Chapter 52#

“Suspension — how easily you say it!” The rage surging in Fu Weishan was already reaching its crest. “The nerve you have! You treacherous—”

Yan Zishu said nothing. He tilted his head slightly; something heavy whistled past his ear and struck the floor with a tremendous crack. A stapler. Fu Weishan’s face had gone the color of iron, veins standing out on his forehead, looking as though he wanted to tear someone apart with his bare hands.

“I knew it — I should have sensed something was wrong with you two long ago! I just didn’t want to suspect you!”

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Are you blind?”

“How much did he give you? When did this start?”

“Why aren’t you saying anything? Afraid?”

Yan Zishu refused every direct question. He said only that he was willing to cooperate with the audit team’s investigation.

Fu Weishan’s nostrils flared. He raged for a full half-hour in an increasingly hysterical pitch, and then fixed Yan Zishu with a stare of pure fury: “Get out!!!”

“I’m sorry.” Yan Zishu gave a shallow bow, then turned and walked toward the door.

From behind him came a clatter and a crash — whatever else Fu Weishan had found to throw.

As he cleared out his workstation, Yan Zishu thought: Fu Weishan probably hadn’t valued him all that much in the end. His fury was likely more about hating Fu Jinchi. Yan Zishu’s collusion with Fu Jinchi would have felt like proof that Fu Jinchi was more worth aligning with — and perhaps it was that, more than anything else, that made it so difficult to accept.

Not that any of this was something worth spending thought on, as far as Yan Zishu was concerned.

He tidied what remained on his desk. He had been prepared for today, and had been clearing things out in stages over the last few days — the surface was neat, with very little left. When he walked out through the door of the CEO’s suite, a row of eyes peered from the secretarial office.

The noise of the throwing had been loud enough to unsettle an entire floor.

Fu Weishan had erupted at Yan Zishu before, but never at anything approaching this magnitude.

“What’s happened?” Helen came toward him, visibly worried, pulling him toward a meeting room. “Is it because of the bid?”

“Let’s stay here.” Yan Zishu stopped her, and not wanting to involve her in what was coming, pressed a densely written handover document into her hands. “Everything about my work and where things stand is on this. If you need anything, call me. Otherwise — it’s better not to reach out for a while.”

Helen wanted to say something, but couldn’t find the words. She looked at what was in her hands and registered, clearly, that it had been prepared in advance.

She said, faltering: “This means—”

“Take care.” Yan Zishu said, and went to HR to process his suspension.

This would be the top story of the day, rattling everyone across the company.

He passed through the HR director’s stunned gaze and very quickly set off a new round of tremors in the gossip circuits.

Most people had always assumed that out of all the possible targets for a scandal, the last one imaginable would be the steady, impeccable Director Yan.

Well. Live long enough and you see everything.

What on earth had happened?

Walking out, Yan Zishu thought: this did align, in its own oblique way, with the original plot — throwing the company into crisis and uncertainty had indeed now been accomplished. Just by a different means than intended.

As for the investigation itself — there was no need for anyone to go looking for a source. He should simply wait for the audit team to summon him.

Outside, the afternoon was unusually bright for winter, the kind of day that was rare in the cold months. Someone on the street was eating ice cream, entirely out of season.

Yan Zishu let out a quiet breath and didn’t rush home, walking along the main road until he came to the neighborhood park, where he stood for a while by the fountain.

The winter sun fell on him, lazy and mild.

When he left the building, he had taken nothing but his personal phone — not even a pen. His pockets were empty. But it was as though he had put down a great deal of weight along with everything else, and he felt, against expectation, faintly light. After a moment, the phone rang. “Hello?”

Fu Jinchi asked: “Where are you?”

Yan Zishu looked around him. “Outside the 7-11.”

A little while later, Fu Jinchi’s car appeared along the street. The window came down; he looked barely affected by his recent injuries.

Yan Zishu watched him from a distance, thinking: he does seem to have recovered well.

Not only physically, but in terms of renewed energy — ready once again to cause whatever chaos he pleased.

He couldn’t work out why Fu Jinchi had come out here specifically. After turning it over, he could only conclude it must be to watch him suffer.

Fu Jinchi got out of the car and walked toward him. If that was what he wanted to see, Yan Zishu was willing to be seen.

He thought of the documents and certificates he had glimpsed once in Fu Jinchi’s office — photocopies of various credentials. He had always come with two contingency plans in place.

Yan Zishu felt, belatedly, that of course he had — how could such a calculating villain have put all his hope on Yan Zishu alone.

What Fu Jinchi couldn’t know was that this calm expression of acceptance was producing, in Fu Jinchi, that same conflicted reaction — the one he always described as wanting and resenting in equal measure.

He had known Yan Zishu would never stand completely on his side.

He had foreseen that he would probably be deceived. He had gambled anyway.

You sat down at the table knowing you could win or lose. Fu Jinchi understood this clearly. He had lost. There was nothing to say, nothing to be angry about. He had gotten exactly what he had chosen. Who told him to be stubborn and test it.

He deceived Third Uncle even in their alliance; he could hardly expect Yan Zishu to behave differently in theirs.

Demanding a standard for others that you didn’t hold for yourself was, of all things, the most hypocritical.

There was no one in the world who looked after his interests without counting the cost. Fu Jinchi had established this truth early.

Though perhaps that was because the people around him, all his life, had never been particularly ordinary.

In adulthood, there had been opportunities to step into a more ordinary world. He had simply declined them.

What was there to complain about now?

Along the road, an ice cream truck rolled slowly past, playing cheerful music, its cheerful body painted with rainbows and small animals.

Yan Zishu finally spoke, asking Fu Jinchi what had brought him here. If the answer was that he had come to hit him, that would have been understandable enough, too.

“Let’s put it all on the table.” Fu Jinchi retrieved his thoughts unhurriedly. “I prefer to finish what I started.”

And so, a little later, Fu Jinchi drove Yan Zishu home.

As the car reached the apartment building, the sun was beginning to set, staining half the sky a deep red. Winter rarely produced evenings like this — the gathering dusk, a faint and mysterious dark blue bleeding in behind the high-rises. Yan Zishu got out. Fu Jinchi followed.

The street lamps hadn’t come on yet. Yan Zishu asked whether Fu Jinchi wanted to come up. Fu Jinchi declined.

But at this hour there weren’t many people nearby, and no one to interrupt them.

“There isn’t actually much to say. Just one thing, and then I’ll go.” Fu Jinchi said. “From now on, we have no relationship.”

“All right.” There was nothing else Yan Zishu could reasonably say. “Thank you, in any case, for looking after me all this time.”

Though he had anticipated it, his stomach still felt like it was burning — a scorched hollow that pushed him to say something more. Watching Fu Jinchi turn to leave, Yan Zishu spoke again: “One more thing — those cufflinks you gave me. I looked them up when I got home — no maker’s mark, so they’re bespoke, which means they’re antiques. Too valuable. I accepted them too carelessly. Let me return them.”

They were, of course, in the art business — he could trace which house had auctioned a piece, in which year. But Yan Zishu said this deliberately, as if to reduce their significance, to erase whatever meaning had been placed in them.

“Don’t bother. They’re not worth anything.” Fu Jinchi said. “I gave them to you, so keep them.”

Yan Zishu didn’t actually want to keep them. Antiques — you couldn’t simply throw them away, and you couldn’t simply sell them, but having them in the apartment would, he was sure, produce the effect of always conjuring a particular memory. If nothing remained to remind him, the feelings could follow the object into silence — but with those rubies sitting in his line of vision, they would keep bringing back that late drowsy afternoon, Fu Jinchi coming through the door, placing the box in his hand.

Saying in that offhand way: call it a new year’s gift.

He didn’t want to be haunted like that. So he insisted: “I’ll go up and get them now. Or I can drop them off at yours.”

“Yan Zishu.” Fu Jinchi said his name. “I don’t need them. Why do you insist on giving them back?”

Yan Zishu looked at him for a few seconds without speaking, then drew the last traces of expression back from his face, returning to the familiar stillness.

The sunset had deepened further; in the last light of dusk, the darkness coming in was rich and thick, carrying something unreadable.

Fu Jinchi gave a mild smile. “It was only an adult’s game. I thought you were someone who could play.”

Yan Zishu recovered his appropriate manner, gave a slight incline of his head. “I’m grateful for the high opinion, Mr. Fu.”

The end, when it came, was — as might have been expected — composed and undramatic. Neither party lost their dignity.

He looked around, and thought he understood that phrase: prefer to finish what I started.

On a night some time ago, it had been Fu Jinchi who arrived uninvited, appearing here beneath this apartment building.

Now he was taking his leave politely, and would not come back.

It had begun here. It ended here.

Without noticing when it happened, the street lamps had come on, one by one.

In the lift going up, Yan Zishu stared at the metal doors and thought: was all this ceremony really necessary.

He opened the apartment door, took off his coat, changed into his slippers, and sat on the sofa — and found himself thinking again, despite himself, about Fu Jinchi sitting here once, in a voice that had something of a spell in it, saying I’ll treat you very well.

On reflection, it hadn’t been a lie. Just that Fu Jinchi’s care was entirely subject to his own judgment — lavish when he chose to give it, and when he chose not to, the tap could be turned off to the last drop, without a moment’s waste.

Yan Zishu lay down on the sofa and let out a soft breath.

The next morning, he woke to find he had fallen asleep there, still in his clothes. No cold. That was something.

His eyes ached with a particular grief. His feelings were full of the sorrow of passing things — but in action, there was no luxury of lying there doing nothing. Yan Zishu assessed the plot’s progress and concluded that even though he had exited early, there was still a great deal he needed to do.

His phone was full of messages — people asking what had happened. He didn’t reply to any of them.

His inbox held a formally worded company letter: official notification of the suspension of all his positions, a request to cooperate with the audit team’s investigation, and an instruction not to leave the city in the near term. Below that, a message from the IT department: his access permissions had been largely revoked, reduced to browse-only.

All very official. All very impersonal.

This reminded him that the apartment, being a company benefit, would probably need to be vacated before long. Better to begin preparing sooner rather than later.

In the weeks that followed, he was contacted several times and asked to come back and cooperate with the audit.

He did as asked, and had several conversations.

Strictly speaking, Yan Zishu had not genuinely leaked the company’s commercial secrets. The numbers he had written in Fu Jinchi’s palm were false. No material harm had resulted — the moral situation was difficult to defend, but legally, there was no case.

As for the gaps in the technical bid’s credentials — those had been Yinghan’s own pre-existing vulnerabilities; Fu Jinchi had found them independently, and making legitimate use of the formal complaint process was, at a step removed, not something that could reasonably be treated as Yan Zishu’s fault even if he were assumed to have communicated it to a board member.

But Fu Jinchi had baited Fu Weishan, and Fu Weishan had taken the hook completely. Convinced that Yan Zishu could not possibly have done only this much, he now regarded everything through a lens of suspicion that clouded whatever he looked at.

Yan Zishu understood that he was bearing the brunt of displaced rage. But defending himself at this particular moment would accomplish very little. In truth, he had stopped caring about Fu Weishan’s trust. Better a clean break than this prolonged half-state.

Apparently, however, Fu Jinchi’s tolerance for magnanimity had its limits.

Whether in retaliation for being deceived, Fu Jinchi proceeded exactly as a cat tormenting a mouse: releasing a little smoke today, a little more tomorrow, continuously aggravating Fu Weishan’s suspicions, making it impossible for Yan Zishu to even resign and be done with it cleanly.

Having severed the relationship as a lover, Fu Jinchi also withdrew whatever softness he had previously extended, gradually revealing the face of someone without mercy.

So when Yan Zishu returned to the company for another round of questioning, and encountered Fu Jinchi in the restroom, his interior response was already numb.

The restroom had been empty. Yan Zishu was splashing water on his face when the door opened.

“Director Yan.” Fu Jinchi entered with a smile that was and wasn’t. “Back for another round of cooperation with the investigation?”

Yan Zishu dried his face with a handkerchief and put his glasses back on. “What new material have you been feeding them?”

Fu Jinchi reached back and turned the lock. Yan Zishu glanced at it and didn’t move.

Then he heard Fu Jinchi say: “I’ve had an interesting discovery lately. For someone whose income is quite comfortable — no property, no car, no stock market, no gambling, no family to support — your personal accounts don’t have very much in them.”

Yan Zishu’s pupils contracted slightly.

Fu Jinchi continued: “Because you’ve been quietly moving assets abroad piece by piece. Not only that, but you’ve been very slowly building up a trail of activity in the name of ‘Yan Xin.’ Should I suggest to my brother that he look into who ‘Yan Xin’ is?”

Yan Zishu let his gaze drop to the basin. He had no easy explanation.

“Yan Xin” was the alias he had prepared as his escape route. To protect himself from the risk of becoming a ghost with no identity if something went wrong, he had constructed a fictitious overseas Chinese background, with that identity named as his asset beneficiary. He hadn’t expected Fu Jinchi to have dug this out too.

The identity itself wasn’t worth much — but this discovery had now retroactively invalidated all the effort that had gone into it, while simultaneously providing evidence of criminal intent.

After all, ordinary people with nothing to hide didn’t prepare aliases for disappearing.

Bringing this to light was equivalent to saying: his conscience was never clean.

The plan had failed. His mood sank. “Do as you please.”

“Tell me.” Fu Jinchi pinned him with an airtight stare. “What is it you’re actually trying to do?”

“It’s a personal matter.” Yan Zishu said.

Fu Jinchi gave a quiet laugh. “Your personal matter. Nothing to do with me. Is that right?”

Fu Jinchi today was in a black outer jacket over a black silk shirt — rightly, there was an old saying that black suited men best, and the fluid, weighted quality of the fabric expressed every nuance of the phrase refined scoundrel with considerable precision. But Yan Zishu was not in the mood to appreciate it. He took a measured breath and let it out. “Didn’t you say, yourself, that we have no relationship from now on — Mr. Fu, I’ll go first. Excuse me.”

He turned the lock back, opened the door, and left Fu Jinchi inside.

After he’d gone, Fu Jinchi found something almost amusing about it: “What did I say? A man’s words — and you believed them.”