Chapter Five: When Pretending Gets Heavy
By the time Feifei got home that evening, her smile felt glued to her face.
She dropped her bag by the door and leaned against it for a moment longer than necessary, breathing slowly. The house was noisy—voices overlapping, the television playing loudly, someone moving things around in the kitchen.
No one looked at her.
She slipped past the living room and into her room, closing the door gently behind her. The quiet hit her immediately, like stepping underwater. She let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.
Her room was dim, curtains half-drawn. The late afternoon light spilled in softly, dust floating in the air. Everything was exactly how she'd left it that morning—neat, controlled, untouched.
Just like her emotions were supposed to be.
Feifei sat on the edge of her bed and stared at her hands. They looked steady. Calm. Normal.
So why did her chest feel like it was folding in on itself?
She lay back slowly, eyes fixed on the ceiling. Her thoughts refused to stay quiet.
The whisper in class.
The way people talked around her.
The way Kael's voice had sounded when he said being quiet wasn't a bad thing.
That one sentence replayed over and over.
Why did it matter so much?
She turned onto her side and hugged a pillow tightly. The pressure helped a little, grounding her. Her breathing slowed, then picked up again without warning.
"I'm fine," she whispered into the fabric.
But the words felt hollow.
A tear slipped out before she could stop it.
Then another.
She didn't sob. She didn't make a sound. Tears just slid down the sides of her face, soaking into the pillow as she stared ahead, eyes unfocused.
She wasn't crying because of one thing.
She was crying because of everything.
Because pretending was exhausting.
Because being strong all the time felt unfair.
Because she was tired of being the girl who never complained.
Her phone buzzed on the bed beside her.
She flinched and glanced at it.
A message notification.
She didn't open it.
Right now, even words felt like too much.
After a while, the tears stopped on their own. They always did. Feifei wiped her face, sat up, and took a deep breath.
See? You survived it again.
She stood, washed her face, and looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were a little red, but everything else looked the same.
Composed. Put together. Fine.
She turned off the light and went to bed early, knowing tomorrow she would wake up and do it all over again.
Smile.
Nod.
Pretend.