The first night at the orphanage, Qian Hui curled up on the unfamiliar metal-frame bed, her tears soaking the thin pillow.
Shan Jue sat beside the bed. He did not cry. Instead, a kind of sharp, almost cutting calm enveloped him. Here, there were no late-night arguments, no hollow silence left by a mother chasing phantoms, no strange leather shoes in the entryway. Here, there were only rules—and rules could be learned, could even be used.
"Qian Hui," he spoke, his voice unusually clear in the quiet dormitory. "Stop crying. The good part of our lives is only starting now."
Qian Hui lifted her tear-streaked face from the pillow.
"We won't lose to anyone when it comes to grades." Shan Jue's tone was like stating a law of physics. "The books we studied while folding paper ingots at night weren't for nothing."
"And we won't lose at making friends either." He continued, his eyes holding a precocious understanding. "Here, honesty is more useful than cleverness. We have each other. That already makes us stronger than most."
He took his sister's hand. The sharp edges of the strawberry hairpin pressed into both their palms.
"Don't worry. As long as I'm here, no one dares bully you." His voice dropped a few degrees, taking on an unyielding hardness. "Remember? The one who stole your homework. Didn't I make him apologize to you in front of the whole class? And the guy who deliberately knocked over your lunchbox—he probably never imagined a few photos and a report could get him expelled."
Shan Jue wasn't boasting. He was reshaping his sister's understanding of "power." In this world, endurance was not a virtue; strategy was.
"I believe we will get into the elite class here." He looked out the window. The orphanage's playground under the moonlight resembled a vast, gray chessboard. "Then, get into the best university together. Leave this place. Go somewhere… where we can make the rules ourselves."
He turned back to Qian Hui and gave her a faint, yet unshakably firm smile.
"This isn't the end, Qian Hui. This is just the first chapter of our own story."