Fu Yizhuo sent Zhu Yun an address — a high-end hotel. She looked up the route online and discovered, almost by accident, that there was a Latin dance performance there the following evening.
Wherever he goes, he never strays far from his calling.
Not wanting to embarrass Li Xun by association, Zhu Yun began preparing four hours in advance. She bathed, changed, did her makeup, and selected a set of jewelry to match. Once everything was in order, she set aside the transit directions she had mapped out and simply hailed a cab.
The hotel was far from campus. By the time she arrived, Fu Yizhuo had been waiting for some time.
It was a well-appointed establishment. Fu Yizhuo stood at the entrance in a full suit, and the women passing by found their gazes drawn, with a certain involuntary quality, to the fitted lines of him.
The location was removed from the city’s noise, the land around it open and unhurried. In the distance, a small man-made lake lay perfectly still. Evening had not yet fully settled — the sky above held a pale, washed blue, like a landscape painting on silk.
Fu Yizhuo stood with his hands clasped behind his back on the wide front steps. He was nothing like Li Xun in his bearing — where Li Xun carried himself with a relaxed, almost careless ease, Fu Yizhuo kept his chest lifted and his chin slightly raised at all times, as though perpetually poised to walk onstage.
On an ordinary man, that kind of deliberate posture might have looked affected, even vaguely like a hotel doorman. On Fu Yizhuo, with his particular build and presence, it was actually rather something to see.
When he spotted Zhu Yun, he bowed slightly and extended his arm for her to take.
Zhu Yun registered the gesture with quiet appreciation. “You’re considerably more gentlemanly than he is,” she said.
Fu Yizhuo maintained his characteristic smile.
“Accurate.”
He led her inside to the hotel’s main hall. It was Zhu Yun’s first time attending a Latin dance performance, and it was not arranged as she had expected — no raised stage, no single viewing direction. Instead, the audience was arranged in a circle around a central dance floor, allowing the spectators to observe from every angle.
Zhu Yun didn’t know much about dance, and could only take in the spectacle as it came. She found herself noting the foreign performers — blond, blue-eyed, clearly professional — and realized that even among the men, none of them came close to Fu Yizhuo’s height.
He really should have been a model.
More than the performance itself, she found herself watching the person beside her. Fu Yizhuo was entirely absorbed, his expression transported, his body moving in small, unconscious responses to the music. Zhu Yun sat with a certain internal tension, genuinely concerned that the mood might overtake him and he would simply rise from his seat and join the performers on the floor.
Fortunately, he held himself together for the duration.
“Shall we, sister-in-law?” Fu Yizhuo said with a smile, as the applause faded. “Let’s go get a drink.”
They made their way to the bar on the ground floor. The performance had just ended, and a number of attendees had drifted in to unwind. The bar was tastefully decorated, the room suffused in the quiet amber of champagne tones, populated by women in evening wear and men in suits — an older crowd, mostly, conversing in low voices about the dancing they had just witnessed.
Zhu Yun felt a private surge of relief that she had not shown up in a t-shirt and jeans.
Fu Yizhuo settled onto a barstool and asked: “What would you like?”
Knowing herself, Zhu Yun kept it sensible and asked for a juice.
In the few minutes it took to prepare, the vacant seat beside Fu Yizhuo was claimed by two women — a pair of sisters, by the look of them, whose glances were anything but casual.
“…” Zhu Yun looked Fu Yizhuo over again. He was facing her, one foot hooked up onto the rung of his stool, the other leg extended straight to the floor, a couple of shirt buttons undone, one arm draped loosely on the bar. The overall effect was, in a word, considerable.
“You two are actually quite alike in that regard,” Zhu Yun said, mostly to herself.
“Mm?” Fu Yizhuo hadn’t quite caught it.
“I said you and your brother have a similar talent for making an impression. He must have picked up some bad habits from you.”
“You have it backwards.”
Fu Yizhuo turned his stemmed glass slowly in his fingers, smiling. “It wasn’t him learning from me. It was me learning from him.”
Zhu Yun was skeptical. “Really.”
Fu Yizhuo gave a quiet, private sort of smile.
“Sister-in-law, you should have more faith in Xun.”
I’d rather not have faith in him about this particular thing…
There was one more thing Zhu Yun had been sitting on for some time. She took the opportunity now. “Why do you call him just ‘Xun’? Is that something special between you two?”
“Guess.”
“…”
“A hint: you actually mentioned the answer the last time we met.”
That would have been at the café. Before Zhu Yun could reach back into that memory, Fu Yizhuo asked: “Did Xun tell you about how we know each other?”
“What aspect of it?”
“Sister-in-law. You don’t have to be quite so guarded.”
Zhu Yun looked down and sipped her juice. Fu Yizhuo said: “He helped me get settled last night. We talked for a while — quite a bit about you, actually.”
“What did he say?”
“He said you were the one who pursued him. That it cost you considerable effort. That he had absolutely no interest in that direction to begin with, but you kept throwing yourself at him no matter how many times he tried to send you away, until finally he reluctantly gave in.”
Zhu Yun’s eyes went wide. A mouthful of watermelon juice lodged in her throat. She forced it down like she was swallowing something sharp.
“Excuse me?!”
The pair of sisters nearby glanced over. Fu Yizhuo was grinning. Zhu Yun caught herself immediately.
He’s making it up…
“Not quite as dramatic as I made it sound,” Fu Yizhuo said, spreading his hands, “but roughly in that spirit. So I can probably guess how he introduced me to you.”
Zhu Yun kept her expression neutral, aiming for inscrutability.
“It’s like a plot summary,” Fu Yizhuo said. “He gives you the outline but none of the details — because he never lets himself appear at a disadvantage. Especially in front of someone he cares about.” He leaned in slightly, conspiratorial. “Do you want to know how we actually met? Little Xun was quite endearing as a child.”