Tonight, don't leave me out in the wind alone

The autumn night wind cut like a knife, rattling the last dead leaves in the park. Xia Wanqing curled herself into a tight ball, tucked into the corner of a bench as if trying to melt into the frozen wooden slats. She had once been the pearl her parents cupped in their palms, chasing the setting sun through the alleys alongside the boy next door, Lu Yanchi, all through their youth. But then her father's investments failed, her mother remarried, and that home fell apart overnight. She dropped out of school to work, losing herself in the hollow warmth of a host club, pouring every penny she scraped together into it until they had bled her dry. Now all she had left in her pocket were a few coins, and even her stepmother—