Chapter 4

I threw the glass away.

Chen Wei was upset. It was a limited edition, he said.

Limited edition, my ass. I wanted to knock him over the head with it and see if I could knock some sense into him.

He knew I was angry. In the end, he didn’t say anything else.

He was always like that. He’d let me do what I wanted, then act as though he resented every second of it. It drove me crazy.

Not long after the party, we had another fight over Jiang Lu.

It began when Chen Wei suddenly asked if I had any discarded paintings.

After four years of art college, I had more rejected pieces than I could count. What I didn’t understand was why he was asking.

“A friend wants to borrow one of your rejects,” he said.

“For what?”

“An assignment, I guess.” He was vague about it.

I grew suspicious.

“Which friend? I don’t remember you having any friends who study art—”

Then it hit me. Jiang Lu.

She studied art, too. She hadn’t gotten into a school in Beijing, so she’d gone to another city.

From what I’d heard, she’d spent four years barely scraping by.

Sure enough, Chen Wei stopped pretending. He told me Jiang Lu wanted to borrow one of my discarded works and submit it as her graduation project so she could get her diploma.

My first reaction was to refuse.

But he kept pushing.

“Come on, Suisui. Do it for me.”

“It’s just a reject. You don’t need it. It’s going in the trash anyway. Why not lend it to her?”

“Please, Suisui. Jiang Lu asked me for help. I can’t just turn her down.”

I wouldn’t budge. Then, out of nowhere, he said:

“So much for repaying me. You won’t even lend me a painting you were going to throw away.”

That hurt. It felt as though he was holding the fact that he’d saved my life over my head.

But he had a point. I owed him.

In the end, I went through my discarded work and handed him a piece called Embracing the Ocean.

“Just this once,” I said. “And I want it back when she’s done.”

He readily agreed.

But even Chen Wei hadn’t expected what Jiang Lu did next. She didn’t use my painting to graduate at all.

She entered it in a competition.

I only found out when the organizers published the shortlisted entries.

I didn’t have Jiang Lu on WeChat. The moment I got home, I confronted Chen Wei.

He was stunned, too. He called her and told her to come over and explain herself.

For once, Jiang Lu wasn’t swaggering. She looked wounded.

“I’m sorry. I thought, since it was a reject, you definitely wouldn’t use it anymore.”

“Even if I threw it away, that doesn’t give you the right to enter my work in a competition!”

“Sorry, sorry. My fault. Don’t be mad, girl.”

Look at that. After all this time, I was still “girl.” Did I not have a name?

“I’m calling the organizers now,” I said coldly, “and asking them to remove it from the shortlist.”

“You can’t!” Her expression changed at once. “They’ll think I stole it. How am I supposed to have a career in this field after that?”

“You did steal it.”

She looked at Chen Wei. “Wei, tell her! She’s the one who gave me the painting!”

I had no words.

Did this woman have any shame at all?

Chen Wei looked torn.

Jiang Lu seized her chance. “Wei, this is really important to me. If my school finds out, they’ll never let me graduate. You know what my mom’s like. She’ll beat me to death!”

He wavered. “Suisui, let it go.”

“I can’t just let it go! It’s my work. Nobody gets to pass it off as theirs!”

“But with Jiang Lu’s situation, exposing her would be a real problem… How about we let it go this once? I promise she won’t do it again.”

I looked at him. “Who are you to her? What gives you the right to promise anything on her behalf?”

I rarely spoke to him like that. He froze, then looked annoyed.

“Lin Sui, be reasonable!”

“I’m being unreasonable? Fine. I’ll take it up with the organizers.”

“Enough! It’s one painting you didn’t even want. You’ve got tons of them. You can just whip up another one. What’s the point of making such a big deal out of it?”

I couldn’t believe those words had come out of his mouth.

“Chen Wei,” I said, “think about what that painting is called.”

“What?” He thought for a moment. “Embracing the Ocean. What’s wrong with that?”

I said nothing. Suddenly, my eyes stung.

He was actually asking me what was wrong.

I’d made that painting while trying to fight my fear. But when I finished, I realized I hadn’t beaten it. I’d only painted the appearance of calm.

So I’d discarded it.

That indifferent “What’s wrong with that?” hurt more than Jiang Lu entering my painting under her own name.