_
Saturday morning.
No plans. No schemes. No meetings with men whose empires were crumbling.
Just a perfectly good morning with nothing to ruin it.
Yun Jiao decided to spend it productively.
"Hawk," she said, lying upside down on her bed with her legs against the wall and her hair pooling on the mattress beneath her head. "How many koi are in the pond."
A pause. "...Seventeen."
"Seventeen!!!!" She sat up immediately, hair flying everywhere. "That's so many. I've only named three."
"Master we have a Jinhao briefing__"
"The briefing can wait. Seventeen koi need names." She said genuinely concerned while rubbing her chin.
"They really don't—"
"Hawk, They are living creatures, They deserve dignity."
Hawk was speechless
"....sigh Fine," he said. "What are you naming them."
She grabbed her notebook.
—
By ten AM she had named all seventeen.
Tangerine was still Tangerine. She'd also added: Dumpling, Little Emperor — for the fat white one who reminded her of the cat — Sunrise, Noodle, Chopstick, General Bao, Lady Plum, and eight others that had come to her in a burst of inspiration she was very proud of.
She showed the list to Chef Zhou in the kitchen while eating her second breakfast.
He looked at it for a long time.
"Chopstick," he said finally.
"The thin orange one."
"...Mn."
"Do you think they're good names?"
He handed the list back. "Dumpling is a good name for a fish."
She beamed at him.
He went back to his prep work with an amused expression.
"Chef Zhou," she said, spinning on the counter stool. "What's your favourite thing to cook."
He didn't look up. "Why."
"I want to know."
He was quiet for a moment. Chopping. Then: "Longjing shrimp."
"Really?" She leaned forward on her elbows. "Why that one?"
"Timing." He set down the cleaver. Looked at her. "Everything has to be perfect at the same time. The shrimp, The tea, The heat. One second off and the whole thing is ruined." He picked up the cleaver again. "I like things that require precision."
She looked at him."Chef Zhou," she said. "I think we're the same kind of person."
He made that amused face again.
"Eat your congee," he said.
She ate her congee.
—— HAWK -----
While his Master was naming koi and interrogating the chef about culinary philosophy, Hawk compiled the Jinhao briefing and waited for an opening.
The opening came at eleven forty-three when she was lying in the garden pavilion throwing pebbles into the pond and watching the fish swim towards them.
"Master."
"Mm."
"Jinhao briefing, You start Monday."
"I know."
"Do you want the information or not."
She threw a pebble, Dumpling swarmed towrds it immediately. "Tell me."
"Fourteen thousand students. Business faculty has three hundred in your cohort. The social hierarchy is—" he paused "—aggressively structured. There are four main groups. The top tier calls themselves the Four Stars. Old money, connections, the kind of students who arrived at Jinhao already knowing they owned it."
"Yunjinna's group."
"Adjacent to it. Yunjinna is not Four Stars but she's close enough that everyone treats her like she is." A pause. "The Four Stars are: Feng Zichen, Bai Ruonan, He Mingyu, and Tang Siyao. All from top families. All used to getting what they want."
She threw another pebble, General Bao surfaced to check it out with great authority.
"And the school itself?" she said.
"Privately funded. The primary benefactor is anonymous — listed only as the Si Foundation. They own—" Hawk paused, "—approximately ninety percent of the institution's assets."
She stopped mid-throw.
"Ninety percent?" she asked shocked.
"Ninety percent".
She looked at the pond.
Thought about a man parked two streets from the Yun estate who had asked his driver to stay put and then sent her a message asking who she was.
And who had then, apparently, requested the Jinhao Business faculty schedule.
She threw the pebble.
Watched it sink.
"Interesting," she said.
"That's all you have to say?"
"What do you want me to say, baby."
"I want you to have an appropriately dramatic reaction to the fact that the man who is quite possibly Lucifer owns ninety percent of the school you're enrolling in on Monday—"
"He owns it. He doesn't run it. There's a difference." She sat up. Brushed grass off her clothes. "Besides."
"Besides what?"
She smiled at the pond.
"If he wanted to be a problem he would have been one already."
Hawk made a grunt sound."
You are going to give me seventeen cardiac events," he said. "One for each koi."
——
Yunjinna spent the entire weekend on her phone.
Saturday: called Feng Zichen, He Mingyu, Bai Ruonan, Tang Siyao, Mengqi, Lulu, Xinyi, and four other people whose opinions mattered at Jinhao.
Sunday: called them all again.The message was simple.There was a new girl enrolling Monday. Transfer student, sort of. Father's biological daughter from outside. Orphanage background. Sweet-looking.
Don't be fooled.
She didn't say that last part out loud.
She said it with tone instead. That very specific tone that girls who had been queen bees since middle school knew how to use — the slightly careful way she said sweet-looking, the very brief pause before she said orphanage background, the warmth in her voice that made every word feel like concern while actually being architecture.
By Sunday night every person who mattered at Jinhao knew a new girl was coming.
And they knew, without being told directly, how they were supposed to feel about her.
Yunjinna put her phone down Sunday evening and looked at her reflection.
Good.
She might not be able to touch her at home — too many cameras, too many witnesses, her mother telling her to wait and watch.But Jinhao was her territory.
She'd built it for three years.
Every connection. Every friendship. Every carefully maintained reputation.That girl could have Chef Zhou and his braised pork and the koi pond and all of it.
Jinhao was Yunjinna's.
She picked up her lip gloss.
Monday, she smirked.
Let's go.—