“I don’t know,” said Xiaokai, “I guess it seemed sometimes like maybe she did know how to feel something. Like maybe she did love us and Liu Baiyan. She went through the same things I did, after all. She probably didn’t feel like she had a choice.”

“She did,” Weiran said. He’d successfully grabbed hold of his wine, but he hadn’t taken a sip from it, and was instead just swirling it around in his glass. “She had a choice. Even if she hadn’t done anything while she was still lower in the List, as soon as she got access to the Files, she could have taken everyone down on her own.”

“Ah, you’re right.” Xiaokai rested his head against Weiran’s chest. “You’re right.”

Weiran turned his head and pressed a kiss to Xiaokai’s temple. He was comfortable being like this now in front of Xingyu—they’d started off with Weiran deathly afraid that Xingyu would find out about any manner of relationship between him and Xiaokai, but now he was comfortable going as far as Xiaokai would let him in front of Xingyu. And normally Xiaokai didn’t have any hang ups when it came to being sexually explicit in front of other people—there were appointments where it had been necessary to do exactly this—but it was different now, and it was different with Xingyu. Whenever Weiran kissed Xiaokai in front of Xingyu, Xingyu would get this expression on his face—like he was proud of Xiaokai. Like Xiaokai had somehow made it by figuring out how to accept Weiran’s love. It was deeply embarrassing. It was like Xiaokai was opening his chest up and letting his heart out for everyone else to see. He allowed just the bare minimum from Weiran—brief kisses, holding hands, draping an arm across the shoulders. If a kiss lingered too long, Xiaokai pushed Weiran away. If Weiran touched Xiaokai too often, Xiaokai pushed him away. If Weiran got that look in his eye, Xiaokai told him to knock it off. Xingyu was observant both by nature and by his training, and Xiaokai could sense that he knew exactly how much Xiaokai cared about Weiran—probably even understood it better than Xiaokai did.

“In any case.” Xingyu stood. “I have some things to work out, so I need to get going for the evening.”

“Will you be staying out all night?”

Xiaokai immediately smacked Weiran on the leg, but he was still blinking up innocently at Xingyu as if he’d said nothing even vaguely suspect.

“Probably.” Xingyu had a flicker of a knowing smile at the corner of his mouth. “It’s just finishing up some paperwork.”

“No one forced you to go back into business, you know,” Xiaokai told him, recognizing that annoyed inflection of his voice.