Later that evening he stood at his window with his hands in his pockets, looking down at the traffic and thinking about how difficult it was going to be to manage several hundred people whose names he did not yet know.
His phone rang. Unknown number.
He answered it with a face that would have curdled milk. "Yes."
"Mr Chen." A woman's voice, unhurried, expensively calm. "My name is Chu Xin. I'd like to arrange a business meeting with you."
"Right," Chen Yang said. "And I'd like you to take my number off whatever list you bought it from. Goodbye—"
"I am not a fraudster."
"They all say that."
There was a pause on the line, and when she spoke again there was an edge in it that had not been there before. "You think I'm running a telephone scam."
"I think a person who genuinely wanted a meeting would have sent an email."
"Then I'll prove it to you," Chu Xin said. "Before we speak again, I'll prove it."
"Fantastic. My dinner's getting cold."
He hung up.
The dinner was, in fact, excellent, and he told himself so several times while he laid it out. He was still admiring his own cooking when the door opened.
"I'm back."
Xiaoya came in with her bag sliding off her shoulder and her long silver hair loose down her back.
"Perfect timing," Chen Yang said, waving a chopstick at the table. "Sit down, it's still hot."
She sat down heavily.
"Another audition?"
"Another audition."
He looked at her properly. "And judging by your face, it didn't go well."
"It was a good one." She turned her chopsticks over without picking anything up. "A new drama. That director — the famous one. Everybody's saying it's going to be the biggest thing on the schedule next year, the viewing figures are going to be—" She stopped.
Chen Yang was surprised she had been in the room at all. A director at that level, and an actress with no credits, and they had let her read.
"So what happened?"
"I didn't get it." Her voice wobbled. "Not the lead — I know I'm not up for a lead, I'm not delusional. I didn't get the passer-by. The passer-by, Chen Yang. Four lines. I didn't get four lines."
"Did he try it on with you again?" Chen Yang said, and heard how hard his own voice came out. "Because if that man—"
"No." She shook her head. "Not this time. This time the part just went to somebody with the right connections. That's all. That's the whole story." She put her face in her hands. "Maybe I'm not meant to do this. Maybe that's the answer and I'm the last one to work it out."
He opened his mouth. Nothing came out that was worth saying, so he shut it again and sat there feeling useless.
Her phone rang.
"Sorry — one second." She wiped her eye and answered it. "Hello?"
She listened.
Then she was on her feet so fast the chair went over, screaming into the phone.
"WHAT?"
"What is it?" Chen Yang half rose. "What's happened?"
She lowered the phone very slowly and stared at him.
"Why are you looking at me like that," he said nervously. "Xiaoya. Why are you looking at me like that?"
She kept staring.
"You know," he said, edging around the table, "sometimes I feel like I don't know you at all—"
She turned on him sharply and he flinched. "What? WHAT?"
"That was the director," Xiaoya said. A sly, dazed smile was spreading over her face. "That same director. He called me himself. He said I passed the casting."
"...That's wonderful," Chen Yang managed, in a cold sweat.
She crossed the room, took him by the front of the shirt, and shoved him against the wall with her hand raised.
"The lead," she said, and her eyes filled up. "Chen Yang, I got the female lead."
"Then we should celebrate!" he said quickly. "Right now, anywhere you like, I'll—"
"Wait." She stopped him with her fingertips against his cheek. "Wait. There's a thing he said."
"What thing?"
"He said I got it thanks to you."
Chen Yang went absolutely blank. "Thanks to me? I don't know a single director. I have never been in a room with a director in my life. I wouldn't recognise—"
And then he remembered a woman's voice on the phone saying then I'll prove it to you.
"Excuse me," he said, and reached for his ringing phone.
Xiaoya caught his sleeve. He gently detached her fingers, and she stood by the table with her arms at her sides, watching him answer it.
"So," said Chu Xin, and even through the speaker the grin in it was audible. "How do you like my gift?"
Chen Yang said nothing.
"Do you believe now that I'm not a fraud? Or shall I arrange something else?"
"What," he said, "does a lady with that much influence want from me?"
"An address is on its way to your phone." The warmth went out of her voice entirely. "Tomorrow night. Come alone."
The line went dead.
"Hello?" Chen Yang said to it. "Hello!"
He lowered the phone.
Xiaoya was watching him. "Did you put in a good word for me?"
"No," he said. "I promise you I didn't. I've never spoken to anyone about your work."
"Then why—" She frowned, working it through, and got there. "She used her connections. Whoever she is. She went to a director at that level and moved a lead role, just to get a meeting with you." Her voice rose. "Chen Yang, why does anybody want a meeting with you that badly?"
"That's what I'm going to find out. She won't discuss it on the phone, which means I have to go."
Xiaoya grabbed his hand with both of hers.
"Don't go." Her face was white. "Please. A person who can do that can do anything, and you'd be walking in there alone, and if it goes wrong nobody will even know where you—" She swallowed. "I'll give the role back. I'll call him tonight and say I can't do it. I'd rather do that than have you go."
Chen Yang looked at her.
She meant it. She had wanted this for six years, she had cried at his table forty minutes ago, and she was holding his hand and offering to throw it in the bin without a second's hesitation. A clear head, in the face of exactly the temptation designed to take it away from her.
He flicked her gently on the forehead.
"Fool."
"Ow!" She let go to rub the spot, outraged. "What is wrong with you?"
"Think about it," he said, smiling. "A woman who moved a leading role to get my attention is not going to shrug and give up because I said no. If I refuse, she finds another lever. That's all handing back the part would achieve — it wouldn't stop her, it would just cost you the role."
Xiaoya's chin came up. "You don't know that. You're just afraid she'll find another way to put pressure on you."
Chen Yang's fist closed.
"That's exactly what I'm afraid of," he said quietly. "Which makes our situation more dangerous, not less. So I'm going to go and meet her, and I'm going to find out what she actually wants."
She took his hand again. "Then be careful. Please be careful."
"I have a plan," he said, and closed his fingers over hers.
The house stood at the end of a walled lane, low and traditional, with lanterns under the eaves and two men at the entrance.
Chen Yang got out of the car and looked at the place over the top of his phone with a smirk. Very old-fashioned. Somebody had spent an enormous amount of money to make a building look like it had never had money spent on it.
"Mr Chen Yang?"
"That's me."
"I'll have to search you for weapons."
He raised his hands and let it happen.
"Thank you, sir. The young lady is waiting inside."
He followed them in across the courtyard, and by the third step he had stopped being amused.
Their aura came off them the way heat comes off a stove — and it was stronger than Leelu's. Considerably stronger. These were not doormen with big shoulders; these were something else, dressed as doormen.
He ran the honest assessment in his head and did not enjoy it. He was newly level two. He was not confident he could take a level two, let alone whatever was walking on either side of him.
"The guest has arrived," the man in front announced.
"Send him in."
The doors slid open onto a long room with a painted screen at one end and a table set for two.
The woman seated at it looked up.
"Mr Chen Yang. Sit down, please."
She poured, and raised her glass to him.
"I hope you'll forgive my methods. They were forced on me, and I don't apologize for them, but I hope you'll forgive them." She gestured at the dishes. "This restaurant is very difficult to get into. Try everything — it would be a shame to waste it on nerves."
Then she smiled slyly. "I should also confess that I've looked into your past. Thoroughly. I'll drink the penalty cup for it."
She did, and set the glass down.
Chen Yang did not touch his.
"What do you want from me?"
"Directly, then. Good." Chu Xin folded her hands. "I wanted to be certain that you have no connections whatsoever to my social circle. That was all the investigation was for, and it mattered a great deal to me, so I had no choice about doing it."
"How would I have connections with people like you?" he said drily.
"Quite," she agreed, smiling. "You're right."
She turned her glass slowly on the tablecloth.
"We would never have met at all," she said, "if your grandfather hadn't suddenly recovered."
Chen Yang's stomach dropped through the floor.
"I'm not sure what you mean—"
"Don't." Her eyes came up. "Please don't pretend. It insults us both and it wastes the evening. I'm not here to threaten you, Mr Chen. I'm here to pay you, generously, for information — and to make three offers, in order."
She held up one finger.
"First. Your grandfather's medical case. I've already made certain that no one else knows about it — the file, the imaging, the nurse's statement. It has been taken care of, and it was taken care of before I called you, as a gesture."
A second finger.
"Second. My venture fund will provide seed capital to your company. One hundred million yuan, in exchange for five percent of the shares."
Chen Yang's mouth opened.
One hundred million. For five percent of a company that had existed for three weeks and had one product nobody had played.
He got hold of himself and said, in the most reserved voice he could manage, "And what else?"
Chu Xin crossed her arms over her chest.
"There's a third point," she said. "You will become a friend of the Chu family."
"...What does that mean, exactly? A friend of the Chu family?"
"Look up my grandfather," she said. "Chu Liangbang. Take your time."
He typed it in. The page loaded. He read the first two lines of it, and then the rank, and then read the rank again.
He looked up. "This man is your grandfather?"
Chu Xin smiled, and it was a very smug smile.
"Now do you understand what friendship with the Chu family is worth?"
Chen Yang set the phone face down.
"I'll tell you what I understand," he said. "Sooner or later I am going to be the richest man in the world. I'm not being poetic; I mean it as a schedule." He tapped the table. "But a medical record like my grandfather's is a rope somebody can hang me with, and I can't cut it myself. For that, I need help."
"For that," Chu Xin agreed, "you need protection. You are about to become extremely visible, Mr Chen, and visible men without patrons get taken apart. I can make sure that doesn't happen to you."
"And how do I trust you?"
"By letting me go first." She said it without hesitation. "Points one and two are already done, or will be done before you give me anything at all. The file is clean. The hundred million lands in your account before you hand over so much as a vial." Her smile turned sly. "And once my grandfather has fully recovered, I will personally guarantee your safety. Mine is not a family whose guarantees are decorative."
Chen Yang looked at her for a long moment.
"Then we have a deal," he said. "The advance clears, and the next day I deliver the medicine."
"When my grandfather is well," Chu Xin said, "I'll come and thank you myself."
"Don't thank me." He picked up his glass at last. "Just keep every part of this an absolute secret. That's the only payment I want."
"For the sake of our common interests," she said, and put her hand out.
They shook on it across the table.
"To successful cooperation," said Chen Yang, and raised his glass.
They clinked, and drank.