Chapter Text
Every Saturday morning, A-Xu ran an open training and sparring session for really advanced adult martial artists in his training hall in the first courtyard of Four Seasons Manor. Wen Kexing mostly just turned over in bed when his husband got up at the asscrack of dawn, and then got up later to leisurely prepare brunch for when training was over a little before noon. A few friends might stay after training; at least Han Ying would, A-Xu’s full time assistant.
To qualify for the Saturday session, candidates had to be able to beat Han Ying in at least one bout out of three; Wen Kexing thought it was unfair of A-Xu to let people beat him up regularly, but A-Xu said that it was all right for them to beat up their da-shixiong, but nobody wanted a shifu they could beat up from the word go.
Wen Kexing also thought that his husband ought to cut poor Han Ying loose as the guy was carrying a major torch for A-Xu, but A-Xu swore it wasn’t a sex thing, not even an infatuation thing, but a shifu thing, and Lao-Wen was just too modern to understand that kind of traditional relationship.
It was totally both a sex and infatuation thing, Wen Kexing was certain, because A-Xu never saw the way Han Ying kept gazing at him when he wasn’t looking. This was especially horrible as Wen Kexing wasn’t even jealous; he knew his A-Xu would never think of Han Ying that way, but as long as the guy kept letting people beat him up in the name of A-Xu’s business, he would never get his feelings disentangled from his boss.
One of the few people who had beaten up Han Ying three times out of the three during their qualification was a man named Wang Yan; he had first appeared at Four Seasons Manor near the end of the pandemic with an unspecified number of kids whom he had enrolled in different kid classes on weekday late afternoons.
Most of these kids had different surnames, so Wen Kexing didn’t even bother to disentangle their parentage, and there were three different guys (in addition to Wang Yan) authorized to pick up the kids after training, but the other three didn’t do martial arts themselves. They all had some sort of government jobs, but Han Ying was police (actually, a colleague of Sui Zhou’s who had cracked the Five Lakes case before the pandemic) and kept fit.
Soon, Wang Yan started coming to the brunch for a bit until he got a text, and then hurried off to meet somebody and some kids for the usual Saturday errands, or maybe some fun.
“Peizhi wants me to take them and A-Hui to the botanical gardens,” Wang Yan said one Saturday around one o’clock, terribly fond smile on his face; as he was speaking Chinese, it wasn’t clear which kind of tā he was using, it not being written down and all. He gulped down his coffee, grabbed a number of Wen Kexing freshly baked meat rolls off the table, and vanished.
“A-Hui is Lan Hui, but Lan as in orchid, not blue, so definitely no relation to Nie Mingjue’s Lan guy,” Wen Kexing mused. “So that Peizhi must be Lan Whatshisname who picks up the kids sometimes, I guess, and not one of the mothers at all?”
Lan Whatshisname (nicknamed, apparently, Peizhi, in a fit of old-fashioned pretentiousness) was the very softest of the three other guys who kept picking up the kids, all big gentle eyes and soft sensitive lips and fluffy hoodies in a way that spoke of him wearing very confining business suits all day as a rule; he relaxed into all that gentleness like somebody who had never been permitted to before the pandemic.
“No, not one of our Lans,” Nie Mingjue said; he was at brunch as well, meaning to meet up with his high-strung business twink boyfriend later on, but hectic texts kept coming, so he lingered, cursing the existence of Jinfeng Pharmaceuticals, which apparently were the customers or business partners detaining his A-Yao on a Saturday..
“Don’t try to understand who is who there,” Han Ying said, “they all cultivate actual courtesy names and there are just too many of them. We have their names and pictures in the system, and that’s enough.”
So Wen Kexing didn’t bother.
***
The next Thursday, Wen Kexing was manning the database laptop as the class of older kids was being dismissed, and for three of the kids, one of Wang Yan’s hangers-on came, a funny young guy surnamed Chen who did not, it turned out, have a government job at all but ran his own noodle shop, all very hand-made and artisanal. He’d brought a bowl because -- of course! -- he knew Wen Kexing to be one of the City’s foremost foodies, and they talked about events starting up again in earnest this spring as the pandemic was properly over, and about sourcing their ingredients, which the guy named Zhang Ping had apparently organized to perfection.
“Which of the kids is Zhang Ping’s again?” Wen Kexing asked; of course, if the guy wasn’t married, the kid would have the mother’s surname, so even if none of the kids on file was surnamed Zhang, that didn’t mean anything.
“None of them,” the guy Chen Chou said, “he’s with Lan Jue, A-Hui’s dad.”
A-Hui was younger, and not among the kids being collected right now.
“And how do you come in?”
Chen Chou sighed.
“We were classmates at the university, and he lives mostly above my noodle shop with me still,” he said, and Wen Kexing felt he could detect a bit of a case of Han Ying there. “He makes the best noodles and really all sorts of beautiful traditional food; in autumn we must bring you some of his mooncakes. They’re the best in the City.”
“But Wang Yan?”
“You don’t want to understand this,” Chen Chou said, making a very comical grimace. “Not even I understand it. I stopped asking, actually. Zhang Ping helps me prepare noodles every morning before he goes to work, and dumps random kids on me whenever something comes up, and that’s enough for little old me.”
He shrugged, corralled the three kids, and shooed them out the main gate of the Manor.
Wen Kexing turned his attention to the next parent, who was complaining about the scarcity of parking in the Old City, which was frankly ridiculous.
***
Two Saturdays after that, Wang Yan brought Zhang Ping along for the training. Of course he didn’t do any training, not being qualified, but sat in a corner of the kitchen courtyard making lists until Wen Kexing put him to work helping to prepare the brunch.
“Oh, can I take some of your reed leaves?” he asked, spotting a jug full of them in a corner. “They look nice and fresh! We’re preparing an apology dinner for Lan Jue because Mowen broke one of his oldest mugs the other day, and apparently that used to belong to Shulin, and Lan Jue has been moping ever since.”
Mowen was Wang Yan, that much Wen Kexing had gathered by now. “Which of you four is Shulin?” he asked.
“None!” Zhang Ping said with great emphasis, pounding dough. “Forget I mentioned him; never say his name unless Lan Jue or Mowen say it first, which they won’t. Ancient history. I never even met the guy.”
Wen Kexing noticed that Zhang Ping stiffly used his part-time boyfriend’s (?) full legal name, but referred to Wang Yan by his nickname / courtesy name, but said nothing.
Instead, he suggested that they buy some of the Scorpion’s upcycled mugs as part of their apologetic event; Xie Wang had a workshop in the Manor’s outbuildings now, and Wen Kexing felt totally entitled to raid it in his absence.
***
“What is the difference between a patchwork family and a polycule?” Rong Changqing asked, genuinely puzzled, as he was dropping by with Ye Baiyi one Saturday when brunch was still ongoing, but Wang Yan had just been collected by Lan Jue, who today wore a pale green hoodie with a cute sleeping unicorn printed all over, and brought the two youngest kids, his own A-Hui and a very adorable little girl.
“Patchwork is temporally distinct,” Han Ying mused, “a network of kids and exes, but every grown-up has only one partner of whatever gender, or it is cheating. Polycule is when they have several partners at the same time and do the whole ‘no jealousy’ thing. Both usually keep shifting a little over time as things don’t always work out the way they were supposed to.”
“Unless it’s Mingjue’s little threesome, for whom polygamy ought to be made legal again,” Wen Kexing said.
Nie Mingjue gave him a mustachioed glare as he was wont to when his personal affairs were being discussed. He had been going stable with that little business twink and one Lan (as in blue) Xichen for a decade or so, and they were even raising an extremely funny little boy named Jingyi who was in the same pre-school age class of A-Xu’s as Lan (as in orchid) Hui, and actually Wen Yuan, the little boy with the Burial Grounds, the hacker collective (or whatever it was called) who were in constant competition with Rong Changqing’s and Ye Baiyi’s students and former students.
“Your family is more stable than most patchwork ones I know, where the straight dads keep passing out and in,” Wen Kexing plowed on, but A-Xu kicked him under the table, so he left it at that.
Rong Changqing’s question had been answered, anyway.
***
Some time after that, Wen Kexing and Han Ying had to break off an actual fistfight between two of the oldest kids from that collective or whatever you might call it while A-Xu was discussing which classes they all should be in after summer with Wang Yan.
“Why can’t Zhang Ping be my dad!” the girl was shouting, enraged. “It’s so bloody unfair! Why do we have to share a dad among the five of us, A-Hui has a dad all of his own, and Zhang Ping and Uncle Chen are nobody’s dads!”
The boy hit her again.
“You are a foul unfilial traitor!” he screeched. “At least we all have mums -- poor A-Hui doesn’t have one!”
“He had one, but she died in the pandemic!” the girl shouted back and kicked his shin. “Never mention his mum never ever! Dad says it’s totally forbidden.”
Han Ying had picked up the boy by now, and Wen Kexing held back the girl.
“Or what?” the boy scoffed.
“Or they will cry, both A-Hui and his dad,” the girl grumped. “And you know how those Lans can cry and mope. They are the worst. And then you have to do everything they say.”
“Are you safe to be let go now?” Han Ying asked, and as they both weren’t Lans, the kids agreed, and the whole situation was defused before Wang Yan or A-Xu even had to pull rank as shifu and dad, respectively.
***
The Saturday immediately after that, there was an invasion. At least it felt like that.
They were in the kitchen courtyard having brunch when three guys and innumerable kids came jumping over the high thresholds between the first courtyard and the kitchen courtyard, bringing several traditional wooden food hampers.
“I, erm,” Wang Yan said, “learned that two of my kids were being pests the other day, so we prepared a little something to contribute. I can’t keep eating your free food all the time, anyway.”
Wen Kexing asked Han Ying, Zhang Chenling and Cao Weining to get more chairs, adding, “Try and count the kids, but if you don’t manage it, never mind; there are a lot. They will be running around anyway.”
“A-Hui is very good at sitting still, being a civilized little Lan,” Wang Yan said. “The other five are mine, and even though they seem like a lot more, there are only five of them.”
“Only,” Gu Xiang giggled, smirking at Wang Yan.
“I had a bit of a wild phase before I -- while Peizhi was with -- well, never mind,” he said. “And then he got married as well, I guess out of spite or sort of one-up-man-ship, when I married for the second time. And then, well, both the pandemic happened, and Zhang Ping.”
Apparently, that was enough of an explanation.
“You know them: Lan Jue AKA Peizhi, my lover; Zhang Ping AKA Qinyong but he never uses that, Peizhi’s other lover, and Chen Chou, Zhang Ping’s roommate and business partner. He’s into women, as far as I can tell.”
Or not; but Wen Kexing said nothing, as he didn’t want A-Xu to kick him under the table, or Han Ying to expire with blushing if he used him as comparison.
Instead, he got up and took the first hamper which Lan Jue and A-Hui were adorably carrying between them. “Oh my, that smells delicious!” he exclaimed.