Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

There is a new student at Gusu Academy.

Lan Zhan, freshly thirteen and top of her class, does not care.

She has better things to do with her time than think about other students. She has three hours of homework, per subject, per week. She has extracurricular testing beginning next month to determine which tier of the upcoming mathematics competitions she will enter. She has one hour of cello practice each night – two hours on Wednesdays – and a lesson every Monday morning which conveniently removes her from the social pressures of her tutor group beginning their week with stories (lies) about their weekend activities.

This Monday morning lesson also marks her absent from the introduction of the new student.

She does not meet Wei Ying until second period.

***

Second period, on Wei Ying's new timetable (immediately creased and half torn from its journey into her pocket with three broken pens, one working pen, half a snapped pencil, two paperclips, a handful of loose change, and a lollipop stick bent in half) is chemistry.

Wei Ying likes chemistry. But she gets into an argument with a vending machine in the few minutes between classes, which ends with two (two!!) bags of crisps in her bag and a scrape across the back of her hand from reaching up inside it at the wrong angle, and so – through absolutely no fault of her own, of course – she is six minutes late.

She grins, and pushes the door open as twenty-nine curious faces swivel to stare – wait, no, make that twenty-eight curious faces and one with an icy glare like Wei Ying has personally offended her simply by existing.

Wow. Who pissed in your cereal?

Of course, the only free seat in the classroom is the one directly beside her in the very front row.

"Wow," Wei Ying says a little too loudly as she slides into the space, because she has no filter, "who pissed in your cereal?"

Wei Ying's imagination was clearly lacking, because she really didn't think that glare could get any worse – but something about the way the inner edges of the girl's eyebrows tense (and they're actually insanely perfect eyebrows too, in that really annoying way where they clearly have never been plucked or shaped or anything, they just look like that on their own) suddenly turns her expression several orders of magnitude more intense all at once.

"What's your name?" says Wei Ying, and the girl turns her face away to stare directly at the front of the classroom. "Hey! Don't ignore me!"

In Wei Ying's peripheral vision, several people are staring at her like she's grown another head. She shrugs off her blazer with another grin, letting it crumple down between the chair and her back, and leans around the death glare to ask the next person along – "You'll talk to me, right? What's her name?"

"We're not supposed to be talking," is what she gets back in a hissed whisper, and belatedly from the corner of her eye Wei Ying notices the teacher waiting at the front of the room with his arms folded. 

Oh well. 

She blinks, and smiles encouragingly as a repeat of her question.

"…Lan Zhan," whispers the other girl, darting a look at the icy expression on what Wei Ying now knows is Lan Zhan's face. 

The teacher clears his throat, patience finally used up, and Wei Ying gets ready to tune out another telling-off.

*

Lan Zhan, Wei Ying writes with tiny pen-strokes on the edge of the paper next to her, and adds a little smiley face on the end.

The paper jerks away from her abruptly, and a blue pencil case with white bunnies printed on it slams down in its place.

Wei Ying doodles a tiny flower at the edge of one bunny's fluffy ear.

***

"Hey, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, wait –" calls Wei Ying as their class is dismissed, and Lan Zhan has quite literally never walked faster in her life. Only the rule against running prevents her from outright sprinting away – away from an entire hour of constant needling, away from quite possibly the most irritating person she has ever had the misfortune of meeting, away from Wei Ying –

Wei Ying, whose too-loud laughing voice is still echoing in Lan Zhan's ears.

In an incredible break from routine, Lan Zhan heads directly to the music practice rooms and locks herself in the smallest one for the entire twenty minutes of their morning break. It's allowed. It's not against the rules to practise during break times. She's not doing anything wrong.

She doesn't even take out her cello.

Lan Zhan's next lesson is PE. Lan Zhan wishes, desperately, with every fibre of her uncomfortable heart, for Wei Ying to be assigned to a different class.

The universe is not on Lan Zhan's side, today.

*

The thing is.

The thing is –

Lan Zhan already knows. Lan Zhan is ignoring the knowledge, in favour of all the other facts about Wei Ying – but Lan Zhan already knows. She knows Wei Ying is the most beautiful girl she has ever met, or will ever meet, in her entire life – and it doesn't matter, because Wei Ying is also the worst girl she has ever met, or will ever meet, in her entire life. So she can ignore it.

When Wei Ying bounces out of the second changing room with her hair already falling half out of a high ponytail and absurdly long, tanned legs making her uniform-appropriate gym shorts look like something out of the kind of coming-of-age movies Lan Zhan isn't allowed to watch – it is suddenly much, much harder to ignore.

Lan Zhan attempts quite genuinely to glare a hole into the opposite wall of the gym. She can feel heat in the tips of her ears.

"Lan Zhan!" calls Wei Ying, obnoxiously delighted, and waves at her enthusiastically from her peripheral vision. "We're in the same class again!"

Lan Zhan does not look at her. She walks stiffly over to the teacher and says, inflectionless, "I feel unwell. Please may I go to the nurse."

It is not technically a lie. This is definitely some type of illness. Perhaps she can have the rest of the week off. Perhaps by next week Wei Ying will have been permanently excluded for misbehaviour.

The teacher looks at her with concern. "Of course you can, Lan Zhan, that's not like you at all. Do you need someone to go with you?"

"No," says Lan Zhan, and leaves – but not before she catches sight of Wei Ying holding a perfect handstand without support, shirt slipping down to expose her toned stomach. 

On the way out of the PE block, Lan Zhan almost walks into the door.

***

"What's wrong with you?!" Jiang Cheng hisses directly into Wei Ying's ear, far too loudly for the close proximity, and Wei Ying shoves at her before flicking another very small piece of balled-up paper in Lan Zhan's direction. She grins, not taking her eyes off the neat dark braid with the white ribbon threaded through it two rows in front of her, and tears another piece off her page with deliberate slowness – to extend the ripping sound of it as long as possible, of course.

It might be her imagination, but she thinks Lan Zhan stiffens just a little.

"I'm trying," she says to Jiang Cheng, voice low and gleeful, "to make her turn around."

"Why?!" Jiang Cheng screws up her face, glancing at Lan Zhan with a bewildered expression. "She's so obviously a bitch, why would you even want –"

"Jiang Cheng," says the teacher sharply, "that does not sound like silent working to me."

"It was Wei Ying," snaps Jiang Cheng instantly, and the teacher sighs in the extremely specific way Wei Ying knows means I really cannot be bothered to tell you off right now but it looks like you've given me no other choice. 

Wei Ying scoots her chair around to the precise angle needed to make faces at Jiang Cheng from behind the teacher's back. She waggles her eyebrows. She pokes her tongue out and crosses her eyes. She stifles a laugh in her hands at Jiang Cheng's furiously red expression. She –

Lan Zhan is staring at her.

"Hey, Lan Zhan," she says, tipping back in her chair to settle more fully into Lan Zhan's eyeline, "have you ever been told off for anything?"

Lan Zhan looks away.

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying whines, tipping back a little further, "Lan Zhan, jiejie, look at me –"

There is a very interesting moment of oh shit weightlessness, in which Wei Ying flings her arms and legs out wildly and smacks her hand on the edge of the table, and then her head hits the floor and everything goes extremely blurred for several seconds.

"Oh, wow," she says into the shocked silence, and then starts laughing. The teacher's saying something, which Wei Ying can't quite make out over the buzzing in her ears, and then she's being carefully helped to her feet – that's weird, she thought Jiang Cheng would yank her upright with the same force she pulls her by the ankle out of bed most mornings – hang on a second.

She's being carefully helped to her feet, by Lan Zhan.

"Huh," she says intelligently, and stumbles sideways – mostly unintentionally – into Lan Zhan's arms.

Lan Zhan stiffens, predictably, and Wei Ying catches a blurry glimpse of Jiang Cheng's outraged red-faced expression – then she blinks, and they're walking down the corridor towards the nurse's office.

"Lan Zhan," she says, "how did we get here?"

Lan Zhan glares at her, clearly not dignifying that with a response.

"Are we going to the nurse? That's stupid, I'm completely fine, we should go back because I know you don't actually want to be missing class –"

"You have a concussion."

"I do not!" Wei Ying is offended – outraged, even – by this accusation. "I've never felt better," she continues authoritatively, and Lan Zhan –

Lan Zhan says icily, "You can walk on your own, then," and lets go of her.

"Aiya, that's unfair," says Wei Ying as she wobbles and catches herself on the nearest wall. "Just because I have a concussion, you're so mean to me – ah, Lan Zhan, wait!"

***

When Lan Zhan leaves her in the nurse's office, Wei Ying is glassy-eyed and quiet. She'd been the same when they first left the classroom. Lan Zhan has thought, several times in the past week, that if Wei Ying somehow gained the ability to shut up for longer than three seconds at a time it would be a perfect miracle.

She finds she doesn't like it at all, actually.

*

Wei Ying is absent for the next three days. 

Lan Zhan should find this peaceful. It should be a relief. Wei Ying has done nothing but torment her since the first morning she burst irrevocably into her life. 

Lan Zhan cannot concentrate.

Lan Zhan sees Wei Ying's test paper on the top of a freshly marked pile in their maths classroom. The mark scrawled in red on the front is astoundingly high.

When Lan Zhan gets her own paper back, she realises it is two marks higher than her own.

"Lan Zhan, wow," says a girl whose name she can't be bothered to recall right now, specifically the girl she saw trying to cheat from both her neighbours on last week's test day, "top of the class again?"

"No," says Lan Zhan coldly with no further explanation.

*

"Lan Zhan," says her form tutor the next morning, in that careful tone she always uses with anyone showing signs of a particularly high-strung mood, "is everything all right?"

"Yes," says Lan Zhan blankly, instead of why do I care about a girl I hate.

She corners Jiang Cheng in the corridor between first and second period. All it takes is a step into her path, a deliberate lack of movement, a blank stare – Lan Zhan knows she is tall, knows she is intimidating, knows Jiang Cheng is only wound so tightly to cover a list of insecurities a mile wide. 

(She might not be able to read herself, but she's spent enough time studying other people in order to survive socially that she does decently enough with that, now.)

Jiang Cheng looks at her, and jerks her chin a little more upright in defiance. There's wariness behind it.

"What do you want?" she says, in the kind of tone the teachers call lip.

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan, which is not – okay it is what she'd been going to say, what she'd planned and rehearsed as a conversation opener, but not as a response to that –

Jiang Cheng makes a slightly choked noise. Lan Zhan feels the tips of her ears burn. 

"Is Wei Ying okay," she forces out between gritted teeth, and Jiang Cheng curls her lip at her.

"Why do you even care," she says, barely a question, "it's not like you've ever spoken to her."

Lan Zhan stares at her. It's the kind of stare which makes practically anyone fold within moments; almost a glare but just a little too blank to really earn the title. The kind of stare which makes Wei Ying grin at her and say something both infuriating and ridiculous.

Jiang Cheng takes longer about it than most people, but she folds too. She huffs, looks away, glares at the wall, says – 

"She's fine. She'll be back tomorrow."

Lan Zhan feels a horrible mixture of fluttering dread and nervous anticipation twist abruptly in her chest. It is extremely unpleasant. She has never felt anything like it before in her life.

She's been thinking both those statements about a lot of things, lately.

***

"Jiang Cheeeeeeeeeng~" says Wei Ying from her sprawled-out position on the sofa in their enormous shared bedroom, "did Lan Zhan miss me today?"

"Will you shut up?" Jiang Cheng snaps, dropping her bag directly onto Wei Ying's legs (her face would have been preferred, but, well, Jiang Cheng isn't going to be that much of a bitch to someone literally recovering from a concussion) and stalking across the room to immediately flop face-first onto her bed. "I spent lunch in detention again, I don't have time to waste on your creepy obsession with Lan Zhan, for fuck's sake, you're so weird –"

"I do not have a creepy obsession with Lan Zhan! She's just –"

"I don't want to hear it!!" yells Jiang Cheng into her pillow. "God, go back to being too concussed to string a sentence together please –"

"You're so rude to me!! I'm telling a-jie –"

Jiang Cheng screams into her pillow.

Really, she doesn't give a shit about Lan Zhan. She has no idea whatsoever where Wei Ying's ridiculous (creepy!) obsession has come from. It's bad enough that they've moved schools midway through the year, that they've had to start over with new friendships and new stresses and new much stricter rules – she doesn't need whatever the hell this is on top of it all.

She is certainly not going to tell Wei Ying that Lan Zhan was – just as creepily – asking after her today.

"I'm so bored," says Wei Ying, and Jiang Cheng throws a pillow at her.

***

Wei Ying is back.

Wei Ying is worse.

Lan Zhan suspects that in actuality the three-day absence has caused an inaccurate shift in her mental image of Wei Ying. That her final impression – dazed, quiet, still – has lingered and affected the other memories; softening them, dulling the noise and brightness and infuriating misbehaviour with entirely irrational concern.

She revises the faulty conceptualisation within the first seven minutes of the day (and Wei Ying was five minutes late).

*

In maths, Wei Ying's assigned seat is on the opposite side of the classroom from Lan Zhan.

This does not stop her, when she belatedly receives her test paper, from leaning sideways away from her table during silent working time and calling, too loudly, "Hey, Lan Zhan, what did you get?"

Lan Zhan ignores her. But one of the other girls – she doesn't know who, because she's not looking – says oh, she got ninety-two, and Wei Ying makes an affronted-excited gasp of a noise which has Lan Zhan glancing back in her direction entirely against her will.

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying crows, "I got ninety-four! I guess being stuck-up and never speaking to anyone doesn't always make you the best, does it?" 

She leans further over, grinning, waving her test paper with the red numbers Lan Zhan has already seen, and then the teacher snaps out of her momentary surprise with an extremely unimpressed expression.

"Wei Ying. Outside now."

The sound of the ensuing argument floats in loudly enough from the corridor that the entire class listens in stunned silence, not even bothering to take advantage of the lack of supervision.

Which means the entire class hears it when Wei Ying says, wild and stubborn and outraged, "But it's true! She thinks she's better than everyone else – why else would she ignore them, she wouldn't even say hi to me this morning when I came back –"

"Wei Ying," snaps the teacher, loud enough that everyone inside the classroom can still hear it, "when someone doesn't want to talk to you it's not always a personal insult. You need to learn to respect other people's boundaries."

Wei Ying laughs, clear and loud and angry. "That's so stupid – not wanting to talk to someone isn't a boundary, it's just called being a bitch."

Wei Ying is sent to internal suspension for the rest of the lesson.

Lan Zhan feels the stares of her classmates prickling under her skin for much longer.

*

In chemistry, Wei Ying is silent and sulking. She doesn't even look at Lan Zhan as they walk in and take their seats. 

Ten minutes in, the teacher says something about the role of electrons in certain reactions, and Wei Ying yawns loudly and makes a popping sound with her lips.

"Wei Ying," says the teacher tiredly.

"Oh? Ah, it doesn't matter, I was just thinking about how everything you're saying is wrong," she says with an innocent smile. 

It's the kind of smile that's looking for a fight. 

The teacher draws breath, expression solidifying into the familiar telling off Wei Ying look, but Wei Ying carries on blithely across him.

"See, the thing is, you haven't said anything at all about subshells and orbitals, and you're putting this solar-system-model into everyone's heads when it's just not accurate, electrons aren't whizzing around actually orbiting the nucleus like that –"

"Wei Ying –"

"– and the orbitals aren't even shaped like that anyway," Wei Ying continues with a dangerous gleam in her eye, "so really I don't think you should be teaching us this at all –"

"Right, that's enough now –"

"– actually, that's a good point, why are we bothering with this? I'm not going to sit here and listen to shit that isn't even accurate." She gets up and slings her bag over one shoulder, smiling at the rest of the class in a way that doesn't reach her eyes at all. "If anyone wants to know what electrons actually do, I'll be in the library."

And then she walks out. The door slams shut so hard behind her it rebounds off the frame and swings itself open again.

Which means Lan Zhan – and everyone else – gets to see Wei Ying unsling her bag from her shoulder and throw it hard enough down the hallway that it slams into the wall at the end and leaves a scuffed black mark on the paintwork.

The teacher sighs and sits down to write an email.

*

Lan Zhan doesn't know what Wei Ying said or did in internal suspension to get let out again for PE that afternoon. Two incidents in a single day should have resulted in a week-long stay – Lan Zhan doesn't even know what the room looks like, but she imagines walls covered in printouts of the academy rules and single desks with high dividers between them – and yet here Wei Ying is, standing at the edge of the sports field in too-short shorts and a messy high ponytail with the rest of them, a vaguely concerned-looking pastoral support assistant clearly sent to supervise the situation sitting off to one side on the grass.

The teacher dumps out a bag of tag rugby belts and tags, and Lan Zhan's heart sinks. 

It's not that she's bad at tag rugby. She's actually – as with most things involving running around and fast reactions – quite good at it. She can easily outstrip most of her classmates, and her disdain for mud and accidental physical contact (despite the rules, it somehow always happens at least a little) is mostly outweighed by her quiet enjoyment of being good at something that for once is socially acceptable to be good at. If she had more time in her schedule, it might even have been nice to be part of the school team – but she doesn't, so it doesn't matter.

The point is this: Wei Ying has a look in her eyes that tells Lan Zhan she's about to lose her spot as the only one fast enough to do whatever she wants here.

Wei Ying gets picked for the opposite team before Lan Zhan can force the syllables of her name past her own lips.

"Lan Zhan," she says, taunting, the curl of her lip almost identical to Jiang Cheng's, "watch out, you might have to actually get near another person if you want to win!"

Lan Zhan doesn't reply. Her chest is doing something strange, lungs burning already even though she hasn't started running. She doesn't know –

She doesn't know when or why Wei Ying's needling turned sharper, digging in deep instead of poking at her edges, but it wasn't this way before today.

Wei Ying makes her angry. Frustrates her, infuriates her – makes her feel other emotions she can't understand or even name – but today is somehow worse. Today Wei Ying's words shove themselves under her skin, prickle their way to the sensitive parts of her she doesn't want anyone else to see, stab right in like they're made for it. 

Wei Ying isn't even saying anything she hasn't heard before. But somehow, unreasonably, it's worse. From her, it's worse.

"Jiejie," says Wei Ying, and this morning when she'd said Lan Zhan, jiejie, hey! I'm back, did you miss me?! the word had been warm and bright on her lips but it's nothing but cold now, "you're still not talking to me?"

The teacher's whistle blows, and Lan Zhan runs.

She manages to avoid Wei Ying for eight minutes exactly. Then her teammates get tired of watching her hang back and force her to either catch a pass from them or let the other team take it – and all at once the ball is in her hands, muddy and cold, and she's sprinting down one side of the field with wind in her face and warm exertion in her muscles, and it's actually enjoyable despite the way the rest of the day has gone so far –

Out of the corner of her eye she sees Wei Ying running, two untouched red tags fluttering at her waist.

Lan Zhan pushes faster. But – Wei Ying, horribly and yet somehow unsurprisingly, is the first person Lan Zhan has met who can match her. 

There's a slightly wild look on Wei Ying's face. "Lan Zhan!" she calls, breathless, sprinting closer, "Say something to me and I'll let you score!"

Lan Zhan faces forward, and runs faster.

She expects the rip of velcro as she loses a tag. She doesn't expect the scratch of nails across her back as two fingers hook into the unyielding belt and yank at the same time as something hits her leg and trips her – the belt cuts into her stomach at the same time as she stumbles, and – 

– she goes down hard, winded, muddy grass scraping her exposed arms and legs from her own momentum, and Wei Ying is on top of her –

Lan Zhan kicks out, rolling onto her back and shoving Wei Ying away at the same time, too winded for words but hot with anger – how dare Wei Ying break the rules, how dare Wei Ying touch her –

The teacher's whistle blows, and blows again because Wei Ying's hands are around both her wrists, nails digging in tight, and as she lets go on one side Lan Zhan takes the opportunity and pushes her hard, using her own weight as she rolls sideways to throw Wei Ying off her, to get her away – 

Ten minutes later they're sitting in dead silence at opposite ends of the bench outside the headteacher's office, stained with mud and grass and – in Lan Zhan's case at least – staring blankly at the opposite wall and trying not to throw up.

She's never been in trouble. 

She's never –

Lan Zhan and Wei Ying are both issued with a three-day fixed term exclusion for becoming involved in a physical fight.

Wei Ying shrugs and says, "Fine, it's not like I care. Poor Lan Zhan though, what a disappointment. What a stain on that perfect record."

Lan Zhan asks to use the bathroom. She locks herself in a cubicle, sits on the closed lid and draws her knees up to her chest, and cries. Silent, shaking sobs that burn in her chest and the back of her throat, breaking at the edges with all her frustration and anger and disbelieving horror at the situation, at Wei Ying, at herself –

She hates Wei Ying. She hates her. She doesn't think she's ever hated anyone more.

***

It's not the first time Wei Ying has been temporarily excluded from a school. It's not even the first time she's been excluded for fighting – she was kicked out of her old school for beating up an older boy until he cried (which he had entirely, wholeheartedly deserved) – but it's the first time she's been excluded from Gusu Academy with all its prestige and reputation, and therefore in Madam Yu's reasoning it clearly deserves a more extensive chewing-out than any Wei Ying has received for previous offences.

It's not like she cares. It's not like it matters. It's not like she gives a shit in the slightest.

But there's something in the pit of her stomach that always ends up just a little bit shaky, afterwards. When her ears are ringing from the shouting and both sides of her face are pink and stinging – that's when she curls up on her bed and tucks the covers over herself and scrolls endlessly on her phone (her backup phone, this time, because her actual phone has been confiscated) until the shakiness goes away. She doesn't cry, because she doesn't actually care – but she doesn't want to talk to anyone either.

Which is why she tells Jiang Cheng to fuck all the way off when she yanks the covers off her – only to be confronted with not just Jiang Cheng but Jiang Yanli as well, side-by-side with expressions of annoyance and concern respectively. 

"A-Ying," says Yanli softly, and Wei Ying sniffs and blinks and makes a screwed-up face at the outrage of being forced by her sister's gentleness to experience an actual emotion. 

"You've only been there a week," grumbles Jiang Cheng, but she shoves a tiny square of plastic into Wei Ying's hand as she says it – the SIM card, from her actual phone. 

Wei Ying is suddenly, pathetically grateful for her sisters. 

Jiang Cheng makes a disgruntled noise as Wei Ying crawls into Yanli's lap and curls up tight, but she tugs the ribbon out of her hair and starts brushing it anyway, rough strokes with her own hairbrush that catch on mud and tangles in a painfully comforting manner.

"You need a shower," she says grouchily. Wei Ying nods; she hasn't even changed out of her PE kit, and her bed is full of mud and grass that she'll probably get yelled at all over again for. It doesn't matter.

"Go on," says Yanli gently, nudging at her just a little. "We'll still be here when you're done." 

Wei Ying is torn between you don't need to baby me and actually, please baby me (but like, haha it's a joke! no feelings here), so she just goes.

When she gets back, wrapped in a thick fluffy towel and dripping all over the floor, her bed has fresh sheets on it, and Jiang Cheng and Yanli are dealing out a round of Uno with a third place left for her to join.

***

Lan Zhan's phone buzzes at 4:30 in the morning on the final day of her exclusion. She is already awake.

She has been awake, lying silently on her back in the dark, for eighty-two minutes. 

Since her exclusion from Gusu Academy three nights ago, Lan Zhan has – cumulatively – slept for approximately ten hours. She has used concealer (left in the bathroom by A-Huan's girlfriend) for the first time in her life, because if her uncle saw the deep shadows smudged beneath her eyes she would be required to copy the family disciplines relating to self-care and appropriate sleeping habits, and she does not think she deserves to when her lack of sleep has not been a choice. 

She has completed every single piece of work sent to her school email address, plus all seven additional pieces of extension work, and attached the evidence to politely worded reply emails to each of her teachers. She has completed the advance reading for the creative essay her class will be starting next week. She has spent an hour each day revising for the upcoming extracurricular mathematics testing, and three hours each day practising her cello examination pieces.

All of this has done absolutely nothing to fix the cold pit of loathing pinched tight in her stomach. She doesn't even know any more if it's for Wei Ying or herself.

The words fixed term exclusion loop slowly through her mind, bringing a hot lump to her throat with every pass. 

She still can't sleep.

She stares blankly at the ceiling and reaches for her phone without looking at it. It buzzes again as she picks it up.

From: unknown number
Message: hey im srry for getting in a fight w u 

From: unknown number
Message: i know ur mad at me

From: unknown number 
Message: if ur wondering how i got ur number i made chengcheng bother ur sister for it yesterday 

From: unknown number
Message: anyway it was actually ur fault for being rude so u cant be mad 

Lan Zhan is going to have words with A-Huan. She is also not going to reply to the messages. She is going to delete them. She is going to block Wei Ying's number.

Her finger hovers motionless over the red button until the screen goes dark.

*

On their first day back, Wei Ying is on time. 

She is in their form room already when Lan Zhan arrives, sitting on a table with one foot propped on the tilted back of a chair and her long hair in two neat braids that sway around her waist as she moves. She's talking to a group of four other girls, hands waving exuberantly and face lit with a bright smile as she speaks, and Lan Zhan –

Lan Zhan isn't sure what she'd been expecting to feel. Anger might have made sense. 

She certainly isn't expecting the bitter wave of jealousy that slams into her chest with enough force to leave her entirely unable to speak. 

Wei Ying turns, the fluid movement of it swishing all the way down to the tails of her braids, and the smile fades a little from her lips.

The entire room falls silent.

"Hi, Lan Zhan," Wei Ying says carefully, and at least twenty curious stares prickle across Lan Zhan's skin.

"Wei Ying," Lan Zhan forces out, stiff and flat, and sits down in her usual seat in the front row as the silence exchanges itself for a flurry of whispers behind her back.

*

The whispers follow her through tutor time and out into every lesson of the day. She doesn't care. It's nothing that hasn't happened before.

People like to talk about her. She's top of the class, the icy bitch who doesn't speak to anyone – 

– she thinks she's better than everyone else, why else would she ignore them – 

She doesn't care. It doesn't make her feel sick inside, right down underneath her ribs in the place air is supposed to go at the deepest end of a full breath.

Wei Ying is the only one who speaks to her that day.

*

"A-Zhan," says Lan Huan with a smile as Lan Zhan opens the front door and pulls off her shoes with just a little more force than necessary, "how was your day?"

"Fine," Lan Zhan says blankly, not even attempting why did you give Wei Ying my number, and locks herself in her bedroom until dinner.

From: unknown number
Message: u said hi to me today lan zhan!!!! thats progress 

From: unknown number
Message: i know u havent blocked me bc my phone wld tell me if u did

From: unknown number
Message: unless chengcheng gave me the wrong number haha that wld b embarrassing

Lan Zhan's finger hovers again above the block and delete button.

From: unknown number
Message: hey if ur not lan zhan u better tell me now 

Lan Zhan glances at her wrists. The crescent marks left by Wei Ying's nails are barely visible despite the slow-healing tendency of her delicate skin; only the faintest curved echoes of thin lines remain. She digs her own thumbnail into one of the marks, just a little, just to feel the pressure of it, to see the colour deepen once more –

– Wei Ying's body pressed against her own, cold damp grass on her face and barely-contained heat pinning her down from behind, electric, their legs tangled together in the moment before she kicked out and turned –

Lan Zhan drops her own wrist like she's been burned. She can feel the flush of colour not just in her ears but all the way down through her cheeks, to her neck even – she's breathing fast, heart pounding, and it's breaking at least four family rules to swear even in the privacy of her own mind but what the fuck.

Her phone buzzes again. She's dropped it, at some point, all the way onto the floor. Her head spins a little as she picks it up.

From: unknown number
Message: im going to take that as u ARE lan zhan then 

Lan Zhan doesn't know why she does it. Maybe she can blame the way her hands are shaking for why she hits add to contacts instead of block and delete, but that excuse doesn't work for the rest of it.

From: Wei Ying
Message: wait do we have history hwk i forgot 

From: Wei Ying  
Message: lan zhan pls u know chengcheng isnt in our history class i cant ask her

Lan Zhan's mouth feels dry. She shouldn't. She shouldn't. If Wei Ying has forgotten the homework it should be her own consequence to deal with.

Lan Zhan knows the strictness of Gusu Academy's policies following a fixed term exclusion. They were explained to her extensively at the reintegration meeting that morning. If Wei Ying receives even one formal sanction during the immediate next week she will be placed back into internal suspension for five days.

Missed homework is counted as a formal sanction.

To: Wei Ying
Message: Worksheet.

From: Wei Ying
Message: o from last weds??? thank u lan zhan!!! <3

From: Wei Ying 
Message: ALSO now i know u can reply to me haha 

From: Wei Ying
Message: u can't ignore me any more 

No, thinks Lan Zhan, despairingly. 

I can't.

*

She dreams of Wei Ying, that night. Wakes, hot and shameful, three minutes before her scheduled alarm with sweat sticking her hair to her face and the sheets twisted between her trembling legs. 

Lan Zhan wants.

She shoves herself out of bed and into a cold shower before she has the chance to remember the details of the dream. It's not – she shouldn't –

She's always known she likes girls. She's always known – unwillingly – that Wei Ying is beautiful. Electric, mesmerising, filled with life and warmth and light like she's everything Lan Zhan never realised her world was missing pulled into stunning life.

But she hates Wei Ying. 

Wei Ying is the worst thing to ever happen to her.

She sits on the floor of the shower until she starts shivering, and doesn't eat breakfast.

***

Lan Zhan is a mystery. An enigma. No-one has ever, ever, held out this long against the force of Wei Ying's personality. No-one has ever ignored her so successfully, no-one has ever seemed so boring with so much not-boring clearly trapped just underneath – no-one has ever matched her, surpassed her, brushed her off and refused to even look at her –

Wei Ying likes mysteries.

"Lan Zhan, hey," she says, lying on a table in their form room and rolling over to drop her head back for an upside-down view, "what did you have for breakfast?"

Lan Zhan ignores her and sits down in her usual seat.

"I had waffles," Wei Ying continues brightly, "a-jie bought a waffle maker last week and we've used it every day so far, I knew I liked waffles already but homemade is just on another level – especially when they're warm and fresh, what a way to wake up in the morning – hey, Lan Zhan?"

Lan Zhan doesn't answer her. Wei Ying wriggles a little further off her table, stretching out one arm to tap the back of Lan Zhan's chair as she dangles upside-down.

"Lan Zhan, if you want to try fresh waffles, you could always stay over at my place. I'd make you breakfast myself."

"Don't listen to her," calls Jiang Cheng from across the room. "She burns them every time."

Lan Zhan still doesn't answer her. Something prickling and hot flares in Wei Ying's chest – the same feeling as the morning of the day they'd fought, when she'd come back from three days of enforced boredom and been categorically iced out for literally no reason at all – 

"Lan Zhan," she says, the words sharper this time, and there's a different smile on her lips now at the beginning of the familiar spiral that's almost certainly a terrible idea when it hasn't even been a week since her last exclusion, "why don't you ever –"

And then she notices that the tips of Lan Zhan's ears are ever so slightly pink.

She spins herself around and off the table so fast she trips and ends up on her knees on the scratchy carpet – ripping twin holes in her tights, which isn't even a record for the shortest time a new pair have lasted before being ruined despite the fact it's barely 8:30am – and says, gleeful as she bounces back upright and leans across the back of a chair into Lan Zhan's space, "Lan Zhan, are you blushing?" 

Lan Zhan whips around to face her, alarm clearer on her features than Wei Ying has ever seen an emotion that isn't anger, and Wei Ying suddenly feels just a little bit breathless.

It's not like – she doesn't – 

The thing is, well, the thing is, Wei Ying has apparently been flirting with boys ever since she could talk. She doesn't do it on purpose. She wouldn't even know how to do it on purpose – she doesn't think she's ever really, actually, had a crush, not in the same way the other girls around her seem to, giggly and silly and falling over themselves to be kissed. 

Wei Ying has never been kissed. She doesn't mind this fact – for all she's apparently an incorrigible flirt, secretly she thinks it might be kind of nice to wait a little. To save it for someone special, maybe. 

It's not something she'd ever admit out loud.

She glances, very briefly, at Lan Zhan's lips. 

And then their form tutor comes in and says, right, equipment check, get your pencil cases out, and Wei Ying scrambles back across the room towards Jiang Cheng because all her pens are either broken or out of ink and she could really do without another disappointed phone call home to get yelled at for later.

*

Lan Zhan comes in the next morning with her usual tight braid beginning loose and low at the base of her neck, smooth dark hair slung in curving sweeps at either side of her face to hide her ears with a few wispy strands escaping along each edge that simultaneously manage to both frame and soften her features.

Wei Ying thinks ah, and then all at once oh no.

*

Wei Ying locks the door to the bathroom she shares with Jiang Cheng and folds herself up into a tight ball on the closed lid of the toilet.

She opens an incognito window on her phone's browser and types:

i think a girl is pretty

The results are not helpful.

im a girl and i think a girl is pretty 

This is slightly better. There's a lot of "what to do if you've been straight your whole life and now have some kind of feelings for a girl", which Wei Ying isn't sure is entirely accurate because it just raises another question.

Has she been straight her whole life?

She thinks about the boys her classmates show her pictures of. The boys she sees at social events and out in the town centre at weekends. None of them have ever made her feel – like that.

She types how to know if youre a lesbian into the search bar.

She thinks about the other girls in her class. Some of them are definitely pretty.

She thinks about kissing them. She feels – nothing in particular, really.

She thinks about kissing Lan Zhan –

Her phone slips from her hand to clatter on the floor.

Someone bangs on the door. Jiang Cheng's voice comes distantly through the thick wood. 

"You've been in there half an hour, the fuck is wrong with you?!"

"Nothing!" Wei Ying calls back, a little too high-pitched. "I'll be out in a minute!" 

"Hurry it up! I need to have a shower!" 

Wei Ying takes a deep breath and stands up, bracing her hands on both sides of the sink to stare at herself in the mirror. There's deep colour across both her cheeks, pink staining the high edges of her cheekbones, and her eyes look just a little wider and darker than usual. She feels – warm, all through her core, and ever so slightly shaky.

When she opens the door she pushes past Jiang Cheng fast enough that she won't have the chance to notice and ask inconvenient questions.

*

"A-jie," Wei Ying whines, from her position sprawled out across the rug at the foot of Jiang Yanli's bed (where she doesn't have to look at anyone's face while she talks to them), "how do you know if you like someone?"

Wei Ying can hear the smile in Yanli's voice as soon as she speaks. It makes her want to shrivel up like a raisin. This is embarrassing.

"A-Ying," she says, in that softly amused way that makes Wei Ying want to groan and complain and back all the way out of this conversation, "do you have someone you like?"

"Ah–!" Wei Ying sits up, eyes wide. "No! Definitely not!" 

Yanli looks at her, lips pressed gently together like she's keeping back laughter. 

Wei Ying pouts. "I don't! I was only – aiya, it doesn't matter, why would I come to you for advice anyway, you have the worst taste in boys of anyone I've ever met –"

"You know A-Xuan is trying his best now," she says reproachfully, and Wei Ying plunges into the argument in earnest because this, at least, is something she understands.

***

Wei Ying makes it through the week without incurring any formal sanctions. Lan Zhan has the distinct feeling this is because she is too distracted to misbehave.

She daydreams. She stares blankly out of the window. She fiddles with her pen and drops it and doesn't pick it up until Jiang Cheng smacks her in the arm and hisses something inaudible at her. 

She watches Lan Zhan. 

This last one isn't new. But what is new is the way she turns quickly away every time Lan Zhan catches her looking. The way every so often a light dusting of pink appears across her cheeks, highlighting the brightness of her eyes in a way that sets Lan Zhan's traitorous heart racing in her chest every time she sees it. The way for a full day and a half, she actually doesn't tease or needle or otherwise bother Lan Zhan – instead seeming not quite to avoid her, but at the very least to deliberately choose other company.

Lan Zhan should be pleased by this development. She does not want to interact with Wei Ying. She does not like Wei Ying.

Instead, she clenches her fists against bitter jealousy and deliberately turns her face away each time she feels Wei Ying's eyes on her.

They make it all the way to Thursday afternoon like this.

*

Thursday afternoon, last period at the end of the day when the entire school is just a little bit (in the words of a very exhausted teacher Lan Zhan overheard when the staffroom door was left ajar one lunchtime) batshit insane, is art.

The classroom is right at the top of the main building, in a little three-room block poking up from the roof like a single brick abandoned on flat pavement. It's more spacious than the cluttered entranceway lets on, the ceiling high enough that last year's colourful final projects hang suspended above their heads as they spill into the space and spread out around the ancient wooden tables (four of them dotted through the space, large and square and paint-stained with room enough for at least ten students to spread out their work over the surface of each). High shelves reach up between old sash windows, stacked with dusty materials and half-finished glue-streaked projects, and a row of semi-functional computers lines the back wall with software too out-of-date to be useful for anything serious.

Lan Zhan thinks this might be the only classroom where she ever sees Wei Ying settled.

She always picks the back corner, tucked on the edge of the wooden table between the last (broken) computer of the row and a window with a single cracked pane that catches the afternoon sunlight and scatters it across her face in a way that makes Lan Zhan want to invent something better than a photograph to capture the ethereal beauty of it. They're encouraged to follow their own projects this year, so Wei Ying settles herself into the most absurd position Lan Zhan has ever seen – propped by one braced forearm on the table, stomach resting on the high stool where she's supposed to sit, long legs stretched out behind to rest her shoeless feet on the counter between the old computers – opens her sketchbook, and spends the entire hour drawing without once glancing up for even a moment.

Occasionally, Lan Zhan will be watching her when the final bell rings. It's the same every time; her hand stills, she blinks twice, and a moment later looks up with a softly dazed expression that haunts all the dreams Lan Zhan pretends she doesn't have – only a single heartbeat of it, of course, then she's swinging herself upright with a bright smile and sweeping the scattered contents of her workspace back into her bag while calling for Jiang Cheng to wait, but that brief moment is enough for Lan Zhan.

(This is a lie. A moment is never – will never – be enough for Lan Zhan.)

On this particular Thursday afternoon, Wei Ying doesn't settle.

She's looking at Lan Zhan every other minute, expression soft and distracted like she's lost in her own thoughts. Lan Zhan refuses to meet her gaze. If Wei Ying carries on like this she won't finish her project on time.

She's still drawing, though.

Half an hour into the lesson, Lan Zhan finally forces herself to turn fully enough away that Wei Ying is no longer in her peripheral vision. She still can't concentrate – she's supposed to be working on the sixth page of her calligraphy project, and she's been working on the sixth page of her calligraphy project for exactly as long as Wei Ying has been attending Gusu Academy. 

Warmth prickles at the back of her neck from what she knows is Wei Ying's gaze. And then a much more real warmth floods all across her shoulders as –

– Wei Ying, appearing out of nowhere, drapes herself over Lan Zhan's back and says, directly into Lan Zhan's ear –

"Lan Zhan, jiejie, I made you a present."

Lan Zhan is not breathing. 

Lan Zhan is, in fact, almost entirely certain she no longer remembers how to breathe.

She stands up, abrupt and all at once, jerking away so violently that Wei Ying slips sideways into the table with an outraged little noise, one hand flying out to catch herself and –

– knocking into Lan Zhan's open bottle of calligraphy ink.

Blue-black liquid spills, spreads, blooms instantly and irretrievably across the entirety of Lan Zhan's six-page calligraphy project, and Lan Zhan sees red.

"Get away from me," she hisses, and something like genuine hurt flickers across Wei Ying's face for just a fraction of a second before she folds her arms and sneers and steps closer into Lan Zhan's space with a spark in her eyes that looks like it could kill.

"Maybe if you weren't such a stuck-up weirdo," she says, scornful and dismissive, and Lan Zhan tells herself desperately that it doesn't hurt but it does, "more people would actually like you, and then you'd know what to do when for once in your pathetically lonely life someone tries to get close to you."

And then she shakes out the slightly crumpled piece of paper in her hand that Lan Zhan didn't notice until now, says in a completely unreadable tone, "Anyway, you won't be wanting this," and drops it directly into the spreading pool of ink on Lan Zhan's corner of the table.

In the split second before the ink swallows the delicate lines of the image, Lan Zhan sees –

Herself. 

Beautiful in fine-sketched pencil, every feature caught and highlighted and framed in the soft light and shadow of an early morning.

There's a single flower tucked behind her ear.

*

Wei Ying walks out of the classroom and doesn't come back.

Lan Zhan stays past the final bell, scrubbing ink from the table like it might still make a difference. Wei Ying's bag lies uncollected in the corner of the room. 

The afternoon sunlight is still catching in the cracked windowpane, still scattering across the space where Wei Ying should be. 

Across Wei Ying's sketchbook, left open in her place.

The teacher leaves the room to make some photocopies, and Lan Zhan continues in the theme of the day and does the worst thing she could possibly do under the circumstances.

*

There is another picture of her in the sketchbook.

It's unfinished; exposed to light only by the raw edge of the torn-away page that protected it. Not meant to be seen.

Lan Zhan looks.

Her expression, captured in the delicate lines of Wei Ying's pencil, is soft and open. Surprised, almost. 

Her hair is loose. Unbound, falling water-like around her shoulders, vanishing into the shadows at the edge of the portrait.

Wei Ying has never seen her like this.

She's never seen herself like this.

Carefully, delicately, impossibly selfish, she removes the page.

***

Wei Ying isn't crying. 

She's angry. 

She's angry, because Lan Zhan is stuck-up and selfish and rude, and because all she'd wanted to do was give her the picture, to see her reaction, to see if she might like it – if she might –

– if she might like her – 

Wei Ying scrubs at her face, makes a disgusted wordless ugh of a noise, wishes she'd picked up her bag on her way out so she'd have something to throw at the old trees that line the edge of the school field.

It's all Lan Zhan's fault.

There's a tiny little voice inside her, deep in the uncomfortable pit of her stomach, that's saying maybe – just maybe – with everything she knows about Lan Zhan, she shouldn't have jumped on her like that.

The voice is wrong. It's all Lan Zhan's fault. 

There's another little voice, this one trapped in her chest with the tears she won't let out, that's saying maybe she shouldn't have said those things.

That she didn't want to say them, really.

This voice is also wrong. It's wrong wrong wrong, Lan Zhan shouldn't be so horrible if she doesn't want to hear things like that, and maybe if Lan Zhan's this horrible Wei Ying should just never ever speak to her again –

A tight little sob tears itself free from Wei Ying's throat as she kicks out at one of the old trees in a shower of split bark and abrupt pain, and really it doesn't even hurt that much but at least then maybe there's an excuse for the way the rest of the tears force themselves out of her between choked little breaths and outraged-frustrated sniffs that do nothing whatsoever to make a difference.

It's not fair. It's not fair. Lan Zhan is – Lan Zhan shouldn't –

There's a teacher walking over in her direction from the far edge of the field. Wei Ying's head of year, probably – they've seen far too much of each other lately, between detentions and internal suspension and all the meetings surrounding her and Lan Zhan's exclusion, and she always seems to be the one who shows up now when Wei Ying abandons a lesson like this.

Judging by her pace, Wei Ying has approximately twenty-five seconds to pull herself together.

She spends fifteen of them crying hard enough that she can barely breathe, and the remaining ten wiping frantically at her face and forcing herself to calm the fuck down – it works better, she's found, to get it out like that, because then it's less likely to happen later on in front of someone.

"I brought your bag over," says the teacher – Ms Qin, Wei Ying remembers now – as she arrives, and Wei Ying smiles brightly as she takes it because that will make the sympathetic tone in her voice go away faster.

"Did you pick up my sketchbook?"

"Of course." The sympathy this time is replaced with just a trace of wry amusement, which is pretty much exactly what Wei Ying was aiming for. She smiles again, slings her bag over one shoulder, and allows herself to be persuaded back into the school building and eventually out of the gates.

She doesn't notice the missing page until much later.

***

Wei Ying is not speaking to her.

This is fine. This is what Lan Zhan wants. Lan Zhan does not like Wei Ying, does not enjoy Wei Ying's company, does not want Wei Ying to speak to her.

Lan Zhan is miserable.

She is miserable all the way through the week that begins with an assembly announcing the residential trip next month, all the way through taking her consent form home and bringing it back completed the next day, all the way through the announcement of group allocations she barely listens to and the handing out of seven different pieces of paperwork about what to definitely pack and what to maybe pack and what to never ever under any circumstances pack – all the way until she's sitting at her desk in her own bedroom, every piece of homework set that day complete, and the only thing left on her to-do list is to look at the room allocations in order to mentally prepare herself for sharing space with whoever she has been assigned.

She unfolds the piece of paper.

And remembers, just a moment later than she would have liked to, that the residential trip is being run by a teacher who has never taught Wei Ying. 

He taught Lan Zhan, last year, and knows her only as a sensible hard-working student who stays out of trouble and has the potential to be a positive influence on the behaviour of others. Lan Zhan spent every single lesson of his with one of the four class troublemakers seated beside her. Sometimes even two; one on each side in a disgustingly irritating sandwich of a seating plan.

These facts, when put together, are perhaps enough to explain her room assignment.

It stares up at her in high-contrast black-and-white from the final informational letter in her hand.

Lan Zhan

Jiang Cheng

Nie Huaisang

Wei Ying 

Nie Huaisang is a new transfer student who arrived last week. Lan Zhan knows her, vaguely, from A-Huan's long-term friendship with her older sister; as young children they were often forced together for playdates of mutual convenience, but once A-Huan and Nie Mingjue were old enough to arrange their own activities they barely saw each other outside of the occasional social gathering. And once Lan Zhan was old enough to reasonably excuse herself from those, that was the end to even that level of interaction too – so prior to last week, Lan Zhan hadn't seen her in at least three years.

A-Huan likes to tell a story about how a six-year-old non-verbal Lan Zhan once bit Nie Huaisang hard enough to draw blood. She thinks this is a funny anecdote. Lan Zhan does not think this is a funny anecdote, because she remembers the incident, and what had actually happened was that Nie Huaisang had climbed halfway up Lan Zhan's bookcase and started pulling books out of it and reading made-up nonsense out of them before dropping them on the floor. But Lan Zhan hadn't been able to explain any of that, and so A-Huan (and their uncle, later) had just seen a mess of books all over the bedroom carpet and a hysterically crying Nie Huaisang with blood dripping from her tiny arm. 

Lan Zhan hadn't been allowed to visit her mother that month.

Looking at the names on the paper in front of her, Lan Zhan wonders idly if the bite scarred.

Nie Huaisang doesn't seem to have changed much. In her first week at Gusu Academy she has somehow already acquired four homework detentions. But she hasn't yet caused trouble during actual lesson time, which is presumably why she has been placed with them.

When Lan Zhan sees her lie down literally on the table in their next art lesson, on her stomach with both feet kicked up artfully behind her and her chin propped on her hands as Wei Ying laughs and makes comments Lan Zhan can't quite catch from across the room and presumably sketches her in this ridiculous position – Lan Zhan wonders (beneath the horrible, burning jealousy she still hasn't managed to eradicate from her disobedient heart) if the teacher who placed the four of them together has somehow managed to make enemies of everyone else in the school who could possibly have advised him against this disastrously terrible decision.

Lan Zhan knows there is no point in asking to change her room assignment. She knows there is no point in – wouldn't even dare consider – asking her uncle to allow her to back out of the trip entirely. 

She puts a great deal of effort into researching and ordering the highest quality earplugs she can discover online; her first purchase with the new card attached to the bank account set up the day after her birthday. The account now contains what her bunny-shaped ceramic moneybox used to – all the saved-up allowance her predictable, restricted life provides little to no opportunity to spend.

She doesn't have any interest in spending it, really. There's nothing she wants to buy. 

Certainly not the expensive waffle maker which has been sitting conspicuously in her online basket for almost two weeks now.

***

Wei Ying does not pay attention to paperwork. She leaves Jiang Cheng in charge of her consent form, which works out well enough after Yanli's gentle A-Cheng, isn't there a school trip coming up? the day before it's due back and the frantic scramble that follows, and she shoves the letter with the room assignments into the bottom of her bag along with approximately fifteen other crumpled pieces of vaguely important paper and promptly forgets all about it.

Jiang Cheng should have told her, really. Nie Huaisang should have told her – they've barely known each other three weeks but that's plenty long enough for Wei Ying to learn she's an incurable gossip who only ever keeps secrets for her own personal amusement.

In fact, Wei Ying suspects this is precisely why Huaisang didn't tell her.

"This isn't funny," she hisses into Huaisang's ear as the three of them stand in the doorway, staring at Lan Zhan's back as she unpacks her bag onto the bottom bunk of the right-hand set of beds in the tiny cramped room that the four of them are about to be stuck in for five entire days.

Huaisang giggles.

"A-Cheng," she says sweetly, "bunk with me?"

"No –" Wei Ying starts, but Huaisang has already dragged Jiang Cheng over to the bunks on the left and immediately dumped their bags all over both the beds – Wei Ying dives after them, grabbing Jiang Cheng's luminous purple suitcase and yanking it onto the floor, and Huaisang screams in outrage at the violation of dibs and by the end of the ensuing scuffle the entire contents of Wei Ying's messily packed bag has been upended onto the mattress directly above Lan Zhan's neatly laid out bed.

Lan Zhan walks out of the room approximately three seconds after Huaisang's outraged shriek, which means Wei Ying has no compunction whatsoever about flopping back onto Lan Zhan's spotless bed, throwing her hairbrush directly at Huaisang's face, and saying exactly whatever she wants to about the situation.

"What the fuck is this?!"

Huaisang giggles again, having dodged the hairbrush with ease (and then picked it up off the floor and begun using it to brush her own neat shoulder-length hair without even a moment's hesitation). 

"Ah, Yingying, I really don't know what you're talking about –"

"This was you. I know it was. Oh my god, there is something so wrong with you –"

"Me??" Huaisang widens her eyes, the picture of innocence. "What could I have done? I only arrived just a few weeks ago, you know."

Wei Ying throws a pillow at her. "Can't do your homework but can dig up all the gossip on who the worst possible combination of roommates would be, I see how it is –"

"That's obvious to anyone with eyes," mutters Jiang Cheng, and Wei Ying throws a pillow at her too. 

"We haven't even spoken in eighteen days!"

"And that," says Huaisang with deep satisfaction into the ensuing silence, "is exactly why I had to make sure this would happen."

Wei Ying narrows her eyes at her.

"I've got your number, Wei Ying," she says gleefully. "Eighteen days. Who's counting?"

"I'll kill you," says Wei Ying pleasantly, and – having exhausted Lan Zhan's supply – grabs a pillow from her own bed to attack with. 

*

There's still another hour until the first scheduled activity, so of course the first priority is making a blanket cave of Jiang Cheng's lower bunk and climbing inside it to gossip. Wei Ying sits directly on top of Nie Huaisang and refuses to let her wriggle out to escape, which is ridiculously easy because she hasn't hit her growth spurt yet and is currently a full head shorter than Wei Ying (who is, as of yesterday afternoon, taller than Jiang Cheng by a single centimetre). She also does absolutely no physical activity beyond walking from the PE block to the nurse's office each week with yet another feigned headache, while Wei Ying has been swimming since the age of six and could probably, actually, pin Huaisang with a single leg. But it's more satisfying this way.

(Wei Ying suspects Huaisang is hiding something when it comes to sports. Last week they played field hockey out on the netball court, and – well. It was quite obvious how much it pained the teacher to pull Huaisang from the only PE lesson she'd ever deigned to participate in, but after the fifth time she accidentally smacked someone in the shins with her stick on the way to score yet another goal it simply couldn't be helped.)

"Yingying," Huaisang squeaks out with a pathetic whine, "you're squishing me –"

"Good." Wei Ying folds her arms and leans back against the wall. "You deserve it."

"Get off! I'll cry –"

"I don't care," says Wei Ying, and Huaisang's face crumples in an alarmingly realistic way complete with actual tears in literally three seconds flat. 

"What the fuck," says Jiang Cheng, shoving Wei Ying sideways to free her instantly – and Huaisang bounces up with a bright smile entirely at odds with the very genuine wetness on her cheeks. Wei Ying gapes at her. 

"What?"

"I'm never trusting you again," Wei Ying declares, and Huaisang laughs delightedly.

"As it should be," she says in a mock-mysterious tone. "Anyway, this week is going to be so fun, Qinghe High's year eight trip was only two days and it was literally the most boring thing I have ever done –"

"You say that about everything," grouches Jiang Cheng at the same time as Wei Ying says, "Wait, what do you mean year eight," and Huaisang's eyes widen in that too-innocent way yet again.

"Oh, I didn't tell you? My da-jie persuaded our auntie to send me up to secondary school a year early because I was driving the primary school teachers completely insane, but –"

"That was an option?!" says Wei Ying in absolute outrage, and Jiang Cheng smacks her in the arm.

"Shut up. As if mum would have ever let you –"

"Hey!" Huaisang pouts and folds her arms. "This is my story time, save your unhealthy family issues for later. Anyway," she continues blithely across Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng's twin indignation, "I made it through year seven because no-one really expects anything of you then, but year eight went so terribly the first time around that da-jie said I'd have to repeat it, and really Qinghe High just isn't the nicest place in the world to be both very small and unfortunately stupid, so here I am."

"You told us you moved house," says Jiang Cheng accusingly after a moment's silence, and Huaisang shrugs. 

"I did." She pauses, just a hint of a smile around the edges of her lips. "Two years ago."

"This actually proves my point about never ever trusting you," Wei Ying starts, and then the door opens with the heavy shuffle of wood over carpet and they all fall abruptly silent.

The blanket is thin enough that Wei Ying can see Lan Zhan silhouetted against the light from the window as she stiffly places her pillows and hairbrush back on her bed and kneels down to open her suitcase.

The air behind the blanket feels thick and stifling. That's definitely the only reason behind Wei Ying's sudden urge to yank it down and look at Lan Zhan directly. 

She's hardly looked at her in weeks. Has forced herself to ignore her, to look away, to pretend she doesn't want –

Her fingers twitch towards the edge of the blanket. Jiang Cheng widens her eyes at her and mouths don't.

Wei Ying has never, ever, not once in her life, listened to Jiang Cheng.

Unfortunately, the blanket is stuck quite firmly under Huaisang's mattress. Wei Ying has to lean her full weight on it and yank when it doesn't come free the first time – and then it does come free, giving way all at once with a suddenness that catches her off-balance, and there's nothing to catch herself on except the floor.

She hears a muttered for fuck's sake from Jiang Cheng, and Huaisang splutters with laughter, and then there's a series of sounds which would probably be Huaisang dragging Jiang Cheng from the room if Wei Ying was paying attention, but she's not, because she's looking at –

Lan Zhan, who has turned around to stare at her where she's ended up sprawled on the floor. They're almost on a level – Lan Zhan kneeling stiffly beside her suitcase, Wei Ying frozen in an odd position somewhere halfway to sitting.

She'd almost forgotten how it felt to be pinned in place by that glare.

"Lan Zhan," she says, and the feeling of rightness as the syllables settle back into her mouth like they belong there takes her by surprise.

Lan Zhan looks away. 

Wei Ying feels a familiar hot prickle deep in her chest; the sensation so similar to anger it must at least be neighbours with it. They've spent almost three weeks not talking, and now Lan Zhan won't even look at her? She wants to talk to her – she wants to hit her with a pillow, actually – she wants to make her show some actual emotion for once – she wants –

She wants –

Lan Zhan shouldn't ignore her, is the point.

"Lan Zhan!" she says, louder, annoyed now, and scrambles upright and closer to grab Lan Zhan's sleeve –

– and stops herself, in the final moment before her fingertips brush white fabric, because that same little voice from eighteen days ago is screaming Lan Zhan doesn't like that much louder than it ever managed the last time.

Lan Zhan turns to look at her.

They're much closer together now. 

If Wei Ying chose to, she could probably count Lan Zhan's eyelashes. They're very long, very pretty eyelashes. No-one deserves eyelashes that good. She's not even wearing mascara.

Lan Zhan's eyes look just a little bit golden, where they catch the light.

"Hah," Wei Ying manages intelligently. She swallows and tries again. "Lan Zhan."

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan finally, and Wei Ying feels just a little bit lightheaded. She wants to say I'm sorry for ruining your project. She wants to say I'm sorry for not speaking to you for eighteen days. 

She wants to say were you counting, too?

Instead, what she says is –

"Why did you take my drawing?"

Lan Zhan flushes instantly, all the way from the tips of her ears down into her cheeks. Wei Ying wants to tease her for it.

Wei Ying wants to find out if her skin feels as warm as it looks.

"It was me," says Lan Zhan, the words forced out with what looks like incredible difficulty.

"It wasn't for you," says Wei Ying, ignoring the fact that this admission carries the implication that it was for her to keep instead – the argument comes easily, and it might not be what she set out to achieve but it's really what seems to keep happening with the two of them no matter what she tries to do, so she may as well just –

"The one that was for me," Lan Zhan says, and pauses. 

Wei Ying stares at her.

"You put it. In the ink."

"Yeah," says Wei Ying, a little blankly. "You were being kind of a bitch, though."

Lan Zhan doesn't seem to know what to say to that. She does look somehow even more pissed off, expression blank in that icy-glaring way and colour flushing even deeper in her cheeks than it was already.

They stare at each other for another minute, and then Lan Zhan opens her mouth to say something and Wei Ying blurts, "I'm sorry I startled you and ruined your project," before she can get whatever it is out.

Eventually Lan Zhan says, "I am doing a watercolour scene instead."

Something invisible and tense in the room finally gives way; a thousand tight-strung tiny threads all gradually fraying and snapping at once.

Wei Ying smiles.

Maybe this week won't be so bad after all.

*

"Lan Zhan, sit with us!" Wei Ying calls across the dining hall that evening – and Lan Zhan freezes, turns, looks at her with something unreadable in her eyes that Wei Ying would almost call hesitance if she didn't know better –

– and walks slowly over to sit down at the corner of the table between Wei Ying and Nie Huaisang.

Jiang Cheng looks from Wei Ying to Lan Zhan and back again, and opens her mouth – and Wei Ying grabs a handful of oven chips from her plate and shoves them into the obnoxiously annoying space before any words can come out of it. 

"Don't be rude," she says over Jiang Cheng's outraged mouth-full complaints, "I know you were about to be."

"You forgot me," says Huaisang, and dodges the incoming chips with a smirk. "Lan Zhan, why are you hanging out with losers like us?"

"Stop it," whines Wei Ying, "leave her alone!"

"Like you always do?!" Jiang Cheng snaps, having unfortunately recovered the use of her mouth.

"That's different!"

"Why?" says Huaisang, with a gleam in her eyes like she's just won the lottery.

"Because!"

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan quietly, and it's astonishing the way it cuts clean through all the other noise to immediately become the only thing worth paying attention to.

"Lan Zhan, don't worry about them, they're just jealous because they don't know any normal ways of making friends."

"Do you?" asks Lan Zhan neutrally, and the entire table falls silent for three full seconds to gape at her. 

Huaisang breaks first, doubling over with silent wheezing laughter until she's bright red and almost crying, and Wei Ying decides it is very, very unfair that Lan Zhan knows how to be mean not just in the actually-mean way but also in the absolutely hilarious way.

She realises, with slowly dawning horror, that she wants to kiss her about it.

"Lan Zhan!" The words come out a little too loud, but that's okay, because at least it's probably a distraction from the way Wei Ying can feel herself starting to blush. "That's not fair! You can't be funny as well as – everything else –"

"What's everything else?" asks Huaisang delightedly.

"Shut up!" says Wei Ying, too high-pitched. "Everyone needs to shut up now!"

Jiang Cheng makes a face. "What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing!! Definitely nothing! Haha, I should ask what's wrong with you, obviously you're projecting something –"

Wei Ying is rambling. She knows this. It's generally quite effective at annoying everyone enough to throw them off the trail of whatever she doesn't want noticed – and it's definitely working on Jiang Cheng at least, because she looks as though she'd quite like to throw her plate of food directly at Wei Ying's head. It's a familiar look. Lan Zhan, for her part, is silently eating her meal with an unreadable look on her face that something instinctive in the back of Wei Ying's mind thinks might be adjacent to satisfaction. 

Unfortunately, Huaisang is watching Wei Ying's minor breakdown like it's a particularly entertaining episode of reality television. There's a sparkle in her eyes and a smile playing on her lips that Wei Ying really doesn't like the look of.

"I'm being bullied," Wei Ying declares. "All three of you are terrible people."

Jiang Cheng throws a chip at her face, and the rest of the meal devolves into squabbling until one of the teachers snaps at them to knock it off unless you want to be split up. 

*

"So," says Huaisang much later, leaning across the rail of her top bunk in the dark, "Wei Ying."

Wei Ying eyes her suspiciously. She glances downwards – Jiang Cheng is definitely asleep, proven by the soft almost-snores she still refuses to admit to despite the actual video evidence on Wei Ying's phone, and regardless of whether Lan Zhan is actually sleeping she's had earplugs in and a silky-looking white eye mask on since literally 9pm. 

"What."

Huaisang grins. "Let's not wake them. My bed or yours?"

"Jiang Cheng's a heavy sleeper." Wei Ying considers the distance between her bunk and Huaisang's. She could probably make it – but that's a question for tomorrow, when she'll get to make the attempt with a proper audience, so she swings herself down in a reasonably normal way (directly over the side, dangling from the top rail by her hands before dropping the final few inches) and climbs up to Huaisang's bed.

They make a tent out of the blanket, tucked down around their backs and messing up their hair where it pulls tight between their heads, and then Huaisang says, "Okay, so, have you kissed a girl before?" 

"Uh," says Wei Ying eloquently. Her face feels hot.

"I've kissed five boys, six girls, and two non-binary people," says Huaisang, listing off on her fingers with expressively dramatic movements, "so I am uniquely qualified to give you literally any advice you could possibly need –"

"I don't want your advice!" hisses Wei Ying, barely remembering to keep her voice low enough. "I don't – I'm not a lesbian, Huaisang!"

"Well I am," says Huaisang primly, "so you don't need to say it like that."

Wei Ying lets out a frustrated groan and drags her hands over her face. This conversation was a terrible idea. Huaisang needs to understand that this conversation is among the top five worst things to ever happen in Wei Ying's entire life.

Huaisang is squinting suspiciously at her. "Are you going to be a bitch about this? I thought it was just internalised heteronormativity, but if you really –"

"No!" Wei Ying shakes her head, emphatic – she's never actually thought about any of it (outside of those brief incognito searches several weeks ago she's been trying not to think about ever since), but at the very least she knows there's nothing wrong with not being straight. 

That there wouldn't be anything wrong with her, if –

"I didn't mean it like that," she says a little weakly, and Huaisang nods sagely.

"Ah, Yingying. I know the signs of a gay crisis when I see them."

"I'm not," Wei Ying tries, but Huaisang leans forward and presses one finger to her lips before fixing her with an intense stare that makes her feel pinned under a too-bright spotlight in a distinctly unpleasant way.

"So you're telling me," Huaisang says slowly and deliberately, "that you don't want to kiss Lan Zhan?"

Fuck. 

Fuck.

Wei Ying takes far too long to answer. Huaisang smirks knowingly and releases her as she sits back.

"Well," she says, after a moment spent clearly enjoying Wei Ying's miserable embarrassment, "what are you going to do about it?"

"Lan Zhan hates me," says Wei Ying, and she'd intended it to sound dismissive but actually it comes out much closer to pathetic.

"Lan Zhan has issues," Huaisang says confidently. "She doesn't hate you."

"You don't even know her –"

"Oh, I do." Huaisang grins and pushes up one sleeve of her pyjama top. "Look at this."

Wei Ying leans closer. There's a thin white mark on Huaisang's summer-tanned skin, two matching crescents a little over halfway up her forearm – barely noticeable until she points right at it.

"Lan Zhan bit me when we were six," she says with – yes, with satisfaction, like this is an accomplishment. Wei Ying understands. 

Wei Ying, in fact, is suddenly, unaccountably, unbearably jealous.

"You knew her already?" she says accusingly, and Huaisang giggles.

"You're so mad, oh my god, I knew you'd be mad about this, you're so gone on her it's ridiculous –"

Wei Ying smacks her right on the faded bite scar, and she squeals in outrage and cradles her arm to her chest.

"Shut the fuck up," Wei Ying hisses as the bed creaks and shifts from movement on the bottom bunk. They freeze, breath held and silent, until Jiang Cheng's soft snoring resumes from below.

"I didn't know her really," Huaisang whispers after a moment. "Our jiejies have been best friends since literally before I was born, so we were essentially forced to interact until da-jie was old enough to get herself to playdates without the whole family needing to be involved. She never actually liked me – but really I don't think she's ever liked anyone." She pauses; Wei Ying can see in her face that it's definitely for dramatic effect. "Until now."

"What do you mean until now," Wei Ying says, putting flat scepticism into her tone to cover the decidedly unauthorised warm fluttery thing her stomach is suddenly doing.

"I mean," says Huaisang with unashamedly smug delight, "that the only lasting benefit of our childhood acquaintance – other than this admittedly pretty sick scar –"

"Will you get to the point already –"

"– Wei Ying. Ah, my sweet innocent Yingying." Huaisang smiles, she tucks her hair behind her ears with exaggerated delicacy, she practically preens. 

Wei Ying is going to kill her. Right after she finally spits out whatever she's building up to.

"Wei Ying," she says again, like she's imparting a great truth of the universe, "I know what Lan Zhan looks like when she wants something."

***

The first activity of the second day is called face your fears, which Jiang Cheng thinks is ridiculous because it's only a climbing wall and she isn't scared of heights. If they wanted her to face her fears they should have given her latest essay a failing grade and written will be calling home on the back of it in red pen – but that's not what's pissing her off right now anyway.

What's pissing her off right now is the fact that Wei Ying has spent the entire morning acting even more like a complete idiot than usual. She made Nie Huaisang braid her hair when they woke up, insisting it had to be good like she actually gave a shit what she looked like for once, then complained the entire time that she was doing it too tight, and now – 

Now she's twirling the end of one neat braid around her fingertips while staring at Lan Zhan. Jiang Cheng wants to smack her.

She also stole Jiang Cheng's eyeliner and mascara this morning, even though Jiang Cheng has literally never seen her bother with makeup, and somehow the end of the eyeliner pencil ended up half blunt with mascara all over it and Jiang Cheng didn't bring her sharpener because she didn't anticipate Wei Ying being a complete fucking nightmare, which was really her mistake, because when isn't she –

"Okay, pair up!" chirps the activity leader, and as everyone starts to move she raises her voice to follow it with, "Pick someone you trust, because they'll be the one keeping you up there if you slip!"

So Jiang Cheng, of course, turns to Wei Ying –

– who is currently standing next to Lan Zhan of all people, talking excitedly to her blank fucking face while gesturing at the huge climbing wall in front of them.

"What the fuck," says Jiang Cheng, and Nie Huaisang pops up out of nowhere and smiles at her with an extremely suspicious degree of innocence.

Jiang Cheng isn't scared of heights, but she's not thrilled about the idea of being up there with Huaisang as the only thing keeping her from plummeting to severe injury if she puts a foot wrong; of all the adjectives she could use to describe Huaisang, dependable certainly isn't one of them.

But Wei Ying is being – as Jiang Cheng has already stated to herself multiple times that morning – a complete fucking nightmare, so here they are.

There's space for two to climb at once, so of course she ends up beside Wei Ying as they reach for the first handholds in really annoying synchronisation.

"Race to the top?" says Wei Ying with a grin, and Jiang Cheng does not want to do that with Huaisang on the other end of her rope but it's not even really a choice when it's Wei Ying, so instead of answering she just shoots into action and grabs as far up as she can reach as she kicks off from the ground. There's a squeak from Huaisang when she completely fails to pull the rope tight as Jiang Cheng climbs, but she ignores the shout from the instructor to slow down while they fix it because it's not like she's actually going to fall. 

The slack in her rope is a little disconcerting, though. She glances to the side – Wei Ying is level with her, half a smirk on her face despite the fact she's not even looking at Jiang Cheng, and yes, of course, her rope is perfectly fucking taut as Lan Zhan keeps up with her every goddamn movement. 

"Why did you pick Lan Zhan," spits Jiang Cheng between harsh breaths as she climbs faster, and Wei Ying opens her mouth and glances down towards the ground and that gives Jiang Cheng the edge she needs to slap the top of the wall just half a second before Wei Ying can reach it.

"I win," she says acidly, and starts to climb down. Her rope is still not fucking tight.

Wei Ying doesn't move. 

"Jiang Cheng," she whines, "wait up here with me until Huaisang fixes your rope so we can jump off together!"

"I'm not fucking doing that!" shouts Jiang Cheng from halfway down the wall, and it's probably the truest thing she's said in her life, because fuck that so much. 

"Aiya, you don't trust Huaisang to catch you? That's so mean!"

Jiang Cheng doesn't bother answering.

"Lan Zhan will catch me, won't you Lan Zhan?" calls Wei Ying, and Jiang Cheng glances upwards just in time to see her let go and throw herself backwards from the top of the wall without waiting for an answer –

– and sail slowly downwards, smooth and controlled, waving smugly at Jiang Cheng as she passes her.

"I hope you break both your legs," hisses Jiang Cheng before she drops out of earshot, and Wei Ying sticks her tongue out.

Maybe Jiang Cheng can swap rooms with someone. Maybe she can start hanging out with Su She instead – she might be a vapid bitch, but at least she's not part of the fucking Lan Zhan fan society like everyone else seems to be now!

No, she can't actually bring herself to interact with Su She. At least – if past events are anything to go by – she'll only have to put up with this for a few more days until Wei Ying provokes Lan Zhan into another stupid fight and they stop speaking to each other again. 

Something to look forward to, she thinks with bitter irritation as she finally reaches the ground and gets rewarded with the sight of Wei Ying helping Lan Zhan into her climbing harness and not getting shoved icily away.

This is definitely the worst thing to ever happen to Jiang Cheng.

***

Lan Zhan feels as though she has been picked up by a tornado, spun around inside its outer wall until she can barely think straight, then dumped unceremoniously back onto the ground.

She also has the feeling that the piece of ground she has been dumped onto is not, in fact, outside the tornado. 

Most people don't know that tornadoes are hollow, that they have a space inside them just like the eye of a hurricane, but Lan Zhan does. That's where she is right now, catching her breath in almost eerie stillness as she sits cross-legged on her bed attempting to meditate, and then the door flies open with a bang and the tornado picks her right back up again.

"We have forty-eight minutes until dinner," announces Nie Huaisang, "and we are going to spend that time playing truth or dare."

Lan Zhan's eyes snap open. They won't include her in this, surely. They won't. She's not the kind of person anyone would choose to play any kind of game with, much less one like this, which is good because she knows Nie Huaisang and she knows it would be an absolutely terrible idea to let her –

"Lan Zhan," says Wei Ying with a bright smile, "you're playing, right?"

Lan Zhan opens her mouth to say no.

That's not what comes out.

The problem is – the terrible, awful, inescapable problem is – that Wei Ying isn't just beautiful. She isn't just ridiculous and infuriating, isn't just mean and unreasonable when she's in a bad mood.

She's clever, and she's funny, and her response if someone is struggling is always to help and never to laugh, and one of the quieter girls in their group had started crying when it was her turn to climb this morning and Lan Zhan had frozen but Wei Ying had known exactly what to do, had comforted and encouraged and yelled out delighted cheers when she made it onto the wall even though she only got a few handholds up before freezing and needing to be helped down – and Lan Zhan's been watching Wei Ying for weeks now, all the time they've been speaking and all the time they haven't, and Wei Ying is good.

She's the kind of person Lan Zhan wishes she knew how to be.

Lan Zhan doesn't actually think she's capable of saying no to anything Wei Ying asks her, at this point.

Wei Ying smiles, and there's eyeliner smudged all around the outer corner of her left eye where she rubbed it earlier without remembering she was wearing makeup, and Lan Zhan is actually –

Lan Zhan is in love with her.

Lan Zhan knows thirteen-year-olds aren't supposed to understand love. But Lan Zhan knows what attraction is. Lan Zhan knows what a crush is; what infatuation is. Lan Zhan even knows what love is supposed to feel like, in books and movies and other people's words.

This is none of that.

This is something else, and it's terrifying, it's uncontrolled freefall which tricks you into thinking it's flying, and Lan Zhan looks at Wei Ying, at her smile, at the makeup-smudged corner of her eye – and stretches out her arms into the wind of it.

She sits down on the floor with the three roommates she so desperately didn't want two days ago.

It's quiet, just for a moment, and her whole world pauses and shifts just a little sideways before it starts turning again.

"Jiang Cheng," says Nie Huaisang, "truth or dare?"

*

Lan Zhan learns that Nie Huaisang once stole a necklace worth over £500 from a girl Nie Mingjue was dating who she didn't like.

Lan Zhan learns that Jiang Cheng would rather lick the underside of the metal bunk bed frame than answer a single personal question about herself.

Lan Zhan learns that Wei Ying's greatest fear is dogs, and that she can hold a handstand one-handed while doing the splits in midair. Lan Zhan stays very still and quiet while she learns this second fact, so no-one will notice how dizzy and incoherent the inside of her mind has suddenly become.

Lan Zhan chooses truth, and Wei Ying asks did you actually hate me, when we first met and Lan Zhan says no, because the rules of the game are that it has to be the truth, and it's true she'd told herself she hated Wei Ying but it's also true that it's always, always been so much more complicated than that. And then they look at each other, and Wei Ying's eyes are very soft, and something slightly strange happens to the time that passes until Jiang Cheng makes a disgusted noise and Nie Huaisang claps her hands loudly and breaks the moment.

Lan Zhan learns that Wei Ying has never been kissed. 

"Truth or dare, Lan Zhan?" says Nie Huaisang with a sly little smile, and Lan Zhan says –

"Dare."

It's the wrong decision. She knows it as soon as it leaves her lips, by the way Nie Huaisang's expression goes instantly sharper and brighter, by the way her own stomach ties itself immediately into a knot, by the way Nie Huaisang looks deliberately at Wei Ying – Lan Zhan follows her, and adds the startled lips-parted look on Wei Ying's face to her running list of reasons why it was the wrong decision –

"I dare you," Nie Huaisang enunciates clearly, while Lan Zhan is still looking at Wei Ying, "to do whatever it is you want to do, right now."

Lan Zhan freezes.

She freezes, and she can't unfreeze. She watches – Wei Ying lifts her chin, just a little, and deep colour blooms in her cheeks as she meets Lan Zhan's gaze – and she doesn't move.

"Lan Zhan," says Wei Ying after an entire minute, and something in her voice is just a little bit uncertain.

Lan Zhan wants to move. She wants to –

She screams at herself on the inside, banging on the walls of her own mind's panicked lockdown – and finally, finally, something breaks.

Lan Zhan gets up and walks out of the room.

*

She doesn't realise she's shaking until the door closes behind her. It's not – she doesn't know why – 

There's a sudden sound at her back, and she flinches from it with a full-body startle that turns her already-racing heart almost painful in her chest – but it's only the door opening again, and Wei Ying slips out into the corridor with something tentative and worried in her expression and opens her mouth to say something that would probably be Lan Zhan, are you okay, and Lan Zhan –

Lan Zhan thinks whatever it is you want to do, right now. 

She steps closer to Wei Ying, too close, close enough that it should be obvious – close enough that Wei Ying should realise, should have plenty of time to step back, to leave, to stop her.

Wei Ying doesn't.

Wei Ying stays very very still, and as Lan Zhan brings one shaking hand up to cup her cheek her eyes go suddenly wide and dark and just a little glassy.

Lan Zhan kisses her.

Wei Ying's lips are very soft, and very warm, and her breath is hot against Lan Zhan's mouth in a tiny surprised gasp of an exhale, and it's just a little bit clumsy because Lan Zhan can still feel herself shaking but Wei Ying grabs the fabric of her shirt and pulls her closer and then it's good. 

Lan Zhan doesn't know who breaks the kiss to catch their breath but they both need it – her head is spinning; she feels like she might faint, and Wei Ying looks dazed and flushed and unsteady with one hand out to catch herself on the wall beside her. She tries to take a step, and wobbles just a little – and Lan Zhan catches her as they fall into each other's arms for the stability of it as much as for anything else. 

It takes Lan Zhan a long time to fully catch her breath. She realises about halfway through that Wei Ying is giggling helplessly, trembling with laughter as she rests her head on Lan Zhan's shoulder and winds her arms around her waist, and Lan Zhan thinks maybe she should be worried Wei Ying is laughing at her but something deep and instinctive in the back of her mind knows that's not the case. 

It's overwhelming, Wei Ying in her arms like this. Lan Zhan can't remember the last time anyone was this close to her. She can't remember the last time there was this much warmth pressed against her own body, this much affection expressed towards her in the form of physical contact. It's – so much. Lan Zhan feels heat behind her eyes.

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying whispers, "will you kiss me again?"

Lan Zhan doesn't need to be asked twice. 

She does, and does, and does, pressing Wei Ying against the wall until she gasps and melts and can barely hold herself upright – until the door beside them opens and Nie Huaisang's voice says, "Holy shit, oh my god, Chengcheng, you're not going to believe this –" and Wei Ying dissolves into giggles again and Lan Zhan has to actually hold her up to keep her off the floor as Jiang Cheng shrieks in outrage and slams the door shut on them.

Lan Zhan thinks this probably isn't how truth or dare usually goes, but that's okay. She thinks she might be dreaming, or in shock maybe. 

Wei Ying smiles softly up at her and strokes her cheek with gentle fingertips, and Lan Zhan takes a little shuddering breath in – and all that warmth abruptly spills out from behind her eyes at once.

"Lan Zhan!" says Wei Ying, alarmed, suddenly sharp and focused again, "Lan Zhan, no, what's – what happened, what's wrong, why –"

Lan Zhan shakes her head. Wei Ying is panicking. She has to say something, come on –

"It," she manages thickly, "it is fine."

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying says again, softer this time, "is it – was it just a lot?"

Lan Zhan nods, the movement tight and minute, and Wei Ying smiles in relief.

"That's okay, then," she says. "It's okay."

Lan Zhan notices, belatedly, that Wei Ying's eyes are just a little red and watery around the edges too.

So she kisses her again, uncoordinated and salt-stained, and Wei Ying kisses back, and there's nowhere else in the world Lan Zhan would rather be than right here in this ridiculous fluorescent-lit corridor with brown carpet and peeling paint on the ceiling, kissing Wei Ying like it's the only thing she was put on this world to do.

***

Wei Ying notices a pattern. The pattern is this: Lan Zhan is hesitant the first time, careful the second time, and possessively confident by the third. It's true of kissing – though the second and third had been barely a heartbeat apart so she hadn't realised it then – it's true of holding hands as they walk between activities or eat lunch side-by-side, it's true when Wei Ying sprawls out on the grass and drops her head into Lan Zhan's lap and feels Lan Zhan's fingers settle into her hair to tease through it until she's half asleep and warm all over.

Wei Ying likes it. It's a cute pattern. Lan Zhan is cute.

Wei Ying realises that when Lan Zhan doesn't speak it's almost always because something is too much. Wei Ying also realises that in the first weeks they knew each other, she was that something.

She doesn't feel bad about this. It's who she is, and Lan Zhan knows that now – Lan Zhan knows she's loud and obnoxious and annoying as well as all the good bits, and Lan Zhan likes her anyway.

Lan Zhan, Wei Ying suspects by the flush in the tips of her ears when she teases her, doesn't just like her anyway. Lan Zhan likes her because. 

It makes Wei Ying feel bubbly and golden and silly inside. They make a raft in their room assignment groups as a team-building exercise and Wei Ying splashes water on Lan Zhan's spotless blue blouse and says jiejie, don't you want to swim with me instead of doing this and Lan Zhan mutters ridiculous but she's blushing, she's blushing all the way to the edges of her cheeks, and then she pushes Wei Ying down onto the grass and kisses her until she's dizzy.

Jiang Cheng dumps a bucket of water on them both, and Wei Ying shrieks in outrage and demands than Lan Zhan defend her honour and push Jiang Cheng in the lake, and in the end they all end up in the lake because Huaisang was the only one actually building the raft so it sinks within approximately eight seconds.

Wei Ying ends up shivering and blue-lipped as they wait with thin blankets to be sent back to change out of their wet clothes, because the inconvenient thing about getting full-blown hypothermia when you're five years old is that it apparently leaves your body useless at temperature regulation for the rest of your life (or at least, that's Wei Ying's excuse for her very annoying sensitivity to cold despite being told it doesn't work like that, actually by multiple different medical professionals), and Lan Zhan looks her up and down, takes off her own blanket to wrap around her, and then – walks off somewhere?

Wei Ying pulls the blankets tighter around herself and tries to stop her teeth from chattering as she leans against Jiang Cheng (who – for once – doesn't shove her off). She closes her eyes and tells herself it's ridiculous to end up like this just because she hasn't got dry after the lake within three minutes. If it was a sunny day, it would have been fine, but of course the word summer doesn't actually mean anything here so instead there's a thick layer of cloud and a breeze that belongs more in October than late May, and –

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan, and Wei Ying opens her eyes to see a tightness in Lan Zhan's expression that she's coming to learn means worried, and beside her one of the activity leaders unwrapping a foil blanket as he tells Huaisang and Jiang Cheng to go inside and get changed.

Wei Ying suffers herself to be led away and properly warmed up, and then one of the teachers comes in to do paperwork about it which she entirely ignores in favour of curling up on the vinyl-covered bed in the medical room with her head on Lan Zhan's lap. She's warm now, wrapped in nothing but several layers of blankets while they wait for someone to find her some dry clothes, and all that shivering has left her just a little more tired than she'd like to admit to, and Lan Zhan's fingers are gently untangling her wet hair with steady, soothing little movements, and it doesn't take long at all for her to drift into sleep.

*

The last few days of the residential are a blur of warmth and bright laughter and Lan Zhan.

They build campfires, and Wei Ying gets ash all over her face and burns her lips on a sticky toasted marshmallow. They go zip lining, and Lan Zhan sails down the wire with a perfectly straight face that makes Wei Ying laugh until she cries, and when it's Wei Ying's turn she keeps her eyes wide open and stretches out her arms into the wind and thinks this is what it's like all the time, with Lan Zhan.

On the last night there's a party, and Wei Ying puts on fishnets and tiny black denim dungarees that barely cover the tops of her thighs and steals Jiang Cheng's makeup again and it takes her a while to get the look right but it's so, so worth it for the stunned expression on Lan Zhan's face when she walks out of the bathroom with her hair loose and messy all the way down to her waist and glitter smudged across her cheekbones to catch the fading sunlight.

And then Wei Ying actually looks at Lan Zhan, and forgets all about literally anything else she might have been thinking.

Lan Zhan is wearing a pale blue dress with silky white three-dimensional flowers scattered across the bodice and translucent gauzy sleeves that float out loose and unshaped from the shoulders to drape around her bare arms. She's done something traditional with a delicate silver hairpiece pulling her hair back from her face, and there's a white ribbon tied around her forehead with long tails that stand out pale against the dark fall of her hair, and Wei Ying forgets how to breathe as she looks at her.

Lan Zhan doesn't dance, but every time Wei Ying glances across the room she's watching with dark eyes and colour in the tips of her ears, and when a slow song comes on she gives in and lets Wei Ying pull her out from the edge of the room into the very centre of it all.

They sway together, Wei Ying's arms around Lan Zhan's neck with her fingers tangled up in the tails of the ribbon and Lan Zhan's hands settled tight and possessive at her waist, and Wei Ying thought they might kiss at the end of the song but Lan Zhan doesn't wait that long. 

The music flows around them, cutting them off like an island from the rest of the room, and Wei Ying closes her eyes and breathes in the orange-sandalwood scent of Lan Zhan's perfume as she parts her lips and kisses back like nobody's watching. She feels light and warm and like she could float away, like Lan Zhan's hands at her waist are the only thing keeping her tethered to the ground, and she'd never really understood why anyone would want someone else's tongue in their mouth but oh, she gets it now, there's sparks flying through her veins and heat deep in her belly and she's falling, she's flying, Lan Zhan is the only person who exists, this kiss is the only thing that matters.

Wei Ying doesn't care about rumours. People can say what they like about her.

*

Wei Ying realises, the next day, that she should have cared about rumours.