QT: Don't fall in love with the Male Lead

Xi Zirui gasps into the kiss when Han Yu's arms come around his waist, gripping onto his hipbone with propriety. 

Clinging to Han Yu's back, Xi Zirui brings both arms around his neck, hanging on to the hawthorn skewer between his fingers. Trying to remain focused enough not to let it drop to the floor or stick to Han Yu's clothes.

Han Yu tries to say something against Xi Zirui's lips, but Xi Zirui doesn't let go of him, chasing after his plush lips with ravenous hunger.

The fingers on his hipbone clench under the hem of his sweater and Xi Zirui's abdominal muscles jump at the contact.

"Ge, gege..." Han Yu's voice finally breaks through the fog of lust clouding Xi Zirui's senses. "People are staring at us."

Xi Zirui chances a sideways from the corner of his eye, and indeed, a small crowd of onlookers has gathered around them.

A young guy is filming them. "Is this for a new drama? Are you guys actors?"

"Whatever, this is going on douyin," he says, shrugging, when he doesn't get an answer.

That kicks Xi Zirui into action, he lunges towards the guy and grabs his mobile out of his hands.

"Hey, that's mine!" the guy, sporting a sad looking goatee and a brand-name backwards hat curses him while trying to bat the phone out of Xi Zirui's hands.

Han Yu materializes at his side and holds the guy back by his oversize hoodie. "Let the nice gentleman do what we wants and you won't have any trouble."

His manic shark grin makes goatee stop struggling right away. 

Xi Zirui deletes the video and returns the mobile back to its owner. "It's rude to film people on the street."

Grumbling, the guy takes it back and shoots both of them a vicious glare. "Whatever," he spits, and disappears into the crowd.

Once they're alone again Han Yu shoots him a reticent glance. "Afraid Master Su is going to get forwarded a douyin of his husband kissing the help?"

Xi Zirui closes his eyes. Must he word it like that? 

He can't risk Su Xueyi finding out about them, he might no longer be an Emperor but he still has the means to make their lives miserable, at least until Xi Zirui neutralizes him.

In fact, the kiss is the least of their problems, considering Han Yu and the original have been having an affair for months.

Xi Zirui can still feel the phantom pain of the whip lashes on his back, can still hear Han Yu's anguished cries.

"You know we can't risk that," he says, after a pregnant pause.

Han Yu worries at his bottom lip with his teeth and scoffs wryly. "I don't know why you care. It's obvious you don't love him."

Xi Zirui shrugs despondently, it's the best answer he can give at present. 

Han Yu kicks his snicker's heel against the pavement and shoves his hands inside his jean pockets. "I guess you need a guy like him to afford your lifestyle."

Fuming, Xi Zirui grits his teeth and says, "We should go back to the house."

Han Yu shrugs and nods. "This date is a bust, anyway."

It's not a pleasant ending to the morning.

---

Back at the house, they spend the rest of the day avoiding each other. Xi Zirui tries to keep himself occupied in the upper floor, and Han Yu stays in his room, doing whatever.

When Su Xueyi arrives he presents Xi Zirui with the biggest bouquet of roses he has ever seen. There must be hundreds of them, all red and velvety. 

He gets a kiss on the cheek for his troubles, and the cold shoulder all through dinner.

They watch a movie together, and Xi Zirui calls it 'derivative', Su Xueyi's favor immediately goes up another point. Now at 36 out of 100.

Han Yu stands guard at the door while Su Xueyi and Xi Zirui are in the living room, and Xi Zirui can feel his gaze on his bare nape like a physical touch.

It makes him squirm away every time Su Xueyi tries to touch him.

Against his best interests, Xi Zirui ends up falling asleep during the second movie. 

Su Xueyi turns off the TV and carries him in his arms all the way up to their rooms.

From his station by the door, Han Yu watches intently as Xi Zirui's limp head lolls into Su Xueyi's chest and his pale feet dangle over the crook of his elbow.

His hands ball into fists at his side.

---

When morning comes, Xi Zirui has no recollection of getting into bed, but somehow he must have, because he's dressed in his obnoxious silk pajamas, and he can't see Su Xueyi going through the effort of doing up every tiny mother-of-pearl button.

He showers and dresses himself in something a little more business casual than gym clothes, but not by much. An oversized wool sweater and black ankle grazing pants is good enough. 

"Let's go to the company," he tells Han Yu as soon as he steps onto the ground floor. "Don't bother with the car, we're taking the metro."

Han Yu's expression darkens somewhat. "Going to have lunch with hubby again?"

"Don't be ridiculous," he says, putting on the same sneakers he wore the previous day. "I'm going to work."

The look of utter disbelief never quite leaves Han Yu's face.

---

This time Su Xueyi is full of smiles when he welcomes him into his office and absent any office boys sitting on his conference table.

"Darling, it's a bit early for lunch." Despite his words, he still gets up from his chair and comes around to drop a messy kiss on Xi Zirui's brow.

"I didn't come to have lunch, I came to work."

If possible, his disbelief is even more stark than Han Yu's.

"But why?" Su Xueyi asks, giving Xi Zirui a worried look, as if he is concerned he might be coming down with something.

"It gets boring staying at home all day," he says with an insouciant shrug of his shoulder. 

Taking advantage of Su Xueyi having recently vacated it, Xi Zirui circles the conference room and sits down on his chair.

He leans into the plush padding, and kicks his feet up onto the tabletop. "Besides, this is my company too."

Speaking plainly, it really isn't, because Su Xueyi established it before their wedding, but Su Xueyi clearly isn't going to tell him that.

He smirks when Su Xueyi swallows dryly. "What are you planning to do?"

Xi Zirui spreads his arms over the table, feeling the grain under his fingertips. "I was thinking I could work with human resources," he says, his smile so wide it hurts his cheeks.

---

Su Xueyi can't really tell him no, so he tasks an assistant with finding him an empty office to use.

It's not huge, but it has an enormous panoramic window with an incredible view of the city.

The window, he suspects, is a CEO's-husband-only perk.

"Fancy," Han Yu says, pulling down on the white leaves of a Chinese Evergreen, surprised to find the plant to be real.

"I'm not planning on staying here long." He gets a blank notepad out of one of his desk's drawers and a pen and makes his way to the door.

Han Yu follows him closely. Strictly speaking, there's no need for him to shadow him inside the company, but Su Xueyi is paranoid, or maybe the original was. 

Either way, Xi Zirui appreciates the convenient excuse to have him close, even if things are still strained between them.

"I still have no idea what you're going to do here," he muses aloud clicking his tongue. "Is gege going to ask the employees to rate their work environment satisfaction, on a scale of 1 to 5?"

Xi Zirui opens up a huge grin. "Actually, yes."

---

It's not a coincidence that Cao Fei, as part of the Human Resources team is the sacrificial lamb chosen to show him around the offices.

Either Su Xueyi is trying to offer him an olive branch by letting him have a go at Cao Fei.

Or Cao Fei has some colleagues who really hate his guts.

He looks horrified to be in Xi Zirui's presence, unable to meet his eyes.

Xi Zirui smiles warmly at him. "Thank you for showing me around, I hope I'm not imposing." He takes Cao Fei limp hand in a short handshake. "Cao Fei right? Nice to meet you."

Cao Fei doesn't know whether to trust Xi Zirui's apparent friendliness and mumbles a faltering, "Likewise."

Han Yu observes this exchange with a smirk.

Their first stop is the costumer support operatives. Which is to say, the call center.

Normally, a company the size of Greydot would outsource costumer support to a specialized company instead of training their own department. The fact that Su Xueyi has opted not to do so is interesting.

And the reason why Xi Zirui wants to start here.

While Greydot brands itself as a tech start-up, it's actually just a reseller of electronics. 

In its early days, Su Xueyi would buy bulk units of cheap electronics, such as speakers, keyboards, headphones, and the like, stamp the Greydot logo onto them. Invest on an aggressive marketing campaign with digital influencers and wait for the profits to rain down.

And they did.

These days, Greydot places orders directly with the manufacturer, which is actually cheaper, and they're the ones engraving the Greydot logo, right there on the production line, onto the same cheap electronics being sold in every online market.

The irony of it all being the thousands of loyal Greydot costumers seeing 'lookalikes' of their luxury products all over Taobao and moaning about how popular Greydot products are that everyone tries to copy them.

It's disgusting, but profitable.

Su Xueyi is a lot of things, but he isn't stupid.

He's scalping costumers, and Xi Zirui would bet his left foot he's scalping his employees too.

Xi Zirui makes his way towards a familiar face he hasn't seen since the first world.

Ji Limei is typing away at a keyboard, talking with someone through her headset on the cubicle farthest from the door.

"Sorry to interrupt, I'm conducting a survey on employee satisfaction." Her doll-like eyes widen in worry, but Xi Zirui is quick to assuage her fears. "Don't worry, it's completely anonymous."

She still doesn't look convinced but Cao Fei intervenes. "It's not official Ji laoshi," he says, giving Xi Zirui a sideways glance.

"I guess I can answer some questions," she says, pouting at having been chosen for this.

"Cao laoshi, could you give us some privacy?" Xi Zirui asks uncapping his pen.

He does, and Xi Zirui smiles down at Ji Limei still sitting down at her chair. 

"What about him?" she asks, nodding towards Han Yu.

"Don't worry about him, he's my bodyguard."

"Are you in any danger?"

"You know, I'm still not sure about that."

His answer doesn't put her at ease and she moves her chair further away from Han Yu, who's leaning against the window frame with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

"What would you say is the worst thing about working here?"

She blinks up at him, once, twice.

"What?"

Han Yu also gives him a curious look.

"Just off the top of your head," Xi Zirui insists.

"And you're sure this is going to be anonymous?"

"I swear."

She drums her fingers over her desk and bites her lower lip, before eventually nodding.

After that, she tells Xi Zirui everything about how she often works unpaid overtime, and how her regular work hours are logged incorrectly anyway. She's supposedly earned a productivity bonus three times already but has yet to see hide or tail of it.

Her pee breaks are monitored, and her lunch hour has been reduced to half an hour.

Xi Zirui writes all this down to the smallest detail. She assures him all of her colleagues have similar tales to tell.

He's sure this is only the tip of the iceberg. He's sure there's much more dirt hiding behind these bland plaster walls.

Xi Zirui is almost done interviewing Ji Limei when the sound of thin heels thumping over carpeted floor enters his field of hearing.

A polite cough sounds behind his back. 

"If we're having an audit I should have been informed about it beforehand," Bai Mi's familiar voice trills, seemingly ignoring the entire point of an audit.

Xi Zirui smirks. He's been wondering when she'd show up.