Chapter 53

A Childlike Heart

"You're quite friendly with the staff." Leaving the meeting room, Secretary Liu had noticed Chao Musheng bringing water to the service attendants.

On the Wangyue, the staff barely registered as people to most of the guests — they were furniture, there to serve. You didn't wonder whether furniture was tired.

It was a relief Xiao Chao wasn't like that. No wonder he'd liked the young man immediately.

He held out a folder. "Here — the background material you wanted on He Yi."

"Thank you, Brother Liu. You really are the most capable secretary in the world." Chao Musheng took it. He'd only made the request this morning, and it was already here. This was what genuine professionalism looked like.

"Think nothing of it. A small matter." Secretary Liu's face fell slightly. "The material came through two hours ago. I was worried it might affect your focus in the meeting, so I held it."

Chao Musheng opened the folder and immediately understood why.

Anyone looking at a bright, talented young girl whose life had ended at its best would feel that loss.

The file listed He Yi's accomplishments from childhood onward — a long record of academic excellence. Her parents had divorced when she was six. She'd been raised by her mother. Less than two weeks after her own death — a fall from a building — her mother had died in a car accident.

In the second semester of her junior year, a boy named Song Cheng had pursued her. She'd declined, wanting only to focus on her studies.

The file made no mention of whether Song Cheng had continued to harass her after being rejected. What it did note: three days after He Yi's fall, Song Cheng had left the country.

"Don't read anymore — eat first." Xu Chenzhu closed the folder in Chao Musheng's hands, more firmly than usual.

Chao Musheng surfaced and followed him to a table in the restaurant.

Outside the window: the deep blue of open sea. Chao Musheng rested his chin on one hand and let out a quiet breath.

"Fresh orange ice cream." Xu Chenzhu took the dish from the passing server and set it in front of him. "Try some."

Ice cream was perhaps primarily a children's treat — the bowl had cheerful little figurines propped on the rim, and the spoon handle was shaped into a small dog.

Secretary Liu glanced at the ice cream in front of Chao Musheng, then at his employer's unusually gentle expression, and experienced a feeling of odd familiarity he couldn't place.

Then he placed it. This was exactly what he looked like when he was trying to cheer up his nephew.

"It's Xiao Jian Gou." Chao Musheng had noticed the dog on the spoon handle — slightly scruffy-looking in the specific, beloved way of that character. The cartoon had been running for decades. When he was young and home alone, this was what he'd watched.

Even now, if he passed a shop with one of the old films playing on a screen in the window, he would stop and watch for a few minutes before moving on.

Very few children watched it anymore. He hadn't expected to find the merchandise on a ship like this.

"What's Xiao Jian Gou?" Secretary Liu saw Chao Musheng's mood ease and leaned over to peer at the spoon, finding nothing that struck him as particularly notable.

"A dog from an old cartoon. When I was little and watched it, I really wanted a dog of my own." Chao Musheng tried a spoonful. The brightness came back to his eyes.

"Did you ever get one?" Secretary Liu pressed with genuine curiosity. Xu Chenzhu, too, was watching him.

"No." Chao Musheng shook his head. "I was too young then. I was at school all day — I couldn't take proper responsibility for an animal."

"That's fair enough. School takes everything out of you — eyes open and you're already studying. No time to look after a puppy." Secretary Liu nodded with feeling.

"Though it might be that I didn't want one quite badly enough to find a way." Chao Musheng turned the spoon over in his fingers. "If you love something enough, you find time for it somehow."

"Xiao Chao." Secretary Liu looked at him with a smile that had taken on a particular warmth. "Whoever you end up with is going to be very lucky."

"Sorry?" Chao Musheng genuinely couldn't follow the leap. "How did we get there?"

"A person like you — you don't make decisions lightly. But when you do commit to something, you give it everything within your power." Secretary Liu raised his glass toward him. "Being loved by you must be a very secure feeling."

"Brother Liu, not everything needs to be filtered through a romance lens." Chao Musheng tapped his glass against Secretary Liu's. "That kind of thinking is bad for career development."

"I'm paying you a compliment." Secretary Liu shook his head. "You're still young. You don't understand yet how rare a thing love actually is."

Seeing the weight of feeling behind this, Chao Musheng pressed: "Brother Liu — have you had a love that ruined you for everything else?"

Secretary Liu set his glass down with great dignity. "No."

Love was a rare thing. Not everyone encountered it.

Zhao Kuo had theorized his way through battles he'd never fought. Surely he was allowed to speak with authority about feelings he'd never had.

He looked at Chao Musheng. Chao Musheng looked at him. With perfect wordless agreement, both of them looked away and let the subject drop.

A hand extended a paper napkin toward Chao Musheng. He took it without thinking. "Thank you, Mr. Xu."

Given naturally. Received without thought.

"Hss." Curly Hair, watching from a corner, scratched at her hair. There was an itch in her brain that felt like something trying to grow.

"Even with how thick your hair is, you shouldn't pull at it like that." Xiao Liu glanced in the direction Curly Hair was looking. "Don't worry — you're still Xiao Chao's number-one hanger-on. Tiger can't beat you."

"He's nowhere close." Curly Hair folded her arms. "When Tiger was still nobody knows where, I was commuting home on the bus with Xiao Chao every single day."

"Someone like Xiao Chao takes the bus ?" Xiao Liu was startled. "He doesn't have a car?"

Curly Hair paused.

She thought about the sprawling flat Chao Musheng lived in. About Auntie Chao's car.

It arrived with sudden clarity: a person from a family like that had absolutely no need to take the bus. Not the way she and Ah Ze had needed to.

He'd been keeping them company on purpose, hadn't he.

And he was sharp enough to have known, from early on, that her initial friendliness toward him had been calculated.

"Curly, what's wrong?" Xiao Liu nudged her elbow. "You've gone somewhere."

"Nothing." Curly Hair looked at her steadily. "Whatever happens, I have to stop what's coming."

"Yes." Xiao Liu nodded. If this instance world was real, there were several thousand people on the Wangyue — passengers and crew combined.

Several thousand living people. Very few could stay indifferent to that.

"But this is an enormous ocean liner. With this many staff. How does one person's revenge sink it?" Xiao Liu couldn't make it add up. "This isn't a fishing boat from some village dock. It can't just tip over."

"Because we've been thinking about it wrong from the start." Tiger materialized from some corner, flashed Curly Hair a conciliatory smile, and settled in.

"Let's go somewhere quieter." Xiao Liu, noticing that Curly Hair had no interest in engaging with Tiger directly, steered all three of them to a deserted spot on the fifteenth floor. "What have we been getting wrong?"

Curly Hair: "The person seeking revenge might not be acting alone."

Tiger: "The system never said there was only one."

They had spoken almost simultaneously.

"Curly, we really do think alike." Tiger gave her a sidelong look of appreciation. "There's a serious structural problem on the Wangyue — a deep imbalance between guests and staff. In the time I've been here, I've already witnessed multiple incidents of guests humiliating the crew."

Xiao Liu hadn't noticed this to the same degree — after the first two days, she and Curly Hair had stopped encountering any difficulty. The section leader gave them easy assignments, and the guests treated them well.

"Everyone on the fifteenth floor is shrewd. Even setting aside the fact that Xiao Chao made a point of looking out for Curly — the moment he was simply civil toward her, nobody else would risk being difficult." Tiger's tone was complex. "This morning I watched a guest stub out a cigarette in a server's bare hand. The server had to hold the ash. The server's palm was blistering by the end and they didn't flinch."

Xiao Liu: "Doesn't the captain intervene?"

"The Wangyue's reputation as the world's most luxurious liner — the captain built that reputation himself. Why would he intervene?" Tiger shook his head. "It's one enormous arena of class and status. Upper-tier guests look down on the lower tiers. Guests press down on staff. Staff are tools for managing guests' emotions. That's the whole structure."

Were there really no members of the crew who resented it?

"Good thing this is only an instance, or who could endure this indefinitely." Tiger shook his head again. "And there's a hidden storyline in this instance."

"What storyline?"

Tiger, noticing Curly Hair had finally addressed him of her own accord, sat up with renewed energy. "A native who knows the inside story told me — the first mate on this voyage was newly assigned. The ship's company appears to be grooming him as the Wangyue's next captain. Apparently the crew are hoping the first mate takes command soon."

"Why would they want someone new over the captain they know?"

"Because the first mate won't tolerate guests abusing the staff. Plenty of the crew know he's already argued with the captain about it."

"If I were working on the Wangyue, I'd want the first mate in charge too." Tiger reached into his pocket, remembered this was an instance and his server identity meant no smoking, and pushed the craving back down. "Unfortunately none of them know the Wangyue is never going to reach port. They're all going to become souls lost at sea."

The instance had too much reality to it. He kept forgetting it was a constructed world.

A shame, when he thought about it.

If he could choose, he wouldn't want the Wangyue to sink. Xiao Chao, the colleagues who liked to corner him and share gossip — he'd grown genuinely fond of all of them.

"Do you know where the first mate is?" Curly Hair's brow furrowed. Perhaps the first mate was key to preventing the ship from going down.

"Not exactly. I only know that since he fell out with the captain, he's been buried in extra work every day." Tiger sensed something slightly off in her manner — she didn't seem like someone hoping the Wangyue went under. "What do you want him for?"

"World peace," Curly Hair said.

"Huh?" Tiger looked at Xiao Liu.

"For love and..." Xiao Liu hesitated. "Justice?"

That's what the protagonists always said in those old anime, wasn't it?

She'd been in the infinite world so long she could barely remember the cartoons she'd watched as a child, pressing close to the television set every evening.

"What does that even—" Tiger felt strongly he was being brushed off. "Thank you for the intelligence." Curly Hair pressed a biscuit into his hand.

"One biscuit?" Tiger was incredulous. "You're giving me one biscuit for all of that?"

"It's one of Xiao Chao's biscuits." Curly Hair extended her palm. "If you don't want it, give it back."

"I want it, obviously it looks delicious." Tiger threw it directly into his mouth.

[Ding! Health +1.]

That wasn't a biscuit. That was medicine.

Tiger didn't ask Curly Hair why she had one of Chao Musheng's biscuits. Curly Hair didn't ask how he'd gathered so much useful information. Players cooperated with one another and guarded against each other in the same breath — that was simply the normal state of things.

*

"Mr. Shen, I'm so sorry." The director looked at Shen Ran in his wheelchair, his face full of apology. "For the dance role in the film — we've found someone else. I hope we'll have the chance to collaborate another time."

Facing the director who had come personally to apologize, Shen Ran curved his mouth into something adjacent to a smile. "It's all right. I understand."

"You and the Song family, if there's been some misunderstanding—" The director glanced at the bandaged foot, and after some hesitation, felt he had to say it. "I'd encourage you to clear it up sooner rather than later."

If Director Song himself hadn't phoned and asked him not to work with Shen Ran, he wouldn't have given up a candidate this good.

"I understand. Thank you." Shen Ran seemed unsurprised. His voice was even. "I hope the film does well."

"Right." The director had run out of ability to meet Shen Ran's eyes. He put down his gift, made his excuses, and left quickly.

"I'd like to go for a walk." Shen Ran told his attendants. "Just out to the deck for some air. You don't need to come."

"Mr. Shen—" The female attendant started to say something, and the male attendant pulled her sleeve. She closed her mouth.

After Shen Ran had gone, she asked: "Mr. Chao asked us to look after him properly. How can we let him go alone?"

"Right now, maybe he needs to be alone." The male attendant shook his head. "We'll tell Mr. Chao."

"The Song family is shameless." The female attendant muttered under her breath. "They'll get what's coming."

No wonder the old master had gone mad saying he was haunted. When a person does enough rotten things, being frightened out of their mind is only what they deserve.

*

Shen Ran had barely made it out of his room when his phone rang. His dance company's director.

[Little Shen — we don't have a choice on our end either. You should... contact other companies that are willing to take you in.]

Dial tone. Shen Ran stared at his phone for a long moment, then laughed at himself, quietly and without warmth.

In that instant, all his years of endurance and painful striving collapsed into something that felt like a joke.

The soft sound of shoe soles on carpet behind him. He turned. "Captain?"

"When the powerful want to deal with an ordinary person, it takes one sentence." The captain removed his gloves. The light cast a shadow across his stern face. "You don't seem to have accepted it."

Shen Ran's lips moved slightly. He said nothing.

The captain stepped forward, opened his mouth to continue — and then looked up toward the far end of the corridor.

"Shen-ge."

Chao Musheng came from the far end in a formal suit, his diamond tie clip catching the light — but even that couldn't outshine the smile on his face.

"Captain — good afternoon." He walked straight to Shen Ran's side, gave the captain a cheerful wave, and took the wheelchair handles without ceremony. "I just found the perfect spot for tea. Come with me — you have to see it!"

The last words were already trailing behind them as he broke into a run.

The wind of their movement ruffled Shen Ran's hair across his face.

"Xiao Chao — slow down—" Shen Ran gripped the armrest with his left hand and swept hair out of his eyes with his right, the whole experience somewhere between flight and chaos.

"Don't worry, I'm reliable. I won't tip you."

Chao Musheng racing ahead with the wheelchair, four bodyguards sprinting behind — the corridor was empty of all of them within moments.

The captain stood in the sudden quiet, adjusted the brim of his hat, and turned back toward the bridge.

*

"The view here is something, isn't it."

Sea wind moving across his face. Shen Ran sat holding his chilled watermelon juice in a mild daze, and found his eyes drifting to Chao Musheng on the other side of the small table.

Under the beach umbrella, Chao Musheng was sprawled in a sun lounger with complete disregard for his formal outfit — the free, easy quality of him impossible to conceal by any amount of dressed-up clothing.

"Want to feed the gulls?" Chao Musheng tore a piece of bread into pieces and tipped them into Shen Ran's palm. "Watch."

He tapped the edge of the plate twice with a silver spoon. One of the gulls circling nearby actually folded its wings and landed on Shen Ran's knee.

It hopped once, twice, and stretched its neck to peck the bread from his palm.

Soft feathers brushed the inside of his wrist, back and forth. The tickle went all the way in.

The bird didn't seem afraid of him. When the bread was gone, it hopped to the ground and wandered under the table without leaving.

"One piece — will it be enough?" Shen Ran wasn't sure what to do, whether he should offer another.

"It's full already. It's just decided this is a comfortable place to rest." Chao Musheng shrugged off his suit jacket, leaving the fitted shirt underneath, and broke off another piece of bread. A second gull came in immediately.

Watching this, Shen Ran understood, for the first time, why some romance novels reached for the image of a young man in a white shirt to describe someone worth stopping for.

"You must have so many people who care for you." Shen Ran watched a gull quietly nuzzle its head against Chao Musheng's palm, and felt the turbulence in his chest begin, piece by piece, to still.

He surprised himself.

"That's right — from eighty-year-old grandparents to babies who can't talk yet, everyone loves me." Chao Musheng accepted this without false modesty. "I can't help it. I'm simply that remarkable. Staying humble just isn't possible."

Shen Ran laughed softly.

Strange. After everything that just happened, he could still laugh.

"Whoever loves you is going to have a lot of small worries." Shen Ran raised the corner of his mouth. Look at that — he even had the energy for jokes.

"Why?" Chao Musheng looked up with honest puzzlement, the gull in his palm turning its head to look at Shen Ran too.

Shen Ran reached out and carefully touched the top of the gull's head. The notoriously piratical seabird did not flinch.

"Because you hold so many people's affection. Whoever loves you — that love might be lost in the crowd of it. You might never notice it." Shen Ran held his gaze. "I imagine people confess to you quite regularly."

Meeting someone like this in the brightness of youth. It would be very hard not to feel something.

"Not really." Chao Musheng thought it over carefully. His friendships, his classmates — they'd all been warm, easy, genuinely good. But people who had told him directly that they liked him: there weren't many.

People seemed to prefer being his friends.

"It's probably because caring for someone as good as you requires considerable courage and self-belief."

Something too beautiful attracted many eyes that stopped and lingered. But most people would never reach out to hold it.

Maybe in the moment of approaching, they'd ask themselves again and again: am I good enough?

Do I have what it takes to keep him?

Shen Ran looked away. He was afraid that if he kept looking, he'd grow a longing he had no right to.

The greatest pain in life was wanting something that was never going to be yours.

"Shen-ge — you were complimenting me this entire time and I just noticed." Chao Musheng lifted his hand and let the gull take off. "Next time you want to compliment me, you can be direct. I have thick skin. I can take it."

Shen Ran drank his juice and smiled without answering.

It really is strange. After a day like this, I can still smile.

"I almost forgot something important while you were praising me." Chao Musheng said. "I have a friend who runs an entertainment company. They've been working on a joint performance with the National Dance Company, but they haven't found the right dancer. He wanted me to ask you — would you consider making a move? If so, he's willing to cover your contract penalty."

Shen Ran looked at the young man's eyes — bright as anything scattered across the night sky — and felt something move in his chest: sharp and sweet at once, like citrus in sugar. "Chao Musheng. Thank you."

It was very hard not to stop for someone like this.

"If you say yes, I should be thanking you — you're doing me a favor by giving me something to offer my friend." Chao Musheng smiled. "I've seen your performance videos online. He's getting the better end of this deal."

"And to make sure you don't change your mind — I'm having him bring the contract right now!" He was already tapping at his phone. He glanced up, confirmed Shen Ran wasn't stopping him, and added: "I already called him, he's on his way. And with me watching, I'll make sure you get a good signing bonus."

"Caw! Caw!"

Gulls called overhead — not an elegant sound.

Shen Ran tilted his face up to the sky beyond the shade of the umbrella. The sun made his eyes ache. The glare brought something that could be mistaken for tears. "Yes."

The light today. It really is something.

Five minutes later, Lian Hai arrived slightly breathless with two copies of a contract and pressed the pen and papers into Shen Ran's hands. "Sign. Xiao Chao's here, so you know I won't cheat you."

"Hold on — you're actually going to sign it right now?" Chao Musheng spotted Shen Ran reaching for the pen and snatched it away. "Read it first — every clause. What if I'm in on it with Lian Hai and we're both swindling you?"

Shen Ran: "I trust you."

"Even so." Chao Musheng kept hold of the pen. "You have to remember — no matter how much you trust someone, that person should never matter more than you do. What you need to do right now is compare both copies, line by line, and not miss anything."

Under Chao Musheng's watch, Shen Ran went through the contract clause by clause. Lian Hai — normally so swaggering — sat beside him in full patience, explaining each provision as needed.

Shen Ran was no lawyer, but he could see clearly: these were exceptionally generous terms. More than that — there was specific language written in about protecting and developing his dance career.

He looked up at Chao Musheng, who was scrolling through his phone beside them, and signed his name.

"Good working together." Lian Hai offered his hand. "Welcome to the family."

"Thank you for taking care of me." Shen Ran's gaze, as he said it, rested a fraction to the side — on Chao Musheng.

"I don't know enough about your industry — you two talk through the details." Chao Musheng got up and draped his jacket over his arm. "I'll head back and deal with some work."

Passing Lian Hai, he put a hand on his shoulder. "Brother Hai — Shen-ge is a friend of mine. When he performs, remember to save me a few good seats."

"I'd never forget you." Lian Hai said. "I've got a gathering tonight — don't forget to come."

"There might be rough weather in the next couple of days. Try to stay in tonight." Chao Musheng thought of his uncle's warning and didn't accept the invitation. "I'll take you to dinner when we're back on land."

"Fine." Lian Hai considered. "I'll cancel tonight anyway."

His greatest virtue: he valued his life and actually listened to people.

After Chao Musheng left, Lian Hai turned to Shen Ran. "Get some rest. When your foot's healed, I'll get you on stage. And don't worry — the Song family's reach doesn't extend to me."

"It was Xiao Chao who asked you to come, wasn't it." Shen Ran looked down at the contract — Lian Hai's signature already on it before he'd even arrived. "I've put you both to trouble."

"Come on, don't think like that — a dance talent like you going to someone else would be my loss. I'm just getting in first." Lian Hai rubbed his nose.

Shen Ran smiled. He really was a lucky person.

*

"Well, look who's skived off and come back." Secretary Liu looked up when Chao Musheng returned and handed him a stack of papers. "What was the emergency?"

"A friend had a small problem." Chao Musheng tossed his jacket on the sofa and took the documents one-handed, settling into the seat beside Secretary Liu.

"Sorted now?"

"All sorted." Chao Musheng opened his laptop and worked through the figures, then sent the processed file to his colleagues in the executive suite. "If a company like the Song Group were to change its chairman — would the impact on the staff be severe?"

"There'd be some disruption in the short term. But if someone like Song Cheng inherits the company, that's the real catastrophe for the employees." Secretary Liu turned pages without looking up. "The company has already put Song Group on the acquisition list. The Song family should be able to enjoy a restful Spring Festival this year, for once."

"We're acquiring Song Group?" Chao Musheng was surprised. "Why?"

From Kunlun's strategic standpoint, there was no particular reason to take on a company like that.

"Perhaps," Secretary Liu said with a hint of a smile, "autumn is approaching."

Chao Musheng: "..."

"Brother Liu, you should really stop watching CEO dramas."

He scanned the room. Xu Chenzhu was nowhere to be seen.

"This was a decision the boss made over lunch today. What would I know about the reasoning?" Secretary Liu's hand paused on the file. He looked up at Chao Musheng for a moment longer than usual.

Chao Musheng closed his laptop and turned — and saw a set of merchandise on the desk. Specifically: a small spoon with a familiar scruffy dog on the handle. A matching bowl. A full set.

"Brother Liu — is this yours?"

"Not mine." Secretary Liu shook his head. "You left in such a hurry after lunch. I'd already gone back to the room to prepare some documents. This was probably the boss who brought it back."

He really hadn't seen this side of the man before.

So the boss had a childlike heart after all.