Chapter Text
“What is this?” Jingyan asks, staring down at the glossy flyer that was certainly not on his desk when he left his office yesterday evening.
The man on the flyer smiles coyly back from behind a spread paper fan. His long black hair tumbles down his pristine white robes and onto the rest of the black background, where it flows into elegant calligraphy that spells out: Lovers’ Tourney. Beneath the title, a sentence declares it the “#1 dating reality TV show in China!”
From his right side, Zhanying says, “The contract for your participation as this season’s ‘Prize Bachelor’ are beneath the flyer,” He pauses, then adds, earnestly, "I've also included several memos I’ve compiled on the essentials of the show for your perusal.”
Jingyan blinks at Zhanying, who pulls out his phone and says, frowning, “The production company wants it by next week, so it’s not entirely urgent, but if you could—“
“Tell whoever arranged my participation to cancel this. Immediately,” Jingyan says. He sets his face into the implacable scowl that once made an intern cry.
Of course, another time, he pulled it on the photographer for a magazine spread PR had forced him into, and ended up on the issue’s cover instead.
But usually, it worked.
Unfortunately, Zhanying is as unyielding as he is devoted—it’s why Jingyan poached him as his personal secretary when he came across Zhanying in the Lanzhou field office years ago. But sometimes, such as right now, those traits are the bane of Jingyan’s work life.
“Vice-President Jing would never allow it. I told you she warned me that if you did not make an effort to meet more people, she would take matters into her own hands,” Zhanying says, giving Jingyan a look that manages to convey all of his aggrieved disappointment. “Not to mention how much effort PR has put into securing this opportunity to improve your public image.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my public image,” Jingyan grits out. “I won that popularity contest recently! On that—that—website you told me about.”
“Business Brief’s Sexiest in Business,” Zhanying supplies, “but your looks don't dispel the tabloid stories from former employees—“ Jingyan opens his mouth to retort that he can’t be made accountable for all the spiteful statements the inept parasites his brothers had cultivated in the company made as they packed their bags, but Zhanying rushes on ahead—“and it’d be good to use this show to address concerns about your bisexuality. Our research shows your decision to publicly come out has increased public anxiety about Da Liang, which was already high because of the leadership turnover. It’s unfair, but—”
Jingyan feels a headache coming on. He closes his eyes. “The best way to do that would be to give my full attention to the company restructure, not to go on reality television. Withdraw me. Immediately.”
“What is this ruckus about?” Jingyan hears.
He opens his eyes to see Vice-President Jing assessing them with a mild gaze as she steps into his office. Automatically, he rises and straightens his stance. Zhanying does the same.
“Vice-President Jing,” they say in unison.
She quirks an eyebrow at them.
“I am withdrawing my participation in the reality TV show,” Jingyan forestalls, firm. Her entrances are never coincidental.
“Even knowing how it much it would help Da Liang?” she says.
He falters. “My job as Director of Business Development is to lead company strategy, not—”
“In several years, you will be CEO of Da Liang Group, responsible for the livelihoods of half a million employees. Will you then still hold on to such a narrow view of your duties?” she says, pleasantly. “Do you think that when you are negotiating a deal, or convincing talent to join Da Liang, your personal reputation is of no consequence? A leader serves to the fullest extent that he can.”
“Surely, when I take over and demonstrate my competence—” he attempts.
“I am surprised you have even dismissed the benefits your appearance would bring to the LGBTQ community.”
“I—beg your pardon?”
“This will be the first time that Lovers' Tourney, one of the most popular shows on TV, will have both male and female contestants. But of course you are aware of this. You must have read the memos Zhanying has worked so hard to put together before you rejected the opportunity.”
“But—” Jingyan says, desperation starting to latch onto him with its claws. “I can’t be on TV. Even if I could spare the time, I could as easily make my image worse.”
“Then make sure that you don’t,” Vice-President Jing says, as she examines the lace on the sleeve of her immaculate white blouse.
“Mother—”
She gives him an implacable look that puts his to shame.
He swears that as his mother leaves his office, her lips twitch at the corners.
****
“What about this?” The stylist says, holding up to Jingyan glossy red pants that were two sizes too small and three inches too short. The rigid spikes of his hair had lost several strands of hair, which clung to his sweaty forehead .
Jingyan shakes his head. Surely there must be something normal he could wear. Though looking again at the cacophony of colors spilling from the clothing racks, Jingyan is suddenly doubtful.
“This then?” the stylist says. He pulls out a gold jacket pretending to be an armor chest plate.
Jingyan tries to rein his horrified reaction in, and manages to turn it into an acceptable wince and head shake.
The gold jacket smacks him on the chest, and he doubles over wheezing. The fabric is only imitation metal, but it’s still plenty heavy.
“You and your arrogant, self-important face can knock yourself out picking whatever then! I’m not paid enough for this,” the stylist huffs, tugging on his spiked choker, and storms out of Jingyan’s dressing room. The door slams behind him.
Jingyan blinks at where his stylist was, and then down at the monstrous jacket in his arm. He deeply regrets giving Zhanying his shooting days off. While he had originally not wanted Zhanying to industriously fuss over every part of this frivolous ordeal, at least he wouldn’t have had to worry about his wardrobe. For years now, he’s left those decisions to Zhanying. Granted, Jingyan has never won any style awards, but he’s also never wound up dressed as a soldier from a Roman legion.
The door bursts open, and Jingyan’s apology for the stylist is already on the tip of his tongue when he meets eyes with a boy - no more than 11 or 12, surely. They stare at each other.
Then the boy's face breaks open in a guileless grin, and he whizzes past him and up a corner of the dressing room table mirror. The moment he reaches the top, the door slams open again, and a man in a creamy turtleneck is clutching the handle and gasping for breath, his hair sticky on his pale skin.
"Fei Liu," he wheezes, flitting his eyes to every corner of the room.
Jingyan gives him a bemused look.
"There," he says helpfully. He points at the mirror's thin ledge along its top edge, where the boy now sprawls, half on and half off, over seven feet from the ground.
The man's eyes snap to the boy - "Come down, Fei-" he orders sharply - and then stalls.
He swallows, and turns his head right back at Jingyan, who watches as his eyes widen and his face grows even paler.
"Jingyan," he breathes, moving two swift steps back. Then he pauses, presses his lips tight. "Director Xiao," he corrects himself.
A crew member then, if he recognized Jingyan.
"Yes," Jingyan said, nodding. "And you?"
The man blinks at him. His hand smooths down, almost unconsciously, the thigh of his dark jeans.
"Found him," the boy whose name must be Fei Liu breaks in, before the man can respond.
Jingyan finds himself turning back to the boy, who was now easily hanging from the mirror with one hand. He looked back at Jingyan with fascinated curiosity.
"You should come down," he says, amused and charmed despite himself. "Your guardian seems worried about you."
"Ground's boring," the boy pouts, but obediently drops down and rushes to the side of the stranger - who, despite the sharpness of his order before, only sighs and cups the back of his head gently.
"Thank you," he says to Jingyan. Now that he was no longer out of breath, Jingyan could probably appreciate the refinement of his appearance. The neatly-cut hair, the fine weave of his sweater, the fit of his dark jeans.
"I apologize for interrupting you. I will leave you to it," the man begins, his gaze roaming once over Jingyan's face, but his right hand already clasping Fei Liu's left - but then it snags on Jingyan's hands.
"What is that monstrosity?" The man directs at the gold jacket.
Jingyan looks down at it, and winces again.
"My stage outfit," he explains, tossing the jacket in with the other items discarded all over the floor.
The distaste radiates from the man’s pale face, and Fei Liu gives it one glance and pronounces, definitively, "Ugly." It makes Jingyan quirk a small smile.
“I’m glad you think so as well." Jingyan says. "I was worried that since I know so little about fashion, it was my taste and not my stylist's that was the issue."
The man gives the clothes on the floor a sweeping look.
“And this is what the… stylist... came up with?” he says, and snorts, an inelegant and incongruous sound. “He’s not very good at his job.”
The stranger considers Jingyan, and then Fei Liu. The boy stares up at him with round, adorable eyes.
He sighs. "Go and find Zhen Ping, Fei Liu," he says. Fei Liu hesitates, sneaking another curious glance back at Jingyan. "Go," he says more firmly.
The boy pouts, but obeys this time. He slips his hand free from the man's grasp, and leaves the room—or rather, sprints out of the room, down the hall and then vertically up the wall as he bounds forward.
The stranger watches him go, muttering to himself, "I'm definitely going to punish him for this later," but even Jingyan can tell there is no conviction in that voice.
He finally turns back to Jingyan.
"I hope you don't mind that he's most likely just head to the crew's snack table," the stranger says, with a wry smile.
Jingyan finds he's already smiling back at him, and clears his throat.
The man nods at the racks of clothes in the room.
"May I?" He asks.
Jingyan gives the man a quick, assessing glance. Now that he was no longer out of breath, the refinement of his appearance was obvious. The neatly-cut hair, the fine weave of his sweater, the fit of his dark jeans. Jingyan himself prefers functional things, but he is intimately familiar with expensive clothes, because he had grown up rich, and more importantly, grown up with Lin Shu.
"Okau," he says, stepping aside.
Moving on light, careful steps, almost as if he were gliding over the floor rather than walking on it, the man crosses to the only rack with neutral colors and thumbs through several hangers. Eventually, he pulls out a black suit.
“This one,” he says imperiously as he holds it out. For lack of a reason to object, Jingyan tugs off his current jacket, which appears identical to the one he’s being offered.
But as the lines of the new suit jacket settle over his shoulders, he realizes that the unassuming jacket in fact has a row of buttons running from the edge of its hem to its high collar, in a style reminiscent of a traditional tunic. As he moves, the cuffs, made of a slightly different black fabric, catches the light.
When Jingyan finishes doing up the last button, the stranger, who throughout the entire process never once took his piercing eyes off Jingyan, tilts his head a few degrees and nods.
“How did you know to select this one?” Jingyan asks. It is a good choice—familiar and comfortable enough he wouldn’t object, but stylish enough to be distinct from his usual outfits.
It speaks of someone who knows his tastes very well.
Jingyan would not be able to pinpoint the exact shift in the stranger’s expression, but suddenly he was radiating intense disapproval.
“Your stylist should have put you in a well-cut suit the first time he saw you. Given your physique and personality, that would obviously have been the best choice. The skill comes in picking something simple enough for you, but interesting enough for the viewers,” the man says, his accent turning more precise with every word. “Of course, that presumes this stylist of yours had any skill to showcase. You should demand a better one.”
“I see,” Jingyan says, his shoulders and back relaxing.
Internally, he shakes his head at himself. With his aesthetic eye, what else could he have been but a stylist?—though clearly, a much better one than the one assigned to Jingyan.
The years of watching his brothers bribe and fawn their way to influence has produced a wariness in Jingyan that he was not proud of, even if it had helped him multiple times. Perhaps in the new Da Liang, which was finally free of their influence, it was time for him to let the trait go.
“Thank you,” Jingyan says, sincerely. “Are you available? Could I ask for you to be assigned as my stylist.”
The stranger blinks at Jingyan.
“I… am only here occasionally,” the stranger says, at last, slowly. “In fact, it's time for me to get back - and find my cousin. Sorry, he tends to run everywhere his curiosity takes him. I'll make sure it doesn't happen again."
"Ah, that's a shame," Jingyan says, feeling strangely bereft. He internally shakes his head at himself. "Don't worry about it, I didn't mind."
The man nods again, this time in goodbye, and begins to turn. Watching him go, Jingyan thinks that there is something about the man he is attuned to, in the same way he is attuned to the movement of his horse when riding, or the tension in his bow during archery practice.
“What is your name?” Jingyan says, and then wishes he had turned off the voice he uses on his subordinates before he speaks.
The man freezes mid-movement.
“Mei—Su Zhe,” he replies.
“Mei Su Zhe?” Jingyan repeats.
“No—no, Su Zhe. Just Su Zhe,” he clarifies.
“Su Zhe,” Jingyan affirms. gives him a small smile. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Su. Otherwise, I might have failed my national debut.”
Su Zhe returns his smile. The smile sits awkwardly on his face, almost like it was unused to being there, and it's charming, transforms his refined face to something much more approachable.
“I look forward to seeing you and your cousin around on set,” Jingyan says.
Su Zhe looks at him again, with those odd piercing eyes.
“So do I,” Su Zhe murmurs, and exits the room.