Chapter 2

Unless there was something wrong with your head, you didn’t go around being beautiful without knowing it.

I’d deliberately hidden my face behind a hacked-off fringe and black-framed glasses, keeping a low profile on the fringes of school life. I didn’t want trouble.

Show your beauty before you can protect yourself, and someone will pluck you before you’re ready.

That was my instinct for survival.

But things were different now.

I felt my deskmate and her accomplices ought to pay a little for what they’d done.

I returned the birthday present and used the refund for a haircut, contact lenses, and a neat new dress.

Then I went to find Jiang Dai, the best-looking boy in school.

“Let’s make a deal.”

“Huh?” He stopped wheeling his bicycle. “Who are you?”

Of course he didn’t know me.

He was two years above me and lived in the villa section of our residential complex.

The fact that we lived in the same complex—even if I was in one of the high-rises—should tell you my family wasn’t poor.

I lived like a rat only because my parents wouldn’t spend money on me.

There was no fixing their favouritism. I could put obstacles in the way of their loving little life with my brother, but I couldn’t get more money out of them.

They were always on guard against any attempt I made to claim a share of the family’s resources.

Jiang Dai started wheeling his bicycle away.

I grabbed the handlebars.

“Jiang Dai, be my boyfriend in name only, and I’ll keep every girl who’s after you away.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Not afraid of getting beaten up?”

Some troublemakers from outside school had their eyes on him too. Their queen bee turned up to pester him every day, and he was thoroughly sick of it.

But even she had a code. She wouldn’t be the other woman.

“No,” I said.

Only then did he give me a proper look.

“You know, someone who looks like you standing beside me would be pretty convincing.”

My new look caused quite a stir when I walked into school.

My deskmate wasn’t particularly surprised.

That made sense.

She’d been the first to see through my disguise.

When Jiang Dai came to bring me breakfast, the mockery in her eyes finally gave way to anger.

But she still smiled at me, as though she’d never targeted me at all. “Su Ying, what’s going on between you and Jiang Dai?” she asked affectionately.

I gave her a sweet smile.

“He’s my new boyfriend.”

My deskmate became her old pleasant self again and started getting close to me.

When Jiang Dai and I went on dates, she insisted on tagging along, supposedly for my own good.

“With an extra person there, you won’t get caught if a teacher or your parents see you.”

I didn’t just agree. I invited her whole little sisterhood.

Jiang Dai played along a few times, rather resignedly.

“Had enough yet?”

“Just about.”

I’d already added every one of them on my fake account.

I never said who I was. I just occasionally posted pictures flaunting wealth on my Moments feed, tagged with our residential complex. They assumed the account belonged to Jiang Dai.

The first to confess was my deskmate’s inseparable best friend.

I replied,

You’re lovely, but your best friend has been so good to me too.

Honestly, I don’t know what to do.

She soon sent back a string of barbed remarks about my deskmate, praise on the surface and insults underneath.

Wonderful. Plenty of material for sowing discord.

When my deskmate confessed,

I sent her screenshots of those remarks and added,

I’m only telling you because I’m on your side. You won’t betray my trust, will you?

Before long, the clique she’d so painstakingly built had split apart. They were at one another’s throats.

Really, if just one of them had been straightforward enough to bring it all into the open and compare stories, they’d have spotted the problem.

Unfortunately,

birds of a feather flock together.

I chuckled.

Jiang Dai pressed an ice-cold Coke against my cheek.

“That happy?”

I hid nothing from him. I told him every last scheme.

“Don’t worry. I never once mentioned your name. They can’t make trouble for you.”

He tilted his head and smiled.

“They won’t make trouble for me.

“Some people never pick a fight with anyone above them.”

That gave me something to think about.

He went on,

“Su Ying, don’t get addicted to dealing with people who don’t matter.

“You won’t have many chances to climb. Your time is precious.

“Being pretty only gets you through the door.

“The really clever ones read books in show business and get ahead on looks at a good university.”

That wasn’t ‘clever’ in any admirable sense. But for someone in my position, it was the best strategy available.