Fu Shiyan’s life was like poison seeping from the roots and stems of an oleander. Her father’s violence was a thorn driven into her bones; her classmates’ bullying, acid rain that nourished vicious rumors. When the transfer student Zhu Ping’an offered her a cup of strawberry milk, she thought she had found light shining through the cracks. The warmth of a gray-blue scarf, the faint promise of a spring outing, the almond milk silently left in her drawer each morning: in her frozen world, these became the only flickering embers. Clumsily, she tried to draw closer, even using her scarred hands to carefully cradle a little warmth.
Then the truth behind the bet pierced her illusion like an ice pick dipped in poison. The smiles, the protection, the warmth of the thermos each morning: all of it had been nothing more than the stakes in a frivolous bet between Zhu Ping’an and a friend. “Keep it up for a month, and make that weirdo believe you.” The words of the bet, exposed over the school broadcast, were the final straw. The last light in Fu Shiyan’s eyes went out. Her lifeline became an abyss, pushing her into utter darkness. The late-autumn wind swept past the bare oleander in a corner of the schoolyard. Its crimson flowers had long since fallen, leaving only twisted dead branches, silently bearing witness to the curled-up figure beneath them as she used a utility knife to cut one last deep line across an old scar. The gray-blue scarf soaked up the warmth of her blood, like a flag of hope stained beyond redemption, covering her poisonous youth before it could ever bloom.
