I was curled up on the sofa, my fingers mechanically swiping upward. The plots on the screen flashed by like a montage on fast-forward: one moment, a prince was falling for a Cinderella; the next, a God of War had returned for revenge; then suddenly, a cultivator was failing to survive a tribulation. The time in the top-right corner of my phone had already reached one-thirty in the morning. My throat felt as if it were stuffed with dry cotton, and every swallow brought a faint sting. I’d probably been binge-watching short dramas for three hours straight, and the screen’s glow had long since dried me out.
