He Broke the Rules

A few days later. Huzhou Medical University.

Xie Qingcheng's office.

'Wuwuwu, Professor Xie, I was wrong! I really was wrong! I have no conscience! I'm not even human! I've failed your trust, failed the Party and the nation's expectations of me — I swear I'll never skip class again, wuwuwu...'

Xie Qingcheng sat at his desk, steel nib tracking across the page. He made a tick on the list without looking up. 'All right. You can go.'

The young man left in tears.

He had ways of dealing with problem students. This particular clinical medicine student had swaggered in and shuffled out with a wet face — pausing at the door to bow repeatedly, voice breaking as he vowed to turn over a new leaf, reform himself completely, never skip class again, and certainly never skip Professor Xie's class.

Xie Qingcheng closed his notebook and folded his hands in his lap.

Every male student with attitude problems had now sworn to him they'd straighten up. Unless He Yu could bring every girl on the other list back to the fold, this round was already lost for him.

He sat with perfect posture in his office chair, the quiet confidence of a man who knows he's won, and let himself drift for a moment on the question of how exactly he planned to discipline a certain overachieving little scholar once he lost.

He was still idly turning that over when his phone rang.

'Hello.'

'Professor Xie. It's me.'

The caller was a first-year girl from the forensic medicine program.

Like He Yu, she was brilliant. She appeared on He Yu's list of students to talk round, but she was also one of Xie Qingcheng's most diligent — or so it appeared.

He had put her there himself.

She was the kind of coolly serious woman who invested far more energy studying cadaveric rigidity and adipocere formation than she ever would in Dior or Chanel. He had given her special dispensation to skip lectures when she chose, for the simple reason that she moved through the material considerably faster on her own than the class could carry her.

That brand of academic intensity tends to isolate a person. She kept her distance from most classmates and didn't listen to just any teacher — but she respected Xie Qingcheng.

Partly because his professional knowledge was genuinely formidable, which fed a certain instinct she had to admire competence. And partly because when she had applied to study independently the university had refused, and it was Xie Qingcheng who fought for it on her behalf — citing tailored instruction, teaching to the individual. She had not forgotten that.

'Professor Xie, the one called He Yu came to find me.'

'What did he say.'

'He didn't jump straight to lecturing me about attendance. He said you'd sent him to have a chat, and he asked if I'd get coffee with him tomorrow.'

'Go. But don't let him talk you into anything.'

'I know, I know — I'll see this through for you, don't worry.' A brief pause. 'Professor Xie, he's from Huzhou University next door, isn't he? Not from our medical college. How do you know him — is he family?'

'Son of an acquaintance,' Xie Qingcheng said. 'His father did me a favour once. The boy's run into some trouble, so I'm helping set him straight.'

That was the honest truth. If it weren't for He Jiwei, he probably wouldn't have kept at it with He Yu this long.

'Oh.' She asked nothing more. 'Got it. Don't worry about my end — I won't let you down. I'm going back to my books now. Bye.'

Xie Qingcheng hung up, dropped his phone into his pocket, gathered his teaching materials, and headed back to his quarters.

He watched from a distance, unhurried. By Tuesday — only two days into the week — the wavering girls had begun drifting back to the classroom one by one. By Thursday, all eleven students except the top scholar had found their way back to their seats, having evidently decided the open sea wasn't worth drowning in.

The top scholar was the last.

Thursday afternoon, she arrived with a notebook full of questions and asked for his help. When he'd finished working through them, he asked: 'Has He Yu come to find you?'

'He has.' The girl — ponytail, neat and crisp — answered without hesitation. 'Twice this week. Both times over afternoon tea.'

But there she paused, something flickering across her face. 'The thing is... he never actually brought up skipping class or anything like that. He really did just take me out for a walk and talk.'

Xie Qingcheng's brow furrowed slightly.

It was already Thursday. And He Yu still hadn't gotten to the point?

Three days left in the week. What was he playing at...

He was still turning this over when the top scholar gave a soft, deliberate cough. 'Professor Xie.'

'Mm?' He glanced up, distracted, and gave her a vague look.

'I have a question I'd like to ask you.'

'Go ahead.' Xie Qingcheng was already reaching for his pen.

But her next sentence made him set it back down.

She asked something with nothing whatsoever to do with studying: 'That — He Yu, he's in Directing Class 1001 at Huzhou University, isn't he?'

Only someone of Xie Qingcheng's spectacularly oblivious disposition could still fail to read a girl when she'd all but spelled it out. He frowned at the young woman standing before him with her notebook clutched to her chest. What was she asking that for?

In the end he gave a dry nod. 'He is. Why?'

'No reason.' She was decisive about it. She flipped open the notebook and succeeded in redirecting his attention entirely. 'Professor Xie, these are the questions I've compiled this week related to your specialty. I was hoping you could help me work through them.'

Sunday arrived.

The top scholar sent him a message: 'Professor Xie, are you free this evening? I've been thinking all day and I've finally sorted something out — could I come speak with you?'

And so at half past six that evening, Xie Qingcheng arrived at his office door as agreed.

His office was on the fifth floor of the teaching building, at the far end of a corridor. He walked the whole length of that long hallway without recognizing the girl standing by the balustrade as anyone he knew.

He reached his own door, was already fishing out his keys, and still somehow managed to completely overlook the girl standing right beside him — so that even when she called out 'Professor Xie,' his first instinct was not to look at her but to glance left and right, searching for the plain-faced student in white T-shirt and jeans he was used to seeing.

'...Professor Xie. I'm here.'

Xie Qingcheng turned around. '...'

A moment later, his body moved before his mind could catch up: one involuntary step backward, and the back of his skull connected with the aluminum security door with a loud crack. He sucked in a sharp breath, head throbbing, one hand pressed over the spot, eyes half shut.

'Professor! Are you all right?'

'...I'm fine.'

The knock wouldn't do him any lasting damage. The girl standing in front of him, on the other hand, was a different problem entirely.

The top scholar looked nothing like herself.

She had let down the ponytail she always wore, and a stylist had blown her hair out into soft, full waves. Her face was made up — precise, polished. She wore a white gossamer dress, and her slender legs, pale and clean as carved jade, ran straight down to a pair of black satin heels with bright silver buckles that glinted against her ankle, catching the dusky-pink of her nails.

Xie Qingcheng ran several checks from top to bottom before arriving at his verdict: not a forgery. Definitively the genuine article.

His head, he decided, was hurting considerably more than the door could account for. Some shapeless premonition was already taking form.

Predictably enough, her next words cut straight to it: 'Professor Xie, I — I came to tell you something. I went out with He Yu again today, and this time he did bring up the matter of getting me back to class. But he also told me about the arrangement between the two of you.'

'...'

'Professor Xie, I have a great deal of respect for you. But I don't think it's right for you to take advantage of someone this way. It really isn't the kind of thing a teacher should do.'

The hand reaching for his keys went still. '...What exactly did He Yu tell you.'

'Everything. He said he tried to confess to someone he likes and it didn't go well, and you told him he needed more tempering — so you've been setting him all sorts of difficult challenges.'

Xie Qingcheng raised one hand, his long, well-defined fingers raking through his hair — dragging what had been a neatly combed arrangement into disarray, a few dark strands falling loose across his forehead.

From behind that scattered fringe, he fixed her with a sharp, cold stare, gave a short click of his tongue, and looked away. 'It's not as simple as you think.'

A pause.

'...Forget it. Go home.'

But the top scholar didn't move. She held her ground with the persistence only she was capable of, eyes clear and steady on him. 'Teacher, you should try to understand He Yu's situation. Don't make things harder for him right now. I think you're genuinely in the wrong here, and I hope that when the time comes, you'll be able to apologize to him.'

...

He Yu had put some kind of hex on her.

Xie Qingcheng's expression cooled sharply. His gaze cut through the loose strands of hair. 'I asked you to leave. Did you understand me.'

'I understood. But before I go, I want to be honest with you, Professor — I've already told He Yu about our private arrangement as well.'

Xie Qingcheng: '...'

'I couldn't help it. He was sincere with me, and I didn't want to deceive him. The fact that you put me on that list specifically to beat him — I really couldn't keep that from him.'

This little traitor had the nerve, at the very end, to bow to Xie Qingcheng with impeccable courtesy.

'Please forgive me.'

With that, she turned and walked away — heels clicking, hips swaying — moving with a languor she had never once shown in all the time he'd known her, as though she'd just discovered she owned a runway walk and had decided now was the moment to use it.

Xie Qingcheng's head was pounding. But he couldn't very well take it out on a female student — so he bit down on his back teeth and said the name low and quiet: 'He. Yu...'

Light and shadow shifted.

Not far ahead, footsteps.

And then —

'Professor Xie looking for me?'

Xie Qingcheng's head snapped up, hair falling further loose, his gaze locking onto the direction of the voice like a pin driven into a board.

Rounding the corner into view was a tall young man, one hand in his pocket, a messenger bag slung over his shoulder — his expression easy, unhurried. Beneath a broad, clear brow, those almond-shaped eyes slanted in a lazy downward sweep of lashes, and a ghost of a smile rested at the corner of his mouth.

He Yu had been hiding behind a Gothic column at the far end of the corridor the entire time. The top scholar hadn't known. Xie Qingcheng hadn't known either.

While the top scholar indignantly argued his case, while Xie Qingcheng stood there unable to get a word in edgewise — He Yu had simply leaned against that damned column, wide enough for three people to circle with their arms outstretched, hands in his pockets, perfectly composed, and listened to the whole thing.

Was this even a human being?

Xie Qingcheng's face had gone grey, his gaze cold and predatory. 'You —'

'Ah, you can't blame me for this one.' He Yu raised a hand and made a soft shushing gesture. Behind those half-lidded eyes was something — a looseness, a devil-may-care edge — that no one else would have caught. 'You're the one who started stacking the deck against me first. Fighting back the way I did — you can't really call that underhanded, can you?'

He looked down at Xie Qingcheng and gave a cold laugh. 'You had people conspiring to make sure I couldn't win. The way I dealt with it hardly qualifies as dirty play.'

Xie Qingcheng: '...'

He'd lost. Arguing further would only cost him what was left of his dignity.

So Xie Qingcheng bit down on his back teeth and said nothing more.

After a long silence, he spoke. 'How exactly did you con her? Look at the state she's dressed herself up in — does that look like a student to you? Camisole, micro-skirt...'

'Not to your liking?' He Yu stepped around to close the distance, planting himself within arm's reach of Xie Qingcheng — one hand still in his pocket, one hand still gripping the strap of his bag. The only difference was that at this range, the way his gaze dropped and held on Xie Qingcheng was something considerably more exposed.

'So tell me — what should a student look like.'

He pressed closer, like he was going to pin him straight through the door.

'Plain T-shirt, jeans, high ponytail, no makeup?'

'Doctor Xie,' he said, with the air of someone delivering a long-overdue diagnosis, 'I've actually been meaning to say this for a while — the problem isn't just mine. You should get yourself looked at too. Your need to control everything is off the charts. You know they have a name for that kind of thinking? It's the twenty-first century — a girl wears a sundress and you act like she's indecent.'

One step closer still, until they were nearly nose to nose.

The distance would have read as intimate between a man and a woman. Between two men with no inclination toward each other, it became something else — aggressive, invasive.

That information needed no explanation. It simply sank into Xie Qingcheng's skin and stayed there.

Xie Qingcheng, backed up against the cold door by He Yu's advance, came back to himself and found the situation deeply unpleasant. He was done talking. He raised his hand and pressed it flat against He Yu's broad, solid chest.

'That's enough. I'm not doing this with you. Move.'

He shoved — hard — then rubbed his right wrist, dropped his arm, shot He Yu a sideways look, and walked past him, past the wall of him, out into the corridor with a heavy, brooding step.

'...Hey, wait — Xie Qingcheng.'

Ten-odd metres on, He Yu turned and called after him, voice unhurried, almost languid.

Xie Qingcheng's expression was not pleasant. But he stood there a moment in the gloom, then turned his head, jaw tight. 'What.'

He Yu lifted the list — produced from his bag at some point — and held it up. 'You lost this round.'

And if that weren't enough, the wretch tucked the list back into his bag and drew out something else: an object wrapped in pink paper.

He Yu glanced up at him with that idle, occasional gaze while his hands moved deliberately, unhurrying the ribbon from the pink wrapping. 'You've been running me through training exercises, Professor,' he said, 'but surely losing comes with a penalty. Otherwise what's the fun in it.'

'...'

'Consider your credentials: a professor, an elder, my former private physician — and here you are, breaking the rules like this. So tell me. What would be a fitting punishment? What would it take to teach you even the smallest lesson?'

Lose the round, not the composure. He'd agreed to the terms; he'd see them through.

Xie Qingcheng said, flat and cold: 'Do what you want.'

'What a shame — I haven't quite decided yet.'

He Yu's voice was mild, almost gentle.

'I'll keep the debt open. Collect it later, when I've thought of something.

'Keep it open?'

'Mm. I have a feeling you're going to keep losing to me.'

Xie Qingcheng's composure finally cracked. 'He Yu. Don't push your luck.'

'I wouldn't dream of it.' He Yu smiled. He said the words — and then, with no apparent awareness of the contradiction, gave Xie Qingcheng a slow, provoking once-over that said the opposite. 'Though I'd suggest, Professor, that you drop the scheming. Your technique needs work. One small move and I pick it up immediately.'

His tone, throughout, remained perfectly cordial.

All while his hands finished tearing away the pink wrapper.

Inside was a chocolate — lopsided, irregular, clearly not bought anywhere but made by an inexperienced pair of hands.

'You were asking just now how I got through to her, weren't you? It wasn't anything complicated. Two afternoon teas earlier in the week, and today I took her to a chocolate-making class. She doesn't have many friends at school — the other students find her standoffish, difficult, a bit much. She's actually easy to be around. It's just that no one ever thinks to include her when they're doing something fun.'

He bit off a piece as he spoke — a clean snap — and held the small dark square of chocolate between two rows of very white teeth.

Then he slung his bag back over his shoulder and walked past.

As he passed, he didn't glance at Xie Qingcheng at all. Those almond eyes looked straight ahead, and he bit the chocolate cleanly off, chewing it at his leisure.

'It's really sweet.'

He said it and kept walking — leaving Xie Qingcheng with nothing but a composed, quiet silhouette receding into the evening light.

.

Elsewhere, at the same hour.

Dusk settling. A villa somewhere in Huzhou.

A woman's heels clicked across the terrace tiles. The hem of her red dress brushed past a man's leg.

'Director Duan.' She settled beside him with a smile, leaning in, and lit his cigarette for him.

'Liang Jicheng's things — all destroyed?'

'Cleaned out completely.'

Director Duan smiled, took the cigarette from her, drew on it once. The woman pushed her loose waves back over one shoulder and leaned in to seek a kiss. He turned his face away, dropped his head to her neck, and inhaled.

'How many men today? You smell like all of them.'

'And who do you think that's for?' She was languid about it. 'When can we make a move on Huzhou University? I'm exhausted sleeping with those board members — greasy old things, every one of them.'

'Old and greasy, those board members. But Director Huang isn't old — you seemed to enjoy him well enough.'

She twisted a strand of hair around one finger with a coy smile. 'Director Huang is a man who ages like wine — more distinguished by the year. Though...' The smile softened. 'I like you more, Director Duan...'

Director Duan raised a finger and pressed it lightly to her lips. Mild, flat: 'Keep this up and I'll have a word with your Director Huang. Guess whether he'd be pleased to hear it.'

She stiffened, then forced a smile. 'I'm only teasing. So serious.'

Director Duan reached up and stroked her hair, his eyes calm and cool. 'Go do your work. After the incident at Chengkang Hospital I can see people getting restless — some of them starting to test the water. Stay a little longer with those few mice. Once our hacker gets the equipment through from the United States, the work of keeping everyone in line can begin.'

He lifted her chin and studied her face.

Soft-voiced, unhurried: 'When the time comes, the technical side belongs to the hacker — but the cleaning of Huzhou University's little cage of mice, that still falls to you and her.'

The light fell on the woman's face — vivid, alluring.

It was Jiang Liping. A teacher at Huzhou University.

'Hit as hard as you need to.' Director Duan's fingers moved across her cheek. 'I know these years haven't been easy on you... Once it's done, you won't have to go on sitting among those old mice, playing the part of a listening device anymore...'