Chapter Text
Wei Ying sits in the pastoral office shared by the leadership team for years nine through eleven on the morning of her first day of term and flips open her pocket mirror to assess the mess Lan Zhan's made of that red lipstick she wasn't supposed to be wearing.
"Take it off," says Wei Ying's new head of year with glacial boredom, and holds out an open packet of baby wipes.
"But it matches my hair," Wei Ying returns petulantly. It's not like she actually cares – the lipstick's entire purpose was to be left on Lan Zhan's face and it accomplished that within three minutes – but it's the principle of the thing. If she lets Gusu Academy start this year thinking she's going to play by all the rules, she'll have nowhere to go but down.
"Your hair is the reason you are here instead of in your form room for registration." The head of year does not sound impressed.
Wei Ying sighs and takes the insistently offered packet of wipes. "If this ruins my flawless skin I'm blaming you."
"Go ahead," is the still-unimpressed reply, and that's the moment when the door opens and Lan Zhan's face appears framed by pink-tipped ears and deliberately not looking at Wei Ying.
There's red lipstick on her mouth.
"Please may I have a makeup wipe," she says stiffly, and the head of year puts her head in her hands and mutters something that sounds a lot like year nine is the worst year while Wei Ying laughs until she can hardly breathe.
Through the entire debacle, a new student watches quietly from beside the desk belonging to the head of year ten with a gaze that Wei Ying, if she'd been looking, might have called calculating.
***
Here's the problem, as far as Meng Yao is concerned:
She told her girlfriend at the end of the summer term that she would be moving schools. She allowed her to think this was because of issues with her scholarship, because that was a nicer explanation than the truth.
She didn't tell her she was moving to Gusu Academy.
"Hey, can you hold my mirror for me?" says the girl with the incorrect uniform who was clearly making out with Lan Huan's sister five minutes ago. "I need to braid this red streak out of the way to prove I don't actually have to dye it back."
"I don't care if you can hide it with a braid," says the head of year nine with something moving slowly from boredom towards exasperation. "It still needs to go."
Meng Yao holds the mirror, because this allows her to remain in the background of the scene and observe the interesting attitude towards authority on display before her.
True to her word, the braid hides the dyed streak immediately. The girl grins as she turns back around. "What needs to go? I already took off the lipstick."
"Wei Ying," says the head of year tiredly, "it's not even nine in the morning on day one. Are we actually having this conversation?"
Wei Ying, thinks Meng Yao. Interesting. She's heard that name before. The obvious entanglement with Lan Zhan gave it away already, of course – but she'd wanted to be certain, and now she is.
So this is her girlfriend's little sister's girlfriend.
"Hey," Wei Ying says brightly as she takes back her mirror and ignores the head of year, "thanks for that. What's your name?"
"Meng Yao."
"Great! I'm Wei Ying, nice to meet you –"
"Wei Ying," says the head of year again, "let's go. Time for you to be someone else's problem."
"What are you going to tell them? Look, I'll even make my skirt the right length again –" she fiddles with something at her waist, wiggles her hips, and transforms into something a little closer to the pictures on the glossy brochures in the front office, "– and I haven't done anything else wrong, so there's absolutely no reason for me not to just go back to my form room and get my timetable now."
She smiles at the head of year, who looks like she very much needs another cup of coffee.
Meng Yao is absolutely fascinated. This is not what she expected from her first half hour at Gusu Academy.
Some areas of her strategy could probably do with a rethink, but that can wait until she's observed Wei Ying's position in the wider school social structure. For now, she watches with interest as the head of year half-heartedly threatens Wei Ying with the promise of a pair of scissors if she sees one single red strand for the rest of today, and it had better be gone tomorrow! before giving in and sending her off with a late pass to her form room.
Personally, Meng Yao thinks this course of action will undermine the head of year's authority and cause worse Wei-Ying-related problems for her within a week. But that's none of her business really. She's not even in year nine.
She should be, by her age, but that's another holdover from her history at the ostentatious, overachieving Lanling Grammar School – the combination of entrance examination and private fee-paying status lends itself well to students skipping ahead, and Meng Yao had gone straight from year seven into year nine last autumn.
It hadn't ended well, but that hadn't been anything to do with her academic capabilities.
Gusu should be better.
Gusu will be better.
***
The first Wei Ying hears of Meng Yao – after their momentary meeting on the first day of term – is the traditional year 9 versus 10 netball match at the start of October. There's a new team for the new academic year, put together midway through September when the sports extracurriculars started up again; Jiang Cheng is both team captain and centre, because Wei Ying thinks that's far too much responsibility to be bothered with (okay, so maybe it's a little more complicated than that, but that's all anyone else needs to know about it), Wei Ying is goal attack, and best of all – Lan Zhan has finally been allowed to squeeze out some time from her overstuffed schedule for a non-academic extracurricular.
Wei Ying – and Baoshan Sanren – may have had something to do with that. Wei Ying is pretty sure she's the favourite of the nieces' girlfriends category now (not that she'd met Meng Yao before the start of term – and actually, thinking on it, wasn't that a little odd?).
The point is, Lan Zhan is wing attack, and Wei Ying is absolutely certain they're going to wipe the floor with year ten.
*
As it turns out, Meng Yao is year ten's goal defence.
She's very short. This means Wei Ying – along with the rest of the year nine team – underestimates her. Passing backwards and forwards to Lan Zhan over the top of her head is hilarious right up until she gets annoyed enough to jump way higher than anyone should actually be able to and send Wei Ying's sixth pass in a row off in completely the wrong direction instead – and less than thirty seconds later, year ten have scored. Meng Yao then proceeds to completely ruin almost every single one of Wei Ying's attempts on the net in such interestingly creative ways Wei Ying can't even be that mad about it; she's too busy being both entertained and impressed.
Lan Zhan's getting annoyed, though – it's obvious by the tightness of her jaw and the sharp stops on all her movements like unnecessary punctuation in a text message – so Wei Ying pulls herself together enough to score three times in the last two minutes and tie the game.
Meng Yao smiles at her as they head for the changing rooms. Somehow her ponytail is still perfectly neat and free of flyaways after a full hour's play.
"Lan Zhan," says Wei Ying affectionately, bumping up against her and winding one arm around her sweat-damp waist while ignoring Jiang Cheng's background whining about how she needs to stop being so lazy in the first half of the game, what the fuck are we supposed to do if your 'sexy last five minutes' goes wrong next time, "your sister's girlfriend is so weird."
"We have similar taste," replies Lan Zhan, deadpan, and Wei Ying gasps and smacks at her shoulder in outrage and demands to be kissed in apology.
Jiang Cheng trips her on purpose as she stalks past the two of them in disgust, but the kiss is definitely worth it.
***
Meng Yao really appreciates Lan Huan's ability to continue as normal as soon as things are, in fact, normal – even when recently they have not been. It's got them through both the whole of September and most of October very nicely.
Eight days before they reach November, Lan Huan finally, in that softly uncomfortable way she gets when something that's been held inside her mind for a long time is at last working its way out to the surface, walks Meng Yao to her bus stop and asks what she's clearly been wanting to ever since she realised Meng Yao had transferred to Gusu Academy on the second day of term.
"A-Yao… what happened this summer?"
"Hm?" Meng Yao blinks and smiles and deliberately doesn't fiddle with the sparkly charms her mother bought for her new school bag. She knows that's a tell.
"I hardly saw you." Lan Huan looks miserable now, and that squeezes Meng Yao's heart in the horribly guilty way that hits the place inside her where all the instructions for fixing any situation are kept with enough force to shake something out of it.
"Jiejie," she says, with big round eyes and careful hands that immediately find Lan Huan's and lace their fingers together because she knows touch is her girlfriend's primary love language. "A-Huan. I didn't mean to. I was just so busy with all the paperwork." She lifts one of Lan Huan's hands to her lips and kisses her knuckles carefully. "I didn't even know I was coming to Gusu until the last week of August."
Lan Huan nods. She looks sad still, but a little less so already. "I wish you'd told me. I could have helped."
"It's okay." Meng Yao shakes her head, just a little. "I don't want you to worry about these things. It's all done now anyway." She pauses, pushes onto her tiptoes to press a kiss to Lan Huan's cheek, smiles in the specific way that she knows shows her dimples best. "I need your advice on a new netball strategy though – if Wei Ying plays next time like she did in those last five minutes, we'll never beat year nine."
Lan Huan clearly knows a deliberate subject change when she sees one, but she acquiesces without complaint. It's one of the other things Meng Yao appreciates about her – she doesn't push when Meng Yao draws a line under a topic like this.
(Sometimes, perversely, some strange little part of Meng Yao almost wishes she would. This is one of the things she doesn't understand about herself.)
*
Here's the thing. Wei Ying should not be popular at Gusu Academy.
Any other non-selective school, yes, absolutely – but Meng Yao knows academic excellence rules the hierarchy here; has seen classes react with disgust to rare disruptions rather than the laughter they've been met with at every other school she's had the misfortune of attending. Students who can't control their behaviour are not valorised here. And that's the crux of it, in Meng Yao's opinion – Wei Ying can control her behaviour (most of the time, from what Meng Yao hears), and her deliberate disruptions are paired with the kind of top-of-the-class brilliance Meng Yao would be agonisingly jealous of if she didn't also possess it herself.
So: Wei Ying is popular. Even among the older year groups, in a delighted that's our crazy smart little year nine kind of way. The younger students would probably be intimidated by her reputation – but she's so nice on top of all the rest of it, so instinctively friendly and caring, that they almost forget to be.
Outside the netball court, Meng Yao has stayed out of her way so far. But she's been quietly climbing the hidden rungs of year ten in every way she knows how – she's got a wide circle of acquaintances already and has done exactly two favours for each of them (one minor, one of moderate significance), her test scores are currently second in her class and will carefully transition to the top once everyone else has got used to the concept of her being there, and of course all the teachers like her just enough to boost her reputation without accelerating her too early into the position of teacher's pet.
Having a girlfriend in year eleven also wins her some extra social currency, but she prefers not to lean on that too hard. She's not in a relationship with Lan Huan for clout.
The point is: year ten will be hers before the end of the winter term. But year ten isn't enough.
Her own year group alone hadn't been the reason she'd had to leave Lanling.
***
"Gusu has all different exam boards," says Wen Qing in despair, slumped forward over the glossy island in Wei Ying's kitchen with books and papers spread out around her like they've been caught in a gust of wind while being dropped from a very tall building. "I have to redo every single piece of coursework from year ten before the end of this term."
Wei Ying pats her sympathetically on the shoulder from where she's perched on the island itself (sitting on three important-looking pieces of paper) and takes another bite of her toasted sandwich. "Poor Qing-jie." She grins. "You did say Gusu would be the best place to prepare for being a doctor – they're just getting you started on the workload early."
"I changed my mind," Wen Qing says balefully. "I'm going to quit and grow vegetables for the rest of my life."
"Aiya, you can't take Wen Ning's job like that! You'd kill all the plants within a week anyway –"
"Please shut up, three of these are due tomorrow –"
"Hey, you chose to come here to do them, you knew you were signing up for my delightful company –"
"Because Granny's hosting both my disgusting cousins this week while their father is away on business and I can't poison their dinner without consequences."
In the silence that follows, Wei Ying clearly hears Xingchen's little voice from the living room explaining to Wen Ning the complex social structure of her dolls' house game. She feels a bizarre urge to laugh.
"Sorry," says Wen Qing a little awkwardly. "You shouldn't have to –"
"Aiya, stop it." Wei Ying waves a hand in her direction and pulls a face. "I'm not that delicate."
Wen Qing doesn't look convinced (which, rude, but also kind of fair enough because Wei Ying knows – even if she can't actually remember it – that she came over at Baoshan Sanren's invitation at least twice during those three weeks in the summer when all the functional parts of Wei Ying's mind decided to take an unauthorised holiday), but she nods.
"Wow," says Wei Ying after a few moments of silent contemplation, "I still really regret never having the chance to beat either of them up."
Wen Qing tilts her head just a little. There's an almost-hidden spark in her eyes Wei Ying very much likes the look of.
"You just need the d– Wen Chao's pet out of the way, right?"
Wei Ying grins.
"I know their schedule for tomorrow," Wen Qing says, watching Wei Ying a little carefully. "I also know that thing's been acting weird lately and Wen Xu is taking it to the vet at 3pm exactly."
"You know a lot of helpful things," says Wei Ying lightly, but there's a dark kind of excitement building within her that feels pulled directly from the version of herself still trapped in the hell of four months ago.
It's probably not a good idea.
She's going to do it anyway.
*
To: jiang cheng
Message: hey wanna come get satisfying revenge w me? 2v2 more fun than on my own
From: jiang cheng
Message: Youre insane
From: jiang cheng
Message: Where and when
*
Wei Ying almost regrets inviting Jiang Cheng when she feels her self-control snap and starts viciously reeling off an itemised list of every fucked-up thing Wen Chao did to her while holding her forcibly in place with one arm twisted behind her back and her hair yanked tight in Wei Ying's fist – but it's worth it to see Jiang Cheng kick Wen Xu in the nuts for calling her pretty.
"Ah, Jiang Cheng, don't we make a great team?" she says brightly as they clean each other up on the bus back towards Gusu, and Jiang Cheng wipes blood from Wei Ying's cheek and tells her to shut the hell up.
"You know I'm right, that was great fun –"
"I didn't know they did all that to you," snaps Jiang Cheng, and it's the kind of snap that's angry as a cover for distress.
"Oh," says Wei Ying, "don't worry about any of that. I don't even remember what I said."
It's true (and her therapist would probably have something annoying to say about that) – now the fight's over, there's only the vaguest impression left in her mind of anything she actually said or did during the event itself.
Jiang Cheng doesn't look reassured by this admission. "Was it true?"
Wei Ying screws up her face. "Probably?"
There's an uncharacteristic silence. The bus heaves itself to a stop, hisses its doors open and then closed again, pulls away with a shudder that sends an empty plastic bottle rolling across the floor from the front seats all the way to the back. Wei Ying watches it, instead of looking at Jiang Cheng.
"The stuff you said their father did –"
"Jiang Cheng," Wei Ying cuts in. "I literally don't know what I said. Leave it alone."
"You could go to court about it," says Jiang Cheng with something unreadable in her voice, and they spend the rest of the bus ride in silence.
*
"I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed," Baoshan Sanren says calmly, and Wei Ying is shocked to discover that some deep-seated part of her thinks horrible panic is an appropriate reaction to this.
She squashes it, obviously, because what the hell? She disappoints people all the time. She's in trouble all the time. It's funny. It's not distressing.
Her therapist is going to have a fucking field day this week.
"Are you going to ground me?" Wei Ying asks, bright and impudent, and pouts dramatically when Baoshan Sanren nods.
"Two weeks," she says. "This is serious, Wei Ying."
Again with the horrible unsettled twisting feeling. It's – this is – she's upset. She doesn't like it. She doesn't want Baoshan Sanren to be disappointed in her – and she especially doesn't want to be upset about it.
"It's really not," she says with a bright smile, and she can already feel the edge of it starting to sharpen, "it's actually just exactly what they deserved. I would have done it a long time ago if it wasn't for the dog."
The word is easy, when she's in this mood.
Baoshan Sanren looks at her carefully, and Wei Ying hates it, hates it, why does she have to see her so clearly all the time –
"If you feel as though they should face further consequences," she says, and Wei Ying suddenly knows what's coming and all she can think is for fuck's sake, not you too, "then we can make a full report to the police and work from there. I will support you to do that." She pauses. "I can't condone vigilante justice."
"Boring," snaps Wei Ying in a near-perfect imitation of Lan Zhan's tone. Baoshan Sanren raises her eyebrows just a little. "Why does everyone keep telling me to do that – it won't make any fucking difference."
"Did punching Wen Chao in the face make a difference?"
"It made me feel better," says Wei Ying in a mockery of what she calls Baoshan Sanren's therapy voice, and Baoshan Sanren sighs just a little.
"I'm not sure that it did," she says, "but I'll let you think about that for yourself. I think we should continue this conversation later tonight when you're feeling calmer."
"I'm perfectly fucking calm," snaps Wei Ying, and Baoshan Sanren only nods and lets the silence stretch.
Eventually, she says, "All right. I'm going to take some time to reflect on this situation. I think it might be sensible for you to do the same."
And then she walks out of the kitchen.
Wei Ying clenches her fists until her nails dig sharp crescents into the softness of her palms. She wants to throw something. She wants to scream. She wants to use all the bad coping strategies and none of the good ones.
She thinks, briefly, about her therapist being disappointed in her. She doesn't give a shit about that.
She thinks about Baoshan Sanren being disappointed in her.
She thinks about you could go to court about it, about make a full report to the police.
Something twists and cracks and pulls loose inside her, tearing her emotions open like a paper bag in the rain.
Tears abruptly flood her vision, and that's not allowed, it's not, she's not upset – so she does scream then, frustration forced out through gritted teeth to keep herself from crying with it instead, and she's not so far gone as to throw anything actually breakable but she grabs a handful of cutlery from the drawer and hurls it directly into the sink for the sensory-overload noise of it.
It's not much, but enough of the tension goes out of her that she can think semi-clearly again. The problem is that she doesn't actually want to be thinking at all.
Wei Ying mutters a half-hearted curse in her therapist's direction for being very irritatingly right about things, and pulls her sketchbook out of her bag.
*
To: lan zhan 💖
Message: cant come over 2mo sorry
From: lan zhan 💖
Message: Why?
To: lan zhan 💖
Message: grounded
Fifteen minutes later, the doorbell rings. Wei Ying hears a low conversation from downstairs – she's in her own room now, still with her sketchbook, and she's been thankfully left alone for the past few hours even though it's almost dinnertime – followed by footsteps, and then a soft knock on her door that's exactly in the rhythm that means Lan Zhan.
"If you're Lan Zhan come in, if not then get lost," she calls out, and the door opens.
"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan, and Wei Ying knows that tone. She groans and rolls over so her face is buried in her pillow – it aches a little, on the side of her cheek where Wen Xu's fist caught her, but at least this way Lan Zhan won't see the bruise for another minute.
"Lan Zhan, I'm literally fine. And I'm not in the mood for you to argue with me about whether that's true."
Lan Zhan doesn't say anything, but Wei Ying feels the bed dip beside her and a hand settle gently on the back of her head. Cool fingers work their way into her hair, nail-tips scratching over her scalp and gradually whiting out her thoughts into stillness. She hums, low in her throat and pleased, and uncurls like a cat to stretch out beside Lan Zhan with a sigh.
"Mm, Lan Zhan." She's half mumbling already, every sharp edge of herself softened from mere moments ago. "You always know what to do."
"My Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan, very softly.
"Mmm."
"Tell me next time."
Wei Ying makes a whiny noise of complaint. How dare Lan Zhan make her think about that, when she's having such a nice time with no thoughts at all.
"You'll only try to stop me," she grouses into her pillow. "So no."
"Will not." Lan Zhan's voice is quiet but sure.
"Then why?"
"To keep you safe."
"Aiya, Lan Zhan." The words are soft; not unkind. "I don't need you to keep me safe."
"I know."
"Hmm." Wei Ying considers this, still into her pillow. "But you want to anyway, is that it?"
"Mn."
Wei Ying rolls over. This causes the unfortunate loss of Lan Zhan's hand in her hair, but the trade-off is that she now gets to see Lan Zhan's beautiful face. There's currently the softest hint of a crease between her brows, which Wei Ying knows means almost unbearable levels of worry.
"Lan Zhan," she says, sharp and demanding, "kiss me."
Lan Zhan does, hot and possessive, and Wei Ying melts into the bed beneath her as the remaining traces of all those uncomfortable emotions fly all the way out of her mind with immediate relief. It's good. It's so good. She makes a noise into Lan Zhan's mouth, and she's not sure what exactly it was but it makes Lan Zhan bite at her lower lip so she does it again, and all of a sudden she's hot all the way through her entire body and she wants Lan Zhan to – she wants –
There's a clattering sound from downstairs, and footsteps coming up towards Wei Ying's bedroom. Lan Zhan releases her with a suddenness that leaves her abruptly empty, flat-out on her own bed and panting to catch her breath, and then there's a gentle knock at the door and Baoshan Sanren says dinner's ready, Lan Zhan, you're welcome to stay, and you both can eat in the bedroom if you'd prefer, and Wei Ying has never wished more fervently for an empty house.
"Lan Zhan," she says, still breathless, "fuck."
"May I stay for dinner," says Lan Zhan in a carefully controlled tone, but she can't fool Wei Ying with that because Wei Ying can see the flush blooming pink from her ears all the way across her cheeks and the heat still lingering in her gaze.
"I'll be very offended if you don't," says Wei Ying with a smirk. "You can't do these things to me without taking responsibility."
***
Nie Huaisang is the key to year nine. Meng Yao discovers this by gossiping with five different people in three different settings and dropping in a question about the source of their information to each conversation.
She didn't expect the same name to come up every single time, but it does make things easier for her.
"Nie Huaisang, right?" she says with a smile, and the subject of her attention turns with wide eyes and her face half hidden behind a folded piece of paper that looks suspiciously like someone else's homework.
"That's me! Who's asking?"
"Meng Yao. Year ten," she adds redundantly – she's almost certain Nie Huaisang already knows who she is despite her question. But she's not quite ready yet for her to know that she knows.
"So nice to meet you," Nie Huaisang says, fluttering the piece of paper like a fan between them. "I hear you've been putting our Yingying to shame on the netball court?"
"She's an interesting player to mark," allows Meng Yao with another smile. "Very changeable; I'd kill to be a fly on the wall in your team's strategy discussions."
"Oh, I couldn't possibly give away our secrets. Not that I know them." Nie Huaisang's eyes are wide again, all innocence. "I don't know anything."
Meng Yao has to repress laughter at that. The way Nie Huaisang looks at her with just a slight sparkle in her eyes makes her almost think she can tell.
Meng Yao knows Nie Huaisang's reputation. Knows her failing grades, her flighty personality – even some stories from her childhood, courtesy of Lan Huan – in short, has a reasonably well-formed opinion of her already.
Despite this, there's something in the back of her head telling her – right now, she's looking at an equal.
"Take my number," Meng Yao says; a calculated impulse. "In case it turns out you do know something after all."
Nie Huaisang smiles. "Yaoyao," she says delightedly, and the immediate nickname feels unnatural to Meng Yao's ears but somehow not in a bad way, "are you flirting with me?"
"I'm taken," Meng Yao says archly, "as you well know."
"I don't know anything at all," Nie Huaisang says, and holds out her phone.
*
"I met Nie Huaisang today," Meng Yao says while braiding Lan Huan's hair that evening. They were supposed to all be having dinner together – her first Lan family dinner that Wei Ying would also have been present for – but Wei Ying, from what she's heard, will be spending the remainder of the next two weeks grounded for fighting with her former foster siblings.
This doesn't seem to be preventing her from planning a reportedly – in her own words – epic combination Halloween-birthday party, though. Meng Yao received her invitation two days ago, in person, with copious amounts of excitement accompanying the delivery.
"How was that?" asks Lan Huan with mild interest.
"She flirted with me," Meng Yao says with a very precise amount of measured bewilderment. She still hasn't decided exactly what she thinks Nie Huaisang is trying to achieve through this course of action. Perhaps Lan Huan's reaction will go some way towards clarification.
Lan Huan sighs. "Don't take it personally. Huaisang flirts with everyone."
This makes a little more sense. The most obvious emotion to feel about this is relief.
But somehow, Meng Yao isn't quite sure Nie Huaisang has that look in her eyes when she's flirting with everyone else.
***
They do talk about it, in the end. After Lan Zhan goes home, after Xingchen pokes her head around Wei Ying's bedroom door to say goodnight, after Wei Ying finally brings her and Lan Zhan's dinner plates back downstairs and loads them into the dishwasher – they sit on the squashy sofa in the living room, and they talk about it.
It turns out that Wei Ying does actually want to – cause further consequences. It's just not the easiest thing in the world to shake the deep-rooted instinctive knowledge that telling people makes things worse.
It's been true for the rest of her life, until now.
"I want Huaisang to help," she says, defensiveness ready behind the words, and to her surprise Baoshan Sanren nods in agreement.
"I think you're right. Her skill set could be very useful."
"Okay." Wei Ying nods, shifts around to tuck her legs underneath her, picks at the fraying edge of her hoodie. "Okay – I have to talk to Wen Qing first."
"That's fine." A pause. Baoshan Sanren looks exactly as calm as Wei Ying isn't. "You tell me when you're ready."
*
Wei Ying doesn't sleep that night. She tries – for hours and hours, lying in the dark staring at the ceiling shoving memories back into boxes like a morbidly unpleasant game of whack-a-mole – and eventually, as the sky begins to lighten into pre-dawn October blue, she gives up.
Xingchen tiptoes blearily down the stairs at ten past six with a large white stuffed mouse toy tucked under her arm.
"Jiejie," she says sleepily, rubbing her eyes, "why are you awake early?"
"To make your favourite breakfast, of course," says Wei Ying brightly, and ruffles her hair. "Can't you smell it?"
Xingchen's expression lights up with a smile. "Baby pancakes?"
"The very same." Wei Ying frowns at her in exaggerated judgement. "Go brush your hair first though, you look like you slept in a hedge!"
"That was you!" squeals Xingchen in outrage, and Wei Ying laughs at her retreating back.
Five minutes later, just as Wei Ying is plating up the first of the miniature pancakes onto Xingchen's favourite plate with intense concentration, Baoshan Sanren comes downstairs in her dressing gown.
Wei Ying is informed of this development by the sound of the single stair midway down the flight creaking in the middle, which for some fucking reason startles her so badly she drops one of the pancakes on the floor.
"Hmm," says Baoshan Sanren. "Good morning."
Wei Ying turns around with a bright smile. "I made pancakes!"
Baoshan Sanren smiles. "They smell excellent. Thank you."
There's a very slightly pointed silence. Wei Ying sighs. "All right, fine. I'll save you the trouble."
Baoshan Sanren raises one eyebrow expectantly.
"Yes, no, and no."
"…oh, I still have to guess the questions?" Baoshan Sanren smiles a little wider and sits down at the kitchen island. "I like this game."
Wei Ying sets a plate of pancakes in front of her. "Do it, then."
"Hmm. You've done a lot of self-awareness work recently, so your yes refers to realising you are currently in a hypervigilant state."
"Ding-ding-ding." Wei Ying stuffs a baby pancake into her own mouth and drizzles syrup onto Xingchen's plate.
"That's too much sugar for her first thing in the morning, wipe the excess off please." Wei Ying rolls her eyes but complies. "My second question would have been did you sleep last night, so that must be the first no."
Wei Ying nods, plops one dollop of jam onto a pancake and a second directly into her mouth. "Last question?"
"Do you want the day off school?"
"Congratulations." Wei Ying shoves the jam-covered pancake into her mouth and speaks with her mouth full. "Three out of three, you win the prize of knowing you are always right about everything."
"Thank you," Baoshan Sanren says wryly. "Remember you have a time-out pass for during lessons if you need it."
"It's more fun arguing with the teachers though," says Wei Ying, because it's true and because if she uses the time-out pass then she'll have to answer questions about why she's using it, and she's definitely not planning on doing that.
Baoshan Sanren gives her a look and starts eating her pancakes in lightheartedly judgemental silence, and Xingchen comes running back downstairs with her school jumper on back-to-front and her hair brushed but definitely not tied up.
Wei Ying braids it for her while she eats, and Baoshan Sanren drives them both to their respective schools even though Gusu Academy is only a ten minute walk because she's in keeping an eye on Wei Ying mode. Wei Ying glances back at the car as she reaches the gate to see her fiddling with her phone – and knows, as sure as she knows Lan Zhan will read the lack of sleep on her face despite the carefully applied concealer, that her form tutor will have a brief informative email in her inbox within the next minute.
She's not sure how she feels about keeping an eye on Wei Ying mode. Part of her very much wants to tell both Baoshan Sanren and her form tutor to fuck off.
The rest of her is five years old, watching everyone who's supposed to care for her vanish, turn away in disinterest, send worse things her way instead – until all at once a familiar face crouches down beside her with a concerned expression and asks, so gently, if she's feeling okay today.
It never happened, then. But it happens now, and that tiny lonely child inside Wei Ying wants it even when her present-day self recoils at the very thought.
So she gives a thumbs-up to the concerned question on her form tutor's face instead of ignoring her, and lets Lan Zhan fuss over her for a whole three minutes before giving her the okay stop it now, I'm really fine they both know is only half true.
*
By morning break, Wei Ying is exhausted.
Everything is too loud. Any time the classroom door opens, or someone tips their chair back and then too-heavily down at the teacher's correction, or clicks their fucking pen it makes her jump. Not visibly – she can suppress it to barely a twitch most of the time – but all the way through her lungs and stomach and into her gut, a jolt that sends her heart racing and sweat prickling across the back of her neck with the urge to run, or possibly to hit someone, or both.
She thinks about the time-out pass glued forcibly into the back of her planner by Wen Qing to stop her from accidentally-on-purpose misplacing it for the fourth time in two weeks.
She doesn't need it. It's morning break now, that's a built-in time-out for everyone.
She makes it halfway down the queue for snacks before yanking her hand from Lan Zhan's comforting grasp and running from the dining hall out of the nearest exit. A teacher she doesn't know tries to stop her with one arm out and a sharp instruction of running is forbidden inside and she ducks around them, bites back the instinctive get fucked from her lips because if she starts that then they won't leave her alone, slams out through the door into the fresh air and sucks in a full lungful of it. It's quiet – she's come out of an exit that's not supposed to be used, and the noise of the main yard is distant around two corners of the building.
The door behind her opens again with the familiar sudden unpeeling of secure fire exits from their housing, and half of Wei Ying knows Lan Zhan's followed her but the other half is startled worse than anything that's happened in class, worse worse worse right down through her entire core and yanking hard on everything she's tried to keep a lid on, and as she spins around she's shaking, breathing too hard, and all at once the world blurs and pulls sideways and –
– the social worker leaves, and Wen Chao smirks as she whistles between her teeth and someone grabs Wei Ying by her hair and says, "Now wasn't that an interesting conversation, I wonder where she got those ideas from," and there's a clatter of nails on hard flooring and Wei Ying screws her eyes shut and brings her arms up to cover her face and screams like she promised herself she never would –
"Wei Ying–!"
"Wei Ying, can you hear me?"
"You're safe. Wei Ying, you're at school. Gusu Academy."
Wei Ying opens her eyes. The autumn sunlight is horribly bright, and everything else is blurred and wavering more than it probably should be, and she can distantly feel herself gasping for breath fast and hard enough that her hands are tingling and numb with it – but she is, in fact, crouched on the floor with her arms over her face in a quiet grassy corner of Gusu Academy.
She flings out one trembling hand, and Lan Zhan catches it. For a few minutes she just exists.
The other two voices belong to Wen Qing and Wei Ying's form tutor.
"Stop triangulating me," Wei Ying complains semi-nonsensically – or tries to – and the words barely come out at all which is probably just as well.
Crouching is uncomfortable. Wei Ying solves this problem by sitting down abruptly and hard on the ground. The movement jolts her a little more back into herself, and she sucks in a breath that feels like she's actually choosing it and leans back against the brick wall of the school in sudden, overwhelming exhaustion.
"Haha," she says weakly, "what are you all doing here?"
This ridiculous sentence has the incredible benefit of making Lan Zhan and Wen Qing immediately develop absolutely identical unimpressed expressions. Wei Ying takes another metaphorical step back into herself as she laughs at them in a very normal non-hysterical way.
"Wei Ying," says her form tutor calmly when she's done laughing, "would you like me to call your aunt?"
"Nope," says Wei Ying. She's currently too exhausted to stand upright, but no-one actually needs to know that. "I just need a minute."
"If you tell me you're planning on going back into class like this I'm stealing a car and driving you home myself," says Wen Qing in a tone Wei Ying can tell is deliberately modulated down softer than she wants it to be.
She pouts. "Don't baby me."
"You're unbelievable. Go and have a nap in the pastoral office if you won't go home."
Wei Ying admits that this is probably not a bad idea, and then Lan Zhan has to catch her when she tries to stand up.
"Embarrassing," she says plaintively from Lan Zhan's arms. "Let go of me."
"You will fall," says Lan Zhan quietly, and Wei Ying makes an inarticulate whining noise and suffers herself to be arranged with one arm over each of Lan Zhan and Wen Qing's shoulders for support and half-carried through quiet corridors to the pastoral office.
Weirdly, Meng Yao is in there. But so is a very comfortable-looking sofa, and this latter presence is far more pressing to Wei Ying's priority list right now.
*
She wakes when the bell goes for the end of lunch. Wen Qing is sitting beside her with a sandwich and one of the neatly packaged incredibly delicious chocolate brownies that show up occasionally on no schedule Wei Ying can divine and always sell out within the first five minutes of lunchtime.
"I told Lan Zhan to go to her lesson," Wen Qing says without preamble. "I've got a study period next so I'm not leaving. Eat." She opens the sandwich wrapper and holds it out insistently until Wei Ying sits up and takes it.
"How did you get a brownie?" asks Wei Ying after a few bites, when she feels more like an actual person again. "It literally takes me at least three weeks of sprinting to the lunch queue for the stars to align."
"Your form tutor has an in. Teacher privileges." Wen Qing rolls her eyes.
"Aiya, that's just unfair." Wei Ying stuffs the rest of the sandwich in her mouth and unwraps the brownie. "Look at this perfection – they should all have to queue up for it with the rest of us."
"It's payment for putting up with you," Wen Qing says distractedly, and glances across the room to where the only actual member of staff present is deeply engrossed in a stack of marking. She lowers her voice a little. "Are you going to tell me what's going on?"
"Not while I'm eating this brownie. It's too good to ruin like that."
Wen Qing is not good at waiting patiently. Wei Ying thinks this is funny, so she eats the brownie as slowly as she possibly can and spends an entire minute (she actually counts it, by the ticking clock above the door) licking the crumbs from her fingers afterwards too.
"One day," says Wen Qing pleasantly, "I'll be qualified to stick needles into you without any repercussions at all."
"The repercussions will be that Lan Zhan will kill you in your sleep," Wei Ying replies just as pleasantly, and steals a piece of paper from Wen Qing's notebook to enclose the wrappings from her lunch in a tight ball and send them sailing across the room into the bin.
And then, unfortunately, Wei Ying is out of excuses. She knows she has to talk to Wen Qing about it anyway – has to make sure that if she does it, there won't be repercussions for her and Wen Ning – but she doesn't want to. She doesn't even know how to say it.
She gets out her phone instead, ignoring Wen Qing's glare. There are two unread messages.
From: jiang cheng
Message: Why arent you in class
From: jiang cheng
Message: Your bitchy gf wont tell me
To: jiang cheng
Message: pastoral office
To: jiang cheng
Message: im fine
And then, typed fast enough that she doesn't have to think about it and deleted as soon as it's sent:
To: wen qing
Message: police + court shit idk. havent done it yet
Wen Qing frowns at her when her own phone buzzes. She reads the message in silence while Wei Ying rearranges her legs on the sofa with pretended nonchalance.
"I haven't done anything yet," Wei Ying blurts after almost a full minute of weirdly uncomfortable silence. "I wanted to make sure – I don't want to make things worse for you and Wen Ning."
Wen Qing shakes her head. She looks preoccupied. "Don't worry about us. He probably won't make the connection."
"If he does?"
Wen Qing shrugs. "It's fine. This is – you should do it." She pauses, the same preoccupation still pulling her expression closed.
It's almost as though she's deciding something.
"What," says Wei Ying, a little carefully.
"I have something that might help." Wen Qing chews on her lower lip for a moment; an uncharacteristic hesitance. "But you can't get pissed about it. Or, well – do whatever, feel your feelings or whatever your therapist says, but just – I did it to help. In case you wanted to do this."
And then, while Wei Ying is still trying to work out what the hell that all means, Wen Qing slides her unlocked phone across the table and sits back without meeting her eyes.
It's open to a private image folder. All the thumbnails are blurred.
She touches one of them to open it, and almost drops Wen Qing's phone.
It's her. Asleep on the air mattress in Wen Qing's bedroom.
"What the fuck," she says blankly.
She swipes to the next image, and understands.
This one is a close-up of her arms. Livid red scratches stand out against skin turned pale by the camera flash – some of them even grouped in matching twos and threes, bruised a little underneath from the force of it.
Wei Ying puts the phone down on the low table in front of the sofa, shakes her head sharply when Wen Qing starts to speak, grounds herself.
Five things you can see. Four things you can touch. Three things you can hear. Two things you can smell. One thing you can taste.
She picks up the phone again.
The next image shows her face. Somehow, Wen Qing's photography has picked out the slight swelling and almost-bruised redness that was barely even visible in the mirror. Traces, left behind from –
"Okay," says Wei Ying, too brightly, "that's enough." She has a feeling that therapist-approved grounding technique might not work so well if she has to use it twice in as many minutes.
Wen Qing holds out her hand for her phone. She looks so uncomfortable and worried Wei Ying kind of wants to laugh – not at her, just to break the tension.
She doesn't.
"I'm sorry I didn't ask you first," Wen Qing says, when Wei Ying passes back her phone and doesn't say anything else. "I just – I didn't want you to have to think about reporting it, not when that was part of why it happened."
"Yeah, no, I would definitely have told you to fuck off." Wei Ying says after a moment. "It's – that's going to help."
Wen Qing nods.
"It's still kind of fucked up that you did it, though."
Wen Qing nods again. "I know."
"Wow." Wei Ying rubs her hands over her face, pulls a long breath in through her nose, lets her cheeks puff with it as she lets it out. Tries to ignore the shakiness in the pit of her stomach.
Realises, very suddenly, that she wants to go home.
"Can you go and find my form tutor? I want – she can make that phone call now."
"Of course." Wen Qing stands, slings her bag over her shoulder, worries at the strap of it with her fingers as she hesitates. "Are you okay?"
"Never better," says Wei Ying lightly.
"Are you sure, because you look –"
"Do you really think you get to ask me that right now?"
Wei Ying hadn't meant the words to come out that sharp. She's not even sure if she's angry or not – so much for that self-awareness work – but she knows she doesn't want to talk to Wen Qing about it.
Wen Qing stills, nods stiffly in acknowledgement, and leaves.
*
From: wen qing
Message: I really am sorry
From: wen qing
Message: I should have told you afterwards at least
To: wen qing
Message: its whatever
To: wen qing
Message: if youd told me before now i wouldve made u delete them
To: wen qing
Message: which u probably wouldntve anyway
To: wen qing
Message: the point is
To: wen qing
Message: those pics will probably make all the difference to which way this goes
To: wen qing
Message: so thank you
***
"My mother's career is not a safeguarding concern," says Meng Yao politely, without any of the edge she so badly wants to put into her voice. She's been pulled into the pastoral office for the third time that week, and she is so, so done with well-meaning concerned questions from overinvolved teachers who think it's any of their business what someone else's parents do for a living.
It's no-one's business. And the more the teachers talk about it, the more likely that the students will – and the more likely everything she left Lanling to escape will begin all over again.
"We just want to make sure you're safe," says the head of year ten in a tone somewhere between placatory and apologetic. "Does your mother work from home?"
"From a hotel," says Meng Yao, which is only half a lie – there's an apartment, technically owned by one of her mother's friends, that several of them split rent on for safety, and while by all logical accounts this would be a more stable and safe-sounding answer than a hotel, it's actually illegal. The safe apartment that keeps Meng Yao's mother out of anonymous extortionately priced hotel rooms and her clients out of their home, and does the same for her friends, and enables them all to look out for each other – in the eyes of the law it's a brothel, and to tell anyone about it would be to ruin all their lives.
Meng Yao hates this fact. Meng Yao has been quietly running online campaigns and petitions to change it since she was twelve years old.
The head of year nods. "Have you ever met any of her clients?"
Meng Yao allows her face to wrinkle in the disgust she knows the teachers want to see. "Of course not."
Not since her mother's friends set up the apartment, anyway.
The door to the pastoral office opens, and a teacher Meng Yao doesn't know ushers three students she knows very well inside.
Wei Ying glances briefly in her direction, but she's glassy-eyed with obvious exhaustion and Meng Yao isn't entirely sure she's actually registered her presence. Lan Zhan helps her gently onto the sofa where she immediately falls asleep before she's even horizontal.
Her entry in Meng Yao's mental database gains a few additional notes.
Wen Qing does not join in with Lan Zhan's gentle arranging of Wei Ying's sprawled-out limbs into comfortable positions. She watches Meng Yao instead.
Meng Yao smiles at her, but it's tight and small and not at all the usual warmly dimpled expression she pulls out for everyone else. She knows Wen Qing would take it as an insult if it was.
Wen Qing doesn't seem as though she can quite bring herself to smile back, which is fair enough given the circumstances of their last meeting.
Meng Yao had once thought, with the same naivety which had led her to apply for Lanling's scholarship in the first place, that being invited by her father to the Jin family summer barbecue was a step in the direction she'd longed for ever since she could remember.
She had been wrong, of course.
*
From: Nie Huaisang
Message: hey yaoyao how come u left lanling?
From: Nie Huaisang
Message: my da-jie knows a kid through her outreach work who wants to apply for the scholarship next yr but idk ive heard its a bit shady?
From: Nie Huaisang
Message: idk tho so i wanted to ask u
Meng Yao considers this. She pictures Nie Huaisang's face saying the words; imagines several different iterations of expression and non-verbal cues to go with them. She is reasonably confident in two conclusions: the mentioned child is real, and this is definitely a transparent fishing trip for gossip rather than actual concern for their future.
To: Nie Huaisang
Message: just issues w my scholarship
To: Nie Huaisang
Message: what outreach work does your sister do?
She doesn't like typing in Nie Huaisang's style – the abbreviations and lack of correct capitalisation are jarring and her phone's autocorrect fights her on every sentence – but she's well aware that matching the texting style of an acquaintance encourages freer dialogue.
From: Nie Huaisang
Message: ohhhh yea i heard they take it away for literally anything
From: Nie Huaisang
Message: like, ur late to lesson twice in a week, haha say bye to ur money
From: Nie Huaisang
Message: or idk u cheat on one test and thats it
Meng Yao suddenly feels as though someone has dripped ice water onto the back of her neck. She can almost see the light in Nie Huaisang's eyes shift as the version of her inside Meng Yao's head delivers the message.
From: Nie Huaisang
Message: oh da-jies work is cool! qinghe sixth form has a volunteer program to get year 13s into the local primary schools
From: Nie Huaisang
Message: da-jies thinking of going into teaching after uni so its good experience u kno?
To: Nie Huaisang
Message: i can imagine it would be
To: Nie Huaisang
Message: personally i cant imagine anywhere id rather be less than a primary school
This is a lie. Meng Yao can imagine at least twelve worse places without even blinking. But the sentiment is true enough – if she had to pick a setting in the world of education or childcare, it would be a nursery. She prefers children at the ages where they are less likely to talk back and can be soothed by something as simple as being held and gently bounced.
From: Nie Huaisang
Message: oh u couldnt pay me enough to do it myself
From: Nie Huaisang
Message: kids are so sticky
From: Nie Huaisang
Message: whats lanling actually like tho? the kid sounds sweet i dont want her to end up in a shithole
To: Nie Huaisang
Message: its reputation is accurate
From: Nie Huaisang
Message: but i dont know its reputation :( u forgot i dont know anything
Meng Yao almost smiles.
To: Nie Huaisang
Message: too transparent. get better at lying and try again
From: Nie Huaisang
Message: ouch yaoyao u kno how to hurt a girls feelings </3
There is a non-negligible part of Meng Yao which wants to type we both know what game we're playing here.
Stop it. Let me see you.
She doesn't. She sends a smiley face emoji with a halo and puts her phone face-down on her desk for the night.
***
Lan Zhan – unless you count the dance at the end of last year's residential trip – has never been to a party. She has never felt any particular desire to go to a party.
But it's Wei Ying's birthday. So she puts on her nice dress and the fluffy bunny ears Wei Ying refuses to acknowledge as a costume on their own, and listens to her uncle's lecture about responsible behaviour, and knocks on Wei Ying's front door with a bag of gifts in one hand and nervousness fluttering uncomfortably in her stomach.
"Lan Zhan!" Wei Ying grins delightedly and pulls her inside by her free hand. There's glitter all over her face and she's paired her black set of bunny ears (bought to match Lan Zhan's three weeks ago, during the party planning shopping trip Lan Zhan had actually enjoyed at least fifteen percent more than she'd expected to) with a sparkly black leotard and extremely short shorts which have somehow acquired a bunny tail in the form of a large pom-pom affixed to the back of the waistband.
"Happy fourteenth birthday," says Lan Zhan, feeling all at once exactly as stilted and awkward as the day they first met, and Wei Ying kisses her.
Halfway through the kiss, everything Lan Zhan has learned about herself and Wei Ying throughout the past seven months comes back to her all in a rush, and she presses Wei Ying up against the wall and scrapes her teeth across Wei Ying's lower lip until she whines into her mouth. Her waist is warm under the tight fabric of the leotard – under Lan Zhan's hands – and all at once Lan Zhan wants to know what it would feel like without –
"Get a fucking room!" yells Jiang Cheng, and a pillow smacks into the side of Lan Zhan's face.
The only thing that stops Lan Zhan from exacting violent revenge on Jiang Cheng in the very next moment is the fact that Wei Ying is giggling like this is the most hilarious thing to happen to her all week.
Lan Zhan catches a glimpse of herself in the hallway mirror as Wei Ying pulls her into the living room. There's glitter smudged across her mouth – sparkly lipgloss, by the uncomfortably sticky feel of it – and all the way across one cheek too, catching the light to accentuate the flush around the top edges of her cheekbones, and her hair is escaping its neat braid in countless flyaways where the pillow made contact. The bunny ears perched atop her head are tilted slightly sideways from their previous perfectly aligned position.
"Lan Zhan!" Nie Huaisang waves from her position draped across a beanbag on the floor. She's got cat whiskers drawn in eyeliner on her cheeks. "Do you like the decor? It was all my own work –"
"You lay on the floor and ordered us around for three hours," snipes Jiang Cheng.
"– all my own work, except for Xingchen who helped with the spiders, and I think it really captures the spirit of our little event. I should be a party decorator. Interior designer? One of those things, I don't know what they're called anyway –"
Lan Zhan tunes her out and looks around the room. Fake cobwebs dotted with large plastic spiders stretch around the edges of the ceiling, paired with black and orange paper chains and streamers that sparkle in the low lighting. There are several glowing plastic pumpkins perched improbably on various pieces of furniture, and a large skeleton propped up on the sofa taking up an entire seating space with a magazine balanced carefully in its hands – and there is also a huge banner reading HAPPY BIRTHDAY WEI YING pinned to one wall in a bright primary-colours design so vividly contrasting from everything else it makes Lan Zhan's eyes hurt a little bit to look at.
The final touch is an abundance of hot pink balloons with black-and-white stars printed all over them. Some of these are stuck to the walls or ceiling; many more litter the edges of the floor, swaying gently like lazy tumbleweeds.
"It is creative," says Lan Zhan eventually.
"See?!" Nie Huaisang waves her arms illustratively in Jiang Cheng's general direction. "Creative. I told you, but you said the colours were all wrong –"
"I thought your sister was supposed to be coming," says Jiang Cheng loudly across the rest of Nie Huaisang's complaint, and Lan Zhan nods.
"Nie Mingjue and Meng Yao," she says, and then clarifies when Jiang Cheng looks at her blankly, "Meeting them first."
Nie Huaisang rolls off the beanbag onto the floor and props her chin in her hands with a suggestively raised eyebrow. "Both at once?"
"What's wrong with you," says Jiang Cheng while Wei Ying laughs and pulls Lan Zhan down onto the sofa with her so she can sit in her lap, and then Baoshan Sanren pokes her head around the door and asks if they want the takeaway pizzas ordered now or later, and then there's a very loud debate about pizza toppings which lasts for nearly twenty minutes. The rest of the guests arrive during this time period, and immediately join in – Wen Qing has extremely strong opinions about olives, Jiang Yanli wants to make sure there are enough plain options for everyone who doesn't like strong flavours (Lan Zhan is silently grateful for this), and Wen Ning is the one to eventually solve the debate by quietly pointing out that the place they want to order from offers half-and-half pizzas, so they can all in fact get whatever they want with no compromises.
Meng Yao pulls out a notepad from somewhere and immediately makes it her job to write down everyone's topping choices and pair them appropriately to avoid unfortunate potential cross-contamination mishaps, which Lan Zhan is initially slightly irritated by because she really had wanted to share a pizza with Wei Ying – but then Wei Ying reels off a combination of four different meats (two of them spicy) and three additional spicy items and Lan Zhan realises with great reluctance that she will in fact be far better off sharing a split pizza with A-Huan, whose only topping crime is mushrooms.
The pizzas arrive, and they watch two supposedly scary films which Lan Zhan is not particularly impressed by. The special effects are lacking, and Wei Ying climbs out of her lap with excitement rather than snuggling closer in with the fear films such as these are supposed to induce. Not that she wants Wei Ying to be scared. But if she chose to make herself scared – with a film that was actually any good – Lan Zhan probably wouldn't complain.
The credits are rolling on the second film, and Lan Zhan is just beginning to feel sleepy from the late hour, when Nie Huaisang sits up from her beanbag sprawl and looks around the room with bright eyes before declaring – with what Lan Zhan thinks is definitely evil intent – "It's time for truth or dare."
"Huaisang," says Nie Mingjue warningly.
"Da-jie," says Nie Huaisang. "You're not eighteen yet, which means you're not allowed to be a boring adult. If you want to be a boring adult, you can go and hang out in the kitchen with the other one." She smiles sweetly at Wei Ying. "No offence to your aunt."
Nie Mingjue sighs and turns to A-Huan as she stands up. "Come and get me if this gets out of hand."
"Of course." Amusement tugs the corners of A-Huan's lips as she watches Nie Mingjue leave.
"That," declares Wei Ying, "is the first and last sensible decision that's happening tonight. Huaisang, hit me with it."
Nie Huaisang grins. "Truth or dare?"
*
Lan Zhan is beginning to enjoy truth or dare. Her deepest and most alarming secret has long since been revealed and transformed into the most treasured part of her life, and Nie Huaisang knows her well enough to avoid any distressingly disgusting dares – those are mostly saved for Jiang Cheng, which Lan Zhan thinks is because Nie Huaisang wants to see how far she can push her before she'll choose to answer a truth instead. Currently she has chosen to chew on a mouldy half-bitten grape from under the sofa rather than break.
"You have to keep it in your mouth for at least thirty seconds before you swallow," says Nie Huaisang mercilessly. "Show me."
Jiang Cheng sticks her tongue out to reveal the remains of the grape with murder in her eyes. Wei Ying shrieks with laughter and aims her phone at the scene, camera already open and recording.
Lan Zhan decides, somewhere around this point, that she in fact likes truth or dare – primarily because Wei Ying likes it, and Lan Zhan loves nothing more than to see her happy, but also because she learns things about people that she would never otherwise find out. She doesn't have Nie Huaisang's endless appetite for gossip, of course, and she doesn't actually care to build up detailed knowledge regarding anyone other than Wei Ying – but if she knows just a little more than the bare minimum about the people around her, then she can at least avoid unintentional awkwardness where possible (and as an incidental bonus, neatly sidestep the usual exhausting types of conversations where these things would be discovered).
She thinks Meng Yao might be doing something similar.
"Dare," says Meng Yao, for the sixth time in a row, and Nie Huaisang rolls her eyes. "Also, I'm fairly certain we're supposed to take turns asking."
"Fine, fine." Nie Huaisang picks up a slice of mostly-cold pizza and starts picking the olives off it. "I dare you to ask someone else a truth."
Meng Yao smiles, makes a show of looking around the room, finishes back where she started. "Nie Huaisang. Why do you want me to pick truth so badly?"
Nie Huaisang, for some reason, looks delighted. "That's an easy one. I want to see if my assumptions about you are correct."
Meng Yao leans just a little closer to her. "And what might those be?"
"Ah-ah." Nie Huaisang waves the mutilated slice of pizza in Meng Yao's face. "We're taking turns, aren't we?"
"There is something so wrong with you," Jiang Cheng says in Nie Huaisang's general direction. "Wei Ying. Truth or dare."
Wei Ying grins. "Dare."
"Can you still do a back aerial?"
"That's not a dare –"
"Yes or no –"
"Yes, obviously –"
"Then I dare you to do one on the table. But you have to land it clean or it doesn't count."
"A-Cheng," says Jiang Yanli, midway between chiding and concerned. "That doesn't sound safe –"
Wei Ying, of course, is already standing up from Lan Zhan's lap and pushing empty pizza boxes onto the floor. There's a gleam in her eyes that Lan Zhan doesn't know if she should be worried about or not but actually is every kind of attractive.
"Ah, Lotus Gymnastics Club, beloved childhood overlord," says Wei Ying with exaggerated wistfulness. "You taught me everything I know and many things I immediately forgot. Jiang Cheng, do you still have my old club hoodie?"
"Get on with it," grumbles Jiang Cheng, but there's a genuine smile on her face despite the words.
"Aiya, so demanding," says Wei Ying, and steps onto the low table – which wobbles, just a little, and Lan Zhan's heart is suddenly in her throat with ten different panic-inducing scenarios all at once –
Wei Ying executes a textbook-perfect backflip, long legs split midair in dramatic elegance – and lands with faultless balance, tight-controlled core strength holding her steady as the table shivers from the impact. Every single one of Lan Zhan's thoughts vanishes instantly as the rest of the room erupts into exaggerated whoops of applause.
Wei Ying looks at her, eyes bright and cheeks flushed beneath the glitter, and says, "Lan Zhan."
Lan Zhan's lips move before she's even aware of the word. "Dare."
"It's my birthday," says Wei Ying. "I want to show you something."
"That's not a dare," Jiang Cheng says with deep suspicion.
"The dare comes later," says Wei Ying lightly, and pulls Lan Zhan from the sofa by both hands. She's still standing on the table.
In the background of her peripheral vision, Lan Zhan sees Jiang Cheng's eyes narrow. "This better not be a –"
"Huaisang!" Wei Ying calls with authority. "Invoking clause thirty-four!"
Nie Huaisang leaps across the room faster than Lan Zhan had any idea she could move, rummages under the armchair in the corner and drags something large and silver out into view, screams GO! with abject delight – and sets off what turns out to be some kind of homemade glitter-bomb.
In the chaos that follows, Wei Ying drags Lan Zhan from the room and up the stairs with one finger held to her still-smiling lips.
*
"Wei Ying."
They're in her bedroom. Lan Zhan's heart is fluttering in her chest like a wild thing.
"What did you want to show me?"
Wei Ying turns away and walks to the door. Lan Zhan hears a soft click.
"My room has a lock now." She's facing Lan Zhan again, close but not quite touching, eyes wide and dark and ever so slightly tentative. "Lan Zhan."
Time slows down, just a little bit. Lan Zhan can feel her own heartbeat in her ears, can count every last glittering fleck of silver stuck to Wei Ying's flushed cheeks.
"I dare you to kiss me."
Lan Zhan does.
***
Nie Mingjue pokes her head around the door after a solid minute of chaos and shrieking from the living room, takes in the scene of glitter-covered destruction, and immediately returns to the kitchen. Baoshan Sanren raises a questioning eyebrow as she sits down and contemplates both her half-empty mug of tea and her life choices.
"The worst mistake I have ever made," she says eventually, "was not asking Huaisang why she wanted to buy a five-kilo bag of glitter."
Baoshan Sanren smiles wryly. "The living room is a lost cause, I assume."
"Yeah." Nie Mingjue sighs. "I can pay for a professional cleaner."
"Don't worry about that." Baoshan Sanren tilts her head a little, almost frowning but not quite. "It's kind of you to offer your own money."
Nie Mingjue shrugs. "Huaisang's mostly my responsibility. Our aunt – my aunt, technically – just does the legal stuff."
Baoshan Sanren hums thoughtfully. "That's a lot of responsibility for you. How do you feel about it?"
Nie Mingjue opens her mouth – then stops, side-eyeing the expression on Baoshan Sanren's face. She thinks about her psychology class at school, thinks active listening, says, "Wei Ying warned me about this," with something politely to the left of accusation.
Baoshan Sanren laughs. "Did she really? That's not the worst reputation I've had." She gets up then, fills the kettle and puts it on to boil for a fresh cup of tea. "Don't feel as though you have to talk to me about it – but I'm here if you'd like to. Parenting isn't always easy."
Parenting. The word takes Nie Mingjue by surprise. It's not like – Huaisang's not that much younger than her. It's not really like that.
(It is, a little bit. She's felt older than her birth certificate shows ever since their father died.)
(She certainly loves Huaisang enough for it to be.)
No-one's ever called it that before, though. She's never felt – recognised, or taken seriously, the way she does right now.
Nie Mingjue realises, a little uncomfortably, that part of her has been aching for that recognition for far too many years. She doesn't have parents, any more. Her aunt certainly hasn't stepped into the role.
But Huaisang might have something close to one.
Baoshan Sanren is poking around in a high cupboard, compiling a selection plate of biscuits while two fresh cups of tea steep on the counter. Nie Mingjue knows this would probably encourage most people to feel more comfortable to start talking. She waits, instead, until Baoshan Sanren sits back down and slides a steaming mug towards her.
"It's okay," she says. "I hate it when the teachers talk to our aunt instead of me at parents' evening."
Baoshan Sanren nods. She doesn't try to tell her she shouldn't be worrying about Huaisang's education.
*
"Who do you have supporting you?" asks Baoshan Sanren eventually, and Nie Mingjue shrugs.
Lan Huan, she almost says, but – she doesn't want it to be like that, between them. They do talk about it sometimes; about their parents especially.
She's one of the only people who remembers Lan Huan's mother.
But it's not about having someone to support her. She doesn't need that – and she doesn't want it, not from A-Huan. She doesn't want a friendship strung through with obligation.
(She doesn't want – whatever it is that she wants, when she looks at A-Huan – to be built on dependency.)
Baoshan Sanren says something about a support group, and digs her laptop out of a pile of papers on one side of the kitchen island to show Nie Mingjue a website with bright colours and regular meeting times listed in a neat little box, but she's only half listening now.
The other half of her is thinking about how, by the time she realised what it was that she wanted, she'd missed her chance to even ask for it.
***
Eventually, most of the empty pizza boxes and approximately half of the glitter is replaced with an assortment of air mattresses, blankets, pillows, and sleeping bags on the living room floor. This is the setting for Jiang Cheng's disgusted outrage at the three hickies on Wei Ying's neck when she reappears almost an hour later with the tail missing from her outfit and glitter smudged across every visible scrap of skin, hand-in-hand with a very satisfied-looking Lan Zhan whose hair has entirely escaped its braid to a state that could – for possibly the first time in her life – be called a complete mess.
"A-Zhan," says Lan Huan, visibly repressing laughter, "would you like to borrow my hairbrush?"
"No," says Lan Zhan serenely, and pulls Wei Ying down into her lap as she reclaims her seat on the sofa.
"Right." Nie Huaisang digs around under the armchair again, and Meng Yao feels more amusement than she expected at the way everyone else in the room subtly tenses. "Now that we're all here – da-jie specifically told me I wasn't allowed to buy this. But I thought our Yingying deserved better than yet another distressingly vicious round of Uno to see out her fourteenth year –"
"Would you get on with it," says Jiang Cheng, and Nie Huaisang pulls out a long, shiny black cardboard box with plain white lettering reading Cards Against Humanity.
It's the most hilarious night Meng Yao has ever experienced. She makes an additional game out of matching the responses to the hands they come from before each winner is decided – and finds herself proved right with almost every overexcited shout of that one was mine!! in the end-of-round chaos that follows.
The only person she consistently misses is Nie Huaisang.
They both end up with a stack of black cards at least three times thicker than anyone else's. They both end up as the last ones awake, flicking back through the deck with a pool of white cards spread between them on the glitter-covered floor and whispering deranged match-ups to each other in the 3am hush of being the only two people awake in a room full of the heavy warmth of sleep.
"What brought the orgy to a grinding halt?" hisses Nie Huaisang delightedly. She's lying on the carpet with both legs kicked up behind her, propped on her elbows as she pokes through the cards with dainty fingers. The soft orange glow of the plastic pumpkin decorations is the only light left in the room, and it catches on the glitter in her hair and paints gentle shadows across her face as Meng Yao watches.
"Chainsaws for hands, necrophilia, or a cat video so cute that your eyes roll back and your spine slides out of your anus," Meng Yao whispers back, without bothering to glance at the white cards in front of her. "Choose."
Nie Huaisang makes a show of considering this. "Your first two options combine well if we had two spaces, but the third is actually a much funnier choice for disrupting our hypothetical orgy. I love that mental image. We need a different black card for the first ones."
"Blank plus blank: the best ways to liven up an orgy?" Meng Yao suggests.
"Exactly." Nie Huaisang's gaze flickers perceptively from Meng Yao to the white cards spread between them. Meng Yao knows she should have at least pretended to look at them before giving her answers. "How many times have you played this?"
"Photographic memory," she replies, and only realises a moment later that she hadn't actually meant to give that away just yet.
This is getting dangerous.
Nie Huaisang smiles, and the low light around them catches simultaneously in her eyes and on the glitter that frames her face, and Meng Yao thinks shit, shit, absolutely not.
"Blank: good to the last drop," she says quickly, before Huaisang can say or do anything else, and almost manages to ignore the way something in her stomach flutters and twists as she watches her drop her gaze to poke delightedly through the white cards and make her selection.
Oh, this is going to make things complicated.