You’re only this young and usable once, so you have to make the most of it. At least that’s what your perfect, omniscient parents say. As the founders of CL-1, Neo-Shanghai’s largest genetic engineering company, they’ve already calculated the trajectory: from ages twenty to twenty-seven, you’re most likely to win the Chrysanthemum Prize. That’s when your synapses fire fastest, when your brain’s processing speed is rapid enough to expand, connect, create, right before it implodes with a dull, whimpering bang.

So when that over-friendly classmate invites you to another augmented karaoke night, you decline and say hey, I have a family event so I can’t make it because apparently hey, my parents are going to lock me in our quadruple-secured basement until I’ve written fifteen more pages of my PhD thesis would ruin the company’s reputation, disappointing shareholder expectations, and that would be so, so, sad, wouldn’t it?

Things are different tonight, though, because you’re determined to break out.

It’s not what good, well-engineered girls do. But you don’t care, because this is the night Huahua, the light of your life since you were sixteen, is performing her new single after years spent abroad in Seoul-II.

So you jab the autoinjector into the security guard’s wrist—green, luminescent, an almost radioactive shade—and you watch him slump to the ground. Then you swipe the master key off his belt and walk right out the door.

The night air is cool, but you barely feel it. You’re too concentrated on calling a cab to the venue.

The cab pulls to a stop. You get out.

You glance at your watch. The second hand ticks to midnight.

But as you step into the elevator hurtling to the top floor, as you make your way through the crowd, Huahua is nowhere to be seen.

The stage gleams with electronic orchids, magnolias, and plum blossoms opening and closing in an asynchronous dance. But the most important part isn’t here.

Your mouth runs dry. You came to see Huahua, not the stage. Huahua, who first gained prominence for playing the white lotus protagonist in Chinese dramas but attracted your attention on the Korean survival show Make It! Huahua, who wowed you with her flawless pirouettes and aerials but won your heart when she cried like a baby over the death of her pet refurbished grasshopper.

“Where is she?” you accost the sound system guy. He has the audacity to look afraid.

He doesn’t understand. You need to see her. Your thesis is due in a month—Adverse Effects of Iterative Cloning—but you can’t write it, because every time you try, you think of yourself. How your parents shoved you into the dissolution tank, acid gnawing at your flesh. How many times they’ve cloned you to be better, to be stronger, refusing to erase your memories because they wanted to “build character”—

The only thing that ever calms you down is Huahua. No matter how painful the cloning, her voice always puts you at ease.

“I don’t know,” he says. “She wasn’t feeling so well.”

“I need to see her—”

Then revelation hits you. Wasn’t feeling so well. You think back to Episode 78 of Huahua: Showtime!: I always like to soak in the tub when I’m feeling congested.

So you rush backstage into her dressing room. You know there’s a luxury ensuite from the floorplan. Security tries to hold you back. But then you snap—do you know who my parents are? CL-1’s founders, they practically own this entire block—and they back off, apologizing profusely, and you push past, shoving open the bathroom door.

“Huahua?” you call. “Are you okay?”

But there’s no response. The mirror is misted over, steam rising through the room.

Slumped in the pristine, porcelain tub is Huahua. Her eyes are glassy, lifeless, turned toward the ceiling. Her head lolls like the sagging stem of a flower; her hand hangs limply over the edge.

There’s spit crusted at the corners of her mouth. And on the floor is a bottle of pills. Scattered, where they must have fallen when Huahua overdosed and died.

You’re only this young and hubristic once, so you decide to clone Huahua’s dead, unmoving body.

No. “Dead” isn’t the right word. Huahua can’t possibly be dead. You lock the door.

Huahua can’t be dead because you need her. Because you’ve spent your whole life being restricted, reasonable, and this is the one night you’ve rebelled—

So you yank on a fresh pair of latex gloves and make a call. You tell your parents you’re sorry about the security guard, but you found a new specimen that will add the finishing flourishes to your thesis. So could they please send over a clinical team to extract the body, beginning the process of nuclear transfer? And do something about the crowd, the police?

And after scolding you for wasting autoinjector samples, they agree. Of course they do.

They’ve never cared about who lives or dies as long as you’re producing results.

Still, you’re terrified when Huahua wakes.

You’re back at the lab now, the sterile white walls only broken by the cloning vat’s green. You’ve dressed according to her ideal type, wearing an angora sweater, dusting peach blush across your cheeks. It’s not because you’re some delusional stalker. According to Chang et al., 21XX, familiarity is good for mental stabilization post-cloning.

But when Huahua finally wakes in the cloning vat and you explain what happened, she doesn’t seem unstable at all.

“Does that mean my contract no longer stands?” She sits up, green sludge dripping from her bare shoulders.

Contract. It takes a moment to realize what she’s talking about.

So the rumors were true. You heard whispers online: that the reason she was back in Neo-Shanghai was because of disputes with her Korean agency. How she filed to nullify her contract, citing respiratory issues and spinal injuries from overtraining, and then they countersued for unauthorized promotion abroad: XY Entertainment has invested countless resources into the creation of “Huahua” and refuses to tolerate this financial abuse. Furthermore, the company possesses all copyrights and the defendant has no claims to her self-image. But you had thought surely something so terrible wouldn’t happen to their prime star.

“I’ll have to look into the specifics,” you say, “but generally speaking, yes. Most contracts only extend to the original biological matter.”

That’s why there’s such a market for CL-1. It’s an easy way to get around employment rights, with clone ownership defaulting to the commissioning company. Excellent for producing factory workers.

Silence settles over the room. Huahua stares up at the ceiling—the great brutalist concrete expanse—and for some reason, it makes you think of the night you found her. But instead of that dull, glassy look there’s something else. The tiniest hint of green, like the first grass shoots in spring.

She stays like that for a second before turning back to you.

“Thank you.” She drapes her arms over the vat. “But if it’s not too much trouble, would you mind cloning my body again? I’d like to be a few years younger. Before all of this happened.”

You freeze. You’ve wiped memories of Huahua’s death to minimize trauma. But of course, she would want more.

Because it was real, wasn’t it? The rumored hospital visits, the binging and purging, her body getting smaller and smaller, the cut of her ribs jutting like a surgical pamphlet: vertebrosternal, vertebrochondral, vertebral.

Your face flushes. You claim to love Huahua, but you’re just as bad as the men angling their cameras beneath her skirt, because the whole time, you were just thinking about yourself.

So even as your stomach roils, you jab the autoinjector back into her wrist. Then you lift her up, placing her into the dissolution tank.

And as you watch her flesh gurgle, like the crackle of crispy pork belly in the night market, her bones disintegrating like fat sloughing off in oil, you try not to think of yourself: eighteen years old, scoring just below expectations on your university entrance exam. Sixteen years old with a broken nose after a failed enhanced figure skating tournament. You try not to think about your parents standing over you as they close the tank lid: try again, do better, tweaking each iteration. Larger dendrites for faster processing. Narrower hips for lighter axels.

Because it’s not about you, it’s about Huahua.

So you put your safety goggles back on, shielding your stinging eyes, and you remake her. Younger, better, fresher.

Huahua’s only this young and beautiful twice, so you have to make the most of it.

It’s strange seeing her the same age as yourself. When you were twelve, your parents made you engineer the perfect orchid, petals as soft as gossamer. But then you reached out and the fibers disintegrated between your hands. That’s the feeling Huahua’s always given you.

But when this version of her emerges from the vat, her cheeks are softer, fuller. It’s how she looked in the “Blooming with You” music video five years ago, clad in nothing but flowers and esculent skin. You thought she looked so mature back then. But now you’ve reached the same age, you see the baby fat, the unsullied light of her eyes.

And you think: thank god the cloning was stable. Iterative cloning is always risky, especially if it’s rooted in field samples. But somehow, she’s emerged unmarred.

The public praises her for “aging backwards,” not suspecting a thing. XY Entertainment has no authority over the new Huahua, so her management contract is void. There is, however, the question of Huahua’s copyright, so you pay a large lump sum and ultimately the settlement comes to this: CL-1 will hold territorial rights in China, whilst XY will retain Korean rights. And no one will ever speak about it, because some fans get so uptight about cloning, whining about “ethics” (no one in Neo-Shanghai cares), “human rights” (clones aren’t legally human) and how “it’s essentially modern slavery” (false, treatment depends on the majority shareholder; your parents treat you quite kindly). And you wouldn’t want to risk a PR catastrophe over such a silly, inconsequential detail, now would you?

So everyone signs the NDA, and the fans lap it up. And when Huahua’s new album hits number one, she insists on taking you out for drinks. She’s booked out a skyline bar for privacy, overlooking the Bund.

It’s dangerous looking at her now.

You’ve always been careful to keep your distance. Sure, you’ve bought thousands of copies of every album just to boost sales. Sure, you’ve plastered every poster on your wall like a shrine. And sure, there’ve been times where you’ve filled yourself up with your fingers, chanting her name like a prayer.

But you know that’s just fantasy. Huahua is untouchable. She’s everyone’s and no one’s.

Yet right now, in the intimacy of the bar, she feels like she’s yours.

Maybe that’s why you do it. Why the first thing you ask instead of how was your day? or what are you looking forward to on the weekend? or even so what do you think of the blossom-shaped chandelier? is—

“Your songs. Which is your favorite?”

For a moment, she tenses. You think it’s all over. That she’s concluded you’re some delusional creep. But then she answers—

“Ivy.”

—and the world stops.

The rim of your glass stalls halfway to your mouth. The chandelier blooms, the lights blurring as the crystals unfurl.

She has to know. That of all songs, people speculate about this. It’s about a woman so perfect the singer can’t get enough of her. It’s about being so envious you want to slip under someone’s skin.

Some fans focus on the suggestive undertones, the parallels to her younger labelmate Xin. But that’s not what draws you in. It’s the shame, the self-loathing. The agony of seeing someone who’s everything you’re not and simultaneously wanting to cling to them, to consume them, to choke them. You feel it sometimes, when you see that one girl in your class. Yixin, who tops exams without any need for dissolution, her name so similar to the alleged muse. Yixin, who smiles so easily, so infuriatingly, that your gut lurches—

Huahua grabs your hand, placing hers on top. Behind her, the Bund flows.

“I thought it might be your favorite too,” she says.

Huahua is young and not so beautiful the night her popularity ranking drops.

You’re holding her hand when it happens, standing on your penthouse balcony. Ever since that night at the bar, you’ve grown closer. Not friends but slightly more than a benefactor. You know this because every other weekend, Huahua has chosen to watch the popularity ranking alone. Seeing the drones form this week’s favored faces in silence, with no company other than the strongest báijiǔ money can offer. But tonight she asked you.

So you’re the one by her side when the drones form Huahua’s wide apricot eyes, condemning her to a paltry second place. You’re by her side when they move on, shaping themselves into someone sharper, sleeker: Xin, who, sure, has won a few vocal awards and did a passable job in that one musical, but is still far less established and hardworking than Huahua.

Huahua tears her hand out of your grip.

“Why would they—”

She paces back and forth. Then, she reaches for her báijiǔ and downs the entire shot.

“How did she get to the top? Xin, that little bitch, used to worship the ground I walked on. Beg when I told her—”

Then, as if realizing what she’s said, her face blanches.

“Forget it. You didn’t hear anything.”

But that hurts more than her outburst ever could. Because now she’s shutting you out, turning away.

“Hey.” You grab her shoulder. “It’s okay.”

The drones spin behind you. You see Xin, her luminescent eyes, her pearlescent smile, and even though she’s Neo-Shanghai’s newly elected darling, you hate her. So what if she can execute runs like a flowing stream? For some reason, you think of Yixin, her effortless laugh, her condescending scores.

You clench your jaw. It’s about artistry, not acrobatics. Huahua’s voice creates intimacy like no one else’s. Like she’s whispering directly to you, lyrics petal-soft against your skin.

“She doesn’t deserve it. Not like you do,” you insist.

“Yeah?” Huahua’s voice is uncharacteristically small. The drones’ light reflects on her skin, shamrock. Her lips are still wet with liquor.

“No one works as hard as you do,” you say.

And you mean it. Because Huahua holds four-hour concerts when she could get away with one. Because there are always headlines about Huahua collapsing in practice, but you can’t find a single fancam of her slacking off on stage. Because no matter how hard you’re working, Huahua’s working harder—

“You—”

Huahua breaks off.

“How did you know?”

She says it like: No one knows. Because everyone likes the appearance of effortlessness, but no one likes to really look. And if they do, they certainly don’t understand.

But of course, you understand. You remember plunging into the acid over and over.

You take in her translucent skin, the crushed shadows beneath her eyes.

“Because,” you say, “I feel it.”

Because, you don’t say, I’ve lived it.

Huahua was younger and kinder once. You know this is real because you saw her radiant ten-year-old self on the television, auditioning for XY Entertainment—and you know everything on the television is real.

So when Huahua, who is no longer so young and kind, collapses into your arms and sobs—when Huahua, who is a bit more broken and cutthroat and cruel, wishes Xin would die, wishes Xin was still that whimpering slut on her knees, at least then she knew her place, then she looked at Huahua like she was the stars, the Water Serpent and the Maiden all at once, then Xin claimed Huahua was her reason for existing, but look at that bitch now—if only Huahua still had her old phone, if only she hadn’t smashed it when she overdosed so she could show the darling fans who Xin really was—so they would see Huahua had her first—

When Huahua spews all this out, you don’t bat an eye. Because of course this is how she feels.

Because deep down there’s still that young girl wanting to be loved.

You know this because you were ten, just like Huahua, the night your parents first shoved you into the dissolution tank, and you feel like you’ve been ten ever since.

So when Huahua looks at you and says Hua Rong, help me, please, you swallow the bile down your throat and nod. You try not to think about the fear, crystallized in your body. A diamond shell where your flesh should be.

Because Huahua’s worked so hard her entire life. So doesn’t she deserve someone who loves her back?

Huahua should only be this young and vulnerable thrice, so this time, when you pull her out of the cloning vat, you take things into your own hands.

She’s ecstatic when she emerges, chanting: thank you thank you thank you. Her nose is slimmer, her jawline sharper, her lungs stronger, just like she asked.

Instead of feeling relief, your blood runs cold. As you study her, you see the faultlines. The way she doesn’t respond when you touch her cheek, an early symptom of nerve damage. The discoloration of skin by her nose, a morbid gray. You were lucky in the first iteration, the second too. But in the third, there are classic signs of cellular degradation; she won’t survive a fourth.

Huahua hasn’t read the papers, the peer reviews.

That’s why you decide to end it yourself.

You tell Huahua you’re going out with friends tonight, that you’ll see her tomorrow morning to celebrate the successful cloning.

Then you head to the lab, grabbing some gloves and filling up an autoinjector before heading out the door.

You almost feel bad when it happens.

When you see Xin backstage with your last-minute platinum VIP ticket, the kind that costs a small fortune and allows an exclusive audience, she gives a wide, unknowing smile. It’s the same venue where Huahua launched her single, only this time the stage gleams silver.

And when Xin looks at you, her eyes gleam too. They shine so ardently, so sincerely, that for a moment you’re reminded of that one girl in your class. And you think: if Xin didn’t remind you so much of Yixin, of her nauseating superiority, if you didn’t already have Huahua, you might have fallen for her.

But you do have Huahua.

When you were growing up, all you had was Huahua.

So when you look into Xin’s immaculate face, you understand why Huahua hated her. Why she wanted her.

And it’s not Xin’s fault. You think of ivy, crawling up the walls, choking out the other flowers. But it’s not your fault either.

So when the security guard you bribed leaves the room, you stab the autoinjector into Xin’s wrist—hard. You watch her crumple to the ground. But you can never be too sure so you stab her once, twice, three more times. Into the throat, the exterior, interior, and anterior jugular. Until there’s needle marks all over her flesh, even more tears than skin.

Xin’s dead. You’re back at number one.

You can’t wait to tell Huahua the good news.

You arrive a few hours early to your meeting, spurred on by your imagination. Will Huahua toss her arms around you like when she emerged from the cloning vat? Or will she simply meet your eyes and say in that small voice: thank you?

It doesn’t matter. You’ll take anything, as long as Huahua keeps looking at you. As long as she remains exactly as she was—

So when you knock on Huahua’s door and she doesn’t answer, you don’t think twice about swiping the master key. Surely she wouldn’t want to wait a second longer.

But when you open the door, you stop still. Sprawled all over Huahua’s couch is someone else.

It’s an aberration. She’s too plain—her body soft and obscure, in contrast to Huahua’s toned, malnourished midriff. And when she stirs at the sound of you entering, turning with her peach oolong tea, the gesture is too familiar. Like she’s come here multiple times, like she belongs here.

And when that realization hits, your vision blacks out.

You jab the extra autoinjector into her wrist. The thud of her body falling is inconsequential.

Where’s Huahua?

That’s the only question that matters. You look around frantically, your body searing. There are no signs of breaking and entering—no shattered glass, no broken vases, no strewn petals—but the woman must have forced Huahua. That’s the only explanation. Xin, you understand. But this… Huahua would never choose anyone so pathetic, so mediocre. Otherwise, why wouldn’t she have chosen—

You own her. It’s your future company on the contract, but you’ve been so generous about it. Your eyes don’t linger on her body when you perform her check-ups; you’ve never even peeked at those AI simulations of her naked body. You’re different from those other slobbering fans. You love her. Doesn’t she understand?

But then Huahua pads around the corner in her dainty slippers. And suddenly you can’t breathe.

You both stop still.

She’s wearing your shirt, you realize. The silk blouse you left last time you crashed, too tired after performing her medicals.

A second passes. Then another.

You take in the pearl pink against her skin. And unable to endure it any longer, you ask—

“—why wasn’t it me?”

You hate how childish it sounds.

You’re supposed to be stronger than this. What happened to “character building”? To “strength through iterations”? Chrysanthemum Prize winners don’t beg. They don’t whimper—

Huahua stares for a moment. Her gaze drops down to the autoinjector, the body, then back up to you again. And you wonder if she feels like you do, like there are weeds choking up your lungs, taking root in your organs where there should have only been flowers.

“You’re too much like Xin.” Her lips pull white at the corners. “You want too much. You want a version that never existed.”

And you flinch back. Because Huahua’s talking about you like you’re using her, shoving her into the tank for your ego just like your parents.

But it’s not about that. Heat pricks at the corners of your eyes. How could Huahua say that you don’t understand, when you’ve stood by her? When you’ve killed for her?

“Didn’t you want this?” Your voice comes out small. “I thought we were creating something together.”

Doesn’t she get it? The lights smear above you. What Hua Rong couldn’t be, Huahua could. That was how it always worked. So how can she say your version doesn’t exist? You crafted her so tenderly: the line of her jaw, her nose. And it was all for her good. So Huahua could get what she wanted, shine brighter than ever on the screen.

Because at least that way, one of you could succeed—

And you long to tell her this. To shake her by the shoulders and beat some sense into her. But then you look at her, really look, and you feel like you’re going to vomit.

Your pulse thuds. It’s like you’re staring at someone else.

Grey skin. Hollowed eyes. It makes you think of a head lolling back. Water trickling over the edge of the tub.

And you don’t want to see it. You don’t want to remember. But for the first time you can’t escape.

Because Huahua is right in front of you, not magnified on stage. And she’s still so young but already so lifeless.

Just a husk you’ve spat out and scraped clean.