Chapter Text
“Shulin, you have to help me, you really do!”
That was Wen Kexing, jumping over the threshold to the kitchen courtyard of Four Seasons Manor, making a beeline to where Shulin was having his tea away from the paying café crowd in the first courtyard. “This strict and cruel master wants three people to beat up Han Ying three times each on Saturday.”
He was jerking his thumb at Zhou Zishu, who was following him closely.
“Even more people joining the advanced class?” Shulin said, putting down his cup.
Teddy was sleeping on his chest, safe and warm in her papoose; of course, if you nicknamed a kid ‘bear cub’, then people would turn it into Teddy, even for a girl. She had a little pink crocheted teddy bear, too, which somebody’s mum or auntie or granny from their extended found family had made for her, and small as she was, she was already attached to it and knew it was hers. Shulin was certain she understood the name already, too, even though she was still so small. She might be too young for him to try and teach her sign language as some parents did with their babies of six months and up; thing was, nobody knew how old she actually was.
She’d been a small malnourished thing when the goons from Jinfeng Pharmaceuticals had dropped her off at the orphanage after her parents had died in yet another toxic spillage; the Sisters had at first not expected her to live, and warned Shulin he might still get his heart broken.
However, he felt he owed her what his mum had done for him, paying forward; and he was willing to risk heartbreak at her potential loss. Peizhi had been a bit misgiving as his own son A-Hui loved his Teddy-meimei so devotedly after only a week, inviting trauma should she not make it; but Shulin simply declared that she would, and she did.
Now, only three months after rescuing her, nobody would expect her to not live to one whole year any more -- she was a healthy, happy, well-fed baby of roughly half a year, give or take. Nobody knew her actual date of birth, and the birth certificate Shulin had for her was lying through its papery teeth, even though it was genuine, thanks to all the official connections they had.
“When she’s older I can do reverse astrology for her and find her a proper birthday,” the lady from the new age bookstore next to Kuruo’s noodle shop had said, and that was as good a solution as any.
“Tea?” Shulin now said to Zhou Zishu, who was literally steaming -- it was hot as hell in August in the City, and he had just taught a kung fu class to two dozen kids aged three to seven.
The man sat down and groaned.
“Iced tea, I think,” Wen Kexing said, bending over his husband and licking his cheek. “Ugh, you are gross, A-Xu; you need rehydrating!”
“You are gross!” Zhou Zishu answered. “The heat has melted your brains, Lao-Wen! You can’t lick me to determine my state, and you can’t keep messing with how I run my martial arts school, either, so stop trying.”
“I have a duty to the people at the Manor, too,” Wen Kexing said airily when he returned from the kitchen with a pitcher filled with a pale green liquid plus ice cubes, and several glasses. “You may be paying Han Ying for his work, but letting people beat him up is utterly against workplace safety regulations. If you want to test these new guys, then you have to ask for volunteers among your students.”
He sat, and poured them tea. Shulin noticed that he’d brought more glasses than there were people at the table (even counting Teddy), so he supposed he'd soon enough learn who the three new Saturday student hopefuls were.
“Han Ying is doing the cool-down and the hand-off to the parents and caretakers?” he guessed, as the two kids he was waiting for (Lan Hui and Wang Chunhua, his partners’ youngest of altogether six kids) hadn’t turned up yet even though their teacher was here.
“Which is actually in his job description,” Wen Kexing said, archly.
“How many times,” Zhou Zishu said, rolling his eyes as he downed his entire glass of iced tea, “do I have to tell you that no modern job description can cover the traditional role of first disciple, which is what Han Ying is to me? You’re just jealous, which is ridiculous.”
Since he’d come back to the City, and half the network of queer people who tended to accrete around Four Seasons Manor had helped him with his revenge for the sake of Wang Yan, Zhang Ping and Peizhi, Shulin had spent time at the Manor at least twice a week -- once while some of their kids were in some class, and once for his own advanced class on Saturdays, with subsequent brunch for friends. And almost every time, the two masters of the Manor would touch on this argument.
Han Ying was an old acquaintance of Zhou Zishu’s whom they had hired during the pandemic when his job in a historical theme park had stopped existing and when Wen Kexing had grabbed his A-Xu and self-isolated on their house boat for almost a year because Zhou Zishu was immunocompromised, so Han Ying had come in extremely useful in keeping the Manor running, such as it was, while all public life was down to a bare minimum. By now, the entire flourishing school wouldn’t work any more without its da-shixiong, but Wen Kexing kept claiming that Han Ying’s devotion was rooted in infatuation, and everything he did above and beyond the call of duty (such as sparring with all potential new advanced students who had to win against him once out of three times to get into the class) was down to that.
Shulin was thoroughly sick of that argument.
“Who are the newcomers?” he asked. “And why is it an issue now and not, well, on Saturday?”
“They’ll be here soon,” Wen Kexing said, just as Shulin had expected. “They’re the vanlife guys who are parking their bus at the marina where our boat lies at anchor; it seems they are stuck here for a bit.”
“Oh, that bus with the lotus pattern and the extendable gazebo on top?” Shulin said. He tied up his motor boat (with an e-motor, of course) at the same jetty when he came from his warehouse, as it was most easily reached by water, and Wen Kexing had offered. Of course he had noticed the new neighbors.
“Three guys of varying degrees between handsome and pretty?” he said now. “I’ve seen them; they assured me you allowed them to keep their bus there, hooked up to your mains and all.”
Which they had needed, as the boat had been a home.
“That’s right,” Wen Kexing said. “The Old Monster’s niece picked them up in an escape room, of all places. How bizarre is that?”
“Not very,” Shulin said. “I helped to design a room there, even. They’re good neighbors. I think I saw the prettiest of the three guys work a shift at the coffee shop next to it, even? The one in chinos and those expensive brand name t-shirts you only get in chain stores where the employees behave bizarrely?”
“Yeah, I think he works there,” Wen Kexing says. “I have hired -- oh, here they come!”
Yes, there they were, all of them cleaned up nicely, not just the preppy one. The other two were a skinny jaded one who sported scruffy counterculture looks (not so scruffy right now) and was actually a TCM colleague of Shulin’s; they hadn’t talked yet, but the man had turned up in the group chat Wu Xi was running for the younger members of the City’s community of traditional healers. And then there was the strong handsome one, in sturdy work clothes (crisp and clean as well) and solid boots. Shulin had seen him tinker around the bus; he’d worn less and was rather grimy, then.
“Hello, neighbors,” he said, getting up. “We meet properly at last. I’m Gu Qingzhang, called Shulin. I think I'm going to beat up one of you on Saturday?”
It only made sense, after all.
“I’m Fang Duobing,” the preppy one said, “and my -- partners are Li Lianhua” -- the jaded TCM practitioner -- “and Di Feisheng.” That was the square-jawed handsome handyman.
“You said partners,” Di Feisheng stated with a smirk.
Li Lianhua grinned to himself and said nothing.
“Hey, I’m not used to that I can,” Fang Duobing argued. “But this is Four Seasons Manor; if I said friends or traveling companions, Wen-laoban would at least mock me, or perhaps scold me for being closeted. We’re actually vanlifers, but we’re stuck here because a certain someone” -- he shot a very pointed glance at Li Lianhua who preened, rather than looking apologetic -- “couldn’t resist the money-for-nothing my mum offered him so she’d get to keep me around for a bit.”
“A-Fei wanted to build the new bathroom for months now,” Li Lianhua said languidly, sitting at the table when Wen Kexing waved at the remaining chairs, “and now we get the place to do it, enough time to do it properly, and money we can spend at the hardware store. And I do go see your dad every day; you can’t blame your mum for worrying about the state of his liver. It’s not charity; I really work for my retainer.”
“It’s not charity, it’s a trap!” Fang Duobing grumbled. “And you fell for it. At least I’m earning honest money being a barista now.”
“Sit down and have your tea, Xiaobao,” Di Feisheng said; he sat next to Li Lianhua and folded his arms over his chest. They were nicely made arms.
Of course, Shulin wanted nobody except his own partners, Peizhi and (by extension) Mowen, but he wasn’t blind. As far as pretty went, neither of these two guys could even remotely compare to Peizhi, but the handsome one was quite easy on the eye, at least as easy as Mowen.
“So you’re in the advanced class as well?” the preppy one (Xiaobao?) said, eying the sleeping baby at Shulin’s chest.
“Never underestimate a papoose dad,” Shulin said, smiling sweetly. “Remember the shitstorm when that conservative Brit insulted James Bond? I guess I will be beating up young Mister Xiaobao here, while our da-shixiong Han Ying will take care of Di Feisheng, and my esteemed colleague here will probably end up with Scorpy -- Xie-er, that is, another papoose dad, even though his spawn have grown out of that stage already.”
“For queer people, you certainly have a lot of dads here,” Fang Duobing said to Wen Kexing. Li Lianhua looked at Shulin apologetically, and Di Feisheng rolled his eyes.
“He’s going to dig himself in even deeper,” he stage-whispered. “Just watch him doubling down. His name now just stands for incurable foot-in-mouth disease.”
“No, really!” Fang Duobing said, and Shulin grinned when he realized how that poor young man’s name was (most likely) spelled. That wasn’t a name you saw every day.
Li Lianhua nodded his eyes at Di Feisheng.
“I mean, you probably all adopted these kids, but I don’t get why…” Fang Duobing went on, undeterred.
Shulin had to save him before the second hand embarrassment got too bad.
“Teddy here,” he explained, “came to me as a tiny patient to be detoxified after the whole Jinfeng Pharmaceuticals disaster; I guess you read about it?”
Fang Duobing nodded.
“She had nobody else and needed care 24/7, so now I’m keeping her. My partners, Mowen and Peizhi, actually sired their kids because they are “bisexual” and “easily overwhelmed”, respectively. How Xie-er spawned his two is very much nobody’s business, but rest assured, they are genuine little scorpies. And their dad is at least as sneaky in a fight as your lover HuaHua appears to be, so I guess all are evenly matched.”
Zhou Zishu looked between Shulin and his own Lao-Wen, and accepted defeat.
“That’s what we’ll do, then,” he said. “Don’t expect it to be easy. I want all of you to give your future classmates a show to remember.”
“HuaHua?” Wen Kexing said, grinning.
Well, so maybe Shulin had overheard Di Feisheng call his partner that the other morning, from his boat, when the vanlife guys were bringing in sheetrock on a bike rickshaw. He had learned to be sponge for even the most useless information, as he’d never found a bit of information that didn’t come in useful at some stage.
“Xiaobao, HuaHua and A-Fei, apparently,” Shulin said, smiling sweetly as Teddy finally woke up and promptly dropped her favorite toy.
Before she could even start wailing, Di Feisheng offered it to her with a crooked little smile. As Shulin had guessed, among the three, he was actually the attentive and sensitive one. Indeed, for a short moment, matching expressions of terrible fondness crossed the faces of the other two.
“While you are here, get some cats if your dog can stand them,” he said. “They let the Baiyi Cat have a litter again this year, and the young ones are all sharp as whips. If you won’t have kids, kittens will do.”
He smirked at the three identical expressions of bafflement turning on him, and was quite looking forward to Saturday.