[Author's Quickie: Whoosh. Chapter four is up, and here we are. After last time's melancholy ending, THE secret is about to come out--very, very soon. Does SSX have enough guts to deal with it? Guess we'll all find out. Also of note! I won't be able to update next week like I always do, since I'm leaving this Friday for college. The fifth chapter will come out two weeks from today (Tuesday!) so don't think I'm abandoning all my dear, dear readers! (Was that sarcasm? It sounded rather freaky. Ah, well.)

Disclaimer: Do they actually check for this? I mean, does some invisible spy file lawsuits against you if you leave it out? I only claim ownership of this story. And my computer. And maybe my socks. Don't sue.

The Phoenix Project

Chapter Four: the Slip

The days slipped by, one after another--a week, then a month. Shang Xiang went to school, sat behind her desk each day, and took everything in without a word. It was easy to be ignored, to fade away amidst the faces, to sit in silence while time ticked on.

It was not so easy to forget.

What could be said? That she cried every night in her bed, yes--that she had lain in stupefied horror until the blissful sleep overtook her--and then would come the nightmares. She dreamt of Zhao Yun. His serious, smiling face bending over her notebook, showing her how to derive Avogadro's number--and then in a sudden change his face would contort in hate and he would rip, slash, and kill everyone who was in the room, splattering blood over the walls while she watched--until reaching over to latch his hands onto her neck and painfully squeeze the life out of her.

Every night she woke herself up by screaming.

Her father and brothers were at a loss to help her. They thought it was the attack that plunged her into such a state. She hadn't told them about Zhao Yun, hadn't told anyone--not even Lu Xun, whose quiet presence she valued more and more as she sank further into depression--because in the back of her mind, she wanted to protect him.

She wanted to protect a murderer.

It was a laughable idea. But she wondered, every so often, why Zhao Yun had told her--wasn't that as good as confessing a crime? Couldn't she lock him up for that? That he was joking, the thought had never crossed her mind. Zhao Yun wasn't the type to fool around with something like that. The expression in his eyes as he said it was full of pain, regret, a whole jumble of emotions--but no lie. So she fought with herself: to protect him, or to give him up. And yet, he had saved her life.

The time passed quickly. Each day, she withstood the insults that Da and Xiao Qiao threw at her; each day, she resisted the taunts that Zhen Ji said to her. And each day, she suffered under Zhao Yun's detached silence as he sat in front of her for class.

They acted as if they had never met. She made it a point to get to class early every day, and to bend over her books so that he wouldn't meet her eyes when he came in. Once in a while, she would glance at him, but it was only for a fraction of a second, never more. And if she had been looking, she would have seen he did the same every once in a while, too.

Gradually, she stopped screaming when she had her nightmares. She would only whimper…and for the rest of the night she would lay awake, watching as the moon disappeared beneath the trees.

Her brothers tried to distract her from her melancholy silence by being more loud, more comical than before. Ce made it a point to pull off his imitation of Yuan Shao every chance he could get, and it was all she could do to smile wanly. Sometimes Lu Xun took her for walks in the park during the weekends, and those were really the only times she actually smiled and forgot about her nightmares for a couple of hours. One day they visited the pond, while the last of the red leaves were still clinging to the tree branches, and fed the geese that had stopped by with bread crumbs. One of geese had snatched off the hat that Lu Xun was wearing that day, and they ended up chasing the waddling bird around the park. Afterwards, Xun plopped the hat onto Shang Xiang's head with a laugh and told her to keep it. Sweet, thoughtful Lu Xun. He was a ray of light in an endless darkness.

And so a month, then two months passed. But it was all just the calm before the storm.

As she tossed and turned fitfully in her bed, Shang Xiang thought she heard the loud bang of a door shutting downstairs. With a jolt she sat up, listening with her ears for any more sounds. It was one o'clock at night. Surely there wouldn't be visitors at this time of hour? Maybe it was Sun Ce. He had gone out earlier in the night, saying he had to go to a friend's party or something--he always had these "social obligations" to meet, and they were getting more and more frequent. Every so often he would come home drunk, lurching about in the darkness until he finally stumbled into his room. Sometimes he even left unpleasant surprises on the floor for them to find in the morning.

Deciding that she had nothing better to do at any rate, she flung off the covers and slid her feet into some slippers. With soft steps she paddled down the carpeted hall, heading for the stairs. To her surprise, she saw that all the lights were on in the living room. Hushed voices could be heard, and Shang Xiang moved closer to the stairs to hear better.

"Quietly!" A voice scolded, sounding like her father Sun Jian, "Don't wake up Shang Xiang."

"Relax Pop," someone else said (probably Ce), "I'm okay. You don't need to flutter over me or anything, I just need some breathing room."

"I knew this was going to happen," someone muttered, "They knew we were coming. Lucky we were able to get away, otherwise who knows what might have happened. Tomorrow--"

"Don't talk about that. It's bad enough Ce's injured, let's just get him a doctor--Shang Xiang!" Quan exclaimed in horrible surprise, as she appeared, darting down the stairs. She caught them all with inexorably guilty looks on their faces, each and every one of them--Ce, Quan, Zhou Yu, and even Sun Jian. Ce was slumped onto the sofa, with bloody gashes on his arms, while the others surrounded him in nervous anxiety.

"Ce!" she cried, rushing to his side and throwing herself onto her knees, "You're hurt! What's wrong? What happened?" Unexpectedly, tears sprang to her eyes as she surveyed the damage done to her brother. He looked a mess; not only were there long, open slashes right and left, as if someone had taken a knife and hacked him with it, but big purplish bruises were starting to form on his legs.

Ce smiled weakly and laid a hand on her head in tender reassurance. "I'm alright. Don't worry so much." When he noticed that she was crying, he frowned and wiped away her tears. "Hey, don't cry. I'm okay, I really am. Since when do you start crying so easily, Shang Xiang?" he said, trying to lighten the mood.

Unknowingly, he had darkened hers. Since that day I found out Zhao Yun was a killer, she thought silently, but she did as she was told and dried her eyes. She took Ce's hand and squeezed it tightly. "Ce, what happened? Who's done this to you?"

"Shang Xiang, you should be asleep," Jian said, having recovered from his initial shock. His daughter was so impetuous…it was senseless to order her to do anything, since she just ignored his request.

"Father!" She whirled on him, turning her fiery gaze to stare at each of them in return. "Tell me what happened!"

"Ce was…coming back from the party," Zhou Yu said slowly, sending a sideways glance at Quan for support. "Just as he was about to get in the car, he was jumped by these robbers. I guess they saw what a fancy car he had and they thought they could get some money from him. Anyway, you know Ce. He wouldn't give in, that stubborn temper of his, and the robbers attacked him. I was getting in my car at the time, so when I pulled up next to Ce, they had already left."

"They took my wallet, the bastards," Ce added, hissing as Jian dabbed ointment on his wounds. Shaking his head and tsk-ing as he did so, he began to wrap gauze around Ce's arm.

"You should be more careful," Shang Xiang admonished, though most of her wrath was gone by now. She had had the strangest thought a few moments before--a horrible, horrible thought. She imagined that it was Zhao Yun who had hacked her brother; Zhao Yun who had wanted to kill him. She shuddered and grasped Ce's hand all the more tightly. Thank god it wasn't true.

"Yeah, I know," Ce said, leaning his head back lazily, "But look at it this way: I won't have to go to school tomorrow, right?"

Grudgingly Jian tightened the last of the gauze and hooked it together with a wire clip. "You can't afford to miss any more classes, mister. This is the last time."

"You make it sound like I wanted to get cut up, Pop," Ce replied innocently, and all of them laughed. It was laughter that came too easily, too quickly; if anyone had looked deeper, they would have noticed that they were laughing to cover up something.

They were all afraid.

The next day, Shang Xiang kissed her oldest brother good-bye and jumped down the stairs three at a time, throwing on her school blazer as she went. Behind her, Quan was stuffing toast into his mouth with one hand as he held his books in the other, though he took the stairs one by one. They were both late for class.

"How fast can you drive?" Shang Xiang asked her brother frantically, as they both reached the first floor and started to pull on their shoes.

"Fast enough," Quan countered, and he looked up to see Ce's smirking face at the top of the stairs. "Oy! Don't give us that coy look! It was because of you we stayed up all night! Toss me your keys, I'm gonna borrow your car!"

"Don't crash it!" Ce yelled back, and he threw his keys down to the living room. Quan caught it in his hands, and he dangled them so that Ce could see it. "That car cost me eighty grand! I'll never forgive you!"

"Come on, go go go!!" Shang Xiang said, grabbing Quan by the arm and dragging him out the door. "Be good, you!" she yelled to Ce, and shut the door behind her. The two of them ran to the garages, and Quan pressed a button on a panel and one of the garage doors rolled back smoothly to reveal Ce's red Astin Martin.

"Eighty grand? It was only seventy-two," Quan muttered as he opened the door, flinging his backpack onto the backseat. Shang Xiang slid into the seat next to his, and shoved her books underneath her seat.

"Drive," she ordered, snapping her seat belt on, and in compliance Quan did so. He started the engine, floored the gas, and within seconds they were out of there. It took them twelve minutes to pull up to the school parking lot, after dodging traffic, numerous pedestrians, and angry police cars. Quan glanced at his watch and cursed softly.

"Crap, I have three minutes to get to the east building," he said, snatching his bag from the back, and Shang Xiang looked at him in commiseration. The east building was the furthest one away from the parking lot, a good two minute run even for the best of athletes.

"Go," she said, waving him out the door, "I'll lock up the car."

"Will you? Thanks," Quan said gratefully, tossing her the keys. "I owe you one. Later." He slammed the car door shut and waved good-bye, before running off towards the Quad. Shang Xiang leaned over and pressed the car alarm on, and locked all the doors. That done, she tucked the keys into her blazer pocket and gathered up her books from under the seat.

"Let's see…Bio, Chem, Calc…where's my Literature book?" she muttered, perplexed. She reached down and started digging in the space underneath the seat, searching for her missing book.

When her fingers latched onto something small and square-shaped, she pulled it out--and found herself staring at Ce's wallet.

[End notes: Ah hah ha! The deception! If I was SSX, I'd go kick Ce's butt. I'd probably manage it too. Anyway, what did you all think? The story is moving, miraculously. And I can't believe USA lost to China in women's volleyball. That sucks! (Here I am, griping yet again about VB. Sheesh.) And what happened to China in men's gymnastics? They should have done better! (Yes, I'm contrary, I know.)]

[Black-Aura Sama: I feel like I should go "eek, eek!" whenever I read your notes. Two fish in a bucket, we are. So what does Ce seem like now? A silly monkey, yes, but how about a very poor liar? Does he strike you are being a poor liar in the game? Oh ho ho, I'm not done with him yet! As for Da Qiao…I don't know why I make her out to be such a biotch and a half in this fic, I just think her personality is very at-odds with SSX. You know: Tomboy v.s. Girly girl. Ich.]