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Murong Yao had never thought he would be welcome at Four Seasons Manor. He hadn't thought he ought to be welcome, even; he hadn't thought he'd want to even go there, to be honest.

Four Seasons Manor was the Gay Place in the City, as much as the bar district and the support centre, the offices the action committees and charities worked out of, or the QUILTBAG clubs at the City's two universities.

They were for queer people, and Murong Yao was probably a straight as anybody could be. Murong Yao would no more go to one of these places than he would go to the core of the Indian quarter for Holi. Murong Yao was so straight, he was probably a Kinsey One; he loved his girlfriend so much he had cut off his own arm to free himself, not because he didn't want to die (he very much did want to die at that point), but because she was waiting for him at the end of this mind-breaking adventure.

Murong Yao loved Chilong; there had never been a shred of doubt that he would marry her, that they fitted together like puzzle pieces, and that all impediments were strictly temporary. There wasn't a shred of doubt right now that, among all the places and people that would welcome him for the Mid-Autumn Festival this year of all years, he would be with her; he would go to the one place that she picked, or stay home with her.

It didn't matter as long as he was with her.

The business and politics of the City's queer community was as far away to him as the beautiful moon tonight, and a lot less relevant.

"… of course you're more than welcome to come along," Gu Qingzhang was saying, "but you will probably have dozens of invitations already. Thank you again for today; I would love to make this a permanent part of our programme. The kids adore you."

"Of course they do," Chilong said, proudly. She'd arrived about eight minutes ago to pick him up after giving a lesson to the sick and disabled kids that came to this health centre to be treated, and to train up in whatever they felt would help them deal with the world. Gu Qingzhang (who, apparently, had been impacted by the same environmental disaster as those kids, but a long time before them) had organised everything for them; he had the assets of the company which had caused the disaster as a nest egg, but was brilliant at getting both donations and publicity to build on that base.

"They're good kids," Murong Yao said, "and I'd be honoured to go on teaching them. Being enthusiastic helps them face all the difficulties that life squares off against them. Be it basketball or breakdance; that's what they come here for, and that's what makes all the rest worth the while."

There had been a basketball guy giving a lesson before him; a tall Chinese fellow with a mainland accent who had, as far as Murong Yao had gathered, been a professional player in China some years ago, but then fell afoul of the powers that be.

"Where are we going tonight?" Murong Yao asked Chilong, because even though he'd still had a few interesting questions from a very eager kid to answer, he should probably leave Gu Qingzhang to his own devices. He had mentioned setting up a table at the Mid Autumn Festival event at Four Seasons Manor, and that would be a lot of work before their party there started.

"Nothing really speaks to me so far," Chilong said. "I feel most of the invitations are just due to your newly discovered fame, and the people will make a terrible fuss. What was the invitation Shulin extended?"

She used Gu Qingzhang's old-fashioned by-name; Murong Yao found it weird. They weren't living in some wuxia fantasy, after all.

"It's karaoke night at Four Seasons Manor!" the kid with all the question said, cheerfully. "A-Fei is going to sing!"

"That was your basketball trainer, right?" Murong Yao asked.

"Yes, and he's a good handyman, and really excellent at kungfu," the kid said, their enthusiasm shining from their entire face. "He's my friend! I got to help him restore their house at the village where we were in summer."

This kid, little Feng Yangliu, was genuinely non-binary; Gu Qingzhang had explained it before Murong Yao started his lesson. With the non-binary people Murong Yao had met before, you could usually tell which part of the binary they had started out from; big beards or large boobs made it very easy to misgender them. Not so the kid — they were too young to show any serious markers of sex, they intentionally avoided any marker of gender, so they were just 'they'.

They were a very enthusiastic little person, and as far as Murong Yao had gathered, people were queuing up to offer them the wherewithal for a bright future. The kid had been very fast on the uptake during the lesson just now, and had understood the basics of breakdance at once. Murong Yao suspected it was because they wanted to understand the thing, not just look cool. They were totally unconcerned about cool and cringe, and that was probably the secret of their success.

"Oh, let's go there," Chilong said. "I hear the parties at Four Seasons Manor are spectacular, but I've never been; there wasn't a reason to go."

"The non-reason probably being that we are straight," Murong Yao said. "Perhaps we shouldn't intrude on other cultures' or sub-cultures' spaces. Just as it's annoying when disabled spaces get invaded by people who go Oh, aren't we all a little bit autistic… and so on."

"If you're invited," Gu Qingzhang said, archly, "you're not invading. Invading is what Russia does in Ukraine; they weren't invited."

"Your comparison is a bit harsh," Murong Yao said. "Even if I wanted to go there and take part in a party regardless of whether they want me, I'm not going to throw bombs or flood a large part of the place."

"Wen-laoban would kill you if you tried," A-Liu giggled. "Even though he says there is a reason that one British slang word for loo is 'bog'."

They said in in English; there was a lot of English in the City not just because it was a very international place, but also because during colonial times, a lot of Scottish people had come to live here when their own bogs in the Highlands had been drained and depopulated for the sake of sheep and cattle.

"That's where the flooding happens in Four Season Manor?" Murong Yao said with a chuckle.

"Yes!" A-Liu said, beaming. "Too often, and Wen-laoban always gets livid. He hangs a sign on the door that says 'BOG' in English, too."

Chilong laughed. "Wen-laoban sounds like a fun person. He's the martial arts instructor, isn't he?"

"No, he's the one who does events and teaches cooking classes," A-Liu said. "The martial arts teacher is Zhou-shifu. He is very strict and definitely not fun. Wen-laoban calls him 'A-Xu', which is very funny, but nobody dares to laugh, or you do a hundred extra repetitions."

"Both the martial arts school and the cooking lessons," Gu Qingzhang said, with that almost malicious smile of his, "are mostly patronised by straight people and their offspring, so you'll hardly be the first outsider to cross their thresholds. Which are high and traditional, by the way."

"Good thing I'm just missing an arm, not a leg," Murong Yao said, and with that involuntary quip, accepting the invitation was a done deed.

"I'm here with the car," Chilong said, "so if I can take any materials for your table in my trunk, just tell me."

Murong Yao and Chilong had their own technique for carrying the stuff they needed between them in a laundry basket that still allowed him to use the considerable strength in his remaining arm to keep her from doing too much of the heavy lifting; and so they got their laundry basket from the car, loaded it up, took a scrap of paper with the super secret instructions for How To Approach The Manor By Car fro Gu Qingzhang. and drove off.

A-Liu was riding with them; they had their own hard little pillow thing to sit on the back seat of a chair. "It's for smaller children really," they said, "but Auntie Yangli bought this for me and said I was so small and skinny I still had to use it as to not slip out of the seat belt."

"That's important," Chilong said, "we don't want you flying around in the car when I brake hard or turn a sharp corner."

"Do you drive like that?" A-Liu asked, and Murong Yao mumbled "Yes," while Chilong declared "Oh, absolutely not, my dear, don't worry!" and as if in demonstration, honked, turned a corner and shot into traffic. Someone else honked, and a bike riksha driver flipped her the finger, but she turned up the radio and accelerated as much as City traffic would allow.

"We have separate position in our budget for speeding tickets," Murong Yao said, and A-Liu giggled even more than they already had.

"It means we get places faster," Chilong said, weaving in and out of lanes. "We can do more creative things with our time than sit in traffic."

"I wouldn't claim I'm too important for rules," Murong Yao said, knowing that she was secretly of that opinion. It warmed his heart — she'd break all the rules for him because she thought him just as special as he thought her.

"But you are!" A-Liu said. "You have a gold medal! A real one! From Paris! With a bit of the Eiffel tower in it, even."

"That's not gold, though, that's iron," Murong Yao said.

"Can you show it to us the next time?" A-Liu asked. "I can get Chun-er's dad to protect you if you do, he's a policeman and has really good kung-fu."

"I'll make sure nobody threatens my fiancé and his gold medal," Chilong said, menacingly, as she cut in front of a taxi and then shot into the small alley between two building sites that Gu Qingzhang's map said would bring them to the rear gates of Four Seasons Manor.

"That guy in the caterpillar looked really surprised," A-Liu mused while they took the next corner.

"You are doing this on purpose to see if you can scare the kid," Murong Yao murmured.

"I'm scared of nothing," A-Liu said; of course they had heard. "Except maybe evil grannies. The people I staid with last year had two of those. Two!! Imagine poor A-Ling, with both his grannies being so scary. Ouyang Zizhen whose family I staid with after that had a lovely great-granny, but she died on account of being over a hundred years old. People don't live much longer than that."

"Over a hundred years is very impressive," Chilong told them.

"Oh, I remember old Madam Ouyang," Murong Yao said. "I performed at the wedding of one of her grandsons; it must have been an older cousin of your little friend Zizhen."

"He has a lot of cousins and aunties and great-uncles and the like," A-Liu said. "And they're all very nice. Some of them are a bit convy — coveral — like rules a bit too much, like Zizhen's dad; his auntie says he only talks boilerplate, and far too much of that. I don't know what boilerplate is, but it sounds hard and heavy?"

"Pre-printed words," Chilong said. "Something you can write so to be on the safe side."

"Yeah, he likes to be on the safe side," A-Liu said. "But he's nice. I'm going to stay with them a bit later, after the New Year, but now I'm staying with A-Hui and his dad until the little aunt of A-Fei's coffee boyfriend and her husband Zhan-gege come back from their holiday; I'm going to stay with them for a bit then. I can live in the coffee boyfriend's old room; he has a nice huge stuffed tiger!"

"Wouldn't you want a home of your own where you can stay?" Chilong asked; it was perhaps not the nicest thing to ask a displaced kid like that, but before Murong Yao could make a face at her, the kid answered, "I don't have much stuff and they all want to be the nicest, so that's all right. I wish I could stay with A-Fei, but their bus is very small and they go places when I have to be in school, and his doctor boyfriend doesn't like to be tied down. But I got to stay with them a few times when they were at the village and did the house and I even got to try their durian. It tasted great!"

Murong Yao had stopped understanding anything a few minutes ago; he knew all the words, but they did not make much sense together.

"Better you than me," he said, because to him durian was definitely an acquired taste — one he never had acquired, at that.

Chilong laughed, braked the car, and honked loudly. They were stopped in front of a nondescript sheet metal gate, and after a moment, the gate swung open, and they drove through.

Behind the gate was a parking lot where a number of people were unloading their vehicles, and behind the parking lot was another gate, this one ornate, traditional and crowned with a curved roof. The gate itself was red.

"Good grief," Murong Yao said, "no wonder people talk about throwing bombs — the parking lot alone could accommodate a high-rise worth tens of millions."

"The Scorpion used to do that sort of thing," A-Liu said, unbuckling themselves before getting out of the car, "but now he has three kids himself who take classes here, and he works with the Manor instead of against it. Look, there's A-Xiang! She's Wen-laoban's daughter and will know where we should take the stuff."

They waved, and a young woman in jeans and a very purple sweater came over, started chatting, and gave instructions when Chilong told her that they were bringing the material's for the DETOXIFY!! stall.

"Shulin puts everybody to work," A-Xiang giggled, and then she did a double take when Murong Yao picked up his side of the laundry basket. "But you're Murong Yao! That's a whole new level, even for Shulin."

"Why?" Murong Yao asked. "Because I only have one arm?"

"Nope," A-Xiang said. "But you're the City's first ever Paralympic gold medallist, you were on the first page of all the newspapers, the magazines queue up to get interviews with you, everybody is so proud and excited, and Shulin? He makes you carry pamphlets."

"I gave some of the kids in his centre an introduction to breakdancing," Murong Yao said, "and then he invited us to come along to the karaoke night you are having here for Mid Autumn Festival, and of course we offered to transport stuff because we have a car."

"And they transported me," A-Liu giggled. "I am stuff!"

"Come on, small stuff, we have a lot of stuff to do," A-Xiang said, leading them all towards the traditional gate.

"Great about the new lane, isn't it?" she said. "Before the new development, there was no getting through the warehouses there; all deliveries had to come through the narrow streets and alleys of the old town. But now, we have the lane through the development, and we're keeping it. My dad twisted somebody's arm via Scorpy's old connections, or he gave them a tiny parcel of land that belonged to the Manor to round off their plans, or maybe both."

"What are they building there?" Chilong asked.

"Mostly residential, with commercial in the lower floors," A-Xiang said. "Like Changming Towers, just a bit more modern."

She opened the gate, and they entered another world. This was a traditional Chinese family home, where 'family' meant several generations of brothers, cousins and their wives, with twice as many servants, and horses in the stables. All these buildings and out-buildings were now dedicated to crafts, cultures and activism, events and martial arts. They skirted a courtyard or two that looked lived-in and comfy, like an actual family home, to come into a large kitchen courtyard which was incredibly busy, with a white-haired, young-faced man directing several dozens of delivery people and handymen.

"Zhang Ping!" he was calling. "Chen Chou! The mooncakes go over there; we are selling them for actual money this time."

Someone had mentioned that name before, hadn't they?

"Shulin's brother," A-Xiang explained. "They're part of the same polycule, but never at the same time — that's why the geeks call it a sedoretu. These people are incredibly complex, but they're happy, and you always know who they are talking about, so never mind."

"I wouldn't have minded either way," Murong Yao said. All this information went right over his head. He just wanted to deposit this basket of pamphlets, find a drink and some mooncakes, and look at the full moon with Chilong and be happy. Perhaps people would sing love songs in the background, perhaps somebody would drop by with a refill later on, and other than that, he could be happy and anonymous among all these gay people and sedoretus and whatnot.

***

His plans didn't quite come off without a hitch; people recognised him, congratulated him, and then went on with their business. Chilong, however, started helping Shulin with setting up his stall and looking after his incredibly adorable toddler daughter who was just at the age where you couldn't leave them alone for even one second. Her name was Teddy, short for Theodosia, and when he watched Chilong playing and laughing with her, he felt his heart painfully squeeze and joyfully jump in turns.

"Do you think there is a reason you and she can't have kids?" said Shulin, very quietly turning up by his shoulder. Murong Yao almost jumped. "Newsflash — being a one-armed paralympian doesn't preclude you from being a great dad. Being a one-armed paralympian in a situation where fertility is an issue because of whatever accident cost you your arm still doesn't preclude you from being an amazing adoptive dad."

He handed Murong Yao a bottle of kombucha and declared "It's about to start, though," before taking his place behind the trestle table where he had spread his materials.

"Scuse me, coffee coming through!" somebody called, shouldering Murong Yao aside. Chilong grabbed his elbow with her free hand and pulled him out of the way.

That was a lot of coffee coming through, on a large tray with a short guy who wore black cargo bermudas and combat boots. It was certainly a fashion choice; might be nice for a breaking routine, even, Murong Yao mused.

"We can sit in the kitchen courtyard, away from all the bustle, if you want to," Chilong said as more and more people were streaming in through the main gate, but Murong Yao was good for a little bit longer. People recognised him, he told them he'd been given a lesson to the kids from Shulin's project, and yes, maybe he would dance later. There was a stage there, after all. The basketball coach from earlier whose praises A-Liu had sung so loudly had just finished re-tightening all the screws, came crawling out from underneath, and was greeted by a preppy guy who handed him a glass of brown liquid with ice cubes in, which he downed in one go.

The stage called to him. After all that had happened, after all the hype and the fame and people pestering him, the existence of a stage still called to Murong Yao.

"The goth guy over there at the mixer is Scorpy," Shulin said beside him. "If you go tell him what music you want, and at what point during the evening you want to perform, he'll get everything ready. He's in charge of music at these events."

"Somebody mentioned he had three kids?"

"Never stopped anybody from being a good DJ," said another guy who had joined Shulin at the table, talking to people about traditional medicine and why it was the best solution in these cases. He wore a bulky green hoodie with the logo of Shulin's project and the kind of colourful trousers tourists bought in Thailand.

"Do you have kids as well?" Murong Yao asked.

"Mostly no," the guy said, "but one has attached themselves to A-Fei, one of my partners. They're the most amazing kid ever and stayed with us sometimes at Shulin's village in the summer."

"Then you're the so-called doctor boyfriend," said Murong Yao, finally putting in the connections. "A-Liu mentioned you, and a coffee boyfriend, as belonging with his friend A-Fei, who just came crawling out from under the stage."

"We gave A-Liu a ride here," Chilong supplied.

"That's what the Wang-Lan kids call us," the guy in green said. His face was a bit vague, as if he didn't know exactly what he was doing, and he wore glasses with big wire rims. "Actually, A-Fei is Di Feisheng, our coffee boyfriend is Fang Duobing, and I am Li Lianhua."

"Erm, hello," Murong Yao said. "I'm Murong Yao, which you probably know, and the lady over there teaching Teddy to tie a bow is my fiancée Chilong, who deserves much more attention and recognition than she usually gets."

"Why?" Li Lianhua asked, all sweet and harmless.

"Because I love her and she is amazing," Murong Yao said, "but that doesn't concern other people. But her support is everything — without her, I'm nothing. Without her, I would probably be rotting in some ditch."

"Your famous accident," Li Lianhua said. "I guess it was much more dramatic than you usually let on. Now that I met you, I truly get what a quiet and sensible guy you are. The usual inspiration porn story line doesn't apply to you."

Murong Yao blinked at him.

"Don't mind him," said yet another guy who looked harmless and fluffy in quite a different way, but was probably as sharp and dangerous as both Shulin and this Li Lianhua were. "They seem to be the TCM mind reading contingent, but they're actually just very good at observing people. Neither of them works miracles. You don't need to worry."

"And you are?" Murong Yao asked. He felt like he was drowning in fluffy organic guys who he would never have thought were gay.

"Lan Jue, called Peizhi," the new guy said. "Shulin's boyfriend. One of them. Sort of."

"The entire polycule hinges around him," Li Lianhua said. "There are compromises and accommodations, and they all have the central objective of keeping Peizhi happy."

"Same as your two guys orbit around you," Lan Jue said, with a smile at Li Lianhua.

"They do have a solid relationship in and of themselves by now," Li Lianhua said.

Then, he looked at Murong Yao.

"This must be so weird for you. All these gay polycules and chosen families."

"You do seem to have more kids than any straight people of our acquaintance," Murong Yao admitted. "That has me confused."

"Oh, that's Mowen's fault," Lan Jue said airily. "My other boyfriend. He is very bi, and he has five kids with two wives and one girlfriend."

"And they all go to the same school," Li Lianhua supplied. "The former Jesuit School in the colonial district; it's very good."

"I gather people are falling over themselves to offer A-Liu the tuition so they can go there as well?"

"If they didn't, then the few remaining Jesuits would certainly waive the tuition," Shulin said. "A-Liu is a phenomenon. Just to think that only a few years ago, the people in charge more or less swept them out with the garbage…"

"All those kids you met today," Lan Jue added. "And Teddy — Shulin adopted her because she had nobody and needed care 24/7 at first. You wouldn't think it, looking at her now."

"Tell me more about that school," Chilong said. "Is it the kind where you need to enrol your future kid before you think about stopping to take the pill?"

Lan Jue laughed, and Shulin said, "No, but I already enrolled Teddy for their pre-kindergarten class," and then Li Lianhua said, "I think the karaoke is about to start. If you take a seat on the stairs of that building beside the gate — it's the office for the martial arts school and the cooking classes — then you should have a good view. Take another bottle of kombucha; Shulin brews it with secret herbs."

Music was starting up, and the white-haired owner of the place (Wen-laoban?) took to the stage to welcome everybody and subtly threaten against several kinds of misbehaviour he didn't want to see — "anything spontaneous from Xue Yang, and please, no more marriage proposals!"

"Good thing we are already engaged," Chilong said to Murong Yao, smiling.

"And I don't even know who Xue Yang is, which may be a good thing," Murong Yao said.

One of the kids — a young man who looked as if he was in the last year of high school or thereabouts — brought folding chairs and little tables for the guests who had been granted the privilege of the office stairs, and Murong Yao sat with Chilong. He saw a few pairs of eyes stray into their direction, but nobody bothered them, and nobody took uninvited photos. There had been phone cameras when he was working Shulin's stall, but that had, apparently, been considered 'working' and hence fair game.

The first singer who took the stage was a young woman who sang 'My Girl' for — well, her girl, probably; then followed a few more or less inspired men and groups of men who sang what even to Murong Yao read as international gay classics — YMCA, I Will Survive, Smalltown Boy and the like. In the middle of this, the MC at the mixing table (Scorpion?) asked the owners of the Manor to the stage, and there was something like a quiet groan going through the crowd.

The white-haired Wen-laoban really couldn't sing. Really. It was painful. The two of them attempted Yesterday, by the Beatles, not one of the most difficult songs in existence, but he managed to butcher it terribly, barely held up vocally by his husband, who was a much better singer.

"The party hasn't started before Wen-laoban got to sing," somebody at the bottom of the office stairs snarked; it was a geek goth guy with an unhinged smirk wearing one cycling glove, his arm slung around the coffee guy with the cargo bermudas from earlier.

"It's a small price to pay," the coffee guy said, "and part of the ritual. Look, the Lotus guys are up next! They are fucking brilliant. I hope Di Feisheng gets to dance again!"

"I hope he flashes his nip piercing again, that's hot," the geek goth guy smirked.

Murong Yao looked at Chilong, a bit lost; she smiled and patted his hand.

In fact, next up was the basketball trainer and handyman from earlier, A-Fei, with his coffee boyfriend and his doctor boyfriend, as A-Liu had called them; the coffee boyfriend brought a bar stool on which the doctor boyfriend sat, legs crossed, in a pose of pouting sajiao, and then the other two took turns singing Leonard Cohen's "I'm Your Man" to him, giving it a competitive note; from the abject declaration of hopeless heterosexual devotion, it turned into a series of offers meant to trump each other, each more outrageous sounding than the last. They knelt in front of him, they dramatically put their hands on his thighs, they looked up into his face that he had turned towards the moon — and when the song mentioned the moon being too bright for the first time, the crowd gave a quiet cheer.

Compared to everything that had been done before these three guys took the stage, this was stellar, brilliant and moving. They managed to stay serious throughout; they only changed one line to make it work for two men imploring a third one, rather than a man begging a woman, and during the instrumental part, the coffee boyfriend wormed his way up the side of Li Lianhua's leg, while A-Fei did dance, as the little coffee guy had hoped.

And how he danced! You could probably breakdance to something this slow, it had been done before, but it was certainly a choice — which A-Fei pulled off brilliantly. While his moves were nowhere near competition standard, he knew what he was doing, his body was athletic and well-trained, and he had the confidence to throw himself on the boards of the stage, repeatedly, and then lie mock-panting at Li Lianhua's feet.

"Damn," Murong Yao said, "they are really good. I wonder if the doctor boyfriend will do anything except sitting pretty, though."

"He's good at that," Chilong said, smiling as Li Lianhua was looking up at the moon, pretending there weren't two men at his feet worshipping him.

However, after the second verse and chorus, this version repeated the instrumental bridge once more, and now Li Lianhua got off his stool to slow-waltz over the whole width of the stage, first with A-Fei who held him tight, an intimate hand steering his hip as if to make sure he got this right, and then with the coffee boyfriend (Fang Duobing? What a name!), who moved a bit livelier and did have to keep Li Lianhua from stepping on his toes once or twice. Then, they sang the first few lines once more, in unison, all three together, and then faded out after the line with the masks.

The applause was louder and more lively than any before.

They took several bows before jumping off the stage.

"And now," Wen-laoban declared through a microphone while standing by the DJ table, "you can go and get your mooncakes at the charity tables. The mooncakes are provided by the Detective Noodle ramen shop and traditional bakery, and are the same at every table; you simply pick who you want your money to go to. To give you time to enjoy your food and have a drink, the next set will only start in 90 minutes; and at the end of that, we have a very special surprise for you."

"That will be me," Murong Yao murmured to Chilong. "I'll get the drinks," she offered, "and you get the mooncakes; we meet up again here in ten minutes?"

Of course, he had to go and buy the mooncakes from Shulin's people; after all, they were the reason he was here, and they were something he could understand better than Trans Youth In Crisis, or AIDS long-term survivor research.

A-Liu was proudly selling the mooncakes with another kid their age handing them out, a very polite little gentleman with a neat haircut and a little blazer. He looked a bit like Shulin's boyfriend Peizhi, so probably was his kid.

He put each order in a little paper bag with the logo of the charity, and a pamphlet, and then handed them over with a smile. "It's a great honour to have you here, sir," he said to Murong Yao with the utmost gravity and he gave him his bag. "I hope you're enjoying yourself."

"I am," Murong Yao said, surprising himself. "Your basketball trainer is quite a good dancer, for an amateur. I was impressed by their performance. Leonard Cohen is certainly a choice."

"A-Fei is very good," A-Liu said. "He's good at kung-fu, too, and at jumping on roofs."

"Qinggong," the little gentleman said. "Or parkours. And he walks on stilts to paint ceilings. He may be an amateur at dancing; but he can do a dozen things well enough to get paid for them."

"You two like him a lot, do you?" Murong Yao asked. "Well, I will say — he is good. I was impressed by his choice, and how he pulled it off."

"He danced for his doctor boyfriend," A-Liu said, quietly. "They both really love him as much as the song says. I wish…"

"Yes?" Murong Yao said, guessing what the kid wanted to say.

"Ah, nothing," A-Liu said, sensible far beyond their years. "I am a lucky kid as it is — I am alive, I am getting well again with Gu-daifu's medicines, and everybody is making sure I am going to get a great education. They all respect that I don't know if I'm a boy, a girl, or something else entirely, and let me have all the time in the world to decide."

"You could take turns," Murong Yao says, with never an inkling whether the suggestion was politically correct at all, "I have seen dancers who switched on the go, while they were performing."

"You must teach me!" A-Liu said. "You are coming back, are you?"

"Definitely!" Murong Yao promised.

***

After that, the evening got a little bit hazy for a while because Chilong had gotten a bottle of artisanal baijiu right from the brewer who traditionally had dibs on selling his wares at the Four Seasons Manor events; the moon was very beautiful, and Murong Yao was very much in love.

"If I could sing at all," he told her, "I would sing their song to you, too."

"Perhaps better if you don't," she said, but smiled sweetly.

"I'll stick to dancing," he then said, leaning back and taking a nibble of his mooncake. It was a sensible one, with red bean paste and pieces of lotus seeds; there was also a snow skin one with matcha paste filling and pistachios.

Murong Yao felt almost sober again after he had eaten his share of both kinds.

The moon was hanging over the curved edges of Four Seasons Manor's traditional roofs, and the music that the Scorpion was playing in the interim was mostly gentle Mandopop, love songs and songs about the vagaries of the jianghu, taken from wuxia soundtracks, most likely.

"This is a nice place for it," he decided. "It's a good thing we took up their invitation and didn't go, I don't know, to some expensive restaurant or to some rich people place in the foothills."

"The rich people all come here, if they can," said a new voice, young and female. "At least I do. But fancy meeting you here!"

Murong Yao looked at her. It was the mayor's daughter, Zhao Ling, nicknamed Qing-er (for some reason). He had met her at the reception when he'd come back from Paris.

"Shulin brought us," he answered. "Good evening to you, Miss Zhao, and a happy Mid-Autumn Festival! How did you end up here, instead of in the foothills, too?"

"I went to school with Fang Duobing over there — the one who's carrying that big box together with the tall guy. That's Di Feisheng, one of his lovers. The other is…"

"… Li Lianhua, I know," Murong Yao said. "I already met them, through Shulin, and through little Feng Yangliu, who apparently worships the ground A-Fei treads on. Di Feisheng did basketball training just before I started my break-dance lesson at Shulin's centre. I think I'll keep on doing it; these kids are so enthusiastic! They are like kittens who know full well somebody fished them from the river."

"Ahh, I see," Qing-er said with a sweet smile, "you joined the A-Liu fan club. That kid is brilliant; I hope people won't swamp them with hopes and prospects and great expectations until they get overwhelmed. A-Liu deserves to be ordinary for a bit, too."

"That's a very sensible insight," Chilong said, "are you sure you don't want to change your major to early education after all?"

"Chilong-jie!" the mayor's daughter exclaimed. "I didn't see you here. Do you have a moment? I've got to show you something!"

"You know each other?" Murong Yao asked, astonished.

"Oh, we have some traditional music classes together," Chilong said. "I've been tutoring Qing-er on the pipa, too."

She got up.

"I'll be back soon," she said, vanished with Qing-er to the kitchen courtyard, and did not return while the night fell in earnest, the moon stood starkly against the black sky, and people where draped all over each other, talking quietly.

There was a group of cheerful ladies in red dancing through the crowd next, in great cheer, waving drinks, making their way to the Scorpion's table, and greeting him effervescently.

"They're all lesbians, though," said a voice from inside the shadows of the martial arts office; it was Li Lianhua, bringing out a platter of mooncakes that looked different from the ones the charity stalls sold. Home-made, and somewhat odd-coloured; but that could be blamed on the moonlight.

"Yes, why?" Murong Yao said.

"Well, they are beautiful?" Li Lianhua said.

"What is that to me? I'm with Chilong; I wouldn't suddenly go and make a pass at strange women."

"Don't you find them attractive at all?" Li Lianhua asked, stepping out from the shadows. He was wearing grey hanfu now, loose trousers and a traditionally wrapped shirt, with a half-length robe over it.

"No?" Murong Yao said. "I'm with Chilong; why should I find other women attractive? It may sound odd to you queer people who define themselves by their sexual interest and gender identities, but I'm just a very simple straight guy. I have been with Chilong since highschool, I love my girlfriend and am going to marry her before Spring Festival, and I'm simply not interested in other women."

Li Lianhua gave a little chuckle that sounded positively malicious.

"You've really never been interested in any other women? Not even when you were fourteen, confused, and full of sap?"

"No. When I was fourteen, I trained for my first proper breakdance competition."

Li Lianhua put a few of his mooncakes on the plate where the matcha filled snowskin one had been, and pointed up at a roof. "There, do you see them, recklessly wandering on the edge to be closer to the moon, drinking heaven knows what evil spirits while they do? That's my lovely men, Xiaobao and A-Fei; I love them very much and have promised to spend the rest of my life with them. I have given my entire future to them as a hostage for their affection."

Murong Yao felt a very big 'but' coming.

"But — I have had other men before them, I have been with women, too, I have even been engaged to one. Saying I will spend my life with them is a choice. While you sound like you never had one."

"What do you mean?" Murong Yao grumbled.

"You're not attracted to women; you love Chilong in particular, and the rest of them could just as well be paper dolls?"

"Yes, I said so," Murong Yao said, feeling a bit contrary. "I know some straight guys will be after any woman they find attractive, but I'm not Donald bloody sleazebag Trump!"

"Congratulations," Li Lianhua said, very maliciously, "and welcome among us queer people. You appear to be something that's called demisexual — only attracted to one person, or very very few in the course of your life, and only ever because they are them. Towards all others, you are practically asexual. Aces and demis definitely belong under the queer umbrella."

"You!!!" Murong Yao sputtered. "You don't get to define me — what happened to people getting to determine their own identities that you queer people always go on about?"

"We queer people of course define ourselves," Li Lianhua said airily, "which is why I know I am pansexual, Xiaobao is still questioning what he may be, and only A-Fei is utterly certain he's completely gay. I only suggest you might look up the term on the internet, and compare it to your lived experience. Enjoy the mooncakes — the rest are for my lovely men!"

He started off towards the roof where the two shadows were effortlessly jumping over ridges and horns, bottles waving in the moonlight.

Before Murong Yao could spot his shadow appearing beside them, Chilong and Qing-er returned, wearing different clothes as well, pink fluffy, cloudy dresses with teal trim that gave Tang dynasty vibes. "We're going to play the pipa later on," Chilong said. "One of the Scorpion's ladies wants to sing a Chappell Roan song in a traditional Chinese version, and they wanted another pipa player. The second set is a bit more original, not really just karaoke. Oh, more mooncakes?"

"Li Lianhua left them," Murong Yao said. "First he claimed I was queer, and then he gave me some of the mooncakes he had made for his men. I don't really get the guy."

"Be afraid," Qing-er giggled. "Be very afraid. I'll see you by the stage stairs in twenty, Chilong-jie!"

She flounced off to talk to the little coffee goth and his geek goth boyfriend. Apparently, she knew almost everybody here.

The Mandopop playlist stopped, and the stage was take over — by a bunch of kids? Of course, they got to stay up late tonight, but these had all changed into pale blue polo shirts and looked very serious and determined.

"How cute," Chilong said. "When we have kids, we have to send them to the same school; Shulin assures me I don't have to enrol them before birth."

"You think we will?" Murong Yao said. She had never talked about it so matter-of-factly.

"I hope so," she said. "I would love to. And if there is really anything that remained from — from what we both went through, then I am sure Shulin can help us with the fertility stuff. And if not, then I'm sure he'll find us a kid like Teddy. We'll be fine."

Murong Yao looked at her, at the moon over the roof where the three Lotus guys were now sitting together, cuddling drunkenly, and felt that alone among these people, his girlfriend literally hung the moon.

"We will be," he agreed, and then the children began to sing — classical western music, European folk songs about the moon filtered through the art of some terribly famous long-dead composers. There was a French one, one in German, and finally one in a Slavonic language, Murong Yao had no idea which.

The children left the stage to wild applause, and then Shulin and Peizhi came on to sing 'Dear Theodosia' from the musical 'Hamilton', but not as karaoke, either — a guy in black with a dizi and a guy in white with a guqin accompanied them. They had come in during the intermission, a bit before Qing-er turned up, bringing one of the blue polo shirt kids.

These two went on playing after Shulin and Peizhi had bowed out, and then two very tall guys came and juggled iron chains while they still played and then Chilong got up to meet Qing-er, who was standing by the stairs to the stage with two pipas, and they accompanied a young-faced white haired woman (a relation of Wen-laoban's perhaps?) wearing red, who sang 'Casual' by Chappell Roan as if it truly were a traditional Chinese song. It came over exceptionally well.

And then, A-Xiang from earlier turned up again and told Murong Yao he might get ready; he would be up last, as the high point of the evening. She was wearing a frilly purple dress now, but still was very no-nonsense.

He talked to the Scorpion about his music choice, he warmed up and stretched in the kitchen courtyard, and then he lurked by the stairs while Wen-laoban took the microphone and declared, "As a very special treat, we have the great honour to welcome the City's very first Paralympic gold medallist, breakdancer Murong Yao!" and then his music started, and Murong Yao knew nothing more, just his music and his body and the moon.

He only came back to himself a while late when he was back at his table, with Chilong, Wen-laoban and Shulin. He had large water bottle in his hand, almost empty, and vaguely remembered having made his way through a jubilant crowd of people.

Chilong and Wen-laoban were talking about the Manor as a wedding venue, and Shulin had been drawing schematics on a literal napkin.

"I am ravenous," Murong Yao declared, shaking his head. "Welcome back," Chilong giggled. "There are still mooncakes left over — from Li Lianhua, you said."

Murong Yao nodded and took one, rudely taking a large bite without cutting it up first.

"No!!" Shulin shouted, but it was too late. Murong Yao had already chewed and swallowed when the burn reached his perception. The mooncake was filled with ham and kimchee, and not the mild kimchee for Westerners!

"Help!" he yelped, weakly. "It's weird. It's hot. Water, please!"

"Water won't help," Shulin said, dashing away to come back with a few bottles of fruity milk drinks that kids usually liked. Murong Yao bolted down two of them before he could speak properly again.

"I heard about Jiangsu style savoury mooncakes," he managed to say, "but these are assault weapons!"

Chilong had taken a very careful bite. "Extremely tasty, if you don't wolf down half a mooncake in one bite," she said. She took a knife and cut open the others, and everybody had a very careful taste. There were red bean paste with Sichuan flakes, braised pork floss and radish, and finally mashed avocado with wasabi.

"These," Murong Yao said, "are a menace to humanity. How does he get such ideas, even is he is from Jiangsu or something?"

Shulin laughed. "Because he's Li Lianhua?" he said. "Welcome to our brand of madness. You will like it here, even if you are are completely straight."

"Li Lianhua said I might be something called demisexual," Murong Yao murmured, and Chilong nodded quietly. "I love you, too," she said.

Up on the roof, Li Lianhua and his men had been joined by a cat. Li Lianhua looked down at them, and waved at them with a mooncake in his hand.

"Okay," Murong Yao said, vaguely.

And it really was.-