The news hit Jinhao at two forty-three PM.
Five girls.
Expelled.
Same day.
Effective immediately.
No appeal process. No warning meeting. No three-strikes policy that the student handbook very clearly outlined on page twelve.
Just — expelled.
Clean. Final. Done.
The school lost its mind.
—"Did you hear—"
"All five of them—"
"Same day?! That's never happened—"
"I heard the Dean was shaking when he signed the forms—"
"Why would the Dean be shaking—"
"Because of WHO asked for it—"
That was where the conversation always stopped.
Got very quiet.
And then someone said the name.
Si Xi.
And the quiet got quieter.
—There was a girl in the third year who knew everything about everyone at Jinhao and Imperial City Capital.
Her name was not important.
What was important was that she had been at this school for three years, had never once been involved in drama, and therefore had been trusted with information by every side of every conflict because nobody considered her a threat.
She sat in the library at three PM and told her seatmate everything she knew about Young Master Si Xi.
In a whisper.
Because some names you didn't say at full volume.
"Young Master Si Xi," she said.
Her seatmate leaned in.
"Twenty five years old. Head of the Si Corporation. You know those three buildings on campus with the Si Foundation name on them?"
"Yeah?"
"He owns them. He owns ninety percent of this school. Has since three years ago." She paused. "He never comes here. Never. Not once in three years."
"Until today."
"Until today?" Another pause. "Nobody knows exactly how much he's worth. The estimates are — " she shivered and shook her head. "Let's just say a cough from that man can shake the country's financial markets. His name alone causes unease in boardrooms across three continents."
Her seatmate swallowed.
"He's that powerful?"
"That powerful?" She looked around. Leaned closer.
"But that's not even the scary part."
"What's the scary part?"
She took a breath.
"The rumours," she said.
—The rumours about Young Master Si Xi were not the kind of rumours that got written down.
They were passed from mouth to ear in dark corners by people who felt safer whispering them than saying them out loud.
A business partner who had once betrayed him. Found the next morning with every asset he owned transferred out overnight. His company. His properties. His family home. His children's school funds. Gone. Before sunrise. The man now ran a small vegetable stall in the southern district. He had never spoken about what happened. He never would.
A crime lord — powerful, connected, feared across four cities — who had made the catastrophic decision to send assassins after Si Xi. Si Xi sent them back. In pieces. Individually packaged. With a handwritten note that said simply:— Next time, send more. —The crime lord retired the following week.
Moved to a different country.
Was never heard from again.
Three of the world's most feared underground organisations who had, in what historians of such things would later call a catastrophic error in judgment, decided to move against him simultaneously.
All three collapsed within a year.
From the inside.
Nobody understood how.
Nobody asked.
Si Xi had been Seventeen.
And the women. Ah.The women. A socialite at a charity gala who had thrown herself at him — publicly, shamelessly, both hands on his chest, laughing up at him like she was doing him a favour.
She lost her two hands the next morning.
Official report: kitchen accident.
Nobody believed it.
She never attended another social event.
A CEO's daughter sent to his private office as a gift — wearing nothing but a winter coat.
Si Xi didn't even look at her.
Not once.
Made one phone call.
She was escorted out and left on the street outside the building.
In January.
Without the coat, bare naked.
She disappeared from society six months later.
A woman who announced publicly — at a press event, into a microphone, with cameras rolling — that she was Young Master Si Xi's girlfriend.
She had used his name to close four business deals that week.
Within forty eight hours her family's company had been delisted.
Her father's assets frozen.
Her brother's visa revoked.
Si Xi never acknowledged her existence.
Not a statement. Not a denial.
Nothing.
Just — consequences.
That was, people said, the most terrifying thing about him.
He didn't get angry.
He didn't threaten.
He simply — acted.
Quietly. Finally. Without warning and without mercy.
And you didn't know it was coming until it had already arrived.
"He has no woman?" the third year girl whispered. "Has never had one. Doesn't want one. Doesn't look at them."
Her seatmate stared at her.
"Then why—" She stopped. Looked at the window. Looked back. "Why did he personally walk into a third floor bathroom today for a first year student he's never met?"
Silence.
The third year girl looked at her notebook."That," she said carefully, "is an excellent question."
——
___SHARP BOB —Her name was Wei Xuan.
Not that anyone was using her name right now.
Right now she was sitting outside the Dean's office with the expulsion letter in her hands and her entire future rearranging itself around her into something unrecognisable.
Jinhao University.
She had worked for this.
Not the way the other girls had worked for it — not with tutors and connections and family donations to the right buildings.
With actual work.
Five years of it.
Grades that had gotten her here on merit alone, from a family that had nothing to do with the circles that Jinhao ran in, from a neighbourhood that most Jinhao students had never driven through.
She had been so proud.
She had been so stupid.
The letter shook in her hands.
Beside her the other four sat in various states of shell-shocked silence.
One was crying quietly.
One was on the phone with her mother, voice very low, very controlled, the voice of someone trying not to fall apart in a public hallway.
Two were staring at the floor.
And Wei Xuan was holding the letter and thinking about five years and thinking about her mother's face when she'd gotten the acceptance and thinking about the look in that girl's eyes in the bathroom right before everything went wrong—Her phone buzzed.
A message from the group chat.
Go to Yunjinna. She'll fix it. We did this for her.
She looked at the message.
Looked at the letter.
Stood up.