She was wearing a mud-yellow sweater today, which made her already dark complexion look even more sallow.
Excited yet nervous, Faye ushered Lily Vance to the sofa in her living room.
It was an ancient sofa, long past its springiness—she sank deeply the moment she sat down.
"These are for you." Lily Vance set down the pile of fruit, snacks, and drinks on the coffee table. "You've been working overtime so much lately, it must be exhausting. And hey—you wanted to know my makeup secret? I came specially to tell you today."
"Really?!" Faye's small eyes went wide. "Sister Lily, you're the best!"
Lily Vance cracked open a can of cola and handed it to her, then tore open a snack bag and urged her to eat freely.
From her observations, Faye loved snacks like any other girl, but with her intern salary and the city's high cost of living, she couldn't afford them.
Faye wasn't shy around her, eating and drinking heartily. Within a short while, her eyes grew glassy and she slumped onto the sofa.
She adjusted Faye's position so she lay flat on the sofa, then turned off the lights.
City neon from outside the window cast light across Faye's childish face.
Lily Vance unfolded the new mask she'd received. The thick, rank smell of blood suffused the room.
She checked the time—five minutes to midnight.
"At exactly midnight, in the dark, cover a girl's face with the red mask I gave you, and her face skin will detach and adhere to the mask. Give this mask to me, and you can receive a permanent mask that will never fall off."
She read Masquerade's final message one more time, then turned off her phone.
This was her only chance to live happily with Tim.
Faye was a girl from out of town. Her parents had divorced young and each had started a new family.
She almost never went home for the holidays, because neither side wanted her around.
Last year she'd liked a boy and couldn't help confessing. His response: "I do have standards for a girlfriend's appearance."
Faye seemed to really consider her a big sister, confiding everything, sometimes so chatty it wore Lily Vance out.
But right now she was very quiet, breathing evenly, fast asleep.
Lily Vance had injected sleeping pills into the can of cola—so that when Faye's face skin peeled off, perhaps the pain would be lessened.
She walked toward Faye, bent down, and prepared to place the mask over her face.
But her hand was trembling so violently it was as if a strong electric current was passing through it. Though she'd made her decision, when it came to actually doing it, she simply couldn't bring herself to act.
She was about to kill a girl—for herself.
A girl who lived in a cramped apartment, yet kept it neat and clean, and placed a fresh vase of daisies on the table;
A girl who wore cheap jeans and a pilled knit sweater, who smiled with a mouthful of white teeth;
A girl who'd stuck reminder notes on her mirror—buy eggs tomorrow, pay the water bill.
Tim's handsome face and bright smile surfaced before her eyes.
Being with him was so wonderful—so happy it hurt.
But could she truly trade another person's life for her own happiness?
Even if she could steel herself now and actually do it, how would she live the rest of her days? Could she really share a life with Tim with a clear conscience?
The hand holding the mask hovered just centimeters from Faye's face.
She'd never imagined such a small distance could feel as vast as the gulf between the Earth and the Moon.
The glowing digits on the clock read midnight.
Four faintly luminous zeroes—like four mouths silently screaming.
Lily Vance collapsed onto the floor. The blood-red mask lay crumpled where she'd flung it.
Cold sweat soaked through her clothing.
Her body burned, then chilled, alternating between the two.
In the space between hot and cold, she drifted off without realizing it.
IV. The Past
Morning sunlight spilled into the narrow, cramped apartment.
She woke on the sofa, covered by a clean old blanket.
The air carried the aroma of fried eggs. Faye emerged from the kitchen carrying fried eggs, soy milk, and youtiao, setting them on the small coffee table. "Sister Lily, eat up—my cooking's nothing special, don't laugh."
Faye was about to sit down when she noticed the blood-red mask on the floor and laughed. "Is this yours? It looks just like the one Ginger had."
"What?" Lily Vance nearly choked on her soy milk. "She has one of these masks too?"
"Yep!" Faye nodded. "The other day, just before midnight, she suddenly showed up here and brought me a bunch of gifts, plus this mask. She said it was super hydrating and insisted I put it on right then and there."
"You didn't use it, did you?" Lily Vance's eyes went wide.
This was a stupid question—of course Faye must not have used it, or she wouldn't be sitting here right now.
"I did." Faye said. "Too bad the mask was so dry—nowhere near as amazing as she claimed."
The fried egg in her stomach suddenly felt like a stone.
After all that—she'd been played by Masquerade.
There was no such thing as face skin peeling off. She'd stood there agonizing over a moral dilemma for nothing. Thinking back on it now, she felt so stupid.
Stepping out of Faye's apartment, her phone buzzed. A WeChat message from Masquerade: I didn't expect that you wouldn't use the red mask. I underestimated you.
Lily Vance replied: There was never any such thing as face skin peeling off! You were just trying to scare me!
The other side was silent for a long time before sending a lengthy text:
Let me tell you a story. About ninety years ago, during the Republican era, in a small town in Yunnan, there was a wealthy family.
The lady of the house was a renowned local beauty, but as she aged, she lost her husband's favor.
Her family included someone skilled in the arts of Gu sorcery, who proposed a plan: find a beautiful orphan girl, flay her face while she was still alive, dry it, and steep it in wine with dried peach blossoms. Drink continuously for three months and youth would be restored.
The lady of the house duly called a maid named Yin Zhu to her room.
Yin Zhu had been orphaned as a child—strikingly beautiful and bright.
The lady bestowed her with fine silk garments and gold and silver jewelry, telling her that from now on, she needn't do any menial chores but only attend to her personally.
The maid was dressed up beautifully and treated to a lavish feast of food and wine alongside her mistress.
Before she could finish eating, she felt dizzy and collapsed.
The wine had been laced with a sedative—so that when her face was peeled, she wouldn't struggle too hard and mar the skin.
The one who wielded the knife was the same sorcerer who'd proposed the scheme.
He first used an extremely sharp blade to make incisions on her delicate face, then poured mercury and turpentine into the wounds to separate the skin from the flesh beneath.
The agony was so intense that it overcame the sedative. Yin Zhu's piercing screams startled a murder of black crows that circled over the old estate for a long, long time.
The face skin was finally peeled off whole—dehydrated, baked, and dried until it became a thin, semi-translucent membrane, like a sheet of rice paper with a beauty's face painted upon it in exquisite detail.
The beauty mask and dried peach blossoms were steeped together in white wine. The clear liquid gradually turned a pale pink.
The beauty mask seemed to come alive—apricot cheeks flushed with spring, eyes both coy and joyous.
Every day the lady of the house drank a cup of the "beauty mask" wine, watching her skin grow ever finer and more pinkly fair—like a girl of sixteen.
Three months later, a servant bringing the lady her morning washbasin dropped it with a clatter the moment she entered the room, followed by a howl like a wolf's.
The lady of the house was dead, her face nothing but raw flesh—the skin peeled cleanly away.
The human face inside the large glass jar had vanished too, leaving only dried peach blossoms, floating in the pale pink wine.
After reading this story, Lily Vance felt as if an ice-cold snake were slithering up her spine.
Masquerade continued:
Though Yin Zhu took her revenge, her resentment did not dissipate. She wanders the world, selling masks with miraculous powers to people.
The world's people are always greedy—willing to sacrifice another's life for a mask that never falls off.
Occasionally, someone like you appears, which makes me feel this world hasn't completely rotted away.
Goodbye forever.
She noticed that Masquerade had used the word "I." Could this "Masquerade" actually be...
She didn't dare think further, and didn't dare keep holding her phone—as if something might crawl out of the earpiece at any moment.
Her phone rang. Tim's name flashed on the screen.
Lily Vance suddenly realized that right now, there was something even more terrifying than encountering a ghost—facing Tim with a bare, unmasked face!
He said he was already downstairs and had come to pick her up for a movie.
Lily Vance grabbed her makeup bag in a panic, planning to put on light makeup. It couldn't match the miraculous masks, but it was still better than going bare-faced.
But after a moment's thought, Lily Vance set the makeup bag down without opening it, got dressed, and went downstairs.
The autumn sunlight was perfect, gilding Tim's tall frame.
The moment he saw Lily Vance, he froze—then smiled.
She was certain that wasn't a mocking smile.
"So this is what you look like without makeup," he said with a grin.
"Wait—have you seen me without makeup before?" Lily Vance was startled. There was no way he could have seen her bare face.
"I saw your ID card." Tim grinned. "Come on—I knew what you looked like bare-faced ages ago. If I had a problem with it, would I still be dating you?"
The autumn sun was dazzling. She raised a hand to shade her eyes, a sudden sting of tears welling up.
Lily Vance burned all her remaining masks.
She wondered how Ginger Jiang would deal with hers? Then it occurred to her that she hadn't seen Ginger at the office for several days.
Ginger's phone was off; her WeChat messages went unanswered.
Just as anxiety began to grip her, her phone started buzzing with notification after notification—their college classmate group chat had exploded.
The latest news: Ginger Jiang, missing for days, had been found dead in her apartment. Nothing had been stolen—only the skin of her face had been brutally peeled away.
—End—