If You Could See the Sun

Alice Sun is the sole scholarship student at Airington International Boarding School, an elite institution in Beijing where most students come from China's wealthiest families. Alice moved to Beijing from California with her parents after financial hardship forced them to close the family's small grocery store. She has spent five years building a reputation as a top student, tying each year for the Top Achiever Award with her academic rival, Henry Li, the heir to China's second-biggest tech start-up.

Alice's parents, Mama and Baba, reveal they can no longer afford even her half-tuition. Baba's printing company has shut down and Mama's hospital shifts have been cut. They give Alice until the end of the semester to decide whether to transfer to a local public school, where she would face the gaokao, China's notoriously difficult national college entrance exam, or to a public school in Maine. Alice is devastated: Airington is her ladder toward a secure future.

At the year's first assembly, Alice ties with Henry for the Top Achiever Award, but the realization that she may never stand onstage again overwhelms her. After the ceremony, a strange cold sweeps through her body. A classmate, Andrew She, barrels into her without seeing her. Her reflection is missing from the glass doors. She has turned invisible.

The invisibility recurs unpredictably over the following days, always preceded by a wave of cold. Having no close friends to confide in, Alice seeks out Henry, who suggests her condition is a form of power. Her aunt, Xiaoyi, offers similar advice: the experience could be a curse or a gift, and Alice should seize whatever opportunity is in front of her.

Inspired by Xiaoyi's words, Alice proposes a business venture. She will use her invisibility to carry out covert tasks for wealthy classmates in exchange for payment, and she needs Henry to build an app. Henry raises ethical objections but agrees to a 50-50 profit split. He creates Beijing Ghost, an app featuring anonymous messaging and voice distortion. The first request arrives almost immediately.

Alice's first client turns out to be her own roommate, Chanel Cao, who wants evidence of her father's affair. Alice follows the man to a restaurant, turns invisible, and photographs him with a young woman. Back at the dorm, she finds the devastated Chanel and, guilt-stricken, reveals her role behind Beijing Ghost and her invisibility. Chanel becomes an ally, leaving a review that triggers a spike in user activity.

A more urgent request arrives from Rainie Lam, a popular classmate whose ex-boyfriend, Jake Nguyen, is threatening to distribute intimate photos of her. Alice, Henry, and Chanel coordinate to access Jake's phone while he showers. Alice deletes Rainie's photos and those of two other girls, then schedules an email containing a humiliating video of Jake to their teachers. Jake receives detention for the rest of the month.

As weeks pass, Alice and Henry's rivalry softens into closeness. After Alice breaks down over a forgotten history test, Henry offers quiet comfort and reveals he never hated her, viewing their competition as fun. Alice recognizes the gulf between them: for Henry, failure carries no consequences, while for her, everything is at stake.

By November, Alice is sleeping barely two hours a night and running Beijing Ghost constantly. She has saved 160,000 RMB, but the school raises fees by 30,000 RMB, intensifying her desperation. She agrees to steal history midterm answers for Evie Wu, a student who struggles with English-language exams. Alice photographs the exam from Mr. Murphy's folder while Henry lures the teacher away. When Mr. Murphy returns unexpectedly, Henry fakes fainting as a distraction, and Alice escapes.

Then Andrew She contacts Beijing Ghost with a far more dangerous request. His father is locked in a corporate rivalry with Peter Oh's father at Longfeng Oil. During the upcoming school trip to Suzhou, Alice is to lure Peter to a hotel room where Andrew's hired men will hold him. Andrew offers one million RMB. Henry objects forcefully, but Alice, thinking of Mama's scarred hand from the robbery in California and her parents' sacrifices, insists she has no choice. Henry reluctantly agrees.

On the train, Henry confides that his father used to lock him in a windowless closet for hours-long study sessions as a child, stopping only when Henry confronted him at age ten. The revelation shatters Alice's assumption that Henry's life has been painless. That night at the Suzhou night market, she lets him sleep on her shoulder.

At the hotel, Alice's invisibility fails for hours. She finally turns invisible near 1:00 a.m. and lures Peter to Room 2005 with a vague note. The men pull Peter inside, and Alice grabs his phone as instructed. In the hallway, she reads a message from Peter's mother on Kakao, a messaging app: warm words about missing him and cooking his favorite food. The message undoes her, and she turns back.

Alice slips into Room 2005 while invisible and unties Peter, but her visibility returns. A violent struggle ensues. Peter's head hits a wall, and he bleeds. The men overpower Alice, tie her hands, and take Peter. She saws through her ropes and races to an underground parking lot where she deduces the men will transfer Peter. Henry intercepts her on the stairwell. He fights the kidnappers while Alice frees Peter from their car, and the three flee upstairs, Alice memorizing the license plate as evidence.

They crash into Mr. Murphy, Alice's history teacher, on the ninth floor. Peter is hospitalized with a mild concussion. On the train back, Mr. Murphy confronts Alice: security footage shows no record of her entering Room 2005, though she was filmed leaving with Peter. Alice refuses to reveal the full truth, knowing it would expose Beijing Ghost, the stolen exam, and her classmates' secrets. Baba publicly yells at Alice in front of classmates and teachers, and she is sent home on temporary leave.

At her parents' flat, Alice is consumed by guilt. She accompanies Mama to the grocery store and, for the first time in years, experiences ordinary life outside Airington. She buys Mama an expensive hand cream for her dry, scarred hands, and Mama hugs her, calling her a silly child. Henry visits, sees the contrast between Alice's world and his own, and learns that Beijing Ghost was created to pay her school fees. He insists the money was never his motivation.

Rather than deleting the app, Alice and Henry transform Beijing Ghost into a fake study app, erasing all messages except Andrew's kidnapping instructions. Alice writes a five-page article about class disparity at Airington and emails it with the modified app to Madam Yao, a school board representative. She confronts Andrew privately, leveraging the car keys, the license plate, and his original messages to secure his cooperation. In the meeting with Madam Yao, Alice argues that consequences should reflect actions, not social standing, and threatens to publish her article through Henry's platforms and Chanel's connections. Henry leverages his family's donations, and Chanel warns she will discourage other families from enrolling. Madam Yao concedes.

Peter's parents choose not to press charges but pressure the school to remove Alice at semester's end. Alice accepts this calmly. Baba softens, telling her that he and Mama work hard so she can have a better life, not so she can repay them. Mr. Chen, Alice's English teacher, offers a path forward: a smaller international school in Beijing's Chaoyang District with a potential full scholarship. Mr. Chen shares that he, too, grew up poor and once felt invisible, overcoming it by pursuing work he genuinely cared about. Alice suspects he may have once shared her condition.

In her final days at Airington, Alice kisses Henry, and he kisses her back. Together with Chanel, they begin building a legitimate version of Beijing Ghost: a platform connecting wealthy students with low-income students for paid tutoring, with scholarships for top-ranking working-class users. Alice looks toward the Beijing skyline at dawn, no longer invisible, no longer defined by her rankings, and seeing herself clearly for the first time.