The room is dimly lit, giving it a desolate appearance, but it is well furnished nonetheless, with plump green armchairs on either side of a small mahogany coffee table to which an oddly shaped vase full of wilting flowers sits in the center. Cups of tea sit there innocuously, and upon further inspection, seemed to be cold. Zhen didn’t know if they were there to provide a welcoming atmosphere, but it made her more uncomfortable than anything. The barren walls are painted a stark white, and she shivers even though the windows are closed tightly shut with the curtains drawn.
She didn’t dare ask the person where they had brought her. They hadn’t told her what they were doing, only with a vaguely threatening note with a date and location on her desk for where to meet as directions. At first, she had ignored it, playing it off to be some stupid prank, but as the letters kept coming, and things started disappearing, well, she started taking it more seriously, suspicion and paranoia ranking high on her list of anxieties.
So imagine her surprise when it had been a child all this time.
And yet, they didn’t seem like a child, eyes never reaching the blinding smile they had sent her way when they had first met. Secretly, she thought that it must’ve been a prank—an ill-fitting one at best—and she had indulged in the little thing, until they demanded to see the letters.
So here they are, in this not-hotel. It is too empty to be one, even with the seemingly never-ending corridors and echoing stairs that is synonymous with that of a hotel. But the lack of a bed in the room, and staff, had been telling. How they got access to this building, she’ll never know.
A sinking feeling makes itself known in her gut, and she ignores it with a slight shake of her head. She is here for one reason, and one reason only.
The child points to the armchair at the right of the coffee table, to which she stares blankly at. They point harder, and she realizes too late that they must want her to sit down because they shove her not-so-gently towards the chair.
They tsk at her for wasting time, and she murmurs a short “sorry.”
The chair isn't uncomfortable by any means, in fact, Zhen thought it was relatively nice for how worn it seemed to be. What is uncomfortable, however, is the expectant stare of the child’s dead dead eyes. She didn’t know what they wanted; they stayed standing rather than taking a seat like her.
“Thank you for making the time for me...” she trails off awkwardly, and yet they say nothing. They gesture to the tea instead, and she gets the notion that they want her to take a sip.
“Did you make this yourself,” she asks in an effort to be polite. She hides a grimace as she sips; no one likes cold tea. Well, one person had loved cold tea, but that was a long time ago.
The child says nothing. instead, they finish setting up a camera in front of her.
“We’re doing an interview,” they say curtly. “I'm starting the camera.”
Zhen’s eyes widen in surprise; this is the first time the child had spoken to her. They have a deeper voice than she had anticipated, and she shifts in discomfort.
“On what,” she asks, trying for a smile. She thinks it might’ve been more of a grimace than anything else, but as soon as she finishes this thing, she can leave and never look back.
“On you and Xia Yu,” they answer, syrupy sweet, yet aggressively absolute.
Zhen freezes.
“I-I haven’t talked to her in a long time,” she says quietly, her head downcast and eyes shifting back and forth in slight panic. “You won’t get anything from me.”
“Don’t play with me,” the child snaps, sounding very much like a demon at the moment. “Do you want—“
“Okay, okay,” Zhen placates, her hands slightly shaking. She takes sip from the cold tea again, just to be occupied for the moment, and from the corner of her eye, she could see the child’s satisfied smirk.
They take the other armchair, leaning slightly forward in sick anticipation, as if seeing Zhen struggle with her emotions is the peak of comedy.
“So,” the child claps, “Let’s start with something simple. Introduce yourself. Keep your eyes on the camera."
“My name is Zhen Lin. I am 28 years old. I own a small noodle shop north of the city.”
“Excellent,” she hears the child say. “How did you and Xia Yu meet?”
“W-we met in university. We shared a dormitory together in our first year. We clicked right away.”
It sounds hollow and monotone, even to her own ears, and she can tell the child is getting impatient from the way she hears them shift in their seat. Hurry up, the child seemed to say.
“We,” she continued hastily, trying not to make them more mad than they already are, “did everything together, from going to movies to singing karaoke.”
"And?" the child prompts, bored, as if they knew all of this already.
Zhen could feel her own frustration rise at the nonchalant-ness of their voice, but she suppresses it. She can't get angry now, not when there's something of importance at risk.
She goes for another attempted smile at the camera, but her eyes betray her.
"And what," she asks, playing dumb on purpose. "That's all there was to it."
And it's true. Their relationship hadn't been that deep, no matter how much she had yearned—that's enough. She grips the cup of tea tighter, and the child eyes her hands, as if they know.
"Tell me about after college," they drawl, long and slow, with a roll of their eyes. "What happened after college?"
The memories after university had been Zhen's fondest, and she lets a small genuine smile slip as she recalls the past that she so desperately wants to forget.
"Xia and I, we were broke college students, so we tended to stay in to eat most of the time. And our specialty was noodles. Xia and I loved making noodles."
"What kind of noodles?"
"Well, hand-pulled noodles were kind of a no-go, I mean, we were college students, and all we had was a rice cooker. so we usually used pre-packaged noodles, but the broth? The broth was where we put in the work. Now, I can't tell you what we put in the broth, since we, er, I still use the same recipe since then, but I can tell you it's delicious—"
"This isn't an advertisement," the child interrupts. "What happened to you and Xia Yu after university?"
Zhen's face drops before she plasters another fake smile on her face, and takes another sip of the cold bitter tea. Her cheeks were starting to hurt from grinning so much, and she shockingly found herself wishing she was back in university, simpler times consisting of her and Xia, and no one else.
"R-right, of course! sorry for veering off course. But anyways, Xia and I opened our own noodle shop. The first day had been hectic, I remember," she recalls, voice light. "We ran out of ingredients so quickly, and she had to order more. I don't remember how late it was, but she was so tired, running around while I just cooked all day." It surprised her how fondly she had said that. She thought she had been over it, but her heart squeezes, and the feelings of nostalgia and want gnaw in her chest.
"But anyways, we shared a bowl of noodles together that night; it was kind of romantic..." Zhen trails off, before she realizes what she had just said. "I-ignore that please!" she exclaims, eyes wide.
She turns to the child, who just looked on with an amused smile, as if they were expecting that. They seemed to be expecting a lot of the things she's saying, she faintly notes.
"C-can we please edit that out?" she pleads with a pink face, embarrassed.
"No can do," the child says, a definite response. "Keep going," they urge. "That's what I want to hear."
"Alright," Zhen replies, shoulders laxing in defeat. "We shared a bowl of noodles together. We talked about marriage; I had secretly wished that Xia would never get married. And she never did, to my knowledge anyways. But the first day had been a success. We called the bowl of noodles a bowl of xiazhen noodles, our names smashed together. We both cried tears of happiness that night.”
She lets out a deep tortured sigh, as if sharing these memories pained her. And in a way, they did. She hadn't expected to delve into her complicated, extremely personal, relationship with Xia in some shady dimly lit room in an abandoned hotel, and yet here she is.
"The shop blew up overnight it seems, with people around the state—even around the country—come trickling in to try our noodles. We were both pleasantly surprised how well we were doing; Xia even got us an interview from a local news station. It was very exciting."
"And how did your relationship fare after the boom in business?" the child asks.
She pauses there, not wanting to delve into Xia's sudden obsession with expanding the business. The child gives her no room to think, urging her on with a snappy clear of the throat.
Thoroughly chastised, Zhen continues her story.
"We were happy the first few years. Well..." she wanders off. "I don't know if she was, for I can never tell, but I was happy. My happiness was enjoying the expression on her face while she ate noodles. My happiness was cooking with her. My happiness—"
The child cuts her off again with a loud cough. Hurry up, is left unsaid.
"Well, as I was saying, the first few years were amazing. We promised to take photos every year together in front of the storefront, just to see our growth. And we did. We were content. Business was booming, we could afford to take a vacation somewhere. I had wanted to go to Italy, she had wanted to go to Japan. We could've gone to both. We should've gone to both."
Zhen pauses again.
"The later years were...less content," she continues, voice more quiet. Her eyes weren't looking in the camera anymore, rather she has travelled back in time, to a place where Xia is standing next to her, instead of hidden in the memories she wishes to forget.
"How so," the child asks, not because they're curious, but because it's their job as the interviewer.
"Xia became obsessed with the business name. I don't know what came over her, but she wanted to expand the business so much. She wasn't the Xia I knew, which is horrible to say, I know. She became money-hungry."
"Why didn't you like that?"
"At first, I was happy that she was trying to figure out where to take this business," she confesses. "But she took it so far. She wanted chains across the country. She wanted me to share the recipe with other chefs, and she wanted me to retire myself. She kept talking about money, and how much money we were going to make. and when i said she already knew the recipe, she lost it. She told me she was going to steal it from me, so that she can make a better restaurant than I ever could. I couldn't take that; we made the restaurant together. it's like she forgot that. I didn't even want to expand the restaurant; I just listened to her because I loved seeing her happy."
Her voice cracks, and she takes a second to blink away the tears that threaten to spill out.
"Sorry," she mutters, voice watery. "Xia had always called me a crybaby."
the child only hums in acknowledgement, and urges her to continue.
"Some days she was normal. I'd question her about expanding the business and she just seemed confused. She'd ask me what I had meant, and wasn't I content with just one restaurant. The first time she did this, I was relieved. I was glad she got herself out of that mentality. But the second and third times, I got upset. I didn't know what she wanted. She always contradicted herself. We'd fight to tears sometimes."
"Tell me about those fights."
"Neither of us ever fought like this before," Zhen whispers, as if she is ashamed. "They were screaming matches. On our tenth anniversary, I had enough. We fought in the rain after we took our annual picture. She threatened me for our recipe yet again. It's like she became a different person ever since she got that locket..." she trails off. “She broke my heart, and I broke hers.”
"All I wanted," she says, voice cracking again. "All I wanted was to remind Xia of home with the noodles. She hadn't visited her parents for years. Expanding the business would mean taking that intimacy away. I couldn’t do that to us.”
Tears start falling, and Zhen drops the empty tea cup onto the floor as she sobs into her hands. It shatters on impact, just like her heart did those many, many years ago.
"I just wanted her to love me back, was that so wrong of me?"
"You did well," the child says, walking over to turn off the camera. "That's everything I wanted from this interview."
"Where are the things you said you took from me, from the letters?" Zhen demanded through her tears. "That's the only reason i even agreed to this interview in the first place."
The child smiles, ingenuine and sadistic. “I can’t fix or return a broken heart.”
“You lied to me?”
“Not my fault you’re so trustworthy,” the child sing-songs, a hauntingly familiar locket dangling from their neck.
“Wait—” Zhen calls out, intending to ask why they had Xia’s locket, but she’s too late. The child had already disappeared to another place, and she is left alone to sit and contemplate about the what-ifs of the past.
As for the child? Well, they have other interviews they have to go through.
