“Do you understand French?” Tang Yu asked.
“No.”
“English?”
Ji Qian’ang answered in precise, unhurried English. “You were looking at me before you asked.”
Tang Yu fell silent. The man somehow sounded better speaking English than Cantonese. Verbal sparring with him was hopeless; Ji Qian’ang never rushed, yet Tang Yu always found himself cornered before he noticed.
Tang Yu put the headset over his ears. “From now on, repeat after each segment. Tell me if you can’t keep up.”
He deliberately chose a breathlessly fast BBC report packed with technical language, then sat with his back to Ji Qian’ang. Ji Qian’ang missed perhaps two words in five, but what he did translate was accurate.
When it ended, Tang Yu put on his own headset and played a quarterly report on Asia-Pacific shipping. Determined not to embarrass himself, he interpreted with steady pacing and careful diction.
He removed the headset and lifted his chin. “Well?”
Ji Qian’ang stared until Tang Yu shifted uneasily.
“Speak.”
“In the third sentence of the second section, you rendered ‘excess shipping capacity’ as ‘excess production capacity.’ Both use capacity in English, but they aren’t the same in Chinese.”
Tang Yu had mistranslated a shipping term in front of a shipping heir. His expression did not change, but his ears burned.
“Play it again,” Ji Qian’ang said.
His delivery was less fluent than Tang Yu’s, sometimes halting or rearranged, but his shipping terminology was exact. Tang Yu leaned back, his gaze drifting toward Ji Qian’ang’s bandaged profile. Concentration softened the usual severity of his face.
When the report ended, Tang Yu looked away. “Average.”
“Mm.”
“You’re not going to argue?”
A nearly invisible smile touched Ji Qian’ang’s mouth. “If you say it was average, then it was. I don’t need your praise.”
Tang Yu bit his lip. Every apparently agreeable answer killed the conversation.
“Why did you tie my shoes?”
“I was afraid you’d fall.”
“What does that have to do with you? My legs would hurt, not yours. You’re my companion, not my servant.”
Ji Qian’ang rose and faced the window. “What answer do you want to hear?”
“Forget it.” Tang Yu slung on his bag. “Don’t come tomorrow. I can manage alone.”
“Grandmother told me to come. I listen to her.”
Technically, Ji Qian’ang was Tang Yu’s companion, but he belonged to Grandmother’s arrangement. Tang Yu slammed the door and left.
Ji Qian’ang smoothed Tang Yu’s crumpled French notes, folded them, slipped them into his pocket, and followed.
Dinner was already laid out with Tang Yu’s favorites, but since Tang Yifeng’s death he rarely had an appetite. Butler Lin tried to tempt him with a new crisp tofu-skin dish filled with salted egg yolk and char siu.
“Leave it.” Tang Yu started upstairs.
A strong tug caught his shirt. Ji Qian’ang held the hem.
“Let go,” Tang Yu snapped in Cantonese. “Who are you to control me?”
He tore free and went upstairs. Butler Lin sighed at the untouched food. “Xiao Ji, eat. I’ll bring something to Young Master later.”
Ji Qian’ang lowered his hand without a word.
Tang Yu fell asleep over a comic, still in uniform. Thunder rolled outside, dragging him into the familiar darkness of his first seventeen years—alone, unsupported, with only Tang Yifeng and Grandmother offering any real warmth.
A knock sounded.
Ji Qian’ang entered carrying a tray. He dimmed the bedside lamp and reached for the comic. Tang Yu rolled over, one arm falling beyond the mattress.
Ji Qian’ang caught his wrist instinctively.
Tang Yu’s skin was cold; Ji Qian’ang’s palm was burning hot. The two temperatures met like a hand lowered into warm water in winter, caught between retreating and staying.
Ji Qian’ang bent over him, one hand supporting that narrow wrist. His breath brushed Tang Yu’s forehead. The tension between Tang Yu’s brows eased, then his eyes opened.
Seeing the face inches away, he bolted upright. “Why are you in here?”
“To bring dinner.”
“You delivered it. Why were you standing there watching me sleep? Are you a pervert?”
“You grabbed me.”
Tang Yu stared uncertainly at his own hand. “You couldn’t move?”
“If you fell, whose fault would it be? I don’t want to be called stubborn again.”
Tang Yu remembered complaining about him by the school railing, believing Ji Qian’ang too far away to hear.
“Get out.”
Ji Qian’ang turned on the bedroom light instead. Tang Yu squinted, then saw him surveying the room with grave attention. The room held too many traces of Tang Yifeng. Though nothing private was exposed, Tang Yu’s chest tightened all the same.