LCP Ch 3

Later that evening, they had just finished dinner. By the time Chi An put on his overcoat and walked up to Liang Ce’s side, Liang Ce’s breath already smelled like pleasant mints. Is he planning to kiss me in a moment? Chi An, having gotten a little, now wanted more, and was practically letting his mind wander into wild assumptions—yet Liang Ce simply pushed open the restaurant’s glass door for him.

Just then, Liang Ce received a phone call. After listening for a moment, he said okay, don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. He then set down his phone and turned to Chi An: “I’m sorry, is it okay if I drop you home first? There’s a sudden situation at work, and I have to go help move a car.”

The situation was as follows: Lu Xi had recently signed a high-profile couple of content creators during a business dinner, and they had just taken on a Valentine’s Day sponsored post for a massager. The topic the creators came up with was experiencing a day in their parents’ dating life from 20 years ago. They had specially managed to rent a Citroën Fukang—the exact model the guy’s dad used to drive—with the plot built around them feeling the car was too uncomfortable midway through their romantic date, leading the guy to thoughtfully pull out the massager as a gift for the girl.

As fate would have it, the day before the shoot, the girl caught the guy kissing her best friend after drinking. The two managed to barely cooperate during the shoot the next day, but by nightfall, a massive argument broke out. The guy parked the car by the roadside, slammed the door, and walked off. The girl didn’t know how to drive, so she sat in the passenger seat, breaking down in tears while calling Lu Xi. As luck would have it, most of the company’s staff had gone out of town for a new media summit, and the remaining administrative and finance staff couldn’t drive a manual transmission. Lu Xi had no choice but to slip out of the conference hall before his presentation to call Liang Ce, asking if he could swing by to drive the car back to the company and comfort the creator while he was at it.

There wasn’t a trace of irritation or impatience on Liang Ce’s face, as if he had long grown accustomed to emergency situations; yet his face was filled with apologies and regret, looking as though he was reluctant to end the date just yet.

Chi An was now certain that Liang Ce really had wanted to kiss him a moment ago. A surge of abundant energy suddenly rushed to his limbs; his mouth wanted to say something, and his hands wanted to do something—anything to wipe away every last bit of apology and regret from the man standing in front of him. He said, “I don’t have anything going on anyway. Let me come with you.”

Liang Ce bought two cups of hot chocolate along the way, handing one to Chi An to hold and warm his hands, while packing up the other to carry in his hand. Before they had walked very far, they saw the Fukang parked by the side of the road. When the girl opened the passenger door, Liang Ce crouched down, pulled out a pack of disinfectant wipes from his bag, and looked up at the creator whose eyes were swollen from crying: “It’s okay now. We’ll take care of things here. Take off your colored contact lenses first.”

The girl sobbed twice and took them. Liang Ce held out his palm to catch the lenses she discarded, then handed over single-use eye drops: “It’s one thing to cry over a guy like that, but crying with colored contacts in really isn’t worth it—it ruins your eyes.”

With those words, he naturally made his voice brighter and softer, transforming from a talent manager capable of cleaning up any mess into a stereotype-fitting gay best friend: “When Lu Xi called me, I was utterly dumbfounded—I haven’t seen such a scumbag in ten years. Yesterday I saw someone in your fan group saying they didn’t like seeing him featured so much. Breaking up might actually be better for your account.”

The girl had just suffered a double blow in her career and love life. How would the video be shot next? How would the editing schedule be adjusted? Did she still want her boyfriend and best friend?—Her mind was a tangled mess. But after Liang Ce said those few sentences, she suddenly felt that things weren’t so unmanageable after all. Her emotions were soothed by a voice that was different from her ex-boyfriend’s—one entirely free of aggression or personal agendas toward her—allowing her logic to finally return, transforming her from a hurt, heartbroken person back into a smart, successful woman who relied on being liked to thrive. She plucked off her false eyelashes along with everything else: “Don’t worry, no matter what, I’ll finish executing the ad before breaking up.”

Liang Ce took her false eyelashes again: “The account was started by you in the beginning, and all the platform real-name verifications are under your name. Last month, I just poached a legal counsel from an entertainment company who is very skilled with these types of lawsuits. If he really tries to make a scene with you, the company will handle it for you.”

The woman nodded: “I’ll go home to find him first, coax him through finishing the shoot for this ad, and then show my cards.”

Liang Ce hummed in agreement, and reminded her: “For the company you two used for the online store a couple of years ago, remember to get both USB security keys back into your own hands first. He doesn’t hold any shares, right?”

The woman shook her head. Strangely enough, these practical matters that needed handling actually brought strength back to her legs. She unbuckled her seatbelt and looked up, catching sight of Chi An standing beside Liang Ce.

Chi An thoughtfully passed over the hot chocolate—now cooled to a drinkable temperature—with a straw inserted and wrapped in a paper sleeve. “I’m Liang Ce’s friend,” he introduced himself with a smile. “I’ve been watching your videos for a long time, and I still think your earliest solo shop-review series was the most fun.”

Perhaps because he spent time around small animals year-round, Chi An possessed a warm, welcoming presence. The woman instinctively accepted his kindness, saying he should come over to her place for dinner sometime when he had free time.

Liang Ce hailed a ride-hailing car to send the creator off, then opened the passenger door for Chi An. For two people on the verge of entering a relationship, discussing someone else’s love tearing itself apart in a chaotic brawl would normally be the ultimate catalyst to heat things up, yet Liang Ce said nothing of the sort. He didn’t comment on the man and woman who had just left to start a war; he simply asked Chi An if he was cold, then adjusted the direction of the air conditioning.

It grew warm inside the car, and Chi An’s temperature rose with it.

People—especially men—easily learn to say very unpleasant things once they start working. Back in college, Chi An had tried dating a man older than himself, on the day right after he learned that Liang Ce had gotten a boyfriend. His roommate gave him a contact, advising him: Don’t hang yourself on a single tree. Liang Ce isn’t even that great—he doesn’t even remember you to this day, does he? You only like him because you haven’t tried anyone else.—The roommate hadn’t entered the workforce yet, but the things he said were already deeply unpleasant.

Chi An went to the meeting anyway. The man was a wealthy heir whose family had donated a building to the university, having entered a hedge fund after graduating from a business school in S16. He wore trendy hoodies and baggy pants, arriving to pick up Chi An in a Cullinan. The moment Chi An got in, the man first bragged about how much money he had made off a certain stock recently, then flexed about a big shot he had just met. “You major in Animal Science? Want to be a vet? Isn’t that really tough? Why do that?” He drove the luxury car wildly, the push-back sensation making Chi An want to throw up. “You’re so good-looking, it’d be so easy to make money posting vlogs on Xiaohongshu—you’d definitely blow up. A while back, an influencer was chasing me non-stop; I heard he made 3 million in half a year thanks to his mom filming videos. If I didn’t look down on people like them, I would’ve gotten together with him. Way more lucrative than us studying legitimately, fucking ridiculous.”

It was terrible. Why had his roommate urged him to meet other people again? To convince him to forget Liang Ce. Yet now, sitting beside a man he was meeting for the first time, Chi An remembered Liang Ce even more clearly. He even felt a secret sense of pride: in his imagination, the grown-up Liang Ce wouldn’t throw around dense streams of profanity, wouldn’t insult other people’s professions or passions, wouldn’t slam hard on the brakes kick after kick, and wouldn’t romanticize “inflicting pain” as “holding power.” Liang Ce was different from other men! Chi An would say things like that just like an irredeemable hopeless romantic. And now, something happened that made him even more hopelessly romantic: he discovered that Liang Ce really had grown up to be exactly as he imagined.

Liang Ce didn’t make light of the woman’s pain, nor did he look down on this dilapidated, outdated car. Those hands of his, which could gracefully catch discarded color lenses and false eyelashes, now adjusted the angle of the outdated Fukang’s rearview mirror, before turning the car key to ignite the engine.

How had the man cheating on his girlfriend with her best friend driven this car? Chi An couldn’t imagine it anymore. He watched Liang Ce expertly step on the clutch, shift gears, and release the handbrake, his soft skin resting against the worn leather. In a trance, he felt as if this car had endured a long, grueling lifetime, only to slowly and peacefully meet its end in Liang Ce’s hands. The car was ruined by Liang Ce—because Chi An could no longer imagine it apart from Liang Ce.

“When I was very young, my mom drove a Fukang.” Liang Ce shifted into second gear to turn, driving smoothly even on narrow roads. “Because she didn’t win the license plate lottery for years, and she didn’t drive much due to frequent business trips, she didn’t get a new car until I was in high school. But we didn’t sell the old one. I got my driver’s license very early, so I often had to pick up and drop off my younger brother.”

His younger brother hated how beat-up the car was, always climbing into the back seat without a word. So today was Liang Ce’s first time having someone sit in the passenger seat while driving this car.

“Is your brother much younger than you?” Chi An asked.

“One year younger, but surprisingly, we share the exact same birthday,” Liang Ce replied with restraint.

Liang Ce dropped Chi An home first, pulling the car up to the entrance of his building in the underground garage. As Chi An was putting on his jacket to get out, his glasses slipped from his pocket onto the floor mat, which was covered in a layer of dust.

Liang Ce picked them up for him, switched on the dim interior car light, and pulled a lens cleaning wipe out of his bag like magic to wipe his glasses. Chi An stared at Liang Ce’s face, illuminated in Rembrandt lighting; he forgot about Sun Liang and the Cullinan, forgot about physical needs and pain, feeling as serene as if he were living in the afterlife.

⋆⋆⋆

Chi An didn’t ask Liang Ce what day his birthday was.

Standing in the empty shower room at the gym, looking at his own body, Liang Ce thought of this. He felt a sense of discouragement. Was Chi An not curious about him at all? It didn’t seem that way either, but Chi An didn’t ask; instead, he kept rummaging and looking around Liang Ce: he stood on tiptoe in front of Liang Ce’s bookshelf, trying to read the spine of every book; his following list contained the accounts of every single creator in Liang Ce’s company; he had even watched that newly signed couple’s shop-review video from five years ago—was that sentence meant for the creator, or for him? Was it to comfort the woman, or to make his heart itch? No, how could he speculate about Chi An like that? Must every single word and action of the other person be meant to flirt with him? Liang Ce, you’re so disgusting.

Liang Ce looked in the mirror and came to a conclusion.

“A person’s affection for another definitely starts with curiosity,” his mother had said to his younger brother two years ago, when she allowed Liang Ce to return home for the first time and Liang Chen happened to bring his girlfriend along. Liang Ce had overheard her say: “But not all curiosity turns into affection. You’re just a little curious about her.”

His mother said it because she didn’t like the girl, but what she said seemed right. Because while most people only get curious about things that look good, Liang Chen was curious about everything: the good and the bad, happiness and calamity, women and men. Liang Chen treated the world without discrimination, and was therefore extraordinarily fickle.

Liang Chen’s unusual curiosity turned him into a bizarre, flashy person; he became the “thing that looks good,” in exchange for ordinary curiosity from others. So from a young age, Liang Chen was immensely popular, whereas Liang Ce was the exact opposite: Liang Ce was incurious about everything, except for a very select few people. His curiosity was picky and focused; once formed, it was bound to endure.

In business, this dull, dormant curiosity worked to his advantage, making him appear professional, measured, and easy to get along with. If the foundation of doing business is the ability to integrate and revitalize the resources in one’s hands, Liang Ce understood the trade deeply. His incurious brain would instinctively strip away those flashier yet useless surface details, allowing him to see the core framework beneath. A few years ago, he and Lu Xi stayed for months at a live-stream company they partnered with in Hangzhou, then went to Guangzhou and Shenzhen, managing to scoop up their supply chain resources. Then he pulled two or three promising business and management colleagues from his previous company, found a few interns on recruitment sites for a hundred yuan a day, and chatted through a circle of major creators he had good relationships with who also wanted to do live-streaming—in the blink of an eye, he used a small team to service over a dozen influencers.

In romance, however, an incurious person is simply a boring person. Liang Ce was far too bland; no one wanted a taste. So he needed to find something else for himself that could make him “look good.” This thing had to be extremely visual, extremely rare, and extremely intense. That thing was his face.

Liang Ce maintained his appearance to be far too beautiful. It wasn’t a wild handsome, nor was it about atmosphere or vividness—it was an atmosphere of extreme, exquisite beauty. Even now, having just trained his shoulders, taken a shower, and standing wet in front of the mirror, not a single trace of messiness could be found: there were no neck lines on his throat, nor visible pores on his T-zone; plump yet unbloated muscles, and symmetrical peaks on his lips. All the ugliness that should naturally occur had been emasculated by him; he was beautiful to the point of being unnatural, beautiful to the point where anyone would want to ask him, “When is your birthday?”—Why hadn’t Chi An asked?

What Chi An asked was: Is your brother much younger than you?—Why ask about his brother? Don’t look at his brother. Look at him. It would be best if he could only see him.

Liang Ce’s wish fell flat.