Chapter 49#

Yan Zishu found an unoccupied bathroom, washed his hands, and had barely dried them and stepped back out when he ran into the same attendant as before.

The attendant said quietly: “Third Master Fu would like you to come up.”

He processed this for a moment, offered his thanks, and accepted. He followed the spiral staircase up to the second floor, to Third Uncle’s room.

The suite Third Uncle had claimed with such triumphant satisfaction was, in practice, a large set of rooms — comparable in area to an ordinary family’s entire apartment, and the most imposing space in the entire ancestral estate. Yan Zishu knocked and entered. Third Uncle was in the study, and gestured for him to sit with benevolent warmth.

Third Uncle began: “Little Yan, I hear Xiaoyu has been giving you some trouble lately? In that case, let me apologize on his behalf — he’s still young and doesn’t know better. Put it out of your mind; he’s not worth holding a grudge over.”

Yan Zishu found this utterly contemptible, but said only that it was nothing, he didn’t mind, the usual.

He was certain Third Uncle hadn’t summoned him specifically to apologize for his son.

Sure enough, Third Uncle then asked about various details from the time Yinghan Group had been negotiating the partnership with Dongyun Bank.

Under the guise of casual conversation, Third Uncle asked after his work, but every question circled back to Li Chang’an.

When Third Uncle began probing obliquely about whether Li Chang’an and Fu Jinchi had any conflicts, Yan Zishu understood: Third Uncle hadn’t known about the gambling. Now that it had blown up, he had suddenly put things together and become suspicious that Fu Jinchi might have had a hand in Li Chang’an’s downfall.

But Third Uncle’s motive in asking wasn’t genuine concern for Li Chang’an’s welfare.

He was simply reassessing how wary he needed to be of Fu Jinchi.

That wariness had always been buried in his bones. Fu Jinchi was a powerful ally, but he was also ungovernable — and faced with this young man’s sharp teeth, Third Uncle felt the instinctive unease of an old wolf confronting something it couldn’t quite tame.

Having read the psychology, Yan Zishu obligingly fabricated a modest account of Fu Jinchi’s behind-the-scenes activities, portraying them as actions serving a private agenda in minor ways, while remaining broadly aligned with Third Uncle’s interests.

How much Third Uncle actually believed was unclear, but he heard it all out, let out a sigh, and waved his hand: “All right. I understand. You may go.”

Yan Zishu left the main suite without looking back.

He had been with Third Uncle long enough to miss the family dinner entirely.

Third Uncle’s kitchen would certainly send a meal up to his room — but no one had made arrangements for Yan Zishu on that front. He went to the back kitchen to find something to eat, and found all the household staff who hadn’t taken the holiday off — the housekeepers, the attendants, the gardeners, the drivers — had gathered there and put together a simple meal of their own, celebrating the new year in their own way. Whether they knew him or not, they cheerfully made a place for him and added a bowl and chopsticks to the table. It had more warmth to it than the main room.

After the bowls were cleared, Yan Zishu finally went to the guest room that had been assigned to him, pushed open the door — and was startled.

Someone was sitting in the dark by the window. The curtains were open; a faint trace of light from outside was just enough to sketch half a silhouette.

Not wanting the lights to be visible from outside, Yan Zishu switched on only the wall sconce. “How did you get in here without me knowing?”

Fu Jinchi, succinctly: “Hiding from the crowd.”

He was seated on the table. Yan Zishu walked over, dragged out a chair, and sat beside him in silence.

Outside, many people were still awake, the noise drifting in — and faintly, behind it, the sounds of a television broadcasting New Year’s celebrations.

Even Fu Weishan found this particular gathering of the Fu family’s ghosts and demons tiresome every time he came. The idea of Fu Jinchi finding any satisfaction here was even less plausible.

But Yan Zishu had noticed something odd.

Hostility came in gradations — the oblique and the direct. The snickering of Fu Xiaoyu’s young hangers-on at his and Ji Chen’s expense was easy enough to understand.

Why were they directing such naked, unmediated venom at Fu Jinchi as well?

Fu Jinchi was sitting higher than him. Yan Zishu rested one hand on his knee.

Fu Jinchi had noticed over time that whenever Yan Zishu was asking something, or wanting to convey something, he had this small habit — he reached out and set his hand somewhere, resting it on a knee, a leg, a hand. Quiet. Still. Sometimes it also meant comfort.

But Fu Jinchi only gave him a brief, flat look. His expression didn’t shift.

Whether something good happened or something bad, whether someone showed kindness or contempt — he maintained the same face throughout.

This didn’t indicate resilience. It only indicated that the mask had been welded in place.

Yan Zishu felt, without knowing quite why, a hollow sadness.

He said, with a show of lightness: “The children in this family really do have the sharpest mouths — every generation worse than the last. No upbringing whatsoever.” Fu Jinchi, hearing this, actually found enough humor to make a small joke: “This is also, technically, a historical legacy.”

And then Yan Zishu heard the history behind it.

It was not much of a history, really. During the major holidays, Fu Zhizhang had occasionally brought his mistress and illegitimate son to the ancestral estate. Their first visit was a Spring Festival — Fu Weishan’s mother, seeing them, was furious, but not about to make a scene in front of the assembled relatives and lose her own composure. So she found a pretext — distributing New Year’s money to the children — and instead quietly encouraged them to go and insult the mother and child.

Children could say anything under the cover of childish innocence. The more blunt and cutting the language, the more variety, the more generous the red envelope she’d give them.

Their parents saw it happening and never intervened, simply watching their children preen and crowd around Fu Weishan’s mother, competing for acknowledgment and payment.

The children didn’t know any better. The adults did — but most of the adults in the room found nothing particularly wrong with it. In fact, many watched the spectacle of the legitimate wife versus the mistress with an air of shameless entertainment, offering their own commentary and opinions with relish.

Fu Jinchi had probably learned, from observing those attitudes, how to be an impassive spectator. Without being taught.

As for the present: without Fu Weishan’s mother distributing red envelopes anymore, the cultivated hostility of years wouldn’t simply dissolve. Besides, when Fu Jinchi had been younger and more volatile, he had retaliated in kind on more than one occasion — including, it went without saying, having once obtained compromising photographs of a certain group gathering and made sure they circulated widely. In short, the resentment between them had long since calcified past easy resolution.

Though if Fu Jinchi were pressed on the subject now, leaking photographs of someone’s bare ass was fairly small-stakes amusement. If there were a real option available, some manner of collective mutual destruction would be rather more satisfying.

He was nursing quite a few thoughts he kept out of the light.

How much time passed was uncertain. From outside came the bells of the new year, releasing the old and welcoming the new.

Fu Jinchi sent a message on his phone, then tapped the hand resting on his knee, and gave what sounded oddly like a command: “Let’s go.”

“Where?” Yan Zishu asked.

“Down the mountain. I’m not spending New Year’s here.”

“Now?” Yan Zishu hesitated. “Just leave like that?”

“Once it’s past midnight, the New Year watch is done. I’ve been leaving early the last few years — they know.”

Before Yan Zishu had time to think further, he was being pulled up and steered toward the door.

There wasn’t an opportunity to object. He was taken to the garage.

Fu Jinchi’s mood was genuinely poor tonight. Yan Zishu finally abandoned his reservations and got into the passenger seat.

Fu Jinchi put his foot on the accelerator; the duty guard waved them through; the car rolled slowly out through the gates of the ancestral estate.

Yan Zishu said, after a moment: “If CEO Fu finds out I left with you, he’ll likely start to suspect something.”

“CEO Fu, CEO Fu. Let him suspect.” Fu Jinchi said only. “It’s not as if he actually owns you.”

Yan Zishu felt that Fu Jinchi was increasingly careless — or rather, increasingly disinclined to conceal the nature of their relationship.

There was even a suggestion of if it comes out, so be it in his manner.

As for Yan Zishu — he wasn’t truly afraid of a break with Fu Weishan. It simply wasn’t time yet.

According to the trajectory of the plot, once Fu Weishan and Ji Chen’s relationship progressed further, one misunderstanding or accident after another would expose what Yan Zishu had done behind the scenes, and Fu Weishan would be so shaken that he would cut Yan Zishu off on his own initiative. That day seemed within sight now.

He was doing the calculation when Fu Jinchi spoke in a perfectly ordinary tone: “There’s actually something else I’ve been meaning to tell you — I nearly said it at the estate tonight but didn’t get the chance. That manchild Fu Weishan, can you believe, actually brought the university student home with him. He really is… well. He’s lucky he’s still alive to do things like this.”

“Hm?” Yan Zishu felt the jump in topic and didn’t quite follow. “You mean Ji Chen? What about him?”

“Do you know that Fu Weishan was in love with another boy, a long time ago?”

Yan Zishu thought of the rephotographed old image on his phone, and nodded. “The one who died of leukemia? I’ve heard of it.”

More than heard — he had rephotographed the old portrait and used it to disturb Ji Chen. But that particular first love, the young piano student, had never truly existed for him as a real person — he was a background presence, living only in others’ memories and conversation, never more than a vague outline, whose name Yan Zishu didn’t even know.

Fu Jinchi, hearing the word leukemia, looked faintly amused. The corner of his mouth tilted. “Leukemia. Only Fu Weishan would believe that. He didn’t die of leukemia. He was killed by Fu Weishan’s mother.”

“What?” Yan Zishu’s expression showed genuine shock.

“She arranged a car accident. His hands were nerve-damaged. The driver was never found — not that the culprit was hard to guess. Just no evidence. After that, the boy couldn’t play the piano anymore. He couldn’t go on, developed severe depression, and took his own life.”

Just like his own mother — driven to end things themselves, so that no one could cleanly attribute the blood to the person responsible.

Because the official cause was suicide.

Yan Zishu was silent. But seemingly that wasn’t enough to satisfy Fu Jinchi’s sense of drama, because he added: “After that, Fu Weishan’s mother told Fu Weishan the boy had been sent abroad — had people sending fake postcards in his name for a while. Later she decided that wasn’t enough, they needed a complete severance, so she told him the boy had died of an illness overseas.”

Fu Jinchi gave a cold laugh. “A story with holes you could drive through — any basic investigation would break it open. And yet Fu Weishan swallowed it whole. His own mother had him running in circles for years, and he still believes it to this day. Isn’t that particularly entertaining? So when I say the university student is lucky — now that Fu Weishan’s mother is dead, she can’t climb out from underground to come after him.”

Something constricted in Yan Zishu’s chest.

From Fu Weishan’s perspective: a first love who had suffered terribly because of Fu Weishan’s attachment to him, whose manner of death had been falsified and concealed, who never received any acknowledgment of the truth. And the person who had orchestrated all of it was Fu Weishan’s own mother. The people who knew the truth had kept it from him for years — it was the kind of thing that didn’t bear careful consideration.

Yan Zishu said, tentatively: “But telling me means there’s a possibility of it reaching CEO Fu through me.”

Fu Jinchi smiled with calculated innocence: “What do you mean by that? Every person has the right to know the truth, don’t they?”

Yan Zishu said: “You could say that — but if you’d wanted to tell him, you could have done it long ago. You’ve held it until now—”

Fu Jinchi said: “Precisely. Because I want to tell him when he’s in the middle of falling in love with someone new.”

The temperature in the car seemed to drop below what the heating could reach.

Yan Zishu held his right hand with his left, and felt that both were cold.

He turned to look at the profile beside him — still those deep-set features, the straight, strong nose, like a fine ancient Greek sculpture. Yet what occupied the beautiful surface was something filled with an inexpressible, lawless quality.

There were many moments when Yan Zishu felt as though he and Fu Jinchi had come very close. And then he’d quickly realize it had only ever been an illusion.

Just today, earlier, he had been carrying genuine sympathy and grief for this person.

Fu Jinchi could smile and say your outfit today is quite striking. Could pass him the chocolate from the table.

Fu Jinchi could impersonate a perfect gentleman. The most attentive lover. The most blameless victim.

And then in the dead of night, he would release whatever it was that lived inside him — and Yan Zishu would find himself looking at something he had no way of approaching at all.