Liu Baiyan and Chen Jun watched him go.

Chen Jun: “I haven’t heard anyone but his clients call Xiaokai that in a long time.”

Liu Baiyan: “He’s still stuck in the past.”

Chen Jun: “Does he know?”

Liu Baiyan: “He will.” A pause, a slight shake of the head. “Eventually.”

IT WASN’T USUALLY Liu Xiaokai’s job to plan events like this, but every now and then someone would make some sort of request, and then Liu Baiyan and Sun Yue would helpfully volunteer him, and then Liu Xiaokai was off doing someone else’s job. In this case, it had been part of a way to sweeten the pot of some deal—Liu Xiaokai would get dressed all pretty and suck him off instead of doing the usual tumble in bed, and in exchange for making Chen Jun go easy on him he’d help plan this inane event. At the time, Xiaokai had thought the appointment was being considerate of an especially rough appointment with Hu Yongzhu—for some reason, the two made appointments one after the other quite often—but now that he knew Xingyu was home, he knew it was because Liu Baiyan wanted him to make sure the event was to a certain standard for his favorite son.

And the party did look pretty good, if Liu Xiaokai was being honest. It was big, elegant, and the food and wine seemed to be going over well with the guests, if his checks on the stocks were any indication.

“Xiao-ge.” Rang’er was hanging off of Xiaokai’s arm, as he had been the entire day so far. “Are you free yet?”

“I’m going to be busy all night,” Xiaokai said. “You can stop asking.” He wanted to add ‘stop calling me Xiao-ge’ or ‘at the very least call me Xiaokai-ge,’ but he didn’t want to deal with Rang’er wilting afterward.15 Chen Jun had more or less put Xiaokai in charge of Rang’er as well, and if Rang’er at any point in the night started running toward his father to complain, Xiaokai was going to pay for it.

“Really? I thought we would get to hang out since you haven’t been here in ages.”

Well, plan failed. Rang’er was pouting anyway.

“Did you try setting an appointment?”

Rang’er’s mouth fell open. “An appointment? I thought we were friends.”

“I set appointments to speak with Liu Baiyan. That’s what happens when you’re as busy as I am.”

“Don’t you get any free time? You’re still so young.”

Xiaokai was going to pretend that was a rhetorical question. He pulled out his phone and made a quick call, just to make sure that there was enough wine downstairs to last them the night. There was.

“Do you meet with my dad very often?”

Xiaokai looked back at him. “Why?”