This Thing of Ours

Chapter 3: Yuan

"Yuan!" Willow ran into me for a hug the moment I walked through the gates of Normashire High. "Will," I pat her on the back. "You dyed your hair pink?"

"Only the ends," she ran her hand in her bob-cut wavy hair. "How does it look?"

"My mom would kill you."

"Glad I'm not invited to the family meetings then!"

I suddenly felt bad about what I just said. I knew Willow wasn't the type of person who actually cared about family, it always had been normal to talk shit about our mothers when we were alone. Her family wasn't welcome in the clan as long as I could remember. Fairly because aunt Jean had married uncle Raphael who's a white person, or in grandma's words, "disgraced our race". Whenever I tried to talk to grandma about it, she always said she was troubled by uncle Raphael's appearance. And as Willow grew up, her uneasiness moved from him to her. Willow had her father's eyes. Those big, hazel eyes had nothing to do with my slanted ones. We looked different but I knew she was ready to defend me, or even our family in any situation. But sometimes, I still felt bad about it. The way grandma forced this discriminating belief into her mind.

"Hey, have you seen Luca?" I asked to change the topic.

"Morning," Luca appeared in front of me just as I mentioned him. He threw me the cranberry juice he just bought for me from the automat and kept sipping his.

"Hey, no cranberry juice for me?" Willow whined.

"Do you even like cranberry juice?" I frowned.

"A pathetic coincidence," Luca ignored Willow completely as he was tying his shoulder-length brown hair into a ponytail. "The three of us are in the same class once again."

"Fuck yes!" Willow threw her shoulder around Luca.

"Language!" Luca warned her.

"Another year fighting for the favorite seat, right?" I smirked, looking at Luca as we started walking inside.

"Let's settle on one thing, you get the seat in algebra, geometry, whatever; I get it in literature and languages."

"Okay look, I think," Willow chimed in. "You two teach me the lectures you're experts in and see how long I can stay on that seat."

"Kill yourself," I said strictly.

"No because that would be interesting," Luca smiled.

The sentences "Oh, come on, Luca!" and "See, he gets it!" came out of my and Willow's mouths at the same time just as we entered the classroom. Before we knew it, Luca had already put his bag on the favorite seat. The second row by the window.

"Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled." he started his speech by quoting Edgar Allan Poe as usual.

"Stop stealing your grandpa's sentences! Those have copyright, alright?" Willow imitated his old English accent.

"Great-grandpa!" He corrected her.

I claimed a seat close to them and immediately put my mind to the company. I took out my calculation notebook and my phone.

"Let's see," I opened the text message our insider manager had sent us about the financial information of Sinclair's company. This was definitely not ethical yet neither was it illegal. Info dumping was something every insider did, bet some of ours did it for Sinclair family as well. I wasn't complaining, we had high income and perfect prestige. They could get any information they'd want and still see that we played fair to earn our place in the industry.

I wrote down the expense ratings, trying to calculate how much income they'll make by the end of this season. "Thirty million," my mouth read the number before my mind could process it. It was nearly the same amount as we made. I turned the previous page where I calculated our season income yesterday night. It was barely thirty-five million.