Su Nian figured she must have owed heaven a lot of money in her previous life.
Otherwise, there was no explaining how her twenty-four years of life had ended up this miserable.
When her alarm went off at six thirty in the morning, she woke because water dripping from the ceiling smacked her. Not the alarm. Water. One icy drop landed precisely between her eyebrows, like heaven reaching out to flick her forehead—Get up. Stop dreaming.
Su Nian opened her eyes and stared at the spreading water stain on the ceiling for three seconds.
Then she rolled out of bed, grabbed a plastic basin, set it beside her pillow to catch the drips, and went to brush her teeth with a blank expression.
The rental was tiny—so tiny that turning around in the bathroom meant banging your elbow against the wall. The water heater was broken. In winter, taking a shower depended on sheer willpower; in summer, it depended on luck. A crack split the mirror, cleaving her face in two. The left half looked more or less fine. Thanks to the refraction along the crack, the right half looked especially haggard.
Su Nian looked at herself in the mirror and said, “Come on. Stay alive today, too.”
Her tone sounded about as cheerful as a eulogy.
She opened the fridge. Inside, there was only half a bottle of milk two days past its expiration date and a wilted head of cabbage. She picked up the milk and gave it a sniff. It didn’t smell sour, so she chugged a couple of swallows for breakfast. Two days past the expiration date was nothing. Her life was much more expired.
At seven fifteen, she left for her first job. The morning shift at a convenience store ran from seven thirty to two in the afternoon. Cashiering, restocking, mopping the floor, dealing with difficult customers—she could do the whole routine with her eyes closed. At 180 an hour, she took home less than 5,000 a day after labor and health insurance deductions.
At two thirty, she switched to her second job. A beverage shop, where she stood until ten at night. She shook cups until her wrists went numb, and syrup stuck in the creases between her fingers no matter how much she washed. By the time she got home, even fingerprint recognition couldn’t unlock her phone.
That was Su Nian’s daily life.
The combined pay from both jobs was just enough to cover rent, utilities, food, and—the debt her mother had left behind.
Su Nian didn’t hate her mother. There was no point. The woman was gone, but the debt remained. Better to spend that time making money than hating her. She had figured that out early. Anyone who couldn’t figure it out wouldn’t have made it this far.
Her mother left when Su Nian was eighteen. Not died. Left. She left behind a note that said “I’m sorry” and a stack of IOUs totaling more than two million.
Su Nian still remembered standing in the empty living room, flipping through those IOUs one by one. Credit-card revolving interest, a loan shark, loans from friends, online loans—her mother had gone through every borrowing channel she could find, like she was collecting stamps.
She hadn’t cried that day. She arranged the IOUs by amount, clipped them together with paper clips, and put them in a file folder. Then she called the bank and asked about repayment options.
The customer-service representative spoke to her in a very gentle voice. “Miss, given your current income, we recommend that you consider a negotiated repayment plan…”
Su Nian said, “Okay. How do I do that?”
From that day on, her life had only one thing left in it—paying off debt. She dropped out of college before finishing because tuition cost money, too. She had calculated that if she put the tuition toward the debt, she could cut three years of interest off her repayment. How much was three years of interest? She had done the math. Enough to feed her for two years.
So she chose food.
Six years had passed. Of the two million, a little over 800,000 remained. She made a fixed payment of 15,000 every month without fail. After rent, utilities, and food, she could save only a few hundred. What could a few hundred do? Nothing. But Su Nian still saved it, because those few hundred were the only “extra” money she could hold in her hands.
A person had to have a little extra in life, even if it was only a few hundred dollars. Otherwise, what was the difference between them and a machine?
The convenience store was especially busy today. A crowd of office workers streamed in during breakfast, every one of them in a hurry, every one of them convinced their time was the most valuable. A man in a suit rolled his eyes at her because he had to wait an extra thirty seconds for the microwave.
Su Nian smiled and said, “Sorry about that, sir. Thanks for waiting.”
What she was thinking was: Your tie’s crooked. You look like you got it caught in a door.
She was very good at this—meek on the outside, razor-sharp on the inside. It wasn’t because she had a good temper. It was because she couldn’t afford the consequences. Arguing with customers would lead to complaints, which would lead to docked pay. Not worth it. Every emotion could be measured by whether it was worth it. That was Su Nian’s survival philosophy.
Around noon, her phone buzzed.
Her landlord had texted: “Miss Su, I still haven’t received this month’s rent. Please take care of it as soon as possible, or I’ll have no choice but to find another tenant. :)”
The smiley face made Su Nian’s temples throb.
She did the math. This month’s paycheck wouldn’t be deposited until next week, but the rent had been due yesterday. She was short 8,000.
Eight thousand.
For some people, 8,000 was the cost of one meal. For Su Nian, 8,000 was the difference between having a place to sleep and sleeping on the street.
She took a deep breath and replied, “Mr. Landlord, I’ll have it to you by next Tuesday at the latest, sincerely.”
She deleted “sincerely” after typing it. There was no point. He wouldn’t understand it.
At two, when her shift ended, Su Nian squatted in the alley behind the convenience store for five minutes. She wasn’t crying. She hadn’t cried in a long time. Crying wouldn’t make money fall out. She just needed to crouch for a moment, let the blood return to her brain, and then stand up and go to her next job.
The evening shift at the beverage shop was even more exhausting. On Friday nights, groups of young people came in, placing orders so complicated they might as well have been taking a math test. Half-sweet, light ice, add coconut jelly, switch to oat milk, add another serving of taro paste—sometimes Su Nian felt these people put more thought into ordering drinks than she did into planning her life.
A little after eight, a couple came in. The guy had his arm around the girl’s waist, and the two of them huddled over the menu at the counter for nearly five minutes. Six people were lined up behind them, and Su Nian’s smile was about to give out.
The girl finally spoke. “I’ll have a caramel milk tea, half-sweet, light ice, with pearls. Put the pearls in a separate cup, not in the tea. They affect the flavor.”
Su Nian said, “Sure.”
The guy said, “I’ll have the same, but make mine full-sugar.”
The girl smacked him. “You’re going to get fat drinking things that sweet.”
He grinned. “You won’t love me if I get fat?”
She pouted. “You’re so annoying—”
Behind the register, Su Nian smiled and silently did the math. The two drinks together cost 130, enough to buy her two days’ worth of boxed meals.
When she turned to make the drinks, a sharp pain suddenly shot through her wrist. The shaker was too heavy. Her right wrist had been swollen for several days, but she didn’t dare see a doctor. The consultation fee alone was 350, and medication could add another five or six hundred. Five or six hundred could stretch her food budget for three more days.
So she shook the drink with her left hand. It was slower, but at least it didn’t cost anything.
After making the couple’s drinks, Su Nian put the pearls in a separate little cup. When she handed them over, the girl glanced at them and said, “Why do the pearls look kind of small?”
Su Nian said, “This batch is a normal size. There can be slight variations between batches.”
The girl frowned, but the guy had already pulled her away.
Su Nian watched them leave and suddenly felt exhausted. It wasn’t physical exhaustion. It was the kind of fatigue that seeped out from between her bones. Standing behind the beverage shop’s counter, surrounded by the smell of syrup and tea, she felt like a machine with a preprogrammed routine—take the order, make the drink, smile, give change, take the order, make the drink, smile, give change.
A loop. Her life was full of loops.
The shop closed at ten, and by the time she finished cleaning up, it was almost eleven. Before leaving, the manager tossed out, “Su Nian, next month’s schedule is up. I filled every Saturday shift for you.”
He said it like he was doing her a favor. Su Nian thanked him. What she was thinking was: Saturday overtime paid twenty percent extra. A couple thousand more a month would be just enough to cover the shortfall in this month’s rent.
She had to be grateful even for being exploited, because at least being exploited meant someone was still willing to use her.
When she closed the shop, she washed every cup by herself, wiped down the counter twice, and mopped the floor once. She put the syrup bottles back, cleaned the tea urns, and checked the refrigerator temperature. No one had specifically required her to do these things, but she did them because the more she did, the less likely the manager was to replace her. Being needed was a kind of insurance. Su Nian had learned that very early.
When she changed out of her apron by the back door, she looked down at her hands. Sugar stains she couldn’t wash away were stuck beneath her fingernails, and the swelling in her right wrist looked more obvious under the fluorescent lights than it had during the day. She clenched her fist, and pain shot from the wrist bone all the way to her elbow.
It was fine. If she could still move it, it was fine.
Su Nian slung her bag over her shoulder and walked home past a row of shuttered storefronts, the streetlights stretching her shadow long. She kept her head down, doing the math in her mind. If she ate only one meal a day for the rest of the month, then added the savings to next week’s paycheck, she could just cover the shortfall in her rent. But she might pass out from hunger at work. If she passed out, she couldn’t work. If she couldn’t work, she wouldn’t have money. If she had no money, she couldn’t pay rent—
A vicious cycle.
Her life was one enormous vicious cycle.
Su Nian stopped and looked up at the sky.
There were no stars tonight. The city’s light pollution had dyed the sky a murky orange. She suddenly wondered if anyone would notice when she died someday. The landlord would knock when he didn’t receive the rent, open the door, see her corpse, and his first thought might be—What about this month’s rent?
The thought made her laugh.
“Su Nian, you’re seriously messed up,” she told herself.
As she passed a pharmacy that was still lit up, she instinctively touched her right wrist. The swollen sensation made her frown. Forget it. She’d hold out a few more days and deal with it after payday. Pain wouldn’t kill her. It would be strange if she didn’t hurt—no pain meant numbness, and numbness meant she really had become a machine.
At least pain proved she was still alive.
Just then, her phone lit up.
It wasn’t a message notification or an incoming call. The screen had lit up on its own. A black interface covered the entire display, and a line of white text appeared:
[You have been selected. Transmission commencing.]
Su Nian frowned and tried to swipe it away, but she couldn’t. She pressed the power button. Nothing happened. She held it down to force a shutdown, but the screen stayed lit. The line began flashing, as if counting down.
“What the hell…”
She assumed it was some new kind of scam app and was about to pry out the phone’s battery—then remembered that phone batteries weren’t removable anymore.
In the few seconds she spent looking down and wrestling with her phone, the ground beneath her feet suddenly turned transparent.
It wasn’t an illusion. The asphalt seemed to dissolve beneath some unseen force, becoming a bottomless black void. Su Nian’s body began sinking, like she had stepped into a swamp, but there was no sensation at all—not cold, not hot, not pain. She was simply falling.
She tried to shout, but something swallowed her voice.
The streetscape around her shattered before her eyes. Streetlights, storefronts, and sky all flew in every direction like broken glass. She watched her shadow peel away from the ground like a sheet of paper caught by the wind.
The last thing she saw was the text on her phone screen changing:
[Transmission in progress. Good luck.]
Before losing consciousness, Su Nian had one final thought—
Who’s covering the morning shift tomorrow?
Then everything dissolved into darkness.