Jiang Bao pushed open the door to her own bedroom and stopped.
For one long second, her mind simply refused to process what her eyes were showing her. Two bodies, tangled together on her bed, under the blanket her mother had picked out for her before she died. One of them was her cousin, Song Bai. The other was Ji Hao — her boyfriend of five years. The man who, just last night, had held her hand over dinner and promised, "The second you graduate, I'm marrying you. I've already decided."
Her mind went white. Blank. Empty in a way that almost didn't hurt yet.
"AHHHHHH!" Song Bai shrieked first, yanking the blanket up to cover herself, though not before Jiang Bao noticed the smirk that flickered across her cousin's face — there and gone, quick as a knife, before the "shock" arranged itself back onto her features. "Cousin! What are you doing here?"
What am I doing here. In her own room. As if Jiang Bao was the intruder.
"Well, well." A new voice from the doorway. Jiang Bao's best friend, Yun Xi, stepped in behind her, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised at the scene on the bed. "Look what we've got here. A couple of cheating birds."
"Cousin, this isn't — this isn't what it looks like." Song Bai scrambled for words, rubbing herself against Ji Hao's arm in a motion that was anything but accidental. "Brother Ji was just helping me with something and he fell onto the bed when you walked in. It's a total misunderstanding."
Ji Hao said nothing. He didn't even try to lie properly. He just sat there, bare-shouldered, refusing to meet Jiang Bao's eyes — which told her more than any excuse could have.
And that was when it clicked into place.
Her aunt and uncle hadn't called her home the moment she finished her final exam because they missed her. They'd called her home for this. To walk in on this. To see it with her own eyes, so there could be no argument, no denial, no messy scene where she refused to believe it.
They'd planned it. All of them.
Jiang Bao felt something in her chest go very still. Not breaking — settling. Like a door quietly closing.
She smiled.
It wasn't the smile either of them expected, and she watched it land wrong on both their faces — Song Bai's smirk faltering, Ji Hao finally looking up, alarmed by how calm she suddenly was.
"Are you happy now?" Jiang Bao asked softly. "You finally got what you wanted. Him." She looked at her cousin, then at the man she'd loved for five years, and let the smile stay. "I wish you both happiness. Truly. From the bottom of my heart."
"Bao—" Ji Hao started.
"Don't." She lifted a hand, cutting him off, still smiling, still calm — a calm that felt more dangerous than tears would have. "I won't stay here and make things awkward for you two lovebirds. I got a job offer in Queen Capital. I'm leaving tonight."
Song Bai blinked. "Tonight? Cousin, don't be so dramatic, we can talk about—"
"Call me when it's convenient and I'll come get my clothes." Jiang Bao's eyes swept the room one final time — her room, her bed, her mother's blanket now wrinkled under two people who'd betrayed her in it. "It's my room, by the way. I pay the rent on this house. The one my parents left to me."
Silence.
She turned before either of them could recover enough to respond, Yun Xi falling into step right behind her, and walked out without once looking back.
Neither of them said a word until they were outside, the cold night air hitting Jiang Bao's face like something almost merciful.
"You knew," Yun Xi said quietly, watching her friend's profile in the dark. "Didn't you? You've known for a while."
Jiang Bao let out a breath that was almost a laugh, almost not. "I suspected. Song Bai's been 'accidentally' touching him for months. I just didn't want to believe my own aunt and uncle would set it up like this." She stopped walking, staring up at the house that used to feel like home, now lit gold in the windows with the two people who'd taken everything from her still inside it. "They think I'm going to cry. Beg. Fight for a man who was already gone the moment my back was turned."
"And are you?"
Jiang Bao's phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out — an email notification, the subject line glowing on the screen: Queen Capital Group — Welcome to the Team, Ms. Jiang. Your relocation details are attached.
She stared at it for a long moment. Then, for the first time all night, her smile turned into something real.
"No," she said. "I'm going to build a life so good they'll regret ever thinking I was the one who lost tonight."
Behind them, a car pulled up to the curb — sleek, black, expensive, nothing like anything that belonged on this street. The driver's window rolled down halfway.
"Jiang Bao?" a man's voice asked, low and unfamiliar. "I was told to collect you for Queen Capital tonight, not tomorrow. Change of plans."
Jiang Bao exchanged a look with Yun Xi.
She hadn't told anyone she was leaving tonight. Not her new employer. Not anyone.
So who — exactly — had sent this car?