“You did,” Shancai said, her voice only cracking once. “But you don’t know him.”

“I know.”

“My mother will burn everything down.”

When they finally broke apart, the rain had stopped. A single shaft of moonlight broke through the hole in the dome, illuminating the zodiac mural above them. The archer. The scorpion. And the scales, perfectly balanced.

Someone—probably Xi Men, who had a cruel sense of humor—spotted Shancai leaving the Meteor Garden one evening. By Monday morning, her desk was covered in them. LOSER. EAT DIRT. F4 SAYS: GO HOME.

He laughed. It was a rusty, unpracticed sound, like the cello’s first note. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

It started, as these things often do, with a popsicle.

For a long moment, he just stared at her. The setting sun slanted through the broken dome, illuminating the dust motes dancing between them. He didn’t threaten her. He didn’t call for his F4 backup. He just looked at her like she was a ghost he’d been expecting.

The woman was even more terrifying in person. Immaculate. A hawk carved from jade and diamonds.

That evening, she heard a sound she’d never heard in the Meteor Garden before: a cello.

It was not a gentle kiss. It was desperate and clumsy and tasted like salt and rain. It was a question and an answer and a declaration of war all at once. Shancai’s hands came up to his chest, not to push him away, but to hold on. Because the world was spinning, and the only solid thing left was him.

“No,” she said.

“I know,” she said.