Chapter 5

Xue Miaomiao had genuinely not expected to run into Ji Ran at Linjiangxian. As far as she understood the world, people at Ji Ran's level never came near a place like this.

Pingchuan was a city built on business. A good many companies with national names had come up out of nothing here, and over the years they had grown into a circle of their own.

Xue Miaomiao's father had started with a supermarket in a small town. Last year he took on a plot in the county seat and put up a shopping centre, hoping that getting the right brands into it would get him into the circle above him.

The first he went after was a clothing label owned by the Ji group. Mr Xue drank for a fortnight straight and nearly put a hole in his stomach doing it, and at last the man in charge of the label gave him a verbal yes and let something slip as well. On the fourth of the month the Xiao heir, whose position was beyond question, was holding a birthday party at Linjiangxian, and the Ji daughter would be there.

Mr Xue took the hint. At a Xiao daughter's birthday, every guest would be the child of someone in the Pingchuan business circle, and getting on good terms with that lot would open the door for him. Having worked that out, he begged everyone he could think of and still could not get an invitation. Then he heard about a relative so distant you would need a map, a girl who had left school and worked in the kitchens at Linjiangxian, who looked rather like Xue Miaomiao and was only five or six years older. That gave him an idea.

The relative took the Xue family's money for nothing, let Xue Miaomiao stand in for her for a day, and threw in some advice. Find a moment to carry dishes out, then change into the dress once inside. The kitchens were full of people, and at worst the supervisor would think she was skiving. Nobody would look further than that.

And it had actually worked. Xue Miaomiao had got in.

She held a glass of brightly coloured juice and stood as if the party belonged to her. Something came back to her, and her red mouth curled. "Oh, I forgot. You're at Wenyuan now. Let me guess. Whose favour did you have to get to be let into the Xiao daughter's birthday?"

A family like the Gis. A father you could not show anyone, a mother on a factory floor. What did it matter if she got into Wenyuan. Poor is poor. She came to a party and all she knew how to do was eat, and she would never in her life get near anything good.

Ji Ran's face gave nothing away, as if the ugly guesses were about someone else. She looked at the matcha mousse she had not managed a bite of and thought, with real regret, what a waste. Then she looked up, met Xue Miaomiao's eyes and said flatly, "Apologise."

"Apologise? To whom? You walked into me." Xue Miaomiao heard it like a joke, contempt almost running out of her eyes. Years of accumulated scorn and envy came up where she could not hold them, and the Ji Ran in front of her and the Gi Ran of two years ago became one person. She forgot that she was the one who had got in by a trick, and the same sentence came out of her as naturally as it had then. "This dress was made for me. Can your family afford to replace it?"

Something went off in Ji Ran's head like a long note.

In the memory, a girl in a paper crown had walked into her on purpose, and the cola in her hand had gone down the front of an expensive princess dress. Ji Ran remembered the open pleasure of it. She remembered the laughing from the other guests, which nobody bothered to hide. She remembered her father arriving afterwards and the way he had made himself small while he apologised.

The girl had said it then too. This dress was made for me. Can your family afford to replace it?

Past and present came down on top of each other, and for a second the smashed mousse on the floor looked like spilled cola. Ji Ran opened her mouth again with a force she had never used before. "Xue Miaomiao. Apologise."

Xue Miaomiao came up against those dark eyes and seemed to see something in them that had been shut away a long time. It frightened her. As she remembered it, outside exams and marks Ji Ran was the least noticeable person in the class. Xue Miaomiao hated her. She hated the nagging after every exam, her mum and dad telling her to learn something from Ji Ran. From a pauper? What was there to learn? Where Xue Miaomiao started was further than Ji Ran would get in a lifetime.

Except. Except that Ji Ran had been taken on by Wenyuan.

She had sat the high school entrance exams with a fever, come first in the city, and Wenyuan had taken her on a special place.

Wenyuan. Not one of the private schools that take anyone with money, but a school with an entrance system that was genuinely strict. Apart from the special places, it mostly took pupils up from its own middle school, and getting into Wenyuan meant having one foot inside the Pingchuan business circle. The Xues were far and away the richest family in their town, and Mr Xue had put his pride away and called in every contact he had, and had still not got his daughter a Wenyuan letter.

Wenyuan, which Xue Miaomiao had dreamed of.

And Ji Ran, who was beneath her at everything except schoolwork, had walked in on a special place.

Her mind went somewhere dark. She had miscalculated. She should not have shut her in the sports equipment room that time. She should have shut her in the music room nobody ever used.

That thought steadied her enough to push the uneasiness down. She stepped closer and said into Ji Ran's ear, "Last time you ruined a dress of mine, that disfigured father of yours had to carry bricks for months to pay it off, didn't he. And this time?"

For an instant the air went still. In the next instant there was a crack.

The slap and the breaking glass arrived together.

Xue Miaomiao's head went sideways with it, and a pale red came up through the layer of foundation. The glass slipped out of her hand, and the bright juice flew across her dress and spread. Her teeth chattered. She did not seem to have caught up. Then she rounded on Ji Ran and could not get a sentence out. "You. You. You dared to hit me!"

This pauper, whom she had looked down on and stepped on from the beginning, had dared to hit her.

Bloody hell.

A silver plate going down was one thing. Plates go down at parties and nobody can be bothered to look. A slap is different.

As the saying goes, you don't hit the face. However thoroughly people in this circle tore each other apart behind the scenes, in front of each other everyone smiled.

One of the Wenyuan pupils recognised her. "Hold on. That's the genius from our year?"

A girl from Xiao Xiao's group caught it, turned sharply, confirmed it was Ji Ran and felt her stomach drop. She put her drink down, messaged Xiao Xiao first, and ran over without breaking step to look Ji Ran up and down. "Ji Ran, Ji Ran, are you all right? Has she been bullying you?"

Ji Ran, who had just caught up with what she had done, had nothing to say.

Xue Miaomiao, holding her face, clearly the one who had been hit, had nothing to say either.

"It really is Ji Ran."

"Go and look. Go and look."

Gi Changning came out of the toilets and met Xiao Xiao coming downstairs. She watched the crowd move towards the puddings. "What's going on?"

Xiao Xiao put her phone away. Her face was black. "Somebody is bullying Ranran. In my own place."

Bloody hell.

Gi Changning pushed her sleeves up and went over fast. She had barely reached the outside of the wall of people when a thin aggrieved voice came from the middle of it. "She walked into me. She wouldn't apologise, and then she hit me!"

The friend's voice came back louder. "Rubbish! I know what Ji Ran is like better than anyone. I copied her homework behind her back and when she caught me she wasn't even angry, she just told me not to copy it word for word. That is the sort of person she is, and you're telling me she hits people? I'd sooner believe the sky was falling."

Ji Ran coughed twice without meaning to and tugged at the girl's sleeve. "Zheng Yao..."

Zheng Yao was half a head taller than Ji Ran. She took Ji Ran's hand in both of hers, full of righteousness, like a hen over her chicks. "Don't worry, Ji Ran. I'm here today and nobody is going to pin anything on you."

Ji Ran had nothing to say.

Xue Miaomiao had nothing to say.

Xue Miaomiao nearly went out of her own body with rage.

"No." Ji Ran patted Zheng Yao's arm. Since coming to Wenyuan she had kept to the edge of things, partly because of what Xue Miaomiao and her followers had done in middle school, and partly because she really did not live in the same world as the pupils here. Three years would go quickly, and a distance that was neither close nor far was about right. But truthfully, when Zheng Yao put herself in front of her like that, Ji Ran felt a warmth settle right through her. "I did hit her."

Zheng Yao, who had been ready for a proper row, had nothing to say.

Xiao Xiao and Gi Changning, who had just arrived in the ring, had three question marks between them.

Say what you like, nobody who knew Ji Ran would have called her the sort to swing first.

"But I'm not apologising," Ji Ran said, perfectly calm. "You stopped deserving an apology the moment you insulted my father."

Gi Changning, who had adjusted to her new position rather well, thought: brave of her. Insulting Chairman Ji to his daughter's face.

Xiao Xiao weighed something up and said suddenly, "Did I invite you?"

It was a question, and the tone of it was not.

Xiao Xiao's memory was good. Today was not her eighteenth, so it did not need to be large or grand, and everything about it was to her own taste. She had invited the people she had played with since she was small and her classmates from Wenyuan. Everyone knew everyone, and the ones who did not had at least heard of each other. There were no outsiders.

It was called a party, and it was really just people of the same age.

In their circle, from the day you are born, there is a high wall you cannot see. Some inside batter themselves bloody trying to get out. Some outside will spend everything they have to get in.

And Xue Miaomiao was not from any family Xiao Xiao knew, and was not a classmate.

Zheng Yao caught up and muttered, "No wonder I didn't recognise her. I thought I'd gone face-blind."

Xue Miaomiao had schemed her way in here, so of course she knew the birthday girl, and she had seen photographs of the Ji daughter, Gi Changning. With this many people watching, the cold sweat came out on her forehead and her heart went off at a speed she could not control.

Gi Changning folded her arms and poked Ji Ran with an elbow, with a look. "Who is she?"

"Xue Miaomiao. We were at middle school together."

Ji Ran did not lower her voice, and once the unfamiliar name was out the talking got louder.

"Xue Miaomiao. Who?"

"Never heard of her. From out of town?"

"That didn't look like a classmate to me. More like an enemy."

Xue Miaomiao, at the centre of it, had the attention of the whole party exactly as she had wanted. The looks held contempt, curiosity and disgust, and not one scrap of the admiration she had imagined.

Her neck pulled in without her deciding it, and her body shook slightly and would not stop.

Xiao Xiao frowned without letting it show. Somebody had come into her birthday party without an invitation, and if anything had happened the consequences did not bear thinking about. She made up her mind. "Check the cameras."

That would take a little time. Xiao Xiao went round her friends as the birthday girl should, and the crowd at the puddings broke up, though every one of them kept half an eye on it and settled in to watch.

Xiao Xiao did not know whether to laugh. Her good mood, broken into by all this, came back a little. She called over the nearest member of staff to clear the mousse and the broken glass off the floor before anyone was cut.

He nodded and agreed, and as he turned away his eyes passed over Xue Miaomiao's face. He stopped. "Didn't you say you were helping carry dishes out of the kitchen? What are you doing out here, and changed?"

The moment she was recognised, every bit of strength went out of Xue Miaomiao and she sat down on the floor. Her palm came down on glass that had not been swept up. Her head was empty except for two words. It's over.

Xiao Xiao understood at once. In as a member of staff, which meant no invitation. Her eyes darkened and her voice came out cold enough to crack. "Check it."

Then she called for the manager in charge of the party and gave her instructions, one after another, in good order.

"I want security and the system gone through from end to end. I don't want today happening twice."

"Find out which member of staff was replaced. If she was forced into it, fine. If she agreed to it, blacklist her. If she'll hand her identity to Miss Xue today, she'll hand it to a wanted man tomorrow."

"And put Miss Xue on the Linjiangxian blacklist."

Linjiangxian counted as hospitality, and in that trade a blacklist is shared. For that reason nobody is put on one lightly, and once a name is on it, the entire service industry in Pingchuan is closed to that person for good.

At the last of it, Xue Miaomiao shook her head over and over, white in the face. She looked round and could not find a single person standing on her side. She panicked, lunged forward and caught hold of Gi Changning's trouser leg. "My, my dad is Xue Yi, he, he does business with the Jis. I know you're the Ji daughter. Help me, please help me. I can't be blacklisted at Linjiangxian, I can't."

Gi Changning was caught before she could move. Xue Miaomiao's palm had been cut on the glass and the blood went onto her trousers. Gi Changning thought about her own finances and felt a pang. "One, I have nothing to do with Ji business. Two, I'm not the Ji daughter, so begging me is no use."

She was gone before the last word had landed, and the teenagers whose ears had stayed behind all produced the same blank expression. Even Xiao Xiao was knocked sideways.

Gi Changning was not the Ji daughter?

What on earth was this now?

If she had been tall enough, Xiao Xiao would have tried her forehead for a fever. "We're in the middle of something. Don't change the subject."

"I'm not changing it. Ranran, let go of me, they're all going to find out anyway." Gi Changning laughed, loose and careless. "What I mean is that they handed out the wrong babies when we were born, and Ji Ran standing here next to me is the real Ji daughter. Understood?"

The crowd made a noise.

Xiao Xiao had nothing to say.

Zheng Yao had nothing to say.

Xue Miaomiao, whose view of the world had been turned over in three sentences, had nothing left but confusion. "No. That's not possible! We were at the same town middle school, her family are from a village, how could she be a Ji!"

It was not possible. It was not possible.

The background she had been so proud of was worth nothing in front of the Jis. All the years of spite she had aimed at Ji Ran. Would Ji Ran turn them back on her now?

It was wrong. All of it was wrong. Ji Ran could not be a Ji.

Gi Changning spread her hands. "Believe it or don't. The DNA test isn't going to lie."

One thing landed on top of another. The man sent to pull the footage arrived late with a laptop. "I've got it."

On the screen, Ji Ran stood quietly getting something to eat, and Xue Miaomiao walked into her on purpose, then turned it round afterwards and tried to put the blame on her.

That settled it.

"What a pity." Xiao Xiao played the clip through several times over, making sure everyone had seen it, then closed the laptop and said to Xue Miaomiao, "Our little Linjiangxian isn't grand enough to hold a personage like yourself. Somebody will bandage your hand shortly and see you home, so that nothing happens here that I would be answerable for."

Gi Changning crouched down and lifted Xue Miaomiao's chin with a pressure that did not allow refusal. She had always done as she liked, and there was something wicked in the way she smiled now. "Miss Xue. Watch where you're walking in future. What goes around comes back. Understood?"

Xue Miaomiao went cold all over. Their eyes were level, and still the other girl seemed to be looking down from a height. A few sentences had broken her life and her pride into pieces.

Xue Miaomiao did not remember how she got out of Villa One. The dress she had bought specially for the party was grey with dust, her makeup had run everywhere, and she had one shoe left, which she only noticed when she turned her ankle.

It was over. All of it was over.

Standing by the car the Xiaos had arranged for her, like a machine on an old spring, she turned her head a little at a time and looked back at Villa One and all its noise.

She knew. The dream she had chased since she was small, of being the one everyone gathered around, had just been destroyed by her own hand.