After I Came Back from That Dinner, I Was No Longer Human

People often say the entertainment industry is a giant dye vat. They’re wrong. At least a dye vat lets you keep your shape, even if it changes your color. This place is a meat grinder, and an altar.

My name is Shen Li. Now I’m a newly crowned top-tier star, standing at the center of the spotlight and adored by millions. My face is flawless, and the way my eyes shimmer has been praised by the media as “a clear spring that can cleanse the soul.” But I know that beneath this skin, nothing remains.

It all began at two in the morning. After rejecting a man who could have destroyed my career, I returned to my shabby rented room, thinking I had stood my ground. Then I saw the pool of black, stagnant water in the washbasin, impossible to rinse away. It was alive. It was breathing. It told me: Do you want to be famous? Then give me the thing you treasure most.

I thought I was trading my conscience, my shame. Then I discovered that at midnight, black threads began to seep through the skin of my reflection in the mirror; my body temperature was dropping irreversibly; and I was growing numb to human emotions.

It turns out that when you decide to trade your skin for everything, all the glory you gain is nothing but a reflection of flowers on water and the moon in a mirror. You think you’ve climbed to the top of the pyramid, but you’ve merely become a meal for a higher-order monster. Beneath that glamorous surface, the rot has already begun.