There were noises on the other side of the door—Xiao-Xiao was coming back, still speaking with his secretary about some project downstairs. Xingyu didn’t rush back to the chair—doing so might put him out of breath, which Xiao-Xiao might notice; he simply straightened, tucked his hands into his pockets, and moved leisurely down the length of the desk, letting his eyes wander the bookshelf towering on his other side.

“Xingyu?”

Oh, so he wasn’t Xingyu-ge anymore? Guess that only lasted as long as they were around people Xiao-Xiao didn’t know. Xingyu glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, hey.”

“What are you doing?”

“Just exploring. Have you read all of these?”

Xiao-Xiao’s eyebrows drew together. He said another few words to his secretary and then closed the door. “Not all of them. If I filled the shelves with books I already read, I wouldn’t have room for anything new.”

That answer made Xingyu smile. A more arrogant person might have tried to claim that he had read all these huge, wordy books, but not his Xiao-Xiao. “Which ones have you read?”

“About half. I’m not going to name them all. What are you trying to do?” He was coming closer, but his steps were cautious, like he was afraid Xingyu was going to jump out and attack him or something.

“What do you mean?”

“What’s the point of all these questions?”

“I’m just trying to get to know you, is all.”

Xiao-Xiao’s lip curled. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but we both know that isn’t true. If you wanted to get to know me, you would have contacted me a long time ago.”

“Would you have answered?”

If Liu Xiaokai didn’t know Xingyu any better, he might have thought that look he had was earnest. Genuine. But Xingyu was, after all, his father’s son. He didn’t miss people, he didn’t want to know about people, and he didn’t care about people. That was evident throughout their childhood, it was evident when he left, and it was evident now. If he didn’t know all of this, he might have broken a long time ago—or, if he did hold on for this long, he might have broken as soon as he saw Xingyu’s face. But, oddly enough, it was exactly Xingyu’s apathy that kept him going—Xingyu’s apathy that helped him hold on. He knew this much about himself. If he believed that Xingyu really cared—if he believed that Xingyu was really his ge and not just competition—then that meant Xingyu had hurt him over despite all of that. That meant that Xiaokai wasn’t enough to make him stay.

That would have shattered him.