The weather forecast on my phone screen was like an ice-sharpened blade, slashing into my eyes without warning: "Over the next three months, our country will be hit by an extreme cold wave unprecedented in a century. Temperatures in some areas may drop to minus fifty degrees, and the duration is unknown."
I stared at those words, my fingertips rubbing against the screen until they made a faint sound, pressing until my fingerprints turned white. Outside the window, it was the height of summer in mid-August. Cicadas screeched as if they were about to boil the air, and sunlight filtered through the blinds, casting dappled shadows on the floor. Everything was as usual, yet hidden within that very normality was a cold that would soon swallow everything.
"Sis, what are you spacing out for? Ming Xuan says we're going to try that new Japanese restaurant tonight. How about wearing the dress I picked out for you?" My cousin Lin Wei Wei came in carrying a plate of sliced watermelon. The strap of her pink sundress had slipped down to her elbow, revealing a collarbone marked with a faint red smudge. It was from last week, when she had "accidentally" fallen into Zhou Ming Xuan's arms and been scraped by his stubble.
I looked up, my gaze skimming over the carefully applied makeup on her face before landing on the watermelon in her hands. Its flesh was an eye-catching red, and juice ran down the edge of the plate, spreading into tiny red stains on the white coffee table. It looked just like the color of the blood that had seeped from the corners of my lips, cracked by the cold, when Zhou Ming Xuan pushed me out of the house in my previous life.
