Yue Fei has a copy of the Witcher 3 delivered with the night’s groceries. Game Informer calls it addictively immersive, so that’s something. Something about religious dragons is also in the pile– there had been an outcry over the same-sex romances in the game, and complaints that it was too open world. Between the two, Wei Qing might be distracted for nearly a month! Not that he actually expects it to make a difference but…
As he watches Wei Qing very earnestly eating his meal, his entire neck hidden by a turtleneck sweater he’d pulled from who-knows-where… He can’t help but think that this Wei Qing is a little better behaved than he remembers.
Then again, he is still thinking of Wei Qing at the time of his death.
Surely, he had ramped up to that level of contrarian wildness. Yue Fei has probably just forgotten that there’d been a time where he was so easily cowed. Surely, this is just an interlude, between messes. A refractory period for bad decisions.
Nevertheless, he’s happy to take advantage. Using Wei Qing’s declaration that he’ll never sleep around again (hilarious) Yue Fei has taken the initiative to cancel his trashier club memberships and delete a few dozen contacts from his phone: All people that he was chasing, chased by, or had already slept with, yet still didn’t know the last name of.
Wei Qing had been practically vibrating with his need for praise as he let Yue Fei do it.
“If it’s still this clean in a month, I’ll be impressed.” Yue Fei returns his phone to him.
Yue Fei would never say these things before. After all, Wei Qing hated being restrained. Hated not being instantly believed and agreed with. Yet, surprisingly, he just nods along, eyes sparkling like he can already imagine his future success.
It makes Yue Fei’s stomach flip. Makes him want to know how far he can push this. If all it takes is a little embarrassment and authoritarianism to stuff Wei Qing in the good kid box he’d inhabited, when they’d first met… wouldn’t that be wonderfully dreadful?
If the key to everything was just not putting up with his shit?
“Then… I await your inspection!” Wei Qing actually salutes. Idiot. Cute idiot, but still.
Yue Fei makes a non-committal little noise and starts doing the dishes, falling into old patterns with an ease that frightens him. But since he’s done babying the man…
“Then what are you going to be using it for now? Games, or proper work?”
“…proper work…”
This agreement isn’t nearly as cheerful. Sure enough, Wei Qing finds it easier to promise not to do things. Applying himself is a much bigger challenge, even though he really had been so very brilliant.
—
Wei Qing swipes through his phone, reading a backlog of ignored work emails large enough to paper the moon. For three years now, he’s been the world’s most hands-off boss. Setting his email account to automatically forward everything from his ‘department’ over to Yue Fei, only showing up at the family company for board meetings, parties, and shareholder conferences that he couldn’t get out of.
He’s been avoiding Wei Securities since he was twenty-one, when his elder brother embarrassed him by shit-canning the prospectus that he’d spent six months putting together, the one that argued they should branch into small government contracts.
Hah. He’d been so proud of it. So excited to share with his da-ge, to-
Wei Qiwan had told him to stick to playing, that his job was a kindness, not an expectation of brilliance. Had locked the booklet that he’d worked so hard on in some random filing cabinet, after only reading the fucking table of contents. Wei Qing had left the office and barely made it to the washroom before he’d broken into angry tears, as ashamed of his own reaction as his brother’s biting dismissal.
It was the first time he’d been told he wasn’t exceptional, and it had come at the hands of the brother he idolized, and desperately wanted to impress. The brother that he swore used to love him, really love him, beyond the ‘playing nice’ common to others of their acquaintance.
When he’d pulled off the mask, it had been soul-crushing.
Ever since, Wei Qing had not gone back for a normal day at the office. First, because he was ashamed, then, because he was waiting to be coaxed, and finally, because he’d been gone so long that he no longer felt he had the qualifications to be anything but a dilettante. He was a joke, a kid with plans and nothing to back it up, not even the faith of his fucking brother to support him. He was a brand-new graduate with a golden parachute, and he’d been foolish enough to believe he was actually talented.
How could he possibly return, after something like that?
But now…
Yue Fei had chosen Wei Qiwan, in the end. Had become the corporate assistant that he originally signed up for, over being the nanny for an overgrown child who thought with the wrong head. Clearly, Yue Fei wanted a purpose, a title that he could be proud of. If Wei Qing continued to cede the business to Wei Qiwan, was he also ceding Yue Fei’s loyalty?
How could he keep him by his side, much less win his heart, if he didn’t present himself as a competent man?
So he reads emails on the tiny screen until his eyes are crossed, working backward and forward on long threads of lackluster R&D, the time-lapse and perfunctory reports making the chore far more difficult. He is trying to figure out why their department’s research assistant (who he has never met) keeps messing up exo- and endothermic when the phone is pulled from his hands and replaced by a proper laptop.
Already opened to his email account.
“If you’re going to work, work properly.” A small shoulder squeeze of acknowledgment. “Eye strain is bad, nevermind your phone battery not being able to handle it.”
Wei Qing’s back straightens at the contact, and he can’t help but test the weight of the computer in his hands. Lighter than his gaming laptop runs faster too-
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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And then he gets distracted and his fingers start to slide from the innocent email client to the browser history, just out of curiosity, just in case-
There’s a slap of dishtowel on marble. He looks up guiltily and finds Yue Fei looking at him with something that he’d almost call amusement, but… surely not…?
“What happened to that new leaf? Don’t think messy thoughts.”
Wei Qing ducks his head and returns to his very serious, not at all messy work email explorations. Seriously though, this research assistant sucks. Like, to the point that it feels like intentional hamstringing. Which, given how his brother had denigrated him…
Wei Qing’s normally careless brows start to furrow. He even fishes out a notepad from a long-forgotten backpack and starts tracking the problems. It’s… a little nice… to exercise his brain again. It’s really nice, when Yue Fei hums over his shoulder and slides a coaster with hot tea over to him.
Domestic, even.
—
Yue Fei cleans the kitchen. Lemon-scrubs everything until the place feels clean again. Makes tea. Watches Wei Qing repeatedly (barely) resist the impulse to creep through his search history. What does he even expect to find, on a work laptop? He has a phone too, okay? A phone and a stay-at-home baby who keeps his romantic life decidedly digital. Yue Fei pulls out a blanket and ruins the cool modernism of the couch that Wei Qing bought but never uses, and perches himself to monitor his charge, instead of disappearing into his own hidden apartment, like usual.
Little tweaks, big changes, but how long could it last?
—
It lasts through the weekend– (Wei Qing’s weekends (and rebirth) very naturally start on Thursdays). Wei Qing even gets a pinboard and unravels three years of churning nothingness that almost rises to the level of corporate malfeasance, with just how little their paper-thin research and development department had actually gotten done.
As far as he can tell… they’d migrated encryption protocols (fine, but not a yearlong project) and retooled some security offerings to include basic facial recognition integration. Again, fine, but it wasn’t like the research came from them.
What the fuck had this division been doing?
He knows he’s a shit boss, but what happened to the hustler spirit?
“Yue Fei…” He looks up at the indifferent man organizing his dry cleaning.
“Mmm?” Yue Fei definitely just threw his second-favorite mesh top into the trash pile. New, well-behaved Wei Qing doesn’t call him out on it. He’ll wear wool jumpers and slacks for fucking ever, if it’s what Yue Fei wants to see him in.
“Is it just me, or is this entire department a do-nothing job?” And how didn’t you notice, when you’ve been acting in my stead all this time? He’s not accusatory. Lord knows, Yue Fei could destroy him a million different ways, without ever getting into the business that he was ignoring. He’s just confused.
Yue Fei throws away a truly arresting leather jacket, choosing his words more carefully than what he is binning. (Wei Qing agrees– everything is uncomfortable, he’s never going clubbing again anyway, athleisure for life, thank you very much).
“Has Master Wei considered that doing nothing is sometimes best? Action is not always preferable to inaction.”
“But it’s a research division.”
“Better than the churn and burn at other companies.”
Comrade Yue, are you trying to convince me that this is about revolutionary sentiment? Sorry, but I can’t believe that! But Wei Qing is soft and tender and trying hard to be good, so he accepts the lie with the understanding that as he proves himself something more than a fuckboy, perhaps he’ll be trusted enough for honesty.
Especially if this has something to do with Yue Fei leaving him for Wei Qiwan.
Probably, certain things can only be understood through in-person learning. Which means Wei Qing will be going into the office. On a Monday morning.
It’s basically the apocalypse.
—
Wei Securities is a regional company, with roots deep enough to float another few generations, even mediocre ones, as long as it isn’t ripped up or spread too thin by ill-considered expansions. Wei Qing and Wei Qiwan’s father had started it, first as simple bodyguard and bodyman services before pivoting to offering protections that mostly kept pace with the technological innovations that flooded into the market in the early eighties.
Unlike those family companies two generations up, they didn’t have uncles to fight with, or cousins to snipe. It should have been a perfectly harmonious company. Had seemed to be, at first. Old Man Wei had retired after a stroke, old enough to pass the reins to his firstborn, young enough to make sure the boy stayed steady. And the second son had been so good!
A real star, tested well, spoke well, had so many ideas for how to be better.
Wei Qiwan had been prudent and professional. Wei Qing had gone to college and graduated early and done everything to have the qualifications to be the most useful tool in his elder brother’s hand. And then they’d fallen out. Wei Qiwan had distanced himself from him. Wei Qing had not gotten the message. Everything had boiled over and now, Wei Qing was basically an urban legend at the office.
A very attractive cryptid, but a cryptid nonetheless.
Which is why it causes about the same uproar as a sighting of the pen fairy, when Wen Qing appears at headquarters at 7:45 in the morning, not suited up, but at least in slacks and a button-down. Looking like someone that might work for a living. As a model, but still.
On every floor, group chats explode as the early arrivers share this earth-shattering news with their peers– Wei Qing is such a rare sight that many don’t even know who he is– they just test a sneak shot of the handsome brother in the lobby, and three minutes later are bombarded with stickers of goats fainting and swears that the Matrix is glitching.
“It’s… kind of offensive…” Wei Qing adjusts his cuffs in the private elevator that Yue Fei had had to dig out the keycard for. His ears are bright red from the attention– normally he is drunk before people start talking about him so openly. He also thinks he saw a few bursts of flash.
Yue Fei snorts.
“It’s very offensive. They’ll be disciplined.” Yue Fei throws the legitimacy of this threat out of his head. Sure, Wei Qing had brought it on himself. But he was still the Second Master Wei, and this was still Wei Securities. If he was willing to be more serious, Yue Fei was not going to let it be turned into a spectacle. He could stroll through the place naked, and those employed by his family should just pretend to be blind to it, okay?
This was the basic contract between employer and employee! Nevermind when Wei Qing was actually being normal and responsible and blissfully low-key for once. He could not be made to feel uncomfortable here.
They did not need a repeat of three years ago.
Even though he understood, later, why Wei Qiwan had felt the need to break his brother’s wings, he still hated it. Hated how angry and crushed Wei Qing had looked, on that bathroom floor in his expensive new suit. Hated all that came after. Wondered, many times, once it was too late to matter, if Wei Qiwan had charted the right course. He rouses himself from his thoughts and focuses on his charge.
By the time they reach the seventeenth floor, Wei Qing is blushing more out of nerves than embarrassment.
A step in the right direction?
—
Wei Securities’ R&D department is tragically summed up by its allotted space, and workers. Seven. People. Seven people in a suite that was clearly designed for double that number. It looks a bit like an accounting department after the financial services agents have come and shut the place down.
Some of the fucking lights are even out. Has he transmigrated into a horror instance?
Nope, just his life, in the state he left it. Wei Qing feels a headache starting. His first drug- and alcohol-free headache in who knows how many years. Personal growth might be overrated, but Yue Fei at his side, still looking disgruntled on his behalf, is enough to keep him heading forward. Past three employees playing dead and into the office that he has not set foot in years.
Oh God, his college certificates are still on the wall. When he’d first gotten here, it had seemed appropriate, but as a twenty-four-year-old fuckup, who had already died once– they were just pathetic, huh? Proof that he’d peaked before he even entered the adult world.
Fuck.
At least someone’s been cleaning the place. Keeping up the appearance that he might return, even if none of them (least of all him) really believed that. He collapses into a leather chair that feels too big for him, like a kid that daddy took to work. Someone dressing up as a boss, just for a moment.
It’s not a bad summation.
It’s also why he stopped coming here. After that meeting… every inch of this place, all the false importance and the shell of productivity, just makes him feel like a joke. A joke that for too long, everyone but him was in on. But… Change means you have to change. Even if it’s knives against your skin and thousands of appraising eyes.
Wei Qing cradles his head in his hands, palms pressed against his eye sockets. Mostly so he doesn’t have to acknowledge the desk toy that is still sitting in place of honor, mocking him.
He can hear Yue Fei moving around the space. Opening the curtains, checking the drawers, organizing those binders full of frankly insane departmental notes. Picking up the toy that is causing him so much anguish-
“Leave it.”
Wei Qing groans and rubs his forehead against the desk. He is a grown-ass man. He has done everything a man can do, including many things he shouldn’t. He’d even died once– what kind of life experience could possibly trump that?
He is not going to be beaten by a fucking hunk of glass. Is not going to hide it away like he is more fragile than it, even if he is.
Even if that hunk of glass had been why he felt important, why he was so blindsided by being called useless and being disregarded. Even still, he won’t hide from it.
…Anyway, a small, stupid part of him– the part that did things like fall for Yang-ge– still holds on to the ridiculous hope that the gift really had meant something once, and that if he just worked properly, it could mean something again.
There is a thoughtful hum of acknowledgment, as Yue Fei returns it gently to its place on the desk.
—
It is good that Wei Qing is distracted. It keeps Yue Fei from being exposed, as his emotions grow complicated. As his knuckles turn white against the hand-blown star chart that he’d last seen in Wei Qiwan’s shrine to his brother– the star chart that the elder had personally commissioned when his didi was about to graduate and join him.
Moondust and flakes of platinum, carefully arranged into a star-strewn sky that exactly matched the one from the night Wei Qing was born. The bottom, engraved with their crest, the family and the business completed by his addition.
Yue Fei expected Wei Qing to smash it. Had thought he’d need to interfere.
This Wei Qing is full of surprises.
Yue Fei has heard plenty about people that are amenable to coaxing but not force– Wei Qing is the first he’s met that inverts that. Who knew that all it took to quench those silly impulses was a harder mouth?
Yue Fei’s thoughts are deep as he cleans up the office and silently supports this strange, suddenly more mature master of his. If only it could last… But a few days of good behavior cannot wipe away years of painful mistakes, of it hurting to even look at the man, with how badly he abandoned himself.
Yue Fei finishes his belated spring cleaning and sees the final stragglers of the seven-person team filing in. A perfect vent for his frustrations.
—
“Wait, he’s here? Really– That doesn’t look like him though, too cold-”
“No, you idiot, that’s his bodyguard or assistant or whatever… You would know these things if you came to the holiday party! He’s somewhere in there though…”
“Who has an assistant who looks that scary?”
“I heard that- nevermind, gossip isn’t some good thing.”
“You have to say it now!”
“Agreed!”
“Absolutely!”
“Well, I just heard… his assistant is actually very elite, but spends all his time cleaning up messy things…”
Even the most thick-skulled amongst them has read at least a few rumors, after all. Things written about the Second Master Wei are practically impossible to avoid unless they forsake the microblogs completely! His social calendar is just too flashy!
“He is his proxy for sure, you weren’t here, but two years ago, that Mr. Yue was the one who came to sign all the orders after something happened with the Master. Even fired old Xiao for selling something to the magazines, but you didn’t hear that from–”
Old Wang’s sleeve is pulled.
Oh no.
No…?
His life was not some cheap drama, it absolutely couldn’t be that- He swivels his neck and indeed finds a cold gaze at his back. Didn’t this kind of trap only appear in melodramas? Since when did his comfortably beige existence meet the requirements? He’s not worthy, he dares not accept!
“Mr. Yue! Sir! I was just filling in the rest of the team-”
“Oh?” Old Wang sees his life flash before his eyes. He never finished trimming his bonsai tree, and who would give Mr. Whiskers his blood sugar medications~
“Then fill them in well. After all, discretion is the very least a worker owes their employer, no?” Yue Fei, backlit in that doorway, might as well be the grim reaper, with how they all quake before him. Satisfied with this level of terror, he pushes off the door frame he’s been leaning on and walks away.
“Meeting in twenty minutes. Be appropriate by then.”
Old Wang pops one of his blood pressure pills. He and Mr. Whiskers might yet live to medicate another day! He will go to the shrine and leave offerings as soon as the workday ended, he absolutely has to thank the Bodhisattva for sparing him this day.
Indeed, his tune changes.
“Okay, well anyway, the Second Master Wei is obviously very powerful and intelligent, he’s been graceful enough to let us solidify as a team with these small moves, so now we should show him our very best bursts of creativity! And discretion! Actually, maybe we should all turn our phones to airplane mode?”
They all follow his fat-fingered example. By the time they file into the never-used conference room, the entire team resembles a docile line of quails. The systems engineer has even taken out his facial piercings and attempted to flatten his mohawk into something shaggily inoffensive. It doesn’t work, but the thought is kind of sweet.
Yue Fei approves.
AN: Won’t someone please think of the balding cat dads? 
…the Loren I read the more I think the brother was in the wrong he’ll need the best of the best of reason to rehabilitate himself in my eyes èwé thanks for the chapter though !
Hey?? he has already sacrificed himself for his brother, this new chance is thanks to him… If he did something very serious that is enough to forgive him even before knowing what it is. But I understand his point, I’m looking forward to the reveal. <– (Google Translate)
Aww they’re both so fragile. I love how Yue Fei is bullying the (in)subordinates on behalf of Wei Qing. Like, he doesn’t fully believe Wei Qing will change but he’s not going to let them stand in his way while he’s trying.
Why cant people communicate !! If the 2 brothers had talked to each other, it would have happened differently !
Thanks for the chapter 🙂
…what does fat-fingered example mean… ?
Thanks for the chapter ♡♡♡♡♡
When someone has big fingers/isn’t skilled using a touch screen and ends up hitting things they don’t mean– often used to describe older people that aren’t good with tech. Basically, Old Wang is nervous and it shows in him trying to get his phone turned off, but everyone still follows his lead.
ouhhhh thanks for replying so fast lmfao it was like 3 am when i commented this
I just wanted to applaud my brain for reading this. Is it just me?? I find it kinda, hmm need to double read every paragraph to get and digest the story. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been reading books with this kind of format or just because I’ve been sleepy while reading it. Anyways, I’ll continue to read ( ꈍᴗꈍ)
Older bro: how did my younger brother not know I really loved him b4 he died….. all I did was completely and utterly crush his spirit, soul, tske away the only person he trusted, and acted like I never cared for him while never talking to or explaining to him why I had to do so.
At least he had a chance to atone, imagine if mc didn’t refuse to drink the soup and reincarnated b4 ml and him died.
Yes, Wei Qiwan is a complete tree stump. He ‘made the sacrifice’ of freezing out his brother (for his own good, in his mind) but then when Wei Qing reacted badly but reasonably to that absolute gut-punch, Wei Qiwan doubled-down and made it worse.
And yes, the real MVP is that tree that was lovely enough to lay under for several years, otherwise it would be too late for anything.