Chapter 45#

Fu Jinchi swallowed down the turmoil of rage and fear behind his composure, pulled the person close, and turned to leave.

Yan Zishu hung on him like a ragdoll, stumbling with every step. For ease, Fu Jinchi simply picked him up.

Fu Xiaoyu came back to himself. “You — you didn’t even say—”

“Get out of my sight.” The words came out cold and flat. He had a sick person to deal with. This wasn’t the moment for reckoning.

*

Fu Jinchi had been staying in a nearby city these past weeks — more precisely, in the small fishing village where his mother had grown up. The cemetery administration had later hired someone to clean and restore the damaged grave marker, and he had gone back several times. They’d offered a token sum in compensation for emotional distress.

After going one final time to see the grave restored, it was well into the afternoon before he caught Fu Xiaoyu’s incoherent messages.

But Fu Xiaoyu had only said, vaguely, that someone was needed. Fu Jinchi had assumed the idiot was up to his usual lowlife antics.

He hadn’t imagined the little beast would be walking around with drugs on him. Let alone that it had been premeditated.

A person who had been attending certain kinds of private parties since his mid-teens — expecting any moral judgment from him was a wasted effort.

The hot spring resort was situated far out in the eastern suburbs, near the border between two cities — roughly twenty kilometers as the crow flew from the fishing village. Fu Jinchi had been on his way back to the city when he’d thought to stop in and keep an eye on Fu Xiaoyu. He’d gone toward the bar, and found this.

*

Yan Zishu gripped the wool of Fu Jinchi’s sweater with tight, curling fingers. The breath coming out of him was burning hot. Fu Jinchi lifted a corner of the coat: “What?”

Yan Zishu was barely coherent, but one thing surfaced out of instinct: “My phone…”

Fu Jinchi took two steps back, blocked Fu Xiaoyu’s path: “Hand it over.”

Fu Xiaoyu stared at him for a long moment, then reached into his pocket with poor grace and held out the phone.

Fu Jinchi looked down to confirm — yes, Yan Zishu’s phone case — but then frowned: “In my pocket. Do I look like I have a free hand right now?”

His impatience carried a clear suggestion that he was about to hit someone again. Fu Xiaoyu, chastened, shoved the phone into Fu Jinchi’s coat pocket.

Fu Jinchi adjusted his grip, pulling the coat up further to wrap the person in his arms as fully as possible. Fortunately, Yan Zishu was slight — curled against him, as long as he didn’t flail, carrying him wasn’t too difficult. People in the corridor turned to look as they passed; this was considerably stranger-looking than Fu Xiaoyu’s earlier performance of steadying a drunk colleague. But no one could see who was under the coat.

Fu Jinchi had never much cared about his reputation. He’d never had one worth caring about.

His chest burned with a contained fury, and something else he hadn’t consciously registered yet: a belated, sick dread.

If he hadn’t come by as it happened…

He’d come very close to overlooking this.

In his head, he had already carved Fu Xiaoyu into small pieces and fed him to the dogs.

Anger had, over the years, refined itself into something controlled: the hotter his fury, the calmer his face became, while the arms holding the person against him drew tighter by degrees.

*

Yan Zishu was like someone shut inside a bottle cast adrift at sea — dimly aware of being moved from place to place, caught in the rolling turbulence of a storm. Wave after wave surged up, dragging him under without his consent. The drug’s effect was building: his heart hammering, his head spinning and ringing, vivid colors blooming across his vision, then a sensation as though he’d been thrown into a furnace.

He felt the difficulty of breathing. His chest heaved rapidly, pulling for air. Somewhere, someone was speaking — the voice arrived like thunder — and simultaneously there were sharp, piercing sounds from all directions, and he wanted to cover his ears but couldn’t locate his own hands. For a while Yan Zishu believed he had woken, tried strenuously to open his eyes, but his eyelids had the weight of stone, and then he was pulled back under into a borderless nightmare.

How much time passed, he couldn’t say — it felt like half a lifetime — before the hallucinations gradually receded.

When he finally opened his eyes, cold all over, the sky was showing the first grey light of dawn. Someone was standing at the head of his bed, backlit, replacing an IV drip.

The cold was from the sweat that had only just broken, and from the fluid traveling in slow drops through the line and into his vein.

Fu Jinchi looked down and met a pair of half-open eyes.

“Awake?” Fu Jinchi felt his forehead. “Still feeling bad?”

Opening his eyes had been a bodily reflex. It took nearly a full minute before his awareness caught up. Yan Zishu moved his right hand — it was warm underneath, probably a hot water bottle of some kind. When he tried to speak, his throat was full of grit. “Thank you.”

He looked at the ceiling, the window frame. The room was completely unfamiliar — neither the resort room, nor any hospital ward.

The mattress conformed to the body’s contours. The duvet was light and soft, like lying on a cloud, so comfortable it discouraged any attempt to think.

Fu Jinchi volunteered the explanation: “This is my home. I brought you here.”

*

The place was, in fact, the small old townhouse where Fu Zhizhang had once kept his mistress. At the beginning, it had been only his mother. Then there had been him, and the two of them had lived here together. After his mother was gone, he had lived here alone. If anywhere could be called his home, it was probably this.

The original decorating sensibility had been established by his mother — the style of a Republican-era townhouse from the 1920s and ’30s.

Yan Zishu didn’t know any of this yet. He turned his head and looked down. He was wearing unfamiliar striped pajamas. His head was splitting — but this was a better outcome than he’d feared. No sign of having been violated. It seemed that even Fu Jinchi had refrained from anything unseemly.

Though if he were to say that aloud, the man currently performing the role of gentleman might take offense.

Yan Zishu found that he still couldn’t move.

The room was warm as spring. Fu Jinchi sat on the edge of the bed, lifted the blanket, and began undoing the restraints around his wrists. “The moment you were brought back you wouldn’t settle — tossing and turning, pulling out the IV every time the doctor got it in, not letting anyone near you until past midnight before the drip finally went in properly.”

Yan Zishu, now free, held his left hand up to examine it. Three or four puncture marks on the back of the hand, still crusted with dried blood.

There was nothing useful he could say. “Thank you,” he said again.

Fu Jinchi pressed the call bell. After a moment the family physician came in, drew blood for testing, and left.

The door closed. Fu Jinchi moved a high-backed chair beside the bed and sat there, watching him steadily.

The ill and the injured tended to be treated with more care than usual — Yan Zishu seemed to be experiencing this now. Fu Jinchi, dispensing with his usual elusive detachment, said to him with real warmth: “Your phone and personal things have all been brought. Helen took care of packing.” He gestured toward the table across the room, where various items had been placed. “She also put in a sick leave notice. Sudden illness, it says.”

“Good.” Yan Zishu surveyed the table. His head was still swimming, but his reason was back. “That was thoughtful.”

“One more thing.” Fu Jinchi leaned forward, elbow on the bed frame, with something like regret. “We can’t move against Fu Xiaoyu just yet.”

Yan Zishu understood. He said, voice still rough: “Because you can’t afford to fall out with Third Uncle Fu?”

Fu Jinchi smiled. “For now, that’s one way to understand it.”

Yan Zishu heard the full implication — the unspoken subject included both of them: not only Fu Jinchi couldn’t act, but he also couldn’t go after Fu Xiaoyu immediately. In Third Uncle’s eyes, Yan Zishu was Fu Jinchi’s person; his actions reflected Fu Jinchi’s stance.

Hitting someone in a flash of anger was understandable, and Third Uncle might even offer a light, pro-forma apology on his son’s behalf.

But a genuine break couldn’t happen. It would cost Fu Jinchi a plastic ally.

“But you said ‘just yet’—” He gave a quiet, faintly sardonic laugh. “Don’t tell me you actually have a vendetta list. A gentleman’s revenge, ten years in the making.”

Fu Jinchi smiled without answering, and tapped his own chest. Of course he did.

“You really are…” Yan Zishu swallowed the rest. He thought for a cold moment. “And what about the bartender?”

“The security footage can be checked. Though if he has any sense, he’s probably already found a way to delete it — that’ll take some work.”

“The one with two moles on his chin.” Yan Zishu said. “Evidence or no evidence — I’ll deal with that myself.”

“You’re the one who can’t let things go.” Fu Jinchi said, somewhere between exasperated and amused. “In the state you’re in, just lie there. I’ll deal with him.”

If any outsider had been present and overheard this conversation, it would have sounded, incontrovertibly, like a pair of co-conspirators.

*

Just over an hour later, the drip finished. The doctor was called back in to remove the needle. Fu Jinchi stayed with Yan Zishu throughout. For food, he arranged a delivery from Golden Phoenix Terrace — though delivery meant his secretary Lily had made the trip out, brought the insulated containers to the house, and handed them over at the door.

Yan Zishu commented: “A regular takeaway would have done. She didn’t have to go all that way.”

Fu Jinchi smiled: “When I’m not there, she doesn’t have much to do anyway. Am I paying her all that salary to sit idle?”

Yan Zishu wanted to know where he had been.

Outside the windows, the sky hung low like a curtain. The north wind was biting, sending dry branches rattling against the glass.

This grey, cold kind of weather was suited to staying indoors and sleeping. Yan Zishu was drained, and after eating he felt the pull of drowsiness again — but his head hurt too much to let him sleep. The drugs acting on his nervous system had left too many residual effects. He asked the family physician about getting a mild sedative. Fu Jinchi handed him a glass of warm water instead, and said that medicine was medicine, you should use the least of it, drink water and flush it out of your system.

The water glass was set back down. One sitting, one lying — and then the room quietly tipped into silence.

After a while, Fu Jinchi said: “Since you can’t sleep — shall we talk?”

Yan Zishu rested against the headboard. “About what?”

Fu Jinchi said: “The usual arrangement. You ask first.”

Yan Zishu thought for a moment, and finally found an opening: “Have you had some trouble lately?”

He’d been about to ask where have you been and what were you doing there — the business about the desecrated grave that Fu Xiaoyu had blurted out was genuinely difficult to set aside. But asking directly felt too intrusive, so he approached it obliquely.

Fu Jinchi sat with his hands loosely clasped, thumbs moving in small circles against each other. Hearing this, he was unruffled: “Oh, that — it sounds like quite a few people have heard about it.” He wasn’t surprised. Whoever had done it had intended to intimidate, so naturally they didn’t mind letting word spread.

Yan Zishu asked: “What actually happened?”

Fu Jinchi was playing absently with his phone. He opened the photo album, tossed the phone across the duvet to rest against Yan Zishu’s legs. “If you want to call it trouble — it’s been dealt with. The cemetery management apologized and paid compensation.”

Yan Zishu looked, and despite bracing himself, still couldn’t keep the frown from forming. “This is…”

Going too far.

Fu Jinchi said: “Don’t be surprised. Small things. I’ve been visible lately — the board seat, making a presence at the company — it’s drawn attention I didn’t exactly welcome from a certain quarter. Fu Weishan’s mother is gone, but her loyalists are still around. This is their way of sending their regards.”

Yan Zishu looked up at him. “Did you know this would happen?”

Fu Jinchi gave a short, contemptuous sound. “It’s not that I knew it would happen this time. Before the grave was moved to where it is now, this sort of thing happened regularly.”

Yan Zishu was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Fu Jinchi’s expression went slightly dark. “Nothing to apologize for. You didn’t do it.”

*

On that overcast day that felt on the verge of snow, Fu Jinchi finally let some of his past open slightly, like a window left ajar.

When his mother died, Fu Weishan’s mother had applied enough pressure to ensure no formal funeral rites were performed. A person who takes their own life is inauspicious, she had said publicly. His mother had been cremated quickly, her ashes kept in a low-cost public cemetery with very poor upkeep. Vandalism was a regular occurrence — red paint thrown, abusive messages written — and it bothered the families of other interred there enough that the cemetery management received complaints constantly, and was forever calling him to deal with the inconvenience.

Fu Weishan’s mother’s family had backgrounds in organized crime. In their time, they had been formidable. But these things had gradually diminished over the years. In this respect, Fu Jinchi was grateful to history for advancing. A lawful society — the golden age when certain figures could operate with unchecked impunity was gone.

Still, a sinking ship had its last few nails. With Fu Weishan’s mother dead and her influence past its peak, her old loyalists still carried traces of the old ways in how they operated.

Yan Zishu listened, visibly stunned. Fu Jinchi said: “You really didn’t know? You were probably still quite young then.”

Yan Zishu looked at him. “You can’t be that much older than me…”

Fu Jinchi said: “I’ve just had longer to get used to it.”