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Walking into the Special Investigations Department for the first time as the Chief was surreal. He’d been going there every day for years—first as an intern, then as a field officer, and most recently as the Deputy Chief. But there was something about knowing it was his now, his to shape and to lead and to remake, that made the place feel new and different even though odds and ends from his former teammates still littered the place.
Da Qing trailed behind him like he knew that Zhao Yunlan wanted some space to take it all in. But Da Qing had never been quite that perceptive about humans so it was more likely he had gotten distracted by something.
He made his way through the large main room and to the office in the back. He sat in the large leather seat and had a thought that his father had sat at this very desk years ago, and that he was following in his father’s footsteps after all. He grimaced.
“So, Chief Zhao,” Da Qing said, slouching against the door frame. “What are you going to do first?”
“Well, Deputy Chief Da Qing,” he answered, just to see the mischievous glint in his friend’s eyes, “we have a very important first task ahead of us. One that will set the tone for our new team.”
“Oh?”
“We’re going to redecorate,” he declared.
Da Qing smirked, like he had expected nothing less. And well, he probably hadn’t. He knew more than anyone how Zhao Yunlan disliked being compared to his father, or reminded of his father, or made to interact with his father. Sometimes it couldn’t be helped, but whenever it was possible, he went to great lengths to spare himself from having to think about his father.
“Excellent,” Da Qing said. He held up his hand and let his claws slide out. “I’ve always hated that couch.”
Zhao Yunlan snorted but he held up a finger. “No, no, let’s try to do this properly. We’ll—” The sight of a portal opening up in the main room stopped him. “The Envoy!” he said and quickly stood. He’d always thought the Black Cloaked Envoy was an intriguing mystery and he couldn’t wait to meet him as the new Chief. The Envoy had only ever communicated with the Chief of the SID and not any of the team members, so Zhao Yunlan had only been able to watch him from a distance. Both his father and the previous Chief had been vague about him, and would only say that they suspected him of having his own agenda and ulterior motives with regards to their prisoners.
Given the way the Envoy’s lips tightened every time he arrived to a dead body instead of a live prisoner, Zhao Yunlan suspected that the Envoy’s agenda and ulterior motives consisted of: keep the SID from killing Dixingren. And really, Zhao Yunlan couldn’t blame him for that. He thought that the Envoy must not have a very good opinion of humans if he’s only been exposed to those who hated his people, which was a shame because they could get so much further in life if Dixingren and humans and Yashou all worked together. Zhao Yunlan’s mother had always said that they learned the most from people who were different from them and that greater things came out of collaboration than hatred; it was a sentiment that Zhao Yunlan shared wholeheartedly.
He hurried out the door to greet the Envoy, nearly vibrating in his excitement. But it wasn’t the familiar black-robed, black-masked figure that stepped out of the portal. It was a man who, while dressed all in black, was maskless and looked at him with deadened eyes. Was this the Envoy’s bodyguard?
Zhao Yunlan glanced behind the man but the portal winked closed and no Envoy stepped out. He reined in his disappointment.
“Hi there,” he said to the man who had apparently just been dropped off in their headquarters via portal. “I take it the Black Cloaked Envoy isn’t coming today?”
The man squinted at him and grunted. “The Black Cloaked Envoy has other business to take care of. He asked that I deliver this.” He held out a neatly folded letter.
Well, that was new.
Zhao Yunlan accepted the letter and opened it. Da Qing crowded up behind him to read over his shoulder. The first thing he noted was that the Black Cloaked Envoy wrote very formally and had excellent penmanship, the kind that his mother and every teacher he had would have swooned over. The second thing was that the Black Cloaked Envoy used a brush and ink for his letter. The third thing was that the man in front of them was named Chu Shuzhi and, if Zhao Yunlan agreed, would be serving out the rest of his prison sentence as a member of the SID and as the liaison with Dixing in the Black Cloaked Envoy’s stead.
He looked up and arched a brow at Chu Shuzhi. “It says here you’re serving a sentence. What crime did you commit?”
“I killed the bastard who killed my brother, and I would do it again if he was standing in front of me,” Chu Shuzhi answered flatly.
“O-okay.” Zhao Yunlan shared a wary look with Da Qing. “So. Are you having any homicidal urges towards anyone else? Other Dixingren? Any humans?”
“Yashou?” Da Qing added anxiously.
Chu Shuzhi looked like he was considering the question seriously. Finally, he said, “I owe the Black Cloaked Envoy my life and my freedom. I would kill anyone who dared to threaten him.”
“Well, that is definitely not us.” Beside him, Da Qing shook his head emphatically. “So I guess we’re good.” He thought the Black Cloaked Envoy was more than capable of taking care of his own enemies, but he kept that thought to himself. It didn’t seem wise to get into an argument with a killer who was out on, what, parole? That was a good question. He frowned. “Are you on parole then? Probation?”
Chu Shuzhi gave him a blank stare.
Perhaps Dixingren didn’t use the same terminology. “How long’s your sentence?” he tried instead.
“One hundred years.”
“Oh, a life sentence then.” Not surprising, given his crime.
“I’ve already served most of it. I only have three years remaining.”
Zhao Yunlan gaped at him. “You’ve already served ninety-seven years?” Chu Shuzhi didn’t look that old. He knew that Dixingren were longer-lived than humans but he didn’t realize it was by such a big difference.
“How old are you?” Da Qing asked. Zhao Yunlan elbowed him for being rude.
“Older than you,” Chu Shuzhi answered with a sharp grin.
“Actually, that’s debatable.” At the Dixingren’s blank stare, Da Qing explained with a glint in his eyes, “I’ve got some problems with my memory. I don’t know exactly how old I am but I do have memories of things that happened several human lifetimes ago, so I’m pretty old.”
Chu Shuzhi just continued staring.
“Okay, how about this,” Zhao Yunlan said. He couldn’t believe this was going to be the second executive decision he made as Chief of the SID. “You’ll be Lao Chu, since we don’t know who’s really older. And Da Qing is Deputy Chief, anyway, so he’ll be called Deputy Chief.”
Da Qing gave him a querulous look which Zhao Yunlan met; he tried to convey, “He’ll probably kill us both if we don’t show him proper respect” with his eyes. Da Qing frowned at him, and then turned and stalked off.
Zhao Yunlan smiled at Chu Shuzhi. “Welcome to the team, Lao Chu!” Maybe he would be so terrible at his job that the Envoy would have to come back and resume his role as the Dixingren liaison. Zhao Yunlan held onto that possibility with both hands. Metaphorically, of course. In reality, he realized that he was clutching the Envoy’s letter so hard that it was starting to crumple. He smoothed it out and folded it along its neat creases.
Chu Shuzhi watched him with an unreadable look. “What is your code of conduct for operations?” he asked.
Zhao Yunlan blinked at him. He hadn’t quite gotten to those yet; he just knew that he didn’t want to keep the ones that his father had in place. He thought quickly. “Try not to kill anyone,” he said. That one was easy; he had been wanting to institute that one since he became Deputy Chief. It was just as well that he was going to have to rebuild the team from basically scratch. “Restrain the suspects securely but don’t cause undue harm to them.” He wasn’t sure but he thought Chu Shuzhi looked just a bit more approving of him. “Respect your teammates and help them out if necessary. Uh, right now, it’s just the three of us but there will be more in the future.”
Chu Shuzhi gave a short nod.
“Get your field reports in on time. And lastly, I reserve the right to add or adjust the codes in the future.” He nodded in satisfaction; that should be good enough for a start. He was itching for a cigarette but he supposed that he should really quit that habit now that he was in a position where people were going to look up to him. He pulled a lollipop out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and stuck it in his mouth instead.
Chu Shuzhi frowned.
Zhao Yunlan shrugged. “Smoking,” he said shortly. “Nasty habit, causes cancer. Lollipops definitely won’t do that.”
Chu Shuzhi frowned even more but he didn’t say anything. He seemed to be a man of very few words.
“Okay! Well, our first job is to pack up all this stuff and put it in storage in the attic. Then we’ll ask for new furniture and do some rearranging. I was thinking of setting up a large table here in the middle of the room, where the team could gather together. And then workstations over there.”
Chu Shuzhi gave no opinion.
Da Qing sauntered back in munching on some of Lao Li’s dried fish. He had a much more satisfied expression on his face.
“Better?” Zhao Yunlan asked.
Da Qing nodded with a blissful grin.
“Good. Let’s go get some boxes and start putting things away.”
Chu Shuzhi, he found, was an efficient worker and it was largely due to his efforts that they were able to get through most of the cleaning that day. Da Qing kept getting distracted and even Zhao Yunlan paused every now and then to consider one of the items before putting it into a box. There was an old lantern, for example, that he thought about adding to his collection at home. But it looked rusty and it was missing its wick, so he stored it and made a note to himself to come back for it one day.
The last thing he did on his first day was to submit a requisition form for new furniture, citing a desire to restructure their space to make it more functional for his team.
The first thing he did on his second day, upon seeing that his request had been denied, was to gather his team together for a bonding exercise: an indoor training session. The next requisition form he submitted was for new furniture, because all of theirs had been damaged beyond repair.
That form went through, after a few days, several addendums with photographic evidence, an in-person inspection, and a summons to his father’s new office at the Xingdu Bureau where Zhao Yunlan was subjected to a lecture and an interrogation about why he accepted a Dixingren onto his team. There was a suspicious glint in his father’s eyes, which he was used to seeing after all these years. What his father was suspicious about, he didn’t know; but there were times when he thought his father was looking at him and seeing someone—or something—else.
Arguing back never accomplished anything with his father, so he did what he had found to be most helpful: he slouched back in his chair, pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and started puffing away at it while staring his father down with as bored an expression as possible. It amused him because he could practically see his father’s blood pressure going up.
Then his father’s eyes flashed golden, like it sometimes did when it caught the light at a certain angle, and he calmed down. “I’m sorry, Yunlan,” his father said, and he looked like he meant it. “I was surprised and I reacted badly. You’re doing a great job, and I’m proud of you.”
Zhao Yunlan barely blinked at the complete one-eighty. His father did that sometimes, like he’d catch himself getting too worked up and it flipped a switch inside of him. He had learned that it was easier to roll with it; appreciate the good moments and disregard the bad. He could barely remember a time when his father wasn’t like that.
“Thanks, dad,” he said. He stood up and put out his cigarette on the ashtray that his father had for guests. If his father was making an effort, then he would meet him halfway.
“I’m glad that you’re making changes to the SID and making it more your own. I’ll approve the request for the new furniture. It should be delivered before the week is up. Please try not to break it too quickly, okay?” His father smiled at him and it was one of his rare ones—one that looked genuinely bright and happy and not like he was only being polite or smug.
Zhao Yunlan huffed out a light laugh. “Yeah, dad. We’ll be more careful, I promise.”
He left the office feeling off-kilter, as he usually did after an encounter with his father. He never knew which side of his father he was going to get in a conversation. This one, he thought, turned out okay. Or at least, it ended on a positive note.
It was all worth it in the end, when entire new sets of furniture arrived at the headquarters and the old ones removed. By the time they had unwrapped all the plastic from them, arranged them in the rooms, hung up the wall clocks, and set up the computers, it felt like a brand new start with a clean slate.