INVISIBLE STRING - Duan Jia Xu

TWELVE

Summer, 2022.

AFTER GRADUATION HUI YING AND SANG ZHI DECIDED TO DO A SLEEPOVER, Sang Yan and Duan xu went out to the bar with their friends to celebrate graduating so the girls decided that it was time for their annual sleepover.

The sleepover was something that never happened a lot, it always happened on rare and special occasions.

Sang Yan and Duan Xu graduating was one of them, it was the first time in a while where both the girls weren't super busy and the house was empty. Well, for the most part.

Sang Zhi's parents were obviously still there, but it was different as now Hui Ying could walk around the house in a casual outfit and not really worry about her best friend's brother's friend seeing her.

The reason why they also held a sleepover was because it was easier anyway, as Hui Ying had to take a long train to her university. So Sang Zhi had suggested they'd do a sleepover with cute masks and gossip.

All something girls would like, obviously it wasn't perfect as they got home pretty late. Slapped some masks on and then fell asleep the moment they closed their eyes.

Hui Ying didn't mind it though, she liked those simple stuff.

She liked just spending time with Sang Zhi, she had been so busy with university work and all the preparing to get through to her second year that she hadn't seen the girl in weeks. And Sang Zhi was her best friend, even if they had a one year difference.

So it was obviously nice when Sang Zhi suggested a sleepover like old times, it was weirdly comforting to Hui Ying that she was right now facing the ceiling. Watching the glow-in-the-dark sticker stars glow while the moon lit up the rest of the room, in a way it felt like home.

That whole year she hadn't seen those stars, and when she was younger she almost saw them every week.

So there was this weird comfort about it, watching how some stars were glowing better due to the quality of it. How some stars were almost falling off, the glue was probably fighting all sorts of gravity to just stay on.

It was nice, comforting in every way possible.

But the silence was quickly replaced with conversation downstairs, it wasn' loud but it was slurred which made Hui Ying frown already. She wasn't sure if the boys had decided to just get back home early, or if it was late and she was just not sleeping.

Whatever it was, Sang Zhi also woke up. Her face showed the confused state of someone who had just gotten woken up by a sound, her eyes frantically searching the room as if she thought that something had happened to Hui Ying.

But when the younger girl spotted the older one, her eyes softened and she lay back down. Only when a loud thud echoed through the room did she sit up again. "What was that?" Hui Ying asked, her voice cutting through the thick air.

Sang Zhi frowned. "I don't know, maybe Sang Yan and Duan Xu are back home?" She spoke, shrugging her shoulders as her hand rubbed her eyes.

"Weren't they going to crash at their friend's house?" Hui Ying asked, she had heard in the car after graduation that they wouldn't come home that night. Maybe she had heard it wrong but she was almost certain she wasn't.

Sang Zhi shook her head. "Duan Xu would crash there, but Sang Yan was going to come home." She spoke.

Hui Ying nodded her head, letting the silence fill the room again as she understood where the sounds were coming from. She was at least happy they weren't being robbed, because she had gotten the fear because she had watched a movie about it.