Three weeks passed by like a blur, and frankly Zi Han could clearly say that her days in Mingde High were getting worse.
The first time it happened, it was her water bottle.
She had left it on her desk during afternoon break and returned to find it tipped over, the contents soaked through her notebook. The pages of her notes had been soaked wet.
She had stood there for a moment, looking at it.
Then she had wrung out what she could, set the notebook in the sun on her windowsill that evening, and said nothing to anyone.
The second time, they had taken her bag from her locker and left it in the bathroom, its contents scattered across the floor. Her laptop was unharmed; it had been in class with her, but her printed articles were ruined, her pens were gone, and someone had written scholarship student on the inside cover of her textbook in red marker.
She had collected everything quietly, thrown away what couldn't be salvaged, and said nothing.
The third time was worse.
---
It was a Thursday.
Zi Han was walking back from the library when three of them appeared, the same girls from the bathroom in the first week, plus one more she didn't recognize. Two of them simply stepped into her path, and the third appeared behind her, and suddenly the width of the corridor felt very narrow.
"You've been spending a lot of time with Shi Xian," the first girl spoke, whose name she had come to know as Luo Mei. Her voice was pleasant. That was the worst part.
"We're in the same class," Zi Han said.
"At lunch too."
"The school grounds are open to all students."
"Shi Xian is friendly," Luo Mei said with a scoff. "He's friendly with everyone. That's just who he is." She paused. "You understand that, right? You're not confused about what that means?"
"I'm not confused about anything," Zi Han said.
"Good. Then it shouldn't be a problem if you stop."
Zi Han looked at her.
"Stop what, exactly?"
"Talking to him. Sitting with him. Whatever it is you think is happening." Luo Mei tilted her head. "You're a scholarship student from a public middle school who got lucky. Shi Xian is—" she raised a hand high, "—Shi Xian. He is up there..." Then she lowered her hand. "And you are down here."
A small frown formed on Zi Han's face. No one in Mingde knew she was the Ming adopted daughter, basically because Ming Ye didn't even want to be associated with her in any way. That's why people still thought she was still a poor scholarship student.
She would have loved nothing more than to slap the Ming family name in their faces, but the consequences were what she was scared of. How would Ming Ye react?
Zi Han clenched her fingers at her sides.
She didn't like being so powerless.
Luo Mei stepped slightly closer, dropping her voice. "Walk away from him before we make it messier than it needs to be."
Then the girl behind her grabbed the strap of her bag.
What followed was brief and unpleasant. Zi Han pulled back. There were four of them and one of her. The bag strap snapped. Her laptop bag hit the floor and her stomach dropped immediately. When she moved to pick it up, someone stepped on her hand. Not hard enough to break anything. But hard enough to make a point.
She picked up her bag and walked away.
---
The rooftop access door was supposed to be locked. But it wasn't because the latch had been broken since the beginning of term, which Zi Han had noted during her initial mapping of the school grounds. It had been fixed numerous times, but it kept being broken, so the school management just gave up on doing any further repairs on it.
Zi Han pushed the door open and stepped out, feeling the sunny afternoon wind waft through her.
She sat down against the low wall, set her bag carefully in her lap, and unzipped it.
The laptop was fine. She checked it twice.
She sat for a moment, her hand resting flat on the closed lid, and looked out at the rooftop and the sky beyond it.
She was fine. The hand would bruise slightly, maybe. Nothing serious.
She was fine.
But the problem was not the hand. Her growing relationship with Shi Xian was. The friendship, if she could call it that, was causing a problem, and the logical solution was to end the friendship and therefore remove the problem.
It was simple.
She knew it was simple.
She had spent two lifetimes being alone and had been fine both times.
But the truth was that even if one had lived in cold all their life, once they experienced warmth it would be difficult to go back to the cold.
She did not want to simply let go of the one person who was willing to listen to her and understand her.
She looked at the sky and then closed her eyes.
At that moment she heard the rooftop door open behind her and she froze.
She heard the sound of footsteps and they seemed to stop somewhere to her left, then she heard the soft click of a lighter.
Zi Han opened her eyes.
Ming Ye was standing perhaps ten meters away, his back partially toward her, one arm resting on the rooftop railing. He was still in his school uniform, though it was unbuttoned as usual.
He hadn't noticed her.
Yet.
Zi Han assessed the situation quickly.
She was at the far end of the rooftop. He was near the door. The door was the only exit. The rooftop was otherwise empty.
She could stay very still and hope he didn't look this way. She could announce herself and manage whatever interaction followed. She could potentially get to the door while his back was turned if she moved now, immediately, without—
Ming Ye exhaled smoke into the grey sky.
Zi Han quickly made a decision to stay exactly where she was and be the quietest version of herself she had ever produced. She turned back to the railing. She became architecturally still. She was not here. She was a feature of the rooftop. She was a very unremarkable piece of railing infrastructure.
Please don't look around, she quietly prayed.
The rooftop door opened again.
Zi Han pressed herself further back as a male student stepped out, someone she recognized vaguely from Class C.
"Ming Ye," the boy said.
Ming Ye didn't turn around.
"I know you're the one," the voice continued. It had a bit of accusation in its tone. "Jia Jia. She likes you. She told me herself."
Silence.
"I know it's not your fault," the boy said. "But you could have said something. You could have told her you weren't interested instead of just... just letting her—"
"Why," Ming Ye asked nonchalantly, "would I do that?"
"Because she has a boyfriend." The voice cracked slightly on the last word. "Me. She has me."
"Then your problem," Ming Ye said, "is with her."
"Don't do that." The voice got louder. "Don't stand there and act like you're not — everyone knows what you're like. You lead girls on, you don't care what it does to them, you never have. You're just like your mother. A homewrecker. It runs in the—"
Ming Ye removed the cigarette from his mouth.
He looked at it for a moment. Then he dropped it, pressed the heel of his shoe over it once, and looked up at the boy with a cold expression.
"Say that again," he said.
A hint of fear flashed through the boy's eyes, but he was not willing to back down.
"You heard me. Just like your—"
"I heard you," Ming Ye said. "I was giving you the opportunity to reconsider."
"I don't need to reconsider anything—"
"You do," Ming Ye said, and smiled. "You really do."
The boy's face went red. His hand shot out and shoved Ming Ye's shoulder roughly.
Ming Ye barely moved. He looked down at where the boy's hands had been, then back up.
Then he laughed.
The next moment his fist swung forward.
The punch landed cleanly against the boy's jaw.
The boy staggered backward after the punch, one hand flying to his jaw.
For a moment he simply stood there, stunned, as if he hadn't expected Ming Ye to hit him at all.
Ming Ye, on the other hand, looked relaxed.
He rolled his wrist once and then stepped forward again before the boy had time to recover.
The boy tried to step back.
Ming Ye caught him by the collar.
The movement was fast enough that the boy barely had time to react before he was dragged forward.
Zi Han felt her stomach tighten slightly as she watched.
Ming Ye didn't say anything at first. He simply crouched slightly so that his face was level with the boy's.
Up close, the smile on his face wasn't that of anger but rather of amusement.
"Your girlfriend," Ming Ye said quietly, looking down at the boy, "makes her own choices. That's not my problem." He straightened. "My problem is that you just put your hands on me."
The boy tried to pull away.
"Ming Ye, let go—"
Instead of releasing him, Ming Ye tightened his grip and began dragging him backwards toward the railing.
For a second the boy didn't understand what was happening.
Then he realized.
"Hey—wait—!"
His voice rose sharply as his back hit the cold metal railing, but Ming Ye didn't stop.
He pushed him halfway over it.
The boy's upper body tipped backward into open air and a strangled sound escaped his throat as his hands clawed desperately at Ming Ye's sleeve.
"Wait—wait! I'm sorry!"
Below them, the ground was several stories down.
Ming Ye leaned forward slightly, holding the boy by the front of his shirt with one hand.
From where Zi Han sat, she could see clearly that if Ming Ye loosened his grip even slightly, the boy would fall.
Students had begun appearing on the grounds.
"Heyy, Ming Ye is going to throw someone off the roof!" someone shouted.
It wasn't long before the grounds were filled with students. Some had even begun recording.
The teachers had begun begging Ming Ye to calm down.
"Ming Ye, calm down, don't let him fall," one teacher said, but Ming Ye only sneered at that statement.
The boy's face had gone pale, seeing that Ming Ye was unwavering.
"Please—please don't drop me!" he gasped.
Ming Ye tilted his head slightly, studying him.
"Cry a little more," he said lightly. "I might feel generous."
The boy's voice broke completely.
"I'm sorry! I won't say anything again, I swear!"
Ming Ye's expression didn't change.
From a distance, it looked almost like he was bored.
Zi Han's fingers tightened against the edge of the floor where she sat.
At first she had assumed this was just intimidation, a scare tactic at best. But the longer she watched, the less certain she became.
She could remember Ming Ye's character in the novel vividly. Though she had not finished the novel, she had read enough. She had read about what Ming Ye did to the male lead's business partner when the man insulted him at a gala. She had read about the innocent waiter who had collided with Ming Ye, causing his expensive suit to be stained with wine, and Ming Ye had deliberately planned an accident causing the waiter to lose his arm. She had read about the three people who had, across the span of the story, made the mistake of assuming Ming Ye's smile meant he was joking.
None of them had been correct.
Zi Han looked at the boy's hands gripping the railing. His knuckles were white. His feet had left the ground slightly on one side.
She looked at Ming Ye's face and realization dawned on her.
He was still smiling, but he was definitely not joking.
He could actually throw this boy off the railing.
Zi Han's heart began beating faster.
If he actually lets go—
Her mind ran quickly through the possibilities.
Calling out would only draw Ming Ye's attention before she had time to act, and trying to reason with him would probably fail because he was unreasonable to begin with.
Which meant there was only one option, and it was a really reckless one.
Zi Han inhaled slowly.
Her plan was simple.
Ming Ye hadn't noticed her yet, so if she ran fast enough, she might be able to knock his arm away and pull the boy back onto the rooftop before Ming Ye reacted.
It was not a good plan.
It was barely even a plan.
But it was the only one she had.
Before she could change her mind, Zi Han pushed herself to her feet and ran.
The sudden movement caught Ming Ye completely off guard.
One moment he was holding the boy over the railing. The next moment a force collided with his arm.
Zi Han grabbed the boy's sleeve and yanked backward with all her strength. The boy tumbled onto the rooftop floor in a clumsy heap.
Everything seemed to freeze for a moment, and before Zi Han even blinked the boy had scrambled up, running fast through the crowd of students with their phones up.
Ming Ye slowly straightened, then he turned and looked at her.
The smile was gone.
That was, somehow, worse than the smile.
Several phones were still up around them.
Zi Han became aware of this and also became aware that there was nothing she could do about it.
Ming Ye looked at her for a long moment.
His eyes dropped to her hand, which was clearly bruised at the knuckle.
"You," Ming Ye said. His voice was very quiet.
Zi Han said nothing.
"You were there the whole time."
Still nothing.
His eyes moved across her face, and then dropped briefly to the bag she had left against the wall, and then back up.
"That's twice," he said.
Zi Han held his gaze.
Her heart was pounding against her ribs, but her face was still. At this moment she was grateful for the fact that she had a stoic face; if not, Ming Ye would have clearly seen how fearful she was right now.
"You're angry," she said. Her voice came out flatter than she intended. "I can see that. But—"
"Angry," Ming Ye repeated, then sneered. "No."
He took one step toward her.
Zi Han did not step back. She wanted to, but she chose not to.
"I was enjoying myself," he said simply. "And you interrupted."
"He was going to fall."
"Maybe."
"He could have died."
"Also maybe." The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile. Something adjacent to it. "Does that bother you, sister?"
Zi Han looked at him steadily.
"Yes," she said. "It does."
He studied her face for a long moment.
Then he looked away, at the railing, at the city beyond it, at nothing in particular. Something moved behind his eyes that she couldn't name. It was there and then it wasn't, like a light switching off in a room at the end of a corridor.
He walked past her toward the door.
The students with phones scrambled to get out of his way. He moved through them without acknowledging their existence. His hand found the door handle.
He paused.
Zi Han waited.
"Next time," Ming Ye said, without turning, "stay hidden."
The door opened.
"I won't be so nice if this happens again."