He Kept Me as His First Love's Stand-In, but I Saved Him First novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Once, Plainly

The stand-in tells the truth once in the study, is told the first love already warned of it, and is moved out to the gardener's annex.

Zhe waited until the house was asleep, and then he went to the study.

The light was still on under the door.

He knocked once.

"Ten minutes, Mr. Shao."

Hanjing sat behind the desk in his shirtsleeves, with a photograph held flat under the lamp.

It showed a boy with a scarf round his neck, laughing at something outside the frame.

He turned it face down before Zhe reached the desk.

"Yu is asleep. Be quick."

Zhe stood with his hands at his sides.

He had thought about how to say it for four hours, and in the end he said it the way he'd say a note was flat.

"The whistle is my father's."

Hanjing did not move.

"He was a rescue man on the harbor at Shipu. The name Ning is scratched inside the barrel, under the tarnish. The dent is from me. I dropped it on the quay when I was fourteen."

"Ning Zhe."

"Nine summers ago, at dusk, I swam out from the north jetty after a swimmer caught in the rip. He was about twenty. I got him to the rocks and pushed the water out of his chest. The chain snapped, and I lost the whistle there."

The lamp hummed.

"I'm telling you once," Zhe said. "I won't say it again."

For a long time Hanjing only looked at him.

Then he leaned back in the chair, and his face went smooth and cold.

"He said you would."

Zhe's heart gave one hard beat.

"When?"

"Tonight, in bed. He said Shipu had made him think of it. He said a man who spends three years being someone else might want to be him for one night."

"I'm not asking to be anyone."

"You're asking for four million and a rescue." Hanjing's voice was even. "What was this, Ning Zhe? A raise?"

"No."

"The coast was full of fishermen's sons that summer. Every one of them has a story about the water."

"Ask him for the whistle," Zhe said. "Look inside the barrel. It takes a minute."

Hanjing's hand closed on the edge of the desk.

It was the only thing about him that moved.

"I'm not going to wake him up at one in the morning and ask him to prove he saved my life."

"Then you won't know."

"I know."

"Then why does it frighten you to look?"

The words were out before Zhe could weigh them.

Hanjing stood.

He was a head taller, and he came around the desk slowly, and for a moment Zhe thought his hand would go to the jaw again.

It stopped an inch short.

"Careful," Hanjing said, very quiet. "Three years I have been generous with you."

"Yes, Mr. Shao."

"You wear what I give you. You answer to what I call you. That is the arrangement, and I have never once asked what you thought."

"No," Zhe agreed. "You haven't."

The silence went on until the rain started again.

"The cologne goes out tonight," Hanjing said at last. "I don't need a copy in the house now. Lu Wen will clear your rooms in the morning."

"I understand."

"And you will not say this to him. Not once. Not to anyone."

"I told you I'd say it once," Zhe said. "I did."

He bowed and left.

At the door he heard the photograph being turned over again, slowly, on the desk.

The annex was a gardener's house at the bottom of the lawn, two rooms and a stove, with a window on the lake.

Lu Wen carried the last box down himself in the grey before dawn.

He set it on the table and stood with his hands folded in front of his coat, looking for words.

"Mr. Ning. I'm sorry about the arrangement."

"It's all right."

"I put the file on Shipu in the cabinet in September." Lu Wen's voice was low. "I did not know, then, what I was filing. I will say that much."

Zhe looked at him.

Lu Wen was thirty-four and had never once raised his voice in this house.

"Thank you," Zhe said.

Lu Wen reached into the box and took out the green glass bottle, still two thirds full.

"Mr. Shao said to dispose of this."

"Then dispose of it."

The door closed softly behind him.

Zhe sat on the bare bed and listened to the house wake.

He did not feel anything yet.

He knew the feeling was coming.

Light grew in the window.

Across the lawn someone walked down toward the lake in a camel coat.

It was Yu, alone, barefoot, with his hand wrapped around the whistle.

He reached the stone landing where the steps went down into the water.

He stopped three paces from the edge.

He stood there a long time with his arm held tight across his chest.

He did not go any closer, and he did not take his eyes off the lake.

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