THE REJECT SYSTEM

CHAPTER 7

The old house was a mess — furniture overturned, cabinets emptied onto the floor, the broken door still hanging from a single hinge. Qin Yuyan moved through it anyway, sweeping up glass, folding blankets that had been thrown across the room, setting things right with the quiet, determined efficiency of someone who simply refused to look at the wreckage a moment longer than she had to.

Lingtian was helping her right a fallen shelf when his phone rang.

"Get ready," Xie Wuchen's voice came through, bright with excitement. "Meet me at Golden Pavilion."

"Golden Pavilion? I just left there. Seems I'll be seeing Wan San again."

"Be there by seven." She hung up before he could ask anything else.

He stared at the phone for a moment, shrugged, and went to find something clean to wear. He settled on the same faded white shirt and blue trousers he'd had for years.

***

The restaurant was enormous, all soft lighting and quiet piano music — definitely not the same floor he'd fought on earlier. If it was, Wan San genuinely deserved his branch director title. A host led him down a long corridor toward a private room near the back. Golden Pavilion really was that big, he thought, if they had private rooms like this too. Since Xie Wuchen wasn't there yet, he considered asking a waiter to take him to Wan San instead — and it was there, halfway down the hall, that he ran into the last people he wanted to see.

Chu Junmo stood outside the private room with his father and mother, clearly there to personally receive whoever they were expecting. Junmo's eyes landed on Lingtian and lit up with smug delight.

"Well, well." He looked him over, slow and deliberate. "Look what wandered down the hallway. Did you get a job as a waiter?"

"Junmo." Lingtian kept walking.

"Small world," Junmo said with a smile, glancing at his father like he'd just been handed a gift. He stepped sideways, blocking the corridor entirely. "Did you hear someone important is coming tonight, so you figured you'd come mooch off it? My family is here hosting someone important. Someone powerful. Can you even dream of meeting a person like that in your entire life?"

Lingtian said nothing. He just looked at Junmo the way one might look at a clown.

"Nothing to say?" Junmo pressed, clearly disappointed by the lack of a reaction. "That's fine. Security!"

Two guards appeared from around the corner, and Lingtian almost laughed. Apparently they didn't know who their real boss was yet.

"Get him out of here," Junmo said. "He's embarrassing us in front of our guests."

The guards hesitated, exchanging a look — the look of men who remembered exactly what happened last time — and eyed Lingtian with something close to fear. Before either side could move, footsteps echoed from the far end of the corridor.

"What's going on here?"

Xie Wuchen approached in a plain white gown, seamless and simple, the kind of thing that didn't need embellishment to look expensive. Beside her walked an older man with a composed, unhurried presence.

"Xie Wuchen." Junmo's surprise flickered across his face before he smoothed it over. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing." Her eyes had already found the guards, found Lingtian standing calmly between them, and her expression darkened. "Why is security here? Did you call them on him?"

"That's none of your business."

"It is when you're threatening someone in a hallway." She closed the distance quickly, her father following at an unhurried pace, quietly taking in the scene without comment.

"Young man," he said finally, facing Chu Junmo, "whatever's happened here, surely it can be settled with a conversation rather than security guards."

His daughter had told him she wanted him to meet a friend tonight, and from the way she'd moved to stand beside this young man, he could only assume this was him.

Junmo glanced at him — dismissively, the way he might glance at a waiter — and waved a hand. "This doesn't concern you either. Whoever you are."

"Junmo." Xie Wuchen's voice carried a note of warning, but Junmo was too far gone in his own momentum to notice.

"No, I mean it," he said, rounding on Xie Wuchen and her father both now, his voice rising. "The two of you can turn right around and go back the way you came. You think you can just walk in and start giving orders? Do you have any idea who my family is? My father could buy your entire family and not even notice the difference." He jabbed a finger toward them. "You're nothing. Rats, both of you, sniffing around somewhere you don't belong. We are here to meet a powerful person tonight — someone who actually matters. Have you heard of the Xie group the control a large amount of resources they have connections here and in the capital. Waste like you won't even dream of meeting them. Xie group decided to give us the privilege of hosting them . I suggest you take your flirty self and get the hell out of here. Xie group could bury people like you and no one would even question it. I suggest you don't butt into business that isn't yours."

The corridor went very still.

Xie Wuchen's father simply looked at him. It had been a long time since anyone had spoken to him like that.

"Is that so," he said quietly.

Junmo, mistaking the silence for retreat, smiled and turned back to his own father as if the matter were already settled.

"See? Some people just need to be reminded of their place," he said, straightening his jacket.

"Chairman Xie, you're here!"

Chu Jing's voice rang out from behind Chu Junmo, whose whole body went stiff.