Chapter 363 - 237: Dimensionality Reduction Strike
Lily was ignored, but that was hardly surprising. These were the coolest girls in her class, and they naturally held that privilege.
She held up her wrist, showing off a Van Cleef & Arpels four-leaf clover bracelet. Her little face was filled with anticipation:
"Dasha, Bobby, look! My dad bought me a four-leaf clover bracelet, too," she said. "Can I join your Friday Sisterhood now? You said only people with a four-leaf clover bracelet were allowed to join..."
Dasha and Bobby finally stopped their conversation. They glanced down at Lily’s wrist for a second, then shot each other a look before covering their mouths and bursting into laughter.
"Oh, God, poor Lily Cervantes. Sweet, sweet Lily Cervantes," Dasha said sarcastically. "Sorry, but you probably didn’t know. The four-leaf clover is *so* last season."
"Don’t you ever subscribe to *Vogue* or follow trends on Instagram?" Bobby added, her mockery just as relentless. "Even the nannies on the Upper East Side are wearing them now. They’re tacky as hell."
"Exactly," Dasha said, smugly pulling out her phone. She swiped the screen open and shoved it in Lily’s face. "See this?"
On the phone’s screen was a tiny, sparkling accessory—a limited-edition, crushed-diamond hourglass bag charm from a collaboration between Balenciaga and some couture workshop.
"This is what all the coolest girls in New York are scrambling to get right now," Bobby boasted, her tone condescending. "Only people who get a personal invitation from their PR director can have one custom-made. A single one costs 15,000 USD!"
"It’s so beautiful..." Lily murmured, staring at the screen. She asked admiringly, "Did you guys bring yours today?"
Dasha and Bobby’s expressions froze.
Even though Lyman Preparatory School was a top-tier private school, their parents clearly weren’t wealthy enough to spend 15,000 USD on that kind of accessory for their thirteen-year-old daughters.
But Dasha was quick to recover. She rolled her eyes and lifted her chin disdainfully. "Of course we already ordered them. The artisan workshop in Paris just needs time to make them. Do you even know what *haute couture* means?"
"But since you want to join us so badly," Bobby said, her eyes glinting as she leaned in closer, "it’s not *completely* impossible."
"Get one of these limited-edition charms for each of us," she said, "and we’ll let you into our little group."
"Yeah," Dasha added. "You want to be one of the cool girls, don’t you?"
"But... 15,000 USD is really expensive," Lily said hesitantly. "Besides, don’t you guys already have—"
"Huh? You think 15,000 is expensive? We’re just giving you a chance," Dasha sneered. "If you don’t even have that much allowance, then you should just go back to public school. Go on, get lost and play with the mud-legs!"
Her voice was loud enough for several people nearby to hear. Their gazes turned, sizing Lily up with curiosity.
Lily, meanwhile, wished the ground would open up and swallow her whole.
Elizabeth and Li Wei, standing just a few steps away, witnessed the entire exchange.
’These little shits are such a pain,’ Li Wei thought. ’Turning a stupid accessory into a case of all-American bullying.’
He was about to step forward, already planning to buy Lily an entire Balenciaga collection the next day, when he suddenly felt his hand was empty.
Elizabeth’s eyes went cold. She pulled her hand from his and shoved the half-finished cup of mulled wine she was holding into it.
She walked over to Lily with a smile, looped an arm through hers, and asked pleasantly, "I overheard you talking about the Upper East Side?"
"And who are you?"
Seeing an adult approach, Dasha and Bobby immediately grew wary.
"My name is Elizabeth Mellon," Elizabeth said with a smile. "I just graduated from the Brielley Girls’ School. I wonder if you’ve heard of it?"
Brielley Girls’ School? Of course they’d heard of it.
It was the most elite K-12 all-girls day school in all of New York—no, in the entire United States of America. It was the exclusive domain where true, top-tier Old Money families cultivated their debutantes and elites.
If Lyman Preparatory School was the gatekeeper to the world of elite private schools—one you could squeeze into as long as your parents were willing to throw enough money at tuition and sponsorship fees—then Brielley was in a league of its own, a fortress whose gates couldn’t be pried open even by waving a check for tens of millions of USD.
In the pecking order of private schools across the United States of America, it reigned supreme at the very top of the pyramid.
It didn’t just represent wealth; it represented the core of New York’s power, heritage, and intellectual monopoly. From Caroline Kennedy to the daughters of top tycoons, more than half of New York’s true Old Money families sent their daughters to Brielley to receive the most rigorous academic and elite education in the country.
Money wasn’t enough to get in. The admissions officers would trace a family’s history back three generations, examining the size of their trust fund and their contributions to the arts and politics.
Compared to Brielley, Lyman was more than just a couple of rungs down the ladder.
"S-So what?" Dasha stammered, puffing out her undeveloped chest in a weak attempt at defiance. "We’re talking about fashion! About *haute couture*!"
Elizabeth tilted her head slightly, her gaze falling on the crushed-diamond hourglass charm on Dasha’s phone screen.
She spoke in a soft, gentle voice, still smiling. "This kind of industrial waste, which relies on ostentatious logos and artificial scarcity... at Brielley, I assure you, whether her last name was Rockefeller, Mellon, Du Pont, or Vanderbilt, if anyone dared hang such a gaudy, soulless piece of junk on her bag, she would become the laughingstock of the entire Upper East Side for three whole years, starting from the very first day she set foot on campus."
"Perhaps only the nouveau riche and little girls with no artistic taste feel the need to wear labels," she said, her smile never faltering. "Does a Rolls-Royce need bumper stickers?"
To hear Elizabeth mercilessly deride them as nouveau riche and tasteless—an insult delivered without a single curse word—was like an attack from a higher plane of existence. Every word was a dagger to the heart.
Thirteen is an age of fragile egos and a desperate craving for validation.
The Balenciaga couture piece they were so proud of was being mercilessly ground into the dirt by a true heiress from a top-tier family. Their psychological defenses crumbled in an instant.
"Y-You’re lying!" Bobby’s eyes instantly reddened, and tears began to fall like pearls from a broken string.
Dasha burst into tears and screamed toward a nearby crowd, "Mom! Dad! Someone’s bullying us!"
A moment later, a well-dressed, middle-aged couple dripping with designer brands pushed through the crowd, their faces flushed with anger.
The father was about to launch into a tirade, but he paused when he saw Elizabeth’s youthful face and the Yale sweatshirt she was wearing.
He took a closer look and saw a tall, powerfully built man walk up from behind her to stand beside Elizabeth and Lily.
As a middle-aged white man in New York, how could he possibly not recognize the man before him?
The Tyrant of Metropolis, the Giants’ Superman, the yellow-skinned God of the NFL, the superstar who was a one-man army.
Li Wei!
"I’m Elizabeth Mellon," she introduced herself, beaming. "A moment ago, your dear daughter told my little sister here to buy her and her friend each a 15,000 USD accessory. She said if she didn’t, they wouldn’t play with her. She also told her to ’get lost and play with the mud-legs’ from public school."
She then asked, "I’d like you to explain to me, what exactly does ’get lost’ mean? And what, pray tell, are ’mud-legs’?"
Sweat immediately broke out on Dasha’s father’s forehead.
Mellon.
He knew all too well what that surname meant in the financial circles and high society of the American East Coast.
’And his little troublemaker had managed to provoke Li Wei and a Mellon on the same day?!’
The middle-aged couple, who had been arrogant and ready to read someone the riot act just a second before, now did a complete one-eighty.
"M-Miss Mellon, and Mr. Li Wei!" Dasha’s father stammered out. He didn’t even bother to wipe the beads of sweat from his forehead, and the smile on his face was more painful than a grimace. He yanked the still-sobbing Dasha in front of him, pulling Bobby along with her.
"This... this is all a misunderstanding," he said. "My daughter has always been a timid girl. How could she possibly say something like that?"
"Oh, my apologies then," Elizabeth said, her smile unwavering. "Perhaps my hearing is just going bad."
"No, no... it was our failure to discipline her," the father said, bowing slightly as he apologized. "We are terribly sorry. Your sister shouldn’t have been subjected to that."
’God damn it, why would Li Wei and a Mellon be at Lyman Preparatory School?’ He couldn’t figure it out for the life of him.
"A joke is no excuse for a lack of breeding, and it certainly doesn’t give you the right to trample on someone’s dignity," Elizabeth said coldly. "You call her family ’mud-legs.’ Are you, perhaps, from an aristocratic family yourself?"
"You’re absolutely right. It was our failure," Dasha’s mother chimed in. Although she didn’t know who Elizabeth and Li Wei were, she followed her husband’s lead and apologized profusely. "We will discipline them strictly when we get home. We’ll cut off their credit cards! We’ll make sure nothing like this ever happens again! Now, apologize to Lily!"
Under their parents’ harsh rebukes and forceful yanking, Dasha and Bobby were too scared to even cry loudly. They were used to lording it over everyone at school; when had they ever seen their all-powerful parents behave so meekly?
"S-Sorry, Lily..."
Then, their parents dragged them away like they were plucking up baby chicks, not even bothering to grab the cupcakes they had just bought, as if fleeing from a man-eating monster.
The other students, who had been quietly watching from the sidelines, saw the entire thing.
That was Dasha and Bobby, the two who were always so imperious and acted so high and mighty in class! And yet, in front of Lily’s older brother and sister, they didn’t dare let out a peep and were forced by their own parents to bow their heads and apologize!
The social tide turned in an instant.
As Li Wei and Elizabeth started to lead Lily toward the next activity area, Lily immediately felt a shift in the gazes around her.
The very girls who had been so aloof toward her before were now looking at her with eyes full of awe, envy, and undisguised sycophancy.
"Lily, you’re so cool!"
"Lily, are you coming to the ski party next week?"
"Lily, remember me? We’re in the same equestrian club..."
In just a few short minutes, Lily went from being a marginalized nobody to the most popular "cool girl" in her entire grade.
Li Wei looked at Elizabeth, who calmly took the mulled wine back from him and took a sip.
"Why the sudden outburst?" he asked. "That’s not like you."
"Because if no one had her back," Elizabeth said, letting out a long breath, "her life here would have been miserable."