Elizabeth

In the night, the fifth floor of a low-rise dormitory building on New York University's campus blazed with light.

Large universities often provide separate houses for "Greek life organizations" like fraternities and sororities to use as regular activity spaces, but NYU, located in Manhattan where land is at a premium, doesn't have that luxury. Still, they've set aside an entire floor of an old dormitory building for Pi Beta Phi as their activity base.

"Where are you?" Ryan shouted into the phone over the blaring music.

Inside the hall, a "carnival of chaos" was underway. The first half at the nightclub had everyone tipsy; by the second half of the private party, they'd completely let loose. All kinds of new and old "party supplies"—red pills, white powders, edibles, drinks, inhalants—came out in waves. Don't let the NYU student status fool you; when they cut loose in private, they're no different from those rave parties.

"Ryan, when are those model friends of yours getting here?" The Vice President hugged Ryan from behind just as he hung up.

"Almost here, almost here." Ryan slowly pried her arms apart.

Ten minutes later, a few male models the original host had mingled with in New York arrived downstairs. Each one was tall and striking, with sharp, deep-set eyes and incredible physiques.

"Everyone's here." Ryan handed each of them a few bills—the "appearance fee" the sorority paid per person, with Ryan skimming a cut off the top. Of course, this was just for showing up. What happened between these sorority members and the male models was none of Ryan's business, nor could he control it.

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

This guy was about the same height as Ryan, with stubble covering his cheeks and around his mouth, giving him a very masculine look. In reality, he was a bit younger than Ryan.

"The stylist's idea." He spoke with an Italian accent, the quintessential Italian heartthrob, like a Renaissance sculpture come to life—chiseled features, deep eyes. He'd dropped out of school at sixteen and come to New York alone, once sharing an apartment with the original host.

"Today's the Vice President's birthday. Just say I told you to keep her company and chat her up." Ryan pulled out two extra bills and handed them over.

"What does she look like?" Piero asked.

"Braces, short hair, red-framed glasses, dresses like a forty-year-old mom." Ryan described.

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

With everything arranged, Ryan sent the group up the elevator and prepared to leave campus first. He was debating whether to have Joel pick him up when he heard a voice behind him.

"Need me to walk you out? It's pretty confusing in here."

Ryan turned around. It was a girl with golden-brown hair and emerald eyes—big eyes, a high nose bridge, a square face with flawless features. Objectively speaking, she was better-looking than Taylor, standing close to five-foot-seven.

Ryan nodded, and the two walked side by side across campus.

"I thought you'd stay up there. A few people had their eye on you." She spoke up, as if to break the awkward silence.

"I still have music to produce." Ryan made up an excuse. Upstairs was too chaotic; he didn't want anyone snapping photos or videos of him and posting them online.

"What about you? Why'd you come out?" Ryan asked.

"I don't like the air up there." She said slowly.

A little while later, they parted ways at the school gate, never even asking each other's names.

·

The next morning, Ryan showed up at the sorority base again. Pinching his nose, he walked into a room and saw Piero and the Vice President lying on a mattress on the floor, surrounded by trash—tissues, plastic bottles of urine, used little umbrellas, and the like.

Ryan walked over and shook the Vice President awake.

She let out a yawn that smelled strange, and when she saw it was Ryan, she even raised a hand to wave at him. Looked like she'd had a pleasant night.

"I know plenty more models like Piero. If the sorority needs them, I can fill up a few MPVs." Ryan said to her.

"But I also need the sorority to do me a favor. Just a small thing—I want everyone to gather and shoot a goofy video with my dance track as the background music." Ryan explained.

"You want to promote your music?" She was sharp; she figured it out immediately.

"Not just that—it'll promote the sorority too." Ryan told her the video concept.

She scratched the back of her head with her pinky, glanced at Piero, who was still unconscious beside her, and didn't refuse outright.

"You'll have to talk to the activities director... Actually, that position's open now. Get in touch with a performance major named Elizabeth. Her contact info's in the roster outside. Tell her I sent you." She tapped her forehead with the heel of her hand, clearly still hungover.

Ryan then roused Piero, who reacted much more dramatically, scrambling into his clothes.

"You need to pay me more!" Piero's face looked like he was about to cry. Maybe the Vice President had a thing for steel wool.

"I just told you to chat her up! I didn't say do anything else!" Ryan said.

"Well, I didn't... I'll be honest with you, I'm basically unemployed right now. Faye only has eyes for this sixteen-year-old female model. She's throwing all the company's business at her, treating her like a princess, like her own daughter." Piero complained.

Faye was in charge of modeling operations, the younger sister of Next Models' co-founder.

No agency would turn down more work opportunities, and male models can't wear women's clothes—at least not yet.

"Sixteen?"

"Yeah, she shot up to fame after last year's New York Spring Fashion Week Calvin Klein womenswear runway show..."

Ryan ignored his rambling, flipped open the roster, and finally found the name Elizabeth.

Western names have a lot of duplicates, so rosters usually include last names. Strangely, this Elizabeth's surname column was blank, as if she deliberately didn't want anyone to know.

·

The next afternoon, Manhattan's Greenwich Village, Washington Square Park.

"So it's you!" Ryan realized this Elizabeth was the girl who'd walked him off campus last night.

"So it's you!" She looked surprised too.

After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Ryan noticed a large group of students—college kids—walking into the park.

"I didn't plan to call this many people, but no one had class this afternoon, and I thought it'd be fun, so they all came." Elizabeth explained.

The root cause was still Ryan's good luck—the girls in the sisterhood were all actively engaged in various social activities and knew how to dress well. Girls like that had strong mobilizing power at school; one girl could attract five or six guys, and those guys would tell their friends. And so it spread, one telling ten, ten telling a hundred, until now a huge crowd had gathered.

This was exactly what Ryan wanted—the more people, the better.

"Everyone stay on the lawn, keep your movements casual. Sit down and read, lie down and sleep, take a walk—just pretend you're relaxing in a park." Elizabeth stood on the steps of the iconic fountain in Washington City Park, holding a megaphone as she directed.

Beside her, another person stood on a ladder, starting to film with a digital camera. Although the crowd was large and difficult to coordinate, the shot itself was very simple.

In just a few minutes, the first part was finished.

Next came the second part—the "wild dance" segment. This required people to change into all kinds of bizarre costumes, cosplaying as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Superman, Dragon Ball characters, or holding completely unrelated objects. In short, the weirder and more abstract, the better.

"Dance even crazier!" Elizabeth shouted, a hint of anxiety in her voice.

"How can we dance without music?" someone complained.

The words struck like a wake-up call. Ryan, standing to the side, took out his phone and placed it against the megaphone's microphone...

"do the Harlem Shake!!!"