Dearest,

I’ve been thinking a lot lately; my life, your life – us, the world.

What’s the world like, outside and above? Is it just as good as they say? Peaceful, mundane, like a Sunday afternoon?

Good for you, getting out just in time to miss Snack Time. The theme this month was The Vintage, and they set the stage in an antique hall, one of those with golden fleur de lis meandering the walls, chandeliers hanging too low from the ceilings, and velvet crimson curtains draping down from the stage into the orchestra. The girls up for the auction were in these heavy dresses, with corsets too tight and the crinolines too rigid. If it wasn’t for the cameras and recording tapes all around, I would have believed I was teleported back to the Victorian era, with a Victorian stage for bidding on pretty little girls and pretty little boys. The auction went as expected; Clint House sold the highest numbers again, seven girls and five boys. We ranked third, which means the prize money will last us another two months. Juju from the floor below, the one with the waist length braids, was the highest bid this year out of all the snacks — seven hundred cheks, that’s almost the price of a bottle of wine I saw a buyer drink. But of course you weren’t here to witness this historical moment.

Or maybe you were.

I hope you weren’t. There’s no need to linger, not here.

I was a bit gone that night. Random people were talking to me, pawns and chickens, useless shitfaces from the basement floor. But then, just as the room was getting too crowded and as I was shouting at a new guard to take a good look at my face before ordering me around, I saw this figure, alone and huddled on the back staircase, with a thin veil of smoke shielding them from the scene. You remember that staircase. The one with the neon-green exit sign as the only source of light. I must have pushed past the guard and stumbled up the stairs, for the next thing I knew, I was smoking next to her. Like how we used to share a cig after Snack Time each month.

I saw you, that night, in her.

I saw you, and I called out to you. Did you hear me?

It’s best that you didn’t.

It was daylight, well maybe, daylight melting into twilight, but it was still light outside. And there was the moon. There was the moon, low and clear, and ivory white. It looked rather lonely there, by itself, between patches of clouds too thin. At that moment, against my words, I wished you hadn’t left. I wished you stayed. I felt something from the inside, something was crawling through my veins, eating my insides and leaving a bloody gaping hole where my heart used to lay. I had the urge to stop those little rats; how are you, what are you up to, how’s your day been, and please stop and listen to what I have to say. Please, or I fear I’ll explode.

But I can’t do that, can I? No. Because I know you’d disapprove. You’d say, in between a sigh, that I shouldn’t abuse my power. Not when you know your favoritism will bring the whole House against that unlucky person. And when it’s time to vote for the candidates to be sold during next month’s Snack Time, people will vote for them. They can’t move you, not when you live on the top floor, not when you are the Captain’s favorite, but they can, and will shove and bite and suck the marrow out of your proxies in the basement. And when the day comes, when the Captain no longer desires you, or when those fat old pigs elect a new Captain, when you get kicked down from the top floor, you’ll fall. And they will be waiting in the basement to eat you alive.

That’s just how the Houses work.

It started to rain this morning. It’s been raining all day. And the girl from the party, the one who gave me cigarettes, she was outside my room just now. I was coming back from the Night Routine when I saw her by the door. She saw me, and asked if I wanted a smoke. When I didn’t say anything, she said she knew me, from home.

Home. From home.

And then she started to cry. She cried and said that she was there when they took me, that she had overheard the whole conversation of those smugglers. But she didn’t do anything, she didn’t tell anyone, she didn’t give off the slightest hint, no she was so good. I was so afraid, I feared for my little sisters and for myself, I thought they were just joking around, I thought you were going to be fine. And one rainy night when she saw my parents kneeling on the muddy ground outside the police station, their voices drenched in rain and a shattering despair, begging and begging for them to reopen my case, she walked on. And you know the rest. You know my story, you know how my parents died. Runover by a car that lost control one stormy night. Right outside a police station.

And there she was, outside my room, plagued by her ‘conscience’ and crying her sins like a good repentant.

Go to bed, little girl.

God is dead.

God died when they hosted the first Snack Time.

After that, I lit a cig, didn’t smoke it, just watched as the ashes piled bit by bit onto the table, watched as the thin ribbon of smoke snaked up.

It was a cig for you.

Did you get it? Or have you left already, gone back to your Sunday afternoon. Well, then, goodbye.

Are you still here?

Soften the storm for me this winter, will you?

Yours

Jennifer Cui ’28

The Indicator x The Student: “Dearest”