“Bring me a glass as well, please.” In contrast, Xingyu was perfectly pleasant as always. The charm that he exuded was genuine, touchable—Xiaokai might be moving and acting perfectly for this situation, but Xingyu just seemed like himself, even looking like this in this kind of environment. He flashed a smile at the waiter and then turned that smile to Weiran. “How’s the hotel?”

“Oh, you know…it’s a hotel.” Even calling it a “hotel” was pushing it, but Weiran wasn’t going to say that while they were in this restaurant, and he especially wasn’t going to say it in front of Liu Xiaokai and see whatever weird friendly response he had to come up with. Weiran knew his type—he’d met a lot of people like him when he was a kid. In front of people they didn’t know, they were friendly and nice and always said the right thing to everyone, and then as soon as they got home or didn’t see any more use in acting nice, the mask would drop. It wasn’t just that Xingyu had talked about him acting weird—it was also that none of the pleasantness he was displaying was reaching his eyes. “It’s fine.”

“I can see if someone has an extra room, if you’d like,” Xiaokai said. “There are plenty of families we do business with who would be glad to house a friend of the eldest Liu son.”

Zhang Weiran didn’t know how to express how much he really did not want to do that. “Not necessary. I’ll manage with the hotel just fine.”

The waiter came back and Xiaokai ordered for himself, then Xingyu ordered, and then Weiran, trying very hard not to look at the prices. Lunch went by fairly smoothly, however empty the conversation was. Weiran noticed with some confusion that Xiaokai wasn’t touching his glass of wine at all, but Xingyu seemed to enjoy with gusto whatever Xiaokai had chosen. And then Xiaokai very politely excused himself to the restroom and Weiran immediately leaned toward Xingyu.

“You’ve been with him all morning. What do you know?”

Xingyu scooped up some of his rice but the spoon just hovered in the air, not getting any closer to his mouth. “Nothing, really. We haven’t even been apart a single moment other than now and when he went to get coffee, which took—I don’t know, a couple minutes?”

“And he didn’t do anything while he was working?”

“Not anything weird!”

Weiran leaned back in his seat again and scratched at his ear.

“I told you. I don’t think he’s a part of this. I spent my entire childhood being trained by my father, and everything I learned—he isn’t using it. Any of it.”