Chapter 8: Maybe He's Just Gay

 

The moment the sentence left her mouth, Yun Li understood the mistake.

She had been repeating the syllables to check her own pronunciation, the way she sometimes constructed test sentences around difficult sounds. It was a habit. The words had assembled themselves before she had reviewed them for content.

Her fans, watching a stream full of tongue twisters and pronunciation drills, would most likely not notice anything unusual. But Yun Li felt the implication sitting in plain view, obvious as a bruise.

Whatever choice Fu Shize had made about her request was entirely his to make. No reasonable person could criticize him for it.

Her impulse to frame him as a wolf-in-dog's-clothing, even buried in a seemingly throwaway sentence, was petty. It was the kind of thing she would have criticized someone else for doing.

She felt the heat of it across her face and added quickly, "That sentence wasn't about anything. I was improvising an example."

She stayed in the stream for a few more minutes, then ended it with less ceremony than usual.

The apartment settled around her, the air conditioner the only sound.

The guilty feeling about speaking badly of someone behind their back — even obliquely — faded faster than she expected. She reasoned herself through it. Someone who had no interest in her would not have any reason to be watching her stream. The sentence had gone nowhere it could cause harm.

And she was fairly certain he wasn't the type to follow content creators.

---

The listlessness that followed lasted several days, which she refused to call what it was.

She emerged from it in stages. He Jiameng's message about EAW's official opening day reminded her that time had been passing while she lay on the sofa. Her most tangible accomplishment in the interim had been the promotional video — she had edited and posted it, and He Jiameng's response suggested it had been received well by the team.

That helped.

As they exchanged messages, He Jiameng sent over a handful of photos from the opening ceremony. She had invited Yun Li days before; Yun Li had manufactured an excuse and declined.

Scrolling through the photos, she stopped on one.

Fu Shize, in EAW's black staff uniform, sitting at one of the desks with his eyes closed, chair tilted back. A candid shot, slightly out of focus, with the quality of something captured in passing.

He Jiameng: [One came out blurry qvq] He Jiameng: [He's so handsome!] He Jiameng: [But he looks so cold and unapproachable. I haven't worked up the nerve to talk to him yet.]

Yun Li felt the memory surface and moved the conversation to a different subject before it could settle.

Once He Jiameng returned to work, Yun Li remembered she had a school reporting date coming up. She decided to make the next week's video early so she could focus on getting organized afterward.

A towel roll cake video had appeared in her recommended feed and looked worth attempting. She ordered what she needed, set up the camera, and spent the next several hours in the kitchen.

Cooking for video was particular — she needed the process to be watchable and the result to look right, but she also needed it to taste the way she wanted. The two requirements negotiated with each other throughout. She adjusted the recipe in two places, reshot a sequence, and achieved something she was satisfied with only when the sky outside had turned the pale gray of very early morning.

She put everything in the refrigerator, cleaned up, and went to bed.

---

The following afternoon, Deng Chuqi called to say she was in the Tongxi District with her roommate after a day at EAW Tech City and suggested dinner. Yun Li resisted. Deng Chuqi applied pressure. Yun Li went.

She packed the towel roll cakes — all but one of each flavor — into an insulated bag with dry ice, planning to let them try the results.

The hotpot restaurant in Haitian Mall had a queue at the door when she arrived. She messaged Deng Chuqi, who appeared from inside within thirty seconds.

"Okay, early warning," Deng Chuqi said, with the expression of someone who has already decided the crime was worth committing. "I knew if I told you on the phone you wouldn't come."

"What."

"My roommate's relatives are here. Both of them. Very good-looking." She clasped her hands. "You're my best friend, Yun Li. How could I not think of you."

Every hair on Yun Li's arms rose. "How many people in total?"

"Not many! Four including me!"

"I'm leaving."

Deng Chuqi had both hands on Yun Li's arm and was already walking her inside. "Even if you don't want to talk, think of it as looking at art. I won't let it be awkward. And what if something clicks—"

"That's not going to happen."

"Why not—"

There was no useful answer to this. Yun Li stopped resisting and went in.

Three people. Less than the EAW gathering. She didn't know any of them. She could eat in silence and leave.

The restaurant was full of smoke and the good smell of broth and spice. The table Deng Chuqi steered her toward was in a corner, a U-shaped booth that was slightly removed from the surrounding noise.

From this angle, coming around the chairs, Yun Li could only see a woman with a warm face, mid-conversation. The other two seats were obscured.

Deng Chuqi pulled her to sit on the other side. "I brought my precious friend."

The woman turned toward them, her smile easy and genuine. "You must be Li Li, right? Chuqi talks about you."

Yun Li was formulating a greeting, let her eyes travel across the table as a matter of ordinary social reflex—

And stopped.

She looked again, to confirm she was seeing what she thought she was seeing.

Both of them.

Setting aside Fu Shize for a moment—

Why was the boy from the airport also at this table?

Fu Zhengchu's expression had performed the same rapid series of calculations. His eyes were wide.

Deng Chuqi, reading nothing unusual in Yun Li's stillness beyond her usual shyness, went ahead with introductions. "Li Li, this is my roommate and senior colleague, Xia Congsheng."

"Holy—" Fu Zhengchu recovered his voice and leaned forward. "You remember me, right? From the airport? You remember."

Yun Li managed, "Mm."

Xia Congsheng looked between them. "You know each other?"

Fu Zhengchu gave a condensed version of the airport story, centering the detail about claiming EAW was his brother's company and Yun Li not believing him. He was characteristically unbothered by his own role in it.

Deng Chuqi laughed. "What a thing."

A thought connected. "Your brother is Xu Qingsong?"

Xia Congsheng explained the family arrangement: her grandmother was Xu Qingsong's mother's godmother. Close enough to function as family, far enough to be confusing on a first explanation.

Fu Zhengchu added, "After that day at the airport, I messaged Qingsong-ge to ask if the shop had hired someone for promotion — there had been someone waiting there a long time. He looked into it and had my uncle go pick them up."

Yun Li turned this over. "Excuse me. Who is your uncle?"

Fu Zhengchu pointed sideways.

At Fu Shize.

Yun Li maintained her expression through an act of will.

They looked nothing like different generations. They appeared to be roughly the same age, give or take a few years. How had an uncle-nephew relationship inserted itself into this situation.

Fu Zhengchu, appearing to trace her confusion, said, "So you've met before, right?"

Yun Li did not look across the table. Under the surface of the tablecloth, she located Deng Chuqi's sleeve and pressed it firmly. "Yes."

Deng Chuqi received the signal and cleared her throat. "Chuqi — didn't you say your brother also goes to Nanli Tech?"

Fu Zhengchu: "Yeah. Anyone else?"

Yun Li looked at him despite herself. He was studying at Nanli Tech? When they'd met at the airport, he had mentioned EAW was near his school. She hadn't made the connection.

Xia Congsheng said to Yun Li, "Didn't you get into Nanli Tech for your master's?"

Yun Li nodded.

Fu Zhengchu's face opened with genuine delight. "We're schoolmates?"

"You should say senior," Xia Congsheng told him.

"Oh—" He recalibrated instantly. "Senior! Are you reporting the day after tomorrow? I think the school has everyone coming at the same time."

"Yes."

Deng Chuqi looked up. "Wait, day after tomorrow? I thought it was next week. I already promised someone I'd go shopping that day—"

"It's fine," Yun Li said. "I only have a few bags."

"You said you had a lot of luggage though."

Xia Congsheng offered before Yun Li could navigate away from this: "My uncle is driving my brother over the day after tomorrow anyway. They'll be passing through. Li Li, you could ride with them — they can help with the bags."

The table had developed a momentum of its own that no one had asked Yun Li about.

She opened her mouth.

Fu Zhengchu looked at Fu Shize with the elaborate deference of someone who has already decided the answer. "Is that okay, Uncle?"

Fu Shize raised his eyes. Made a sound of assent.

"Perfect." Deng Chuqi sounded relieved. "Thank you for the trouble."

Yun Li had not said a word. The other three had arranged her transportation and enlisted the one person she had specifically been hoping not to need anything from, and done it before she had produced a complete sentence of refusal.

The person who had been volunteered sat with the same expression he might have worn if this conversation had been about someone else entirely.

---

The rest of the meal was uncomfortable in a way that was entirely internal to Yun Li. The food was good. She had no appetite.

In the second half of the meal, Deng Chuqi's phone produced intermittent notifications and she replied to them with the smile of someone who had forgotten there were other people at the table.

Xia Congsheng noticed and teased her about it.

Deng Chuqi shared without embarrassment: "I met someone on the subway a few days ago. My type. So I asked for his WeChat." She was beaming. "We've been talking, and he invited me to a movie next week."

Xia Congsheng said, "Lucky you. The one time I asked someone for their contact, I found a complete disaster."

"What happened?"

She poked a piece of meat into the broth and said, "University. I visited my brother's school because he and a classmate were in trouble with their families. The classmate's brother came to deal with it, and he was very good-looking, so I asked." She shook her head. "He told me he changes girlfriends every month, and this month he happened to be one short. If I was interested, I could have the spot."

Fu Zhengchu guessed immediately: "Sang Zhi's brother?"

"Him."

"That can't be right," Fu Zhengchu said, laughing. "At a reunion recently, Sang Zhi said her brother had been single for over twenty years, finally got together with someone, and has been announcing it to anyone who'll listen. Claims she pursued him."

"..."

The topic had arrived without anyone formally declaring it, and it was now the table's subject.

The implicit structure of the conversation assumed everyone would contribute.

Fu Zhengchu, when it came to his turn, glanced at Yun Li with a brief expression of memory and guilt, then volunteered a few words that covered enough ground and moved on quickly.

Then it was Yun Li's turn.

She was sitting across from the specific person her turn would be about. Lying seemed worse than the truth in its own particular way.

"I have," she said, reluctantly.

Deng Chuqi stared at her. "When."

"Recently."

"And?"

Yun Li kept her eyes level. "He didn't give it to me."

Deng Chuqi looked as though she had misheard. "Sorry?"

"He didn't give it to me."

The table absorbed this. Everyone except Fu Shize had either succeeded in their own attempt or held the outcome lightly enough to find it funny. The combination of Yun Li's face and the bluntness of the answer turned the mood heavier than anyone had intended.

Yun Li felt it land and said quickly, "It's nothing. Really."

The smile that came with the words had the particular quality of one produced under pressure.

Xia Congsheng, who was a fundamentally kind person, said, "He was probably just caught off guard — a beautiful girl asking like that, out of nowhere. He was trying to seem composed. He definitely went home and felt terrible about it."

She glanced at Fu Zhengchu.

Fu Zhengchu picked up the relay. "Or he already had a girlfriend."

He seemed to feel the joke needed a third voice and turned to nudge Fu Shize's shoulder. "Uncle, your turn. Say something comforting — show some elder energy."

Yun Li felt the air around her become very close.

The universe had arranged for the person who had done the declining to be coached into comforting the person who had been declined, at the same table, in real time.

Fu Shize looked unmoved by the request. "What should I say."

Fu Zhengchu, apparently deciding that his uncle's creative range needed a prompt, leaned close and murmured something.

A beat.

Fu Shize said, without inflection, "He might be gay."

"..."