Zhang Xingchuan sat perfectly still in the armchair for more than ten minutes.
Tan Xiao rolled over. Half asleep, he noticed light in the corridor. Is the door open? Does that mean Zhang Xingchuan is home?
He sat up, looking only toward the doorway, then climbed off the bed to go outside.
“Hey,” Zhang Xingchuan called.
Only then did Tan Xiao see him sitting nearby.
Zhang Xingchuan had wanted to call his name, or tease him with his usual “kiddo,” but suddenly neither would come out. He could only manage a simple “hey.” Strangely, hearing himself say it made him feel sad first.
Tan Xiao had only just woken up and wasn’t perceptive enough to notice the detail.
“Why didn’t you turn on the light?” He switched it on himself, thinking Zhang Xingchuan was playing with him, and smiled. “Were you planning to prank me?”
The lights came on. Zhang Xingchuan squinted briefly. “No. I didn’t want to wake you. Have you been sleeping badly lately? You were sleeping like a little pig on my bed.”
Tan Xiao felt embarrassed that he had fallen asleep waiting. “A little tired, yes. Were you busy today? You’ve seemed very busy lately.”
He came over and sat on the edge of the bed opposite Zhang Xingchuan, then stretched his long legs toward him so that their calves lay crossed together.
He rocked his knee and nudged Zhang Xingchuan’s leg with his own, a perfectly natural gesture of affection.
Usually Zhang Xingchuan would have responded. Sometimes he would nudge him back and they would continue their pointless, sweet little game.
Other times, Zhang Xingchuan would simply get up, come over, and pin him to the bed, after which certain things would follow quite naturally.
Tan Xiao was looking forward to either possibility. Both sounded wonderful.
Neither happened.
Zhang Xingchuan did not move. He looked at Tan Xiao with an expression that felt oddly unfamiliar.
Tan Xiao still did not understand. He looked back, puzzled.
“I wasn’t busy today,” Zhang Xingchuan said. “I went to the university. I heard your defense went well and wanted to congratulate you in person.”
“Did you go to my dorm? Missed me and came back? Why didn’t you call?”
“No,” Zhang Xingchuan said.
After dark, he had parked outside the university and walked onto campus. He sat here for a while and wandered there for a while. He passed the School of Economics and Management library where they had gone on their last date, and he went to the foot of Tan Xiao’s dormitory building to look up at his window.
Countless times he took out his phone, then put it away. He spent more than two hours walking around campus like a tourist before finally driving home alone.
If Tan Xiao had not come to wait at his house, Zhang Xingchuan would probably have called him tomorrow, asked when he had time, and arranged to meet and talk.
It was such a good day, with Tan Xiao’s defense finally passed. After so long under pressure, he ought to be allowed to relax. Zhang Xingchuan should not force him to face a boyfriend who had learned the truth and demand an explanation on the very day of his success.
Now Tan Xiao was beginning to understand. He withdrew his legs and sat up very straight, his eyes fixed on Zhang Xingchuan.
For a moment both men simply looked at each other.
“You know,” Tan Xiao said.
It was not a question.
Zhang Xingchuan did not answer, but his expression said everything.
“How did you find out?” Tan Xiao asked.
“The bicycle.”
“What?”
Zhang Xingchuan had taken the task of buying him the best possible bicycle seriously. After careful research, he had selected an Italian brand whose style seemed perfectly suited to Tan Xiao.
He contacted the store to ask whether it stocked the model he wanted and whether the frame was available in the appropriate size.
He chose the highest-spec version. When he arrived at the store, the manager welcomed him enthusiastically and invited him to join the brand’s cycling club, a special membership scheme recognized worldwide.
While filling out the registration information, Zhang Xingchuan thought that the bicycle’s after-sales service and maintenance notifications should go directly to Tan Xiao.
So he entered Tan Xiao’s email address.
The manager went to enter it into the system and returned a moment later looking delighted, his attitude even warmer. The email address, he explained, had already been registered with the club several years earlier. Its owner had commissioned a handmade bicycle from the Milan store. The manager asked what had happened to that bike, since the system showed no maintenance or repair records. He also explained an unofficial privilege of the custom-bike program: established club members could move to the front of the waiting list instead of facing the three-to-five-month minimum wait imposed on new members.
The manager mistakenly assumed “Julian” was Zhang Xingchuan. The height recorded in the club profile was similar to Zhang Xingchuan’s, and the way Zhang had walked in and paid without hesitation, together with his bearing, made him look every inch an easy mark willing to spend a fortune on custom bicycles.
That was how Zhang Xingchuan learned that nineteen-and-a-half-year-old Tan Xiao had casually commissioned a thirty-thousand-euro bicycle in Italy, as though buying a candied hawthorn skewer at a roadside stall.
If that had been the only clue, it might have meant nothing more than an extravagant purchase. But Zhang Xingchuan had also seen the full name recorded in the cycling club membership: Julian’s surname was Doria, one of Europe’s old aristocratic family names.
A distinctive surname. And an extremely wealthy family.
Then Zhang Xingchuan began piecing together all the fragments Tan Xiao had mentioned before. Tan Xiao’s great-great-grandfather had married a Qing-era noblewoman, a gege, who had fled to Europe. His father had come to China more than twenty years ago to conduct “cross-border logistics” business.
Born in Italy, long resident in Switzerland.
Zhang Xingchuan had heard of a family that matched those details.
The Doria family was the financial power behind an international container-shipping giant. Public information indicated that the head of the family’s current generation had indeed spent some time working and living in China shortly after the turn of the millennium.
The discovery hit Zhang Xingchuan like a falling boulder. For a moment, he was completely stunned.
Small things he had ignored earlier now began to connect in his mind.
Jiaxin’s younger brother practiced épée fencing. Tan Xiao had given him a set of spare equipment.
Jiaxin had mentioned once that the fencing coach hardly dared touch her brother during lessons, assuming he must be some secretly wealthy young heir. The protective equipment was already outrageously expensive in its own right, and it had been altered with extreme precision to fit the child’s build and fencing habits.
Then there was the potted blue orchid that Zhang Xingchuan treasured so much. When the temperature changed sharply with the season, it shed a few leaves, and Zhang Xingchuan asked a flower specialist to inspect it.
The expert had been astonished. Orchids like this usually lived in a collector’s climate-controlled greenhouse, he said. It was a priceless rarity that money could not simply buy.
His unspoken meaning was clear: Zhang Xingchuan, you vulgar rich man, you don’t know the value of what you’ve got. What a waste! A rare, naturally blue-flowering Huaxi Phalaenopsis orchid, and you’ve left it on that office desk of yours, surrounded by the smell of money?
And Tan Xiao’s attitude toward everything. Zhang Xingchuan had believed he was simply born broad-minded and carefree, unconstrained by worldly concerns.
Maybe it was because there was nothing he had not already seen.
The poor student Zhang Xingchuan thought he was dating might actually be the young master of a fabulously wealthy old-money family.
In the days after receiving the bicycle, Tan Xiao had quickly filmed a lively, youthful clip of himself riding it and sent it over.
Zhang Xingchuan had watched it whenever he had a spare moment during the days that followed. That was still his Tan Xiao. Obviously it was.
So how had he suddenly become Julian Doria?
The worst part was that Zhang Xingchuan could not be certain why Tan Xiao had not told him the truth.
Rationally, he understood that someone living far from the protection of his family might have good reasons to keep his identity secret. Hiding his background could be a necessary act of self-protection. He understood. He truly did.
But people were emotional creatures. Even Zhang Xingchuan, the levelheaded, gentle capybara president, could not stop himself from wondering:
Does my lover, Tan Xiao, not love me quite as much as I love him? Does he not trust me enough?
Has he just been playing with me, planning to leave whenever he’s had his fun?
Does he secretly laugh at me? Especially when I thought spending money could make him happy, what must I have looked like to him? A clown?
No, no. It wasn’t like that.
Zhang Xingchuan forced himself to stop these increasingly extreme suspicions. They were too uncharitable. Tan Xiao could not possibly have approached him with such malice.
The process by which Zhang Xingchuan had come to know and love Tan Xiao was perfectly clear in his memory. He knew better than anyone what kind of person Tan Xiao was at heart.
Tan Xiao never approached anyone with ill intentions.
Right now, Tan Xiao felt unbearably miserable.
The feeling reminded him of losing that treasured bicycle. He had failed to lock it once, through a moment’s carelessness, and had lost it forever.
This time, too, he had delayed. He had only wanted to wait until his defense was over. Yet because of that small gap in timing, Zhang Xingchuan had discovered the truth before Tan Xiao could tell him himself.
“I came here today,” Tan Xiao said, “because I wanted to tell you about this.”
After a moment of silence, Zhang Xingchuan said, “Then tell me now. I’m listening.”
“I…” Tan Xiao took a deep breath. “I’m Julian Doria. My father is Lorenzo Doria. You know… the Doria you’re thinking of.”
“I know.” Zhang Xingchuan nodded and let out an involuntary sigh. “Why is your surname Tan? Your mother doesn’t have that surname either.”
“My great-great-grandmother gave my great-great-grandfather a Chinese name using the surname Tan. I heard it was the Chinese surname of one of her uncles,” Tan Xiao explained. “Her descendants all have Chinese names. My father’s Chinese name is Tan Minhong. He has a younger brother named Tan Minheng. My sister is Tan Yun, and there are several other younger brothers and sisters I’m not close to. I don’t know what Chinese names they use.”
Zhang Xingchuan nodded rather aimlessly again. He had barely taken in who was who among the later names.
Whoever they are, they can do as they please. He wasn’t interested in those people anyway.
“There’s actually something I’m not sure about,” Zhang Xingchuan said. Only one thing mattered to him. “Did you really ever intend to tell me any of this?”
“…”
Tan Xiao stared at him in disbelief. What sort of question was that? Did Zhang Xingchuan think he had just been playing around, without a shred of sincerity?
Tan Xiao wanted to lose his temper. He wanted to accuse Zhang Xingchuan of thinking so poorly of him. But he quickly understood that Zhang Xingchuan wasn’t entirely wrong to have doubts. He had not explained himself in time, and that had given rise to this misunderstanding. He had not offered enough reassurance, leaving Zhang Xingchuan unable to feel secure.
“It’s not like that,” Tan Xiao said. “I really was going to tell you. I just worried it would become a burden for you if I said it. I only…”
“All right, all right,” Zhang Xingchuan interrupted.
Tan Xiao grew desperate. “It’s not all right! How can it be all right? I’m not finished. The reason I kept putting it off was that I was afraid you wouldn’t treat me as me afterward. I don’t want to be Julian Doria. I want to be Tan Xiao. At least in front of you, I never want to be Julian. I really… I just…”
“All right.” Zhang Xingchuan could no longer remain seated. He stood and crossed over to pull Tan Xiao into his arms. “Don’t cry, Tan Xiao. Don’t cry.”
“…”
Tan Xiao had not even realized he was crying. Once Zhang Xingchuan hugged him, he buried his face against the man’s chest.
Thank goodness.
He could clearly feel that Zhang Xingchuan still loved him. He loved Tan Xiao, not some other identity or fortune.
The instant Tan Xiao shed tears, Zhang Xingchuan lost all his resolve. It was Tan Xiao in his arms, not Julian.
A moment earlier, the president had been keeping a stern expression to “interrogate” him. Now he was so distressed that he had no idea what to do.
And truly, Zhang Xingchuan was at a loss. He had never seen Tan Xiao cry before.
“I shouldn’t have asked it like that,” Zhang Xingchuan said. “I don’t really suspect you of that. I’m just upset. How could you keep this from me? You can hide it from anyone else, but you shouldn’t hide it from me. You understand? That’s not right.”
He had never seen Tan Xiao crying. Tan Xiao, for his part, had rarely heard Zhang Xingchuan stumble over his words like this. He sounded so clumsy.
Tan Xiao kept his face buried in Zhang Xingchuan’s shirt and wiped his tears on the fabric. “I wasn’t trying to hide it. I really came to tell you today. Since you already knew, why didn’t you ask me to confirm it earlier?”
His tears had Zhang Xingchuan in such a muddle that he kept stroking the back of Tan Xiao’s head as he said, “I was afraid you’d be embarrassed, afraid you’d fall apart. I didn’t want to affect your dissertation defense.”
Tan Xiao’s tears had come from panic, not from any intention to cry. Now he stopped almost as abruptly as he’d started. His clever mind was already spinning, and he switched to strategic coaxing. Besides, this angle was perfect for burying his face in Zhang Xingchuan’s chest.
“Brother,” Tan Xiao murmured, “you’re so good to me.”
“…” Zhang Xingchuan finally began to suspect he had been played. All that worrying had been for nothing. He tried to push this cunning university boy away.
Tan Xiao was quicker, locking both arms around his waist.
“Don’t go,” he said. “If you let go, I’ll start crying again.”
“Don’t try that trick on me.”
I’m absolutely going to try it, Tan Xiao thought. You fall for it every time.
“Julian,” Zhang Xingchuan said, “you haven’t finished your explanation. Sit properly.”
“I can explain just fine like this. My mouth still works.”
Zhang Xingchuan was completely out of options. It wasn’t as though he could actually use force against him.
And with Tan Xiao clinging to him so shamelessly, Zhang Xingchuan felt once again that the young man was as sweet and innocent as ever. He wasn’t some distant, unattainable aristocratic heir. He was still the same familiar Tan Xiao, his kiddo.