Once Chen Deping and Han Qingshi got down to business, they lost all track of time. When the assistant came to remind Han Qingshi that the award ceremony was about to begin, she hesitated, then said, “Go in my place.”
“All right,” the assistant replied.
The auditorium.
Mu Xia had been seated at the end of the first row, where it would be easy for her to get up and leave when it was time to speak.
Across from her was the stage. A nameplate for the GN representative sat directly in front of her, printed in neat block characters: Han Qingshi.
One minute before the ceremony began, it was suddenly taken away and replaced with another name.
By the time the award ceremony ended, news of Mu Xia’s serious mistake on the project had already spread.
On the way back to the dorm, plenty of people she knew asked what had happened. She brushed them all off with a smile.
She still wasn’t completely sure about a few things, and she didn’t want to talk about them yet.
When her roommate and best friend, Yue Qian, heard what had happened, she left her boyfriend behind and rushed back to find Mu Xia.
As soon as she arrived, she spotted a woman trying to slip away after sensing the heavy mood in the dorm. Yue Qian quickly dragged her back and pushed her into a chair. “Quit trying to act cute. It won’t work on me!”
Mu Xia pouted, dropped the cute expression, and tugged at the head of a yellow duck cushion. “If you already know, why are you asking me?”
“I don’t know a damn thing!” Yue Qian rescued the duck, whose neck Mu Xia looked ready to snap, and sat on it. “Unless I’ve lost my memory, I sacrificed my summer vacation to help you fix that algorithm. How could there still be a problem? Did you fail to submit the latest code?”
“Exactly!” The other roommates were just as baffled. “The last few days of summer vacation, we’d see you working until five in the morning if you started early, or two in the morning if you started late. Every time Qianqian refreshed her Moments, there you were, looking half-dead from working overtime. If there was still a problem after all that, I’d start questioning reality.”
“Your Moments? Pay up!” Mu Xia reached for Yue Qian. “Ten cents for every picture you took without permission.”
Smack! Yue Qian swatted her hand away. “Let’s deal with the real problem first. I’ll give you a hundred for each one afterward.”
Mu Xia rubbed her hands together, delighted. “Really?”
“I promise. Damn it, I almost let you change the subject again.” Yue Qian glared at her. “And how did Han Shuyan dare promise to fix it in a day? Algorithm optimization doesn’t happen overnight. It’d take at least a week just to compare the data and find the problem, let alone optimize the code. Does she have any idea what she’s capable of?”
“Easy, sis.” Mu Xia cracked open a can of cola for Yue Qian, but her playful smile had faded. “We share a dorm. We see each other every day. Don’t say things like that in front of her.”
“Tch! She’s such a brilliant scholar she thinks the rest of us are beneath her. She couldn’t care less about living with a bunch of academic failures.” Yue Qian was still fuming. “Three years in the same dorm. Did she ever come to a dorm get-together? Did she ever go out and cut loose with us? If it weren’t for you and her… Oh, damn!”
Yue Qian suddenly realized something. Her expression turned serious. “Mumu, does Han Shuyan know your computer password?”
The smile vanished from Mu Xia’s face. She gazed toward the doorway without a word.
Yue Qian turned around, puzzled.
Han Shuyan had just pushed open the door, her backpack slung over one shoulder.
Yue Qian slammed her cola onto the table. “Did you have something to do with what happened to Mumu?”
Han Shuyan tossed her backpack onto the desk, her face darkening. “Yue Qian, watch your mouth. You’re too old to act like a stupid, reckless middle schooler.”
“Fuck! Who are you calling stupid?” Yue Qian’s temper flared, and she stopped holding back. “Your PhD Eldest Senior Brother couldn’t solve the problem, but you just happened to know how to optimize it? Did you wake up one morning with a sudden revelation? When did the feng shui in this dorm get so good? Or did you find another way—like stealing someone else’s work?”
“Qianqian.” Before Yue Qian could say anything worse, Mu Xia came over and caught her by the wrist. She shook her head silently.
Yue Qian knew about Mu Xia and Han Shuyan. As furious as she was, she didn’t want to be the one who wrecked their relationship. She swallowed the anger burning in her throat.
Mu Xia gave Yue Qian’s wrist a gentle squeeze, then walked over to Han Shuyan and said calmly, “Can we talk?”
Han Shuyan scoffed and yanked the door open.
They went to the little square in front of the dorm, where people hung their laundry and blankets out to dry.
After a long silence, Mu Xia spoke first. “You never used to come study with me at the library. Even when we’d just gotten together in sophomore year, you still wouldn’t go when I asked. Then the day before yesterday, you came to me on your own. I was actually pretty happy.”
Mu Xia had a habit of looking people in the eye when she spoke. It made her seem sincere. With her bright smile, which rarely left her face, she could win people over with ease.
At the moment, Han Shuyan only felt annoyed. “Just say what you want to say. You don’t have to dance around it.”
Mu Xia smiled faintly and looked away. “All right. That day, I’d already gone downstairs. I only wanted to go to the social sciences library and read for a while. Then you asked me to go back and get my laptop because yours wouldn’t start, and you wanted to borrow mine for the night. I didn’t think twice about how strange that was. I even let you submit the code for me. I thought that with our relationship, I could trust you to handle it. I guess I was wrong. Yanyan, you deleted my code, didn’t you?”
As she reached the end, Mu Xia’s smile grew brighter than the sunset. Her eyes caught the fiery light, lovely and full of life.
Everyone who knew Mu Xia said her smile was guileless and impossible to ignore. Han Shuyan had never seen it that way. To her, it was fake and grating.
“Yes, I did!” Han Shuyan admitted. Years of pent-up resentment burst out of her, hurting both herself and Mu Xia. “I didn’t just delete your code. I stole the part you’d already optimized! When I told the professor I could fix the bug in a day, I meant it would only take an hour!”
Han Shuyan’s anger extinguished the last of Mu Xia’s hope that she’d been wrong.
Mu Xia gripped the back of a chair and leaned forward, squinting toward the fiery sky. “Yanyan, you don’t have to do this. If you wanted a chance to prove yourself, I would have helped you.”
“There you go again, talking like that! It doesn’t matter how hard the problem is—you always act as if it’s nothing!” Han Shuyan was livid. “Do you know how much people hate that about you? When we started school, I was the one ranked first in the program. You only got into A University through a transfer. If our department hadn’t suddenly started a special program and opened admissions to students from other schools, how could you have transferred from that awful School 13 into A University’s best school, its best major, with its best advisor?”
“I did badly on the entrance exam, but I got another chance to choose. Was that not allowed?” Mu Xia asked with a smile.
“Of course it was allowed! But why did you have to choose our major?” Han Shuyan’s eyes reddened. “Ever since you came, everyone’s attention has been on you. Is it really such a big deal to rank first after switching majors? Are you that happy about winning the national scholarship? Ask yourself: looks, figure, family, ability—what do you have that I don’t? Why did everything that belonged to me have to go to you the moment you showed up? Because you’re younger and look so harmless, and you can call everyone ‘Brother’ and ‘Sister’ and make them like you? Mu Xia, is playing the sweet, innocent girl really that much fun?”
“It isn’t fun.” Mu Xia stood up and tilted her head to look at Han Shuyan. “Since we got together, haven’t I stopped calling other girls ‘Sister’?”
Mu Xia’s words turned all the anger in Han Shuyan’s chest into a dull ache she had nowhere to put.
They had started dating at the beginning of the second semester of sophomore year, after the rankings came out.
It was Mu Xia’s first final exam in the School of Computer Science since transferring into the major.
She’d beaten Han Shuyan by four points, taking first place after Han Shuyan had held it for three straight semesters.
That day, Han Shuyan had stared at the grades for a long time.
When she returned to the dorm at dusk, she’d been the one to confess to Mu Xia.
Mu Xia had only asked, “I get clingy when I’m dating someone. Can you handle that?”
Han Shuyan had said yes. In less than two weeks, they’d gone from strangers who happened to share a dorm to a couple.
Over the next two years, Mu Xia hadn’t been as clingy as Han Shuyan had imagined. Maybe she simply hadn’t wanted to waste her time.
Mu Xia hadn’t minded. She remembered every important holiday and gave Han Shuyan countless little surprises, large and small.
The longest surprise had taken nearly a month to prepare, right in the middle of finals. Even then, Mu Xia had still taken first place by a comfortable margin.
That hadn’t moved Han Shuyan. If anything, she resented people like Mu Xia, who could shine without even trying. As long as Mu Xia was around, no one would ever notice Han Shuyan getting up early and staying late at the library.
She was jealous.
Even now.
She was tired.
“Mu Xia, let’s break up,” Han Shuyan said.
Mu Xia’s smile stiffened for a few seconds, then returned. “Okay. I still want to apologize. I had no idea you hated me this much. But tell me—did you ever like me? Even a little?” She held two fingers barely a centimeter apart.
Han Shuyan’s gaze darkened. Her hands curled into fists at her sides. “No. Not for a second. I’ve been in love with someone since I was a child. She’s mature and dependable, and she’s successful in her career. Everything I do is to catch up to her. I only got together with you because I wanted to see what the computer science prodigy would look like groveling in front of me.”
“Oh, I see.” Mu Xia interlaced her fingers and stretched both arms over her head, entirely without grace. Then she turned toward Han Shuyan, her expression colder than Han Shuyan had ever seen. “Yanyan, one last question. Do you know what I’m like when I’m not playing the sweet, innocent girl?”
Han Shuyan felt a chill run through her. For no clear reason, this version of Mu Xia frightened her. “What are you like?” she asked, her voice carrying a faint tremor.
Mu Xia lowered her hands. The weight of her gaze felt almost oppressive. “Petty, and I never let anything go.”
That evening, Mu Xia returned to the dorm alone.
The lights were off, and all her roommates were there. The room had the spooky feel of a haunted house.
Mu Xia didn’t dare go in. She clung timidly to the doorway. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” Yue Qian crooked a finger at her, her tone certain. “We all know. Han Shuyan was behind the project mess, wasn’t she?”
Mu Xia gave a dry laugh and shuffled inside. “Nothing like that. Don’t make things up.”
Yue Qian scoffed. “Then why does she look so guilty? The class monitor just came by and said she’s changing dorms.”
“Changing dorms in senior year?” Mu Xia was surprised. Then she thought about it. Maybe it was for the best. No more awkwardness. “Where’s she moving?”
Yue Qian gestured in disdain. “Room 306. She’ll be living with those oddballs from information warfare.”
“…Hah.” That was certainly one way to put it.
Mu Xia sprawled across the bottom bunk, reached over to the Dorm Leader’s desk, stole a crisp jujube, and tossed it into her mouth. “Why’s everyone in the dorm today? Did all your boyfriends run out of credit, so you couldn’t call them to take you out?”
“Give it a rest. We’re all here because of you.” The Dorm Leader leaned back and handed Mu Xia the rest of her half-bag of jujubes. “What Han Shuyan did was awful. We were worried you’d feel bad, so we didn’t go out.”
Mu Xia took another one and popped it into her mouth. She didn’t argue.
There was no point denying what everyone could see.
“Mumu, if you feel awful, just cry. No one will laugh at you,” Yue Qian said gently.
It would have been strange not to feel hurt after being stabbed in the back by someone who had been close enough to count as family.
Mu Xia only smiled and said nothing, crunching her way through the jujubes.
Yue Qian couldn’t stand seeing her swallow her hurt like this. She rolled up her sleeves and declared, “Come on. I’m taking you drinking! We’ll drown your sorrows!”
The Dorm Leader was the first to volunteer. “I’m coming, too. I’ll help drag you two home.”
The Eldest Sister said, “I’ll call a car.”
Now that Han Shuyan was gone, Second Sister, next in line, added, “I’ll get the door.”
Yue Qian’s face went blank. “All right, everyone, break it up. Where I’m taking Mumu is dangerous. You’re not suited for it.”
Ignoring the other three as they peppered her with questions, Yue Qian whisked Mu Xia out of the dorm.
It wasn’t until they were on the subway that Mu Xia finally remembered to ask, “Where are we going?”
Yue Qian gave her a sly smile and leaned in to whisper, “A lesbian bar. We’re going to find you a pretty big sister.”
