Wei Qing’s twenty-fourth birthday is right around the corner, and the topic of a party is an awkward thing. When he was younger, his parents threw it, then through high school and college, his elder brother took the reins and took him out to steakhouses, letting him feel like a real adult. After? After, whatever messy friend group Wei Qing was around in that particular year would take him to some club, get incredibly wasted, and send him home (or to the nearest broom closet) with a pair or even trio of beauties to attend to him.
So what the fuck happens for this one?
Going back to having his parents plan it is too sad, the situation with Wei Qiwan is still too strange and stifled, and those friends? Eh, when’s the last time he heard from any of them? And what did it say, that he didn’t miss a single one, couldn’t even name them? The truth is too obvious: everyone he had been carousing around with was just a friend of convenience, the aimless flotsam that had remained when the wreck of his personal life had led all of his high school and university peers to slowly slide away from him.
Nothing pleasant would come from suddenly calling them up and trying to convince them to shape up and party in a more refined way.
By process of elimination,
… It seems like… it should fall to Yue Fei?
Right, Yue Fei. Someone distinctly unsuited to things like throwing parties, for all his skill in managing Wei Qing’s day-to-day life and past dalliances. This isn’t just Wei Qing’s estimation, but Yue Fei’s. Yue Fei is very helpless when it comes to separating his own desire, from what is best for Wei Qing, from what the man himself might actually like, to ring in his twenty-fourth year.
The lover in him wants to cash in on those reserves he has from almost a decade of pulling a very respectable salary while having his room and board included in his duties as a live-in. He wants to take Wei Qing to some elaborate tasting menu and watch magical flavors explode across his tongue, wants to rent some private villa and watch the galaxy shimmer to life in the sky and across a lake spread out beneath their feet. He wants to worship Wei Qing body and soul, praise him for how good he’s being, make his eyes go wide and glassy with the force of his meticulous love.
He wants to see what heights Wei Qing’s stamina can reach, once he’s already been spent. But then… doesn’t that make the whole birthday just about them? Is this just a golden house with invisible walls?
The meddling assistant in him wants to give Wei Qing the gift that his boss wants but is too afraid to ask for: a return to the relationship with his brother, which had once been so very important to him but was now a burned-out house, held in escrow while he went back and forth on whether to save or demolish it. Yue Fei wants to rent out the same private room, in the same upscale steakhouse that Wei Qing had first nervously had him press his suit for when he turned eighteen years old. He wants Wei Qiwan to be there, kind and open once more.
To have him apologize and explain, but such explanations–
One, they are not in Yue Fei’s ability to control. After all, at this point, he shouldn’t even know the secret of the tape that had first strained their bond. And two…. Even if Wei Qiwan explains of his own volition, won’t that cast a pall over the entire night? Who wants to be confronted with such betrayal and embarrassment, on a day that should be full of celebration and love? Won’t it turn beauty into pain, in exactly the way Yue Fei doesn’t want for his master?
And standing outside all of this, complicating things further, is the gulf between what Wei Qing might want, and what is actually good for him. Yue Fei is not being narcissistic, when he judges that Wei Qing would adore his first plan, with the meal and the lakehouse and the bodily feast to follow.
But as tempting as it is, Yue Fei does not want to become Wei Qing’s whole world. The prospect scares him, badly. He does not want their relationship to become limerent; Wei Qing should have more people to rely on and care for so that even if their bond is eventually severed, he will never again find himself alone along a ledge. He knows he is already a little remiss when it comes to this.
After all, in the last eight months, what has Wei Qing done without him?
But the necessary isolation of recovery is not something that should be extended outward into infinity. He remembers Wei Qing as a high school senior and university student representative; although there was always a distance between him and his peers, the same distance that existed between the sun and the moons that could only reflect it, it never stopped Wei Qing from being the center of attention.
Brilliant and laughing, teasing and soft, someone that cherished others and worked hard to meet their expectations, and was cherished in return. For Yue Fei, who at that time only knew how to hold himself apart or collapse into others in a way that was unhealthy and impure, watching Wei Qing grow was a revelation. In a very real way, it was Wei Qing who taught him how to be human.
Yue Fei would not have that type of person diminished until all his brilliance could fit in his hands.
He-
He does not want Wei Qing to become his exclusive property, his Flower. He does not want to be his father, and he does not want Wei Qing to become Yue Cibai, hollowed out by the weight of holding all his childish expectations and his weak-willed need for love. He wants Wei Qing to choose to be with him, he wants Wei Qing to be able to leave.
And that doesn’t happen if there’s no one for him to turn to, no one else who can help meet his emotional needs. It gives the party a weight and expectation that Yue Fei worries endlessly about.
—
Yue Fei ruminates for two full weeks on how to give Wei Qing a birthday that gives as much as possible, with no sharp edges or hidden pits. He keeps coming back to those forgotten friends. High school, eh, high school is a confusing place. People change, and things fall apart. But college–
Yue Fei takes advantage of the endless robotics talk that rings them Tuesday through Friday and refreshes his memory on those clean young faces. Makes some calls.
“A reunion? No, Mr. Yue is right, it would certainly be fun, but it’s only been a few years. I’m not sure we’ve accomplished enough to justify coming back together. After all, even the youngest reunions are at least five-year intervals.” On the phone is Fang Yichen, who served three years as the Business School Student Council Secretary, underneath three-term President Wei Qing.
Yes, he’d been a President even as a second-year, blame his family name and the fact that no one else cared enough to match his energy– even his seniors laughed and threw up their hands and happily let him take on those unpaid hours of planning and contacting donors and organizing speakers. After all, the other second-generations had beauties to chase and golden parachutes to check, and the up-and-comers were busy working part-time jobs and maintaining their scholarships. Who had time to match that demon Wei Qing?
Yue Fei smiles through the phone. Fang Yichen has a very good image in Yue Fei’s eyes– he was one of those hardworking little scholarship students, but one that still found a well of energy with which to support Wei Qing’s grand designs for their council. A good person, a good subordinate, a good friend.
“Secretary Fang is right; as someone that never went to university, my language is probably imprecise-” Also, he’s very easy to trick due to his own ingrained politeness.
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.
“Ct! Rb, P vlvc’a wfjc atja ja jii!” Tef Mfl mjc qgjmalmjiis tfjg atf rkfja mbegrlcu vbkc atf wberfs wjc’r ygbk. Pa’r j ilaaif wfjc ab yjla tlw ilxf atlr, yea Tef Mfl atlcxr atja qgbyjyis, rbwfalwfr, ilaaif aglmxr mjc yf erfv obg ubbv, gjatfg atjc tjgw.
“It’s fine, it’s fine, I feel I was very educated by following Master Wei. Not a reunion then, just- although it is early, you remember how Wei Qing was, no? He certainly will hope for something grand at that five-year mark, so perhaps we could arrange a casual meet, to get things started early.”
“Would… would Wei Qing really like that?”
Fang Yichen is not wrong to be hesitant, and his voice sounds a little lost.
After all, Wei Qing had been this only child’s adoptive elder brother for a time, the person he looked up to just like Wei Qing looked up to Wei Qiwan. Fang Yichen had held on, even after his descent into hedonism, had accepted invitations to restaurants where he could not understand the menu and clubs where he didn’t know if what was on offer was the people or the drinks. He’d tried harder than most, to support Wei Qing even when the shine fell off.
Fang Yichen had finally stopped answering Wei Qing’s summons when he’d been forgotten in some private room and very nearly assaulted, while Wei Qing was off doing lines in the bathroom. Yue Fei had brought him out and straightened his clothes and paid for his cab; from start to finish, Wei Qing had not noticed the lamb that he’d allowed to be mauled by lions. It had been days later that Wei Qing thought to check-in; by then, Fang Yichen knew he couldn’t afford to accompany him.
Maybe Wei Qing knew too– he cut off the people that were involved in the attempted assault but also cut off Fang Yichen.
Yue Fei cannot bring any of this up directly– he can only trust in Fang Yichen’s soft heart and Wei Qing’s ability to win him back if given the chance.
“Yes, he would.” Yue Fei coughs and practices diplomacy. “People always want to explore the world, but Wei Qing is returning to his core self. He- is not who he was that night, he is who you remember.”
“Good. That’s… really, really good.” Fang Yichen sounds genuinely relieved. He’d always been an open and honest child. “I’m happy, I’m- I trust Mr. Yue’s judgment, meeting is no issue, although I will have to check with my boss.”
His tone deflates.
He did well in school, did well in his interviews, and his prize? Was to work sixty hours a week at the office and an extra four to eight over the weekends, depending on what has been left until the last minute. This is what it means to be a rising star, and he feels very lied to about it.
His pay is great, but he can feel his hair thinning already. No one warned him about this bitterness or the pitiful vacation days that he can’t clear his plate long enough to spend. He had to compile spreadsheets while eating dumplings at his parent’s house last New Year, ancestors help him.
“Whatever works for you, we can make our schedule match yours,” Yue Fei pauses, thinking he hears a sob over the line. No? Ah, must be a problem with the connection. “Anyway, please let me know, it would be wonderful for Wei Qing to be able to connect again.”
“Of course, of course! Let me clear this presentation and lock my calendar, I’ll be back with a date in no time at all!”
This is the first part of the compromise Yue Fei has come up with. It’s too much to try to cram so many good things into one night– Wei Qing might faint from overstimulation. Best to give some gifts early, to spread out the friendship and belonging so that Wei Qing might pick and choose those relationships that he thought lost, but were still within his grip if he only tightens his hands and pulls a bit.
Next up is Wei Qiwan.
—
Wei Qing has rubbed off a little on Yue Fei.
Enough that he’s halfway tempted to set the meeting by blinking Morse code in the elevator. But as temporarily amusing as it might be to point out to Wei Qiwan just how insane his idea of care is, Yue Fei doesn’t want to stir him up too much. Especially because he’s asking for a favor.
So instead, he sends a very polite email, rather than a smoke signal from the foyer.
[Wei Qing’s birthday is coming up, and this year is a little different than the last few. Is President Wei free to chat about it? -Yue Fei, Assistant to Vice President Wei, Research and Development, Wei Securities.]
Heh. His signature line is almost as long as the message itself. While he’s still amused by the formality of the auto-add from his work phone, Wei Qiwan responds:
[Fine. Come up now then. -Wei Qiwan, President and CEO, Wei Securities, The Person You Will Have to Kneel Down and Beg, If You Plan to Marry Into This Family.]
Okay, okay, Yue Fei bows to Wei Qiwan’s stronger signature game, and superior message tersity.
Although- he bursts into laughter. Wouldn’t it be funny if Wei Qiwan forgot to clear that custom bit of his signature, and his well-hidden brother complex was exposed to everyone foolish enough to message him? Imagine all those rough old uncles in their manufacturing arms, wondering if Wei Qiwan has heard about them trying to introduce their poor little daughters to Wei Qing?
Ahahhahaha.
He still remembers a certain regional director who misunderstood sexuality to the point that he tried to connect his baby butch daughter with Wei Qing under the assumption that their preferences would balance one another out. He wonders if the man would see that signature and excitedly try again? Probably.
Yue Fei feels light as air, as he ascends Wei Securities once again.
Still, since grinning like an idiot isn’t the best look when begging a favor, Yue Fei tucks away his mirth and organizes his face back into the coolly professional mask that still makes Wei Qing dazed sometimes.
For all his professionalism, he’s a little taken aback when he is ushered into the President’s office and is met with the sight of Wei Qiwan, hunched over a priceless antique coffee table, which is positively covered in menus and portfolios and cake vendor information.
Ah.
Perhaps it had been reckless to assume that Wei Qiwan wasn’t invested in Wei Qing’s birthday?
It certainly seems like a certain pent-up CEO has been party-planning for quite a while. Yue Fei’s smile wins out over his stoic mask, his face going hopelessly soft and indulgent by the time he takes a seat across from Wei Qiwan and starts perusing the frightening number of options.
Wei Qiwan looks up and recoils. “Ah! Don’t- put that face away, I’m not Wei Qing, I don’t want whatever that look of yours involves!” He seems genuinely frightened, which only makes Yue Fei’s face weaken more. It looks positively indulgent.
Hideous, hideous! Wei Qiwan blocks his face with a fondant-free bakery menu.
“Ugh. How can anyone- anyway! Look around if you want, I can hardly be the one to plan anything, but you also can’t let our Wei family lose face. That one- to the left– no, my left– yes, that one! That was his favorite as a kid. He likes the Satsuma buttercream the most. The owners retired, but the daughter who took over is competent enough. QingQing will probably attribute any lapses in taste to the sweetness of nostalgia, rather than the change in baker.”
Very professional, just how deep does your complex go?
Yue Fei reads through the offerings; Satsuma isn’t on the menu, but that’s no obstacle if he throws the Wei family name (and money) around. He takes a picture of the contact information and stores it on his phone; if not for this birthday, there are always future celebrations and just-because treats.
Wei Qiwan finally lowers the menu, verifies that Yue Fei’s face is at least bearable now, and points out more ideas and preferences of his little brother’s. Then again, everything has already changed, he doesn’t know that he still has the qualifications to vouch for Wei Qing’s preferences.
“Honestly, waiting this long, I was starting to think you didn’t have anything planned at all.” Wei Qiwan glowers. “Or worse, that some asshole that isn’t fit to clean the dirt from his feet was going to be in charge again, taking him who knows where and filling him with god-knows-what.”
Seems Wei Qiwan had a good enough idea of what Wei Qing’s last two birthday parties had involved. And yet-
“If that is the case, why not intervene?” There’s no judgment in Yue Fei’s tone.
“Hmph.” Wei Qiwan snorts. “And with my track record, would he accept my intervention?”
“He might.”
Wei Qiwan looks up, a trace of vulnerability leaking out before he makes himself look constipated again.
“Haven’t you noticed his weekly gifts getting a little more sincere?” Yue Fei addresses his words to the menus, seemingly nonchalant. Indeed, this last week had even included a tie that actually matched Wei Qiwan’s coloring and disposition. Sandwiched between two novelty cactus ones, but still. Quite a step up from Minions’ DVDs and durian.
Wei Qiwan organizes the menus, no doubt half cataloging them, half cataloging the truckload of gifts that he’d been receiving ever since Wei Qing started coming back to work. By now, it’s almost enough to fill the entire office, if Wei Qiwan wasn’t eating part and sending part home. Yue Fei knows he isn’t throwing any of it away.
Packrat CEO.
“What, you’re saying that a pallet of candy didn’t come from the heart? I wish you’d said something before.” And yet, even as he says that he crunches down on three tic tacs, as has recently become his custom. It’s so bad that the managerial pool actually pitched in and got him a custom gold case to hide them in, just to protect Wei Qiwan’s baffling image from crumbling completely.
—
Yue Fei rolls his shoulders and takes a few more pictures of menus and business cards, Wei Qiwan harmoniously handing him the best and explaining his selections, filling Yue Fei with all his knowledge of his brother’s preferences. Yue Fei is convinced he’s sincere. Sincere enough that Yue Fei should probably make the suggestion before this turns into another danger of a banquet.
“I think a full birthday would be a little too tense, but- if you invited him to dinner, just the two of you, like before… I think there’s a good chance he’d accept.”
“He doesn’t forgive easily.” It takes Wei Qiwan longer than it should, to force those words out.
Yue Fei rolls his eyes; Wei Qiwan doesn’t catch it.
“He does. Unfortunately. Even if you never explain, he’ll hold onto the hurt and hug you tightly anyway, even if it forces the thorn deeper and deeper into his heart.” Yue Fei is now sure of this. If he was actually able to write his brother off so easily, Wei Qing wouldn’t still be so hurt by small comments and rejections. So don’t make him do that. Come clean eventually, about this secret only you should know, yeah? Not on his birthday, but… eventually.
“I miss the you that didn’t speak so much.” Wei Qiwan rolls his eyes, but it doesn’t cover the vulnerability.
“I miss the me that didn’t have to,” Yue Fei quips back.
“Hmph.”
A fully-qualified assistant, Yue Fei brings them back to the matter at hand instead of descending into bickering. After all, his status is a little awkward. He feels closer to Wei Qiwan than he is, and is closer to Wei Qing than he technically should be. How he and Wei Qiwan interact in private is something that he’ll have to slowly find the boundaries of.
“Well, his birthday is on a Wednesday this year. How about inviting him out the Friday before? After work, so that if it goes badly, he has the weekend-”
“His three-day weekend, you mean?”
At this point, Yue Fei is convinced that Wei Qiwan simply doesn’t remember how to speak. His mind flashes back to Wei Qing’s earlier slump and the feel of him crying against his arm, ashamed and afraid to ask for the support he needed. It injects protective frost into Yue Fei’s previously amenable tone.
“That amount of time, which is totally fair given he used to not work at all, he can use to recover if you start a fight. For example, by bringing up the length of his workweek.” There’s an edge to Yue Fei’s voice, half-warning, half-censure. Luckily, after a moment of instinctive anger, Wei Qiwan nods and waves it away, almost admitting his wrongs.
“Fine. I can ask. It’s just a dinner.”
“Good. And… Thank you for the ideas.” Really, this is enough for him to pamper Wei Qing with treats for their next several lifetimes together, if that’s something he’s worthy to earn. Cakes and famous private chefs, sushi, and doberge and longevity noodles made by a genuine grandmother (even if she’s not yours).
If he can’t cobble together a nice experience with all this, he should just give up on being an assistant at all. Or a boyfriend!
The meeting ends up being Wei Qiwan and Yue Fei’s longest to date in this timeline. They manage to spend forty-three minutes together, pouring over menus and discussing Wei Qing’s changing tastes and the finer points of intimate gatherings vs. grand blow-outs. It’s only when Wei Qiwan’s lovelily beige assistant knocks on the door and reminds him of a teleconference with a client currently in hiding that Wei Qiwan remembers his image, straightens his spine, and hides all the menus in a suspiciously large drawer, which seems to be hiding even more brother-based materials.
Yue Fei even thinks he sees a folder labeled ‘Private Islands – Geoff’s Portfolio.’
Ha-
Wei Qiwan, even this early, were you already thinking of where you’d send Wei Qing to recuperate if this world and your indifference became too much for him to bear?
Well, now that he is forewarned and forearmed, he’ll make sure that particular file never gets pulled.
—
Ultimately, Yue Fei decides to split the baby three ways after all.
The best way to show someone they’re loved while staying low-key is to spread it out, no? An extended lunch with his college friend, a dinner with his brother, a weekend away, just the two of them, and whatever Receptionist Xiao has been whispering about doing in the office the day of…
That’s a pretty good birthday? Yue Fei thinks?
As someone who has never celebrated his own beyond Wei Qing dragging him out for ice cream and giving him a stupid amount of money, Yue Fei is, admittedly, nervous. Birth is about community, not individual, in the Pearl of the World, and birthdays in a group home are just a tragedy in court-appointed yellow. But if he ignores the elaborate palace birthdays that show up in those dramas of Wei Qing’s (where someone always seems to get poisoned and fucked…?), as far as he can tell, his plan is appropriately mushy and unlikely to backfire.
It’s all he can hope for, as a novice.
Author’s Note:
Yue Fei, you’re doing great sweetie.
Although it wouldn’t be fun to live, part of me is very soft to the idea of dumb (and even sometimes harmful) but well-meaning family members. Which is probably why Wei Qiwan exists. The manufacturing uncle who genuinely thought a gay daughter and a gay brother would be perfect as marriage partners follows this trend.
(Although she never appears, you can safely assume that she rolled her eyes and pulled over her art-school girlfriend and even if her dad occasionally gets confused about things like ‘which of them is the man?’ and ‘ah, it’s my fault, I raised my daughter too strong, blame dad!’ he eventually decides that having a daughter who can take over the factory and has a good wife is also not so bad and spends his retirement taking their overweight corgi on walks (the dog is overweight because manufacturing uncle gives too many treats to his ‘grandson’)).
Next few chapters are fun birthday stufffffffffff with only minor sunspots.
I’m taking notes on Yue Fei’s planning skills !
(And I love the little glimpse of worldbuilding of the uncle with a gay daughter)
Thank you for the chapter !
With that said, this novel is great and I love it. Wei Qiwan is a really compelling character, even if I read him as more of a villain in need of redemption than as a dumbass in need of common sense. I look forward to seeing him become a better person and reconcile with his brother (even if I kind of want him to suffer a little first). Thank you for sharing your hard work with us!
And I don’t think your reading is wrong or that there’s a right way to read Wei Qiwan necessarily. I give him a lot of leeway (which I think comes through in my notes) because most of the story is already written on my end and I’m looking at him through the eyes of his arc being completed when we’re actually still in the early stages of it as far as posting goes.
That said, while his initial action of distancing might be understandable if misguided, his choice to bury his head in the sand for years and let Wei Qing self-destruct undoubtedly makes him largely responsible for how things ended in their last life. If you asked Wei Qing who hurt him the most, he wouldn’t say Gao Zhong or Yang Wushe… he’d say Wei Qiwan.
We’ll get into it more once they properly have it out with one another, but intentions don’t excuse actions, and Wei Qiwan… I would say he started out with a reasonable (if doomed) idea, then he got angry and upset which made him be less pretend-y and more genuine with his disgust (which confused his original intentions), then… everything having to do with his brother made him furious, so he just stopped looking at him except when the trouble got too out of control. And by the time he looked back, Wei Qing was gone.
Now, he’s clawing his way back while still not wanting to confront what happened between them and the harm he caused. Probably because Wei Qing hating him for the ‘fake’ distance is one thing (that was his intention, after all), but if Wei Qing learns the truth and hates him earnestly, there’s no escaping the weight of it. That would be really hating him, and Wei Qiwan is so afraid of that that he’s willing to stay in this weird liminal space where they can’t really get better but at least he still has the protection of Wei Qing hating the ‘false’ him instead of the ‘real’ one.
Cowardice isn’t a bad name for it. As John Stuart Mill said:
“Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”
I got a better mental image of Yue Fei’s expression when it turned out to be too much for Wei Qiwan 😂. Also realized how much I loved all the palace birthday chapters I’ve read on this site! Never boring lol.
This is such a sweet chapter!! The boyfriend and the brother planning WQ’s birthday together is so wholesome 🥺 I love their dynamic (even if they’re still figuring out what exactly it is in this life)
Also I’m now obsessed with the gay daughter and her wife and dad and chubby corgi son. Will be dreaming about them
Thanks for the chapter~
words cant express how much I adore this story and how much I love Yue Fei and everything he is doing to set these two siblings right.
thanks for the chapter <3
Wahhh i really love these people ~(≧▽≦)/~ they’re all so cute. And someone protect Fang Yichen please~
Thanks for blessing us with the update as always. Looking forward to a healing birthday celebration~💕
Hehehe best boyfriend
Thank you for the update ❤️💯
I absolutely love the writing style.I started a chapter before bed, and well, I ended up reading all of the chapters and not sleeping, I was drawn in.
The story flows nicely, it makes me laugh, it makes me cry, it makes me go awww at the fluff and boo when the scum#1 and #2 make an appearance.
The author is really talented, I am looking forward to reading this story and many many others from this author. (many many other stories dear writer, many many)
… Am i the only one wanting to read about this uncle and his discovery of a new daughter and Dog-son ? owo
Thanks for the chapter !