Chapter 8

Since the second year started, apart from rehearsals for the welcome evening, Gi Changning had hardly been down to the dance club. The older members she knew were either preparing for the university exams or applying to schools abroad, and she had nothing in common with the first years. There was no fun in it.

The club president had taken a team away to a competition and left the vice-president minding the place. His name was Zhou Shaoyu, a street dancer as well, from the international section. He handed Gi Changning a hair band with the ease of long practice, full of indignation. "You can't do anything with the new intake these days. They won't listen. I told them not to go and find you, I told them twice, and off they went."

Zhou Shaoyu had come down to the club for a rare half hour of peace and been hit in the face by a pack of first years who thought they were the coolest thing alive.

Gossip being what it is, Gi Changning said at Xiao Xiao's party that she was the Jis' swapped child and Zhou Shaoyu had a live report from a friend before she had finished saying it. The dance club believed in Gi Changning, certainly, but that belief was something she had earned, not something the Ji name had bought her.

Rushing to mock and provoke somebody the moment they come down in the world struck Zhou Shaoyu as contemptible.

The club had its own changing room. Gi Changning put on a tracksuit and fingerless gloves, stretched out properly to free limbs that had been shut in a uniform all morning, took the band and tied her hair into a small knot at the back. "What exactly are you angry about?"

"They ignored me," Zhou Shaoyu said, with complete conviction.

Gi Changning had nothing to say.

Then she asked, honestly, "Do you know why they don't let you lead the team to competitions?"

Zhou Shaoyu had no doubts at all. "Because I'm too good-looking and I'd take the attention off them."

Very good. Gi Changning slapped a small bluetooth speaker against his chest. "Hold on to that confidence. You're judging today."

Wenyuan's small square was away from the teaching and administration blocks, over near the sports field. Alumni who had once had a band had cleared it out, and these days it was used for events, with open-air performances at festivals and for the leavers.

There were already plenty of people waiting round it. They opened a path when Gi Changning appeared, revealing the three first years in the middle. "Right, here she is."

Zhou Shaoyu went ahead, saw that one of the first years had a speaker of his own and started laughing. "What's this? You issue a challenge and bring your own backing track?"

There was nothing kind in that laugh. What it meant, from the inside out, was that the first years could not take a loss, and that choosing your own music for a battle is cheating.

The short one, who had gone to Gi Changning's classroom in the first place, went dark in the face. "Watch your mouth."

Zhou Shaoyu's family were in media and he had a fine command of the sideways insult. He put on a look of complete innocence. "Well, you tell me. What's wrong with my mouth?"

The short one was easy to light. He took a step forward with his fist closed. "You."

Zhou Shaoyu did not move, which multiplied the mockery.

Gi Changning put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back. "Master Zhou. Are you here for a street fight?"

"I wouldn't rule it out."

Wenyuan let its pupils take up whatever interests they liked. It did not let them fight in public.

Gi Changning rolled her eyes and settled it. "Here's what we'll do. We use your speaker, and somebody on my side shuffles a playlist. One judge from you, one from me. All right?"

It was not a formal battle, so there was no need for the full rules, and of the thirty minutes of break a good chunk had already gone. Quick was best.

The two sides conferred and that was that. Gi Changning against two, with the spare first year judging alongside Zhou Shaoyu. For the music they borrowed a phone off somebody watching and found a playlist with enough fire in it.

The fizzy drink bottle spun lightly in Gi Changning's hand, and the neck of it came round to point at the short one.

He grinned, very satisfied with that, and warmed up with two floor moves meant to put some pressure on her. When Gi Changning showed no particular reaction he snapped his fingers, bored.

Music.

Breaking is one of the most spectacular things in street dance, hard and heavy on technique. The short one kept the beat with his hands and feet, and after one heavy drum he went into a dazzling run of toprock, then, before the next, put one hand on the ground and threw a genuinely beautiful air flare.

Most of the onlookers had never been near street dance, and the trick of it carried them. They made admiring noises.

The cheering wound him up further. He landed, crooked a finger at Gi Changning and then turned it down at her, which is as rude as a hand gets.

Gi Changning did not react at all. She was moving with the beat, looking for the right moment to come in.

Having failed to get a rise out of her, and with the crowd that warm, he swept his hair back smugly and went straight into a Thomas flare.

The music at that point was laying down the low drums before the lift, which meant the Thomas flare had come away from the track entirely.

Zhou Shaoyu could not help pointing at his own ear, as if to say, that's it? The first year judging beside him could not look either.

At which point Gi Changning moved.

The drums came in heavy with a guitar on top of them, and she met the beat with a run of tutting so sharp it dazzled. Her movements were wide and unhesitating, there was no nerves in any of it, her eyes were bright, her face and her body sat exactly on the music, and every time her gaze crossed the crowd somebody screamed.

As though she had taken all of them into her world with her.

Zhou Shaoyu sat down cross-legged on the ground and said to the first year beside him, "There. That's the distance between you and her."

Gi Changning was not street trained at all. She had done ballet from a young age and then classical, and only met jazz and contemporary through Meng Lai. In street dance she was better at hip-hop, which is easy to get into and takes everything in. All that earlier training gave her an understanding of dance that nobody else had, and with natural ability on top of it, and a personality that took up room, there were plenty of people in the club who could not stand her when she arrived. Zhou Shaoyu had been one of them.

It had gone the same way then, except in the big studio, a dozen of them shamelessly battling one new arrival. That was where Zhou Shaoyu first saw what Gi Changning's body could do to a piece of music.

Whether a track was hard or soft, she caught what it was almost instantly and built steps to fit it in no time at all. There was a particular magic in her. When she danced, an audience could not look anywhere else.

That is what real ability looks like.

Out on the square, the short one felt the force of her the moment she came in. The eyes of the crowd were sliding off him onto her, and they were cheering for her. Whether it was the pressure or the exertion, his heart began to go faster. After Gi Changning finished a floor move he lost his concentration for a second, his arm went crooked on a freeze, his balance went with it and he went down.

A faint hissing came from the crowd.

He flushed red and hit the ground with his fist, furious with himself. Since middle school he had resented Gi Changning for coming to street dance late, and the Ji name had stopped him going anywhere near her. Now he finally had a chance to humiliate her, and the person who had issued the challenge and the person humiliated were both him.

Zhou Shaoyu clicked his tongue. "Right. That's decided. Any objections?"

The first year judge said, "No objections."

A dancer with a strong head recovers fast after a mistake and makes it back. He had not only failed to make it back, he was lying on the ground as if his nerve had gone entirely. Even a friend could not referee that crookedly in public. Nobody was going to object.

Gi Changning carried on as if nothing had happened, untouched by the other side's mistake. Her arms opened out under the guitar and shivered with the beat like current going through her, and on the next heavy note she threw the same shoulder freeze he had, in reverse. She winked at the crowd on the far side, went forward into exactly the fall he had taken, and in the middle of the gasp put both hands down and used her waist to send herself into a back flip in completely the other direction, landing on one knee, and brushed her thumb across the end of her nose.

All of it in one piece, and the music stopped.

Zhou Shaoyu was clapping hard before anyone else caught up. "Beautiful."

Somebody who knew her shouted, "Ning, you're unbelievable!"

That last move was a slap across the short one's face.

Gi Changning got up, brushed the dust off her shoulder and her knee, and paid him no further attention at all. She crooked a finger at the tall one. "Next."

---

By the time Ji Ran and Zheng Yao got to the small square, there were three deep round the edge of it.

Zheng Yao was tall and used to this. She got Ji Ran through the crowd, and in no time they had a view from the front.

Gi Changning had changed into a tracksuit and trainers for dancing, with a black support and a fingerless glove on each wrist, and her shoulder-length hair pulled into a low tail with a thin band. Loose strands stuck to her forehead with sweat. She wiped them away with a sleeve, lazy and not losing an inch of ground. "Next."

Zheng Yao asked a girl she knew beside her, "How's it going?"

The girl was clearly a devotee. "He isn't lasting one round against her."

The short boy who had just lost sat with a face like a wet weekend. A bet is a bet, so he had to leave the ring, and as he passed the tall one their shoulders touched and a look went between them.

Music again.

This was not the first time Ji Ran had seen Gi Changning dance. At the welcome evening in their first year she had led, throwing herself about under the lights as if she had been made to shine like that.

The small square had no lights and no proper sound, and Gi Changning had no heavy stage makeup. She was simply dancing to the music, and though she was shorter and lighter than the boy she was up against, there was nobody to look at but her.

Gi Changning was sure of herself. It was in the tilt of her mouth and in the cleanness of her movement. She did not seem ever to have doubted what she was building, as if music nobody could see were leading her body about. She put one hand down, ran through a sequence of steps and went up into a handstand freeze on a crisp run of drums, and the tracksuit slid a little with gravity and showed a flat, hard stomach.

Ji Ran touched her own without meaning to.

The music stopped a blink later, and Zhou Shaoyu held up three fingers, for the three times the tall one had repeated himself.

The first year judge gave him a look beyond description and spread his hands, which meant: you were terrible and there is nothing I can do.

Gi Changning had won again.

Ji Ran found herself clapping.

The winner's grin was wide. Two battles had not been enough to warm her up, and she was barely out of breath. She looked at her two beaten opponents and said scornfully, "Without the Ji name behind me I can still carve you up."

She did not lower her voice for it. Zhou Shaoyu gave her a thumbs-up, and a wave of that's our Ning went round the crowd.

Gi Changning threw her head back proudly, and at the edge of her vision caught Ji Ran, who stood out in that crowd like a different species. Her eyes lit. She put an arm up to wave, told Zhou Shaoyu she was off, and before he could answer she had come over and taken Ji Ran's arm.

Zheng Yao could read a situation. "Ji Ran, you go with Gi Changning while she changes. I'll walk back with the others."

Ji Ran smiled helplessly and left the ring with her.

Warm after all that, Gi Changning pulled her zip down and asked cheerfully, "How was I?"

"Good to watch."

She knew nothing about street dance, and was worried that was too thin an answer, so she went carefully through which moves she had liked.

Gi Changning put her hands behind her back, and her chest came out further with every word of praise. The grin would not be held down. She knew Ji Ran did not understand a thing about it and was delighted with how seriously she meant it. "That bit," she said as they walked, "is a hand flow combination. You have to take it fast or it isn't pretty. Though I'm better at putting a routine together than..."

---

In the dullness of school life, something as good as a dance battle had gone round the whole second year in no time. When Gi Changning got back to class six, everyone who had watched escorted her to her desk like a planet with moons, and free praise poured into her ears until the bell went.

An ordinary day went by. With three minutes left of the last lesson the form teacher held a short class meeting, the point of which was to work hard, and that the parents' evening was on Friday.

Gi Changning, loose and easy with the relief of the day being over, froze solid at the words parents' evening. She sat holding the strap of her bag like somebody struck by lightning.

Oh hell. A parents' evening means the results go up. Were her results fit to be seen by anybody?

After school she met Ji Ran for the bus home with her head down and her feet dragging.

"What's wrong?" Ji Ran said.

Gi Changning produced an expression halfway to crying. "Ranran. Who used to go to your parents' evenings?"

"Mum." Ji Ran worked out what the problem was and tried to help. "She won't be angry about marks."

Gi Changning thought about that monstrous results sheet of hers and sank further. "I don't think Mum has ever had the chance to be angry about marks."

Ji Ran had nothing to say.

There was no answering that.

Ji Ran was not good at this sort of thing, and since Gi Changning was still flat she opened a new line herself. "What about you? Who went to yours?"

Gi Changning came back to herself and said uncertainly, "My brother and Dad took turns, I think. You don't need to worry. I'm the one holding up the bottom, so whichever of them goes, there's a nice surprise waiting."

Not like her. All she had for her mum and dad was a nasty shock.

Ji Ran had nothing to say.

Why did Ningning seem even lower than before?