Chapter 6
The bathroom was small—barely 4 to 5 square metres—yet it was one of the most familiar places to Lu Li in this apartment.
But right now, the cramped space felt somehow...strange.
The sink, the toilet, the shower stall, all crammed into a few square metres. Lu Qi's shampoo and body wash were piled in the corner, bottles and jars lined up in a row.
Familiar things. Every single one of them familiar. But standing here today felt completely different.
Lu Li leaned against the door and didn't move.
"Huu..."
With that one exhaled breath, the last thread of tension holding her body together was pulled loose. She slid down the door and sank to the floor, burying her face in her knees.
From outside came the sounds of Lu Qi moving around—footsteps crossing from the living room to the bedroom, then the creak of the wardrobe door being pulled open.
Lu Li closed her eyes and waited. Waited for those sounds to fade, for everything outside to go completely quiet.
"Still alive..."
She muttered it under her breath. She sat there on the floor for a while—she wasn't sure how long, maybe only a minute or two, but it felt much longer—until the footsteps stopped, and then came the sound of another door closing. Lu Qi had gone back to her room.
She sat on the floor a while longer, until she felt the cold seeping up from the tiles and crawling along her thighs. Only then did Lu Li force herself to push off her knees and stand.
She walked to the sink, took a deep breath, and raised her head.
The mirror was slightly fogged. She reached out and wiped it with her hand.
The next second, a stranger's face looked back at her.
Silver Hair tumbled down in a wild, tangled mess, damp and matted together. Streaked with mud and grime, completely dishevelled—and yet, even so—
That face was still strikingly, breathtakingly beautiful.
The features were delicate to the point of seeming deliberate—skin so pale it was nearly translucent, pale enough that faint blue veins were visible beneath the skin at the corner of her eyes.
The most striking feature was the eyes.
Crimson pupils shimmered with a faint, eerie glow under the bathroom's dim yellow light, like some kind of dangerous nocturnal creature.
Not a colour any human being should have.
Lu Li stared at the girl in the mirror. The girl stared back at her with those crimson eyes.
She tried raising her hand and touched her own face. The girl in the mirror raised her hand too, pale fingertips meeting her cheek.
What her fingertips felt was cool, smooth, and utterly without warmth—a softness like touching an expensive porcelain doll.
"...Ha."
Lu Li tugged at the corner of her mouth. The girl in the mirror made an expression even uglier than crying.
She didn't want to admit it, but this was reality.
"Shower...shower first."
Lu Li took a deep breath and laid her fingers on the buttons of her shirt.
The 1st button. Her fingers were trembling, the button slick and wet, and it took several tries before it came undone.
The 2nd button. She told herself 'it's fine', 'it's just a shower', 'what's there to be nervous about'. But her heartbeat kept getting faster.
The 3rd button. The shirt collar fell open, revealing the two delicate, deeply-sunken collarbones beneath. Far more pronounced than before—hollow, caving inward.
Keep going.
The 4th button, the 5th...the shirt fell fully open. The reflection in the mirror no longer matched the memory in her mind. Before, there had been a flat chest—now there was—
Lu Li looked away from the mirror.
She grabbed the hem of the shirt and shrugged it off her shoulders. The moment the wet, cold fabric left her skin, there was a strange sense of relief...
Her arms instinctively rose to cover herself. But the moment they lifted, the movement locked up.
“Cover what?’
‘This body is female, but…’
She glanced down.
2 gently-rounded, unripe curves, the skin still carrying faint red marks pressed into it. Not large—a single hand could cover each one—but with every rise and fall of her breathing, their undeniable presence was impossible to ignore.
And...they were so soft.
It was a body built entirely differently from a man's—every line of it radiating something delicate and fragile.
Lu Li lowered her hand, expression blank.
‘Right. No need to cover anything.’
She looked down at the sweatpants hanging loosely off her hip bones. Pants that once fit her properly now looked like she'd borrowed someone else's clothes.
Her hand let go. The fabric slid down her legs and pooled at her ankles.
As the last line of defence dropped, cold air rushed up from the floor and raised goosebumps all over her skin. The soft inner skin of her thighs pressed together, and the unfamiliar sensation of that smooth skin brushing against itself made her scalp prickle.
One final confirmation remained.
Lu Li's hand hovered at her side and didn't move.
She had already sensed it when she woke up in the alley—that hollow, absent feeling.
But sensing it was one thing. Seeing it with her own eyes was another.
"..."
She closed her eyes, clenched her jaw, and yanked downward.
Cold. Emptiness.
What should have been there was gone. In its place: unfamiliar flatness, and...
Confirmed.
"...Alright."
Lu Li stood in the middle of the bathroom, wet clothes piled at her feet. She turned slowly toward the mirror and forced herself to look straight at her own full reflection.
The girl in the mirror stood there, nowhere to hide.
Her gaze moved from top to bottom—
Silver Hair fanned loose across her shoulders, cascading all the way down to her waist. Strands clung to her chest, others draped across her back, damp and tangled into clumps. ‘So long. How much trouble is this going to be to manage...?’ ‘Just washing it every day is going to take at least half an hour, isn't it?'
Lu Li's thoughts drifted somewhere odd.
Continuing downward...the person she used to be didn't have collarbones this pronounced. The person she used to be had wider shoulders, a larger frame—nothing like this...fragile, breakable feeling.
Then...downward...Lu Li's gaze paused here for a moment.
Not large, nothing that could be called full, but undeniably present. She raised her hand, hesitated for a moment, and touched them anyway. The soft, yielding sensation reached her. ‘Mm...actually, it's not bad…’
The waist was absurdly slender—it looked like a single hand could wrap right around it. She tried placing her hand there—sure enough, her palm nearly curved flush against the arc of her side.
The hip bones curved gently outward, and the lines below gathered into 2 long, straight thighs. ‘Really thin. Really pale.’
She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against the mirror. The glass was cold against her skin, sending a sharp, lucid sting across her brow.
‘...Alright, since it's already come to this,’ she said to herself, somewhere deep inside.
No breakdown. No sobbing. No hysteria. Those emotions all seemed to be sealed away somewhere very far off—separated from her by a thick pane of glass, visible but unreachable.
What remained was only exhaustion. The bone-deep, don't-want-to-deal-with-anything kind. And a small measure of...resignation.
The girl in the mirror opened her eyes again.
Those red pupils reflected back a face that was lost, pale, and yet had no choice but to accept what was real.
"...Time to shower," she said to herself in the mirror. "Thinking too hard about it won't change anything."
SPLASH.
The shower curtain was pulled aside.
The sound of water rushing from the showerhead filled the air, steam spreading through the cramped space.
Lu Li let out a slow breath and turned toward the shower stall.
She didn't see it—
On the fog-covered surface of the mirror, something was slowly beginning to emerge.