"I LOVE HOW they still haven't removed Clark's stuff from the school email. Or the register. Or literally anything at all. It's almost like he's still here." Yunji pretended to be teary eyed as her hands flew to her heart. "Though he'll always be here in our heart, really."

I coughed. "I'd suggest you quiet down. We're walking by a few of his friends, you know."

"Oh, fuck them. What are they going to do? Break my arm? I'm not one of the day students or the local weeklies. I'm a full boarder. My parents are going to go to the end of the world to make sure they get punished."

"And another one bites the dust?" I suggested hesitantly.

"And another one bites the dust," Yunji said with mock grimness. "I'm such a vengeful bitch."

"Is this meant to be revenge for something?"

"I'm sure it is. I'm sure they've pissed me off at some point and I just forgot." Yunji flicked her ponytail in the air. "It'll be justified, somehow."

"Technically speaking," I said gently, "you'd have been the one inciting the argument in the first place."

"But they'd be the one throwing the first punch, isn't that right? By that logic, Clark did nothing wrong. Kai fucked with his girl first. And let's be real. We all think Kai kind of deserves it."

"But we don't say it out loud."

"No, we blame it all on Clark, because he's the one who got expelled and otherwise it just puts Kai in an uncomfortable position too. Though I doubt they actually thought that far."

Yunji and I had agreed long ago that the kids here were pure. Not in the sense that they were all angel-like obedient children, because they were the opposite of that, but in the fact that they rarely went into hostility that the competitiveness back in China caused. At my old school, for example, it was so common for girls to talk shit about each other and try to pull each other down in more ways than one. But while people still talked behind people's backs, it was rarely because of true menace.

Yunji said they were obnoxious. I thought they just didn't have the need. They weren't half as competitive as my old school, especially since half the kids didn't give a shit about their grades.

If there was jealousy here, it was about who was dating who. Who was prettier. Who had the nicer clothes. It was so much simpler than my old school, where everyone was watching out for everyone and anyone could stab you in the back. It was a nice change of scenery, being able to make friends for once in my life without my mum giving me her extremely unwanted (but usually helpful) input about whether or not the newest friend I made was after something or genuinely wanting to be friends. And whether she'd betray me or if she'd actually stick through with me.

It was fucking exhausting. But it also meant everyone here felt almost... dumb. Immature. They didn't notice half the things I did. Adelina was one example of that. She had no idea that Yunji and I felt mistreated by Nadia until we said it ourselves.

It was a kind of blessing, in a way, but also extremely annoying for those of us like me and Yunji. Because if we pointed things out, it made us seem bad. It made us seem petty. And so we had to keep all our little opinions to ourselves.

God knew it was annoying. But Yunji and I could just blabber away our annoyances in Mandarin, since almost no one else spoke it anyways. Most of the Hong Kongers were quite bad with it, or so they said.

It didn't matter. We weren't bitching about them anyways.

We made our way back to house, Yunji ranting about what had happened during her lessons today and how someone had been extremely rude to her and fucked her entire group project up, and how she'd managed to save the entire group by doing everything by herself. Apparently, all her group members had been very impressed with her and now considered her their god.

Or something like that.

It was a rather common occurrence for us Asian full boarding girls at this school, I'd realise. The boys, they didn't bother. If their group was lazy, they were lazy as well. But us girls? We'd do a four-person project all by ourselves if it meant we still looked like hard-working students in our teacher's eyes at the end of it.

Either way, I never had to worry about finding group mates during my English projects. People flocked to me. It was a strange feeling, because most of them were people who wouldn't take too glances at me in another situation. They didn't do it on purpose, I don't think. It just made sense in their brain. They thought they had nothing in common with me otherwise, but they still saw me as their "friend" in their heads. If I approached them, they'd still smile and be nice and chat with me, but it would always end in an awkward silence that sent either one of us away.

So, they never felt the need to talk to me unless they needed my help.

And academic-wise, they'd quickly realised that they frequently needed my help.

I didn't think I was any smarter than any of them. I didn't think any of us were smarter than any of them. The difference was in culture. China had always put academics first. In the past, if you could do well enough in the ke ju exams (and be male), you could become an official. And then you could climb your way up to riches and splendour and power. There were even positions for female officials in many dynasties. Academics always came first back home. If you had good grades, you could do anything. That was how things had always worked.

But not here. Here, everyone focused on childhood bliss. They didn't even have their first exams until they were in their teens, when my first school exam had happened when I was six years old. It was a completely different way of things, and why we all excelled so much academically. We knew how to study. We'd been forced to memorise information after information since we were born. They hadn't.

Everything had a reason. You just had to look hard enough.

Our stop at Lok House was brief before we both grabbed our wallets and headed to the cafe, laughing and giggling as we did so. Adelina was busy at some club, so it was only us two. I pushed the door open and we skipped in.

At the snack bar, I used my magic to levitate the ones I wanted to buy before bringing them to the counter. Ten pounds total. It would last me a little while.

But when I turned, I froze in my tracks before snapping towards Yunji.

"What's up?" she asked, her brows knitted together as she paid for her own snacks.

In a very quiet voice, I said, "The four Aesir boys. Right there. I can feel their gaze, Luo xiaojie."

Yunji let out a loud laugh that they must have definitely heard. But they wouldn't have been able to do anything about it either. The rage I'd feel had once again subsided in the past few days, and now I only thought it was ridiculous.

That was how things worked, I supposed. My own three stages of grief. From sadness to anger to humour.

"What, are you going to walk over and start flaming them again? Dui dao ta men bu ke zhi li?" Scold them until they can't function anymore?

"I don't think I'm that good."

"Oh please," Yunji said as she gathered her snacks and shoved them in her hoodie's pockets. "You most definitely are. I don't know how you have a tongue like that, but you do."

"Is that a compliment?"

"Of the highest order. What I'd do to have a mouth like yours. Both figuratively and literally."

I gave a little pout. "It's too small."

"Well, mine's too fucking big. The grass is always greener on the other side, Honoria Song. Remember that."

"Your mouth is perfectly fine, calm down."

"Like I said, the grass is greener on the other side. We never see what's good about ourselves, only what's good with others. What's that poem again? Envy by Mary Lamb?"

That was one of the poems we'd learnt for our English JCMs, which were the exact same as the GCSEs version.

Immediately, I recited the line I knew she was thinking about. "And should it fret, you would suppose/It ne'er had seen its own red rose."

Now she directed a glance of utter disbelief at me. "You already memorised it?"

I scratched my neck. "I've been memorising like, ten quotes a day for our exams. There's so much shit to memorise I wanted to start early. I just do it before I sleep."

"Why?" she asked, "why would you do that to yourself?"

"I got stressed out," I admitted. "Glanced at all the quotes we had to memorise and thought I might as well start now rather than later."

She was muttering something to herself as we left the cafeteria and walked down the path. Probably cursing me and my work ethic. I couldn't precisely blame her. I startled myself with it. God knew I hadn't worked half this hard while I was in Hong Kong.

We walked past Isabela, also heading to the cafe, and stopped to say hi before continuing on our way.

We went to our common room, a large and spacious chamber with a wood-based design. There were large, arched windows on one wall that overlooked the entirety of the back of the school with light pink silk curtains draped over it, and three large couches lined up against three walls of the room. The fourth had a small opening that led to the accompanying kitchen, one that I often used on the weekends. A large-screen TV was next to it, with a Nintendo Switch plugged in that some of us liked to play when we were free.

We'd just sat down and began to dig through some of the snacks we'd bought when Adelina stormed in, huffing and puffing. "Guys. Guys. I... I have news."

Yunji and I were expectedly very confused. I raised a chocolate bar in her direction. "Want one?"

Adelina immediately ran over and yanked it out of my hand, peeling the packet open as she said, "I just got cornered by Withington..." which wasn't the best opening, but she didn't look angry, just surprised. "He told me to tell you guys that Clark Ford is coming back."

"What?" Yunji's shriek tore through the room, and I pulled her back down to the couch before glancing around to make sure no one had heard or been shocked into cardiac arrest.

I turned to Adelina after I was sure of it. "Elaborate," I demanded. "Elaborate now."

"Apparently his stuff is back in his room."

"Have they seen him?" I asked, blinking furiously. "His stuff just randomly showed up?"

Clark's stuff had been packed and taken away last week. And he'd already been expelled fair and square—hadn't shown up to class at all. Unless...

Yunji voiced my inner thoughts for me. "Let me guess. The school just got a massive donation."

And then all three of us fell into silence.

We had no evidence that had happened. None at all. But it was also the only theory we could come up with for how Clark Ford got expelled and then somehow got let back in within a single week. It made no sense, no sense at all.

Yes, it didn't affect us, but at the same time... damn.

Yunji said what I wanted to again. "I can smell the bribery and corruption from this very common room."

Adelina let out a choke of laughter. Yunji stared at her with her deadest stare. "Am I wrong, Roche? Am I wrong?"

Adelina shook her head, swallowing her giggles. "No. You are not wrong.You are very much correct. Bet the school is rolling in the money given by the mysterious benefactor right now. They must be overjoyed. Perhaps they'd build an entire new wing."

I coughed. "I don't think they got that much money."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Adelina admitted. "I asked my parents if they knew the Fords. They're actually fucking filthy rich. They sell sports equipment, you know, so my family has some level of friendship with them. Clark's house is apparently so big you could get lost in it."

Yunji muttered under her breath, "Dear god."

"Precisely."

"This was a strange turn of events."

Adelina shrugged. "Didn't Jason Reese go through the same thing last year?"

"Yeah," Yunji said, "but he still got asked to leave over the summer holidays. He did get expelled in the end, basically, just in a nicer way."

Adelina blinked. "Oh, I thought he left of his own accord."

Yunji shook her head. "He got asked to leave."

"Pity. Apparently he's hot."

Yunji stared at Adelina for a long time. "Ade. Darling. He does drugs."

Adelina just flashed a smile before sitting down beside me and munching away on the chocolate bar. "It's incredible, really, the shit that happens in this school. I never, ever, ever thought in my life a school like this could actually exist. Could you believe it? I couldn't."

"It's like Gossip Girl," Yunji mumbled.

"It's literally Gossip Girl," Adelina said. "We even have a gossip account. Albeit a shit one, but still a gossip account."

I deadpanned, "Most schools have a secrets account, you know. My old one did too. I still follow it."

"Yeah, but you don't get explosive shit like this."

I narrowed my eyes. "Aren't we a little melodramatic? And too gossipy? And a bit nasty? This doesn't affect us at all, and we have nothing really against them but we're still talking trash behind their backs—"

Yunji cut me off. "We are not talking trash. This is exactly what happened. You mean to tell me Clark Ford just randomly got accepted back because the school changed his mind? That Queenie didn't cheat on him god knows how many times and he did the same thing in revenge? That..."

"Shush," Adelina warned. "People might hear you."

Yunji shut her mouth with clear reluctance.

My eyelashes fluttered as I blinked. It was almost laughable, now that I thought about it. Before I'd come, I had had so many goals for this school year. Good grades. Make new friends. Not just one or two, but many. Try things I'd never dared try before. Have the best years of my life.

And now it was reduced to this. My social circle—even with my recent expansion, still mostly limited to the Asian full boarders. My grades, not bad but nowhere near what I wanted it to be. Trying new things? I'd tried nothing. Absolutely nothing. I'd achieved nothing. This entire year has been a waste so far and it was already March.

It was pathetic.

But I didn't say that out loud, didn't dare let a sliver of what I felt show on my face. Instead I let my eyes turn to the ceiling with its lights and let the flare blind my eyes before eventually letting my gaze flicker away.

Pathetic. It was so pathetic.

I thought I was over being jealous of everyone here. And that I truly didn't want to be relevant. That I was fine being invisible with just some friends around school. I don't know who I was trying to fool. Myself, probably, but I was so wrong. In these moments, after the joy of laughing about what the latest ridiculous piece of news around school was, all I felt was emptiness.

I'd been well-known for once in this school.

And it was because of a boy.

It went against every single bone in my body.

I still got bitter every time someone was gossiped about. Because at least people knew who they were, and they cared about what they did. No one did that with me.

It was a ridiculous thing to be jealous about, but it was true. I suppose when you were left with nothing you started craving the smallest of things. And it all started becoming so impossible to get until you were filled with nothing but want and envy and jealousy, until it rotted through your very soul.

But it was all just ridiculous.

So I cleared my brain of those thoughts and turned back to my friends.

—

CLARK FORD WAS back, and the entire student body was rejoicing.

Obviously, that was an overstatement. Half of us had silently promised to stay away from him, and could barely look him in the eye. Rumours spread everywhere of how he'd gotten back in, even though there was only really one. But soon afterwards we went back to our ordinary life. Easter was nearing.

I was heading back to Hong Kong again. Though this time it was for studying and nothing else. Exams were nearing. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared.

I was fucking terrified. Last time hadn't mattered all that much, but this? This was a show of how I'd done throughout this entire year. I did not want to let my parents down. I did not want to let myself down.

I had to get good grades.

And so Easter had lost its purpose as a holiday long ago and became a chance for me to study.

My parents had arranged for me to portal to the airport again, so a week before school I once again found myself packing up for the journey. I had more things to bring this time. Textbooks, some of my artefacts... and it was all heavy too. But I had no other choice.

This was the real reason I'd come, and I wasn't about to let myself forget that.

Easter was spent in front of my desk with a stack of notes before me. My hand was cramped from how much I copied and recited, and even my parents got worried about me enough that I was forcibly taken out of the house to go shopping. If I messaged my friends, it was to ask about academic things.

I went out with Louisa and Gwen and Audrey once over Easter, but all of us had gone back quickly to continue studying at home.

Clearly, I wasn't the only one who felt the stress.

My parents caught me staring out of the window of our living room one day. I didn't step out to the balcony because the door was faulty and difficult to pull open, and the only person who ever really went out there was my mother to take care of the plants.

My mum placed her hand on my head, even though she was the same height as me. "Your birthday's next month."

My birthday was right at the end of my exams. That was a nice thing to note. I wouldn't have to be slaving away in front of my textbook during my birthday.

"I know," I said with a grin as I turned around, launching myself into my father's chest. He wrapped his hands around me, laughing.

"Anything you want?" she asked, combing a finger through my hair.

I scrunched up my nose as I glanced at her. "Not much, honestly. There isn't anything I really want right now." That was the way most of my birthdays went. I rarely ever got anything on the day itself, but instead saved up my birthday gift until I did find something I wanted. It was how I'd gotten my first phone. I saved up my birthday gift and told my parents I was willing to combine it with my Christmas and Chinese New Years' gift. To be fair, I was more than old enough by then to have gotten my old phone, but my mother had always been strict about things like that.

"You're sure?" My dad asked.

"I'm sure," I said with a cheeky smile. "If God gives me good grades for my exams, I'm willing to give up a hundred birthday gifts."

My mum's expression turned serious. "You're studying yourself dry, Manyuk. You need to let yourself take a rest. If you keep on studying like this you might get sick."

I laughed. "Mum, I'm not studying that hard."

My schedule went like this: I woke at nine and started studying at eleven. At one I usually had lunch, and half an hour after I finished I'd start studying again, with a sporadic five minutes break in between. Until dinner, after which I'd study for an hour extra before resting for the rest of the night.

I'd never studied so hard. But I was a firm believer that God rewarded anyone who worked hard. And that I'd be willing to reap the seeds I'd sowed. So I kept going.

Some days I didn't know how I kept myself going.

But then I thought about being able to get good grades, being able to show Sebastian and Theodore and Nadia and all the people who looked down on me that I was better than them, and all my complaints washed away.

I was a simple person.

And I had a goal. A goal I very, very dearly wanted to reach.

And I'd always been the kind of person who could do anything for it.