'Damage control is always the hardest part of dealing with a disaster, just ask any haggard-looking office worker whose badge said PR. Or maybe don't, they may just throw their fifth coffee of the morning at your head and then break down in front of you. Now that is not a situation anyone wants to encounter at eight am in the morning. Or at any time at all as a matter of fact, but I digress. Unfortunately, we don't leave the mean girls in high school, especially not if you enter high society. Mean girls will always be mean girls whether they are in pleated skirts and headbands or evening gowns and high heels, either way, the vapid tongues can destroy a squeaky clean reputation in a matter of minutes, I should know. Nowadays with the joys of social media and the endless crowds of paparazzi, here is no shortage of material of which wildfire rumors are born. What matters is not how you ascend to martyrdom but how many fire extinguishers you bring for the ride. The more you take, the less likely you will go up in flames.'
The crisp staccato notes of violin music cut through the silence of the night, Zhao Yingyue's fingers drummed lightly on the fingerboard., her fingers climbing up and dropping down with practiced ease and a carefree manner. Earlier in the evening, she had dragged herself up to her apartment which overlooked the busy streets outside, painstakingly and meticulously scrubbed the sticky wine off of herself and out of her hair. She had then bagged up her discarded, wine-stained trenchcoat and her black dress into a dry cleaning bag and sent it off to the local dry cleaners in the hopes that they would be able to work some of their magic and somehow reverse the damage that the wine had done, however, Yingyue was not holding her breath for the return of the garments in any presentable fashion.
After her long shower, she had spent the better part of the late evening and even into the early morning sat in front of her vanity and staring blankly into space, her face emotionless and her body still as if she had been carved like a statue. After the room got too humid she moved to the balcony and stared down at the mass of blinking lights that made up the busy streets of the city which never ceased, even in the middle of the night. Yingyue just couldn't get past the way that her former best friend, Felicity had treated her when they had first spoken. Three years ago, Yingyue would have finished planning her revenge on whoever had made the near-fatal mistake of angering her and would have made the necessary calls to have her plan exacted hours ago. However, three years in the world that she had once scoffed at as a place for the peasants and working-class as well as the schools and training camps had changed her outlook on the world drastically.
Three years ago, Zhao Yingyue had debuted as one of the youngest socialites to step into high society that year. Backed by her late father Zhao Bohai, although she was one of the youngest, she was allowed to forgo the barbaric and sometimes downright cruel hazing rituals which went down. Her father's name had given her the respect of everyone else around her and her mistakes as a young adult were generally swept under the carpet and most turned a blind eye for fear that her father may step in and consequentially end their careers or reputations, or both. Even though her father's influence acted as a safety net, there were some things that even Zhao Bohai couldn't do.
Yingyue's social demise had come a few months after her debut ball, held in early January in time for the first snow of the year, which had been one of the most sought after events of the social calendar at her former best friend's debutante ball which had come in the late summer There had been an incident involving way too much alcohol and the trashing of three separate venues, and smashing a very expensive antique chandelier. This had resulted in Yingyue's disappearance from high society for three years, setting the record for the shortest social season ever.
The violin music stopped when Yingyue reached the end of the piece. When she eventually looked away from her music and noticed the watery sunshine struggling to be seen through the heavy clouds left from yesterday's drizzle. She packed away her violin with a sigh, wiping the excess rosin off of the strings and putting the case and music stand away in the far side of her room. Her phone pinged and she flipped it over.
From: Elise Faulkner
Selena, the reading of your father's will is set to be tomorrow morning at the head office, I'll be accompanying you to the meeting. There will be a limo waiting outside the complex at 8.30 am. I hope you have recovered from last night.
Selena sighed again heavily and set herself on her bed, lying back and staring at the powder blue ceiling. Going forward the days would only get harder. She had already begun to anticipate the worst. As far as she could remember, Zhao Yingyue's life had been planned, by the day, by her father. From when she was young and homeschooled, being chaperoned to extracurriculars, from violin to watercolour, from dance to deportment. There had been an endless stream of nannies as she had lost her mother young, PAs of both the work and not work variety, butlers, cooks, housekeepers and drivers but she had rarely ever had the chance to see her father. The only time her father had had time for her was these business meeting style meetings where she had to reel off her recent achievements and her father would lecture her on how to behave and tell her about the schematics of the operations of his most recent business ventures. Going off of the conversations that they had shared before, the will would not mean good news for her. She was sure that he had made a five-year plan for her which would inevitably involve getting married to someone he had picked out for her. The very thought filled her with dread and sent icy shivers down her back. Goosebumps shot up her arms and she hugged herself, rubbing up and down her arms vigorously as she began to steel herself for the inevitable.
It was going to be a long few days.