“No.” Tang Yu set down his chopsticks and stood. “I’m finished.”
Wei Yingrong asked, “That’s all you’re eating?”
“I have no appetite.”
She looked at him as though she wanted to say something, but ultimately paid no attention to where he went.
Tang Dong had not noticed anything wrong and continued the earlier discussion. “If the Nangong project succeeds, it can only benefit Juefei’s future.”
Lin Juefei answered, “I’ll do my best.”
As the words left his mouth, his phone rang.
He glanced at the screen, and his expression shifted. He stood at once. “Excuse me. I need to take this.”
Lin Juefei went into the corridor outside the dining room and closed the door behind him.
Wei Yingrong turned to Tang Dong. “Juefei only just came home. Aren’t we rushing him? We should let him rest for a few more days.”
Tang Dong disagreed. “The Nangong family is at the height of its momentum. Juefei is capable enough. Don’t worry.”
The husband and wife traded several remarks.
The clock on the wall swung from side to side. Grandmother glanced at it several times, her expression stern and growing steadily darker.
“Shanbai, how long has Juefei been on that call?”
Grandmother valued rules and etiquette above all. She had been willing to overlook Lin Juefei taking a call during a family dinner, but five minutes had passed and he still had not returned.
Lin Shanbai’s face stiffened. “Madam, Juefei…”
Wei Yingrong noticed nothing amiss and continued, “Juefei is different now. So many people are desperate for a connection to the Nangong family, and at his age he has already—”
“Enough,” Grandmother interrupted.
Wei Yingrong froze. Though surprised, she did not dare continue.
Tang Dong tried to smooth things over. “Mother, it may be about work. Young people—”
Grandmother cut him off too. Her expression remained calm, but the rebuke in her words sharpened. “Do young people no longer need manners? There should be less business discussed at the dinner table.”
The dining room fell silent for several seconds. Lin Shanbai tactfully went out to remind his son.
Another two minutes passed before Lin Juefei opened the door and returned. He bowed slightly.
“I’m sorry, Grandmother. It was a business partner…”
He came to the table and rested both hands on the back of his chair. “There’s an urgent matter. I need to leave.”
Grandmother set down her soup bowl. “What could be so urgent that you can’t finish dinner?”
Tang Dong said, “It’s normal for young people to have matters of their own.”
Lin Shanbai could see his son’s anxiety. With no room left to worry about ceremony, he offered several explanations at the table and waved Lin Juefei away.
Grandmother was plainly displeased. She watched Lin Juefei’s retreating back with a meaningful gaze.
“That child Juefei has grown up.”
Lin Shanbai immediately replied, “Madam, in front of you, Juefei will always be a child in need of guidance.”
Grandmother took an unhurried sip of soup. “I’m not so sure.”
The remaining adults exchanged looks across the long table. No one dared answer.
Years ago, Grandfather had married Grandmother, who brought the Liang family assets with her. Together with Grandfather’s younger brother, she transformed the Tang Corporation into a commercial empire spanning shipping, property, and finance.
The year Grandfather died on a mission, the Tang family descended into chaos. Grandmother was alone at home when someone took advantage of the disorder and broke into the old residence.
Lin Shanbai was not yet Butler Lin. As Grandfather’s former comrade, he had been discharged after suffering severe injuries on duty. At the critical moment, he stepped in front of Grandmother and took two knife wounds for her. He spent three months in intensive care.
Lin Juefei had just turned one. His mother had died giving birth to him, and with Lin Shanbai unconscious, the Tang family cared for the boy as though he were their own.
People tried to seize control of the Tang Corporation from Grandmother, attacking her openly and in secret with an endless succession of schemes.
When Lin Shanbai finally woke and left the hospital, several of his organs were permanently damaged. From then on, he remained at Grandmother’s side and managed the Tang household. He had done so for more than twenty years, becoming the family’s most trusted man.
It was precisely because Lin Shanbai had taken those two wounds that father and son now held their present places in the Tang family.
Not long after Tang Yu left the table, Ji Qian’ang slipped away while the adults were arguing and went after him.
The old residence’s tool room stood at the end of the covered passage connecting the main building and the side wing. Few people ever went there.
Inside were pruning shears, shovels, and several half-used buckets of paint.
A man nearly thirty had told a fourteen-year-old child, There would be no harm in trying it when the time comes.
When Tang Yu first heard those words, he had not fully understood what “trying it” meant. But the suggestive way Nangong Min looked him over made nausea twist through him.
Tang Yifeng slapped Nangong Min across the face on the spot and threw him out.
Afterward, Wei Yingrong summoned Tang Yu to her room.
“Xiao Yu, that’s simply how Mr. Nangong talks. He didn’t mean anything by it. Don’t take it to heart.”
One claim that he had not meant it erased everything. When Nangong Min appeared at the Tang residence again, everyone behaved as though nothing had happened.
After Tang Yifeng broke up with him, Tang Dong even called Nangong Min privately to apologize on Tang Yifeng’s behalf.
Tang Yu had endured it from the age of fourteen until now—until his entire family told him it had only been a joke, until he had learned to appear poised and gracious whenever he encountered Nangong Min in business circles.
Wasn’t it disgusting? Wasn’t it vile?
When Ji Qian’ang finally found Tang Yu, he was curled up in the pitch-black tool room.
Tang Yu’s entire body shook. With practiced movements, he felt along the floor until he found a sharp shard of glass.
Without hesitation, he dragged it across his wrist.
As if only this searing pain, sharp enough to pierce bone, could let him forget the filth and ugliness for a moment.
“Tang Yu.” Ji Qian’ang’s low voice carried a trace of breathlessness.
He stood in the doorway against the light, then crossed the room in several strides and crouched before Tang Yu.
“Give it to me.”
Tang Yu looked aside and ignored him, his whole body still trembling.
Ji Qian’ang reached around him for the shard hidden behind his back. “Tang Yu. Give it to me.”
Tang Yu scoffed, endless mockery rising in his bloodshot eyes. “Give it to you? What does anything I do have to do with you?”
“Do you pity me?”
His voice shook, countless dark-red veins webbing his eyes. “You pity me, so you tie my shoes. You jump into the pool to pull me out—”
“You put food in my bowl at the family dinner so everyone can see how pathetic the Tang family’s young master is? So pathetic that he needs charity from a companion?”
His words came faster and faster until the last was almost a roar.
Ji Qian’ang’s burning hand closed around Tang Yu’s cold forearm. “Give me the glass.”
Tang Yu looked away and drove the shard into his own palm again and again.
Blood ran down his wrist into his sleeve, staining the white uniform a horrifying red.
“You like seeing me like this, don’t you?” Tang Yu tilted his head, his gaze unfocused yet intent.
He loosened his hold on the shard and reached a mangled, blood-soaked hand toward Ji Qian’ang.
Warm, sticky blood smeared across Ji Qian’ang’s cheekbone.
Tang Yu pressed the glass beside Ji Qian’ang’s Adam’s apple. The point entered his skin, raising a tiny bead of red.
Tang Yu curved his lips and demanded hoarsely, “Are you waiting to laugh at me? To see how completely insane I can become?”
Ji Qian’ang answered with absolute calm. “You shouldn’t do this to yourself.”
Tang Yu threw aside the glass, seized the collar of Ji Qian’ang’s uniform, and dragged him closer.
Their foreheads struck together. The smell of blood spread through the cramped tool room.
Tang Yu bent forward and truly sank his teeth into Ji Qian’ang’s shoulder. The bite carried the taste of blood. Even through the uniform, it made Ji Qian’ang’s entire body go rigid.
Only when he had bitten enough did Tang Yu release him. He leaned back against the wall, gasping.
“Why didn’t you push me away?” he asked hoarsely.
“Do you think you deserve to be treated like this?”
Ji Qian’ang remained silent.
He lowered his gaze to his hands. A fine scar ran between the index and middle fingers of his left hand, almost invisible unless one looked closely. Similar wounds covered his body.
That one had come from Uncle Ji burning him with a cigarette when he was young.
No one in the Ji family had asked whether he was in pain. They asked when he could return to school, how his father intended to repay his debts, and whether his left eye could still recover.
After a moment of silence, he answered Tang Yu’s accusation flatly. “I’ve suffered worse pain than this.”
“What you did barely counts.”
Ji Qian’ang stood and looked down at the person huddled against the wall, his eyes fathomless.
“And when you bite someone, it makes me want to pin you to the floor and bite back.”
“You should be grateful I can restrain myself.”
Tang Yu raised his face. The conspicuous red mole at the point of his chin faced Ji Qian’ang.
“Then don’t.”
He lifted a hand and pointed to his own Adam’s apple. “Bite here. Let everyone see.”
Ji Qian’ang’s gaze darkened. Step by step, he advanced until he had Tang Yu, who had just risen, trapped against the wall.
His fingertip settled over the red mole at the point of Tang Yu’s chin, rubbing it with deliberate, measured pressure.