That single sentence moved Fang Li deeply that night.
Moved as he was, Fang Li went along with whatever Qin Weidong wanted. Once Qin Weidong was fed and satisfied, Fang Li would’ve reached up and plucked a star out of the sky for him if he asked.
The next morning, Fang Li woke up and reached out weakly, feeling for the edge of the bed. Qin Weidong was already buttoning the cuffs of his dress shirt. Fang Li noticed the cufflinks he had chosen were quite formal—ones they had bought back in the U.S. A sales assistant had asked a model to try them on before recommending them to the couple. They’d picked out a few pairs, and this was one of them. Qin Weidong had always found this pair too heavy and tight on the wrist, so he rarely wore them.
“Big meeting this morning?” Fang Li asked.
“Mm.” Qin Weidong had just returned to the country and had a mountain of things to deal with. Seeing Fang Li awake, he asked, “You’re up this early?”
Fang Li mumbled, “I’m not some unemployed bum anymore…”
He had a career now too, okay?
Today, Yang Yuecheng had asked him to go choose a few songs to cover for his upcoming album. They’d bought the rights from Japan. Fang Li sat up in bed, and Qin Weidong said, “Since you’re up, come down and have breakfast with me.”
Fang Li gave a little grunt and reached out to him. Qin Weidong came over and picked him up. Fang Li wrapped his arms around him lazily, yawned, and said, “Aren’t I going to wrinkle your shirt?”
“I’ll change it when I come back up,” Qin Weidong replied.
He carried Fang Li to the bathroom to freshen up. Fang Li looked at his toothbrush and wrinkled his nose.
“Your teeth hurt?” Qin Weidong asked.
Fang Li had loved sweets since he was little—candy, cakes, anything sugary—and he had no self-control. If no one was watching, he could clear out an entire plate of candy in no time. With Qin Weidong gone for the past half year, there’d been no one to rein him in. He’d been indulging freely.
“No, they don’t…”
Fang Li stuffed the toothbrush into his mouth. Qin Weidong took it right back out. “Open up. Let me see.”
He said “open up,” but didn’t give Fang Li the chance to refuse. His long fingers gently pried Fang Li’s mouth open. He touched the area near his molars, then turned on the light over the mirror and inspected more closely. “Looks like there’s a cavity.”
Fang Li bit his finger and pushed his hand away. “You’re gonna make me gag if you keep poking around…”
Qin Weidong said, “I’ll make a dentist appointment for tomorrow.”
“I’m not going,” Fang Li protested. “Are you even qualified to say that? I didn’t see any black spots. Who says cavities have to be black, huh?”
He refused to admit it. Qin Weidong didn’t argue, just said, “I’ll find time tomorrow and take you.”
He couldn’t tell Fang Li exactly what time yet—he had to check his schedule—but the fact that he was willing to squeeze it in meant that Fang Li’s affairs were always a top priority to him.
Fang Li spit out his mouthwash and muttered, “I’m really not going. I don’t have time tomorrow…”
He’d been to the dentist in the U.S. before—terrifying. The sound of the drill felt like it was boring through his skull straight down to his toes. Worse than being on the operating table! He’d rather let the tooth rot than go again.
“When do you have time then?”
Qin Weidong was unusually patient this morning, likely because of the promise he’d made the night before.
Fang Li mumbled around another mouthful of water, “We’ll talk about it later…”
Fang Li was terrible at solving problems. Anything he didn’t want to face, he just… postponed.
At breakfast, Qin Weidong glanced at the table: fried milk, red bean porridge, sweet glutinous cakes. The housekeeper had clearly gone all out for Fang Li. One look, and Qin Weidong’s own teeth started to hurt. “Is this what you’ve been eating while I was gone?”
Fang Li sipped his soy milk, unfazed. “Yup. Auntie treats me super well. Whatever I ask for, she makes.”
Their housekeeper, a cheerful, round woman from Hunan, was cleaning up in the kitchen. She called out warmly, “That’s right! Xiao Li, if there’s anything you want to eat tomorrow, just tell Auntie. I’ll make it for you. I’ll even bring out some of our hometown chili peppers for lunch today!”
Fang Li shot Qin Weidong a smug look: See? You were gone, but Auntie and I got along just fine.
Qin Weidong said, “Auntie, don’t put any more sugar in his food from now on. His teeth are bad.”
Fang Li had always been someone people doted on—handsome, sweet-natured. Auntie sometimes looked at him the way she looked at her own son. When she heard that, she immediately nodded and promised to remember.
Fang Li gave Qin Weidong a resentful glance. “You come back as the big boss, and this is how you treat your employees?”
Qin Weidong replied calmly, “I don’t control whether they eat sweets or not.”
Fang Li sighed. The sticky rice cakes on the table suddenly didn’t smell as good anymore. But since Qin Weidong was back now, there’d probably be many more days like this ahead.
Fang Li muttered, “Before, it was because I didn’t have the means to eat like this. Now I finally do, and you won’t let me. Qin Weidong, are all capitalists fueled by the joy of robbing others of theirs?”
Qin Weidong had a meeting at nine. He asked Fang Li what his plans were for the day. Fang Li told him—selecting songs, recording, and a magazine interview. His new MV was doing great across TV stations in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The media there had started calling him the “pure-type rookie male singer of the year.” The company wanted him to debut in the Hong Kong-Taiwan market first before returning to the mainland.
While Fang Li was still having breakfast, Qiao Shi texted. Turned out the delivery Fang Li had asked the music shop owner to send had been placed under the doormat. His landlady saw it and kindly put it into the hallway cabinet—he’d thought it was lost!
After watching the MV inside, Qiao Shi wrote: [Brother Li! You looked amazing in it! My little sister said that if she’d had a senior like you in high school, she definitely would’ve fallen for you!]
Fang Li smiled and replied: [Did Xuxu get hers too?]
Qiao Shi responded, [She did! She’s just as scatterbrained as I am. By the way, when will we get to see you dance?! I bet if you danced, you’d sweep girls off their feet!]
Fang Li texted back: [Dance? Let’s not. That MV already got Qin Weidong and me into a huge fight…]
Qiao Shi immediately sent back a horrified emoji he’d made himself.
He followed up: [If I’m not mistaken, the most intimate moment in that MV was you and the female lead taking a graduation photo together? Even that’s not okay?]
Fang Li replied, [Nope…]
And then: [He said I was flirting with her in it.]
Qiao Shi paused for three or four seconds before replying: [Hahaha, that really does sound like something Brother Qin would do! Oh my god! Brother Li, what did you do?]
Fang Li replied, [Of course I reasoned with him! But we’ve made up now. I also promised him that I’d avoid any intimate scenes in the future.]
Qiao Shi sent a laughing emoji.
[Haha, this counts as intimate? Well… I suppose by Brother Qin’s standards, it does. Looks like he’s mellowed a lot! Your strategic move of flying back really paid off!]
Fang Li replied: [Who knows? But he really has changed a bit. We’ll take it slow.]
Qiao Shi was at a bar with friends and had another job later that night. He shook the little devil charm on his phone and told Fang Li, [Brother Li! We all really miss you. Hope one day you’ll bring your concert tour to New York!]
Qin Weidong was about to go into a meeting. He said to Fang Li, who was busy texting on his phone, “Give me Yang Xiaoliu’s number.”
“What do you want his number for?”
“You won’t give me your assistant, so I’ll talk to him instead.”
Fang Li immediately knew what Qin Weidong was up to. “Do you really need to know my schedule every minute of every day?”
Qin Weidong answered frankly, “Yes.”
Fang Li rolled his eyes but gave him the number anyway. He wasn’t that opposed to it—back when they lived in different countries, Qin Weidong always knew where he was and what he was doing, and they were on the phone nearly every hour during the day. They’d always communicated that way.
After breakfast, Yang Xiaoliu came to pick Fang Li up. He ended a call as soon as Fang Li got in the car and said, “Brother Li, someone named Li just contacted me…”
“Li?”
“Yeah, he said he’s President Qin’s assistant…”
Fang Li just gave an “oh.”
Yang Xiaoliu recalled the call and said worriedly, “Brother Li, he said you and President Qin already talked, and if I give him your daily schedule, he’ll pay me three times what Waves does. Brother Li, why would he offer so much? What does he do? Is he some crazy fan who followed you all the way to the mainland?”
Although the assistant offered a high salary, Yang Xiaoliu still had professional ethics. Back when he worked with other artists, fans had tried to bribe him for schedules, and he had always refused.
“Crazy fan?” Fang Li laughed at his word choice. As he got in the car, he said, “He’s a friend of mine. He’s just worried about my contract stuff. It’s fine. Go ahead and report to him.”
Once he heard the guy was someone Fang Li knew, Yang Xiaoliu was relieved. The job was easy—just reporting a schedule—and he’d be making three times the money. Still, he felt a bit uneasy.
“Brother Li, is it really okay for me to take this money?”
Fang Li nodded and said it was. Only then did Yang Xiaoliu fully relax, feeling quite happy—he’d already saved up quite a bit over the years.
If he could earn that much extra money this year, he would be able to buy a small place of his own in Jinyang by the end of the year.
In late December, A Date with the Millennium premiered in the mainland. Romance films didn’t have as large a market there compared to Hong Kong and Taiwan. Still, with two attractive leads, the film drew in plenty of couples and did decently at the box office.
Taking advantage of the movie’s release, Fang Li’s album was also launched in the mainland. The striking cover caught attention once again, and his songs quickly climbed the radio charts. As his fame grew, so did the criticism. A mainland music magazine commented that he was this year’s breakout star—“a dark horse” in the music industry—but one whose looks outshone his voice.
To be fair, he didn’t have many works to his name yet. Most fans were first drawn in by the album cover and his handsome presence in music videos. The Waves Company was well aware of this and pushed ahead with producing Fang Li’s first truly complete album.
Before the New Year, Qin Weidong and Fang Li went to see A Date with the Millennium together. Fang Li was moved to tears, sobbing through the film while Qin Weidong handed him tissues.
When the theme song—sung by Fang Li—started playing during the emotional breakup scene between the leads, his soulful, melancholic voice filled the theater, moving many couples to tears. Fang Li cried along too.
It was the first time Qin Weidong had heard Fang Li’s singing in a public setting. The experience was… surreal.
He glanced around and saw boyfriends comforting their girlfriends. So, Qin Weidong also reached over to wipe Fang Li’s tears.
Between sniffles, Fang Li mumbled, “I don’t remember this part from before. It’s killing me.”
He had watched an early internal cut of the film to better capture the emotions for the theme song, but it differed from the final mainland version.
“Don’t cry,” Qin Weidong said.
Fang Li kept staring at the screen, crying harder. Artistic types always had strong empathy.
“It’s almost New Year’s,” Qin Weidong tried again. “Crying’s unlucky.”
Fang Li blew his nose hard, tossed the tissue at him, and said, “Watch the movie. Stop talking.”
Qin Weidong had no choice but to shut up.
As the New Year approached, shops were already putting up festive couplets over their doors. After nearly four years in the U.S., this would be their first time spending New Year’s back home.
It was also the first New Year that Qin Weidong would spend as the publicly acknowledged son of Qin Zhengrong—who had been missing for years before finally being found. His return to the Qin family made this year especially meaningful.
A few days before New Year’s, Qin Weidong was summoned back by Qin Zhengrong, busy being introduced to all the people he was expected to know.
Fang Li knew then—Qin Weidong probably wouldn’t be able to spend New Year’s with him.
On the eve of Lunar New Year, a heavy snowfall blanketed Jinyang. Snowflakes danced in the beam of car headlights as Qin Weidong returned—he came back with Feng Hui, and with them was Qi Jian.
Qi Jian’s mother had passed away, and he had no other relatives in Jinyang. Qin Weidong and Feng Hui, seeing that he was alone, immediately agreed to bring him along so the three of them could spend the New Year together.
The two men carried two boxes of fireworks out of the car and set them off in the courtyard.
Qi Jian was good with his hands. He had knitted a bouquet of yarn flowers for Fang Li, who loved it. He found a vase and arranged the bouquet carefully inside.
After the fireworks show, Qin Weidong said to Fang Li, “I’ll have to go back home for a few days during the New Year. Qi Jian will stay here and keep you company. Feng Hui and I hired a driver and a tour guide—we’ll take you two to Luxi Town tomorrow to walk around and have some fun. Sound good?”
Fang Li knew Qin Weidong had done his best to arrange everything for him. Qin Weidong’s return to the country also meant…
From this year on, he was officially part of the Qin family. If it had been an ordinary household, it wouldn’t have mattered much—but it was that Qin family. Qin Weidong had returned to the place that had always been his by right. He was no longer just Fang Li’s Qin Weidong.
Fang Li said, “Go ahead. Qi Jian and I will enjoy ourselves. Are there a lot of relatives on the Qin side? Don’t drink too much.”
Qin Weidong nodded. In truth, his days of playing host were over. Among his peers in the Qin family, he didn’t even need to speak—people instinctively watched his expression. After three rounds of toasts, if anyone tried to pour him another, someone else would intercept the drink on his behalf.
He knew exactly what they were thinking, and he’d already made his own arrangements. But the constant stream of people coming to see him was wearing him out.
Meanwhile, Feng Hui was lighting sparklers for Qi Jian. Fang Li pulled one out too. “How do you light this?”
Qin Weidong pulled out a lighter to help him, but worried the sparks might hit Fang Li, so he took it from him.
“This year we’re back… Should we go visit Grandma’s grave for New Year?”
Fang Li froze. He hadn’t expected Qin Weidong to bring that up—and hadn’t imagined that he’d remembered at all.
The sparkler flared, throwing off bright sparks. Qin Weidong handed it back to him but kept his eyes on Fang Li’s hand.
Fang Li asked, “Back to Chongsi… Do you have time?”
Qin Weidong said, “We’ll leave early on the third day of New Year and be back the next day.”
Axolotl Translations 
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