Chapter 92

An overnight drop in temperature made the city feel as though it had skipped straight from autumn toward winter.

The placement exams were over. As Elise had expected, she made it into Class One, Northbridge's highest-ranked course group. Ms. Parker was delighted, as was everyone around her. Elise was mostly relieved. All that brooding hadn't cost her the result she'd worked for.

When the dismissal bell rang, she began packing her books. Something clinked inside a small compartment of her backpack. She reached in and drew out a key.

The spare key to the skate park.

After letting her and Jade use the place, Mu had given her a copy so she could go whenever she liked. Once she'd decided to keep her distance from him, she'd stopped going. So much had happened afterward that she'd forgotten she still had it.

More than a week had passed since their last meeting. If she'd counted the days correctly, he would be leaving either today or tomorrow.

She told Nora she had something to do and left ahead of her, walking toward the skate park.

The door stood open when she arrived. Someone was inside.

Elise hesitated at the entrance, then glanced at the paving stone where Pei had hidden the key before. She could leave hers underneath it and send him a message.

What if someone took it? Pei might be that careless, but she wasn't.

After standing there for a while, she decided to go in. If Pei was the person inside, she could hand it to him and be done.

The smooth floor stretched empty before her. Behind the bar, a man took a bottle of red wine from the cabinet, examined the label and put it back. He chose another, uncorked it and turned to pour into a stemmed glass.

Elise stopped. She couldn't quite bring herself to go farther or retreat.

Mu heard her and looked up.

Too late to leave now.

She made her way to the bar, sat down and pushed the key toward him.

“Here. Your key.”

His hand paused. He stared at the key for a long moment before looking at her face, searching for hesitation, some sign that she regretted bringing it back.

He found none.

Mu tipped back his glass and emptied it.

“How much have you had?” Elise asked, frowning at the several empty bottles beside him.

“Not much.” A few bottles hardly counted for him.

Neither of them spoke again. The silence grew uncomfortable. Elise spotted the water dispenser, stood and picked up a paper cup. A drink would at least give her something to do.

“Don't drink that,” Mu said automatically.

“Hm?” She stopped with the cup in her hand.

He turned to search the cabinet. There should have been a few bottles of imported mineral water left, much like the ones he'd sent to the Whitmore house for her. It had a clean, refreshing taste.

The name started with a K, if he remembered correctly.

He found a gourd-shaped bottle with a K on the label and clear liquid inside. Was that the right one? He wasn't sure. Setting it on the bar, he went back to look. When he pulled out a second bottle beginning with the same letter, Elise had already opened the first and taken a swallow.

“Wait, don't drink that yet.”

She lowered it before he finished, her face scrunching up. The bottle looked almost like the mineral water at home. Why did it burn?

Mu took it from her and read the label more carefully. In small print at the lower right, he found the alcohol content.

Fifty-three percent.

Clear spirits, then. Wonderful.

He looked up. Elise was still grimacing, and a flush had begun to spread across her cheeks.

This was entirely his fault.

“What kind of water is this?” Her face felt feverishly hot.

“It's liquor.”

There was no taking back the swallow now.

Elise pressed a hand to her head, looking miserable. Mu tried to help her over to the sofa. She reached out without thinking, caught a handful of his soft shirt and left her hand against his chest.

Nora's endless talk about her favorite celebrities had taught Elise more fitness vocabulary than she'd ever needed, from biceps to abs. Whenever Nora praised some idol for looking slim in clothes but being surprisingly strong, Elise thought of Mu, and of the day she'd taught him to skate when he'd loosened his shirt.

Now the alcohol gave her the nerve to say things she would normally keep to herself.

Mu glanced down at her hand, then raised his eyebrows.

“Let me feel,” she said, her face red.

He went quiet for several seconds, looking at her. “Feel what?”

Giving her the wrong bottle had been a mistake. Still, he couldn't help being pleased by this sudden closeness.

Elise nodded eagerly. Of course she wanted to check. Then she could tell Nora to stop bragging about her idol's gym routine. Mu had him beaten.

With a sigh, Mu caught her hand and held it still.

“Behave,” he said gently. “I'd like to give you another couple of years to grow up.”

For all his reluctance to end the moment, he stopped her.

Elise bristled. Grow up? Since when had he been raising her? She wasn't eating his groceries, was she?

He enclosed her hand in his. “I mean you're still too young.”

“I'm not young.” Her tongue wasn't quite cooperating. “I'm twenty-seven this year.”

Mu stared at her.

For a long time he said nothing. Then, very carefully, he asked, “Isn't Ellie seventeen? How did you get twenty-seven?”

An extraordinary possibility had occurred to him. He needed to know.

Elise missed the coaxing note in his voice.

“I died at twenty-six in my last life. I've lived more than half a year again now. Add it up and I'm almost twenty-seven.”

She said it without the slightest thought of keeping it secret.

Mu went still. Memories of meeting her in his previous life flashed through his mind. Had she died not long after him?

Had Elise been reborn too?

“What happened?” he asked softly. “Tell me properly, Ellie.”

She told him everything, going through what had happened in her last life and this one, holding nothing back.

“So,” she concluded, “you ought to treat me as the older one.”

“No.” Something bright stirred in his eyes. “Because I'm twenty-seven too.”

He'd thought he was alone in this. All this time, the girl he'd longed to find had come back just as he had.

Being reborn had given him the chance to meet her again.

Elise showed no sign of sobering up. Mu found some honey, mixed it into water and tried to give her a drink.

The cool rim touched her warm lips. She frowned at the sensation and pushed the glass away.

“No. Go away.”

“Have some, and I'll go away,” he said, helpless.

Only because she was drunk had she let her guard down enough for him to say such affectionate things. Once she was sober, she might be just as eager to send him away as before.

He brought the glass back several times. Each time, she pushed it aside.

Mu stood and looked around for another way to get her to drink. A straw might work.

He had barely started toward the bar when a sharp tug caught his clothes. Looking back, he found Elise gripping his sleeve.

“You're just giving up?” she asked, her voice thick.

“I'm getting a straw.”

For no reason she could have explained, anger began rising in her. She suddenly stood and pointed at his nose.

“Didn't your teachers teach you anything? You don't stop halfway through something! You keep trying. You don't give up because it gets difficult. Do you understand?”

There was no reasoning with someone who was drunk.

“I haven't given up,” Mu said after a pause.

He only wanted to try a different way of giving her the water.

“Yes, you have.” Her voice turned aggrieved.

He'd given up and decided to leave the country. He said he might come back, but that meant he might not. What if he liked it overseas and simply decided to stay there forever?

She grew angrier.

“How can you give up halfway through asking someone out? Other people keep at it. Can't you learn from them?”

Mu went rigid. For a second or two he didn't move. Then he set the glass aside and lowered himself in front of her, looking directly into her eyes.

“How would you like me to keep trying, Ellie?”

She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head, thinking. How did people pursue girls, anyway? Her thoughts tangled before she could arrive at an answer.

“I don't know. Figure it out yourself.”

“All right.” His voice was gentle. “However you want me to keep trying, I will. Would that do?”

“Yes.”

Satisfied, Elise dropped back onto the sofa.

Mu crouched before her. His voice fell almost to a whisper, his eyes unusually bright.

“But weren't you the one who told me to stay away?”

She rubbed her nose, aggrieved all over again. “Because I wasn't sure whether I liked you. What if I didn't? What was I supposed to do then?”

The hope he'd thought extinguished began to return. He scarcely dared breathe, afraid he might disturb the moment.

“Are you sure now? Do you like me?”

“Of course I don't!” she snapped. “I don't like you. I can't stand you!”

Mu lowered his head. A quiet laugh escaped him, then another, until he was laughing openly, unable to hide how happy he was.

Elise stared in confusion. What was so funny?

She pointed at him with imperious confidence. “Cancel your plane ticket.”

He wasn't running away from this.

“What ticket?” he asked, though he knew exactly what she meant.

“The one for going overseas.”

She gestured so wildly that Mu opened his arms, ready to catch her if she toppled off the sofa.

“All right.” He was still smiling. “I'll call Pei in a minute and tell him to cancel it.”

“No. Call him now.”

“Okay.”

The smile never left his face as he took out his phone. When the call connected, he gave a brief instruction.

“Cancel tomorrow's flight overseas. Do it now.”

At the other end, Pei was driving. He looked utterly bewildered.

“What flight?”

Mu had no plans to go overseas anytime soon.

Before Pei could finish, the call ended. He stared at his phone, baffled. Mr. Mu had never asked him to book a ticket in the first place.

Mu hung up and turned back to find Elise quietly watching him. The drunken haze seemed to have left her eyes. Her gaze was clear.

His stomach dropped. She'd sobered up.

After he'd finally coaxed a few honest words out of her, would she refuse to stand by them? Considering how she'd avoided him before, that was entirely possible.

He was already mourning his brief good fortune when she caught his tie.

Her face was suddenly close. She had to tip her chin up to look at him, but a firm pull on the tie made him bend down and narrowed the distance between them.

Elise knew she'd spent a long time in a drunken fog, abandoning her reserve and saying things she'd never quite dared say before. By the time a little sense had returned, it had been too late.

But she'd said it all now. What was left to be afraid of?

Holding his tie, she looked up at him, still drawing courage from the alcohol.

“From today on, you're my guy. Got it?”

For once, Mu was too startled to answer immediately. Then a slow smile spread across his face.

“Nothing I'd like more.”

Several days later, Elise still had trouble believing it had happened.

Nora noticed the change first. Elise spent more time holding her phone between classes, and the gloom of the past weeks had vanished. She would smile at the screen without even realizing it.

Nora pestered her until she learned that they had finally talked things through.

“So Mu finally got the job.” She sighed theatrically. “Took him long enough.”

“Not yet,” Elise said, shaking her head. “After my college entrance tests.”

Preparing for them was still a serious worry. She and Mu had agreed on limits, including how often they could see each other each week, so dating wouldn't interfere with her studies. Once the tests were behind her, they could enjoy being together properly.

“Of course that's what you'd do.” Nora laughed until her stomach hurt. Poor Mu. After all that waiting, he still had to wait until the exams were over.

Even so, he must have been deliriously happy.

“Do your brothers know?” Nora asked more cautiously.

That was exactly what Elise was worrying about. They'd scarcely been civil to Mu before. If they found out she and Mu had privately agreed they liked each other, he might not survive the conversation.

She'd been thinking it over for days, but hiding it forever wasn't an option. She meant to tell them when she got home.

If they were angry, she would keep coaxing them until they forgave her. If they wanted to take it out on Mu, he'd already promised not to hit back or argue, whatever they did or said.

Still, what if her brothers were angry with her and nothing she said could make it better?

The worry followed her all the way home.

She barely noticed dinner. The table was unusually quiet, and when she cautiously looked at her brothers, none of them seemed in a good mood.

Julian drifted off several times with his fork suspended over his plate. Adrian ate several pieces of ginger he disliked without noticing. Theo looked listless and kept sighing. Miles wore the expression of someone whose money had been borrowed and never returned.

Elise's confidence dwindled further.

After a long hesitation, she finally went to Julian's study. Lately all four of them kept gathering there, discussing some important matter she knew nothing about.

She knocked. The voices inside stopped at once.

A moment later Julian opened the door, surprised to see her. Adrian, Theo and Miles were all inside. They turned toward her.

“I have something to tell you,” she managed.

She wasn't going to sneak around behind their backs to date someone.

Julian glanced over his shoulder. A silent look passed between the brothers.

Elise sat down and squeezed her fingers together, embarrassed. How was she supposed to say it? I want to start dating. Would that be all right? It's Mu, but please don't be angry?

Of course they'd be angry.

Julian had told her to stay away from Mu. Adrian and Theo had challenged him openly. Miles had actually beaten him up. Mu was practically their least favorite person in the world.

But she wanted to hide it from them even less.

She shut her eyes so she wouldn't have to see their faces and rushed through the words in a single breath.

“I like Mu, so I said yes to him, and we're going to start dating after my college entrance tests!”

No one spoke.

The longer the silence lasted, the more nervous she became. At last she cautiously opened her eyes.

Julian was looking at her gently. He raised his eyebrows.

“Are you sure how you feel, Ellie?”

Where was the scolding? He didn't even look angry.

“Yes.”

“Come to think of it, you'll turn eighteen not long after next year's tests.” He considered her for a moment. “Eighteen. An adult. Old enough to date.”

Elise stared.

Then joy broke through her bewilderment. He wasn't angry. He was actually agreeing?

Theo looked as though he was trying not to laugh at how nervous she'd been.

“You think we don't know what's on your mind? Trying to hide it from us, hm?”

A guilty twinge caught her. She hadn't meant to conceal it forever. She'd only been frightened of their reaction and wanted to postpone the storm.

“I didn't dare say anything before.” She spread her hands. “I'm telling you now, aren't I?”

“We already knew.” Adrian rested his chin on his hand, looking thoroughly depressed. “Our little sister wants to date someone. Why does this feel like getting dumped?”

Miles slapped the back of his head.

“What's wrong with you? Dumped? She's your sister. Stay away from her.”

“You're the one who ought to stay away,” Adrian shot back.

Julian had told him about catching Miles with a sibling-pairing video he'd stumbled onto while searching for advice on getting closer to his sister. Adrian had made fun of him for ages afterward.

Miles clapped a hand over Adrian's mouth, his face turning scarlet.

“How many times do I have to tell you? That was a misunderstanding!”

Did he look like the kind of creep who wanted to date his own sister?

Elise watched curiously. “Miles, why does Adrian think I should stay away from you?”