Flash Delivery Form
After college, Daisy Luo had bounced through several jobs without finding one she liked, so she ended up opening an online shop selling women's clothing. Business was neither good nor bad—just enough to get by.
One weekend, while packing orders at home, she found that her once-thick stack of delivery forms had been reduced to just two. Her nephew Xiongxiong had scribbled all over the rest, and one was even stuck to the back of her only cashmere coat.
Whenever her brother and sister-in-law had weekend commitments, her apartment became her eight-year-old nephew's makeshift daycare. Daisy's parents had passed early, and her brother and his wife had raised her. Since she worked from home, looking after the kid occasionally was only right—except that this little terror was impossible to manage. One second of inattention and he was making mischief.
She called the delivery company to arrange a pickup and asked them to bring more forms, but they said they were too swamped to come today.
Her computer was on, and an ad page popped up automatically: "Faster than the speed of sound is the speed of light, and faster than the speed of light is the speed of thought. Flash Express—as fast as lightning, delivered instantly!"
Daisy had barely clicked the "one-click order" button on the website when her apartment doorbell rang. No one was at the door—just a thick stack of delivery forms left on the step, each marked in the upper right corner with dark red text reading "Flash Express."
The forms looked strange—there was no sender field, only a recipient field. In the bottom right corner of each form, a line of small print read: Can deliver goods to any location.
What good were delivery forms without a delivery person?
She filled one out and stuck it to a package, then went to the bathroom. When she came back, the labeled package was gone.
The only other living thing in the apartment was her fat cat, curled up on the sofa, one notched ear twitching slightly as it snoozed.
Her Taobao chat pinged. A customer wrote: "Boss, you're amazing! It's such terrible smog, and everything else I ordered is stuck in transit, but your package already arrived! The courier just dropped it at my door and my neighbor brought it in. Thanks! xo!"
Daisy was bewildered. She checked the buyer's ID—confirmed it was the same package she'd just labeled with a Flash Express form.
There was no way her package could have been delivered in the time it took her to use the bathroom. Right?
She grabbed another form, filled in the address, and stuck it to the next package she was shipping. Then she stared at it without blinking.
A brilliant blue flash. Daisy's vision went white, and when she looked again—the package had vanished.
Ten minutes later, her Taobao chat chimed repeatedly. The buyer of this package also confirmed delivery—the community security guard had notified her to pick it up. The dress she'd bought would be perfect for tonight's party, and she even sent photos of the unboxing.
Utterly shell-shocked, Daisy finally grasped the truth: stick a Flash Express form on a package, and it reached its destination instantly.
The doorbell interrupted her thoughts. It was Lily Tao, her college roommate and best friend, face wet with tears, looking haggard and desperate.
Daisy was startled. "What's wrong?"
"I wasn't planning to go home for Spring Festival, but I got a call saying my grandma is critically ill. I went to buy tickets right away, but it's too late—trains and planes are all sold out." Lily began crying again. "My grandma raised me when I was little because my parents were always working. If I don't get to see her one last time..."
A crazy idea took hold in Daisy's mind.
She grabbed a Flash Express form, wrote down an address, and stuck it to her fat cat's broad back.
The cat blinked blankly and licked its paw. Accompanied by a blinding flash, it vanished.
Lily screamed. "Where's the cat?"
Daisy called her aunt, who lived a thousand miles away.
Her aunt shouted in astonishment that a fat cat with a notched left ear had suddenly appeared in her house, rubbing against her legs and meowing.
The delivery forms had only transported clothes so far—she had to confirm they could safely send living beings across long distances. She couldn't risk Lily's life on an assumption.
She turned to her completely bewildered friend. "I have a way to get you back right now, but you have to swear on your grandmother's name that you'll never tell anyone about this."
Lily's eyes went wide. "Really? I'll do anything!"
Daisy handed her a Flash Express form. "Write down the address of your grandmother's hospital. Hurry!"
Lily didn't understand, but she obediently wrote down the address.
Daisy slapped the form onto her back.
"What are you doi—" Lily's words were still in her mouth as she vanished in a burst of light.
Less than a minute later, Daisy got a call from Lily. She was laughing and crying at the same time, incoherent. "I'm here! I'm at the hospital! Are you a fairy?"
Daisy exhaled slowly, a smile spreading across her face.
Lily had been the beauty of their college days—vivacious, excellent grades, universally popular. She'd been running a cosmetics business even in school, earning enough to cover her own tuition and frequently subsidizing Daisy's meals and clothes. Daisy had never been able to do much for her in return—until now.
Since Flash Express could safely transport a living person across vast distances, didn't that mean she could travel the world for free? A global adventure had been her dream since childhood, one she'd always kept tucked away because she couldn't afford it.
Now that she had a way to travel without spending a cent, her first thought was to walk into a bank vault or an armored car and spirit away stacks of cash.
But after doing some research, she quickly discarded that idea. Bank vaults had extremely tight security. Even if she could use the delivery form to escape, surveillance cameras would catch her, and the police would come knocking. Getting into an armored car wasn't hard, but cash was stored in specially designed transport cases that required professional tools to open. Breaking into jewelry stores or antique shops after hours—she might dodge the cameras, but fencing stolen goods would be like beating a drum she'd already stolen, announcing her crime to the world.
Ideas swirled in Daisy's head as she scrolled through web pages aimlessly—until a news item caught her eye. A high-ranking official in Haicheng had recently been placed under investigation for corruption.
She'd read before about greedy officials who received so many bribes they'd rent entire houses just to stash the money.
Daisy teleported into several officials' vacant properties. Most times she came away empty-handed. But persistence paid off—on one occasion, she discovered a basement beneath a certain official's house, where shabby cardboard fruit boxes were stuffed full of cash: RMB, US dollars, euros, gold bars... some of the bills had even grown moldy in the damp basement environment.
She wrote her own apartment address on Flash Express forms and stuck one on each box. Accompanied by a series of brilliant flashes, the boxes of cash and gold vanished from the basement like a grand fireworks display.
Daisy registered a women's clothing company and brought Lily on board as a partner. Lily's management skills were outstanding, and the company quickly found its footing.
As chairwoman, Daisy offloaded the tedious daily operations onto Lily and began her world travels.
She strolled beneath the Eiffel Tower in Paris, went on shopping sprees at Galeries Lafayette, posed for photos outside Casa Milà in Barcelona, sipped coffee under the Tuscan sun in Italy, and wandered the streets of Brooklyn in New York...
So this was how the other half lived—draped in designer labels, feasting on fine cuisine, immersed in dazzling, breathtaking splendor. She never had to wear her sister-in-law's hand-me-down clothes again, or cheer over a single meal at KFC like she had as a child.
But travel wasn't all pleasant. Once, wanting to admire the nighttime scenery at the Saigon docks, she accidentally stumbled into a drug deal. The two groups started shooting at each other, bullets whizzing past her hair. If she hadn't used a delivery form to teleport home, she'd have been riddled with holes.
After that scare, and with her delivery forms running low, Daisy stayed home for a while. She tried searching for more, but the Flash Express website had disappeared completely from the internet.
Naturally, Lily was curious about the forms' origin. Daisy claimed she'd found them by chance and had already used them all up.
She wasn't telling the truth. She'd recruited Lily for her abilities, but Daisy would never fully trust her. She knew, deep down, that Lily was better than her in every way. That knowledge was like a splinter buried in her flesh, giving a faint sting from time to time.
"Don't trust anyone—the closer they are to you, the more power they have to hurt you." It was something her father used to say, probably because his wife's unannounced departure had wounded him so deeply. He died of illness a few years later. Daisy later learned that her mother, who'd run off for another man, had also passed away not long after.