Still Ordering Me Around Like a Servant

'This old man's name is Zhuang Zhiqiang. He really is a hard case.'

Half an hour later, workers from the Relief Station under the Civil Affairs Bureau arrived and took turns thanking the medical staff and Xie Qingcheng's group while explaining the situation.

Xie Xue and Bai Jing — who had insisted on hitching a ride — came up from the underground garage and settled onto the sofa in the medical room to hear the details.

'Old man Zhuang Zhiqiang… ah, his case is a complicated one. It's a problem our Relief Station has never been able to resolve.' The worker rubbed his hands together, took a sip of tea a nurse had brewed in a paper cup, clicked his tongue, and sighed. 'About ten-odd years ago, he showed up in Hu City saying he was looking for his daughter. But when we checked his household registration, he was just a solitary old man — lived alone in a cave dwelling in Shanzhou, the kind of place so poor even the birds don't stay. He had no real neighbors; fetching water meant a walk of two li. We even sent people specially to interview the villagers, and they all said he was a recluse who nobody knew anything about. We did send him back to his hometown once, but before long he'd make his way back to Huzhou again… it kept going back and forth like that.'

'That's no excuse for shirking your responsibility. Shouldn't you lock up someone that dangerous? He's an eyesore, and he could attack people!' Bai Jing couldn't help but burst out.

'Miss, here's the thing.' The worker looked pained. 'We can't detain homeless people. They're citizens too. All we can do is arrange shelter and medical care…'

Bai Jing said bitterly: 'I don't care. People with mental illness should all be forcibly committed. These abnormal people — shouldn't they be locked away from everyone else?'

He Yu hadn't felt much one way or the other about this woman before. His moral threshold was on the low side — or you could say his tolerance for all kinds of people ran high. What Xie Qingcheng had told him about her hadn't seemed worth commenting on. Everyone has their own way of living; everyone makes their own choices.

But Bai Jing's little outburst about mental illness had just gone and tap-danced straight across Young Master He's minefield.

The corner of He Yu's mouth lifted into a faint, cold smile. He kept his head down and said nothing.

The Relief Station worker wiped the sweat from his brow and said: 'Miss, please don't get agitated. I can assure you — given how things look now, old man Zhuang Zhiqiang's condition may indeed be deteriorating, and we can't rule out that he'll lose some of his civil capacity. So once he's a bit more stable, we'll take him to a partner psychiatric hospital for supervised care and treatment…'

Xie Qingcheng asked abruptly: 'Which psychiatric hospital?'

'The way things stand, it'll probably be Chengkang. The facilities and management are a bit behind the times, but Wanping Hospital's intake capacity for our referrals is already full. Not much we can do.'

Bai Jing listened, and at last seemed satisfied. She muttered: 'Well, that's something at least…'

Just as they were talking, the emergency department doctor came in.

The doctor briefed them on Zhuang Zhiqiang's resuscitation: because help had come in time, he was out of danger. If anyone wanted to look in on him, one person could go.

'A girl would be best. The patient's still not fully conscious — he keeps asking for his daughter.'

Xie Xue stood up. 'I'll go.'

She followed the doctor out.

He Yu had been sprawled lazily on the waiting room sofa, elbows propped on the back of it, head lowered, listening to them with a blank expression. Now, seeing her leave, he drew in his long legs and started to rise.

Xie Qingcheng's voice came out with unmistakable scrutiny and warning: 'Stay where you are.'

'What?'

'Why are you following my sister around all day?'

The young man sank back onto the sofa. He was quiet for a moment, then looked up with what appeared to be gentle, polite negotiation — except his bright eyes were full of mockery and amusement. 'In that case, sir, how about I follow you around all day instead?'

'…'

He Yu said, calm and unhurried: 'You've got your blind date here with you. It'd be awkward for me to stay. I'll clear out. Save you the trouble.'

Bai Jing obligingly cried: 'We are not a thing!'

He Yu gave a soft laugh. He didn't look at Bai Jing. He turned his head and pitched his voice low enough that only Xie Qingcheng could hear: 'Doctor Xie, do you think maybe age is catching up with you? Couldn't even manage one little girl.'

'…'

The rotten little wretch.

What had they buried in his family's ancestral plot — a latrine? How else do you produce something like this, all fine manners on the outside and animal underneath?

Xie Qingcheng's face went cold. His lips barely moved: 'Get out.'

He Yu smiled, then suddenly rose and reached past him, one arm coming down against the wall behind Xie Qingcheng's head. Xie Qingcheng startled — he had no idea what this unpredictable, well-dressed delinquent was about to do — and as He Yu leaned in close, he caught the scent of that adolescent warmth, the heat of the young man's chest radiating through without even making contact.

That particular brand of pressure — the kind that only a young man radiates — was something Xie Qingcheng found deeply resistant to Adaptation; he was too much his own man for it, and the irritation rose in him at once, the instinctive unease of a male animal sensing his territory encroached upon.

He was just about to shove He Yu off when the young man who had invaded his personal space straightened up on his own. In his hand was a large bag of coffee he'd grabbed from the tea station behind the sofa.

— The takeout He Yu had ordered earlier. Still hadn't been handed out.

'Relax, I just came for the drinks.'

He Yu took in Xie Qingcheng's expression — which was not pretty — and the amusement at the corner of his mouth sharpened. He divided up the coffee, passing cups to the Relief Station workers, the doctor and nurses, and sending one over to Xie Xue as well. Even Bai Jing got one.

But —

'Oh, look at that. I'm so sorry — forgot yours.'

He paused, then held out his own iced coffee to Xie Qingcheng. 'Would you like mine?'

The offer was transparently hollow. The straw was already punched through the lid; he just held it out, tilting it straight toward Xie Qingcheng's lips.

He had expected Xie Qingcheng to refuse.

He hadn't expected that Xie Qingcheng, goaded into genuine irritation, would look up from beneath hooded brows with a flat, dark gaze — and then, still sitting exactly as he was on the sofa, in a posture that He Yu had not anticipated at all, like a man being waited on by an impertinent little brat, let those pale lips part slightly, lock eyes with He Yu, and slowly close his mouth around the straw He Yu had planted in front of him.

Lips sealed around it. Then he just sat there, staring at him, and drew one long, deliberate, completely shameless pull.

Xie Qingcheng's throat moved as he swallowed — every bit of it a provocation.

'Leave it there.' He released the straw. His lips were wet; his eyes were all edges. 'Consider it your contribution to your elder.'

'…'

Watching him bow his head and close his mouth around the straw, He Yu felt something restless and hot stir in his chest — like irritation, like being bested. He'd wanted to see this man embarrassed and off-balance, or flushed and furious.

Instead he'd gotten composure. A cool, unhurried superiority.

For one instant He Yu genuinely wanted to upend the iced coffee over that frozen, imperious face, then watch him dripping and disheveled and thoroughly humiliated.

But in the end he only smiled, set the iced coffee quietly on the table, and as he lowered his head he said under his breath: 'Fine. Since you wanted it, don't waste a drop. Drink it properly. Every last bit. If it's not enough, say the word — I'll get you more.'

'You've already driven for us and fetched a bankbook tonight, and now you're playing delivery boy too.' Xie Qingcheng's smile was cold. He picked up the cup, long fingers tracing the condensation beaded on the side. 'Go do whatever it is you do.'

And he gave the cup a small, dismissive wave in He Yu's direction.

He Yu walked away with a dark expression.

The people around them had been watching this volley of sharp words long enough to sense that these two didn't get along, and the atmosphere had grown somewhat awkward — but Xie Qingcheng didn't seem to care.

He stood, walked directly to the bin in front of everyone watching, and dropped the coffee in. The boy had ordered iced coffee in the middle of the night. At his own age, with all this carrying on, did he ever intend to sleep?

Xie Qingcheng sat back down and turned to the Relief Station worker with a perfectly composed face. 'I'm sorry about that. The client's kid doesn't know his place. Hope we haven't made you uncomfortable.'

'Oh — not at all.'

Two strained laughs.

Xie Qingcheng: 'Where were we — right. Are you certain Zhuang Zhiqiang has no daughter?'

The worker refocused. 'That's right. None. Old man Zhuang has no family at all. Part of what we do is help homeless individuals reconnect with relatives or their work unit, but this man has no one to contact.'

Xie Qingcheng was silent.

In his experience, Zhuang Zhiqiang's behavior didn't read like a simple delusion with no origin. The 'daughter' was the knot at the center of something real.

.

'My girl…' In the hospital bed, the old man with the oxygen tube murmured on in his half-sleep, calling to the person who perhaps existed only in his mind: 'Such a remarkable child. I watched you grow up from nothing — watched you go to school with that little bag on your back, watched you test into university and leave for the city…'

He paused for a long time. Then a clouded tear seeped out from beneath the creased folds of his eyelids.

The old man's murmuring filled with grief and a swallowed sob: 'Why won't you… come back and see your old dad just once more…'

Xie Xue was tenderhearted; she had been crying quietly the whole time. With the nurse's permission, she reached out and took Zhuang Zhiqiang's hand, and said softly from beside his bed: 'Uncle, please don't cry. I… I'm here. I'm right here with you. You need to get better soon…'

She couldn't stay with the patient too long. After she had comforted the barely-conscious old man for a little while, the doctor told her it was about enough, time to go.

Xie Xue came out of the emergency resuscitation room, sanitized her hands, and reached into her bag for a tissue to wipe her eyes — only to find the pack was empty.

Just then, a fine-boned hand held out a man's handkerchief.

Xie Xue looked up with her reddened eyes and met He Yu's gently smiling face.

He Yu, who in front of Xie Qingcheng was all insolence and menace, managed to be perfectly presentable in front of Xie Xue. Even the handkerchief he extended was immaculate: snow-white cotton, not a crease out of place.

'Here.'

'Th — thank you.'

'Don't mention it.'

He had known this was how she'd react.

Xie Xue had lost both parents not long after she was born; her grandparents were already gone by then too. She had grown up watching other children call out freely — baba, mama, yeye, nainai — names that, for her, only emerged in a whisper each Qingming, standing under the black umbrella Xie Qingcheng held open, a small bunch of pale chrysanthemums in her arms, coaxed out toward cold, damp stone.

So she could not bear to see anyone of her parents' or grandparents' generation without a child by their side.

'Doctor,' she said, wiping her eyes, turning back to the emergency physician, 'when the old grandfather is transferred to the psychiatric hospital, will you let me know? I'd like to go with him.'

He Yu's brow drew slightly together. 'Why would you want to go somewhere like that?'

'It's fine — as it happens, the university still needs me to visit a few prisons and psychiatric hospitals to discuss bringing students in for guided visits. They want the directing and screenwriting students to have more exposure to unusual social environments. I just haven't had a chance to go yet.' Xie Xue sniffled. 'It'd be two birds, one stone.'

She'd already put it that way, so He Yu couldn't very well say more. He stepped to the side and picked up the stray little yellow dog instead.

The puppy was gripped under its chubby forelegs and lifted up to face him; its yellow-and-white paws churned uselessly at the air. The dog's little black-bean nose came level with He Yu's bright eyes, and the dog looked faintly baffled.

He Yu asked pleasantly: 'How about I get you registered and you stay at my place for now? Once your owner is well, I'll bring you back.'

The puppy trembled: 'Whimper…'

Animals often have what people call a sixth sense — they can read the pressure and the wrongness beneath a person's smile. So the puppy was frightened and eager to appease him at once, and stuck out its soft little tongue to give He Yu one nervous lick.

He Yu smiled. He ran his knuckle over the dog's head, let it lick at his fingertip, his eyes going quiet and opaque. 'Good. You've got more sense than that man does.'