— JINHAO. WEDNESDAY MORNING—
The school was different.
Not visibly. Not loudly.
Just — different.
The way a room was different after something significant had happened in it. The air carrying the memory of it. Everyone moving slightly more carefully. Conversations happening in slightly lower voices.
Five students expelled same day.
Young Master Si Xi on campus.
Personally.
The third floor bathroom had become, overnight, the most significant location in Jinhao's recent history and no one could explain exactly why that was funny and terrifying at the same time.
Yun Jiao walked through the main gate at eight seventeen AM.
Strawberry lollipop.
White shirt. Dark trousers. Hair loose.
And the immediate, collective, completely involuntary attention of approximately sixty percent of the people in the courtyard.
She walked through it like she was walking through air.
In her earpiece Hawk said: "Forty three people have looked at you in the last thirty seconds."
"Is that a Problem?"
"For thirty seconds, yes."
"Hm." She took the lollipop out of her mouth. Put it back in. "How do I look."
"Like trouble," Hawk said.
"Well, I think i'm Perfect."
———
Feng Zichen had been watching her since she walked through the gate.
Not obviously, He was too practiced for obvious. But he had been watching.
Feng Zichen did not get curious about people easily. It wasn't arrogance — it was just that most people, once you looked at them for more than thirty seconds, turned out to be exactly what they appeared to be. Boring. Predictable. Readable.
He had looked at Yun Jiao for thirty seconds yesterday at lunch.Then another thirty.
Then the whole meal had passed and he had learned precisely nothing concrete about her and that had never happened before.
He sat on the steps of the main building with his coffee and watched her cross the courtyard.
Watched the way people moved around her without meaning to.
Watched her face — open, soft, completely unbothered, the expression of someone who found the world mostly amusing.
Watched her eyes. There, That was the thing. The eyes didn't match the face.
Not always. Just sometimes. Just in flashes. The way lightning was there and gone before you could be sure you'd seen it.
Something old in those eyes.
Something that had absolutely no business being in the face of a seventeen year old girl.
He stood up.
Threw his coffee cup.
Walked toward her.
—
She heard the footsteps.
Looked up.
Feng Zichen,
Tall. Sharp features, sharp eyes, The School most Handsome and mysterious. The easy confidence of someone who had been the most interesting person in most room and knew it and had decided to be unbothered about it.
First of the Four Stars.
Yunjinna's closest male ally.
Approaching her directly with his hands in his pockets and a look on his face that she couldn't immediately categorise.
Interesting.
"Yun Jiao," he said.
"Feng Zichen," she said back.
He raised an eyebrow slightly.
She smiled at him.
He studied her for a moment.
"You know who I am," he said.
"You sat three seats from me at lunch yesterday and called the pork fine," she said. "I remember people."
Something moved in his expression."It was fine," he said.
"It was transcendent," she said. "There's a difference."
He looked at her.
She looked back.
"You answered Professor Chen's question yesterday," he said.
"Someone had to. He looked tired of waiting."
"He's been waiting two semesters."
"I know." She tilted her head. " But I got tired of the wait, Did I get it wrong?"
"No." A pause. "That's the problem."
She smiled at him.He didn't smile back.
But something in his expression shifted — the careful neutral assessment moving into something more like actual attention.
"What are you doing at Jinhao," he said.
Not rudely Just — directly. The question underneath the question being: what are you, actually.
"Studying," she said pleasantly.
"From an orphanage."
"People study from all kinds of places."
"Not here they don't." He tilted his head. "Not like that."
She looked at him.
He looked back at her.
Two people having a conversation that was also a different conversation entirely.
"Are you always this direct with new students?" she asked.
"No," he said simply.
"Should I be flattered?"
"You should be honest."
She blinked at him, Big eyes, Soft expression. The picture of a girl who was slightly confused by the intensity of this conversation but was trying her best.
"I am honest," she said sweetly. "I'm studying, I like the pork, I named the koi at home, I don't know what else to tell you."
He stared at her, The named the koi landed somewhere he hadn't expected it to and completely derailed his next sentence.
"You named the— what?"
"The koi, In the pond at home. Seventeen of them." She counted on her fingers. "Tangerine, Dumpling, General Bao—"
"You named seventeen koi."
"They're living creatures. They deserve dignity."
He stared at her for a long moment.
Then smiled with an expression of q: I don't know what you are but I find that genuinely interesting.
"Feng Zichen."
Both of them looked.
Yunjinna was Standing ten meters away with He Mingyu beside her, coffee in hand, expression arranged into something pleasant that was doing a tremendous amount of work.
Her eyes moved from Feng Zichen to Yun Jiao to Feng Zichen again.
"Class starts in ten minutes," she said lightly.
"I know," he said.
He looked at Yun Jiao one more time.
"General Bao," he said.
"My personal favourite," she confirmed.
He walked away.
Yunjinna watched him go.
Then looked at Yun Jiao.
Yun Jiao looked back at her and smiled
"Good morning Sister!" Bright. Warm. "Did you sleep well?"
Yunjinna's grip on her coffee tightened.
"Fine," she said.
She turned and walked toward the building.
He Mingyu followed.
Yun Jiao put her lollipop back in her mouth and walked in the same direction.
Behind her Hawk said very quietly: "Yunjinna's blood pressure is probably very high right now."
"Mm," she agreed pleasantly.
"Feng Zichen talked to you for four minutes. That's apparently significant."
"I named koi at him. It worked out."
"...You named koi at him."
"People don't expect the koi. It throws them off."
A pause.
"Master," hawk said speechlessly "You are genuinely one of a kind."
"I know," she said And walked into class.