Evanescent Dreams

11. Those pills...

The apartment was small and cramped, with a strong odor of unwashed dishes and garbage that scattered randomly across the floor. 

"Yeah, it's always like this here. Xie Xubo's parents work overseas and only Xuan Miaomiao took the effort to clean the place up once in a while..." Weng Bai explained as they awkwardly stepped across the living room to Xie Xubo's bedroom. 

Weng Bai knocked the door of Xie Xubo's bedroom, "Hey, Xubo, It's me."

No sound came back. 

Weng Bai slowly opened the door. The room was even more in a mess than the living room. Everything was everywhere. Unlike Lin Xingren's colorful room,  however, this room was depressing. There was no light coming in. The windows and curtains were closed shut and books, banners, sports trophies, all seemed to have been purposefully thrown to the ground in a tantrum.  

Blinded by the darkness, Lin Xingren felt something bumpy under her socks. She first cringed realizing she had accidentally worn her polka dot socks from home, then lifted her foot to find a crumbly scrapbook: Xie Xubo [Heart] Xuan Miaomiao. 

Xie Xubo was sitting gloomily next to his bed, face buried deep in his knees. 

Weng Bai walked over and knelt down next to him. 

"Hey buddy, you ok?" Weng Bai whispered gently.

Xie Xubo looked up, he was unshaved and his eyes were swollen purple. 

"I-I-" he breathed arrhythmically, trying to express something. 

"I know, I know," Weng Bai lightly patted Xie Xubo on the shoulder, "we're here so you can talk to us, ok? This is Chen Siyun, Ye Zhen, and-"

"No! " Xie Xubo suddenly started screaming in agony, "Bai, I didn't kill her! I didn't! We were very in love, very in love..."

Weng Bai's eyes reddened as Xie Xubo bawled his eyes out at him. 

"Bai, I'm so tired. Why am I so tired?"

Tired. 

Tired was also the sole feeling left in Lin Xingren that day she ripped all her writing, all her scrapbooks, and with it, all the memories. Tired was the feeling that won over when she turned around one last time to see the abandoned stories dropped in the cold rubbish ben. 

Then and now, I'm either the perpetrator, the victim, the bystander. Never the savior. This is, perhaps, my inherent flaw: The disability in saving anyone. Stop faking. 

"Listen, we know you didn't kill her. We're going to find out exactly what happened, so please help us," Ye Zhen crouched down in front of Xie Xubo. 

'Help me. I want to see my sister and you want to see the truth. We need you just as you need us,' is what's he was saying. Has that little boy who cried in the playground already learnt to save others and himself?  Has he grown? What a relief...

 "What do you want?" Xie Xubo's voice was cracked.

"Do you know where Xuan Miaomiao's phone is?" Ye Zhen asked in earnest.

Leaning next to the half-closed bedroom door, Chen Siyun swallowed hard. She scanned the room and her gaze fixed on something. 

"No, I don't. The message...the message... Is Xuan Miaomiao still alive?! No, that's not possible..." he hugged his head, "does she actually despise me this much? I did something really bad, did I?  She came back as a ghost to send me this message, right?"

"Hey, hey, calm down," Weng Bai hushed and shook his head towards Ye Zhen. There was still no clue how Xuan Miaomiao's message was sent. 

"Does," Lin Xingren thought of something but flustered as the people in the room looked towards her, "I mean, does Xuan Miaomiao have little Red, the socializing app?"