LUNCH
—
The Jinhao cafeteria had a system.
Like all cafeterias everywhere, it had a system that nobody had officially created and nobody officially enforced and everybody followed absolutely.
The best table — window-facing, good light, visible from the entrance — belonged to the Four Stars and their orbit.
Which today meant: Yunjinna, Feng Zichen, Tang Siyao, He Mingyu, Bai Ruonan, Mengqi, and several others arranged around them like planets around a very well-dressed sun.
Yunjinna had arrived early.
She had her food, her coffee, her friends, and a clear sightline to the cafeteria entrance.
She was, she felt, in complete control of this situation.
Then Yun Jiao walked in.
Alone. Tray in hand. Looking around the cafeteria with the expression of someone taking in a new space — slightly wide-eyed, slightly uncertain, the new girl energy fully activated.
Yunjinna watched.
Yun Jiao's eyes passed over the window table.
Passed over Yunjinna.
Didn't stop.
She walked to a random table near the middle of the cafeteria. Four students already sitting there — two boys, two girls, mid-conversation, not paying attention to the entrance.
She set her tray down. Said something.
One of the girls looked up.
Smiled.
Said something back.
Yun Jiao sat down.
Yunjinna picked up her coffee.
Good, she thought. She doesn't even try to sit with us. Knows her place.
She took a sip.
Three minutes passed.
At the random middle table, one of the boys laughed.
Genuine. Loud. The kind of laugh that happened when something was actually funny.
Five minutes. The other boy said something. Yun Jiao responded. Both girls dissolved.
Seven minutes. All four of them were leaning toward her slightly. The unconscious lean. The one that happened when someone had your complete attention and you hadn't noticed yet that you'd given it.
Ten minutes. One of the girls had turned her chair to face Yun Jiao properly. The other had put her phone away. The two boys had completely abandoned whatever they'd been talking about before she sat down.
Yunjinna's coffee had gone cold in her hand.
She hadn't taken another sip.
"Who is she talking to," Feng Zichen said, from beside her, with a tone Yunjinna didn't like.
"Nobody," Yunjinna said.
He was still looking.
"She's quite funny," he said. Like he was surprised by this. Like it was a fact he was recording.
Yunjinna set her coffee down."She's fine," she said.
He looked at her.
She looked at her food.
Across the cafeteria Yun Jiao said something else and all four of her new friends burst out laughing again.
Yunjinna picked up her chopsticks.
Put them down.
Looked at the window.
The view was really very nice today.
——
Yunjiao had twelve minutes between her first and second class.
She found a quiet corner of the second floor hallway, sat on a window ledge, and ate the small bag of chips she'd smuggled in her jacket pocket.
"Hawk," she said quietly.
"Here."
"I like it here."
A pause.
"Jinhao?"
"The people are interesting." She looked out the window at the courtyard below.
"That boy in my class — seat four from the left. He answered three questions wrong on purpose so he wouldn't have to keep answering."
"Smart."
"Very. He's bored." She ate a chip.
"The girl behind me takes notes in three different colors. Red for things the professor emphasizes. Blue for her own thoughts. Green for things she disagrees with. She had a lot of green today."
"You noticed all that."
"I notice everything."
"And yet you named a fish Chopstick."
"Chopstick is a great name."
"Chopstick is a utensil."
"Chopstick is a fish with a thin elegant body and he deserves a name that reflects his physique."
Hawk made a sound.It was the sound of someone who had given up on this particular argument and had made peace with that.
"Master," he said, differently now. Softer.
"Are you okay? First day and everything."
She looked out the window.
The courtyard. The trees that had been growing there for decades. Students crossing below with their bags and their coffee and their completely ordinary Monday.
She thought about the first time she'd started somewhere new. Really new. Thirteen years old, freshly recruited, walking into a training facility that smelled like cold metal and hard floors and the very specific kind of silence that happened before difficult things.
She'd been terrified.
She hadn't shown it.
Some habits started young."I'm good," she said.
"Really?"
"Really." She ate the last chip, Folded the bag. "It's just school, Hawk."
"It's just school where your stepsister has spent three years building an empire specifically designed to make people like you miserable."
"People like me," she repeated.
"Beautiful, talented, slightly chaotic people who name fish and answer academic questions without looking up from their notebooks."
She laughed.Small and quiet and real."I'll be fine," she said.
"I know," he said. "I just like asking."
She looked at the courtyard.
Down below, coming through the main building entrance—A man.
She almost missed him. He was moving the same way the campus moved — just another person in the flow of it. Except the flow was adjusting around him without anyone seeming to notice they were doing it. Small shifts. People unconsciously creating space.
Dark jacket. Dark hair. The kind of face that—She sat up slightly.The kind of face that made you look twice even from a second floor window."Hawk," she said."Already on it," Hawk said. A pause. "That's him."
She looked down at the courtyard.
Si Xi moved through it like he owned the place.
Because he did.
She watched him for three seconds.
Then she picked up her bag.
Slid off the window ledge.
And went to find her next classroom.