Elizabeth

At night, the five-story dormitory building on New York University's campus was brightly lit.

Universities with sprawling campuses often provided separate houses for "Greek life" organizations like fraternities and sororities to use as their regular meeting places. But New York University was in Manhattan, where every inch of land was worth a fortune, so it didn't have that luxury. Instead, it had set aside an entire floor of an old dormitory building as a base for Pi Beta Phi.

"Where are you?" Ryan shouted over the loud music as he made a call.

Inside the hall, people were "dancing like maniacs." They'd gotten tipsy at the club during the first half of the night, and now, at the private after-party, they were really letting loose. All kinds of new and old "party drugs"—red, white, edible, drinkable, and aerosol—were making the rounds. They might have been New York University students, but when they went wild in private, they were no less outrageous than the ravers.

"Ryan, when are those model friends of yours getting here?" Ryan had just put down his phone when the vice president hugged him from behind.

"They'll be here any minute." Ryan gently pried her arms away.

Ten minutes later, several male models the original Ryan had known in New York arrived downstairs. They were all tall and striking, with bright eyes, deep gazes, and incredible physiques.

"Everyone's here." Ryan handed each of them a few bills. It was the "appearance fee" the sorority paid per person, and Ryan had skimmed some off the top. Of course, that only covered showing up. What happened between the sorority members and the models was none of his business, and there was nothing he could do about it anyway.

"Growing a beard now, Piero?" Ryan asked one of the models.

Piero was about as tall as Ryan, with a beard around his cheeks and mouth that gave him a very masculine look. In fact, he was even younger than Ryan.

"The stylist's idea." He spoke with an Italian accent. He was the quintessential handsome Italian, with sculpted features and a deep gaze, like a statue from the Renaissance. He'd dropped out of school at sixteen and come to New York alone, and he and the original Ryan had once shared an apartment.

"It's the vice president's birthday. Tell her I said to keep her company and chat with her." Ryan slipped him two extra bills.

"What does she look like?" Piero asked.

"Braces, short hair, red-framed glasses. Dresses like a middle-aged housewife," Ryan described her.

Piero's pupils contracted, but, in the end, the money won him over, and he nodded.

Once everything was arranged, Ryan saw the men into the elevator and prepared to leave campus. He was wondering whether to ask Joel to pick him up when a voice came from behind him.

"Want me to show you out? It's pretty easy to get lost in here."

Ryan turned around. It was a girl with golden-brown hair, green eyes, large eyes, and a high nose. Her square face had no discernible flaws. Objectively speaking, she was prettier than Taylor, and nearly 170 centimeters tall.

Ryan nodded, and they walked side by side across campus.

"I thought you'd stay upstairs. A few people seemed pretty interested in you." Perhaps to break the awkward silence, she suddenly spoke.

"I have to get back to making music." Ryan made up an excuse. With all the chaos upstairs, he didn't want someone snapping a photo or video of him and posting it online later.

"What about you? Why did you come out too?" Ryan asked.

"I don't like the air up there," she said quietly.

A little while later, Ryan and the girl parted ways at the campus entrance. Neither had asked the other's name the entire time.

The next morning, Ryan returned to the sorority house. Pinching his nose, he entered a room and saw Piero and the vice president lying on a mattress on the floor. Trash was scattered around it: tissues, plastic bottles used as makeshift urinals, used condoms, and the like.

Ryan walked over and patted the vice president awake.

She yawned, her breath reeking of something strange. When she saw Ryan, she even lifted a hand to greet him. It looked like she'd had a fun night.

"I know plenty of other models like Piero. If the sorority needs them, I can fill several minivans," Ryan told her.

"But I need the sorority to do me a favor too. It's just a small thing. I want everyone to get together and shoot a silly video with one of my dance tracks as the background music," Ryan said.

"You want to promote your music?" She was clever and guessed right away.

"Not just that. It'll promote the sorority too." Ryan explained his idea for the video.

She scratched the back of her head with her little finger and glanced at Piero, who was still asleep beside her. She didn't refuse.

"You'll have to talk to the events director... That position's vacant now. Get in touch with a theater student named Elizabeth. Her contact info's on the roster outside. Tell her I sent you." She tapped her forehead with the edge of her hand, clearly still hungover.

Ryan woke Piero up. His reaction was much stronger; he hurriedly got dressed.

"You have to pay me more!" Piero looked as if he was about to cry. Maybe the vice president was into ballbusters.

"I only asked you to chat with her. I didn't ask you to do anything else!" Ryan said.

"It's just... I'll be honest with you. I'm practically unemployed now. Faye's only focused on one sixteen-year-old model. She'd give her all the work at the company if she could. She's unbelievably good to her, treats her like her own daughter," Piero grumbled.

Faye managed the modeling division and was the younger sister of one of Next Models' co-founders.

No modeling agency ever complained about having too many jobs. Besides, male models couldn't wear women's clothes—at least, not yet.

"Sixteen?"

"That's right. She shot to fame after walking in Calvin Klein's women's ready-to-wear show at last year's New York Spring Fashion Week..."

Ryan ignored his rambling and flipped through the roster, eventually finding the name Elizabeth.

People in the West often shared the same first name, so rosters usually included surnames too. Strangely, the surname field for this Elizabeth was blank, as if she'd deliberately tried to keep people from knowing it.

The next afternoon, in Greenwich Village, Manhattan: Washington Square Park.

"So it was you!" Ryan realized that Elizabeth was the same person who'd shown him out of campus the night before.

"So it was you!" She looked just as surprised.

After a brief exchange of greetings, Ryan noticed a large group of students walking into the park. They were all college students.

"I hadn't planned to invite so many people, but we don't have class this afternoon, and it sounded like fun, so they all came," Elizabeth explained.

The main reason was that Ryan had gotten lucky. The girls in the sorority were all socially active and knew how to dress, which made them great at rallying people around campus. One girl could bring along five or six guys, who would then tell their friends. Word spread from one to ten, then ten to a hundred, until a huge crowd had shown up.

That was exactly what Ryan wanted. The more people, the better.

"Everyone, stay on the lawn and act naturally. Sit and read, lie down and nap, take a walk—just pretend you're relaxing in the park." Elizabeth stood on the steps around the park's iconic fountain, directing everyone through a megaphone.

Someone else stood on a ladder and began filming with a digital camera. With so many people, coordinating them was difficult, but the shot itself was very simple.

The first part was done in just a few minutes.

Next came the second part, the "dancing like maniacs" segment. People had to change into all kinds of outrageous costumes and cosplay as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Superman, or Dragon Ball characters—or hold completely unrelated objects. In short, the weirder and more absurd, the better.

"Dance like you're even crazier!" Elizabeth shouted anxiously.

"How are we supposed to dance without music?" someone complained.

The remark was a wake-up call. Ryan, who was standing nearby, took out his phone and held it up to the megaphone's microphone...

"Do the Harlem Shake!!!"