Chapter 21

Meng Lai's family was an ordinary one. Her mother worked at a state-owned company and had not retired. Her father ran a small business. They had a flat in Pingchuan and a car, nothing to worry about, enough that a daughter could take up something outside her schoolwork.

The one thing about them that was not ordinary was that Meng Lai had an elder sister.

A sister who had been everybody's example of the clever child next door since she was small. Top of the year in every exam at school, a place at one of the two best universities in the country, a master's, then a job at a multinational. All of it smooth. A winner at life.

Every single person Meng Lai's age had grown up hearing the legend of Meng Lai's sister.

There were ten years between them. If three years makes a generation gap, then the two sisters had two and a half gaps between them. In Meng Lai's memory her sister had looked after her devotedly, and Meng Lai worshipped her sister without reservation and glowed when she talked about her. "We've got a lot of relatives. Every holiday they turn sour. One way or another they boil my sister's whole career down to one word, luck. And a few of them are so jealous their eyes have gone red, and they say she's too strong-minded, which isn't nice in a woman, and no wonder she can't find a boyfriend."

Once she started on the worst of the relatives her talent for performance came out in full. She pulled jealous faces that were exactly right and did the voices in that sly, needling way, and at the end of the whole palace-intrigue show she thumped the yoga mat. "My sister's too busy to come home for New Year and I'm already upset about that, and then that old man starts dancing about on my sore spot. Was I supposed to sit there? So I said, better than somebody's son who does nothing and lives off his parents. And the shameless old thing turned the gun straight on me and said my sister did so well at school, how come I didn't inherit the least scrap of it. My sister didn't give birth to me. Where am I supposed to inherit it from?"

The further she went the louder she got, spraying as she went, with a good deal of swearing that got halfway out and was dragged back. Put a blood pressure monitor beside her and the top number would have gone off the scale.

Gi Changning quietly turned her face aside, and waited for Meng Lai to drink some water. "So your mum's stopped you dancing?"

Meng Lai had learned to dance from small as well, but rumba. Part of the reason was that her mother's company once took the staff to a dance show, and the next day her mother signed her daughter up for rumba. Later Meng Lai moved to jazz and modern, and her parents did not make much of that either and cheerfully paid the fees.

Which tells you the Mengs were fairly open-minded, as households go.

"Yes." Her face did something complicated and her hands tightened on the flask. "My relatives, who I see once a year, have found a way in. Some of them mean it and some don't, and all of them are saying my marks are bad and I'll have a hard time of it later, and what's the use of dancing, I'll never make anything of it. And even if I can't match my sister, I ought at least to get into a third-tier university, because a degree looks better than a diploma, and then I could sit the civil service exams when I graduate."

Her mother worked for a state-owned company, and with the world changing the way it does she knew exactly what a steady job is worth. The moment she heard that a civil service post might be at risk, she was up on her feet.

Gi Changning said, "Wow."

That was aiming straight at the heart.

Meng Lai was at an ordinary high school, not a key one, and the number who went on to a degree was middling. She sat in the upper half of her year and would get a second-tier place without any surprises. If she gave up dancing and really pushed she might touch the first-tier line, and if the exam went well and she picked her applications carefully, with luck she could get a first-tier place.

Which sounds fine. The problem was that dancing was not the reason her marks were bad. Dancing was where the pressure of studying went. Without it she would be grass with no rain, unable first to open out its leaves and then simply feeding the soil.

Meng Lai thought of herself as one of the crowd. She went to her lessons like everybody else, worked like everybody else, and stood in the shadow of her tall sister like everybody else. Dancing was the only thing that made her feel she was particular, that there was only one of her.

That afternoon the relatives finished lunch and left one after another, and Meng Lai thought she had got away with it. That evening her mother gave her formal notice. From the start of term, no hobbies of any kind, dancing included. The exams and nothing else.

It went off over her head like thunder out of a clear sky. She is not sharp and rebellious the way Gi Changning is, and for once she could not find a word to say back. She rang her sister without caring what time it was there, and a few sentences in she was crying too hard to speak.

The next day she found out that her sister had rung their mother and got the whole story. Her sister said this: "Part of the reason I worked was so Lailai could have it easier. So there'd be more than one road out for her."

And her mother answered: "Seven hundred marks in the exam, five hundred, four hundred. Which one gives her more roads?"

Privately Meng Lai knew her mother meant well by her. For an ordinary family the university exam is one of the biggest turns a life takes. But she also knew her own gifts and her own temperament were nothing special, and with a sister to be measured against since she was small, all her family had ever wanted from her was to be safe and well, so there had never been any pressure on her. When the high school results came out she was a few marks short of the best state school in Pingchuan, and her parents offered to pay to get her in, and she chose another school because the workload at a key school frightened her.

Gi Changning listened to all of it without interrupting. "And you? What do you want?"

"Me?" Meng Lai's head went down. "I want to read dance. Then come back and open a studio and teach children."

"And now I don't know."

She was not against studying, and she was not against putting dance aside for a while for the exams. She was only thinking about the future her mother had drawn for her. Exams, graduation, the civil service or a public sector post, and then she would be settled.

The road ahead was bright. There was simply no colour in it that belonged to Meng Lai.

---

"Ningning? Ningning?"

Gi Changning came back to herself and found both parents watching her, worried. She put her chopsticks down, embarrassed. There was a row of ragged tooth marks along the wood, and splinters had come up in the worst places. Nothing in her upbringing would ever have let her chew her chopsticks at the table. It was the conversation with Meng Lai, which had set her thinking about herself.

"I'm fine." She tried to smile and could not. She looked down at the bowl of mixed grain porridge in front of her, broken corn, oats, red beans, wolfberries. She had always loved that porridge and for the first time she had no appetite for it. All those colours swam in front of her. She did not dare look at her parents' faces. She made herself say it. "Dad, Mum. What do you think about me dancing?"

Her parents looked at each other and found the same question in each other's eyes. They were the most ordinary parents there are. So ordinary that they had walked past the studio without knowing what sort of dancing went on inside it, and only after Gi Changning came home did they clumsily look up on their phones what the difference was between one kind and another.

They had been sorry that before everything changed they never let Ji Ran take up anything outside school. Now Gi Changning had made that up, and it had left them with a different worry.

"We haven't really got a view about the dancing. We're glad you've found something you love," her mother said honestly. "It's only that we keep thinking, you're still a student, and this is the time when the groundwork gets laid. Wouldn't it be better to put your energy into schoolwork?"

There it was.

And hearing it, strangely enough, Gi Changning let out a breath.

She had always read feelings accurately. Since the swap she had been living inside love from her own parents, love with no conditions on it and no limit to it, and she had sunk right into it. Being sunk in it had dulled her. Only now did she see that there was guilt mixed into what her parents gave her, and that the guilt made it impossible for them to ask her for anything, including that she work hard and put dancing down for a while.

Take the parents' evening after the mid-terms. Chairman Ji would stand there with the report card and perform a scene of swallowing heart pills, hoping his rebellious daughter would take pity on an ageing father and do better next time. Gi Changning's father came back from the parents' evening, put the report card in his pocket, and cooked two dishes and a soup that same night, as if coming bottom of the year was nothing at all.

The Jis had money. Even if Gi Changning were an idle rebel who learned nothing, Chairman Ji could lay a broad smooth road down in front of her. The Gis were different. They had nothing to spend like that, and no reason to ignore marks and ignore the exams.

Their only reason was that they felt guilty. They had not been there at the most important time for their daughter's character, so they felt they had no standing to ask her for anything.

Understanding to a degree that was frankly outrageous.

It came to her late. Now she knew where Ji Ran had learned to be a saint.

"I see." Her shoulders came down a little. She picked up her chopsticks again, looked up and smiled. "I'll put my energy into schoolwork. There's time enough to dance once I'm at university."

---

Next day Ji Ran came over to mark Gi Changning's paper.

She still set the papers herself. She is no good at arts subjects, so it was maths only, meant to shore up what Gi Changning had missed in middle school and her first year. Gi Changning's maths was frankly mediocre, which left plenty of room, and marks come up fast there. Part of her end-of-term result, which had been almost presentable, came from maths.

Ji Ran frowned a little and marked in pencil. At a geometry proof she looked as though some outrageous line of reasoning had knocked her sideways. "Gi Changning. How did you manage to prove that a right-angled triangle and an isosceles one are congruent?"

Gi Changning had nothing to say.

Her eyes slid away and she said weakly, "I probably misread it?"

Ji Ran turned the pages. "Misreading it is the least of it. This function question further on, you've forgotten that multiplication and division come before addition and subtraction. And your method is right, which is the annoying part. One step wrong and every step after it goes wrong."

"Little Gi Changning." Ji Ran changed what she called her, since the order of operations is something you chant at kindergarten. She rubbed her temples, put the pencil down and stopped marking. "Will you tell me what's been going on with you?"

The paper was not hard. Every question on it was one Ji Ran had already gone through with her. Mistakes at that level should have been impossible unless Gi Changning had lost half her brain overnight. Since she had clearly done it herself and not looked the answers up, Ji Ran said very evenly, "If you'd rather not say..."

"There's no rather not." Little Gi Changning's ears went red and her scalp prickled. Ji Ran had not said one harsh word and she was still curling her toes and wishing she could go through the floor. And Ji Ran had guessed right, all of it. She had been miles away while she did the paper and there was no arguing. "I saw Meng Lai yesterday."

Ji Ran listened to the whole of it, opened her flask and looked blank, as if she could not see what there was to agonise over. "Is that all?"

"What do you mean, is that all?" Gi Changning banged her head down on the desk. "Chairman Ji swore he'd break my legs and I didn't give up dancing then."

The size of the sacrifice.

No. Sacrifice is the wrong word. She was willing to put dance down for a while and fight for a future, for herself and for her parents.

Dance was the most important thing in her first sixteen years. She knew quite well it was only being put down, and that she would pick it up again at university.

She was just a little bit sad about it. Only a little.

Ji Ran blinked. "What were you going to do before?"

Gi Changning understood that before meant while she was with the Jis. Her lips moved and her voice came out like a mosquito. "If the exams went badly, Chairman Ji was going to donate a building and send me abroad for a bit of gold plating."

The house was quiet and her voice was small, but Ji Ran heard it clearly, and privately thought it was Chairman Ji all over. "Do you want to read dance at university?"

Gi Changning nodded. "I do."

Ji Ran understood even less. "Then why are you giving up dancing?"

Gi Changning was getting frantic. "Because I have to study. Do you know what marks a dance academy takes?"

"I do." Ji Ran had looked up the entry marks for the well known institutions once and had a rough idea, though she was not applying to an arts school herself. It was precisely because dance academies take high marks that she was puzzled. "So why do you have to give dancing up? Haven't you thought about the arts-school entrance exams?"

Gi Changning had nothing to say.

She shot to her feet, the stool screeching on the floor. "The arts exams?"

"Yes." Ji Ran counted off what was for her and what was against. "You've got the training. You've got prizes from dance competitions. You've got a following online. Your academic marks are behind, and catching up in a year and a half would be very hard on you. The arts exams ask for lower academic marks. The second term of your second year starts in a few days. There's time."

"That leaves the fees, and you and Meng Lai should be able to manage those."

Gi Changning paced the room when she had heard it out, muttering the arts exams, the arts exams, her eyes getting brighter and nothing left of the flatness from before. She came up to Ji Ran, said nothing at all, picked her up and swung her half a turn round the room, kicking a chair on the way. She could not feel it. She hugged Ji Ran, delighted. "Ranran, Ranran. I'm doing the arts exams. I'm going to do the arts exams."

Ji Ran let herself be lifted bodily off the floor with no expression at all, and was then set down on the bed like an offering in front of a shrine. "Gi Changning. Please calm down."

"I can't calm down."

Ji Ran had nothing to say.

She took a deep breath and asked three questions in a row. "Do you know how the arts exams work?"

"Have you looked into the coaching schools?"

"Can you keep your academic subjects going while you train for them?"

The three questions calmed her down completely. Her dream and the exams were not two ends of a rope after all, and after a turn like that she could not hold her feelings still. She carried a stool over, sat down opposite Ji Ran like a good girl, and said, embarrassed, "Sorry. I got too excited."

"It's all right." Ji Ran asked patiently, "Is there nobody in class six doing the arts exams?"

Gi Changning shook her head. "There are sports students. No arts students. Our class is a special case. The exams are a formality. Most of them either have the building ready to donate, or they'll apply abroad afterwards, or they'll go somewhere private and come home to eat and wait for death. And some are there purely to make contacts. It's complicated."

Ji Ran did not know much about the ecosystem of class six, and paused. She had been back with the Jis several months and nobody at school had bothered her. Her father and her elder brother could see she did not want parties and things of that sort, and had not pressed her. "What about your dance club?"

Gi Changning thought about it. "There aren't many of us, and most are from the international section. They joined for fun, to unwind. The rest need to enter dance competitions with some standing at home or abroad, because a placing helps their applications."

There were arts students in Meng Lai's year, but arts students cover their academic subjects at a different pace and are kept on their own floor.

So it was not really fair to blame Gi Changning and Meng Lai for not thinking of it.

Ji Ran had her answers. She looked Gi Changning in the eye and asked one last time. "Ningning. Do you really want to do the arts exams?"

Gi Changning answered straight. "I do. Not knowing was one thing. Now I know, and I'm not giving up any chance that's going."

"Good." Ji Ran's face was serious and her voice was firm. "All you have to do is talk Mum and Dad round. Everything else about the arts exams, I'll sort out."