Chapter 34#

What did it mean for two people to define themselves as lovers?

When Yan Zishu had agreed, he hadn’t had a great deal of time to think through the question.

Afterward, he tried. Only there were probably as many definitions as there were people. A bed partner already satisfied the need for physical contact; a lover seemed to imply something more — a rigorous and close mutual entanglement — yet lacked the reasonable and appropriate weight of a formal name.

In terms of Fu Jinchi’s behavior… he had moved into Yan Zishu’s life with increasingly unapologetic freedom.

The frequency of Fu Jinchi’s overnight stays increased, and the apartment gradually accumulated new things: slippers, sleep clothes, toiletries. Towel, cup, toothbrush — the additions were not dramatic, but they were real, leaving traces one by one.

On one occasion Fu Jinchi brought a small pot of a delicate money-wort plant, its round leaves appealing, and said it would look nice on the shelf as a bit of greenery. He said the place was too bare — too little green — and wasn’t a comfortable space to live in.

Yan Zishu looked on in silence, thinking to withdraw his opinion and move away. Fu Jinchi caught his hand and laced their fingers together.

Each time they met, there was a quality of clandestine lovers about it — embraces and kisses confined to the space of one apartment, or one hotel suite, never on open display, heat offered only within circumscribed times and places.

Outside the door, each reverted to the formal, pleasant coolness of acquaintances.

As Fu Jinchi had said he would: he was good to his lover. He knew how to look after people.

Only sometimes it felt real, and sometimes it felt like a performance — the line between them blurred enough to make it difficult to tell.

Once, in a shallow sleep, Yan Zishu woke in an instant, opened his eyes, and found Fu Jinchi looking directly at him. His vision was blurred, the light was blurred, and for a disoriented moment it looked like a cold-blooded creature with slit pupils. The cerebral cortex sent a reflex warning, and what little sleepiness remained scattered at once.

But only a second, and Fu Jinchi was back to his usual self, asking what he wanted for breakfast.

As though the uneasy feeling of a moment ago was only a nightmare’s trick of the light.

If there was anything else to be said — having been open with each other now, there was considerably less awkwardness about mentioning things, good or bad.

Fu Jinchi shared secrets with him unilaterally and freely, and these secrets became the rope that bound them together.

One day Yan Zishu suddenly understood what this was.

A process of separation.

Fu Jinchi was slowly, soundlessly, detaching him from his position as Fu Weishan’s trusted confidant.

*

The Ma Trading Association did eventually bring suit against Yinghan Group — on the grounds of breach of the auction contract’s confidentiality clause and client information disclosure. The legal department mounted the defense, and in the end the liability was redirected to a former employee who had left the year before. The claim was that person had introduced an error in a spreadsheet at the time, which had persisted into the current year and misled a new employee. Since the individual had long since resigned, the matter was considered resolved without further accountability.

This defense was only marginally more sophisticated than the classic it was the temp worker and we’ve already dismissed them, and its evasive intent was obvious enough.

Not everyone failed to notice that two large companies litigating over “information disclosure” were most likely using the lawsuit as a decoy — the real goal being to shift public attention, since the money laundering allegation was the genuinely serious charge, and both sides wanted the investigation’s findings to recede from public consciousness.

The effectiveness, however, was limited.

Whatever the Ma Trading Association’s circumstances, the fact that Yinghan Group had been dragged into the money laundering storm came at a particularly unfortunate moment, compounding the recent string of damaging trending topics and poor public reputation. Whether or not there was any real substance to the concerns, the public was inclined to assume the worst.

People could say they were waiting for the official investigation results — but investigations took time. The stock market couldn’t wait. The moment public opinion caved, the share price followed in an avalanche, causing the company’s senior management considerable and ongoing distress.

Yan Zishu told Fu Jinchi: “Fu Xiaoyu came out of it relatively unscathed. He’s even managed to land in a better-suited position where he can show what he can do.”

Fu Jinchi was indifferent: “Who cares about that idiot. Watching his father Third Uncle jump up and down was enough. And Fu Weishan.”

Birds of a feather.

Fu Xiaoyu was, in his way, a fool with a fool’s luck — he had received a thorough dressing-down from Third Uncle at home, but since he had never paid any attention to stocks or any of that, he genuinely couldn’t grasp what his father was so angry about. Having been used without realizing it, he didn’t understand why things were serious. An adoring mother who had always spoiled him without limit meant he continued living in a blissful, self-congratulatory haze. The privileges available to the second generation of wealth really did include the capacity to not care about anything.

Afterward, however much Third Uncle wanted to rage at his son, he was still his blood, and certain arrangements had to be made. Eventually he orchestrated a move, getting Fu Xiaoyu transferred to the appraisal department — ostensibly better-suited to his background, and considerably more lucrative.

If Fu Xiaoyu escaped all consequences, Ji Chen — Ji Chen escaped even more cleanly.

Fu Weishan’s protection was a minor reason. The main factor was that once the situation had escalated to that scale, bit-players’ storylines became almost irrelevant.

As Fu Jinchi had said, Fu Weishan was the one having the genuinely difficult time. As the company’s legal representative and chairman, he was the front line of any official investigation — and now, just as the original plot had always prescribed, he had no choice but to exert every resource available to hold the pressure at bay.

Simultaneously managing the official inquiry, attempting to stabilize the share price, and handling the imminent shareholders’ meeting.

Ji Chen, at this point, was at best a lucky charm offering some measure of comfort.

What even Yan Zishu didn’t know was that Fu Weishan’s experience of that comfort was inconsistent — sometimes genuinely consoling, sometimes faintly irritating.

Perhaps because in the original plot, Fu Weishan was the one standing on high ground, sheltering a small love interest from the storm — noble, grand, moved by his own sacrifice, the deep satisfaction of the dominant male. Now that he was the one being battered by the storm, that particular sense of achievement was gone, and somehow the enthusiasm that went with it had dimmed.

If you asked Fu Weishan directly, he did have feelings for Ji Chen — that was beyond question. Yet it seemed he had never considered the deeper dimension of those feelings. The emotion was more like a programmed sequence: it had developed when and how it was meant to, and he knew what it was without knowing why.

Two weeks passed in a flash. The inevitable moment always arrived eventually.

Two adjacent medium-sized conference rooms had their movable partition removed and combined into a single large hall. Rows of chairs arranged in neat order. The meeting name displayed on the large screen. Artificial flowers on the podium. The host’s voice through the microphone announced the formal opening of the shareholders’ meeting.

Everyone present was dressed in dark formal clothing. Even Fu Jinchi had made the rare concession to looking like someone from an older era — hair combed back with a traditional oil, neat and formal.

Yan Zishu stood at the edge of the room, scanning, and immediately found him in the sea of black. A good face really did seem to generate its own light.

He also spotted Third Uncle Fu, hair freshly dyed, looking several years younger than at their last meeting, radiating a certain well-satisfied energy.

Yan Zishu and Helen both came in person to serve as staff, with additional monitors overseeing the voting process.

Even with Fu Weishan’s best efforts to reassure shareholders, this year’s assembly was inevitably more restless than usual.

On the surface it appeared entirely normal — ordinary arrivals, small talk in clusters of three and four, settling into seats in groups.

This restlessness wouldn’t show on faces. It would show on ballot papers.

The shareholders’ meeting had more than ten items to vote on.

When the counting was done, Yan Zishu checked the result on the item for Fu Weishan’s election to the board: passed, by a narrow margin.

The entire meeting had been unremarkable, entirely undramatic.

Fu Weishan returned to the CEO’s suite looking reasonably composed, but anyone who knew him well enough could feel the contained fury in his footsteps.

A moment later, the entire secretarial office heard the distant slam of a door, the impact echoing through the corridor.

Yan Zishu sat calmly in the outer room of the suite. After a while Helen came in looking somewhat conflicted, gesturing toward the inner office with a tilt of her head, keeping her voice very low: “What do we do — there’s still a dinner tonight. I don’t know if CEO Fu is still going.”

Yan Zishu replied in an equally quiet voice: “Xiaochen is in there with him. We can ask later.”

Helen startled, and only then realized the inner office contained more than one person. The atmosphere had a particular quality.

The frosted glass didn’t allow transparency, but it transmitted light — two silhouettes barely visible, pressed close together. Possibly kissing.

Despite her surprise, her professional composure held. She gave a quick nod and withdrew.

Less than two minutes later, someone else came through the door. Yan Zishu looked up to find Fu Jinchi strolling in with unhurried ease.

Fu Jinchi also stopped for a moment at the sight of the light and shadows behind the frosted glass, then let out the knowing, sardonic smile of someone who had seen it all.

He even seemed to find this more entertaining than the shareholders’ meeting scene just now, his expression registering something like appreciative interest.

Yan Zishu watched him start to enjoy the spectacle, remembered his own responsibilities, stood up promptly, and pushed Fu Jinchi back out without making a sound.

From the inner room came the sound of something falling, and the suggestion of breathing — Yan Zishu’s attention wavered, and Fu Jinchi glanced back as well.

Yan Zishu caught his arm and said under his breath: “Come on — outside first.”

In the reception area on this floor, a front desk staff member had brought coffee over and set it on the small round table before the sofa.

Fu Jinchi added a creamer. “I’m not allowed to look a little longer? Is that the young intern in there?”

Yan Zishu reverted to normal volume: “What is there to look at. Two eyes and a mouth, same as everyone.”

Fu Jinchi rested his cheek on his hand: “Hard to say whether to credit the boy’s methods, or chalk it up to my brother’s lack of judgment.”

There he was again, back in a company setting, habitually salting his speech with my brother, my brother.

Yan Zishu thought: that mouth of his — if he let him back in there, it might actually come to a fight.

People were still moving past at intervals; this wasn’t an ideal location for idle chatter. Whatever gossip needed discussing could wait until they were somewhere else.

In public, Fu Jinchi maintained all proprieties without fail — sitting directly across from him, perfectly correct — though when he stretched his legs, his leather shoe brushed against Yan Zishu’s leather shoe, and he lowered his voice: “I’ll come by yours tonight.”

Yan Zishu replied with the tone of confirming a business appointment: “Fine. After nine.”

For office workers, particularly the chronically overworked variety, even private meetings had to be carved out of limited hours. Fu Jinchi had taken over most of his scarce leisure time and still found it insufficient, perpetually pushing for more.

Before they could say anything further, Third Uncle Fu appeared at the far end of the corridor. An older man’s expanding frame, but a resonant voice — and despite an unsatisfactory share price, many decisions had gone his way, leaving him in a state of well-satisfied ease: “Jinchi, still haven’t headed back?”

Both men stood to greet him. Fu Jinchi smiled: “I was going to say hello to CEO Fu before leaving.”

“Right, right — newly in post, absolutely appropriate.” Third Uncle took the appropriate senior’s posture and agreed, then turned to look at Yan Zishu with narrowed eyes. “Little Yan — I hear you looked after Xiaoyu very well while he was in your department. An old man like me still owes you his thanks.”

Yan Zishu kept his expression perfectly still and promptly inclined his head: “You’re too formal about it. This is simply what we’re here to do.”

I set your son up, and I did it when I felt like it, without consulting you about the timing.