Chapter 54#

In truth, it had all been an excuse.

When Yan Zishu said no, Fu Jinchi accepted the refusal with only a note of regret. Nothing more.

That was the end of it. No landlord materializing afterward to say she was evicting him regardless of what he thought.

If Yan Zishu had been the protagonist of some melodrama, there might really have been a string of misfortunes driving him to the street, until in a cold rainstorm someone appeared and extended a rescuing hand. But Yan Zishu was not that kind of person. He was a cannon fodder character of no great importance — things wouldn’t go very smoothly, but heaven probably wasn’t going to focus its full attention on persecuting him before the story reached its end.

Grass always found a crack to breathe in.

And indeed, things unfolded more or less as he’d expected.

Fu Xiaoyu had entertained ideas of a systematic campaign against Yan Zishu — but they had been stopped at his father’s level. Third Uncle was entirely consumed with the critical business of power and money; he had no patience for his son’s petty distractions, and told him off for creating unnecessary complications during a sensitive period. So Fu Jinchi’s performance of doing-a-favor-while-revealing-half had been, from start to finish, a fabrication.

The episode faded away.

Nobody paid much further attention to where Yan Zishu was living, which left him with the sense that he was gradually being forgotten.

But being outside the eye of the storm didn’t mean immunity from it. Although he was no longer at its center, his awareness of the storm was only slightly delayed, not absent. And to think he could avoid it entirely — that was not realistic.

He could smell the signs.

For example: strange phone calls began again, from numbers identifying themselves as belonging to various departments and units, asking whether he had any knowledge of the former company’s internal affairs.

When people had come to ask about Li Chang’an some time ago, it had clearly been an informal, private inquiry — furtive and oblique. This was different. The conversations were formal; when he met the callers in person, they introduced themselves properly and showed credentials. Economic crime investigation units, that kind of thing.

Yan Zishu accordingly presented himself with full cooperation — clear-headed, organized, leaving nothing out.

Afterward, the questioners were equally courteous, and shook his hand. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

He said the right things about the duty of every citizen.

There it was. The air before a storm.

On the way home, it was the season when spring rain was supposed to be precious — but what fell that day was a real downpour, grey and unrelenting, beginning without warning. Though he found shelter, his clothes were half-soaked by the time he reached the base of his building. And then, worse luck, he was ambushed.

A small stray dog hurtled out from somewhere and ran directly into his ankle, staying to rub and nuzzle.

Tiny. If it hadn’t been so friendly, he might have taken it for a large rat.

Yan Zishu hesitated, stepped around it, and went upstairs.

By nightfall the rain had grown heavier, and the late spring cold had brought the temperature down sharply outside. He kept thinking about that puppy, which had looked very young. He had no choice but to take his keys and go back down. The dog was still there, crouched in the corridor, not daring to go out.

Yan Zishu sighed, picked it up, and carried it in.

A dog appearing beside a cannon fodder character approaching the end of his narrative arc — the timing was extraordinarily inconvenient.

He was in no appropriate phase of his life for dependents. If he kept the dog with him, there would inevitably be some point when it was left without anyone to care for it. But the small creature was impossibly soft and helpless-looking.

When Ben was telling him that Fu Weishan had smashed the office again two days ago, Yan Zishu was sitting with the phone in one hand and a thick syringe in the other, feeding the puppy. He had removed the needle and replaced it with a valve core. The dog was in a box, and Yan Zishu was on one knee at the coffee table.

He looked down. Sighed — not for the first time. The requests for adoption had gone unanswered.

Ben switched to calling directly to save the typing: “Before it was the board members arguing over Li Chang’an’s pledged shares. But you know — Li Chang’an’s wife, her family is not without its own connections, right? When Li Chang’an first went under last year, his wife had to fight all those battles about whether the gambling debts were marital property, and her family got swept up in the investigation too. Now they’ve come out the other side, and they want it all back with interest. They seem to think: the mess Li Chang’an made, the Fu family has no reason not to share the cost — or else produce the money. But the board members would never agree to that. In short — it’s quite the drama.”

“How is the company holding up overall? What’s the impact on normal operations?”

Ben gave a pessimistic answer: “Like a market on a chaotic day. Regular business is definitely suffering.”

Ben took this as an invitation to open up further — talking about the spring auction preparations being neglected, and more besides. It was less like passing along news than like complaining, and Yan Zishu could hear the subtext: if Yan Zishu found somewhere better to go, Ben would want to follow.

Ben’s mood seemed to reflect a broader anxiety among the staff — unsettled, uncertain, not knowing which way things were heading.

It might be overstating it slightly, but when Yan Zishu had been properly in his role, he had been a genuine stabilizing presence. Work that went through him came out organized, which meant Fu Weishan could handle things in an organized way. Now the company was fractious, the newly promoted chief assistant deferential to a fault. And perversely, Fu Weishan was finding this uncomfortable — Fu Jinchi had once assessed him as ambitious beyond his ability, always grasping at more than he could hold, which was, when examined closely, rather accurate. Remove the capable majordomo, and the master of the house began to flounder — complicated relationships all at once, no one to read the situation and respond first.

How often was Fu Weishan slamming things in his office lately? Did a chairman clearly at his wit’s end inspire his staff to work calmly, or did it make them feel the company might not survive the week?

Ben privately suspected that Fu Weishan might even have some regret about having pushed Yan Zishu out so hastily. But a boss couldn’t admit something like that — so instead it was just continuously criticizing the new person for not meeting expectations, cycling endlessly through frustration.

Both sides were grinding, neither was finding it easy, and there was no time to build up anything slowly. No more suitable candidate was in sight.

Yan Zishu understood all of it. He could only say: “Start looking at other options in the meantime. Good to have an exit plan ready.”

The dog drank the last of the milk eagerly and let out a vague attempt at a bark, then began nuzzling at his hand.

“That’s the sensible approach…” Ben heard something in the background. “What was that?”

Yan Zishu put the syringe down and rubbed the dog’s head. “Nothing. Oh — where were we?”

“Just the part about me looking for another job…” Ben said hesitantly. “Actually, let me think it over a bit more.”

“Then let’s leave it here for today.” Yan Zishu said apologetically. “I have a few things to take care of.”

Ben said quickly: “Of course, go ahead.”

Fu Weishan might or might not regret anything — but he would certainly never imagine that his former chief assistant was currently spending his days caring for a dog.

After leaving Yinghan, Yan Zishu had been living more or less in isolation. Finding the dog had introduced an unexpected note of company into his life — two living creatures in the apartment did make it less quiet. The only regret was that the dog would eventually have to be sent somewhere else.

But it was a local mixed breed, not in demand, and the adoption posts on neighborhood platforms had drawn no replies.

Yan Zishu explained this to the dog, with genuine regret: “Don’t be discouraged. You’re actually quite good. You’re just at a slight disadvantage in terms of origin.”

The dog gnawed at his trouser leg and flung it back and forth, then tired itself out and curled up inside one of his slippers to sleep.

The weeks passed quickly. It had grown by a size, and settled for lying on the top of the slipper instead.

During this time, Yan Zishu followed developments at Yinghan, with the dog nearby. His attention split into two halves — one tracking the machinations and maneuvering, the other inhabiting ordinary daily life. At least there was something to do, and he didn’t have to sit with nothing but his own thoughts.

The dog was young and treated him as both its person and its mother. It needed a great deal, but gave back a great deal as well.

Unexpectedly, this arrangement had begun to ease something in him — he had become calmer again, less consumed day-to-day by all the old grievances and calculations.

He sometimes thought: it was probably because he had found a new place to put his feeling.

Fu Jinchi didn’t need him. The dog did — something like that.

He had even begun to question, on that basis, whether he had been tangled up in a person, or whether he simply needed someone to care for.

Every time the dog came rushing enthusiastically over to nudge at him, Yan Zishu thought: if you could choose freely, why would you want a man when you could have a dog?

At least this creature’s love was genuine, and didn’t require any exhausting interpretation.

Carrying this particular philosophical insight, when he encountered Fu Jinchi again, he found he was further along than he’d expected.

*

The spring auction preview had opened to the public, as it did every year. Yan Zishu had resigned, but no rule prevented him from coming to look.

He was, naturally, recognized the moment he walked in. Exhibition managers, staff — people who knew him from before. Those who had heard the unflattering story of how he had left passed it along to those who hadn’t. The general consensus settled around:

Why would he come here to be humiliated, after leaving the way he did?

In reality, he wanted to get a sense of how the plot was progressing, and being out and moving around was better than sitting at home with no information. On the other hand: Yan Zishu didn’t consider this a particularly embarrassing situation for himself.

His coldness and detachment had always been his armor. People’s looks and whispers had never been much to him. Though in this context, it did give him a sense of what it must have felt like when Fu Jinchi had turned up day after day at Yinghan, unwelcome, and continued to show up anyway with that same unaffected ease.

Fu Jinchi had his own kind of armor: in every situation that should have provoked intense feeling, he wore the expression of the Cheshire Cat — that smile that was and wasn’t — concealing whatever fury, contempt, or bitterness moved inside him, presenting instead an air of detached amusement at the world.

It was precisely while that comparison was forming in Yan Zishu’s mind that he came across Fu Jinchi, wearing exactly that smile, in front of an oil painting.

Not directed at Yan Zishu. Directed at Third Uncle Fu and several company executives standing nearby.

The group had apparently just emerged from a meeting inside, walking and talking as they moved — the mood light on the surface, unmistakably stiff underneath.

Yan Zishu nearly walked straight into them.

He stepped to the side, but the exhibition hall was open enough that a complete detour was difficult.

Everyone in this group knew him. Walking directly into each other like this — whether to acknowledge it or not, some collective decision seemed called for.

There was a brief hesitation visible in at least one of them. Then Fu Jinchi, who was at the front, looked directly past Yan Zishu without any sign of recognition, and walked on.

Everyone behind him instinctively followed suit, as though Yan Zishu simply didn’t register on their visual field.

Which left Yan Zishu standing there, having begun to smile in greeting, looking rather foolish.

To anyone watching from the exhibition hall staff, it would have seemed a moment of cringing social exposure.

Fu Jinchi today was dressed in a thoroughly corporate style — nothing like the polished, art-world-adjacent rakishness of before.

That Fu Jinchi — the one who wore small suit jackets and moved as though he’d stepped in from a literary film — was hard to imagine resorting to the I-don’t-see-you tactic. He would more likely have given that unhurried, offhand smile: “Oh, Director Yan is here too?”

Watching that figure recede, Yan Zishu formed a calm and clear assessment in his mind.

Completely unsuitable for him.