The Rules of the Upper Class

Song Yu was eighteen.

No money, no home, no future.

After failing to collect her wages, hungry and disheveled, with blood dripping from her wrist, she was stopped by a voice.

"Hey."

The girl propped her chin on her hand and looked up at her with a beaming smile.

Her eyes, black as jade, sparkled. As they swept over Song Yu, it was like a dazzling galaxy, unlike anything she'd ever seen, had descended before her.

Along with a sweet, heavenly voice:

"Are you okay? Come here, I'll buy you a meal."

Eighteen-year-old Song Yu got new clothes. A new job. A new place to live.

And "love."

A bewitching night played out again and again, remaking her flesh and bones.

Until the day the game was declared over.

Her bones were torn out, her sinews ripped away, and all she could see was ruin.

*

The Tang family's eldest daughter, Tang Yingxue, was sick to death of her family pressuring her to marry, so she came up with a new plan.

Find a cheap, lousy partner and put on a show of loving each other to the point of death.

Once her family saw how terrifyingly low her standards could go, they'd stop pushing her to marry and realize she'd be better off single.

The young heiress picked a security guard taking out the trash behind a bar.

Eighteen, just of age.

All skin and bones, pale as a ghost.

And

very, very in need of money.

The heiress had a pretty face and lured the girl into her grasp with a smile.

When it was time to break up, she smiled just as sweetly. "You can't bear to leave me? Beg me."

When the girl got down on her knees, the heiress laughed cruelly. "I was only playing around with you. I don't fall for cheap tricks like that."

The girl's face was deathly pale, and she trembled with rage. The hand that had given the heiress bone-melting tenderness night after night rose high.

But in the end, it never came down.

*

Years later, after her family's investments failed, the heiress was forced into an arranged marriage to become someone's stepmother.

At the wedding, she tore off her hair ornament and ran. The guards caught up and pinned her to a table. In despair, she grabbed the hem of someone's clothes at the banquet and begged for help.

The untouchable rising star held a wineglass between her fingertips and looked down at her.

The girl who had once been thin and pale had grown into a woman of refined elegance, alluring and cold, with an intimidating presence.

"Beg me?"

"Fine."

As the heiress's consciousness blurred, teeth scraped the nape of her sweat-soaked neck.

A voice, cold to the bone, drifted before the mirror:

"Open your eyes. Move your hips."

"Use one of those ways you don't think is cheap."

*

Theme: Love others and love yourself.