MONDAY MORNING
—
Six AM.
Yun Jiao's alarm went off.
She hit it, lay still for five seconds, and then her body just — got up. Years of mercenary habit. The alarm was mostly ceremonial at this point.
She stood in front of her wardrobe.
Ruan Suyin had arranged a shopping trip on Saturday that Yun Jiao had attended with great cheerfulness and had allowed the woman to select an entire wardrobe for her without complaint, because sometimes the best intelligence came from watching what someone chose for you when they thought they were in control.
Ruan Suyin had chosen well-made, tasteful clothes that were also, subtly, less than what she'd chosen for Yunjinna's wardrobe.
A little less fitted. A little less designer. Good quality — they weren't stupid enough to be obvious — but the difference was there if you knew where to look.Yun Jiao looked at it all.Then she looked at the single outfit she'd bought herself with her own money while Ruan Suyin was distracted by a handbag display.
Simple white shirt. Well-cut dark trousers. A light jacket that fit like it had been made for her specifically because she had spent exactly forty minutes with the tailor at the back of a small shop that Ruan Suyin would never have taken her to.
She put it on.
Looked in the mirror.
Okay.
Objectively.
Devastatingly.
She was going to walk into Jinhao and cause problems for everybody just by existing and she felt completely fine about this.
She picked up her bag.
Went downstairs.
—
Chef Zhou had made her a special breakfast without being asked.
Longjing shrimp. His favourite thing to cook. The one that required everything to be perfect at the same time.
She stopped in the kitchen doorway.
Looked at the plate.
Looked at him.
He was already turned back to the stove like nothing had happened.
"Chef Zhou," she said."
You'll be late," he said to the stove.
She sat down.
Ate every single bite.
It was, without question, the best thing she had put in her mouth in two lifetimes.She sat there for a moment after she finished.
Then she said, very quietly: "Thank you."
He made a small sound.
Not a word.
Just — an acknowledgment. The kind that meant more than a speech.
She picked up her bag.
Walked out.
—
Butler Ye was standing in the entrance hall with a set of car keys.
Not the household driver.
Him. Personally.
She stopped and Looked at the keys, then Looked at him.
His face was its usual expression of professionally experiencing no emotions whatsoever.
"The car is ready, Young Miss," he said.
She looked at him for a moment.
In three years of working for this family, in her previous life Butler Ye had done his job with perfect neutrality. Never taking sides. Never showing preference.
But he had also seen the camera footage.
He had also watched Liang Boshen walk out of this house and not come back.
He had also, apparently, decided that Monday morning called for a personal gesture.
"Thank you, Butler Ye," she said.
He nodded once. Turned toward the door.
She followed him.
—
The drive to Jinhao took twenty minutes.Yun Jiao sat in the back and looked out the window at the city waking up — shops opening, people moving, the morning light doing things to the skyline that made it look almost gentle."Hawk," she murmured.
"Here."
"How do I look."
"Unfairly good. I checked the car camera."
"Good answer."
"I've learned."She smiled at the window.
"Nervous?" Hawk asked.
She thought about it honestly.
Seventeen years old in this life. About to walk into a school full of people who had been warned about her before she arrived. On the territory of a girl who had spent three years building something specifically to keep people like Yun Jiao out.
"No," she said.
And meant it.
—
Jinhao University looked like money.
Not the loud kind. The quiet kind. The kind that had been around long enough to stop needing to announce itself — wide stone buildings with clean lines, a central courtyard with actual trees that had been growing there for decades, students moving through it all with the easy confidence of people who had been told since birth that places like this were their natural habitat.
The car stopped at the main gate.
Yun Jiao got out.
And the courtyard did that thing.That thing where conversations didn't stop exactly but sort of — slowed. Where eyes moved without meaning to. Where the general atmosphere shifted in the particular way it shifted when something arrived that the atmosphere hadn't quite accounted for.
She walked through the gate.White shirt. Dark trousers. Long dark hair loose. Face doing what her face always did which was exist in a way that was fundamentally unreasonable.
Somewhere to her left a boy walked into a pillar.
She didn't look.
—Yunjinna was standing with Feng Zichen and He Mingyu by the main building steps when the car pulled up.
She'd positioned herself there on purpose. Good sightline to the gate. The right amount of casual — leaning against the railing, coffee in hand, mid-conversation, the picture of someone who definitely wasn't waiting for anything.
She saw the car.
Saw the door open.
Saw Yun Jiao get out.
Beside her Feng Zichen — who had been mid-sentence about something — stopped talking.
He Mingyu went quiet.
The general area went quiet.
Yunjinna looked at the girl walking through the gate and felt that feeling again. The one she couldn't name. The one that sat in her chest like a stone.
"That's her?" Feng Zichen said.
His voice had a quality she didn't like.
"That's her," Yunjinna confirmed. Keeping her voice light.
"Hm," he said.
Just that.
Hm.
She gripped her coffee cup.