Chapter 1: The Second Choice
The jeweler set two boxes on the velvet tray. In the first lay a pink diamond necklace that Xie Xun had chased across three cities and paid a fortune for. In the second lay a cheap black brooch, a free gift with the necklace, utterly wrong for a wedding dress. For the first time in my life I pointed at the necklace. "May I choose first this time?" Xie Xun ruffled my hair. "Yu'an has always been proud. If she is not first, she would rather have nothing. You are easygoing, and the rest is not bad." I said nothing. I had known him for twenty years, and I was always the one picking up what my sister left. Every summer he handed her the heart of the watermelon, cool and seedless and red, then pushed the pale slice near the rind to me. "This part is ripe too. Just not as sweet. Make do." When he bought a new car, he let her choose the passenger seat because she got carsick, then told me any seat in the back would do. Even love worked that way. He loved her, but she chose her research and her ambitions. Half-broken, he turned around and confessed to me. I looked at the black brooch and pushed both boxes toward my sister. "You take them. I am not choosing anymore." Xie Xun sighed. "Yuwan, how could a free trinket suit your sister?" I looked straight at him. "Then why does it suit me?" He froze, then smiled. "When you were children, everyone said you looked like her thin little maid." I was her twin, and I was never once her equal. I had told him a hundred times that I hated that nickname. He always promised to stop, and always said it again the moment she was in the room. "Xie Xun," I said quietly, "let us break up."