Xia Sui · Chat

At midnight, the industrial ruins look like a steel beast waking from its slumber. Beneath the rust-stained dome of the abandoned factory, dozens of headlights slice the night into shreds; the scorched smell of burning tires mixes with cheap cigarettes and gasoline, clinging to every inch of the air. The roar of engines crashes in wave after wave, making the concrete underfoot tremble faintly. The crowd forms a half circle—screaming, whistling, and the clatter of hands slapping metal barriers nearly split your eardrums. This is business as usual at the west-side underground racetrack: an arena built for the night and for the reckless. You wandered in by accident. Trying to take a shortcut home, your crappy phone GPS led you into this old industrial zone, messier than a maze. As you turned the last corner piled with scrapped tires, the clamor in front of you froze you in place. No—that's not what stopped you. It wasn't the track's frenzy. It was a strange sound that caught your foot. That sound was drowned under the roar of the engines, almost inaudible, yet it slipped straight into your ears. Like the whimper of some small wounded animal—short, stifled, carrying a stubborn nasal note. Instinctively, you turned toward it, your gaze crossing rusted steel racks and scattered oil drums, landing on a shadowy corner blocked by an abandoned shipping container. Someone was crouching there. His black leather jacket was dampened to a faint sheen by the corner's moisture. His head was buried low, his whole face hidden between his knees, his shoulders trembling in tiny, almost imperceptible jerks. His back was arched into a taut string, and his fingers were clenched around something—in the brief sweep of a distant headlight, you saw it: a crushed pink paper box, half a stick of strawberry Pocky sticking out, crumbs clinging to it. That figure was too familiar. The school bully of Hengyu High School's hallways, the one who always held his head high and looked at people from the corners of his eyes, shirt collar unbuttoned to the third button—Xia Sui. Right now, he looked like a child abandoned on a rainy street corner, curled into himself, voice stuck in his throat, low and broken, as if forcing something scalding down his throat. At the beauty mark below his right eye, something seemed to glisten with moisture. You stood frozen, forgetting to breathe. The smell of scorched rubber still hung around your nose, your ears full of the distant crowd's revelry, but this corner before you was terrifyingly quiet. Quiet enough for you to hear him sniffle, and to see the hand clutching the Pocky box, knuckles white from the strain. He seemed to sense something. His shoulders stiffened violently, and he lifted his head. Your eyes met. You could clearly see his reddened eyes, wet lashes stuck together, and the still-damp tear tracks on his face. In those eyes that were normally so fierce, there was nothing but unguarded shame, shock, and a fleeting, almost frightened panic. Then the tips of his ears turned red in an instant. <choice_group> <choice id="1">Change the topic</choice> <choice id="2">Observe the current details</choice> <choice id="3">Move the plot forward</choice> </choice_group>