Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

For the oldest FTL hub in existence, Jianghu Station was in surprisingly good repair. Its status as the location of the first faster-than-light experiments conducted outside safe sub-light distances had led the Five Families to transform it into a heritage site, which meant it had to be at least functional enough to uphold their collective legacy when tourists came to call. But Jianghu Station had also grown into a medium-sized city in its own right, with a research university, a handful of factories, an asteroid mining operational base, local offices for many of the quadrant’s leading firms, and—supposedly—its own thriving music scene.

The transition from barebones research site to somewhere one might intentionally choose to raise children had begun about 75 years ago, when the Five Families had constructed a new habitat ring around the outside of the original ring structure of the station. Each Family had taken ownership of one-fifth of the habitat ring, setting down shared rules for how the new residential area should be governed and maintained.

Piece by piece, the new residential units had been sold off. Most of them. But the Five Families still retained some of their original holdings. The Lan family, for instance, owned the property on which the university had been built, as well as many of the units set aside for graduate students and professors to rent.

There were also several units set aside for members of the main family, should they choose to remain in residence on the station. That was where Lan Wangji was headed now.

His uncle expected him to remain here long enough to do a thorough inspection of the Lan properties, to liaise with the on-site property managers, and to report on the status of the university itself, as it was a satellite campus of the original Lan University back home. Uncle of course had a close relationship with the administrators of Lan University Jianghu, but, he had told Lan Wangji, it was best to gather information from multiple sources.

(Lan Wangji was also here to consult with an expert in guqin score reconstruction, which was the one part of this trip he was actually looking forward to.)

His first impression as he stepped out of the shuttleport and into the large space just outside was NOISE. His fellow shuttle passengers streamed past him, dispersing into the bright, crowded space to be swallowed up in moments.

A neon sign obviously meant to be seen by those arriving from the shuttleport declared the area “DOCKMARKET.” Stalls and stands pressed close to each other, offering street food, produce, tourist tchotchkes, clothes, shoes, toys, glassware, and other less-identifiable crafts. At least one stall was definitely selling sex toys, going by the way all their wares were wrapped in discreet brown paper that nevertheless disguised nothing about the shape of the object inside.

After the first burst of overwhelmed confusion, Lan Wangji made out a second, smaller neon sign further in, this one promising “TRAM” with a large arrow. He’d already become disoriented. The arrow must point toward the outer ring, which meant the shuttleport was oriented such that its doors pointed out along the circumference of the inner ring, rather than pointing out in the radial direction of the path he assumed the shuttle had taken from the central docking spire. Did the shuttle have to move in a spiral direction to match speed with the spinning rings? Was there some kind of poetic metaphor here, about how moving sideways was sometimes a more direct path to progress than forging straight ahead?

He shook his head slightly. It didn’t matter; he wouldn’t be returning to the docking spire until he left the station again. All that mattered was getting on the tram and making his way to the Lan Sector.

He was striding purposefully in the direction indicated by the TRAM sign when something small and warm collided with his leg.

He looked down. It was a young child, maybe three or four, shaking with quiet sobs and clinging to Lan Wangji’s leg with all its might.

Lan Wangji froze. He had no idea what to do in this situation. The child was not his—was he allowed to touch it?

“There, there, little one,” he said lamely. “Are you—are you alright?”

The child began to wail like a siren. The two of them were now attracting judgmental looks from passers-by. Whose child was this? Was there a station authority to whom it could be delivered?

“A-Yuan!” said a bright, sharp voice, very close by. The child’s wail stuttered.

Lan Wangji whipped his head around toward the noise. A young man, younger than Lan Wangji by a few years or so, stood a few paces away with his hands on his hips, looking as if he were trying not to smile.

“Is he yours?” Lan Wangji demanded of the man.

The young man took a step closer. “He’s my clone,” he said, now smiling broadly. “A test run before I launch the rest of my clone army. Can’t you see the resemblance?”

He reached down and detached the child from Lan Wangji’s leg and held its wet, snot-covered face up next to his own.

They looked absolutely nothing alike. But the child reached for the young man anyway, whining, “Xian-gege, Xian-gegeeeee,” before burying his face in the young man’s neck.

A quiet conversation ensued, one Lan Wangji could barely hear over the roar of the crowd going about their shopping.

“What happened, buddy?”

“There was spinners.”

“Uh huh, and did you go to see the spinners?”

“Yeah. Then you weren’t there.”

“You walked away from me and couldn’t find me again, huh? I couldn’t find you either, because you’re so little, I’m sorry. You’re just going to have to stick with me until you get big and tall, okay?”

The child hid his face again and mumbled something, and the young man rubbed his back soothingly.

Lan Wangji was not impressed by this obvious lack of regard for child safety. He said flatly, “Station conduct rules dictate that children must be kept under close supervision in all areas adjacent to docking facilities. The rules further specify that children under eight must be in contact with their guardian at all times.”

The man raised one eyebrow at him, then lowered it and raised the other. (Lan Wangji had never seen anyone do that in real life before.) “New here, huh?” He looked Lan Wangji up and down and all the way back up again, his gaze every bit as judgmental as Uncle’s, though Uncle had never made Lan Wangji’s insides squirm quite like this.

Still making eye contact with Lan Wangji, the man said to his young charge, “A-Yuan, why did you try to kidnap this big gege’s leg, huh?”

A-Yuan resurfaced to say, “Cuz he’s from my book!”

“Your book?” The young man’s face crumpled into a pout of confusion, then cleared so abruptly it was like noon at midnight. “Oh, right, he’s got this book about the Five Families and the invention of the inversion drive.”

A-Yuan began to sing in a warbling, childish voice: “Lans the dive and Nie the me-tal, Jiang the pow-er to the pe-dal, Jin the gold to foo’ the bill, Wen the fac-a-ree to fill!”

“Yeah! That’s right, little buddy! Lans the drive.” The man hoisted the boy up further in his arms and made a trilled R sound, rolling his tongue around his mouth expertly. To Lan Wangji, he added, “In his book, the Lans are all in those crazy mourning robes you’re wearing. Guess that’s why he thought he recognized you.”

“Travel robes,” Lan Wangji could not stop himself from saying. “They are engineered to provide insulation in the event of decompression.”

“Smart.” The man nodded his acknowledgement. “Don’t see why they have to be white, though.”

“Highly visible for search and rescue.”

The man’s eyebrows went up. “Ooh, morbid. Cool.”

This flippancy was insupportable. Lan Wangji glared at the man harder. “To answer your question: yes.”

“Huh?”

“I am new here.”

And with that, he walked off toward the tram terminal, schooling himself not to look back at the messy, irreverent man and the incredulous smile blooming across his expressive face.

—------

Lan Wangji was met at the entrance of his residential unit by one of the Lan’s property managers, an impeccably dressed man named Su She.

Their only prior interaction had been an exchange of net letters regarding Lan Wangji’s expected arrival time and the length of his anticipated stay, but Su She gushed about meeting Lan Wangji as if they had been faithful net correspondents for years, shaking Lan Wangji’s hand in both of his in an overly-familiar way that made Lan Wangji’s skin crawl. Su She was an attractive man, and in other circumstances Lan Wangji might have even considered him as a partner, but something about his smile did not reach his eyes.

Su She spoke of the Lan properties he managed as if he owned them. Lan Wangji thought it was probably because he was hoping to make Lan Wangji think of him as an extension of the Lan family, fully committed to represent their interests, but the performance missed the mark. The man mostly just sounded like he had delusions of grandeur.

Was every person on this station going to be a boor? So far Lan Wangji was two for two (if one didn’t count A-Yuan, which Lan Wangji did not.)

At least the residential unit was clean and well-appointed, with a small meditation garden and a large window equipped to provide UV light, should the resident desire some Vitamin D.

The Lan Sector itself had also proved to be clean, quiet, and dotted with greenspace parks. Su She complained of noisy students, but the undergraduate housing was attached to the university campus and managed by someone else entirely. Only time would tell if the graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and so on were a genuine menace or if Su She was as much of a blowhard as he appeared.

When his luggage arrived from the shuttleport, Lan Wangji did not hesitate to make his excuses to Su She and retreat into his new unit to begin unpacking. The two of them would likely have to spend a great deal of time interacting during Lan Wangji’s stay due to Lan Wangji’s purpose here; no point in suffering through the man’s company more than absolutely necessary.

There was no need for them to be friends. As long as the man was competent at his job, that would be enough.

—------

Lan Wangji had carefully reviewed both the Jianghu Station Ordinances and the Jianghu Station Residential Property Owners Assocation Covenant, Conditions, & Restrictions. He always carefully reviewed the ordinances and statutes that governed whatever place he lived, and it still confused and frustrated him that so many others did not. Didn’t it make them anxious, wandering through life not knowing the rules?

He had noticed in the JSRPOA Covenant that the Board of the JSRPOA met once a month. Coincidentally, their monthly meeting fell only a day after he arrived, and the meeting place was within walking distance from his unit, just over the ringbridge to the University sector.

Without any other pressing engagements, he made his way to the Board meeting.

The meeting was held in a small lecture hall with stadium seating. Where a speaker’s lectern would normally be, there was a long table with five chairs at evenly-spaced intervals, though only four were filled. Behind the four seated people—the board members, Lan Wangji presumed—was a large projector screen displaying the meeting agenda, as well as an inset video feed from a camera near the table.

Lan Wangji took a seat near the front of the lecture hall, as was his habit. The hall was at least half full and still filling, though it was clear few found the front seats desirable, as it was filling from back to front.

Putting aside his years of exasperation with people’s apparent desire to avoid participating in events they had voluntarily chosen to attend, Lan Wangji turned his attention back to the Board. On the left was a man a bit older than Lan Xichen, probably in his early thirties. He was broad-chested, with beetled brows and a perpetual sneer that looked incongruous on an otherwise blandly handsome face. In front of him on the table was a stand-up label that read Jin Zixun, Jin Sector.

To the right of Jin Zixun was a thin middle-aged man with a thin mustache, a sharp jawline, watery eyes, and slightly sunken cheekbones. He wore a friendly, patronizing smile, though Lan Wangji thought he also looked anxious. The card in front of him read Qin Cangye, Nie Sector.

In the middle of the table was the empty chair. There was a card there, but someone had stuck a piece of colorful tape over the name so that it simply read Lan Sector.

Lan Wangji squinted. Did that tape have little rabbits on it?

On the right of the empty chair was a plump middle-aged woman with a wide, soft, friendly face, somewhat older than Qin Cangye. Deep smile and laugh lines framed her mouth and eyes. Her hair was swirled skillfully into a loose bun and secured with several practical hair sticks. The card in front of her said Chen Yuying, Jiang Sector. She was talking to the Board member on the far side of the table, who—

Lan Wangji blinked. Then he blinked again.

Assuming his eyes were working properly, the Board member on the far right of the table was the young man he had run into in Dockmarket yesterday. He had the same expressive face, the same large dark eyes, and the same high ponytail, although this time it was mercifully not decorated with a child’s excretions. The card in front of him said Wei Wuxian, Wen Sector.

His clothes were neater today, Lan Wangji noted—more professional. But how could someone with so little regard for station rules be on the Board responsible for enforcing the Residential Covenant?

Qin Cangye called the meeting to order. The time was noted. Each Sector was asked to state for the record who was representing it. It seemed like a ritual that would hold little weight, normally, but when Qin Cangye called out, “Who represents the Lan Sector?” and there was no answer, an unhappy murmur rippled across the hall. Someone behind Lan Wangji muttered “Tactless.”

Qin Cangye coughed awkwardly. “Right, right. My apologies, everyone, it was just…habit. Mo-taitai was, ah, taken from us, so suddenly, that…Well.” He coughed again. “Who represents the Jiang Sector?”

With his roll call complete, Qin Cangye announced an open forum for the property owners in the audience, both in the hall itself and watching on the net. There were several maintenance requests that really should have been netted rather than wasting meeting time, an inquiry about the next scheduled insulation upgrade, and an obviously pointless request that something be done about the noise of the construction project in Jiang Sector South 7B.

The final owner comment was the first to draw any words out of Wei Wuxian since he’d given his name in the roll call.

“No, Qiu-xiansheng, it would not be cheaper to set the temperature of the residential ring lower,” he said. He was smiling, but from Lan Wangji’s vantage point in the front of the auditorium it was clear the smile was hiding gritted teeth. “I’ve explained this to you before, do you remember? It’s very different from how heat works on a planet.”

“I just don’t see why,” said a middle-aged man crossly, “we’re wasting so much money heating the whole residential ring over 20 degrees Celsius in the middle of a perpetual winter! Space is cold, dammit!”

He gestured meaningfully in a direction Lan Wangji assumed was meant to represent ‘space’, thought of course they were surrounded by the void of space in every direction.

“Space is empty,” said Wei Wuxian patiently. He had slipped into what Lan Wangji, a dyed-in-the-wool academic from a family of academics, recognized instantly as teacher voice. “If an object in space isn’t facing the sun, it’s freezing, yes, but on the side facing the sun, it’s boiling. Most of all, though, heat simply doesn’t transfer through space the way it does on a planet with an atmosphere. On a planet, heat can move through the molecules in the air, but in space, there is no air, and not very many atoms, right? We on the station generate a lot of heat in the process of making our own energy and moving energy around. And we spend even more energy trying to get rid of excess heat, because we have to make a way for the heat to transfer out into space even though there aren’t very many atoms out there. We have to build a special little road for the heat to follow, out of liquid metal we control with fancy magnets and—well let’s not get into all of that. The point is, if there’s no road for the heat to go down, all the heat just stays right here on the station and we get warmer and warmer and start to cook ourselves. It costs a lot of money to keep making a nice road for all our excess heat. Do you understand, Qiu-xiansheng?”

“That just doesn’t make any sense!” insisted Qiu-xiansheng. “Space is cold!”

“Okay. Okay,” said Wei Wuxian, squinching his eyes shut and rubbing his temples. His eyebrows stretched as high as they could go, then crumpled, then finally relaxed as he opened his eyes. “Let’s try this. If we lower the temperature in the residential ring by one degree, everyone’s dues will go up by 30%. Does that answer your question?”

There were outraged murmurs across the hall.

“So let’s not keep demanding we lower the ambient residential temperature because it ‘saves money’,” Wei Wuxian finished wearily, making little quotes with his fingers. “Yeah? Yeah.”

Reluctantly, Lan Wangji adjusted his respect for this Wei Wuxian upwards a single notch. He may not be aware of all the rules on Jianghu Station, but he clearly did have an understanding of the mechanical rules governing its continued existence, which was more than Lan Wangji could say of most.

The owners’ open forum ended and the actual agenda began. As Lan Wangji had anticipated, it was a series of routine approvals for maintenance funding. He did, however, begin to get a sense of the Board’s dynamic.

Jin Zixun was always sceptical of the cost of repairs or agricultural maintenance. He demanded an explanation for every line item, and sometimes managed to convince the others, typically Qin Cangye, that a given bill should be sent back to the vendor until a better explanation was provided. He was needlessly aggressive about it, but Lan Wangji thought it was an understandable impulse; they were responsible for spending the collective dues of thousands of people, and should never let expenses be paid without appropriate oversight.

Qin Cangye clearly prided himself on being the “adult in the room”, offering reasonable platitudes and generic aphorisms like it was his job. However, he still looked to Jin Zixun for guidance an inordinate amount of the time, looking especially nervous every time he had to approve any bill over a certain amount.

Chen Yuying loved adding color commentary to her votes, and especially seemed to love complaining about the Stationkeepers, who took in property taxes and business taxes and sales taxes and were responsible for enforcing quadrant law as well as passing local ordinances and issuing licenses. But she nearly always voted the same way as Wei Wuxian, and seemed to look to him for guidance the same way Qin Cangye looked to Jin Zixun for approval.

Wei Wuxian invariably asserted that he had looked over the expense ahead of time and that he could confirm it was an appropriate use of funds. He always started out civil, but the dislike and disdain on his expressive face whenever Jin Zixun tried to push back on an “appropriate use of funds” was very evident, and very quickly he would be baited into making snide remarks and personal attacks.

With only four members, the votes were often deadlocked, even over entirely petty things like not knowing why an arborist had suggested one species of tree as a replacement for a dead specimen of a different species. According to Qin Cangye, every tied vote had to be put off “until after the election.”

It was only at the final agenda item that Lan Wangji got a proper taste of JSRPOA politics.

“And now, without further ado, we come to the issue of renter-operated in-home daycare,” said Qin Cangye. “We’ve had several complaints brought to us over the past few months, and Jin-xiansheng was kind enough to put together a formal proposal to ban the practice for renters, though unfortunately it remains protected by quadrant law for owners. We would have voted on it last meeting, but with Mo-taitai’s untimely passing, the meeting was canceled.” He squinted down at his terminal. “A procedural objection has been raised against the proposal, under Restriction 1025B(2)(c), which states that—and I quote—‘policy proposals that will disproportionately restrict otherwise lawful business activity in one sector over another must be accompanied by an impact study in order to ensure the affected sectors receive adequate compensation as laid out in restriction 1025B(1).’”

Qin Cangye and Jin Zixun both frowned. Chen Yuying looked curious; Wei Wuxian looked unbothered.

Lan Wangji’s lips thinned. He was already against childcare as a business activity—childcare should be publicly funded, not optimized for maximum profit!—and the idea of people running unregulated operations out of their homes, without proper facilities or oversight, was deeply unsettling. Judging by the expressions on the Board member’s faces, this move was yet more evidence of Wei Wuxian’s callous disregard for child safety.

He stood up.

“Excuse me,” he said in a loud, clear voice. “I believe I can offer insight on Restriction 1025B(2)(c).”

Qin Cangye blinked at him. “The floor is yours, Xiansheng…?”

“Lan Wangji,” Lan Wangji said in response to the implied question.

Qin Cangye, Jin Zixun, and Wei Wuxian all did a double take, clearly recognizing the name.

“Restriction 1025B(2)(c) is mediated by 1025B(2)(c)(i),” Lan Wangji explained, “which states that the economic impact study requirement is not triggered if the policy in question is related to a health and safety hazard, which in this case—”

“They’re saying the daycares are a noise and traffic congestion problem, that’s not a—” Wei Wuxian broke in, but Lan Wangji barreled on undeterred.

“Which in this case,” he continued, “it clearly is, as all matters of childcare outside of advertising are defined as a health and safety issue in Condition 112A, ‘Health and Safety Defined.’ Thus, the procedural objection is inapplicable.”

He sat down.

Wei Wuxian was very red. “That’s—” he said. “That’s not—you can’t just—”

Jin Zixun made a smug little ‘hmmp’ noise. “It’s about time someone got the better of you and all your sneaky little procedural rules, tying up our meetings in red tape because you know you’ll never have the votes.”

Lan Wangji took a deep breath to settle himself. It was a good thing he’d been here, if this was Wei Wuxian’s typical modus operandi. Spending the Association’s money thoughtlessly while trying to preserve his own profits at the direct cost of children’s safety—

Jin Zixun’s disdainful voice cut across his thoughts. “You and all your bleeding-heart pet causes, with absolutely zero concern for anyone’s property values! If you’d just accept that we ought to be running this place like a profitable business—”

Wei Wuxian snorted. “No thank you, I don’t think running this nonprofit like your idea of a proper business would be in accordance with my fiduciary duty to the good people of this lovely station. You’re damn lucky you own enough property to fall back on landlording, after all the startups you’ve crashed. Profitable? What would you know about profitable, other than that it makes you angry when public services have the temerity to cost money?”

There was a hint of a wounded snarl in his voice.

Oh no.

Lan Wangji had, perhaps, been reading this all wrong.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said Qin Cangye soothingly. “Now’s not the time. I doubt we’ll be breaking deadlock on this tonight. Let’s just reschedule this vote until after the election, yes? I believe—yes, that’s the last item on the agenda, so we can consider this meeting adjourned! Good night, all!” He chuckled nervously.

Glaring daggers at each other, Jin Zixun and Wei Wuxian began to pack away their belongings.

Wei Wuxian packed at top speed, hopped off the stage, and darted out of the auditorium with nothing more than a quick nod to his Jiang sect ally; Jin Zixun took the stairs at a more dignified pace. He advanced toward Lan Wangji as Lan Wangji sat frozen, unable to move.

“Lan Wangji,” said Jin Zixun, extending a hand in Lan Wangji’s direction.

As if on autopilot, Lan Wangji rose and shook it, matching Jin Zixun’s excessive grip strength out of sheer self-defense.

“A pleasure to have you in the meeting. Excellent contribution,” Jin Zixun told him. Where Su She’s smile had not reached his eyes, Jin Zixun’s oily smile perfectly rounded out the rest of his self-satisfied expression. He had identified Lan Wangji as an ally, and was only too pleased to recruit him as an asset.

‘Recruit’ turned out to be rather more literal than Lan Wangji had anticipated, as the next thing out of Jin Zixun’s mouth was, “The Lan Sector needs to field a better class of candidate for the election. That little snake Su She is running, but I can’t stand the man—always trying to claw his way into the Five Families at every opportunity. You, though, you’re main branch stock, and you understand the way things are supposed to be done around here. We could use a man like you on the Board. What do you say?”

Su She on the Board did, admittedly, sound like a nightmare.

“Thank you. I’m willing to run,” Lan Wangji said, and just like that, his fate was sealed.

Chapter Text

The previous night, Jin Zixun had promised to introduce Lan Wangji to some key Jianghu Station citizens whose influence would give him an edge over Su She. Other than that, Lan Wangji had no idea how one went about campaigning for office.

He decided not to worry about it. He had an actual job to do, after all.

He pulled up the dashboard for the Lan family properties on Jianghu Station. There were two sets: the University Sector properties and the Lan Sector properties. Each set was further subdivided: the University properties into the main campus, campus-adjacent student housing, and off-campus research buildings; the Lan Sector properties into blocks reserved for postgraduate students and postdocs, blocks reserved for professors, and a half-dozen nicer properties reserved for the actual Lan family, which were either rented to the most august of university guests or to Lan family connections. At least one was always held open for a visiting Lan.

After their somewhat off-putting interaction two days ago, followed by the news that Lan Wangji would be running against Su She for a seat on the board, Lan Wangji somewhat guiltily decided to start with Su She’s properties. Of the property managers employed by the Lan Legacy Foundation, Su She had been on Jianghu Station the shortest amount of time. If there were any issues with his work, they hadn’t had much time to surface.

Su She had charge of the half-dozen Lan family units (half of which were currently empty) and three of the modest mid-rise apartment blocks reserved for postgraduate students. Turnover in Su She’s properties did not seem unusually high, with students in the various postgraduate degree programs all typically finishing out their leases and renewing them when necessary in accordance with their status at the University. There were the usual maintenance requests, and those seemed to be dealt with promptly. It was rare for anyone to rate Su She five stars on their way out of a unit, but it was rare for anyone to respond to that exit survey in the first place; the only person who had left a comment during Su She’s tenure as her property manager had merely said “maintenance is prompt but manager is too nosy.”

Too nosy. Did that mean Su She behaved in that ingratiating, overly-familiar way with everybody? No wonder he rarely earned 5 stars. But being irritating did not seem to prevent him from doing his job.

The only thing that stood out as anomalous was the unusually high rate of emergency access overrides.

A property manager of course had keycard access to every property they managed, but all uses of such access were logged. Quadrant law had long mandated that landlords, and by extension any employee acting as a landlord’s legal proxy, were required to give 24-hour notice before entering any rented property. However, exceptions were made in every polity for emergencies involving health, safety, and emergency maintenance. One would rather the property manager be able to key in a plumber to deal with a burst pipe than come home to all one’s belongings water-damaged—or to one’s door broken off at the hinges.

With the number of properties Su She oversaw, one might expect such emergencies to happen every few months at the most, less often if the units were in good repair. Su She was logging emergencies nearly once a month, sometimes more, and nigh-invariably marking them as false alarms after the fact. The notes attached to the false alarms were innocuous enough—“Adjusted flood sensor sensitivity to prevent alarm being triggered by child’s bathtime,” “Neighbor reported screaming. On entry, determined screaming was coming from a horror movie. Noise canceling array attached to media feed determined to be faulty. Array replaced”—but if one read more than year’s worth of access logs, the same verbiage showed up across multiple properties, sometimes even noticeably copy-pasted.

It was not impossible for the same component to fail across multiple properties within the same three-year period, especially given all the units had been built by the same developer. It was not impossible that Su She had simply had the misfortune to take over the management of these blocks during a window where many alarm components were reaching end-of-life.

But “not impossible” did not satisfy Lan Wangji.

He was staring directly at the access logs, wondering what Su She was doing during these visits if the excuses given were as fake as Lan Wangji’s instincts insisted, when he saw the emergency access counter refresh and the number tick up by one.

Lan Wangji’s eye twitched. He could go. He could go right now. He could find out what exactly Su She was doing with the access the Lan family had granted him.

He noted down the access location—a unit rented to a student in a doctoral program within the music department—and grabbed his own copy of the property access card before hurrying off.

—------

The unit was on the third floor of its block, with a good view of the greenspace park across the street. Lan Wangji took the stairs instead of the elevator, his heart pounding. Was this appropriate? Would he just be intruding needlessly on a real emergency? Would he be as wrong about Su She as he had been about Wei Wuxian?

Perhaps. But one way or another, he had to find out, and this was his best chance.

He made his way to the unit, stiffening his resolve. As he drew near, he could hear raised voices coming from inside, drifting out from the slightly open door to the shared hallway.

“—nails in all the walls! Unapproved paint colors! Customer traffic wearing down the carpet!”

“—be responsible for any of that at the end of the lease—”

“You didn’t even clear this little side business—”

“—sorry, I’m sorry, I can fix it, I just thought—”

“No, Yan-jie, listen, he’s talking out his ass—”

“STOPPIT! STOPPIT STOP STOP!!!!”

That last outburst was the shrill, tremulous voice of a child about to throw a tantrum.

There was a moment’s pause. Lan Wangji stopped with his hand on the doorknob, the sign on the door penetrating his awareness for the first time: Yan Ning - Beginner Piano Lessons.

“Shh, buddy, it’s okay,” said one of the voices, bright and sharp.

“It most certainly is not! Control your child. Neither of you should even be here, this enterprise of Ying-xiaojie’s was never approved—”

Lan Wangji flung open the door and strode into the room. He knew both those voices.

“Su She. What is going on here?”

He took in the scene. A willowy young woman in her mid to late twenties was clutching her hands to her chest, her eyes wide. Wei Wuxian was standing next to her, a bracing hand on her arm; he looked furious. A-Yuan was standing at Wei Wuxian’s feet and holding a stuffed bunny in a death grip, his little face screwed up in distress.

Su She was holding a framed photo in one hand. It looked like he had taken it off the wall. The wall itself had been painted with a large, simplified piano, its keys highlighted in different colors and marked with the appropriate notes.

“What are you doing here?” Su She spat.

By his aggrieved tone, Lan Wangji inferred that someone had tipped him off about the new entry in the race.

“I was alerted to an emergency access,” Lan Wangji said coldly. “It appears the tenants you manage have a great deal of ‘emergencies,’ Su She.”

Su She’s flinch was blink-and-you’ll-miss-it. “A false alarm,” he said quickly. Too quickly. “But while I was here, as you can see, I discovered many other violations. Yan-xiaojie has been secretly running a business out of her unit, despite that requiring my express approval—”

“It, it wasn’t a secret,” Yan Ning protested. “I thought—I thought—”

“And look at all these holes in the walls! And the paint!”

“Excuse me, but that is complete bullshit,” Wei Wuxian broke in. “You don’t have to be ready to get your security deposit back in the middle of your fucking lease!”

“Nobody asked you,” sneered Su She.

“I’m an elected representative of the residents of this station, and I’m a tenant advocate with the Jianghu Renter’s Rights Group, so actually a fuckton of people have asked me, dipshit,” Wei Wuxian shot back. “Who the fuck are you, other than a poor man stealing a rich man’s keys?”

“Stobbbit,” whined A-Yuan softly. “No yelling.”

“Yes. That’s enough, both of you,” Lan Wangji said.

Su She glared at him. Wei Wuxian at least looked mildly abashed, but Lan Wangji did not fool himself into believing his scolding had made an impression—all Wei Wuxian’s attention had gone to A-Yuan as if magnetized.

“Yan Ning,” Lan Wangji said gently, turning to the tenant. “Did Su She give you twenty-four hours notice of his intent to enter your residence?”

“N-no,” she said.

“Su She,” Lan Wangji said. “Why did you enter this residence?”

“A false alarm,” Su She repeated.

“Bullshit,” Wei Wuxian said under his breath. He was still looking down at A-Yuan, patting the boy’s hair.

“What manner of false alarm?” Lan Wangji asked.

“A….child screaming,” said Su She, his eyes darting to A-Yuan.

Lan Wangji stared at him for a moment. It was so, so obvious he had only come up with that idea after being asked the question.

“When you heard this….‘child screaming’, did you call Yan Ning at the comm address on file?” asked Lan Wangji. Before Su She could answer, he went on: “Did you even knock on the door?”

“There was a chance a child might be in danger. Of course I wouldn’t give whoever was inside a chance to hide the evidence,” said Su She stubbornly.

Lan Wangji’s head ached. “Su She. I cannot currently disprove your claim. However, as an authorized representative of the Lan Legacy Foundation here to review the management of the Foundation’s properties, I will be filing an inquiry with our mutual employer regarding the suspicious number of ‘false alarms’ in your access logs. The Foundation delegated authority to you in order to prevent catastrophic property damage or immediate threats to human health and safety. If in truth you opened the door looking for an endangered child, you should have immediately left once you ascertained the child was safe. Any additional concerns should have been addressed during a proper inspection, with twenty-four hours notice, as stipulated by the law.”

As Lan Wangji spoke, Su She seemed to shrink into himself, his shoulders hunching up towards his ears.

Lan Wangji found he had more to say. “By skirting quadrant law this way, you not only abuse the authority granted to you by the Lan Legacy Foundation, but you put the Foundation at legal risk. Your aggressive and threatening behavior toward tenants must cease immediately, permanently, if you want to have any hope of continuing to serve in a public-facing role.”

Everything he had said so far was concentrated on the risk this represented to the Lan Foundation, on the way Su She had perverted the rules, but Lan Wangji was angry for more than just that, wasn’t he?

It was just so much easier to trust anything other than his gut.

He recalled A-Yuan’s terrified little face and found his words. “I am appalled at your decision to carry on this way in front of a small child,” he said, “who has now learned strange men can burst into someone’s home, threaten them, and manhandle their possessions without warning. This is wholly inappropriate conduct for a representative of the Lan Legacy Foundation, and I will be filing a personal complaint along with my inquiry into your records.”

He took a deep breath. There. That was it. That was about as much as he ever managed to say at one time. His throat was bone dry; he swallowed convulsively.

Oh. One more thing.

“Now get out of this house.”

Eyes full of hate, Su She absented himself.

Lan Wangji swallowed twice more. Why was his mouth still so dry?

“My apologies,” he said hoarsely, “for his conduct, and my own.”

“Oh, no, thank you! Thank you,” said Yan Ning. “I really didn’t know what to do! He came in without warning once in my first year, but that time it was just a faulty fire alarm, and it was before I started giving piano lesson, so I didn’t have the—oh, here, let me get you some water.”

At some point during Lan Wangji’s upbraiding of Su She, Wei Wuxian had knelt down to comfort A-Yuan, murmuring to him that the bad man was getting in trouble for scaring Yan-jie, that the bad man would never come back, that A-Yuan had been so, so brave telling him to stop. Lan Wangji had been only peripherally aware of Wei Wuxian’s voice, but it flared up in his hearing now as Wei Wuxian said, “See, everything’s okay now, your Lan-gege scared him away, didn’t he?”

“Lan-gege?” A-Yuan said hopefully.

Lan Wangji gratefully gulped the glass of water Yan Ning offered, then knelt down next to Wei Wuxian. He didn’t know anything about talking to children, but he could try to copy Wei Wuxian’s example, at least.

“A-Yuan was very brave,” he said. “The…bad man had no right to come in here and…scare Yan-xiaojie.”

“Did you send himma way?” asked A-Yuan. His eyes were huge in his head, round like marbles.

“Yes,” Lan Wangji said. “And…I will get him in trouble, also.”

“That’s good,” said A-Yuan decisely. “Qing-jiejie says no yelling, that’s a rule. And no scaring, unless you like it. But you have to say it’s okay, for the masks.”

Lan Wangji was lost. “Yes. No yelling,” he tried.

Wei Wuxian was smiling at him crookedly. “He likes to be scared sometimes, for fun, with some rubber monster masks we have,” he explained, as A-Yuan inspected his bunny plushie. “But we have to make sure he’s in the mood for it first. Can’t just jump out right before bed and scare him when he’s not ready, or it won’t be any fun and he’ll get nightmares. You know?”

“Nainai was scared of the man,” said A-Yuan, looking at his bunny. “Nainai wants a hug.”

“Nainai?” Lan Wangji said to Wei Wuxian under his breath.

“His bunny,” Wei Wuxian said, rolling his eyes fondly. “Long story. Okay, buddy, let’s get Nainai a hug. Can I give you both a big hug? I know how much Nainai likes those.”

A-Yuan nodded fervently, and Lan Wangji nearly fell on his behind as Wei Wuxian surged up with A-Yuan and Nainai in his arms.

“Biggest big hug!” Wei Wuxian said. “Oof! I think Nainai is getting heavier!”

It was clear that going at speed from crouching on his knees to standing, while holding a four-year-old, was not as effortless as he wanted A-Yuan to think.

Yan Ning still looked drawn and pale, but she was smiling at their antics. “Are you all ready to go, A-Yuan?” she asked. “You know what to practice this week, right?”

“Squeezy fingers!” said A-Yuan, after a moment’s thought. “Aaand…Pointy fingers!”

“Good work,” Yan Ning said. “You did very well this week. I’ll see you next week, okay?”

Lan Wangji should probably stay to talk to Yan Ning about this experience, but he was concerned about the child. To Yan Ning he said, “I’ll contact you shortly to get your full report of this incident. Do not worry about your music lessons—there are occupancy and income thresholds you have clearly not met. As long as you have a regular business license through the Station, you’re not in violation of your lease.”

Yan Ning let out a breath. “Thank goodness. That’s what I thought, but he—well, you saw! He was very…forceful.”

“Yes. My apologies, again. I must take my leave.”

He sent his comm address to the terminal she had open on the counter, then bowed low before slipping out of the apartment.

—------

Lan Wangji caught up to Wei Wuxian in the hall, where the other man was still soothing A-Yuan’s flustered nerves.

“What if he comes back?”

“Oh, he learned his lesson! He knows better than to mess with us now!”

“Whabout Qing-jiejie? And Waipo? And Ning-gege?”

“He knows they’re with us, so he won’t bother them.”

“And Nainai?”

“Oh, Nainai most of all! Everybody knows Nainai is your bestest friend. And that I’m your bestest bestest friend.” He booped A-Yuan on the nose. “Do you think you’re ready to go? We can ride in the elevator!”

“No-ooo,” said A-Yuan, drawing out the word thoughtfully. “S’too small, anna scary noise. Xian-gege can carry me.”

Wei Wuxian sighed, making eye contact with Lan Wangji at last. “You want me to carry you down all the stairs, huh?”

“Yus,” said A-Yuan decisively.

Wei Wuxian’s eyes rolled up to the heavens as if seeking strength. He opened his mouth—

“I can carry him,” said Lan Wangji. Because…he could. It was silly not to offer when Wei Wuxian was so obviously tired.

“Lan-gege can carry me!” said A-Yuan immediately, squirming in Wei Wuxian’s hold. “Lan-gege, yes!”

“What is it with you and Lan-gege,” muttered Wei Wuxian. “Okay, buddy, you can go to your shiny savior-man if you want. Hup!”

Lan Wangji abruptly found himself with an armful of squirming child. He tried to copy what he had seen Wei Wuxian doing, circling an arm around A-Yuan’s back and curling a hand around his upper leg to give him a stable seat. It took a type of coordination he’d never used before, but he figured it out in the end.

“Alrighty then,” said Wei Wuxian, giving Lan Wangji another once-over. “Guess this might as well happen. Stairs it is!”

They walked down the stairs. It was only two flights, but A-Yuan’s weight certainly became harder to ignore the further they walked.

As A-Yuan sang a little song to himself, Lan Wangji said, “I’m sorry he had to see that.”

Wei Wuxian glanced at him sidelong. “He’s a resilient little bugger. He’ll be all right.”

“Nevertheless.”

He wanted to find some way to apologize for what had happened at the Board meeting, but could not find the words. It had not been wrong of him to accurately cite health and safety policy in defense of child welfare. It had not. He simply…regretted having given the impression he supported Wei Wuxian’s enemies.

He still wasn’t sure why the daycare measure was so important to Wei Wuxian, but he felt fairly certain by now it was not pursuit of material gain. Not if he worked for a Renter’s Rights organization while being an owner himself.

“So you’re here looking into the properties your family owns?” said Wei Wuxian. “Or, the property owned by the Lan Legacy Foundation, at any rate?”

His voice was casual, but his eyes were shrewd.

“A distinction with little difference,” Lan Wangji admitted. “All current members of the main branch hold shares, and shares cannot be transferred outside the main branch. LanFuture Engineering is publicly traded, but the Foundation owns a controlling interest.”

“Yeah, the Jiang do something similar,” said Wei Wuxian, voice wry. “Gotta make sure the wealth stays in the family and all that.”

It was odd. Wei Wuxian was perfectly willing to antagonize Lan Wangji, to needle him over his appearance or his family wealth, but he had also been quick to share details about A-Yuan and nearly as quick to entrust the child to Lan Wangji’s arms. Lan Wangji was used to social ostracization and mockery, and he was equally used to people trying to curry favor with him by being overly familiar, but he’d never experienced this particular blend of the two. With A-Yuan’s warmth against his chest, Lan Wangji could better see how Wei Wuxian’s flippancy and casual criticism of Lan Wangji’s family were an invitation rather than a rejection.

Honesty was, after all, a kind of intimacy.

He remembered Wei Wuxian had asked him a question. “I am here to inspect the properties held by the Lan Legacy Foundation, and to provide a first-hand report on the University to my uncle in the central administration of Lan University.” He resettled A-Yuan’s weight in his arms, trying not to disturb the boy’s quiet contemplation of the view over Lan Wangji’s shoulder. “I’m hoping to find mentorship with one of the research professors in the music department, as well.”

Wei Wuxian’s eyebrows went up, his lower lip pushing out in an exaggerated version of the slight frown Lan Wangji had eventually learned to recognize as intrigue rather than disapproval. “Oh? So you’re not just a family business guy?”

Lan Wangji’s ears went hot. He looked away. Between his unthinking alliance with Jin Zixun the other day and his emphatic defense of the Lan Foundation minutes ago, he must have come off as highly business-oriented.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

“I study traditional music,” was all he could manage for a full twenty seconds.

He didn’t even know what it was he wanted to convey. He had pursued his post-graduate degree in music history with his family’s slightly grudging approval. It wasn’t law (like his uncle, like Lan An), or engineering (like his mother, like Lan Yi), or business (like his father, like his brother, like the many, many Lans who came after Lan Yi to profit off her invention), but the Lan family prided itself on its legacy of original scholarship. Even the Lans studying business were at risk of causing a family scandal if they dared pursue a non-thesis MBA.

(The irony of a rigid adherence to the tradition of pursuing new ideas was not lost on Lan Wangji.)

Music also had its place in the family legacy. Lan Yi herself had played the guqin: Lan Wangji had first gotten curious about the instrument because her playing had been featured in one of the many documentaries about her life shown to young Lan descendants.

But all his doctorate really qualified him for was a further career in academia, and he had gotten out of his doctoral program in record time because the truth was that despite being a dyed-in-the-wool academic, he absolutely hated academia. He loved research, he loved designing lessons, he loved mentoring students, but he was a mediocre lecturer, and he was absolutely terrible at networking. Of course there were a million tenured professors unashamed to be mediocre lecturers, but Lan Wangji had a very low tolerance for performing tasks he was bad at. The networking problem was even worse. Socializing with one’s colleagues and superiors was unfortunately a key component of navigating university politics. Xichen had tried to coach him, and Lan Wangji was marginally better now at goal-oriented information exchange, but he doubted he would ever have Xichen’s ability to “just talk to people.”

He had avoided the mire as best he could as a graduate student. If he became a professor, there would be no escape.

If, however, he was willing to stay afloat solely on family money, he could simply pursue his own interests, fund his own research, and publish his own monographs as an independent academic: a university of one. Unfortunately, this idea, too, had its dangers. He’d seen what happened to Lan relatives who’d retired at twenty-three to live on their trust funds. At first they’d travel, volunteer, explore creative hobbies, learn new languages, raise children. Then, inevitably, they’d go one of two ways: increasingly listless and depressed and withdrawn, or increasingly listless, depressed, and ready to make it everyone else’s problem.

Lan Wangji did have reason to believe his own personality would prevent him from wallowing in inaction. He could simply commit to historical research as his self-appointed job and be fulfilled—he was almost sure of it.

Almost.

Lan Xichen had pounced on his little brother’s indecision and convinced Lan Wangji to undertake the Jianghu Station visit. “Of the three of us, you’re the least likely to be bamboozled by Univeristy politics,” Xichen had argued. “I’m sure it will reinforce your conviction to leave academia yourself, and Professor Guan would be the perfect mentor to get you started on your independent research career! Weren’t you telling me she’s made some fascinating progress in score reconstruction recently? And you’re so much better than I am with holding a lot of different regulations in your head, so you’ll be able to do the property inspection more thoroughly in less time.”

It was a good argument—self-effacing, evidence-based, flattering to Lan Wangji, the works. Xichen was also currently courting a dimpled accountant he’d met in a used bookstore. Any reasons he gave for why he, Xichen, should stay on-planet while Lan Wangji spent an indeterminate amount of time in space were highly suspect.

Lan Wangji, freshly exhausted from the aftermath of his dissertation defense and still disoriented every time someone referred to him as “Dr. Lan,” had acquiesced to the request anyway.

So here he was, fleeing an implicitly political position…only to immediately volunteer for actual political office.

This was the kind of irrationality that reared its head when he had no clear rules on how he was supposed to behave.

He breathed in slowly through his nose, calming himself. Social rules were often confusing, but “don’t stop talking in the middle of a conversation” and “show interest in your conversation partner” were two rules Xichen had drilled into him, however difficult Lan Wangji found it to follow them in practice.

“And you?” he asked Wei Wuxian, putting the question of his own occupation firmly to the side. “How do you spend your time on the station?”

He’d been coached on that one by Xichen too. “How are you spending your time these days,” was the safe alternative to both the standard “What do you do for a living?” (which routinely embarrassed people who knew about the Lan family money) and what Lan Wangji had eventually come to recognize as the cruelest question imaginable: “How’s your dissertation coming along?”

Wei Wuxian smiled widely. “Well, you’ve seen the important parts already,” he said. “I cause problems for the Board, and I watch A-Yuan when nobody else is free. This was the only time of day his grandma could find for baby piano lessons, so I pop over and take him out of daycare once a week.” His eyes softened, his smile less bright, more warm. “He’s obviously pretty young to be learning piano, but he’s been determined to learn ever since he saw me messing around on my keyboard. Since it was my fault he was pestering his poor family about it endlessly, I offered to make it happen.”

Lan Wangji was struck by a vision of Wei Wuxian sitting at a keyboard with A-Yuan in his lap, executing flawless arpeggiated runs and making the boy gasp with delight. Before he could blink the vision away and get out a question about Wei Wuxian’s instrument-playing habits, Wei Wuxian had already moved on.

“My actual paid job has very flexible hours, which makes it easy to help out,” Wei Wuxian was saying. “I’m a freelance programmer. And since I’m one of the few people who can actually write usable original code in Versal, I have my pick of contracts.”

Versal was a programming language that had something to do with the inversion drive, Lan Wangji knew. Xichen, who was highly placed in LanFuture Engineering’s HR department, would occasionally bemoan the difficulty of recruiting competent Versal programmers.

(Apparently, they had a worrying tendency to abandon their careers before they turned thirty.)

“Is that not…time-consuming?” Lan Wangji asked. “I’ve been told it’s a challenging language.” Or perhaps, if it took such a high toll on its programmers, Wei Wuxian was doing the smart thing by taking long breaks even in the middle of the work week.

“Challenging, ha,” said Wei Wuxian derisively. “I mean, I get why people say that, kinda—general relativity is enough of a mindfuck on its own—but I started learning Versal when I was just a kid, since it was my mom’s job and she always made it sound fascinating. I was only ten when the latest version was released, and it really does feel like I grew up with it, you know? You just…get used to thinking about code runtime in relativistic terms.”

He sighed. “They don’t teach it to kids, as a rule, because they’ve been able to prove a causal link between coding in it as an adult and, like, brain problems or whatever, but honestly I think they’ve got it backwards. If they taught it to kids while their brains were still growing, it wouldn’t break people when they were adults.”

Lan Wangji stared at him, alarmed. Xichen hadn’t mentioned any of that.

Then Wei Wuxian chuckled darkly. “I’m reaping the benefits of their mistake, though. I’m light-years faster than anyone else in the business, so I can take a contract budgeted on the basis of three entire months of labor, then do the whole thing in a fugue state in the last seventy-two hours. It means I have a wealth of free time.” He snorted. “And a wealth of money. At least compared to where everyone thought I would be by now.”

“Is that safe?” Lan Wangji ventured. He grew a little bolder—Wei Wuxian certainly didn’t present himself as a delicate conversation partner—and added, “Or ethical?”

Wei Wuxian’s chin jutted forward. “What would be unsafe would be the average Versal coder trying to finish in under a week what would normally take them three months. And if I start finishing my contracts fast, companies will expect everybody to work fast. How’s that for ethical?”

Lan Wangji didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t seem like the kind of question he could leave unanswered. Perhaps humility was the safest course. “I do not know much about contract work. Or programming.” He paused for a moment, marshalling his thoughts. “If the contracts are for the product of your labor, rather than for work-hours performed, then it would seem you are not violating your agreements.”

The jutted chin relaxed. Wei Wuxian seemed mollified, though the look he was giving Lan Wangji now was amused. “Well-reasoned,” he said, adopting a performatively patronizing tone that reminded Lan Wangji of one of his rhetoric teachers from secondary school. Then Wei Wuxian scratched the nape of his neck, ducking his head sheepishly. “I mean, I didn’t bother padding my time when I was starting out. I was nineteen, I needed the money, I thought I was hot shit, and I wasn’t really thinking about grown-up crap like ‘the labor market.’” He made the little quotes with his fingers again. “But I happened to brag about how fast I was in earshot of this friend of mine who’s in a unionized shop, and he told me I was being an idiot kid. I didn’t buy it right off, but then—well, anyway, now I try not to fuck over other Versal coders if I can help it. There are few enough of us as it is! I’m trying to convince Wen Qing she should let me teach A-Yuan when he’s the age I was when I started. Maybe when he’s lost interest in piano.”

“You’re sure it’s safe?” Lan Wangji didn’t know who Wen Qing was—A-Yuan’s grandmother?—but it hardly mattered. Wei Wuxian looked like he was twenty-four at the absolute oldest. How could such a young man be sure he wouldn’t suffer the same adult-onset issues as the other Versal programmers?

“I’m sure,” said Wei Wuxian smoothly. “Wen Qing still wants to get me enrolled in a single-subject neuropsych study before she’ll tell A-Yuan’s waipo it’s okay, though.”

Wen Qing was not A-Yuan’s grandmother, then. But also not his legal guardian, so likely not his mother. Another relative, perhaps? Someone within the family who the others deferred to on medical questions.

Maybe she was how Wei Wuxian had come to know A-Yuan. Maybe she was Wei Wuxian’s partner. That would be logical.

His stomach felt unaccountably tight.

The silence that followed was not what Lan Wangji would have called comfortable, but Wei Wuxian seemed at ease. They had just passed a sign pointing them toward the tram station when suddenly A-Yuan said “Ice cream.”

Lan Wangji had thought the child asleep. Had he been dreaming of dessert?

“Xian-gege,” said A-Yuan, reaching over from Lan Wangji’s hold to tug Wei Wuxian’s sleeve. “Look! Ice cream!”

Lan Wangji looked, and saw what A-Yuan had seen: an ice cream cart parked at the corner of a greenspace.

“For your trouble?” Lan Wangji to Wei Wuxian said in a low voice. “I’ll pay. If it won’t…spoil his appetite, or whatever it is sweets do.”

Wei Wuxian blinked at him. Then he huffed, a tiny laugh. “Yeah, you know what, I deserve this. Buy me an ice cream, Lan-gege.”

“And me! Me too!” crowed A-Yuan.

So the three of them got ice cream.

Lan Wangji feared it would be impossible to simultaneously eat his own ice cream, hold an ice-cream-eating little boy, and avoid staining himself in either strawberry or chocolate, so Wei Wuxian carried their bouquet of desserts until they had found a bench to share.

To Lan Wangji’s relief, the tightness in his stomach had vanished. The ice cream soothed his throat, too, and speaking seemed easier.

“I think I know why Su She was in such a foul mood,” he admitted. “I was persuaded to run against him for the open Board seat.”

“Oh!” Wei Wuxian had a little spot of vanilla cream on his lower lip and something about it was making Lan Wangji’s limbs feel overlarge. “That was you? I heard there was another hat in the ring, but hadn’t heard a name.”

He swiped his tongue across his mouth, erasing the white spot; Lan Wangji mourned its absence.

A bite later, Wei Wuxian went on, “I was just happy there was anyone else in the running. Him running unopposed was too depressing for words. Not that I know him well, or anything—I didn’t even know he was a property manager before today—but he’s certainly made an ass of himself at a couple of meetings.”

“I can imagine,” Lan Wangji said honestly.

“Made a ass,” said A-Yuan proudly, his face covered in chocolate.

Wei Wuxian blew a raspberry on his sticky cheek. “You little rascal, trying to make me look bad in front of your fancy Lan-gege! You already knew that one!”

A-Yuan giggled, then went back to demolishing his fudge pop where he was sitting between the two of them on the bench.

Wei Wuxian met Lan Wangji’s eyes over A-Yuan’s head. “We may not agree on policy, but I can see you’re at least a man of integrity. If my initiatives are going to get voted down by anyone, I’d prefer it be you.”

He sighed, stretching his long legs out in front of him and crossing his ankles. “Su She may be an ass, but to hear him tell it, he’s a pretty well-connected ass. I get the impression he’s sucked up to a lot of influential people around the station. So tell you what. I’ll introduce you around the station, make sure people know who you are—and have a favorable impression. Sound like a plan?”

“Jin Zixun proposed something similar,” Lan Wangji told him.

Wei Wuxian scoffed loudly. “Oh, baby, I can do so much better than Jin Zixun.”