Chapter 22#

When Yan Zishu returned to the private room, their unhurried client had still not arrived — still stuck in traffic, as it turned out.

Zhang Yan caught sight of the thick stack of papers in his hands and produced a knowing smile. “I was wondering what was taking Director Yan so long — you went to find a print shop?”

Yan Zishu said: “What would I need a print shop for? A document got left in the car — I just remembered and went down to the car park to fetch it.”

He handed the stack to Ben, then sat back down and picked up his phone, scrolling through it without apparent concern.

He had already sent word to Helen to look into who, over the course of the day, could have had access to the document folder.

Ben, under Zhang Yan’s watchful gaze, began sorting through the papers with methodical composure — while privately consigning Zhang Yan’s sabotage methods to a very low tier of contempt.

Ten minutes later, Dongyun Bank’s representative, Manager Qu, finally made his belated entrance.

Cloud backups had resolved the immediate crisis of the missing documents — but that did not mean the meeting itself would go smoothly.

Manager Qu had drooping eyebrows, an elongated face, and deep nasolabial folds, which together gave him the permanently aggrieved appearance of someone who had been handed a great deal of misfortune and was still processing it.

For three and a half hours, Manager Qu wore that mournful, eggplant-dark expression while systematically dismantling a great many terms and conditions that had previously been agreed upon.

By the end he wasn’t even bothering to conceal his impatience: “Director Yan, your side needs to show some basic good faith here. We came in with genuine good faith — but look at these terms, and these ones — none of them match what was originally discussed. How are we supposed to move forward like this?”

Ben thought: So stealing the documents was just the appetizer. Here’s the main course.

Zhang Yan put on a performance of surprise: “Could this be the wrong version of the proposal? Surely this isn’t the final draft?”

Ben kept a smile on his face: “How could it be different from the original? These were all terms that had been agreed to in principle with President Qin.”

Manager Qu only said, with absolute certainty: “It’s impossible — I wouldn’t mislead you. We’re a bank. Every internal decision goes through a complex approval process. I wouldn’t personally be responsible for changing things arbitrarily, now would I? In short, our requirements are fixed. Your side will need to go back and discuss it internally, and let us know whether you can meet them. If you can, we carry on. If not — well, that would be unfortunate.”

Zhang Yan played the enthusiastic conciliator, all warm words and eager gestures, performing urgency to keep the client at the table.

In the end, the not-quite-legitimate authorization documents weren’t needed at all — because the negotiation stalled and the letter of intent was never signed.

Once Manager Qu had been seen off, Ben turned to Yan Zishu with a sour expression: “The old bastard suddenly reneging on everything and refusing to budge — that’s Zhang Yan written all over it. He must have been in contact with the other side privately and done his own deal with them.” Most likely with a kickback involved.

Yan Zishu was, as always, restrained in his phrasing: “Mm. A difficult first round of talks — it happens. We’ll see how things develop.”

Helen had already gone through the security footage and sent Yan Zishu a list of names — one of whom was someone known to be close to Zhang Yan.

He had, in effect, already identified the culprit. But the footage only showed the person entering and leaving; there was no more direct evidence.

Yan Zishu didn’t intend to spend energy on finding any.

This sort of person was small fry. There was limited value in making an example of them in a hurry.

When the target was a lackey, it was more worthwhile to go after the boss.

Ben had long since decoded Yan Zishu’s habit of saying nothing while making his point with precision: the real message was I agree with everything you said, I’m simply not going to say so. He stopped contributing commentary.

Still, looking at Manager Qu’s stoniness and Zhang Yan’s backstage maneuvering, he worried that subsequent rounds of talks might be no smoother.

Then again, Ben reflected: I’m a project manager’s assistant. Why am I carrying this much anxiety.

After work, work stays at work.

The clock on the wall read past six-thirty. Zhang Yan had made a self-satisfied exit long since.

With the weekend approaching, Ben had no appetite for staying late either. “Director Yan — shall we just head out? I can drop you wherever.”

Yan Zishu thought for a moment: “No need. I was actually thinking of going for — a drink.”

The impression he gave was of a human work machine, and work machines ran on work rather than alcohol. A drink being mentioned at all was rather an unusual occurrence.

Ben, who had also been running on empty for a while and had privately been entertaining thoughts of a bar, said: “I’ll come with you.”

Yan Zishu said, with tact: “I’ve made plans with someone.”

Plans? With who?

Ben burned with curiosity but thought better of asking, and obligingly drove the company car back to the office.

Yan Zishu still managed to call after him: “Make sure you find the missing documents and my USB drive before you go home.”

… Ben concluded that he had briefly lost his mind to even consider going for drinks with this kind of supervisor.

As for the identity of “someone” — it wasn’t as though he had no idea.

Ben had barely left when Yan Zishu went straight to Fu Jinchi’s office.

He asked for directions on the way, and the staff not only didn’t stop him but brought him upstairs themselves.

He knocked at the slightly ajar door and pushed it open. The door, inlaid with its mosaic of colored glass panes, slid inward on its track. “Is the printer sorted?”

Dark carpet on the floor, a single-strand bead curtain overhead, casting shifting, dappled light. The room was furnished with elaborate sofas and side tables, yet Fu Jinchi was sitting in a plain chair, flipping through an entertainment magazine.

One leg crossed over the other, both feet tipped casually onto the tea table — the chair balanced precariously on its two back legs. Yan Zishu found himself involuntarily thinking: if he just walked over and put one foot on it, would the whole thing tip back?

He was, fortunately, past the age of acting on that kind of impulse.

Fu Jinchi let the chair’s front legs settle to the floor with a quiet thud and turned to look. “Done for the day?”

Without waiting for an answer, he went on, with a light smile: “Do you know, after you left, I had to get someone from IT to come and set the printer up again. A borrowed printer, and you managed to cause this much upheaval — not only wasting a perfectly good ink cartridge, but leaving poor Manager Qian unable to use his computer for half the afternoon.”

Yan Zishu thought, drily: the hall manager had been on his rounds — it wasn’t as though he was sitting at his desk.

Magnificent peacock. All talk.

He had come intending to invite Fu Jinchi out to a bar, but what came out of his mouth was: “In that case, shall I take Manager Qian out to dinner to make it up to him?”

Fu Jinchi replied, indifferently: “No need. He has to pick his child up from a tutoring class this evening.”

Yan Zishu tried again: “Then may I invite Mr. Fu somewhere for a drink? Would you do me the honor?”

To which, unexpectedly, Fu Jinchi said: “Another time. I don’t feel like going out today.”

That genuinely surprised Yan Zishu.

Before any inkling of playing hard to get could form in the back of his mind, Fu Jinchi spoke again — this time in a tone that was, for him, unusually straightforward: “But you’re welcome to stay and have a piece of cake. Today is my birthday.”

Yan Zishu thought back and found this was not, in fact, an invention. Fu Jinchi’s birthday was real.

As Fu Weishan’s chief assistant and a participant in all things concerning the Fu family, he had naturally reviewed Fu Jinchi’s basic file at some point.

Date of birth, blood type, professional history, even personal interests —

Whatever was findable on the surface, none of it was classified.

Only most people didn’t connect “basic file” with “remembering to mark an occasion.” Knowing when someone was born and wanting to celebrate that date were two entirely different things, with no necessary link between them.

And Fu Jinchi himself, as a person, seemed inherently difficult to associate with the concept of “celebrating a birthday.”

This particular elaborately composed peacock — all poise and performance — who could picture him in a paper crown, blowing out candles, making a wish?

If he were going to mark the day at all, it should have involved throwing a party, or hosting some showy banquet —

Not sitting alone in an office, leafing through a dull entertainment magazine.

Well. It was his day. The person at the center of it was entitled to some latitude.

“Happy birthday,” Yan Zishu said, and then patted his jacket pockets out of reflex. “I only just found out — no time to prepare anything…”

This was the instinct of every adult who had turned up to a social occasion only to realize they had no cash for a gift.

Fu Jinchi looked at him and smiled. But the pupils of his eyes held something like a frozen sea.

No gift, but the cake was already there. Fu Jinchi had someone bring it in — a layer of dark chocolate coating on the outside, fruit arranged on top, no name or greeting written on it. This was the standard-issue variety the administrative department provided for all employees on their birthdays.

Having likely sat in the refrigerator all afternoon untouched, it had gathered a fine layer of condensation by the time it arrived.

Fu Jinchi’s own secretary, seizing the opportunity of delivering the cake, had taken the liberty of bringing two colleagues who were on shift and knew him well — to light candles and sing the birthday song. Since the boss had never gone in for any of this in previous years, today, for whatever reason, she had decided to do it properly.

Fu Jinchi declined the ceremony, and told her just to open the cake. The others offered their congratulations all the same.

Trite as it was, even the most solitary and difficult person generally didn’t turn away this kind of cheerful goodwill.

Yan Zishu watched the scene unfold and thought: how had the atmosphere drifted this far from where it started?

In the end, Fu Jinchi himself didn’t eat a single bite. “You all have it — I don’t like sweet things.”

The employees took their cue, none of them bold enough to press him. The sentiments had been delivered, the social function had been served, and they drifted out one by one.

The half-eaten cake was carried away. The tea table was cleared and reset as though nothing had been there.

As the secretary and the others withdrew, there was a soft click — the door catching on its latch, perhaps automatically — and the room suddenly felt enclosed.

The brief burst of warmth dissolved in under half an hour.

Yan Zishu sat on the sofa and felt, unexpectedly, a certain quietness settle over things. “Who celebrates a birthday alone and doesn’t eat a single piece of their own cake?”

Fu Jinchi said: “I already told them — they should have had it as an afternoon snack.”

Yan Zishu said: “No employee would dare.”

Fu Jinchi said: “It would have been thrown out tomorrow anyway.”

The implication being that it was only because Yan Zishu had barged in that the cake had served any purpose at all.

In the antique-toned office, the ceiling was scattered with small laser lights. Fu Jinchi stood, retrieved an already-opened bottle of gin and two clear glasses from the drinks cabinet, and came back. “Since I couldn’t join you for a drink out — we can have one here.”

The room fell quiet, with only the sound of liquor pouring into glass.

To break the silence, Yan Zishu asked what seemed like the only obvious question: “And your wish — did you make one, Mr. Fu?”

Fu Jinchi said, with remarkable candor: “Every year I wish misfortune on everyone with the Fu name.”

Yan Zishu let out a short, involuntary laugh. “Doesn’t that curse yourself into the bargain?”

“It does.” Fu Jinchi admitted this with perfect equanimity. “The unfortunate thing is, it still hasn’t come true.”

Yan Zishu, sensing the full weight of that particular brand of weary nihilism — the flavor of someone who has decided everything might as well burn — chose not to pursue the topic.

Instead he shifted to another: “There’s actually something of a personal nature I’ve been wanting to ask.”

Fu Jinchi brought his glass to his lips. “Go on.”

Yan Zishu said, quietly and mildly: “Do you happen to have anything on Li Chang’an?”

Fu Jinchi choked, and spent several seconds coughing.