“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that. My first official appointment was when I was sixteen. But if you want to act all horrified, I was training for it long before that. People are picky, you know. Especially rich men. You use a little too much teeth and suddenly—”

Zhang Weiran didn’t know if he wanted to hear this, but his mouth wouldn’t move to voice his concerns.

“—they are complaining to the List, and then Sun Yue is sending me through a line of ten more people to practice. The practice is the worst part. At least the appointments have variety.” He stretched out his arms suddenly, and then gave an even more sudden smile to Weiran—one that seemed a lot less pained than before. “I haven’t been able to talk about this to anyone. This is nice.”

He looked…beautiful. That was the only word Weiran could come up with to describe him, and it was a word he thought he would never use for Liu Xiaokai. Beautiful—the way his black hair fell into eyes seemed almost gentle; the slope of his nose was like it had been carved out of marble; the small birthmark right below his lip—and another one, Weiran noticed, beneath his eye, like a teardrop; and his eyes seemed to have opened up, turning from unreadable walls into endless pools. He looked beautiful. He looked like Xingyu when Weiran fell in love with him.

“Whenever Sun Yue wants to talk about the appointments, it’s always ‘Learn anything?’ and ‘Did they give you too many bruises to hide in the next appointment?’” He laughed, and Weiran was ashamed to think that that sounded beautiful too, even with the words it just followed. “Sun Yue hated it when I did, so I learned to stop a long time ago, but…sometimes I’d just like to complain.”

Weiran was going to go back in time two weeks and punch himself in the face. No, he didn’t even need to go that far to pummel some sense into himself—he only needed ten minutes. Ten minutes, he would give himself a mean right hook, and then he’d shove himself toward the bathroom to give Xiaokai a glass of water, at the very least. “What kind of things do you want to complain about?”

“Mostly the appointments.” He stretched out his legs now, fully extending them, and his feet brushed against the side of Weiran’s thigh. He didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t let them bother me too much. If I let every single thing bother me, I’d go crazy. Get even less sleep. But I let myself be annoyed at some things.”

“Like…bruises?”

“Yes. Or burns.” He held up a photograph of a thin-lipped, sneering man. “This one likes leaving marks. Hu Yongzhu. You should write it down.”