“Not so fast,” Sangui says with a laugh. “We don’t just let anyone in. You’ll have to prove yourself first—”
“How?” Ares asks at once, his heart beating so fast it hurts. Whatever Sangui says next, it doesn’t matter. He’ll do anything.
Maybe Sangui can see the desperation in his face, because after a moment, he nods. “Meet me at seven on Sunday morning. The same stop where we got off earlier. Understood?”
This time, when Sangui holds out his hand, Ares takes it and shakes it firmly, even though it’s splattered with his own blood.
6
Chanel
Step one: Learn more about him (his family, interests, dreams).
I finish applying a fresh coat of lip gloss and scroll through the contacts on my phone.
Hundreds of names blur past. Assistants from past events and girls I’ve befriended inside nightclub bathrooms or danced with at parties and boys I’ve exchanged a few flirty messages with, then never spoke to again. Half the names I don’t even remember anymore.
Finally I land on Jamie. The dial tone blends together with the incessant honking outside the tinted car window. Typical Beijing morning traffic.
“Qin, what’s up?” Jamie’s sweet, lightly Australian-accented voice comes over the speaker. Jamie likes to call everyoneqin—a kind of alternative todarling—including her private chef and strangers in shopping malls.
“Are you busy?” I ask.
“Nope. Just heading out of dance practice.” Some lightshuffling in the background, music fading with the click of a door. “And you know I’m never too busy for you.”
I laugh. “Oh my god, stop it.”
“You know it’s true.”
“Love you,” I say. “Okay, there’s someone I want you to help me search up....”
“Oh,” she says with instant interest. “Who is this? A new man in your life?”
“Something like that,” I say vaguely, because it’s easier to just go with that. It’s not as if I could tell her the truth anyway.No, he’s my new enemy, and according to a bizarre vision in a lake, I have under three weeks to find out everything I possibly can about him to stop him before my house burns down.
“What’s his name?” she asks.
“Ares Yin,” I say, and wait for her to work her magic.
Last summer, Jamie Lai joined an idol survival show and managed to sing and self-promote her way through to the end, where she was thrown into a girl group very misleadingly named The Eight. There were ten of them. (“A logistical nightmare,”she complained to me. “At every event, we’re always two seats short.”)
They released a total of two singles, neither of which did well critically or commercially, and it seemed they were on the verge of disbanding when a clip of them from the show’s earlier episodes went viral just this winter. No actual music was involved in the clip; they were heating a beef sandwich in the back of the dance studio using a regular clothing iron. This raised many questions—was it safe? Was ithygienic?Was itreally kind of genius?Was it a sign of immense privilege, that they were willing to risk ruining both the beef and the iron just for one meal? Were they being denied proper food? Did beef sandwiches need to be heated? Were beef sandwiches even good?
The impassioned debates threw them into relevancy for long enough that all the members gained tens of thousands of followers. Then, quick to capitalize on the trend, the group rush-released a song with weirdly suggestive sandwich-themed lyrics, which was so horrible that people listened to it ironically, and soon the cafés in Beijing and Shanghai started playing it, and that was when The Eightreallygained traction.
Now they’re being invited to galas and award shows, and they even have a small but dedicated fan club.
But outside of being an idol, Jamie Lai is more commonly known in Beijing’s young, elite circles for her impressive stalking skills. I’ve seen her locate a friend’s ex using nothing but the sliver of his elbow in a blurry photo from ten years ago. There was a particularly desperate time when I’d considered asking her to find out if my father was cheating, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And now I’m glad I didn’t, because she would have had a front-row seat to my family’s drama.
“Huh,” Jamie says a few moments later. “He’s not very active on social media, is he?”
“Yeah, I tried looking him up last night, and I couldn’t find any accounts,” I say.
“Don’t worry, I’ll find something,” Jamie reassures me. “Give me maybe five business days to work on it. How urgent is this?”
Extremely. My-whole-life-is-kind-of-riding-on-this urgent.“Let’sjust say I’m...veryinterested in this boy,” I say, hating myself, hating the world, hating Ares Yin for forcing these words to leave my lips.
“Damn, girl.” I can almost hear her eyebrows rising. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that about a guy before. Just how hot is he?”
