Chapter 35#

Third Uncle Fu turned to his beloved nephew: “Why are you sitting out here? Is Weishan not in?”

Yan Zishu glanced immediately at Fu Jinchi. Fu Jinchi glanced back at him, producing a perfectly mild and untroubled smile. “I’m not sure — I only just ran into Director Yan here and got to talking.”

Fu Jinchi then turned to Yan Zishu: “Is CEO Fu in his office right now?” — putting a deliberate emphasis on the question.

Under the knife-behind-a-smile gaze, Yan Zishu said, after a careful pause: “…Probably.”

Third Uncle suspected nothing, and beckoned to Fu Jinchi. “Come with me then. I was just about to speak with him on something.”

The two of them left — uncle and nephew together. Yan Zishu drew a long breath, turned, and went to Helen’s office.

Helen had heard the entire sequence play out, and looked both mortified and on the verge of laughter. “You — you didn’t think to stop them?”

“How could I have stopped them.” Yan Zishu sighed. “I’ll hide in here for a while.”

They exchanged a look and reached a silent mutual understanding.

They chatted idly for a bit; Helen even produced a private stash of dried fruit to help the time pass.

For a subordinate, prudently avoiding any awkward scene that might involve one’s employer — large or small — was a wise and necessary exercise of judgment.

As for Third Uncle, someone who had witnessed everything over the years — he wasn’t really going to be bothered by minor details.

Spotting the intern making a flustered exit like a startled small bird, stumbling over his words and disappearing quickly, Third Uncle simply remembered something: “Weishan — you need to stop spending all your time on amusements. It’s time you thought about getting married.”

Third Uncle’s voice carried as though through a megaphone; Ji Chen, who had stiffened at the words, picked up his pace and was gone.

Third Uncle settled comfortably into a chair, apparently untroubled by what he’d glimpsed on his way in. Fu Weishan holding a lover in his office, or holding someone in a nightclub — in the eyes of a man of his generation and outlook, these were equally unremarkable. No meaningful distinction.

His own son Fu Xiaoyu had been running around with one hot young model after another since his mid-teens. You couldn’t keep track of them all if you tried.

Liking to play around — that was a man’s nature, no harm done.

No different from playing with cars or watches.

“I have no plans to get married.” Fu Weishan pressed his fingers to his brow and stated this once more, clearly. “Did you have something else to discuss, Third Uncle?”

“No plans to marry? How can you not?” Third Uncle launched immediately into his routine. “If your father hadn’t married, you wouldn’t be here. The old saying is: settle home first, then establish career. A man who won’t marry can’t settle down — everyone thinks you’re immature, lacking commitment. They don’t trust you.”

Fu Weishan’s patience, internally, was in poor supply: “Whether I’m trustworthy is not for others to decide.”

Third Uncle said: “Trustworthy? You think you’re trustworthy — look at what’s happened to the company. It’s a complete mess. If Jinchi hadn’t found the right connections this time, this money laundering business would have finished you, I’m telling you—”

The special talent of this particular individual was an unusually thick skin, matched by Fu Xiaoyu’s — both perfectly capable of saying anything with complete equanimity.

Fu Jinchi sat to the side watching the spectacle with pleasure, one leg crossed over the other, leather sole hovering near the tea table and bobbing faintly.

That infuriating ease of his — not just the tooth-grinding Fu Weishan who wanted to hit him, but even if Yan Zishu had been present to see it, he would have agreed the man deserved a beating.

Unfortunately, Fu Jinchi had earned the right to hold his head up this time.

Third Uncle had been right about one thing, at least: Yinghan Group’s handling of the money laundering investigation had once again benefited from Fu Jinchi’s connections.

After all, the company’s historical business was not entirely above reproach — some of those headline-making auction prices of years past didn’t particularly invite close examination. A Schrödinger’s investigation: with the right kind of facilitation, it could go either way, and having someone smooth the path produced considerably more favorable outcomes.

So even Fu Weishan was left with questions on two counts: first, where Fu Jinchi’s web of connections had come from — which could only be attributed to the legacy of Fu Zhizhang; second, that Fu Jinchi was playing the role of someone extending a hand to help, rather than someone adding a push to someone already falling.

Despite his mixed amazement and suspicion, in terms of outcome, this left him without the firm footing to actively oppose Fu Jinchi’s entry onto the board.

That was simply how things worked in cycles.

It was truly the case that, however any of it was planned, the fundamental activity between people was always exchange.

All manner of conditions, all manner of interests, in constant motion. For reputation, for profit, for love, for hate, for desire.

Ultimately tangled into one inseparable knot.

*

Yan Zishu had spent enough time in Helen’s office. He returned to his workstation. In the middle of it Ben came to find him about various things, keeping him occupied for a stretch — by the time he thought about Fu Jinchi and Third Uncle again, both men had long since left.

Today the company had many shareholders coming and going, unfamiliar faces everywhere, the floor busy and varied. With the weekend approaching, even the regular employees were collectively restless and not particularly engaged with work.

In passing, Yan Zishu had kept note: at the shareholders’ meeting venue, he had not seen Li Chang’an appear.

Still in Macao, perhaps, still at the tables.

Later that evening, a message arrived through the private app: “Can we meet a bit earlier today?”

Yan Zishu, recalling Fu Jinchi’s new position on the board, wrote back: “Do we need to celebrate your new appointment?”

Fu Jinchi replied: “No celebration needed — but I’ve brought a pot of Buddha Jumps Over the Wall to yours. Don’t come back too late.”

Yan Zishu stared at this for five or six seconds, then set his phone aside without replying.

But he still satisfied the request — packed up at the end of the day and headed home.

The Friday evening rush was as bad as ever. Horns blared in an unbroken chorus.

When he reached the apartment, someone had gotten there first. Yan Zishu had eventually yielded to persistent lobbying and given Fu Jinchi fingerprint access, so he could let himself in when needed.

Fu Jinchi’s leather shoes were neatly paired at the entrance. His suit jacket hung on the coat hook.

And the jacket’s owner was leaning in the kitchen doorway, watching the flame, the extractor fan humming steadily.

On the gas stove was a special ceramic pot bearing the Golden Phoenix Terrace logo, being heated over a low flame. So that’s what happened, Yan Zishu thought — it had been prepared at the hotel, brought here, left to simmer slowly. He’d gone to considerable trouble for this.

The moment he stepped through the door, the rich, complex aroma hit him, and his mouth immediately had something to say about it.

He looked at the pot for a moment, then asked quietly: “What made you think to bring this?”

Fu Jinchi smiled: “You mentioned it once. I happened to remember.”

Yan Zishu remembered, of course.

They had been ordering room service at a hotel, talking about food preferences, and Yan Zishu had mentioned it in passing — that when he was in primary school, doing supplementary reading, he had come across an essay by a renowned author about this dish, and it had been wonderfully written. A dish that takes ten days or more to prepare, with sea cucumber, pig’s tendon, red dates, shark’s fin, fish skin, chestnuts, dried mushrooms, pork knuckle and other expensive ingredients — first the chicken broth is reduced, then the broth and all of these ingredients are cooked through multiple slow-cooking processes, the whole thing taking close to two weeks, beginning to end… What you taste is no longer any of the original individual flavors, but everything together as one. Rich, mellow, fragrant and sweet, the taste lingers for two or three days afterward.

As a child he’d been unable to imagine what this elaborate mixture tasted like. He only knew that producing a single dish took nearly two weeks, which seemed like an enormous undertaking — and couldn’t help feeling both curious and wistful, since he had no idea where one might find such a thing, and had made a private resolution to track down the author when he grew up and ask.

By the time he actually grew up, of course, the craving had long since subsided. He only found his childhood self mildly amusing in retrospect.

To test his memory, he had been struck by the impulse to take out his phone and search for the original essay. He found nothing.

He supposed it didn’t matter — it was a minor detail, hardly important.

In front of Fu Jinchi at the time, Yan Zishu had said, unbothered, that he must have the title wrong.

Afterward, though, he had switched to a different search engine and kept looking, quietly and stubbornly, for a long time.

He wasn’t, in truth, particularly invested in tracking down Fujianese cuisine, or in re-reading a piece of classical prose.

What he had wanted to resolve was the simpler question: was it a wrong search term, or did this world simply not contain that essay?

The question never found an answer. And now Fu Jinchi was in his apartment, warming that same dish in front of him.

Just because he had mentioned, once, a small unimportant childhood memory in passing.

Fu Jinchi had been paying attention to him, quietly and consistently, all this time.

In that instant, what surfaced in Yan Zishu was not warmth. He felt unsettled and vaguely irritated, with nowhere to direct it.

Who are you to do this? I never asked you for this.

But he couldn’t exactly say the other person was behaving badly… it was more that the behavior was too good. Too much like he genuinely mattered.

Which left Yan Zishu with a crushing sense of weight he couldn’t account for, pressing on his chest, making him uncomfortable.

It was a strange thing to say, that a person was afraid of being taken seriously by someone else.

But — Fu Jinchi, was it necessary to go this far?

He would have preferred a clear and explicit price on everything. Weren’t they using each other? One night in bed in exchange for a piece of information, one morning meal in exchange for a kiss — undignified, perhaps, but the indignity was straightforward, each party paid what they had to pay, equal exchange, no one owed anyone anything.

But Yan Zishu also knew that this fantasy of equal exchange was entirely illusory and one-sided.

No one owes anyone anything — Fu Jinchi was not the kind of person suited to sentiment, and never had been. He was calculating, unscrupulous, a businessman who had made a precise science of strategy. If he gave anything to someone, it was always as a preparation for extracting more in return. Those who wish to take must first give.

What made it maddening was that Fu Jinchi also constantly raised the stakes unilaterally, because he had never operated on any principle of fairness.

Fu Jinchi told him to wash his hands: “There’s a banquet order that came in recently — Old Cao was already making this, and I thought of you. It was no trouble.”

Old Cao — the hotel restaurant’s national banquet-trained chef. So the caliber of this meal was genuinely exceptional. Most people would never have the chance.

Yan Zishu looked at him for a moment, and said, inexplicably: “I’m not that hungry yet.”

Then he added: “Thank you. That was thoughtful.”

And turned and went back to the bedroom, absently pressing the lock behind him, then going through the routine of changing clothes.

He knew his response had been impolite and out of proportion. He should at least have pretended to be more composed — accepted the gesture gracefully.

Whatever his actual feelings, that was what was called poise, and self-possession. The proper approach of someone with breeding and confidence.

The small key to every interior door in the apartment lived on the door frame above it; the locked door was only a formality. Fu Jinchi found the key, opened the door, and came in, pulling it shut behind him. Yan Zishu had changed into his home clothes and was sitting cross-legged on the small rug in front of the bed, reading.

Fu Jinchi sat on the edge of the bed and leaned toward him. “Are you upset?”

“How could I dare be.” Yan Zishu was frowning, half genuinely put out and half complaining: “You act like you own the place — the kitchen is there for your use, the locks are there for your opening. At this rate you might as well move in. I’ll be the one moving out.”

What was turning over in him a moment before had been something more corrosive. He had wanted to say: because you’re acting like a self-deluding client who thinks he’s bought something he hasn’t.

Even if it meant turning the words against himself as well — just to see what expression would appear on Fu Jinchi’s face.

He wanted to test whether he could tear through that face of attentive, warm-hearted care.

Wanted to see whether Fu Jinchi would, like a normal person, fly into a rage and leave.

People’s interior thoughts occasionally produced this kind of double-edged impulse — one that struck indiscriminately, at everyone including oneself.

But mercifully, most of the time the words didn’t actually come out. That was called decency.

Fu Jinchi’s gaze was deep and still. He reached out and ran his hand across the back of Yan Zishu’s neck. “The floor is cold. Come up here.”

Yan Zishu exhaled and leaned, of his own accord, against Fu Jinchi’s knee.

Fu Jinchi took the book out of his hand. “Not hungry — then rest early.”

Yan Zishu deliberately chose to misread the words, turned over, and reached up to undo Fu Jinchi’s belt buckle.

Whether to prove something specific, or to deliberately avoid thinking about something.

…

Some time later, Fu Jinchi went to the kitchen and turned off the heat.

Every ingredient carefully selected, the considerable effort of Master Cao entirely unappreciated. If the chef himself had witnessed this, he would certainly have expressed profound distress. Not that Mr. Fu was particularly troubled by the waste.