Chapter 9 Fake Smiles and Real Dreams #2
“You can get through the morning.” I took a deep breath, opened my bedroom door, and stepped into the hallway that always felt colder than it should.
Its silence thick and uncomfortable in the early hour.
The moment I reached the bottom of the stairs, my stepmother’s voice pierced the quiet, sharp and unwelcoming, each word landing like a stone.
“You took long enough,” she snapped without even turning to look at me, her tone carrying the kind of irritation she reserved especially for my existence.
“Honestly, do you think the world waits for you to float around doing nothing?” I forced my smile tighter, walking into the kitchen where the lights were bright and unforgiving, illuminating every tense line in the room.
My step-siblings sat at the table, just like yesterday.
Both of them were eating breakfast without acknowledging me at first, but then one of them glanced up, smirking before nudging the other.
“Nice hair,” my stepbrother Wei said, his voice dripping with insincerity as he pretended not to laugh.
“Did you roll out of bed or is that the look you’re going for?” he added with a snigger.
“And that sweater,” his sister, Xiaoling, added, wrinkling her nose dramatically.
“You look like a thrift store threw up pastel colors. Do you ever wear anything normal?” I opened my mouth to respond, something soft and polite ready on my tongue, because that was the only kind of defense I ever learned. But then my stepmother chimed in before I could speak.
“And honestly, Alora, that diary,” she said, gesturing toward the notebook tucked under my arm as if it were something shameful.
“Most girls your age are planning their futures, not scribbling fantasies and emotions. It is so very childish.” My smile wavered, but I kept it in place, swallowing the hurt like I had trained myself to do.
I tucked the diary closer to my chest, as if shielding it from their words could somehow shield me too.
“I like writing,” I murmured, though my voice barely carried over their dismissive laughter.
My father finally looked up from the newspaper he had been pretending to read, his eyes landing on me with the same distant disapproval I had grown used to since moving in.
He sighed heavily, as if my presence alone exhausted him.
“Just remember what I told you,” he said, his tone stern and void of warmth.
“Writing will not build you a life. You have real responsibilities now. You are not a child anymore, Alora. Start acting like it. Focus on serious things.”
My throat tightened painfully, but I kept my smile steady.
The expression stretched so tightly across my face that it felt like it might crack and fall away entirely if I let myself blink too long.
The heaviness in my chest grew until I could no longer breathe properly, but I didn’t let it show.
I couldn’t show it. Showing it only made things worse.
“I understand,” I said softly.
My father nodded once and returned to his paper, his attention already drifting away from me, abandoning the fragile attempt I had made to be seen, heard, or understood.
I glanced at another photo of my mother, this one tucked into the back of my phone case. Her smile was bright and unburdened, her eyes full of love, and her presence was everything warm that this house was not. I whispered silently inside my head, a habit I had never managed to outgrow.
I miss you, Mom. You always told me my light mattered. But sometimes I do not feel like I have any left.
My chest tightened, and before they could say anything else, anything sharper, anything that would tear another piece of me away, I walked quickly toward the door. My footsteps were quiet and hurried, as if escaping a place where the walls pressed too tightly around me.
“No later than six,” my father said without looking up.
“Yes, Sir,” I answered automatically, too softly for any of them to bother hearing.
I slipped my shoes on, gripping my diary a little too tightly, then opened the front door and stepped outside.
The cool morning air rushed over my skin like a relief so profound it nearly unbalanced me.
I closed the door behind me, exhaling the breath I had been holding since I woke, letting the weight of their voices fall away as the fresh air settled around me.
It was gentle and forgiving in a way this house never was.
The street was quiet, washed in soft gold from the rising sun, and I let the warmth soak into me, loosening the tension in my shoulders, softening the ache in my chest. Out here, I could breathe again.
Out here, I could be more than the disappointment trapped inside those walls.
Out here, I could almost believe my mother was right, that I still had something bright inside me.
Almost.
My steps quickened the farther I moved from the apartment building. My shoulders eased slowly, the weight of my forced smile lifting as the city sounds swelled around me. Shanghai mornings had an energy that felt almost healing.
I followed the familiar route toward the bus stop, the diary tucked safely against my chest, and took the same number eighteen bus I always did. Riding it across several districts until the sprawling modern buildings of Fudan University came into view.
The campus loomed, large and elegant, a collection of glass windows and traditional stone facades that blended into a harmonious mix of old and new. The wide walkways already filling with students from all over the world.
When I first arrived in Shanghai, I was amazed by how diverse it felt, by how many languages floated through the air as groups of students hurried to their morning lectures.
Seeing people from so many different countries used to comfort me, used to make me feel a little less alone.
Because at least I wasn’t the only one who didn’t quite belong.
But today, as I walked through the main gate, clutching the strap of my bag with anxious fingers, the usual hum of excitement didn’t take hold.
Instead, something heavier brushed against my senses, something warm and prickling at the base of my spine.
I slowed without meaning to.
There it was again.
That feeling.
The faintest shift in the air around me, as if the atmosphere thickened with a presence that didn’t belong to the crowds.
A silent awareness pressing gently between my shoulder blades.
I told myself not to look behind me, not to feed the growing paranoia in my chest, not to imagine shadows where there was only morning light.
But the sensation deepened, threading its way beneath my skin, tightening around my heartbeat until it fluttered unevenly.
I stopped just outside the main courtyard, pretending to adjust the strap of my bag, using the moment to glance over my shoulder subtly.
Nothing.
Only students talking and laughing, vendors pushing carts filled with breakfast buns, a girl taking photos of the entrance gate, a man riding a bicycle with a stack of books strapped to the back.
Normal.
Totally normal.
But my heartbeat wouldn’t slow, and the warmth behind me didn’t fade.
I swallowed, trying to gather myself, telling my racing thoughts to settle.
It was the city, I told myself. The crowds, the stress of the morning, the lingering fear from two nights ago.
Anyone would feel jumpy after nearly being dragged into an alley by a stranger.
Anyone would imagine things. Anyone would sense danger in places that were completely safe.
Yet the feeling didn’t linger like danger.
It was the same feeling I had yesterday, as if someone was following me, stalking my movements from some unknown place.
It felt like the shadow of a warm breath against the back of my neck, gentle but unmistakable.
The kind of presence that made fear tighten and comfort bloom at the same time.
I pressed a hand to my chest, hoping the beat of my heart might slow if I focused on the rhythm.
But my pulse remained quick.
Could it be as I hoped?
Could it be him?
I took another step through the courtyard, weaving between students heading toward different buildings, and once again I felt it, soft but insistent.
My thoughts flickered back to the alley.
Back to him, as if on some relentless loop.
The way he stepped between me and danger as if it were instinct, as if he knew the shape of my fear before I even understood it myself. I pushed the memory away quickly, telling myself not to think of him, not here, not now, not when my life was already complicated enough.
But the warmth behind me lingered as I crossed the campus lawn.
And for one brief moment, when the breeze shifted and brushed against my cheek, I could have sworn it carried a presence I felt somewhere deep inside, something invisible yet familiar.
Someone was watching me.
And even though I told myself it was only my imagination running wild,
A quiet part of me whispered…
It was him.