split second to find the bench empty. That woman–where did she go? She looked along the empty street, but there was no sign of anyone.
"What the hell was that?"
MROW!
The sudden sound took the breath out of her. Carrie felt her heart fall and she immediately turned–flinched–to the direction of the sound.
Slowly, she strained her neck, keeping a safe distance from the trash bin, and when she looked inside–
"Meow."
Carrie exhaled sharply, letting out a shaky triumphant laugh. "It was just a cat."
Sighing, she reached into the bin and took out the feline. "You crazy cat. You scared the life out of–"
"–Me" she barely had time to finish her statement as her eyes landed on what she was looking for. "There you are."
Her manuscript glowed at her. She assumed it was from the street lights, but as she reached for it, the light didn't look like the yellow reflection of the street light. But more like the sun.
It started moving around the script, and finally landed on the title page.
"What in the–"
HOOOOO-IH!
Air was sucked out of her lungs. It was as if someone had reached inside her chest and pulled her soul through her skin. And a consuming heat pulled up her arm.
A single hollow light shunned on her, pulling everything around her up. The script, the cat, even the bus station bench.
Then everything went blank.
…
The first thing Carrie felt wasn't the "shimmering light" or "angelic choir" people described in transmigration novels.
It was the scent of horse manure and the sound of a leather whip whistling through the air.
CRACK.
A sudden hot pain exploded across her shoulder blades.
Carrie's eyes flew open. She wasn't in the bus station. She was kneeling in freezing mud, her wrists bound to a wooden post.
Her brain tried to make sense of the sensory overload.
"Twenty-four!" a guard barked.
CRACK.
"Twenty-five!"