Chapter Text
The papers were still warm when they left the apartment.
Xiao Se set the pace – unhurried, as though Beijing’s avenues had been lent to him for the afternoon. Mai Yanchi followed, a silent gravity that made bystanders straighten without knowing why. Wang Ye drifted at the rear, hands in pockets, mouth tilted in a faint curl – the kind of smile that suggested he already knew which doors were worth opening and which were better left sealed.
They didn’t take the direct road to the Chi residence. In Beijing, straight lines are for tourists and fools. They wove instead through two tea houses, a discreet bookshop, and a courtyard where Wang Weiguo – Wang Ye’s father – had once hosted private conversations with men whose names were never printed but always remembered.
By the time the Chi gates opened, their arrival had already been noted in the city’s invisible ledger.
The Chi residence smelled of cedar and rank – old wealth that believed its own lineage proof against erosion. Curtains heavy enough to make sunlight hesitate. Carpets that demanded whispers. A winter bouquet stood on a console table, perfect in posture. Somewhere, a clock ticked with the authority of a judge clearing his throat.
Chi Yuanduan stood in the reception room as if history itself might take attendance. His wife, Zhong Wenyu, sat in her silk like a blade sheathed in etiquette. They had expected one young man, awkward with affection. Instead, they received a procession:
- Wang Ye, linen calm, son of the richest man in Beijing – a connection Yuanduan could not ignore.
- Yanchi, wordless but radiating the pressure of a command post. In uniform.
- Xiao Se, the you-know-who diplomat’s son who handled language like a sword, his teacup an accessory to strategy.
- And finally, Wu Suowei – soft grey clothes, eyes unreadable, the mole by his right eye glinting like a punctuation mark in a sentence no one else could finish.
Introductions were a study in temperature. Xiao Se handled the air the way a pianist handles dynamics. He spoke first, his tone as warm as tea steam and just as hard to catch.
“Secretary Chi, Madam Zhong. Thank you for receiving us on short notice. We believe in solving matters at the table before they sour on paper.”
“You’re friends of…?” Chi Cheng’s mother trailed, the way an orchestra fades into tacit rest.
“Of your son.” Xiao Se answered smoothly. “And of Xiaowu here. We keep our circle small and our dinners smaller.”
Tea arrived. It wasn’t a casual pour. The porcelain cups breathed out the unmistakable aroma of Huangshan Maofeng, pale liquor, floral and faintly fruity – the sort of leaf gifted to foreign dignitaries, not bought by the kilo.
Xiao Se allowed Wang Ye to praise the leaves with the exact sincerity his father had perfected, while Yanchi murmured about the refinement of the room. Then Xiao Se shifted the temperature by half a degree, subtle as a hand turning a chess piece.
“We’re here because we respect your house,” he said, voice polite but without the faintest hint of deference. “And because Beijing’s air carries rumours faster than dust.”
Zhong Wenyu’s smile was polished steel. “I have no rumours.”
“No,” Xiao Se agreed, eyes bright with Slytherin amusement. “You have conclusions. Which is more efficient.”
Her gaze landed on Mai Yu. “Wu xiansheng, you should spend more time with your own parents,” she said lightly, though the line was sharpened to an exit. “Not with strangers.”
Mai Yu’s answer came without pause, smile feather-light. “I did, a-yi [auntie]. Stopped by their graves on the way here. Traffic was better that way.”
The words landed without theatrics, but with the kind of weight that made the room remember itself. Even the clock seemed to hesitate. Wenyu’s knuckles tightened once on her saucer. She recovered in the space of a blink. Xiao Se’s mouth didn’t shift, but his eyes smiled, sly as a serpent satisfied with the first cut.
Yuanduan’s eyes narrowed slightly, watching the exchange with the flat gaze of a man calibrating instruments. He turned to Mai Yu as if choosing a scalpel.
“My son,” Yuanduan said at last, “is a difficult man. Poison, sometimes. You seem intelligent enough not to drink too deeply, Wu Suowei.”
Mai Yu’s eyes brightened, reckless mischief sparking. “I believe in public service,” he said, solemn as a priest. “I’m sacrificing myself for the greater good – keeping him locked down so he doesn’t bring any exotic diseases home.”
The line rode in like humour, but the current beneath it was territorial. Wang Ye coughed, failing to smother a laugh. Even the older Chi’s mouth faltered, remembering humour for a heartbeat.
That was when Xiao Se placed his cup down with deliberate care.
“Secretary Chi,” he said, all surface civility, “allow me to be clear. We don’t treat proximity to your son as a social experiment. We stand with him. Which means, by extension, we stand with the man he chooses. This isn’t charity, and it certainly isn’t whim. Weak men don’t survive in our circle – they get eaten. The fact that Wu Suowei is here should tell you exactly what he is not.”
A pause.
“We prefer shadows. But should any… administrative misunderstandings persist around your son’s affairs, we know people who delight in tidying. Even when the mess was swept under the rug by well-meaning hands.”
The sentence glided by like silk, but its edges could cut.
Wang Ye stirred, his voice low and almost lazy. “Harmony is prosperity, shushu [uncle]. My father always said strength and harmony are twins. I think you’ll find Dawei speaks both languages.” The reminder hung there – not a threat, but a fact written into the geography of power.
[Referring to the phrase “家和万事兴” – Harmony is prosperity.]
Yanchi finally spoke, his voice steady as iron. “We don’t carry dead weight, Secretary Chi. We carry those worth carrying. And we are not asking permission. We are claiming space.”
It was enough. Chi Yuanduan did not apologise – pride still had a mortgage on the house – but he didn’t ask them to leave, either. That, in his dialect, was concession.
The head of the Chi household set his cup down with care. He looked at his son’s boyfriend with an assessment that slid, almost against his will, into a grudging respect. Then he turned that gaze on the trio who had flanked the boy without fanfare. It took no more than twenty minutes for the point to lodge: this was not a fling. This was armour, and it was inconveniently built to last.
Wenyu glanced at her husband. She had spent a lifetime reading the air around state dinners and sanction tables; she heard what was not said. These men were not bluff. They were also not brag. They were what people became when they had nothing to prove and an entire network behind them.
As they left, Wenyu surprised herself. “Do you eat lotus root, Xiaowu?” she asked Wu Suowei.
“I do.” he said.
“Good.” she replied, a truce in the language of soup.
By the time they slid back into the black sedan, the taste of expensive tea still lingered like an unfinished chord. Silence stretched – until Wang Ye cracked it with a lazy sigh.
“I think we showed enough teeth today. But truth be told, I’d still rather a cup of proper Da Hong Pao.”
Xiao Se’s voice was dry as Fujian rock itself. “Of course you would. Lanzhu’s sermonising has infected you. He treats Da Hong Pao like it’s a religion – mother trees, purebreds, commodity blends. He’d auction his own shadow for a tin if the Wuyi government let him.”
“Please,” Yanchi laughed, “he guards his stash like it’s nuclear material. Last time I asked for a pot he handed me Tieguanyin and said my soul wasn’t ready.”
Mai Yu, curled like a spoiled cat in his seat, made a noise of theatrical disgust.
“Amateurs, the lot of you. Everyone bangs on about Da Hong Pao because it sounds dramatic. Orchid aroma, nine infusions, blah blah. But most couldn’t tell a decent rock tea from flavoured bathwater. Madam Zhong, at least, passed the test today.”
“You’re bratty when you’re right, just like A-Qing.” Wang Ye muttered, his eyes soften at the mention of his lover.
“I’m bratty when I exist.” Mai Yu corrected primly, kicking his cousin-in-law’s ankle. “Market prices are for gullible civil servants. I have cousins and boyfriends who bring me the good leaves.”
Wang Ye let out a bark of laughter. “Bloody hell. You’re lucky your mouth comes with an entourage.”
“Correction,” Mai Yu’s grin was wicked, “you’re lucky I keep things interesting. Otherwise, you’d just be another bored Wudang priest arguing over steeping times.”
Yanchi snorted. “Careful, A-Yu. Keep talking like that and you’ll get banned from half the tea houses in Beijing.”
“Excellent,” Mai Yu said smugly. “Fewer philistines stealing the dumplings.”
“Radishes and greens, ba-di [8th brother]”
[Referring to the phrase “ 萝卜青菜，各有所爱” - Radishes and greens, each has those who love them.]
The car filled with laughter – Wang Ye’s low and sharp, Yanchi’s bright, Xiao Se’s velvet and dangerous. Mai Yu’s laugh, albeit still tight, is starting to bear more of Wu Suowei’s carefree one.
Behind them, in his cedar-walled study, Chi Yuanduan was writing a note to himself. In neat, precise characters: Stay away.
He would never admit it. But he was.
They processed Chi Cheng in the early morning, that pale, bureaucratic hour when men in offices believe themselves gods. Papers slid, stamps thudded, and a neutral voice recited neutral words, each one leaving a faint smear across the day.
“There was a mistake. A misunderstanding. And we will address the person who made the mistake.”
A haphazard promise: precise, bloodless, entirely unbelievable.
Outside, air. Not freedom – air. Chi Cheng took it into his ribs like a man storing fuel.
A suspiciously ordinary young woman leaned against a pillar. At ten steps away, her eyes flickered gold. The illusion slipped. Mai Lilun was doing his pick-up.
Bloody yaos and their habit of possessing other people’s skins.
“Car’s around the corner.” Lilun said, low. “Don’t wave.”
They walked. Half a block. The Mais kept to the shadow, as though the street itself were an accomplice.
The car smelled faintly of locust flowers and peach liquor. Lilun drove with one hand, eyes steady, voice flat as the road.
“Cousin tried to sell the old house a-yi left him. And other assets. Would’ve gone through, too. He’s stubborn like a true Mai.”
Chi Cheng’s eyes blown wide, and his throat tightened. “No. He tried to…”
“Mm.” Lilun didn’t look at him. “We stopped him. Politely but firmly. Wudang boy’s name on the papers now, which means no one else can get claws in. Poetic solution. But don’t get sentimental at him, Chi. If A-Yan had been cornered, I’d have done the same. The world is chaos without him.”
A beat.
“I actually did.” Lilun continued, his tone never shifted. “Nearly cooked myself to ash just to buy him one more breath on the field.” His delivery was arithmetic, not confession. A smile – half maniac, half memory – tugged at his mouth as he recalled agonising months of recovery in Peach Blossom House, under the weight of Zhu Yan’s crimson gaze. Until suffering turned to bloom.
[Referring to Lilun’s OST in Fangs of Fortune]
The comm crackled, and Mai Dongyuan’s voice slid in, calm as polished wood.
“A-Li’s right, Chi Cheng. I’ve done the same. Once, Lanzhu asked me to lend a hand with Jiushi’s door. Nothing grand, something I could have cleared in an afternoon. But because it was his request, I went. And when the wrong enemy appeared, I bled dry to drag Qiushi back alive. He was Lanzhu’s family. And once you let someone into your eyes, you stop counting down time. For my Mengmeng, I would play the fool a thousand times over”
[Hints at Ling Qiushi’s 4th Door and that Ruan Lanzhu’s alias was Zhu Meng in the Spirealm]
“Oh, beautiful. Engrave it on a teacup, sell it at the lovers’ market.” Lanzhu’s voice cut through, sharp enough to sting even with static. “Do you people ever hear yourselves? Idiots in love, idiots in uniform – same species, just wrapped in different fabrics. You think martyrdom is a strategy? Extreme psychos, the lot of you.” He hissed, then the line snapped to silence.
Inside the Obsidian base, softer than smoke curling off a dying flame, Lanzhu spoke – not into the comms, but to the man seated beside him.
“Mai Dongyuan,” he said, the name weighty with all the times he hadn’t dared use it, “don’t ever think almost disappearing on the other side was funny. I was desperate. I was devastated. I can’t let you go, even if the world insists I must.”
[Referring to Ling Jiushi’s OST in Spirealm, I Know by Gao Jiayi]
The car rolled on.
Outside, Beijing hurried past: breakfast stalls steaming, cyclists leaning into the cold, children running with half-zipped coats.
Inside, Chi Cheng sat very still. His eyes were a silent storm.
He saw it now – how extreme all the Mais could behave when cornered, how far Mai Yu had been willing to go. Selling not just possessions but the bones of his life, the house of his mother, the walls that had sheltered him since childhood. Not a gesture of despair, but of love sharpened to the edge of recklessness.
The thought twisted him. Pride in Mai Yu’s independence. Fierce gratitude that the cousins had stepped in, protecting him without cutting that pride to ribbons. Possessive relief that he hadn’t been forced to watch the man he loved dismantle himself for his sake.
Chi Cheng had seen this kind of loyalty before, reckless and uncompromising. It mirrored his own, and it terrified him. He turned his face to the window, expression careful, because if he let it slip, he would unravel.
The streets blurred by, and Chi Cheng closed his eyes for one beat too long – just long enough to admit to himself that Weiwei’s wild, unreasonable loyalty was the closest thing he had ever found to home. His breath scattered.
At last he said, voice pitched low, almost to himself:
“He loves me.”
Lilun shifted gears, unbothered. “Of course he does. Else why bother with the days?”
“I am glad he has you.” Chi Cheng nodded towards Lilun. “My dad likes to deliver his blows in a Taiji manner.”
“Talk Taiji later,” The Mai said. “Eat first. He’s waiting.”
“Love bears all and bares all.”
Abhijit Naskar, Amor Apocalypse: Canım Sana İhtiyacım
At the base, the door opened before Chi Cheng could lift his hand. Mai Yu stood barefoot with a sweater that wasn’t his and a mouth that had been pressed into control for too many hours.
For a moment neither spoke.
They stood – the world’s shortest ocean – then crossed it.
They did not break.
They held with bone-crushing force.
“You win.” Chi Cheng murmured into his Dabao’s hair, “I accept my defeat.”
“Next time,” Mai Yu replied into his collarbone, “I’ll sell you first and buy you back for more.”
The Chi heir huffed out something that began as a laugh and ended as a vow.
That night, they sprawled on their obnoxious waterbed, sharing a single cigarette and kisses of smoke. The window looked out on a slice of grey sky. Mai Yu’s pink pyjamas glowed gently in the low lamp; the duck print was ridiculous and correct.
Mai Yu took the cigarette from Chi Cheng’s lips without asking, voice low. “Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.”
Chi Cheng pressed his mouth to his hair, steady as oath. “Then let’s live this one well, Weiwei.”
“Deal.”
He inhaled hard, twice, then leaned forward and blew the smoke back into Chi Cheng’s mouth. The cloud tangled between them – half challenge, half seduction – and for a dizzy moment it felt as though both of them were breathing from the same lung.
“And when the weather turns cold, and your leg aches due to old age, Chi-ge….” Mai Yu’s grin was wicked, bratty, but his eyes carried the weight of too many unslept hours.
“I’ll dance with the limp.” Chi Cheng caught his wrist.
“That’s my charismatic idiot.”
And after a beat, with that same reckless mouth that had already earned him enemies and armour alike: “The Chis will come around. They’re slow, but they bend. Don’t give up on them, laogong. They’re your roots, even if they scratch.”
Chi Cheng closed his eyes, torn between pride and weariness. “And if they never do?”
“If they won’t have me at the table, I’ll sit in your chair, smoke in your mouth, until they realise there’s no room left for ghosts.” His lover said simply, eyes glittered, equal parts defiance and devotion.
In the week that followed his release, their art company restarted – smaller, cleaner, as though rinsed in rain. To Beijing, the Mais receded into rumour and late-night jokes. Guo Chengyu stayed a phone call away, a man playing chess with someone who only respected checkmate.
Chi Jiali began shopping for her brother and his gorgeous-bratty-dearest without apology. Chi Cheng’s mother learned to call ahead before visiting. His father, reluctantly, learned to ask questions he did not want answered – and to endure the answers.
One evening, with steam fogging the kitchen window and two bowls of noodles scorched almost beyond salvation, Mai Yu watched his boyfriend lift a pair of shoes from a bag.
“They are loud, Dabao. But jie [sister] thinks they suit you.” The Beijing native warned.
The Mai examined them. “They are pink.”
“They are grey.” Chi Cheng replied, deadpan.
His baobei’s mouth twitched “Hideous”. He tried them anyway. They fit like inevitability.
“Walk.”
Mai Yu walked. The shoes squeaked. They both laughed.
Later, they carried bowls to the table and ate in companionable silence, broken only by commentary on scallions. Chi Cheng washed, Mai Yu dried; their elbows bumped; they made room. The apartment breathed with them – the smell of soap, the hush of coats drying, the pulse of a city past midnight.
Ordinary. Which was to say, hard-won.
They met Jiang Xiaoshuai at a dumpling shop that had outlived five redesigns and two revolutions. He brought beer and a grin sharp enough to saw wood. They spoke about everything except the important things. That was the point.
At the end, the doctor clapped Chi Cheng on the shoulder. “I prefer you in boring, Chi Cheng. It’s a good colour.”
“Grey?” Chi Cheng deadpanned.
“Pink.” Mai Yu corrected.
All three laughed over steam and vinegar, like a door opening on a warm room.
When they walked home, the night air stung and their breath lingered like small ghosts. Chi Cheng’s grin stayed wolfish as his Dabao tucked a hand into his pocket without hesitation, not even glancing around.
“Chi shaoye, do you ever get tired of being brave and suave?” Mai Yu asked.
“Yes, dear.” Chi squinted one eye, mock-smouldering. “Whenever you put on those atrocious pyjamas.”
The cemetery felt older than the village that leaned against it, as though stone had taken root before wood. Cold slabs shouldered names into silence. Patient pines bent with the weight of frost, their needles whispering above a pond green with winter algae, an oval mirror bored by time. Somewhere unseen, children’s voices rose in song, sparrows of sound darting in and out of the air.
Mai Yu knelt first, the way sons do. His fingers brushed the carved characters, reverent but unflinching.
“Ma, your Daqiong is here,” he said softly, to the woman who had taught him stubborn grace. “Pa – hope you’re not laughing too much with Ma beside you.”
Chi Cheng stood a pace behind, a man in a place that had made room for him without asking anyone’s permission. His voice was low, careful.
“Ma, I’m sorry we didn’t get much time. Pa, I’m sorry we never met. But I am here. I am taking care of Weiwei, you don’t need to worry.”
He reached across the grey and clasped Mai Yu’s wrist. Mai Yu’s mouth trembled – not weakness, but agreement.
“We’re here.” Chi Cheng continued. “We’re staying. People who matter don’t mind.”
Wind moved in the tall grass. A magpie landed near the pond and examined its own reflection like a critic. From beyond the willow, a children’s song found them. Old words carried by new throats, bright as water over stone.
The rich heir knelt at last, shoulder to shoulder with his person. He didn’t ask the dead for permission. He told them the truth.
“I will keep him.” Chi Cheng said. “I will bring him back and I will walk out with him, every time. We will walk a thousand miles with this first step.”
[Referring to the phrase “千里之行始于足下” - A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.]
Mai Yu laid a chrysanthemum against the stone. His fingers found Chi’s, weaving tight, refusing to let go. A real smile broke across his face at last, earned and unguarded. The twin moles on his cheeks caught the pale light; the tail-mole at his right eye glinted like a full stop at the end of every previous sentence.
Under the quiet blessing of stone and sky, the insecurities rose like smoke. Mai Yu’s voice was taut, almost bitter.
“Sometimes I think you still dream of Wang Shuo. He’s safer. Cleaner. Not weighed down by being a Mai. Not dragging storms behind him.”
Chi Cheng stilled, then turned him gently, pressing his palm against his jaw until dark eyes met his.
“Weiwei, you idiot. I don’t dream of ghosts when I have you in my arms. And as for the storms, you think I don’t see them? I choose you anyway. Every day, every step. Not out of pity. Not out of desperation. Because without you I’d be living in a house with no roof, open to the rain.”
The words landed like a vow, plain and unornamented, which was why they held. Mai Yu’s breath hitched. His mouth twisted into a smirk that couldn’t hide the relief. “You’ll regret it one day. Trouble is written into our name.”
Chi Cheng’s laugh was low, wolfish. “Then I’ll buy better roofs. And when they break, I’ll build again.”
As they walked back down the path, the landscape seemed to shift with them: reeds bowing like witnesses, plum branches like promises still waiting to blossom. Smoke curled from village chimneys. It smelled of rice and soup, of kitchens where families argued and laughed and forgave.
Chi Cheng thought of his father, already stepping back if only slightly; of his mother, offering lotus root like a flag of truce across a battlefield table. The image steadied him.
Home, he realised, was not a fortress that kept the weather out. It was this – walking side by side, through cold and thaw, with someone who made you want to come in from the wind.
I long to tell you true,
Of more than stars or mountains too.
Though sunrise fades beyond my sight,
With you I’ll face the quiet night.
On earth’s last night I’ll stay,
And hold you close till break of day.
Though waves may sweep the wrecks away,
With you I’ll wait that day.[Zhan Xuan, The Last Night on Earth]