He Sold My Designs to the Chairman, So I Married the Chairman novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Marry Me
He watches his own sketchbook pages light up behind his boyfriend on the awards stage, walks into the chairman's private lounge with the dated original and offers marriage, and the chairman says yes.
Lan Yichen sat in the fourth row with a ring box in his fist.
On the screen, his own coat sketch grew four metres tall.
It was grey wool, with one sleeve cut long enough to fold back over the hand.
He had drawn it in March at the kitchen table, at two in the morning, with Zhiyuan asleep in the next room.
In the corner of the page he had penciled the date, small and slanted, the way he dated everything.
Someone had cropped the date off the slide.
"Autumn Telegram," said the host, and the grand hall of Qiao Group's tower rose to its feet.
Fang Zhiyuan walked onto the stage in the camel coat Yichen had saved two months to buy him.
Director Meng Ruoxi put the Golden Needle into his hands, and the cameras flashed white across his face.
Twenty-eight looks went by on the screen behind him, one after another.
Yichen knew every one.
He knew which seam he had redrawn four times, and which hem he had cried over.
Zhiyuan held the trophy to his chest and smiled at the room the way he smiled at waiters, warm and easy.
"I want to thank one person above everyone," he said.
Yichen's thumb found the lid of the ring box and pressed until the hinge hurt.
Five years, he thought.
Tonight he had meant to say it in the car park, in the cold, with the book in his other hand.
"I want to thank Chairman Qiao Weicheng," Zhiyuan said, "who believed in me when I had nothing."
The applause came down on the hall.
Up in the glass box above the stage, a man in a grey three-piece suit stood with his hands behind his back.
Qiao Weicheng, thirty-two, who owned the tower, the group and nine thousand people.
He had never been photographed with anyone, and he did not clap.
He was looking straight down at the fourth row.
At Yichen.
Their eyes met for one second through the glass, and the cold in them went down his spine.
Yichen stood up.
The woman next to him whispered, "Where are you going?"
He didn't answer.
He carried his bag down the side aisle with the dated sketchbook inside it, the black cloth one, every page marked in his own pencil.
He had brought it tonight to give to Zhiyuan along with the ring.
At the stage steps, Zhiyuan saw him and the smile held perfectly, which was how Yichen knew he had planned for this too.
Zhiyuan came down with the trophy and caught his elbow, low and quick.
"Don't make a scene," he said into Yichen's ear. "I'll explain at home. You'd never have gotten them to look at it, babe. I made it a success."
"You made it yours," Yichen said.
"Same thing, between us."
Yichen looked at the hand on his elbow.
Then he looked at Zhiyuan, five years of him, the face he'd drawn on napkins in the first winter.
He pulled his arm free, and he didn't say a word, and he got into the lift.
He pressed 68.
The lift opened on a quiet floor of black stone and one long door.
A man in steel glasses stood in front of it with a tablet. He had the look of someone who had never once been surprised.
"Mr. Lan," said Pei Jinan. "The Chairman is not receiving."
"He bought something from me tonight," Yichen said. "I'd like to see him about the receipt."
Pei Jinan looked at the bag, and at the ring box, and at Yichen's face.
Then he opened the door.
The lounge was one dark room with a wall of glass, and the whole river lit up beneath it.
Qiao Weicheng stood at the window with his back to the room, and a tablet beside him was showing the hall.
He turned.
Up close he was taller than he looked in photographs, and harder, with a faint old scar through his left eyebrow.
He looked at Yichen.
"Lan Yichen," he said.
Yichen had never told him his name.
He didn't stop to wonder about it.
He crossed the carpet and set the sketchbook on the low table under the lamp, and opened it to the first coat.
"March fourteenth," he said. "Look at the corner."
Weicheng looked.
"April second. April nineteenth. Every page."
"I see them."
"Zhiyuan can't draw a sleeve. He photographed these while I slept."
Yichen put the ring box down beside the book with a small hard click.
"You bought stolen work, Chairman."
Weicheng's eyes came up from the page, slow and dark.
"I have a ring with nobody's name in it," Yichen said. "Marry me, and I'll make it legal."
The silence went on long enough for the river to move under the glass.
Weicheng reached out and took Yichen's hand, which was shaking, and closed his fingers over the ring box one at a time.
His palm was dry and very warm.
Then Qiao Weicheng, who had never smiled in public, smiled at him.
"Yes," he said.
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