❝she was the girl, who bit the horizon, who peeled the stars from the sky and put them on her tongue, the girl who was hungry for the universe, who craved magic and saw the broken boy for who he truly was- a broken boy.❞
Beca...
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Chapter 22
Reunited But Not Really
Jem
When I saw Ellis Chan's house and scouted both the exterior and interior of the grand infracture, I highlighted it as the most expensive thing I've ever seen.
But the Shangri-La Beijing Hotel? Holy shit. I gaped, eyes as large as saucers. It blew everything out of the water.
My mouth had trouble picking itself up off the floor when the caked-with-dry-mud soles of my falling apart converses slapped noisily on the polished marble onyx floor. The scent of crisp, fresh vanilla scent wafted through the gold revolving doors and I tugged at my faded t-shirt, a bargain I got from the factory outlet, promptly conscious of my myriad of insufficiencies. It was such a vain thing to do- to worry over your appearance. But just by striding casually into the posh obsidian lobby of the Shangri-La hotel of Beijing could easily belittle you into feeling like a second-rate walking thrift shop.
Even Ellis, whose classy and sophisticated game was customarily on point, faded in terms of debauchery as compared her to the whole hotel. Her Ralph Lauren white polo was marred with white yellow--ish sweat stains from the humid hellhole outside and she debuted a red pair of sailor architectural grid patterned shorts of a 'high-waisted' fashion, whatever the fuck teenage girls thought looked good nowadays. It was loose and clung onto her waist in weird, crumpled folds. She smelled like a combination of her cherry perfume and perspiration. Her short legs were wet and slick with sweat from the Chinese heat, combined with the pollution, car exhaust puffing out smoke in every direction and overall bad air. It wasn't too bad once you got used to it but it wasn't great weather to run in because every deep breath felt like you were swallowing something heavy and big, like you were constantly choking on the dense atmosphere.
The lobby had soft orchestra music playing on the invisible speakers overhead, filling the marbled sparkling lobby with an impenetrable aura of serenity and refinement. Uncomfortable and quessy with the environment, I shoved my hands inside my pocket, feeling generally cheap compared to the hard-faced power-suit-wearing businessmen and the diamond-embedded women lounging by the bar-slash-cafe, dining on caviar and expensive, overpriced coffee. Snobbish tittering laughter tickled over the violin music.
"Goddamn," slipped out of my mouth. I continued to gape wordlessly.
"Oh please," said Ellis, totally unintimidated, "Don't act like you've never been in a fancy setting before."
"But I've never been in a fancy setting before."
Ellis ignored me. "Hello," she chirped when we approached the concierge, "I'm looking for, uh, Marisa Chan."
The concierge was a lady with a taut, constricting bun, pulling at the strands of her hair, appearing to be painful by how the roots of her hair looked like they were about to give up from the sheer force. She was adorning a black blazer, with a fake gold name tag pinned over the left side, and black everything, which went well with the plain facial expression upon their arrival.
