Work Text:
Wei Ying carelessly dropped his bag on the floor as he walked in the door, grabbed a beer from the fridge, dropped down onto the couch, and proceeded to start doomscrolling Twitter.
"Long day?" Jiang Cheng asked, recognizing his favorite decompression technique.
Wei Ying didn't bother responding verbally. He just looked pointedly up at the wall clock, which read 8 PM. Two hours later than usual. Yes, obviously it was a long day.
"Well, at least you shouldn't be drinking alone." Jiang Cheng helpfully resolved that incorrect state of affairs by grabbing another beer and plopping down next to Wei Ying. He opened the can with a loud click and raised it to toast.
Wei Ying grinned ruefully and then lifted his beer in reply. He wasn't sure if Jiang Cheng was really trying to stop him from drinking alone, or if he just wanted an excuse to have a beer and make it look like he was performing a public service, but either way, he was happy to have a drinking partner. Jiang Cheng answered his next unasked question, which was going to be if they were there to chat or to doomscroll together in companionable silence, by pulling out his own phone. Pleased, Wei Ying looked back down to see what fresh horrors the world had in store for him today.
The first thing that caught his eye was images of rushing water. "What the..." he muttered as he clicked on a video. Oh. Oh no. It showed a river washing down the steps of a subway station. The next one showed a handful of people standing in waist-deep water working together to pull on a rope to haul up an adult and child who were stuck underground. Apparently multiple countries were currently experiencing once-in-500-years flooding, for the third time in the past decade. Horrified at the disaster and touched by the community spirit of the heroes saving their neighbors, he felt tears appearing at the corners of his eyes.
Then he made the mistake of reading the replies.
My thoughts go out to those poor people.
This is why we need climate solutions now!
You can't believe everything the mainstream media tells you! Global warming is a hoax!
Slurrrrrp! Bang! Jiang Cheng placed his beer hard back onto the table after taking a loud sip.
It was enough to pull Wei Ying out of the rabbit hole he was about to go down. There was plenty wrong in the world, but losing his focus over a climate denier on Twitter (that was probably a bot anyway) wasn't going to solve the problem. And besides, wasn't he trying to decompress? This was not working.
He jumped back over to his main feed and unfocused his eyes a bit, scrolling until he found something cute. Bunnies! That would do nicely.
This time reading the replies was a good idea. OP apparently had a bunch of bunny-loving friends who showed their appreciation by replying with their own bunny pictures. One particularly creative one showed a very chill bunny that had a folding fan propped up against it. When Wei Ying clicked to look closer, he saw that the fan had an intricate painting of another bunny, and that bunny was holding its own fan, which appeared to have a painting that was too small to see. Intrigued, Wei Ying clicked on the username to see what else they'd posted.
It was... fans. A lot of fans. Fans with gorgeous hand-painted mountain scenes. Brilliantly colorful fans inlaid with shiny gold and silver accents. Black-and-white fans with formal calligraphy. This fan aficionado clearly had a style, but there were also retweets of a broader set of styles. Cheeky cartoon animals on a fan that could have come from a dollar store. The pink, blue, white trans flag in fan form being held up proudly with a backdrop of a bunch of marchers, many of the rest of whom were carrying the same flag in fabric form. A folding fan that had a picture of an electric fan. It seemed that this person was a big fan proponent and wanted to boost all the quality fan content that they came across, in addition to posting their own.
Wei Ying was not particularly into fans. In fact, he hadn't really even thought much about them before. But he recognized a fellow geek as a kindred spirit, and appreciated the passion and dedication. He scrolled up to check who it was.
The Twitter bio read "literally only fans." And then there was a link... to an OnlyFans page.
No way, Wei Ying thought. He was not afraid to do a little wordplay when the time was right, but this was a little too on the nose. Then he started wondering... did this person like fans already and decide that OnlyFans was the thing for them? Did they think of the pun first and get so amused that they built an entire hobby around it? Did they actually have NSFW fan-related content? Was this all an elaborate troll?
There was only one way to find out.
He copied the link and pasted it into an incognito tab. The bio was the same "literally only fans," and the profile picture was a plain grey folding fan. To see any content, he'd need to subscribe for five dollars a month. Why not? Five dollars was only a small chunk of the overtime pay he got for extra time that he wasn't even planning to work today. Spending it on decompression via weird internet fan nerd seemed like a reasonable use of the extra money.
As he stood up to go get his credit card, he tried to take another sip of his beer only to realize that he'd finished it while engrossed in fan content. So he went and got his card from his bag, then detoured to the kitchen to grab two extra cans from the fridge.
"Thanks," Jiang Cheng acknowledged when Wei Ying put the fresh beer for him on the coffee table next to his almost-empty can. Then he went back to his phone, evidently just as engrossed in whatever he was looking at as Wei Ying had been.
He wasn't too engrossed to catch Wei Ying pulling out his credit card and starting to key it into the website. "Dude, you're impulse-buying something online? Do I need to stop you?"
"This is Art. And it's only $5."
"Art?" Jiang Cheng asked, skeptical, trying to get a look at his screen. His eyes jumped to the payment details first, without taking in the rest. "Five dollars a month, not five dollars. Are you going to remember to cancel your subscription if you don't want to pay sixty bucks every year for the rest of your life?"
"Okay yes five dollars a month. Good point, I'll set myself a reminder to cancel it."
"What even is this so-called art?"
"This guy -- or girl, or whoever, they're pretty anonymous -- made an OnlyFans about fans! They're deconstructing the premise of the site. And the fans are pretty."
"Since when did you give a fuck about fans?" Jiang Cheng lifted up Wei Ying's beer cans to measure how much he'd had. "Did you start drinking at the office?"
"I don't give a fuck about fans. Or at least not before ten minutes ago," Wei Ying replied, ignoring the second question. "But this person's a nerd, and they amuse me, and it's not too expensive, so why not?"
"Whatever. It's your money. Just don't accidentally spend your share of the rent money giving big tips for not-porn on a porn site."
"Have I ever been short on rent?" Wei Ying glared. He worked his ass off to avoid being short on rent. Sometimes he spent the second half of the month eating nothing but beans and rice to be able to pay his share. He owed a lot to the Jiang family for taking him in and raising him, but he was determined to pull his weight when he and his adoptive siblings decided to move out and get an apartment together.
"No." Jiang Cheng's face stayed annoyed and defiant, but his posture shrunk down and betrayed the fact that he realized he'd poked Wei Ying in a sore spot.
"Anyway," Wei Ying moved on brightly, attention fully back on the task at hand, "Just watch as I become a patron of the arts." He completed the payment with a flourish, and the hidden posts turned into pictures.
His first thought was that it looked an awful lot like this person's Twitter, minus the retweets. Lots of dignified, classy-looking folding fans. He clicked on one at random and zoomed in. It showed an adorable little robin. Zooming in even more, he realized that it was not a screen-printed photograph, as he'd originally assumed, but an extremely detailed painting. After admiring it for a few minutes, he went to look at the comments.
ArtLover52
Exquisite!
GimmeThat
WTF? I didn't pay $5 to see some random bird on a fan. Show us your tits!
ITrollTheTrolls
@GimmeThat what did you expect from an account that calls itself "Literally Only Fans"?
PeerlessCucumber
The robin is very well-rendered, but the overly-detailed background is a distraction. I hope that future content can include this level of detail for the subject on a blank background.
Wei Ying went to look at the next picture that was posted. This one again had birds on it, these with scientific names next to them. One said Sittiparus varius and the other said Cyanistes cyanus. He checked the comments.
ITrollTheTrolls
I see what you did there
PeerlessCucumber
Are puns your only go-to move?
LadyLuck87
What a beautiful pair of tits.
MonopolyMoney
I don't get it.
PeerlessCucumber
@MonopolyMoney have you heard of Google? The last post had some loser demanding "Show us your tits," so this fan does so, literally, because OP apparently doesn't know any better tricks.
ITrollTheTrolls
@PeerlessCucumber how are you simultaneously hating on everyone at the same time?
The next fan didn't have a bird, but rather, a lot of fine-print writing. Wei Ying had to zoom in to see that it was a poem rendered in fine calligraphy. This post had a substantial caption.
Ok, folks, let's play a game. I want to see who among my fans is a true appreciator of the arts. If you want to play, send me a video of yourself reciting a poem. I don't want any cheaters, so you need to wear a blindfold so that I know you're not just reading it from somewhere behind the camera. And announce at the beginning that you're doing this for Literally Only Fans, so I know you're not just recycling a video that you sent to someone else.
If I like your poem and you recite it well, I'll reward you with a flower. If your recitation is crap, I'll throw flowers at you until you pass out.
Wei Ying wasn't sure how Literally Only Fans would manage to do either the reward or the punishment through an online interface, but now he was invested. He also wanted to know if this flower business was a break from the consistent adherence to being literally only about fans, or if LOF would somehow still stick to the theme. It sounded like answering this particular question wasn't going to cost him any more of his overtime pay, just some time and dedication. He was pretty good at memorization when he decided he wanted to, and he'd learned a number of poems over the years.
"Hey Jiang Cheng..." he began.
"Sure, fine, I'll be your cameraman as you take the next step in your relationship with the fan fetishist." It was then that Wei Ying realized that Jiang Cheng had been reading over his shoulder the entire time. He did a quick mental inventory of what he'd been looking at and decided that he wasn't ashamed of any of it.
"Ok, great, thanks. Use my phone. That'll make it easier for me to upload the video."
Wei Ying dug around in the basket of scraps that they used when they needed to repair a broken article of clothing, and found what he was hoping for -- a long thin strip of black fabric. He wrapped it around his head, covering his eyes in the front and securing it with a knot in the back.
"Here, stand against this wall, it's blank white and the lighting is good," Jiang Cheng helpfully offered.
Wei Ying leaned on years of experience being too lazy to turn on a light when he wanted a midnight snack, and expertly stood up and headed over to the wall that Jiang Cheng had indicated. "I'm ready when you are," he said.
"Ok, three, two, one... go."
Wei Ying had picked the poem from his inventory that he thought would best appeal to Literally Only Fans sense of style: a formal, old-fashioned verse about a forest in the moonlight. He put his passion into the recitation, which wasn't too hard because he genuinely liked this one. He could feel his hands gently sketching out the image that his words were painting, rising up as the poem focused on the upper branches, gliding down as it moved on to talk about the graceful stream along the forest floor. His hands dropped to his sides as he finished, and then he couldn't resist taking a little bow.
"Ok, I've stopped the camera. You're lucky I didn't burst out laughing at your acting halfway through and ruin the video."
"Thanks Jiang Cheng, you're so thoughtful." Wei Ying stuck out his tongue. "Here, let me see how it came out." He held out his hand and felt the phone land in it.
"How are you going to see it with your blindfold still on?"
Wei Ying made sure to have his eyes mid-roll at the moment the blindfold slid off of them. Then he turned them down to look at how the video came out.
It was pretty decent. He was no professional actor, but he got all the words right, and it came across as someone who genuinely appreciated the poem. He DMed it to Literally Only Fans.
It was only after he'd sent it that he realized that Literally Only Fans now had a video of his face (minus his eyes), and he had no idea what Literally Only Fans looked like. That seemed mildly creepy and imbalanced, now that he thought about it. Well, too late to take back the fact that he'd sent a video. The best way to even it out would be to find out what this mysterious fan aficionado looked like.
He had already planned to do a video with a bad recitation to find out what it meant for LOF to throw flowers at him, and now that sounded like it could help him solve the riddle. Wouldn't LOF have to appear on screen in order to throw flowers? Maybe he could catch a glimpse of their face.
"Jiang Cheng, help me do another one."
"What? One wasn't enough? Have you already heard back from them?"
"No, I want to get a few queued up so that I can test out all of their different reactions. I want to be able to send it as soon as they reply!"
"Why am I enabling you?" Jiang Cheng muttered to himself, but obediently took Wei Ying's phone to start shooting the next one.
This time, Wei Ying picked a different poem and made as many mistakes as possible. Just to be sure, he emphasized the wrong words with grand, mocking sweeps of his hand.
After they'd shot three more bad poetry videos, Jiang Cheng's grumbling got more urgent. "Why the hell am I doing all this for you? What are you doing for me?"
"Well, what do you want me to do for your?" Wei Ying asked pragmatically.
"Uh, shit, I dunno, at least get me another beer or something."
"On it." Wei Ying kept his blindfold on as he went to fetch two more beers from the fridge, just to show that he could. As he walked back into the living room, he heard the front door open. He could smell who it was before she had a chance to say hello. "Shijie! You brought us food!"
Jiang Yanli worked as a chef, and one of her duties was to keep the pot of her famous lotus pork rib soup full and fragrant until closing time. Usually, this meant there was a bit of extra at the end of the night, so she made a habit of carrying a few reusable containers to work in order to bring home the leftovers.
"A-Ying! A-Cheng!" she greeted warmly, not batting an eye at the fact that Wei Ying was standing there blind-folded carrying two beers, and Jiang Cheng was holding Wei Ying's phone ready to shoot another video.
Wei Ying, however, suddenly had more urgent priorities than producing bad poetry content for his new Internet bestie. "I'm hungry!" he declared as he peeled off his blindfold.
"Save some for me!" Jiang Cheng started racing to the kitchen to be the first to grab a bowl.
"Don't worry, I brought plenty for both of you."
Within ten seconds, Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng were sitting at attention at the table with their bowls and spoons at the ready, and Jiang Yanli was screwing the lid off the soup container. The only difference from the same scene fifteen years earlier was that Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng were twice as big.
"How was work?" Wei Ying asked Jiang Yanli as he started digging into his soup.
"It was great!" The yawn sneaking out behind her smile didn't make the smile any less genuine. "And I got lots of tips; I'll have to treat you two to a fancy dinner on my next day off."
"See, now that's a proper use of extra money," Jiang Cheng noted, turning to Wei Ying. "Tell her about the porn site you've been spending your overtime pay on."
"It was only five dollars! And I'm supporting a creator whose wordplay is second only to their taste in the arts."
"You mean who's built an entire account around a pun, and who's now convinced you to participate in their blindfold fetish."
"You make it sound way weirder than it is, and anyway what's wrong with a blindfold fetish?" Wei Ying turned to Jiang Yanli to fill her in. "So I went down a Twitter rabbit hole -- literally, I suppose, since I started out looking at pictures of rabbits -- and I found this account called Literally Only Fans that tweeted out pictures of painted fans, and they had an OnlyFans link in their bio! So of course I had to check it out. And they have a poetry contest where they make you recite poetry wearing a blindfold so you can't cheat and look at the poem behind the camera. And that's what I was doing when you came home."
"I see. Well, I'm sure our A-Ying will win the poetry contest!"
"Ah, heh, well, see, there's both a prize if you recite well, and a retaliation if you recite badly. So of course I had to do both to see what happens."
"Oh? And what happened?"
"I don't know yet!" Wei Ying quickly checked his phone to confirm if any messages had come in while he'd been talking. "They haven't even replied to my good poem, so I haven't sent any of the bad ones yet."
"Well, good luck," Jiang Yanli smiled.
After polishing off the last drop of soup, Jiang Cheng made a tactical retreat to go brush his teeth before Wei Ying could corner him into doing more filming. Wei Ying decided their video buffer was big enough for the night and wandered down to his bedroom to browse related accounts while constantly refreshing his messages.
He found that his fan account had a few other fan-enthusiast friends. One was a regular commenter, Peerless Cucumber, who had his own OnlyFans site with pictures of a handsome, green-robed cosplayer who posed with a folding fan of his own and seemed to be trying to look as pretentious as possible in all his photos. Another, Wind Master, was featured in one of Literally Only Fans's posts. Wind Master also seemed to be a cosplayer. They also posed in formal robes, with various different gender presentations, always with a white fan that said 風 in black calligraphy. This seemed to be a whole small subculture. Wei Ying wondered how Literally Only Fans had managed to snag that username, since it described all of them. Maybe LOF had joined the site first.
After about half an hour of admiring fan-wielding cosplayers, Wei Ying accepted that he probably wasn't going to get a response tonight and went to bed.
When his alarm blasted him out of sleep at Too Early in the morning, his first move was to check his messages. Still nothing! "Come on, dude, I've worked so hard for you," he grumbled, pulling on his shirt as he stumbled down to the kitchen. He had his jacket half-on and toast hanging out of his mouth when he finally saw a notification pop up, and he pounced on it.
It was, on brand as always, a photo of a fan. The fan featured an intricately-detailed purple lotus blossom painted against a backdrop of perfectly still water and brilliant green leaves, accented with silver dewdrops in some shiny material. "Huh," Wei Ying said out loud.
He considered replying back immediately with his first bad recitation video, but he decided he wanted to keep his new friend waiting like they'd kept him waiting. And besides, he actually really liked the lotus fan, and if this "pelt you with flowers until you pass out" threat was going to somehow screw up his account, he didn't want to lose access to it just yet. So instead, he pulled on his shoes and went to catch the bus.
At the office, he was just pulling his laptop out of his bag when his teammate Nie Huaisang arrived. "Wei-xiong!" he greeted an octave higher than usual.
"Hey," Wei Ying replied, turning to Nie Huaisang and raising an eyebrow. Was he going to find another big mess to clean up when he opened his laptop and checked today's tasks? Nie Huaisang meant well and was a fun teammate, but sometimes compensating for his work quality was a bit exhausting.
Then again, if I have to work overtime again, that's more fan content that I can purchase. Wei Ying had made a deal with himself that he wouldn't spend any of his base pay on his new hobby, which would naturally ensure that he'd still have enough to cover necessities. Suddenly working overtime almost seemed like something to look forward to.
But when he opened up his laptop to check, everything seemed to be in order, at least as much so as he'd left it last night. With a shrug, he went to fill up his coffee mug and then settled in to the workday.
He resisted the urge to send any more videos throughout the day. He wasn't sure what time zone Literally Only Fans was in, but based on the timing of this morning's reply, he was guessing it might be the same as his, and neither of them needed the distraction during work.
As soon as he got home (on time for once), he sprang into action and sent the first bad poetry video.
He doodled for about an hour, waiting for the reply to come in. He realized absently that he was drawing fans, designing new ones. His fans had flowers and birds and writing just like what he'd been seeing. He made one where he carefully wrote out his first poem (the one he'd recited properly) in calligraphy so neat that he wouldn't recognize it as his own handwriting if he didn't remember writing it. He designed fans for good luck, fans with dark warnings, fans with hope. He started sketching out his own imaginary cosplay outfit and was just adding a red accent to the drawn figure's hair when a reply notification popped up.
As he'd hoped, the message really was a video of a person throwing flowers at the camera. However, they kept their face hidden behind a fan, expertly switching it back and forth between their hands as they rained a wild gush of flowers from both sides. There was... maybe a hint of a hairline visible. But it could have been anyone.
As soon as he'd finished watching, messages started pouring in faster than he could look at them. Each one seemed to contain a single flower emoji. They just kept coming and wouldn't stop, until finally, the app crashed.
"Well I guess if I'll throw flowers at you until you pass out was directed at the app rather than at the person looking at it, that's a pretty good characterization of what just happened," Wei Ying allowed, laughing.
He tried unsuccessfully to open the app a few more times, and wondered absently if it would eventually resolve itself. Well, no use in continuing to try for now.
Two hours and three beers later, he gave it another try. The app opened again, and the DMs he received had disappeared. Cool. Time to try Bad Poetry Video number two. This time, when he received the video reply, he looked as carefully as he could, knowing he'd only get to see it once. He caught both ears and half an eye, which seemed like progress.
As he waited for the app to uncrash, he went and knocked on Jiang Cheng's door. "Help me shoot more bad poetry videos."
"Can't you just lean the camera against your laptop and shoot them yourself? What do you need me for?"
"How am I supposed to stop and start the camera while blindfolded?"
"Take your blindfold off for that part, and then edit it out."
"Isn't that cheating?"
"Seriously? Are you able to look at the poem while you're reciting it? No. And besides, aren't you trying to fuck it up on purpose? Who cares if you're not following the rules? You could even do one without the blindfold."
Wei Ying was not feeling particularly inclined to show any more of his face than he already had, given his clear disadvantage in this contest. But Jiang Cheng was right that he could shoot the videos himself. "Fine, enjoy reading history or whatever it is you're doing in there."
"You love history; why are you making fun of me for it?"
Wei Ying stuck his tongue out, realized Jiang Cheng couldn't see him through the door, and said, "Whatever."
He managed to shoot and edit another five bad videos by the time the app would open without crashing. At that point, it was already late in the evening. If his new friend went to bed early, then he probably wouldn't get a response tonight, so it wouldn't be worth staying up to wait for it. But if they did reply and he'd already gone to bed, he might miss his chance to watch the video before getting spammed with emojis. After weighing the pros and cons, he decided to wait until the following evening before continuing to send bad poetry, to make sure he'd be paying attention when the replies came back.
And so it continued, night after night. Wei Ying decided to pace himself and just send one video each evening.
He started optimizing his video viewing. Worried that he'd miss a critical moment or want to go back and re-watch, he tried taking a screen capture when the video played. But the site seemed to be blocking it somehow, and it came back blank.
"Well, let's see you try to stop me from doing it this way," he said to the app, and the next time, he pointed his phone screen at his laptop camera as the video played so that his computer could capture it. It wasn't perfect, but it was clear enough.
To their credit, Literally Only Fans sent him a different video each time. Sometimes the choice of fan or choice of flowers even seemed to match the poem he'd butchered in his recitation, evidence that these were freshly-created based on his submissions.
Whenever a sliver of LOF's face was visible, Wei Ying saved the freeze-frame from the laptop video of the phone screen. Each one was much too limited to get a sense of the person's face. But after five weeks, he'd accumulated enough that he thought it was worth combining the various images to see what would come out.
Three painstaking hours later, he's assembled a Picassoesque collage. There was maybe half a mouth, most of both eyes, the ears, and some of the outer cheeks. It still didn't really look like a coherent person, but he was getting closer.
Each week after that, he added his newly-gathered screenshots to his combined picture. It still looked ridiculous, all different angles spliced together, but after a few more weeks, it was starting to give a sense of the person's face.
And this person looked a little familiar.
"Well, shit." Literally Only Fans must have known who Wei Ying was since he sent his first video. Looking back, that explained a few things.
Wei Ying did a bit of googling, then hopped down the hall. "Shijie," he wheedled, "Do you have any old folding paper fans that you don't want anymore?"
"Oh? What for? Is this your online friend with the poetry contest? Do you need to take a picture with a fan now?"
"Yes to the first, no to the second."
Jiang Yanli waited patiently for Wei Ying to elaborate.
"I want to make them a handmade fan as a gift, and the Internet suggested that it would be easiest to start with an existing fan's frame."
"You're making them a gift? But how would you know where to send it? Isn't this site anonymous?"
"I... may have done some investigating and figured out who they are."
"That's creepy, dude!" Jiang Cheng called from the other room.
"Well, it seems creepier now to keep the knowledge to myself without telling them I know who they are."
"Why'd you Internet-stalk them anyway?" Jiang Cheng was now out in the hallway, leaning against the wall and fixing Wei Ying with his standard judgy glare.
"I didn't stalk them! I just wanted to see what they looked like. So I pieced together the little glimpses of their face that I got when they knocked out my account every time I sent a bad poem. I never expected to recognize them!"
"Knocked out your... you know what, I don't want to know. I can't believe I helped you with this."
Jiang Yanli, meanwhile, had been looking thoughtful, and suddenly spoke up, "You know, I think I do have an old fan or two. Let me check."
She rummaged around in the back of a few drawers, and produced not one but three folding fans with Disney characters on them. "I can't see myself using these again. I probably should have donated them years ago. Help yourself, if these will meet your needs."
"You're the best, shijie!" Wei Ying grinned as he took the fans. He checked them over. One was clearly broken, another looked a bit too cheap, but the third one was in decent condition and opened and closed well. The frame looked a little scratched up, but he figured he could clean it up with a coat of paint or polish.
"Do you have the other supplies that you need?"
"Let's see. I have a compass from my high school drafting class, and I have paints and glue and paper. And they always have shiny stuff on their fans. I could probably use ribbon for that. Where do we keep the gift-wrapping supplies?"
"Top shelf of the linen closet."
Wei Ying planted a big kiss on Jiang Yanli's cheek and then sauntered off to get started. He carefully cut a large semi-circle of paper, cut away a small semi-circle in the middle for the hinge, and pencilled in fold marks on the back. Then he flipped it over and got to painting.
Painting was the easy part. Wei Ying loved to paint, and he specialized in wild freehand scenes that flowed from his heart to his paintbrush without any prior sketches. Drawing inspiration from the genres of art that Literally Only Fans tended to publish, he painted a long, blossom-covered branch with a bird perched on top. Once the paint dried, he added a few silver-ribbon accents to the bird's features and then carefully replaced the Disney image with his new one.
"What do you think, shijie?" he asked, hanging off the side of her doorframe, half in her room, dangling his new handiwork.
"It's beautiful. Are you trying to catch this person's attention?"
"Not that way." Wei Ying allowed himself a brief moment to daydream about the person whose attention he really wanted to catch, which was definitely not Literally Only Fans. "I just want to let them to know that I recognized them. And to give them a gift worthy of the art they've shared with me."
"Well, I think it's perfect for that."
Glowing a bit as he always did when Jiang Yanli was nice to him (which was literally every time they interacted), Wei Ying wrapped his present and fired off a quick text: "Hey, want to get dumplings after work tomorrow? On me!"
"Sure, what's the occasion?"
"Dumplings, I already said!"
"Lol. Ok see you soon."
As their workday wrapped up, Nie Huaisang turned to Wei Ying and said, "So which dumpling place? The one downstairs, or the one down the street?"
"The one down the street." Let's be a bit further from the office, just in case this gets weird.
"Mmm, works for me, that one has xiao long bao," Nie Huaisang replied as he started leading the way.
"Oh god yes please." Right. That's totally why I suggested that one. Good side-benefit, though.
"Did you know my brother won't eat soup dumplings?"
"What? Why?"
"Oh, you know him. He couldn't care less about style or presentation; he just wants the most efficient protein delivery vehicle so he can get back to the gym." Nie Huaisang rolled his eyes. "I guess I can't blame him, since I feel the same way about working out as he feels about the stuff I like to do. I'll never be a state champion weight lifter, and he'll never be an artist. We're each walking our own paths."
"So you think of soup dumplings as art, huh?" Wei Ying asked.
"Of course! Can you imagine the first person who made them? Who thinks to themself -- you know what, I'm going to wrap soup up in a dumpling and eat it? That's so creative!"
"Couldn't you say that about a lot of kinds of food?"
"I mean sure, yeah, it's all art. Anything that takes thought or effort. Eating modern food, we're truly standing on the shoulders of giants."
Wei Ying suddenly remembered a poem about a dumpling that he'd come across in his research for his videos. He'd rejected it as too short to be an impressive recitation, but it was perfect now. "My body is powdery white and round..." he began in his best poetry performance voice.
Since he was watching for it, Wei Ying caught a brief flash of surprise on Nie Huaisang's face before the latter quickly schooled his expression into thoughtful approval. When he finished, Nie Huaisang applauded and declared, "Bravo, bravo! A true appreciator of the arts."
"And now for some food art," Wei Ying concluded as they reached the restaurant and he held the door open. "After you."
They sat down and pulled their menus out. "Remember, I'm treating you, so you get to order whatever you want," Wei Ying said.
Nie Huaisang happily accepted his task and placed their order with the waiter.
"Mmm, great choices." Wei Ying rubbed his palms together in anticipation. "Ok, now, meanwhile..." He reached into his bag and pulled out the gift box. "This is for you."
"You're giving me a present? You said the occasion was just dumplings. Why does dumplings require a present?" And then, apologetically, "I didn't get you anything."
Wei Ying just smiled at him. Actually, you kind of did.
Nie Huaisang opened the box, more excited than actually bashful. When he saw what was inside, he froze for a fraction of a second, then flicked open the fan and immediately used it to hide his face. The fluidity of the practiced motion was more confirmation than whatever his face could have shown.
"What...? Wei-xiong, why are you giving me a fan?"
"No reason."