Chapter 4- Engagement

  Have to give it to her, Qonni has quite the talent convincing the world she’s not completely deranged.

  From the back of the room where Andras are lined against the wall with trays in a hand, champagne free to grab, I raise a glass to toast her in the dark as everyone claps. My tenth glass, I assume, since it’s beginning to taste like water.

  It’s good wine. Though I expect nothing less from Valtor’s event, the SEM announcement definitely took me by surprise. Valtor is known for its fine craftsmanship and attention to detail in its leather goods and watches. What’s less known is that Valtor owns about seventy percent of the world’s diamonds, mined from gem caves he inherited from his father and his father before that, and that he markets and upsells them as treasure. Valtor is a famous luxury brand with the most recognizable logo on the market; you see it on the streets as much as you see the Lotus logo. But these are two completely different industries.

  So what the hell is Valtor thinking, treading into the pharmaceutical field?

  Maybe the alcohol is getting to me, but my mind can’t form a reasonable answer. All I know is that Vikson won’t be happy to hear about the news.

  In the middle of the questionnaires, someone slips out from the back of the crowd. The reporter who threw Qonni the forbidden question. She’s heading toward the door now that her job is done. She gives me a glance before pushing open the exit to leave, but not before she takes the folded bill from my fingers.

  The room rises in a standing ovation as Qonni finishes her final statement. Her rating has gone up, I’m certain, especially after catching and returning the curveball I threw at her. Turning the game in her favor. You’re welcome, by the way.

  Look at her, posing in her glory, showing off her dress and the Valtor logo on her lower back. Her hair twisted into an updo, curls falling over her chin. I never see her outside of her usual dark hair and her uniform. This person on stage is a different person, an entity I can never compete with.

  Qonni wouldn’t have been a problem had she only been normally smart; maybe above average would’ve been a fun challenge, but that’s not who Yun Qonni is. Unfortunately, she’s as mean, crude, conceited, inconsiderate, and as insufferable as she is a genius. The kind that comes once in a generation, the freak you hear on the news who has discovered a new planet within the first week of her internship, or perhaps discovered a new species, invented a new energy source, invented a time machine, even.

  By the time I was first introduced to her, she could speak ten languages fluently. Knows every word in the Bowenese dictionary. Often recites quotes from famous philosophers and scholars from the front of her mind in a heated debate in class, where we quickly learn Qonni belonged in a completely separate league from the rest of us.

  No one doubts that she’s a prodigy—her only redeemable quality.

  And now she’s created a product that will undoubtedly change the trajectory of the food industry. How will I be expected to compete with that?

  I’ve learned from a young age that I have it better than almost everyone in the world, a perfect life, but it’s times like this where I don’t think life is fair, and I feel it most with her—how inadequate, how incompetent I am in comparison.

  Whenever it’s exam season, I never eat or sleep well, stay up all night to make sure I get a perfect score, and don’t rest until I receive my perfect marks. Then, besides me, Qonni, who doesn’t fret a nerve knowing she’s scored perfectly, gives me a sly smirk.

  The sole reason I’m even tied with her at all is because of the benchmark. Grading us like a marathon. Crown to whoever reaches the finish line, except when you lift the finish line, you realize just how far Qonni can run without a limit, and that when she finally pauses from exertion, she turns around and sees nobody behind her.

  That’s who I’m up against.

  And if my resolve is any weaker, I’d have given up long ago and accepted my flimsy standing in the family. But it isn’t. So I take another glass of champagne to wash down this turmoil, and watch the crowd slowly dismantle.

  Except Yun Hai Ko returns to give a surprise announcement. I roll my eyes and hope it’s not another world-changing product.

  Except it’s something worse.

  “Thank you all for joining us tonight,” Haiko starts. “This one is mostly for my daughter and her special day. But please welcome her and her fiancé, Valtor Tai Fung, on stage. Congratulations on their engagement!”

  Did I hear that right? Engagement? Her? Who’d marry—

  I scoff. Yun Hai Ko’s out-of-retirement ceremony? As if it’s not just marrying her daughter off to some rich guy. Have the Yuns finally wasted all of Dr. Lena’s life insurance checks? About time, since that drunkard hasn’t gained any known income since his wife’s death. Well, they’ve definitely lasted longer than I’ve predicted. Is this what Qonni’s been up to lately? Dating around to find suitors?

  Valtor’s fifth heir comes into view. A tall man with a buzzcut, in a pastor’s gray robe, collar flipped over his neck. You’d think he’s in his fifties, but he’s quite young, no more than twenty-five. There’s an impassiveness on his face as he makes his way across the stage, the notorious four-star silver pendant swinging on his chest. He doesn’t smile or wave to acknowledge the audience. His eyes are on Qonni, but it’s as if they’re looking right through her.

  Do they even know each other?

  Ah, of course not. It’s another arranged marriage; I wouldn’t be shocked to find out this is their first time meeting.

  How awkward, both of them standing next to each other like strangers. Strangers who…face each other and kiss before the flashing cameras.

  *

  Roughly ten years ago, under the browning trees of a chilly autumn afternoon, I met Qonni on the day of our engagement.

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  As everyone knew by then, Lavoran marriages were strictly for business. Exactly how people married in the old days for politics and whatnot, old-fashioned and outdated, but the tradition was how my family grew its empire.

  To merge with other powerful and wealthy families, obtain a title and status, and maintain our prestige. Well, even if they weren’t influential like the Yuns at the time, Vikson made an exception for them. Astronomical talent, that family. Self-made from the rotted bottom of the Abyss, and built a large portion of what Lotus is today. Rumor had it that Dr. Lena was supposed to be the one married into the family, but she had declined at the last minute and chose to marry for love instead. Vikson, of course, had been furious enough to fire them both from the company, but they were too valuable for the old man to go through with it. But when the Yuns had their daughter, she showed potential and promise, and another arrangement was made for the family. To mine. Because I was the only boy close to her age among my other cousins (the next closest was seven years older), they matched us.

  My family, who’d strayed so far from the main family tree. But I guess any Lavoran blood would do. However, our family standing could have been easily mended if my father had taken a position in the family business. But instead, he’d taken the role of Commander in Chief of the Transport Department. Upholding the responsibility to first-handly escort the swarm of Infectants into the Void, a job that took days if not weeks, up to a month to complete, giving him a reason to leave home for a period of time.

  My mother is left all alone to care for the kids. Ama didn’t mind it, since she grew up family-oriented, with eight other siblings, bonding over her dishes. Months before she met my father, she had graduated from culinary school and planned to open her own fine dining restaurant. But she always prioritized family before her own desires, so she agreed to put her dreams aside to invest in the marriage. They had been on and off for about 7 years before they finally officiated the marriage.

  To anyone with eyes, these two were clearly not a good fit. But because both sides needed each other’s benefits, the two sucked it up and signed their marriage certificate. The wedding ceremony hardly lasted an hour, and Ama had been bursting into tears once every few minutes. Aba stood impartially beside her, who didn’t offer a single word of comfort nor gesture of solace, as if this life event was a chore to get over and be done with quickly. Then it took another six years for my mother to conceive a child with the help of a machine.

  After my younger sister was born, my parents finally agreed to live separately in the same home. Other than attending social events, the two were hardly seen in the same room, going months without exchanging a word, living on opposite sides of the manor, pretending the other didn’t exist.

  Being a suitor was nothing new for me, since I’d already been set up a few times with other girls my age to test compatibility for houses we’d know we want to align with, and start us young. They didn’t want another case like my parents. I already know the procedure: the initial screening, where we meet in person. Then, she’d start tearing up and screaming, and the arrangement would be dismantled within five minutes. And I expect nothing less from Yun Qo Ni.

  Except she was nothing I expected. Qonni was different—weird, different.

  At the grand opening of the first hotel to open on a Gaia, we met at the main lobby floor. She waited for us alone. In a red coat with a matching plaid skirt, white tights in her shiny red shoes, ribbons on both sides of her twin tails, she seemed normal. Her sanguine cheeks bubbled up as she greeted me. And that was when it all fell apart.

  She introduced herself formally with a handshake the way adults do instead of a wave, then begins stating her full name, her birthday, her BMI, her favorite color, favorite book, favorite season, dish from each cuisine, flower from each season, hobbies that also varied by season, then ending with her latest achievements and medals won from debates and academic contests, all in a single sentence.

  Ama was quite impressed and clapped, then gave me a shoulder nudge to do the same greeting in return. I attempted. But I could only get as far as my favorite color before my mind began to melt as Qonni stared at me with those large black eyes, wide with curiosity. Clearly, she expected more, but no worries, it turns out she’s not picky with suitors. The five-minute mark had passed, and she offered to show me around the hotel.

  I looked at her hand and thought maybe this was the time to start crying and screaming, and throw a tantrum so that we wouldn’t continue this date. But I couldn’t summon the courage, with all these guests around who endearingly gawked at us. So I took her offer.

  Which, in retrospect, was the right thing to do, and was more interesting than I’d imagined. Not the hotel, no, the decor and furnishing could use some more glam. Her.

  Qonni often spoke to herself in a different language and also sang and hummed in a different tongue. And when she did speak Bowenese, her extensive vocabulary could be a foreign language. Deeply immersed in her own world, that girl.

  Ama seemed to like her, and it was enough for me to agree to continue our arrangement. We officiated the engagement that same night, on stage in front of dozens of cameras and a crowd. Usually captured with a kiss, but it was optional for us as we were children. But Qonni took my jaw and planted a kiss anyway. There’s a video of it somewhere, my red face and confused gaze after disconnecting from her lips.

  It was months later, after attending many more social events with Qonni by my side, that I thoroughly understood what Qonni really was, specifically to Vikson. The great acclaimed man, even to our family standards, who rarely spoke to my family during cocktail hour, finally walked our way. He asked about my father’s transport, my mother’s fruit and vegetable garden, my academics, then intensively with Qonni her latest studies for about half an hour, the longest he had been speaking to an individual.

  Qonni was the type of person Vikson wanted surrounding him in his life, for the company, for the business. Her potential bled everywhere she walked, that much I noticed. That was when I started keeping her close, trying my best to understand the world in her eyes. To my luck, Qonni was eager to show me, with the patience of a melting glacier, teaching me the most basic things in their simplest form. She was deeply into the tiny stuff, the microbiology, like her mother. Even to the best of my efforts, I was years too early to comprehend.

  But in my studies, I stumbled upon a subject I could better digest: astronomy, specifically stellar astronomy. Every night, I lie in my room staring at stars that fill up the frame of my window with a buried curiosity. But when I brought it up, I discovered that Qonni knew very little about that subject. Nevertheless, she found it intriguing as I explained my findings. She knew the basics, of course: the light-years, planets, galaxies, and all that.

  We lay on the rooftop of my manor, as I pointed out the signs of each star. How to tell the location, which season we were in, solely on the coordinates written in the stars, and what the stars say about us.

  “Your star is here and your planet is here,” I said to her, my finger creating a line across the sky between two points. “And mine is here and here.”

  Qonni watches my finger drag down the middle of hers. “Oh, the two of us make a plus sign.”

  “Or a cross.” I dropped my gaze to the heavy textbook on my lap. “But it says here, crossed stars aren’t good signs.”

  Her eyes narrowed on the page.

  “Bad things will happen if you bind the two opposing forces together,” I continued.

  “Like what?”

  I shrugged. “Doesn’t say.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter what it says,” Qonni lied back down beside me. “There’s no concrete evidence to support this pseudoscience.”

  “Hmm. Well, the stars may change. They’re different every month.”

  “The angle of Earth will change, yeah, but not the alignment of stars,” she corrected.

  I sighed in frustration. Qonni wasn’t someone I was willing to lose over something written in the stars. I flipped through the texts. “Maybe if we wish on the stars, we can change it?”

  Qonni laughed. “Most stars are about ten thousand light-years away.”

  “Really? What does that mean?”

  “It takes their light about ten thousand years to reach our eyes, so what we see now is about ten thousand years old. It means we can’t change the stars, the way they’re aligned. We’re ten thousand years too late.”

  *

  I stare at her on the stage now, at the brightest star in the grand hall, held in another man’s arm.

  I blame the alcohol for this stir in my chest—the sudden drop of a loss. As if I had the golden goose first, fed it, played with it, only for this man to swap in and take it when it began to lay golden eggs.

  Taking the last flute of champagne on the tray, I drown the angst and finally leave the hall before I lose control of my urges—walk up the stage, yank him off her, and throw him off the Gaia.