“I’m going to get some rest.” Xiaokai stood, either oblivious to these glances or not caring about them. “Don’t spend too much time watching the news. Don’t forget to eat.”

Xingyu scoffed. Bold of his didi to chide them like this when he was going to bed at five in the evening without dinner. But this was just a temporary, knee-jerk reaction; as Xiao-Xiao left the room, this initial thought faded into what had been pressing on his consciousness just as strongly as finding Bai Xue, which was, naturally, Liu Xiao-Xiao’s reputation.

One of the first things he’d found out about his brother upon returning was that he was the city’s most eligible bachelor. This was the kind of title that had a lot hinging upon it—not only was he a fu’erdai with all kinds of appealing prospects, but he was also young, and he was handsome, and he came from a (presumably) good family, and he was certainly capable. Most of all—and this was maybe the most appealing part about all of it—was that he wasn’t promiscuous. He was polite and courteous to all the women he met, but he didn’t flirt with any of them, and he didn’t make any of them feel uncomfortable. There were brief rumors according to Liu Xingyu’s research that Xiao-Xiao was involved with his secretary. These rumors, however, exclusively came from cheap gossip magazines, and as there was no truth to them, the pathetic papers could only repeat the same “evidence” of the secretary’s sudden promotion so many times before they eventually had to give up and the majority of the city went on believing that Liu Xiaokai was not only rich, young, handsome, and capable, but also innocent and pure as well—the kind of young man that parents would fall over for their daughters to marry.

But all sorts of things had happened since Xingyu had first found these articles. Most importantly, Liu Baiyan had died, and the arrests had begun. Xiao-Xiao had such a good reputation, so what would all these rumors and deaths and arrests do to that reputation? What if Liu Xingyu had succeeded in bringing down the List, but got the whole city to hate and whisper about his didi in return? Xingyu wouldn’t be harmed by this kind of thing—he’d only just returned, and all of these people came falling so soon after, so what kind of person wouldn’t be able to conclude that he’d had a hand in this? And, even if someone did dare speculate that he should have been arrested with everyone else, he wasn’t the kind of person who got his feelings hurt by little things like gossip of the common people. It was only Xiao-Xiao saying such things that would get him riled up in any way.

But Xiao-Xiao—