Chapter 3

By the end of the meal the two families had reached an understanding nobody had to say out loud. The girls would move first, and the household registration would be sorted out on a working day as soon as it could be.

Gi Ran. Ji Ran now, it should be.

Ji Ran had few things and would be quick to pack, so they went to the Gi house first.

There was not enough room in Ji Changfeng's car, so he borrowed one from the hotel along with a driver.

Gi Changning watched the roads and the view outside get more familiar. Just as she was expecting it to run straight on to the villa district, the car turned, and they were in the city village. She whipped her head round and saw only the tall ash trees and the long thin leaves lying yellow on the ground under half-bare branches. She sat still for a second, then understood something and took a deep breath. "This is..."

The driver took the pitted road slowly and braked in front of an old three-storey block.

Her mother opened the car door. She had not caught what Gi Changning said. There was a nervousness in her voice she could not hide, afraid her daughter would find the place too poor, and she tugged at the hem of her coat without meaning to. "Ningning?"

Gi Changning pushed down everything she was feeling and smiled at her. "Coming."

The Ji car pulled up behind them.

Mr Ji's step faltered. For some reason he stood there until Ji Ran poked him.

He knew this place. Less than two kilometres on from the entrance to the city village, past the planted trees and the park, was the villa district where the Jis lived now.

That was where one world stopped and the other started.

Two kilometres.

Two kilometres.

Sixteen whole years.

He thought he must be getting old. He could not help wondering whether, if he had looked this way on his drive to work one morning, he would have seen Ji Ran with her school bag on, waiting quietly in the wind for a bus.

And if he had seen her he would certainly have known that face. It was his wife's.

Full of all this, and full of fatherly feeling, he put out a big hand and stroked Ji Ran's hair. His voice shook a little. "Ranran. These have been hard years for you."

Ji Ran had no idea what he meant and looked completely blank.

She had a home that kept the weather off and a school to go to. What had been hard about it?

Ji Changfeng rolled his eyes quietly. He knew his father was staging another tragedy in his head, and he cut across the conversation before it got any further from the point. "He does this a lot," he said to Ji Ran. "Ignore it."

Ji Ran had nothing to say to that.

The stairwell in the three-storey block had poor light. Her mother went ahead, telling Gi Changning as they climbed, "Your uncle's family are downstairs. They'll be back tonight. We'll get your dad to cook and all sit down together properly."

While she worked the lock she went on, "Your cousin is doing a master's in another province. He's only free at New Year. That'll be a lively house."

Gi Changning nodded to show she had it.

The Gi home was small but it had everything, and the storage was particularly good. Every space was clean and tidy. There were not enough slippers to go round, so Gi Changning's father did not ask anyone to change.

Ji Ran's room put the three-tier desk shelf straight in front of you. The first tier held the workbooks and textbooks she used daily. The second was packed tight with classics and study guides. The third was thinner, and in a space that small it was a startling thing to see.

The second bedroom was so small that two girls could just about turn round in it. The parents all went to the sitting room for tea and conversation. Gi Changning was the only one who stayed to help.

Ji Ran pulled out a suitcase she had not used in a long time and a woven sack, patted the dust off them, crouched and went over them again with a wet wipe. A voice came from above her. "Do you mind if I sort out the books?"

"Thank you." Ji Ran looked up, understood she was being offered help, and said, "That's kind of you."

Gi Changning measured the three tiers by eye, went up on her toes and started with the top. "It's no trouble."

The top tier was a mixture. Martial arts novels, a few old computing textbooks, some popular books on basic medicine. Gi Changning hissed through her teeth at one of them, a book on human anatomy with a fairly alarming cover. She also found two journals entirely in English, and the name on them was familiar.

She dug about in her memory. She had seen something like them at her aunt's, her mother's younger sister, who was a doctor. The Lancet, was it?

The question came out of her before she could stop it. "Are you going to study medicine?"

"Hm? A bit, maybe. Computing isn't bad either." Ji Ran opened the wardrobe. There was not much in it, and half of what there was her mother had made over out of old clothes, cut unlike anything in the shops and rather lovely for it.

She folded the clothes and went quiet for a moment. She had thought about burn repair once. There were a lot of reasons, and the first one went back to being very small and hearing her father come home from a job interview where they had turned him down over the scar on his face, then crying in the bathroom late at night where he thought nobody could hear. Her hands kept working while all sorts of pieces went through her head. The last two days had cut straight across everything she had planned for her life, and she did not quite know where she stood. "The exams are a long way off," she said.

There was plenty of time to think it through again.

Gi Changning looked at the two careers pointing in opposite directions, and something flickered past in her mind that she did not manage to catch. She sorted the books into piles. Clearing the desk, she found a small envelope she recognised. "Xiao Xiao's party?"

Ji Ran was moving the stacked books into the woven sack. She paused and answered from where she was crouching. "Yes. Are you going?"

Gi Changning had in fact been in two minds about it, since her position was not what it had been a week ago and she did not have the standing to get into a fight with Xiao Xiao any more. She dipped her head, met Ji Ran's eyes, and somehow in that cool steady look she found a trace of hope.

Oh no.

Who could stand up to a look like that.

Gi Changning's head went light and she surrendered on the spot. "I'm going. Shall we go together tomorrow?"

Ji Ran's eyes curved. "I'd like that."

Gi Changning had nothing to say.

Then she caught up with what she had just agreed to, and thought of all the years of open and quiet warfare with Xiao Xiao, every bit of it over nothing, with neither of them willing to give an inch, until in the end they kept a surface peace for their families' sake.

What is said is said. Gi Changning pressed her lips together and added, "Right. So. If I do end up fighting Xiao Xiao, hold me back a bit."

Not that she was afraid. It was more that, the way her finances stood now, she could not afford the damages.

Ji Ran thought of the small girl handing over the invitation, and asked out of curiosity, "Xiao Xiao seems quite shy. How would you end up fighting?"

Shy?

The funniest thing she had ever heard.

Gi Changning took a deep breath. She badly wanted to count their quarrels off on her fingers, then decided that was childish, like a primary school pupil telling tales. She waved a hand instead and said darkly, "Historical reasons. We just don't get on."

Ji Ran had nothing to say to that either.

Fine.

On the subject of the party, Ji Ran knew the Xiaos were comfortable. Truthfully, you could pick any pupil at Wenyuan at random and they would be better off than she was. She had very little practice at any of this. "Do I need to bring a present?"

Gi Changning judged it shamelessly by her own standards. "She's got everything. Bring something that means something."

Ji Ran blinked. "Something that means something" was a wonderfully slippery phrase. She thought about it, pulled out the drawer under the desk and took out a cloth bag, then drew out what was inside it. A purse.

The purse was sky blue. A clump of water weed was embroidered on it, and behind the weed a small round goldfish was blowing bubbles. Two red beads hung from the drawstring, and at rest they looked like the shadow of coral. Altogether it was as if a piece of scenery had been moved onto the cloth, and all of it moved.

Gi Changning's eyes lit and she was at Ji Ran's shoulder in an instant. The weed curved differently in every stalk. The goldfish was more like something out of a cartoon, but the colours shaded into each other so convincingly that the two sat together perfectly. She said wow, and could not hold back the urge to own one. "That's gorgeous. Where did you buy it? Send me the link, my Ran."

As Gi Changning leaned in, Ji Ran shifted sideways without thinking. She was not used to anyone being that close, and she had to hold her own body still by force of will. Her free hand went to her hair. A pet name like my Ran turned her ears red, and she said evenly, "I made it. Will it do as a birthday present?"

At the words "I made it" something unprintable went across Gi Changning's face. Her first reaction was not that Ji Ran could embroider like that. It was, "Does Xiao Xiao deserve it?"

Ji Ran had nothing to say.

She was never going to understand the history between those two.

Gi Changning kept going. "Listen to me. I'll find something on a shopping app for nine ninety-nine with free local delivery, guaranteed tomorrow. Giving Xiao Xiao a thing like this is a waste of a good thing."

"It doesn't matter." Ji Ran put the purse back in its cloth bag. "Mum is very good with her hands. She embroiders and she sews. The little goldfish is the only thing I ever learned off her."

And that was only because her uncle downstairs had kept goldfish for years.

Gi Changning was bad at school, which is not the same as being stupid. She heard at once what was behind the sentence.

She was being handed something to look after.

Ji Ran lowered her voice and went on. "Mum works at the textile mill, eight in the morning to eight at night. The same movement all day has left her neck bad. She's the only earner in the house, so when she gets home she takes in embroidery, and sometimes the neighbours bring cloth round and ask her to make it up into clothes. It doesn't pay much. It adds something."

Gi Changning thought of the woman's rough hands and the man's awkward face, and her breath caught.

"Dad is a very good cook. He was a hotel chef before the accident, and he's best at anything made from flour. He takes casual work, and when there's nothing he goes with my uncle's family to the market and sells vegetables, and sometimes he helps with deliveries. My uncle has done a great deal for us, so Dad never takes his money."

Ji Ran's voice was level, the way she was. In a few sentences she laid out the whole of the Gi household. At the end she pulled the anatomy book out of the pile, set it on the desk, folded over one page and said, "Remember to rub Mum's shoulders and neck after school. You..."

She smiled, pulled the zips shut on the sack and the suitcase, and swallowed the rest.

You'll do it well.

Gi Changning stared at that look of trust, then turned her head away and worked hard at keeping the tears where they were. She could not lie to herself. When she first met the Gis in the hotel, the call of her own blood had been completely beyond her control.

She wanted an ordinary family.

And while Ji Ran was wearing an out-of-date uniform and made-over clothes, she had been picking her way through the boys' uniforms at Wenyuan and taking two sets, grudgingly, as a badge of being different.

Gi Changning wanted to ask whether she thought that was fair.

While I was enjoying myself, you were fighting to get by.

She thought it, so she asked it.

Ji Ran produced a rare look of surprise. "Why would you think that?"

Gi Changning was more surprised than she was. "Shouldn't I?"

"Of course you shouldn't." Ji Ran was not blind, and she could see there was something badly wrong between Gi Changning and the Jis. She did not know what, so she poured out a mouthful of the standard uplift and meant it. "What we're after isn't only having enough. It's having enough inside."

Gi Changning scratched her head and understood, oddly, that she was being comforted.

God. This person. Gi Changning sniffed. How could anyone be this good.

Ji Ran took the handle of the suitcase and put her other hand on the door. "Let's go."

Mild sunlight filled the little sitting room. The parents, who had run out of small talk, looked up at the two girls in the bedroom doorway.

Let's go.

On towards the future.

---

The Jis' villa district was called Jinhua Gardens. The hotel driver had gone back by then, so Mr Ji rang for another car. The Gis meant to decline, argued with themselves for two minutes and decided they wanted to see where Gi Changning had grown up and where Ji Ran would live from now on.

Two kilometres is not far. Standing in front of the imposing Ji house, the Gis pressed their lips together, glanced at each other without planning to, and each found the same nervousness in the other's eyes.

Nervous at the size of the gap between the two families.

Nervous about whether Ningning would settle, and whether they had cost Ranran her future.

The Jis were not in the habit of going into the children's bedrooms, so Ji Changfeng made a pot of tea and sat the Gis down to talk, leaving the two girls to go upstairs on their own.

Ji Ran's first feeling on walking into the Ji house was cold.

The weather had nothing to do with it. From the floor you could see your face in, to the plain lines of the sofas, to the sharp edges of the crystal chandelier, there was almost no colour in the house that was not black, white or grey.

Her second feeling was loneliness.

The house was too big. Big enough that with all these people standing in it, Ji Ran still felt a loneliness she could not have described.

Gi Changning took her upstairs. Her room had been through one round of clearing and was not in its usual state. She took two mints out of the bag strapped to her suitcase, handed one over, unwrapped the other and pushed it into her cheek. "I've packed most of it," she said round the sweet. "What isn't packed, I don't want."

Ji Ran peeled the wrapper off hers and looked round.

Gi Changning's room was large and still not empty. Clearly only the personal things had gone. Magazines in every colour lay across the shelves at all angles, bright posters covered the walls, the sheets were fluorescent pink, the quilt was sunshine yellow and the rug was sky blue. At first glance it hurt the eyes. After a while Ji Ran thought, yes, this is exactly what Gi Changning would like.

"The Jis aren't a big family." Gi Changning's eyes dimmed a little. "After Granny died, the only ones we're close to are my aunt's family, and close means that with everyone's work we only get a meal together when people visit at New Year."

Ji Ran listened carefully.

"You don't have to think about the cleaning," Gi Changning went on. "A woman comes in regularly to do it, and she puts fruit and vegetables and frozen food in the fridge. She doesn't live here. If you don't want her in your room you can lock the door. Those two keep their studies and their rooms locked as a rule."

"Jinhua is a bad place to order food from." She changed direction and took a thick stack of hotel delivery cards out of a drawer. "This lot are decent. Those two are workaholics and they're not home till after midnight, so don't wait to eat. And don't be scared sleeping on your own. Jinhua's security is as good as it gets."

Ji Ran took the information out of it exactly. All of this was what sixteen years of living here had taught her. So Ji Ran asked, "What do you do, when you're sleeping here alone?"

Gi Changning shouldered her bag and grinned. "Put music on and dance about. Make a horrible racket. It sounds like company."

It sounds like company.

Sixteen years of loneliness and wanting, boiled down to that.

The Gis helped carry Gi Changning's suitcase to the boot. Before they left she opened her arms to Ji Ran. "Hug?"

She did not wait for an answer. She wrapped her up like someone who had known her for years. They were much the same height, so a small tilt of the head put them close enough to count each other's eyelashes.

In that moment two complete strangers felt something they could not explain.

Perhaps there really are people in this world who are halves of one another.

Gi Changning patted her back, picked up the suitcase, turned and waved. "See you tomorrow."

Ji Ran waved too. "See you tomorrow."