Chapter 40

The Pingchuan convention centre was busy.

Shanqing, the new designer who had led the wave of Chinese street style single-handed, was about to hold her first solo show here. It had the attention of every designer in the trade. Some were predicting failure, some were waiting eagerly, some were simply waiting to hear. And in the middle of all that noise, Shanqing announced that the show would not be open to outside guests and that the video would go up on a public platform afterwards.

That set everybody off, in the trade and out of it.

A designer who had only just made a name, carrying herself that high, not even opening one small show to outsiders. Had she run dry? Was she afraid of what the trade would say? Was she afraid of making a fool of herself? That sort of thing was everywhere, and the people defending her, saying can't you see the video is going out publicly, were buried underneath it.

And Shanqing, at the centre of it, did not have one spare minute to watch which way the wind was blowing online. She was flat out. Clothes, venue, lighting, models. She did all of it herself. She had been a year getting ready for this.

Because she was giving her daughters a coming-of-age present.

The exams were over, and the classmates had gathered, because it was Gi Changning and Ji Ran's shared birthday.

The convention centre was booked, and their mother would not let her daughters take a look, so everybody collected in an exhibition hall that was not being used and ate and drank and talked.

The show was not open to outside guests. Nobody had said anything about friends.

Xiao Xiao let herself go completely once the exams were done. She had cut her hair short and sharp, with two studs in her left ear, and she was in a thoroughly punk outfit with chains on it that rang when you brushed them, and boots with a platform inside and out. She had no tattoo. There was a rose-shaped transfer on her collarbone. The whole effect put five or six centimetres on her.

Gi Changning rolled her eyes and turned to Ji Ran without ceremony. "Look at her. If a client ever saw a lawyer looking like that, who'd dare hire her?"

To everybody's surprise, Xiao Xiao had not applied to a business school. She had an offer from the best university of political science and law in the country. Whether she switches to business later is an open question.

Xiao Xiao was in a good mood and would not come down to her level. "I'll let you have it, seeing as it's your birthday."

Gi Changning rolled her sleeves straight up. "I don't need letting."

Ji Ran and Zheng Yao looked at each other and sighed, and one of them held Gi Changning down and the other got her arms round Xiao Xiao, and they separated the pair to prevent a tragedy on a birthday.

Just then a loud voice came all the way in from the doors of the centre. Ji Ran's head whipped round, and a striking girl with very long legs came through the door and was in front of them in no time, and hugged both birthday girls faster than anybody could react and spun them round three times on the spot.

Meng Lai, coming in behind, turned to stone. "Bloody hell."

Those were two grown adults. One of them dances and is solid muscle. And she simply picked them up.

Ji Ran was squeezed nearly breathless. "Fang Xiaomu."

"Here." Fang Xiaomu gave a cheeky salute. Her luck has always been good. Not long after her third year started, a new round of selection for women pilots came round, and she got through the medical and all the tests and the background check, and was good enough to be confirmed before the exams had even happened. Possibly because she was so excited, she did better in the exams than anybody expected, and when the results came out she rang Ji Ran, and her voice nearly broke the phone.

Her acceptance letter came in the first part of July, and seeing their daughter about to leave home, her parents finally put work down and took her and her grandfather away on a trip. She was in another city when the invitation reached her, and she flew in that day.

She had a bag on with the presents in it, two identical fighter jet models. She grinned foolishly. "Happy birthday. I couldn't hold it in."

Since nobody knew each other very well, Ji Ran and Gi Changning made the introductions.

Girls that age have much the same things to talk about, and once the exams are over the universities alone will keep a conversation going. With the two of them smoothing it along, nicknames and numbers were exchanged inside a few minutes.

Zheng Yao had applied to the same university of political science and law as Xiao Xiao, dead set on law.

Gi Changning and Meng Lai had done very well in the arts exams. The way they worked through the second half of the third year can only be called desperate. Gi Changning even gave herself gastroenteritis, and her father spent every spare hour finding new ways to make soup and went and learned medicinal cooking. In six months she was fed up so well that she ate everything in sight and put on ten pounds.

Which meant that after the exams she was concentrating on taking it off again, and had to be careful how she trained through the change, because building a body that looks good and is not overdone is extremely hard.

Ji Ran had put weight on at the same time. She had been on the thin side to start with, and it improved her colour.

Gi Changning and Meng Lai got exactly what they wanted, offers from the Capital Dance Academy, and went on and on about how Ji Ran's university was not in the capital.

Of the two households, the one least worried about the results was Ji Ran. On the day they came out she went down for two laps round the block and ran through a set of taiji she had not long learned, laying the groundwork for standing through long operations one day.

Under her influence both households were oddly confident, right up until her form teacher Sha Kesheng rang to congratulate her on being top of the province. Wenyuan hung a banner. The head waved a hand and gave her a scholarship on top. The scramble among the famous universities began properly, and while the parents had no idea what to do and Gi Changning was only interested in collecting the offers like stamps, Ji Ran had already chosen.

Clinical medicine at one of the strongest medical universities in the country. On her marks she could have gone somewhere better, but only that university has burns surgery as a key department, with state backing behind it.

Everything was going the right way. Zhou Shaoyu, far away abroad, even posted two vacuum-packed stargazy pies, and after a journey like that the smell when they were opened was quite something and everybody backed right off, and only Gi Changning's father felt sorry for him and wanted to post Four Seasons' new self-heating food straight back to him on the spot.

And ask Zhou Shaoyu whether giving his name still got you a discount on a celebrity to front it.

They were well into it when Ji Changfeng came in person to fetch them and take them through to where the show was being held.

It was nothing like the usual setup. The hall was close to empty, with no raised runway, only two cameras and lights that were not on yet.

Their mother put Ji Ran and Gi Changning in the front row, and both fathers were in that row too, properly dressed and smiling at their daughters' friends.

Liang Cheng had wanted to come and could not get away from the hospital, and did not like to let Liang Shuo come and cause trouble on his own on a birthday, so they had agreed to have dinner together that evening.

The uncle's family were missing too. Gi Zhao really had gone into poverty relief work after his master's. The uncle and his wife were out west at that moment, introduced by Qian Dajin, talking about beef and mutton supply and plans for a factory there.

Ji Changfeng came over to their mother and said something, and she nodded and went backstage. And then every light in the hall went out at once.

While everybody was still wondering, a slow-moving golden river appeared across the floor, like a huge night sky made of scattered stars, running all the way to Ji Ran and Gi Changning's feet.

Soft light came up.

Two models came out from the back in shirts.

They were two very young girls. They did not follow any of the rules of a runway and did not do a runway walk. They strolled like the most ordinary girls from down the road, their faces lively or thoughtful, with the odd playful movement thrown in. When they reached Ji Ran and Gi Changning, each produced a card from somewhere and put it in the girls' hands, and once they had been taken, turned on the spot and went back.

The girls put the cards side by side and found they were identical, except for the clothes printed on them, which were the two shirts the models had just worn. The same shirt, with different details, so that one looked lively and the other a good deal steadier.

Written on each in fountain pen: happy eighteenth birthday.

Gi Changning said it into Ji Ran's ear. "That looks like Mum's writing."

Ji Ran thought about it.

Before she could think for more than a few seconds, the next pair came slowly up that road of moving stars.

Two models again, in elaborate princess dresses this time, the fabric layered over and over and soft as cloud, the colours completely out of a dream. Watching it, Zheng Yao put a hand over her mouth, and an envious noise got out through her fingers.

The models might not have heard. They were minding those enormous skirts and walked with more dignity for it, and when they reached the girls they curtseyed like real princesses and handed over two cards.

Ji Ran put her head against Gi Changning's. "This one's Da's writing."

With both fathers in the room, Ji Ran's father is Da and Gi Changning's father is Dad, to tell them apart.

Gi Changning shot a look at Chairman Ji, sitting bolt upright.

The show went on.

For it, their mother had snatched time out of a year of work and gone on revising and finalising without stopping. She had eighteen pairs ready, thirty-six outfits in all, covering nightwear, everyday clothes, evening dress, qipao and formal wear, and she had picked models built like Gi Changning and Ji Ran, and got the whole show through in eighteen minutes.

It was a wholly personal show. She had put every bit of the love she has for her daughters and every idea she had into each design and each revision, and a gift that had been held down for years came out like water through a broken bank, and with everything she had been frantically learning behind it, any style at all came to her hand, and inside each piece was a subtle and clever thought nobody outside the family could read.

Which is why she did not invite the trade. She did not want to know how fine the designs were and did not want to know whether the clothes had faults. She only wanted to see her daughters' faces.

Because this was Shan Qing, a mother, giving her daughters the best she could manage.

By now the two of them had seventeen cards, in seventeen different hands, from their family and their friends, all saying the same thing. Happy eighteenth birthday.

Gi Changning sniffed. "When did Mum and the rest of them do all this? They kept it so quiet."

Ji Ran could hear what was under it. Putting on a show like that without either of them knowing must have taken an enormous amount, and her mother had the Anzhi new line on top of it. Ji Ran passed her a tissue and said quietly, "When it's over, let's go and hug Mum."

Gi Changning took it and said thickly, "Hug her. And spin her round."

Ji Ran stopped that at once. "There's no need to spin her round."

Mum is over forty, not fourteen. A hug is a lovely surprise. Being spun round is a shock.

Before they could say much more, the last pair came.

Two models stepped onto the road of stars again.

One in a black dance costume, the other in a white coat. They came quietly up to the girls and handed over the cards.

The dance costume is the one Gi Changning wore for Monster. After the episode she guested on went out last year, Monster stunned the whole internet, and on sheer technique and difficulty and the force of the feeling in it, set off a long wave of people covering it, and pushed Gi Changning and Meng Lai past three million followers. And with all that going on, Gi Changning did not chase the numbers. She went back to training harder, which impressed every arts candidate in her year.

The white coat is the future Ji Ran has chosen. Wherever the idea of medicine first came from, she had looked at her future in cold hard figures as she grew up and given it up without flinching, and she had lost her bearings when her life turned over, and she had doubted whether she could carry the weight of a life. And now she will not stop.

Having handed the cards over, the models did not turn to go. They took a few steps back and took off the dance costume and the white coat in front of everybody, and underneath were clothes exactly like the ones Gi Changning and Ji Ran had on that day.

Both girls stood up sharply. Something seemed to come to them, and they looked at their own cards first, and then swapped quickly and looked at each other's.

Unlike the other seventeen, the eighteenth card was blank, as though it were waiting for them to write it themselves.

The models still did not turn. They went backwards step by step, two outlines in a river of time, until they reached the end of it and walked quietly off.

They never looked back.

The river of stars ran on across the floor and made one bright road, and at the end of that road were dreams and wanting and the future and the past, sweet and bitter, every kind of life there is. And in the end they can only go and find it themselves, and live it themselves, and go at it without looking back, and walk into a few walls on the way.

In that one second everybody there felt something they could not put a word to. There was no lecturing. There was no display of money. There was no flattery in the wrong place.

There was only the most honest good wish a mother and a whole family could give two girls.

As Liang Zhi wrote on the back of a photograph.

All our lives, what we are doing is getting out from under what other people expect of us, and finding who we really are.