Chapter Text
Xu Si is having a very strange day.
To start, Yang Kai had propositioned him. This had actually happened the previous day, but the results of the propositioning carried the strangeness into today. This was not unwelcome. Yang Kai was hot. He was also very efficient and punctual and had been giving Xu Si once-overs at strategy meetings for ages.
Second, Yang Kai had stayed the night, but, second and a half, had slipped away with unsuccessful silence the following morning. He had forgotten his watch. Xu Si didn’t want to be accused of theft, so he grabbed up the watch and threw on a robe and ran into the hall.
In time to see, third, Yang Kai step into an elevator shaft.
And now Xu Si is, fourth, standing at the foot of an unconscious Yang Kai’s hospital bed, holding his short silk robe around himself and doing his best to answer the doctor’s questions.
“Yes,” he says to one. And then, “No. The collapse wasn’t related to the, ah. Intercourse.”
“Of course,” the doctor agrees. “It was related to walking into an elevator shaft.”
“Yes,” Xu Si agrees. “But the intercourse was hours earlier. So it shouldn’t have affected his faculties.”
The doctor gives him an unimpressed look. At Xu Si’s side, a voice says, “Thanks for assuring us that being dick drunk off you wasn’t a causal factor here.”
To ameliorate the strangeness of, four and a half, completing extensive hospital paperwork in only his very thin very short robe, Xu Si had asked his assistant to bring him a change of clothes. Now she’s standing beside him, bag across one arm, phone in the other, flicking through rapid-fire responses to emails and occasionally chiming in with helpful additions.
Xu Si ignores her. Some time ago, he’d encouraged his employees to bring their authentic selves to work. Most of his employees had turned out to have authentic selves that were very similar to their existing workplace personalities. However, Liu Mingxuan must have been less comfortable being herself, because the change in her demeanor was remarkable.
“I simply don’t want any confusion about the sequence of events,” Xu Si says, after Liu Mingxuan’s words have lingered too long.
“Relax, boss, nobody’s going to think you sabotaged your boyfriend. We all know you need him for the launch in November.”
“Excuse me, I think I see the family arriving,” the doctor says, stepping out of the room.
Xu Si reminds himself that all employees have full and rich lives and seeing those unique personalities in the workplace is a privilege. Then he asks Liu Mingxuan, “Boyfriend?”
“Yeah?” She finally looks up from her phone with some confusion. “Ever since you fucked in the copy room after the second quarter numbers came in.”
Xu Si clears his throat. “That,” he says, “wasn’t me.”
Liu Mingxuan’s eyes and mouth form a round “o”.
Through the door, Xu Si can hear the doctor explaining to the family, her voice growing louder as they approach.
“She probably didn’t even hear me,” Liu Mingxuan says, to a Xu Si who is very certain that one thing doctors are supposed to do is hear people.
“Only fell two or three meters…” the doctor’s voice filters in in patches. “…shouldn’t have caused this reaction…any underlying conditions?”
“His partner is already in the room,” is the last thing the doctor says before the family is filing in. “I’ll give you all some time alone with the patient.”
Xu Si glares at Liu Mingxuan. Liu Mingxuan opens her eyes very wide and raises her phone in front of her face. Xu Si hears a whoosh as she defensively answers another email.
Yang Kai’s family make straight for the bed, clustering around it, and Xu Si briefly wonders if he could just leave before they see him. But then one of them, an older woman in an embroidered cardigan, glances toward Xu Si and Liu Mingxuan and gives them a small smile before turning back to the bed. The other woman, maybe Yang Kai’s mother, is brushing Yang Kai’s hair off his forehead and clutching his hand. The man is standing very straight, lined face pale, his hands gripped tight around his jacket.
Xu Si shifts his eyes away. This feels like something he shouldn’t be seeing. For something to do, he pulls out his phone and opens his calendar.
A garbled voice comes over the PA. Liu Mingxuan tilts her head for a moment and turns to Xu Si. “That you?”
Xu Si listens but doesn’t hear his name in the announcement. “Hm?”
“You drove the Lexus here, right? They’re saying it’s blocking the ambulance entrance.”
“Oh.” Xu Si digs in the pocket of his robe and hands Liu Mingxuan the keys. “Thanks.”
Xu Si had never followed an ambulance to the hospital before. He thought he had done rather well for a first attempt.
As Liu Mingxuan starts to go, the older woman approaches them, straightening her cardigan. Her eyes flicker between the two of them but land on Liu Mingxuan. “The doctor says you’re Kaikai’s fiance?”
“Oh,” Liu Mingxuan says, with the sort of restraint in facial expression she still manages fine in front of everyone who isn’t Xu Si. “No. She meant him.” She gestures at Xu Si and, helpfully, leaves.
Yang Kai’s grandmother (it is probably Yang Kai’s grandmother, Xu Si thinks, though he wants to be cognizant of many possible family structures) looks up at Xu Si. Xu Si looks back. He is very aware of the inadequacy of his robe and resists the impulse to tug it lower. He turns his gaze quickly back to the bed, where Yang Kai’s father has sunk into a seat, shaky, one hand clutching his chest. Yang Kai’s mother is gripping the father’s shoulder with one hand and Yang Kai’s arm with the other. She takes an unsteady breath, and the father reaches up to squeeze her hand where it rests on his shoulder. Xu Si watches their fingers twist together. He swallows and tries to shift his eyes away again but doesn’t manage it this time. Suddenly he’s seeing his aunt in the hospital bed, and himself at its side, feeling his own hands clutched tightly around themselves.
“You’re Kaikai’s fiance?” the grandma asks again.
At the word, Yang Kai’s parents both look over. Their eyes meet Xu Si’s.
He shakes himself out of the memory and opens his mouth to deny it.
“I,” he finds himself saying. “Well. That is, we never discussed marriage.”
Which is how, five, he finds himself with Yang Kai’s relatives’ tearful attention and greetings , membership in the greater family group chat, and an invitation to join them for dinner that evening.
Liu Mingxuan finds him in the lobby, everyone having been shooed out by the doctor so Yang Kai can get some rest, and the family having bid Xu Si farewell with final exhortations to come by that evening. “None of us should be alone at times like these,” Yang Kai’s mother had said, with frightful sincerity. Xu Si had summoned a response about the importance of family ties.
“Wow,” Liu Mingxuan says, once caught up to speed.
“I was trapped,” Xu Si says. “I had no choice.”
“Er.”
“Would I abandon a family in need?”
“In need of what?” Liu Mingxuan asks flatly.
“Comfort! Succor.”
“And a fake son-in-law?”
“Boyfriend.”
“So much better.”
“His father looked like he was about to have a heart attack,” Xu Si says in a lower voice. “Wouldn’t the shock of Yang Kai being partnered and then not partnered set him off?”
Liu Mingxuan looks doubtful, but she doesn’t argue further. Xu Si has adopted his expression of earnestness, which mostly looks like indigestion, and is very tiresome to argue with in these moods. She gives him one last, communicative look, drops the car keys in his bag of clothes, and passes the bag to him.
Xu Si stands in line at the enterprising corner stall near his factory, waiting to purchase breakfast. He is now (finally) dressed in the clothes Liu Mingxuan had brought, Lexus retrieved and parked. As he waits, every few seconds, his phone buzzes.
The line ahead of him is not moving very quickly, so he pulls it out. Predictably, the buzzes are all from Yang Kai’s family group chat. He’s begun to predict this in the one hour he’s been a member.
Grandma: Welcome, Xiaosi! Though there is sadness in the moment we find a new joy in new friends.
Auntie Rong: ♥️
(several minutes of silence)
Auntie Ting: Xiaosi, so happy to welcome you to the family, looking forward to meeting you at dinner
Xingyi: hey grandmas not picking up my call whos xiaosi? hows yang kai?
Auntie Ting: Xiaosi is Kaikai’s fiance!
Boyfriend, Xu Si thinks, not typing it yet. He’s also not thrilled about Xiaosi, but he’ll correct that in person. In-person corrections have more impact, and he doesn’t want his first impression in the family chat to be cold or aloof.
Auntie Rong: Boyfriend technically, but he saved Kaikai’s life.
Also untrue, it was the talented doctors and EMTs who had worked their medical miracles on Yang Kai.
Auntie Rong: Kaikai’s still under observation, I’ll tell you more at dinner.
Grandma: He’s in a coma, but they say it’s not that bad. Sorry Xingxing, I was busy starting dinner
Xingyi: a coma???
Auntie Rong: Ma, I thought I would make dinner.
Here follows a discussion about what Xu Si might want for dinner and whose house it would be ideal to eat at. Xu Si confirms that he does like steamed fish, agrees that it would be difficult to date Yang Kai without liking steamed fish (would it?), and leaves the location to them, voicing support for the side arguing that Yang Kai’s mother shouldn’t overwork herself.
After more back and forth, Grandma prevails and it’s agreed the dinner will be at her house. Xu Si confirms the address. He confirms the time. He cringes at himself for thinking of her as “Grandma” already.
Since Mid-Autumn is right around the corner, the hostess gift is easy: mooncakes in specialty flavors in an elegant, tastefully decorated box, and a bottle of high-end baijiu that the older generation will appreciate. Xu Si balances both on his way up the stairs. When he knocks, the door is almost immediately swept open to welcome him with a flood of warm air.
“Xiaosi!” A woman he hasn’t seen before greets him at the door. She looks similar to Yang Kai's mother, with the same round eyes, but her hair is darker and shorter. “Come in–leave your coat there–oh, what a nice coat.”
“I spoke with the hospital,” Yang Kai’s mother’s voice comes from farther inside the apartment, “And they say he’s still doing very well, all vitals are good.”
“That’s wonderful,” Grandma’s voice replies. The rest of her response is lost in a whoosh and sizzle of food hitting a hot pan.
“I’ll take this off your hands,” the new woman offers, taking the box. “You really didn’t need to…” she trails off, reading the flavors. “‘Kyoto hojicha.’” She looks back up and smiles at him. “Sounds like something Kaikai would like.”
Xu Si has been giving his best networking-event smile and greeting but the woman has been too distracted to notice. He inserts the smile now. “They’re from an independent neighborhood bakery in–” he begins to explain when another whoosh cuts him off.
“Xiaosi is here!” she calls toward the back of the apartment.
“It’s Xu Si,” Xu Si says, but she’s already turned to lead him in.
The scene that greets him is quieter than he expected from the noise. Yang Kai’s mother and grandma are in the kitchen, visible through an open doorway. The new woman sets his mooncakes in the kitchen and returns to whisk his baijiu away to the same place, with an admiring noise. Yang Kai’s father is already seated at the table. He greets Xu Si with a nod and Xu Si gives him a networking greeting as well (the spotted-across-a-crowded-room version). He’s relieved to see he has more color in his face now.
“Xiaosi,” Yang Kai’s mother greets him, coming briefly out of the kitchen. Xu Si swallows another “Xu Si” correction, since his boyfriend’s mother can call him whatever she wants, and turns his pleasant smile on her. She bucks the script by taking both his hands in her slightly damp ones. “Thank you for coming, it’ll be so nice to meet you properly. We didn’t even know Kaikai was seeing anyone! This is my sister, Zheng Ting. Dinner’s almost ready,” she assures him, heading back to the kitchen.
Grandma leans her head around the kitchen doorway and waves at him. Xu Si waves back. He can modify the script.
“Xingxing couldn’t come after all,” Zheng Ting says from beside him. “The baby got sick at the last minute. So it’s just us.”
Xu Si connects Xingxing to Xingyi in the group chat and nods, piecing together the context. “Her child’s health is most important, of course.”
Zheng Ting gives him a look but agrees. “I feel like the third wheel,” she confides after a moment where they stand and watch the kitchen and Xu Si weighs several potential conversational routes. “You’re here for that important first meeting of the boyfriend’s parents and his…aunt?” She chuckles.
Xu Si gives his best investors smile. “If you’re important enough to be here you must be important to Yang Kai.”
Dinner does indeed come together quickly. Xu Si is ushered to a seat between Grandma and Zheng Ting–“call me Auntie Ting!” she’d insisted, and he hadn’t thought of an excuse not to–and across from Yang Kai’s parents. The food piled between them could feed at least twice their number, and Xu Si soon finds his plate filled with steamed fish, braised eggplant, and stir-fried vegetables.
He praises the tenderness of the fish and freshness of the vegetables, which is seen as an opening for other topics.
Yang Kai’s mother–Auntie Rong, she’d insisted, following her sister’s fashion–leans forward. “We didn’t get a chance to ask you at the hospital, but–they said you’re the one who rescued poor Kaikai?”
The pleasant expression freezes on Xu Si’s face. He swallows. “Yes.”
That morning had been feeling distant, but the memories are still right there, ready to jump to fore. They do now. The annoyance of running after Yang Kai turning to panic. The terrible, almost comical image of the elevator doors opening and Yang Kai stepping into air. The relief at the elevator cabin being barely a floor away, the fear at Yang Kai’s body crumpled on top of it, not moving. Xu Si’s muscles aching after he’d, somehow, heaved Yang Kai up into the hallway. Neighbors’ doors opening as he tried to wake him.
And then a blur of the ambulance, jumping into his car to follow it, and a long stretch of medical checks and confused questions at the hospital as Xu Si slowly regained his calm.
“And that’s all,” Xu Si finishes. He tries for a somber pleasant expression (but he fails).
There’s a pause, then Auntie Rong leans forward and begins to ask what position Yang Kai had been in when Xu Si reached him, was he sure he hadn’t hit his head, was there any blood. Xu Si answers the same as he had for the doctors.
“That must have been very frightening for you,” Grandma says, after Auntie Rong is finished.
Xu Si opens his mouth. “It was an honor to help someone in need,” he says after a moment.
“Nonetheless.”
Xu Si, at a loss for how to respond, is saved by his PR instincts putting a smile on his face. Grandma smiles back in a way that seems to convey she understands, but Xu Si isn’t sure what. Then she looks back at the others.
“Do you remember when Ah Cheng had his heart attack? And he tried to insist you finish shopping first?”
Uncle Cheng’s eyes crinkle as he smiles at his wife. “It was 11-11. The sales! You’d been talking about it for weeks.”
Auntie Rong smacks him fondly. “I can’t get one of you on sale.”
After that, Xu Si makes it through a few more bites before the conversation turns to typical boyfriend grilling: how long have he and Yang Kai been together? (Xu Si can truthfully say not long.) How are his finances? Is he in a secure job? Does he want kids?
Xu Si settles easily back into networking mode for this. He’s spun the story of his factory’s early success often enough, so he modifies it and brings it out here: an inspiring tale about a young factory owner and an early-career advertising lead trying to prove themselves. He implies that their mutual interest and respect grew over the years, and lets the family fill in the details. If they want to picture a musical crescendo and a sudden spark as his and Yang Kai’s eyes meet over sales numbers, that is all to the best.
Revealing that he’s a factory owner managing his own brand earns appreciative looks, though Grandma is more interested in the shoes than in the role. When he describes being able to look over the factory floor, her eyes sparkle.
“And what about your family, Xiaosi?” Auntie Rong asks, once the financial matters are settled. “Are they here in town?”
“Ah.” Xu Si clears his throat and delivers the usual summary. “Three generations of my family were born and raised here. After my aunt passed a few years ago, now it’s just me.”
There’s a pause. “No parents?” Uncle Cheng asks, as if Xu Si might have forgotten them.
Xu Si does the familiar dance of assuring them that yes, he really has no family, and yes, he has checked.
They take this in in silence.
“Were you and your aunt close?” Auntie Ting asks.
“Yes, I ran the factory with her until she passed.”
“It must be difficult for you now,” Grandma says.
“Ma!” Auntie Rong hisses. “You can’t say things like that. Besides, look at him, Xiaosi clearly does very well for himself.”
“I just meant it must be lonely,” Grandma explains.
Xu Si opens his mouth to assure her it isn’t, and finds that he can’t.
Not that he is lonely, of course. It must be the way everyone’s eyes are on him. The silence goes on too long before Xu Si pulls himself together and gives an elegant shrug. “It’s fine.”
Auntie Rong squeezes his hand. “You have us now,” she says, and leaves Xu Si doused in a cold bucket of guilt while she gets up to clear the dishes.
Xu Si gathers himself after this. He employs the familiar conference tactic of retreating to the restroom to regroup, where he reminds himself that he is there to help a grieving and worried family, not leech off their sympathy with his own little struggles. Which he doesn’t have! He has no struggles. He smooths his expression in the mirror and runs through his mental catalog of conversational options for the rest of the evening.
He resumes his seat at the now-empty table. After a few minutes, Auntie Rong and Uncle Cheng come back from the kitchen, Auntie Ting comes back with refreshments, and Grandma comes back with–
“Oh, Ma! I can’t believe you still have that.”
“Well, digitizing’s such a pain, and I wasn’t going to get rid of them.” Grandma briskly wipes down the already-clean table in front of Xu Si and sets a large binder in front of him, as the others sit back down and Auntie Ting starts cutting up mooncakes.
“I’ve never had these flavors,” she’s saying, “so I thought it’d be fun to split them–”
As Grandma is saying, “The photos only go up to…was it Xiao Zhi’s fifteenth birthday when we had the digital camera?”
And Auntie Rong is saying, “I can’t believe I forgot the baby photos part of having a date over, Kaikai’s never brought a date over.”
A plate with eighths of hojicha and jamocha nut mooncakes is pressed into Xu Si’s hands. Combined with the stress of the evening, the bold green and strong smells make Xu Si’s stomach turn over. “Just let me know if you want more, dear,” Auntie Ting says as Grandma opens the album to the first page and points to a fat little baby. “There he is!”
Xu Si holds tight to his tiny plate and tiny fork as the photo album tour proceeds. The networking analogy is thinning but he can liken this to sitting through an executive’s vacation photos. He makes admiring noises as Grandma turns the pages. The first fat baby is joined by a second, slightly younger–“we had our babies at the same time, near enough”–and Xu Si is treated to an assortment of winter photos of the babies in bright coats and ridiculous hats, looking bundled and puffy like tiny birds. The next photos are toddlers–“oh, we don’t need to see him,” Auntie Ting says, flipping the page past a photo of a man holding the younger toddler–and then into early childhood. Yang Kai becomes recognizable, the shape of his huge youthful smile still an echo in his practiced smiles today. The boy growing up beside him has bright, round eyes and an even bigger smile. Xu Si watches them start school, test the limits of human flight, hold their tiny new cousin–“that’s little Xingxing,” Grandma says–run with sparklers, pose on school trips.
“What is your son’s name?” Xu Si asks Auntie Ting as a demonstration of polite interest, as Grandma wets her finger to flip another page.
“Zheng Zhi,” she says, still looking at the photos. Her voice is proud. “This is right after he won second place at long jump in the regional tournament. And this is Xingyi, our niece,” she adds, pointing to the young girl making a face at the camera while behind her the youth track competition continues. In the next photo, Zheng Zhi is holding the girl above his head while she holds his ribbon above hers. “It’s such a shame they couldn’t come tonight, it’d be so nice for you to meet the other kids.”
Xu Si demurs. Since the children in the photos grew older, exceeding the age of cute babies sitting near each other because their parents set them there and beginning to show real personality and friendship, he’s been keeping his mouth full with bites of mooncake so he doesn’t have to offer much commentary. The rich jamocha flavor is cloying and sits heavily in his mouth. The close childhood shown in the photos is outside Xu Si’s lived experience, but he suspects that kids that grew up as closely as these three seemed to would notice instantly that he wasn’t really dating their cousin.
The album ends on a spread of Mid-Autumn photos: a family photo with the three kids, the boys now teenagers, holding their lanterns aloft, parents in the background, an older man running into frame before the shutter goes off. The very last photo is solid black with a tiny dot of yellow.
“Grandpa was always trying to photograph the moon,” Grandma says, laughing softly. She closes the album.
“This has been so nice,” Auntie Rong says suddenly. “Meeting you of course, Xiaosi, but also just… I know if I was at home right now I’d just be–” she cuts off, shaking her head.
Auntie Ting studies her for a moment. “Why don’t we plan on dinner again tomorrow? That way Xingxing can come and bring Dandan, and Xiao Zhi will be free to come too. He’s on a shift right now,” she explains to Xu Si, who murmurs some sympathy, inferring her son must be working unfortunate hours in the service industry. “And that way you can be around all of us again.” She pats her sister’s hand, then turns to look at Xu Si. “You’ll come, won’t you, Xiaosi?”
Xu Si looks around the four of them. They’re all looking back, Auntie Ting eagerly, Auntie Rong mistily, Uncle Cheng warmly, Grandma expectantly. An invitation back: this was a success, the networking part of Xu Si’s mind says happily. Oh no, the other part of his mind says.
Xu Si puts on his best smile.
“I’d love to.”