Chapter 39#

Although Fu Jinchi’s theory that everything has its price sounded like a cup of toxic motivational soup — cynical, mercenary — even toxic soup wasn’t without a grain of truth. At the very least, Fu Weishan had, in fact, gone to meet a potential match.

No one had offered him a hundred billion. But there had been something in it for him.

When Third Uncle had casually raised the subject of marriage at the shareholders’ meeting, it had sounded like nothing more than the rambling of a muddled old man.

But to mistake him for muddled would be to underestimate old ginger. Old ginger was still the spiciest kind.

Third Uncle’s way of pushing marriage wasn’t through nagging. He let the facts do the talking.

If he had gone on about carrying on the family line, Fu Weishan would certainly have dismissed it out of hand. But Third Uncle had said nothing of that sort, and simply sent over a dossier on the prospective matches. Yan Zishu passed it to Fu Weishan, and Fu Weishan found he couldn’t quite refuse outright.

After all, the old man’s criteria for selecting candidates were unflinchingly practical — he cared nothing for personality, appearance, or even what the woman actually looked like; he only looked at who had the most advantageous background and could bring with her the right kind of collaborative relationships.

…A selection process like that inevitably produced candidates that Fu Weishan found genuinely worth considering.

For Third Uncle, who derived enormous satisfaction from playing matchmaker, his nephews and nieces were also a form of resource at his disposal.

In passing: Li Chang’an’s wife, the one with the high-ranking official family connections, had originally been introduced by Third Uncle as well.

Among those introduced to Fu Weishan this time was a Miss Zhu, whose father was a senior official in a government ministry, with considerable oversight of government projects that mapped directly onto Yinghan Group’s area of business.

On that basis alone, she was many tiers above Yuan Mu.

Fortunately, though Yinghan had hit a rough patch recently, that was a matter of company-level turbulence — Fu Weishan himself remained a presentable figure, a credible entry on the marriage market. The matchmaker’s timeless pitch was always: even if marriage isn’t the goal, getting to know each other is worth something.

So Fu Weishan’s personal framing of his own behavior was not going on a blind date.

He was simply remaining open to further collaborative opportunities.

He had simply not mentioned this to Ji Chen.

No real reason to — telling Ji Chen would only make him overthink and worry unnecessarily.

Men were consistently talented at rationalizing their own behavior.

On the day in question, Yan Zishu asked Helen to make a reservation for Fu Weishan and Miss Zhu — the usual place, the Sky Garden.

When the time came, he could have sent the company driver. But given that this touched on the plot’s development, Yan Zishu felt it was better to attend to it in person, and on the grounds that this is the CEO’s private matter, turned the driver away and drove Fu Weishan to the restaurant himself.

Waiting outside a restaurant while the CEO dined with someone was no longer a very common occurrence for him these days.

After their dinner — the conversation had lasted just over two hours — Fu Weishan, as a matter of courtesy, offered to have Miss Zhu driven home first.

Yan Zishu turned to ask for her address. Miss Zhu extended her phone toward the front. “Let’s add each other on WeChat — I’ll send you the location directly.”

The request was not unreasonable. Yan Zishu scanned her code.

Afterward, however, Miss Zhu used this contact to reach out to Yan Zishu alone, asking to meet.

Not with any romantic intent. The two of them met at a café, and Miss Zhu, sipping through her straw, came straight to the point: “Can you tell me honestly — is your CEO straight or gay?”

If she had been asking about something else, Yan Zishu would have deflected and let it pass. But for this particular question, he found he couldn’t in good conscience conceal the answer, and replied with tact: “He’s had experience with both men and women.”

Miss Zhu made a faintly sardonic oh sound. “I thought as much. There was just something about him.”

It was clear that Fu Weishan had not proactively brought up his sexual history with his potential match.

Yan Zishu said nothing, sipped his coffee. His position made it difficult to say much.

Miss Zhu, however, kept talking: “It doesn’t matter. I just wanted to check. If possible, please don’t tell him I know.”

Yan Zishu gave her a mildly surprised look.

She seemed to take this as an opening and continued frankly: “I assumed you wouldn’t tell me the truth — I only intended to test the waters. I didn’t expect you to actually be straightforward about it. In that case, I might as well be honest too: I have no intention of marrying or having children. As you can imagine, my family disagrees. Since your CEO is gay, this works out — I can use this match to hold my family off for a while, and when we end things, I won’t feel too bad about it.”

She had fine, mild features and a blunt manner — everything coming out at once, like beans tumbling from a bamboo tube.

Yan Zishu smiled. “Understood.”

Miss Zhu said: “Thank you, then.”

Yan Zishu said: “Nothing to thank me for.”

In this world, the quiet struggles people carried — how many of them were things no one could change, no one had the power to change, that required simply going on fighting without end.

Unlike Fu Weishan’s own framing, from Miss Zhu’s perspective, this had been a properly serious blind date.

She hadn’t been entirely truthful either, of course. She was in fact a lesbian — only she had been born into a conservative family and didn’t dare come out. Pressured relentlessly by her elders to lower her standards, to not be too demanding, to be more proactive, she had gone about it like completing an assignment, sending Fu Weishan messages with some regularity, arranging to meet when there was nothing particular to do.

This sent a clear signal to Fu Weishan and everyone around him: Miss Zhu was pursuing him with dogged persistence.

Fu Weishan, being Fu Weishan, found nothing peculiar about this. People chased after him constantly; he was more than capable of managing the situation with ease.

Yan Zishu had a reasonable sense of what was actually going on, but kept Miss Zhu’s secret regardless.

Whatever Miss Zhu told her family was her own business, but her father seemed unexpectedly satisfied with this potential match. And Miss Zhu — perhaps because she had already decided she would blame the eventual breakup on Fu Weishan — had no particular reservations about using the courtship, while it lasted, to actively leverage her father’s connections on Fu Weishan’s behalf.

This resulted in Yinghan Group securing two or three government partnership projects in quick succession. Not major ones, but enough to lift spirits after a difficult stretch.

The unavoidable side effect was that Ji Chen began hearing rumors.

He was slow to pick things up, but he was not actually stupid.

Yan Zishu was still turning over how exactly to make use of this for his own purposes when Ji Chen came to find him first.

He arrived at Yan Zishu’s lunch table, set his tray across from him, and hemmed and hawed: “Assistant Yan… do you have… any time?”

Yan Zishu had nearly finished eating, and made a deliberate show of checking his watch: “I need to confirm CEO Fu’s afternoon schedule with him shortly. If you have something to say, I can give you half an hour after six. Come by the office then.”

This formality threw Ji Chen off: “I — it’s actually a personal matter.”

Yan Zishu: “Then the café downstairs. The Corner Coffee.”

He had been spending an unusual amount of time in cafés lately — first with the CEO’s blind date, now with the CEO’s current love interest.

At the agreed time, they pushed through the glass door one after the other. Ji Chen offered to buy something; Yan Zishu had already ordered two coffees and paid.

“It’s you who came to find me,” Ji Chen protested. “I should be paying.”

“It’s fine,” Yan Zishu said. “I’ve had many more years of work than you.”

Yan Zishu sat upright, leaning slightly back against the chair: “What did you want to talk about?”

Something about that posture — like hearing a work report — made the words harder for Ji Chen to find.

He frowned, but he was here now, so he gathered his nerve: “It’s actually about CEO Fu lately…”

Yan Zishu took a slow sip of coffee, and answered with equal unhurry: “You want to ask about his blind date? It’s been going well.”

Ji Chen’s eyes went wide. The bluntness knocked the air out of him. His face cycled through pink to white.

Yan Zishu continued: “As it happens, I was actually looking for an opportunity to speak with you too. He’s met a very compatible match this time around — exceptional in every respect, looks, education, character, family background — very well-suited to him, a genuine match of equals. I’d suggest preparing yourself. If things develop between them — will you break things off with CEO Fu, or continue as you are?”

It took Ji Chen a long moment to find his voice: “What exactly are you saying?”

“Did I explain myself unclearly?” Yan Zishu thought for a moment. “I mean — if he intends to marry, you might want to think ahead: take a settlement and end things properly, or the two of you carry on — though that would depend on whether the other party could accept the arrangement.”

“This isn’t a transaction between us!” Ji Chen’s voice rose sharply. Several other customers looked over.

When the attention had shifted back elsewhere, Yan Zishu continued calmly: “Then how would you describe what you have? Do you think CEO Fu will play at this forever? Never marry? Never have an heir? Can you marry him?”

“We’re in a real relationship. You’ve said yourself that he likes me—”

“What I said was that you make him happy.” Yan Zishu said, without a trace of shame. “Those are different things.”

“Then what did you mean, that I affect his judgment?”

Yan Zishu set his phone on the table in front of Ji Chen. The screen was unlocked. On it was a photograph — a rephotographed image, clearly old.

A boy with almond-shaped eyes and a sharp jaw, mid-teens, seated at a piano, looking toward the camera.

The face bore a resemblance to Ji Chen’s. But it was definitely not Ji Chen — at the very least, Ji Chen didn’t play piano.

The rumored first love that Fu Weishan had never gotten over.

*

When they went back upstairs in the elevator, Ji Chen was still in a daze. Yan Zishu’s cool, measured voice kept circling in his head:

Anyone who looks like this boy affects his judgment. I apologize for not having explained this fully before. You’re not the only one.

Who he is doesn’t matter. He’s been gone a long time — leukemia, very sadly. CEO Fu has never been able to forget him.

You look like him. Of course CEO Fu likes you. The trouble is, the living can never compete with the dead.

But CEO Fu will come back to a normal life eventually. Marriage. Children.

I hope you can understand. And thank you for understanding.

The young student felt as though he had been struck by lightning.

So everything had been empty words.

Saying one thing to one face, another to another.

The tricks these polished, elite types excelled at.

And they carried it off as though it were the most natural thing — no guilt at all, apparently.

In the elevator, an advertisement on the screen was running on a loop for a matchmaking app. The tagline was catchy and utterly devoid of logic.

Yan Zishu kept his face blank, and felt, vaguely, that his own little speech had been about equally awkward.

Not quite guilt — but approximately as embarrassing as an advertisement assuring you that a married life is a happy life.

He didn’t even know if Fu Weishan’s supposed first love was a real person. He had been a useful fiction.

When all was said and done, wasn’t he himself just being terrible.

But at least it was very effective — when Ji Chen pressed the close-door button, he accidentally hit the emergency button at the same time, which was testament enough to the state of his mind.

The private lift went straight up to the 25th floor. Most people had left by this hour; they didn’t encounter anyone when the doors opened. Ji Chen followed behind Yan Zishu in silence, head down. When they reached the CEO’s suite, Yan Zishu turned: “Aren’t you going to get your things and head home?”

Ji Chen looked up. His eyes were red. “I have one more question. What you said today — was it on CEO Fu’s instruction?”

Yan Zishu exhaled. He thought privately: these protagonists — this was exactly why they were so easy to manipulate. With a voice but no capacity for direct confrontation. Why hadn’t it occurred to him to just go confirm it with the man himself?

One simple conversation would have shown him it was all fabrication.

He was composing a response, the words still taking shape, when he caught sight of a tall figure approaching from behind Ji Chen.

Both of them spoke simultaneously: “Mr. Fu.” “Director Fu.”

Fu Jinchi looked them over with an unhurried eye. “You two are remarkably dedicated — neither of you have gone home yet? What’s with the serious faces?”

“Nothing significant,” Yan Zishu said. “Nothing worth mentioning. You haven’t left either, Mr. Fu? Looking for CEO Fu?”

Fu Jinchi nodded: “I just checked — he’s not in his office. He may have gone out on another date.”

Ji Chen’s expression deteriorated further. Fu Jinchi seemed to notice, and said with concern: “You look tired. Did you not sleep well?”

Ji Chen shook his head quickly. “No, I’m fine.”

Fu Jinchi smiled: “The overtime is endless no matter how much you put in. The boss has already left — shall we all call it a day? I can give you two a ride.”

He pulled his car keys from his pocket and gave them a brief swing. “Or we could go for dinner. That place from last time — you said the grouper was excellent, daily special — we should be able to make it if we go now.”

Yan Zishu frowned slightly, uncertain what that place from last time was referring to. Then he caught the direction of Fu Jinchi’s gaze, and realized: he was speaking to Ji Chen, not to him. He felt a small, disoriented pause. When had these two been out to dinner alone?

“You can count me out.” Yan Zishu took half a step back. “You take Xiaochen — I still have things to see to.”