Chapter 7

Jiao Bai had layered a coat over his shirt and trousers—stiff fabric, hem dragging to his feet, hood so big it swallowed his entire head. His hands were tucked up inside the sleeves, sunglasses and a face mask covering the rest. He was wrapped up tight from head to toe.

The outfit drew disgusted looks from everyone around him.

Like spotting a rat in a gutter—people felt dirty just from being nearby.

Jiao Bai stood in front of Shen Ji, facing head-on the bone-chilling cold in the man's eyes, and listened to him demand: "Who gave you permission to dress like that?"

The stale, blood-and-thunder domineering-CEO line, delivered with just the right atmosphere, sent Jiao Bai's adrenaline spiking—an old habit of his, since he'd always had a weakness for exactly this flavor of comic. He exhaled slowly. When the original body first arrived in South City, it had been the height of summer, and he'd taken protective measures, but the Shen family found it embarrassingly strange and wouldn't let him do that again. From then on, every time the original owner came to the Old Residence, he'd had to wear whatever the old butler prepared for him—he'd never gotten a say in what he wore that day.

And of course the Old Madam loved the great outdoors, so family banquets were always held on clear, sunny days, out in the front garden under direct sunlight.

The original owner had suffered for it. After every family banquet, whatever skin he'd left exposed—face, neck—would turn red and swollen, itch, peel, and break out in a dense rash of blisters.

Jiao Bai had absolutely no intention of going through that. Just the thought of it was horrifying. On the way over, he'd forced the driver to pull over so he could rush out and buy this entire getup.

Shen Ji's tone was ice: "Go back and change, then come again."

Jiao Bai ignored him. The moment a friend came online, the app auto-logged him in, and he found himself glaring at the Pikachu avatar sitting second on his friend list. Pikachu, it turned out, was alive—alive, moving, and currently breathing fire at him.

Don't ask why Pikachu had Fire Baby's powers. The answer was: because the whole thing was nuts.

The fire felt almost physical. Jiao Bai's whole body seemed to heat up, and in a flash of temper he talked back: "I'm not changing."

Shen Ji hadn't expected the dog to talk back. He blanked for a second, his face went cold, and his right hand swung out. Jiao Bai lunged aside to dodge.

At the same moment, that hand was caught by another force entirely.

Qi Yiliao frowned. "Old Shen, you haven't even asked what happened, and you're already raising your hand?" He released Shen Ji's wrist, tilted his head down, and looked at Jiao Bai with an expression of great warmth. "Little Li, are you coming down with something? Chills?"

Jiao Bai: "..."

If you'd just stop calling me Little Li, I might actually pet that cat head of yours.

"I'm not sick. I have a sun allergy," Jiao Bai said, pushing his slipping sunglasses back up.

"Ah, a sun allergy." A benevolent understanding surfaced on Qi Yiliao's face. "Then you really do need to bundle up."

"Old Shen, have you taken Little Li to see a doctor?" Qi Yiliao tilted his face slightly; sunlight brushed past his temple and cast a golden halo along the bridge of his straight nose. He stood there like some compassionate savior come to redeem the world.

Shen Ji breathed out a mouthful of smoke. "Not necessary."

Qi Yiliao sighed. "Still, he should get it checked out at a hospital." He smiled at Jiao Bai. "Old Shen doesn't have the time, so go on your own, little one."

Jiao Bai looked at Qi Yiliao's avatar and wondered whether that white cat was about to be strangled to death.

The white cat sat there like a dead thing, which only made the Pikachu still breathing fire down below look all the more ridiculous. The two avatars belonged to entirely different art styles.

Jiao Bai gave a perfunctory greeting and walked off alone toward the main hall of the Old Residence, ignoring the two stares boring into his back, quickening his pace, wanting nothing more than to reach somewhere without sunlight.

Shen Ji said flatly, "Same person, different temperament."

Qi Yiliao flicked ash off his cigarette. "You know what he used to be like?"

Shen Ji narrowed his eyes—he'd never bothered paying attention to that Qi kid, let alone some puppy surnamed Wang. "I asked the old butler."

Qi Yiliao held the cigarette between his pale lips, freed a hand, and elegantly straightened his suit cuff. "Old Shen, that kid looks like a withered, scraggly weed, but there's an odd resilience to him that doesn't fit the picture. He was different again just now compared to last night—changing back and forth like a kaleidoscope. Isn't that rare enough that you'd want to spend a little time keeping an eye on him?"

Shen Ji's fingers twitched; the better part of a cigarette was pinched off and crushed. Just a dog.

......

Jiao Bai drank a small bottle of the liquid antihistamine he'd brought along, tossed the empty bottle into a trash can, and sat down in a corner to strip off his coat and pull off his sunglasses and mask. He rubbed ointment onto his face and neck—he'd already applied some before heading out, but he wasn't taking any chances, so he put on more. Once this whole business was over, he was going to see a practitioner of Chinese medicine and get this allergy properly cured, once and for all.

The front garden was bright with sunshine, thick with the scent of flowers. Jiao Bai leaned against a wall, using its angle for cover, and quietly sized up the guests who'd come for the birthday banquet—mostly Shen family members, with a handful of the Shen Corporation's longtime business partners, along with the family head's childhood friends and acquaintances.

He didn't see the young master of the Shen Corporation, Shen Er'an. Word was he'd already gone back to school for exams or something.

Jiao Bai wasn't surprised. Shen Er'an was the product of one reckless night from his father's younger years; his mother had been a tea picker up on Chengshan, and bringing him into the world had cost her nearly her life—what remained of it she'd spent delivering him to the Shen family.

Shen Er'an's arrival had, indirectly, led to the death of the woman Shen Ji loved. Shen Ji couldn't stand the sight of him, and cared for him even less.

Father and son didn't live together, rarely shared a meal at the same table, and greeted each other like strangers when they met.

The Old Madam was caught between them. She'd tried to intervene a few times, then gave up—her younger son had only the one heir, and even without affection between them, blood ties were blood ties.

Jiao Bai yawned. The original owner had no presence to speak of and no friends, which meant no small talk required—he had it easy. He was nearly dozing off in his corner when a great sweep of clouds rolled in over the front garden, blotting out most of the sun. The Old Madam had come out.

Today was her eightieth birthday. Not that anyone could tell—she ate a vegetarian diet and chanted sutras, and her hair and complexion hadn't declined much at all; she still had plenty of spirit in her.

The Old Madam sat in a wheelchair, pushed toward the hall by her most accomplished younger son—Shen Ji, the family head himself. A string of prayer beads turned in her hands; her clothes were plain, and the banquet itself was nothing extravagant.

The whole proceeding kept it simple, entirely vegetarian, every single year.

Jiao Bai smacked his lips and gave a short scoffing laugh. So this was the kindly, benevolent-looking old woman who kept a person chained up like a dog.

As for that particular matter, since it didn't involve the male-lead gong or the male lead shou directly, the comic "Broken Wings" never addressed it head-on, and the details weren't laid out in full—it had to be pieced together from a handful of characters' perspectives.

A few years back, Shen Ji had come down with a strange illness that put him at death's door; specialists both domestic and abroad had been helpless. The Old Madam had gone to the temple to pray for him, and on a master's guidance, mobilized the family's resources to search Shen Ji's birthplace and the place he'd grown up for two people whose fate charts would bolster his—those two were the original owner and Qi Shuang. The pair had eaten and slept alongside Shen Ji in his hospital room for half a month, and miraculously, he'd pulled through the crisis.

The Old Madam was a firm believer in the fate-chart theory. She'd had the two of them set up to live together at Qinxin Garden by the eastern lake, thinking that once Shen Ji's health improved, he could choose one of them to marry into the Shen family.

It wasn't as if the Old Madam had much choice in the matter—if it hadn't been the master's word, she'd have considered it Shen Ji simply keeping two strays, and even the Qi family's youngest son wouldn't have been good enough to set foot through the Shen family's front door.

And yet two years had passed, and the position of Madam Shen still sat empty. Shen Ji didn't believe a word of the fate-chart business; the people he kept on the outside changed constantly, but he never once touched either of the two at Qinxin Garden. It was as if, to him, the moment he touched either one, he'd be tangled up in fate itself, trapped in some cursed loop where his life stopped being his own.

He wanted to hold onto his wealth and standing, wanted a lifetime of peace and stability, and yet here he was, relying on someone else's fate for it—what a joke.

With Shen Ji never selecting either of them to bed, the original owner and Qi Shuang had lived out their days at Qinxin Garden peacefully enough, no trouble between them.

Until the day Shen Ji brought the original owner along to meet some friends, and the balance broke...

Once Jiao Bai had run back through the plot in his head, his thoughts landed on the original owner's adoptive parents. They'd taken a sum of money from the Shen family in exchange for letting the Shens take the boy away, telling everyone he'd given up on school and insisted on going to work in another city. What they told him was that his luck had turned—he'd met a benefactor and would get a better education in the big city.

In truth, they'd used the money from selling him to send their precious daughter abroad.

Jiao Bai truly loved this comic's mess of a plot—even a disposable pawn who got written off early could have a backstory this melodramatic. He sighed, arranged his expression, and stepped out of his corner, crossing a dazzling stretch of designer clothing to stand before the Old Madam.

"Xiao Qiu, why aren't you with Ah Ji? There's a crowd today, don't wander off." The Old Madam took Jiao Bai's hand, placed it in Shen Ji's palm, and patted it.

The whole thing looked like a wedding ceremony.

Jiao Bai pulled his hand back and wiped it against the back of his clothes.

Shen Ji had bent down to tuck a loose strand of hair behind the Old Madam's ear, and from that angle he caught Jiao Bai's little gesture perfectly.

The Old Madam, whose hair she cherished dearly, suddenly felt her younger son tug at it, and nearly had a heart attack. "Ah Ji?"

"It's nothing." Shen Ji let go and smoothed down the Old Madam's silver hair.

Jiao Bai glanced at the few strands left on the Old Madam's head and wondered how they hadn't all been yanked out. Hadn't Shen Ji eaten today? What a weak grip. Just then he noticed Qi Yiliao, over among the moneyed crowd, looking his way, and whatever mischievous amusement had been in his eyes vanished instantly.

Jiao Bai turned his face away as if nothing had happened, and met Qi Zizhi's gaze instead.

What's with all of you staring at me? Something wrong with you people?

Jiao Bai pulled up his account and checked the friend list. Qi Zizhi sat right below Shen Ji, his avatar blank—nothing there at all, jarringly empty.

Right now, three friends were online—Qi Yiliao, Shen Ji, Qi Zizhi—all three showing zero activity value. Get lost, the lot of you.

Under a barrage of contemptuous, disdainful stares, Jiao Bai offered the Old Madam his birthday wishes, then took the first chance he got to slip off toward the restroom, and from a passage beside it, snuck out into the back garden. He'd only just found a spot shaded from the sun but still catching a natural breeze when Qi Shuang's call came through.

The moment the call connected, Qi Shuang didn't speak right away. His breathing was deliberately kept quiet, but there was a tautness to it. His people had already sent him the information—the address belonged to a household with a mother and her child living there.

That was the master's wife and child.

In his hospital room, Qi Shuang's face had gone pale. Even the Qi family's connections hadn't managed to trace it that far—how had this country bumpkin found it? It was uncanny.

"That mother and son are already under surveillance by my people. That's what you meant, isn't it—that's what you want me to do, right," Qi Shuang said quietly. "Chuqiu, I misjudged you. I thought you were the type to bow and apologize to an ant you'd stepped on."

Jiao Bai crossed his legs, perfectly at ease. "Likewise."

The original owner had also thought Qi Shuang was an adorable younger brother, free of any young-master airs.

When Jiao Bai had been following the comic, he'd thought the master was nothing but a con artist with a talent for mysticism. But the more he read, the more he noticed the author had actually looped the logic back around. The original owner died, and that same winter, Qi Shuang married into the Shen family. In its own way, the fate-chart prophecy did come true—Qi Shuang did bolster the fortunes of the Shen family head. Just not Shen Ji's.

Shen Ji's wedding date was set for Little New Year's Eve.

Just a few months away.

Jiao Bai went over the plan ahead with Qi Shuang, then laughed. "Young master, wishing you swift success."

Listening to that laugh, Qi Shuang shuddered, spineless. He really deserved to smash his own head against a wall.

Being friends wasn't an option anymore, but becoming enemies was absolutely out of the question too.

Jiao Bai guessed that from now on, Qi Shuang wouldn't dare try any little tricks in front of him again. Still, he didn't think the road ahead was clear and bright—Shen Ji, that old bastard, was someone he had no way to get back at, not for the time being.

Ah, the road to a nobody clawing his way up really was hard going. A rich young master as stupid as Qi Shuang, yet convinced of his own cleverness and ripe for exploitation, was a rare specimen. Finding one was a stroke of luck, and one worth cherishing properly.

At dinner, Jiao Bai sat at the Old Madam's left hand—the seat reserved for the future daughter-in-law. With Qi Shuang absent, he was the only one occupying it, which made him a target; plenty of hostile glances came flying his way.

"Xiao Qiu, I hear Shuangshuang's in the hospital with an allergic reaction?" the Old Madam asked.

Jiao Bai looked at the mountain of vegetable dishes in front of him and gave a listless, "Mm-hm."

There were only two outsiders at this table—Qi Yiliao, and himself. Even Qi Zizhi hadn't been seated here.

And Qi Yiliao sat directly across from him, dead center, impossible to miss the moment he looked up.

At that point, Qi Yiliao joined in on the topic, taking a spoonful of lotus seed soup. "The Qi family's youngest has an allergy? Why are kids these days all so sensitive?"

Everyone from the Shen family at the table assumed that the "all" in Chairman Qi's question included some lover of his own—not exactly a comfortable subject to ask about.

But if no one responded, it would look like they were being dismissive of Chairman Qi.

A few seconds later, the Old Madam broached it in the tone of idle chitchat.

"Little Zhang," Qi Yiliao said, pointing across the table at Jiao Bai, in the tone of an elder fussing over a junior, "Little Zhang here has an allergic constitution too."

Jiao Bai: "..."

First it's Little Li, now it's Little Zhang. What, am I supposed to be carrying every surname in the book on my back?