His phone rang while he was still holding it, and the name on the screen was Guangzi.
"Speak, subject," Chen Yang said grandly. "Your emperor is listening."
"Idiot." A pause. "Listen, are you okay? I heard about the job."
"I'm fine."
"Because I've got a bit put by," Guangzi said, awkward and serious. "If rent's a problem this month, say the word, I'm not going to make it weird—"
"Guangzi. I'm fine. I promise you I have never in my life been finer." He stretched out on his bed. "Hold on. How did you even hear about it?"
There was a silence on the line, of the specific kind that meant his friend had been hoping to get through the call without arriving here.
"Fang Jia told me."
Chen Yang stopped moving. Just the two syllables of her name and there she was in his head, whole, exactly as she had been.
"Huh," Guangzi said, filling the silence. "She's probably still upset, you know? Honestly, I never got the full story out of you. Why did the two of you break up?"
"Her mother," Chen Yang said, and the annoyance came up in his voice before he could smooth it out. "Her mother had a list of demands. I didn't meet them. That's the whole story."
Guangzi sighed. "Stories like that take away any desire I've got left to get married."
"Wait." Chen Yang sat up. "That's not — how did she know I'd been fired? She doesn't work there. Nobody I know works there."
Another silence, longer.
"Because it's her boyfriend's doing," Guangzi said. "The rich kid she's seeing. He bought into the company. Bought shares, specifically, and specifically so that he could have you fired."
Something went white behind Chen Yang's eyes.
"He bought a company," he said, very quietly, "to fire me."
"Okay, I can hear your face," Guangzi said quickly. "Calm down. Whatever you're about to do, don't do it. Don't do anything stupid, I'm serious—"
Chen Yang's fist closed until the knuckles cracked. "Stupid? Stupid is a man with money deciding my life is a toy—"
"Right. Yes. Absolutely. And on that note I have to go, I'm being called, bye—"
The line went dead. Chen Yang looked at the screen and, after a moment, smiled.
Then he thought of the name again — Zhang Jinglong, that shameless, smirking parasite — and the smile burned off him. He was still standing there furious when he glanced at the clock, and then all the fury went out of him at once and he panicked and ran.
The Regal Grand at night was a wall of gold light with a doorman under it. Chen Yang stood at the foot of the steps with his hands in his pockets, checking the street in both directions, which is what a man does when he is early and pretending not to be.
A luxury car came up the curve of the drive and stopped, and a girl got out of it.
"Sorry," Xiaoya said. "Did I keep you waiting?"
She had done something to her hair, which was pale and silver and pinned up off her neck, and something to the rest of her as well, and two men crossing the drive turned to look and murmured to each other about which drama they had seen her in.
Chen Yang did not say anything, because he was not currently capable of it.
"Well?" She smiled at him. "What are you standing there waiting for?"
"Sorry. I've just — I don't think I ever noticed how beautiful you are before."
"Mm." She tipped her chin up, pleased and pretending not to be. "That's because I dressed up. You said posh place, so I did posh."
She took his arm. He nearly went up the steps sideways.
"Relax," she said, patting his sleeve. "It's etiquette. Nobody's proposing to anyone."
The restaurant was on a high floor with the whole city burning away below the windows. A waiter set menus in front of them and withdrew.
Xiaoya opened hers and studied the dishes with great care, and then studied the prices with more care than that, and was in the middle of some difficult arithmetic when she heard Chen Yang, across the table, calmly ordering half the page.
"—and the crab. The large one."
"The crab?" She put the menu down flat. "Do you have any idea what that crab costs? Take it off. Take it off right now, we can share something—"
"I have money," Chen Yang said serenely.
"Stop that. Don't pretend to be a rich man in front of a waiter, it's the saddest thing a person can do."
"My family got the compensation," he said, and let himself look proud of it. "For the house. The demolition money finally came through."
"Oh." Understanding arrived all over her face. "Oh."
She reached across and hugged his arm and shook it, delighted, and Chen Yang coughed into his fist and looked hard out of the window at the city.
Afterward they came down through the lobby, full and slow and pleased with themselves.
"We could keep going," Chen Yang said. "There's a place—"
"I couldn't fit another thing in me," Xiaoya said, laughing. "Politely and sincerely, no."
"Well, well, well."
The voice came from the bar side of the lobby. A blond man in a very bright shirt was walking toward them with his hands spread wide, and Chen Yang's stomach dropped, because he knew that face.
Zhang Jinglong.
"What an unexpected meeting," Zhang said. "The world really is small."
"It is," Chen Yang said.
"So." Zhang looked up at the ceiling, at the chandeliers, at the marble. "Can you afford a place like this?"
"Why?" Chen Yang's voice went flat and hard. "Are you going to throw me out of here too?"
The blond man's smirk widened until it was almost affectionate. So the little office worker knew. That was better. That was much better than not knowing.
"Do you two know each other?" Xiaoya asked, surprised.
Zhang turned to her, and only then really looked at her, and whatever he had been planning to say was replaced by something slower.
"Beautiful," he said. "Genuinely beautiful. My god."
He put himself half a step closer, angling his shoulder to shut Chen Yang out of the conversation. Humiliate him in front of her, take her away with him, and finish the evening two ways at once.
"Miss, a word of advice, because someone should give it to you. Don't trust this man. He's poor. He's unemployed — as of this month, in fact. He can't pay his rent. And here he is spending the last money he has in the world on one dinner, just to make an impression on you." He shook his head sadly. "He's throwing dust in people's eyes. That's all this is."
"Are you judging by yourself?" Chen Yang shouted at him.
Xiaoya, who had not moved, said calmly: "So you decided to warn me. Out of kindness."
"I hate it." Zhang put a hand on his heart, with pathos. "I hate to see beautiful girls deceived. It's a weakness of mine." He produced a card between two fingers. "Which brings me to it. I want you to be the face of my brand. Take the card."
She looked at the card. She did not take the card.
Zhang held it there a moment longer, then let it drop, with an expression of genuine regret at the waste. "Think about it. I'm not joking about the conditions. The pay would change your life, and I'm being modest when I say that—"
"I'm here with Chen Yang," Xiaoya said. "And I am not pleased with the way you've been speaking about him." She smiled sweetly. "Also, judging by tonight, your company will be bankrupt inside two years. I'd get out early if I were you."
Zhang's face went the colour of his shirt.
"Drama queen," Chen Yang murmured, honestly impressed. "That was excellent acting."
"Let's go," Xiaoya said, taking his arm again. "The scumbag is finished talking."
Zhang Jinglong stood in the middle of the lobby, furious, absolutely unable to understand how a woman who looked like that could look at a man like that and choose him. Fine. Fine. He would remember this. He would make Chen Yang remember it too—
The elevator opened behind him.
"Jinglong." Fang Jia came out with her bag over her shoulder. "Take me home."
"What? No — sit with me, have one drink at the bar, it's early—"
"No." Her voice had frost on it. "I'll transfer you the money for dinner tomorrow."
She walked past him. He went after her through the doors, saying her name, telling her to wait, and she crossed the drive to the car without once turning her head. The door shut. The car pulled out into the traffic, and Zhang Jinglong stood alone on the steps of a five-star hotel and screamed her name after it into the dark.
She was his subordinate. She worked for him. He did not understand — he genuinely did not understand — how she thought she was allowed to behave this way.
Out on the bridge, the city moving under them, Chen Yang and Xiaoya walked slowly and picked over the encounter.
"Anyway," Chen Yang said at last, "he gave me an idea."
"He gave you an idea," Xiaoya repeated. "That man."
"I've been thinking about where to put my money. Properly, I mean, not a savings account." He looked out at the lights. "A game company. I'm going to open a game company, and I'm going to destroy his."
She stopped walking. "Chen Yang. Don't rush. Business is a huge risk — people lose everything doing exactly this, and you've only just—"
"Don't worry about it," he said, and there was something in his face she had not seen there before. "Just watch the show."