Take off your shirt

The broken beam came crashing down in a shower of wood chips. Pei Yang instinctively raised his arm and closed his eyes.

"...Ngh!" He grunted as a soft, heavy body landed on him. The pain he had expected never came. Pei Yang opened his eyes and heard the ripping sound of fabric.

"Yin Sufang!"

Yin Sufang's entire weight pressed down on Pei Yang. The boards broke apart in midair, and his back took several direct blows from the rotten wood.

"Who told you to come over here?" Pei Yang wrapped an arm around Yin Sufang's waist and used his uninjured leg to kick away the piled-up wood fragments. When he looked up, the coworkers who were usually so close to Yin Sufang stood a short distance away, seemingly stunned. Not one of them made a move to help.

"What are you all standing there for?" Pei Yang growled. "Come help!"

Only then did everyone snap out of their daze. They came forward to move the boards, and several of them worked together to help Yin Sufang and Pei Yang up.

"Curator Yin, Curator Pei? Are you all right...?"

"We-we were just stunned. How could those boards fall down out of nowhere?"

Pei Yang bent down to rub his aching knee, then slowly shifted over to inspect the pile of broken eaves on the ground.

Exhibition structures failing quality checks was about as basic a mistake as it got. Yin Sufang cared about this exhibition more than anything. How could he have overlooked that?

Pei Yang picked up a few broken boards. The breaks were smooth and even. They didn't look as though they had snapped on their own. It looked more like... someone had done it deliberately.

"...What do we do? I think the nearest hospital is pretty far away," a coworker behind him said anxiously.

Pei Yang froze when he spotted a pool of blood beneath the wood fragments.

He wasn't bleeding. That meant...

"Yin Sufang?!" Pei Yang immediately turned and grabbed his arm. "Are you okay?"

"I..." Yin Sufang's face was pale, sweat pouring down it. He seemed to be in too much pain to speak.

Pei Yang looked him over but found no obvious wounds on his front. Then something occurred to him. He gripped Yin Sufang's shoulders and turned him around.

Yin Sufang was the only employee who hadn't worn a thick hanfu outfit that day. When he had shielded Pei Yang, the edges of the boards had torn through the back of his shirt, leaving him bleeding heavily.

"Oh my God... he's bleeding!"

"Fangfang, does it hurt?"

"I-I'm fine." Yin Sufang stubbornly waved them off. "Hurry... get someone to deal with this area."

"Huh?" The coworkers exchanged looks. "We've... never dealt with anything like this before. Who-who should we get?"

"Forget that for now. We need to treat your back first," Pei Yang said. "My place is nearby, closer than the hospital. We'll go there."

"But..."

"No buts." Pei Yang pulled Yin Sufang along. "Your health comes first."

Without even taking the time to change, Pei Yang bundled Yin Sufang into the car and stepped on the gas.

Yin Sufang moaned in pain in the passenger seat, tears and snot streaming down his face. Pei Yang felt awful. He glanced at him. "Are you stupid? Why did you throw yourself on top of me?"

"Do you... have any fucking conscience?" Yin Sufang hunched forward, afraid of getting blood on Pei Yang's car. "This-this is my exhibition. If anything happened to you at my exhibition, then I..."

"Wait-fuck! How am I so fucking unlucky? It was a perfect day, and then this happens right at the end! I checked that section myself..."

"There's more to this. Someone sawed through those openwork boards," Pei Yang said.

"What?!" Yin Sufang swore without a shred of decorum. "Who the hell is trying to screw me over?"

"Have you made any enemies lately?"

"What enemies could I have made? Who would hate me that much?" As Yin Sufang spoke, he suddenly straightened and slowly looked at Pei Yang. "Wait. Actually, there might be one person."

Pei Yang said, "Who?"

Yin Sufang said, "You."

Pei Yang said, "..."

Pei Yang almost laughed in exasperation. "If you really think it was me, get the hell out of my car right now."

Yin Sufang pursed his lips. "Then who else could it be? You're the only one in the whole Exhibition Planning Department who has a grudge against me. And if Sister Lan hears about this, then I..."

"Right, Sister Lan." Remembering something, Pei Yang immediately took out his phone and called a coworker at the scene. "She can't find out about this, or you're done for."

When the call connected, Pei Yang got straight to the point. "Cordon off the scene. Nobody is to tell anyone outside about this, not even Sister Lan."

"B-but, Curator Pei, Sister Lan... she already knows."

Pei Yang frowned and exchanged a look with Yin Sufang in the passenger seat.

When they reached Pei Yang's home, he helped Yin Sufang over to the couch and went into the other room to fetch his first-aid kit.

Yin Sufang sat obediently, panting after climbing six flights of stairs, his large eyes roaming around the living room.

When Pei Yang came back with the first-aid kit, Yin Sufang said the same thing Xia Jingmo had: "Pei Yang, you live in a place like this?"

"Take off your shirt." Not wanting to be humiliated, Pei Yang instinctively bristled all over. His voice turned cold and hard. "It won't take long to put some ointment on. If you don't like it here, go sit in the car. I'll bring the kit down."

"Who said I didn't like it?" Yin Sufang frowned. "I meant the company offers housing subsidies and single-occupancy staff apartments."

"But... there aren't many spots, and you have to be on good terms with the Administration Department to get approved. You hardly talk to anyone at work. Nobody told you about it, did they?"

Pei Yang didn't answer. Seeing that Yin Sufang still wasn't moving, he tore open his shirt. "Why do you talk so much?"

"Hss... be gentle!"

Pei Yang unscrewed the ointment, squeezed some onto his fingertip, and began applying it to Yin Sufang's back a little at a time.

"Hey, I'm pretty friendly with Sister Li in the Administration Department. She owes me a favor. Do you want me to help you..."

"No." Pei Yang pressed harder. "If you have time for that, you should think about how you're going to explain the collapsed structure to Sister Lan."

"Fuck! I'd forgotten until you brought it up!" Yin Sufang felt a headache coming on and weakly rubbed his temples. "Who blabbed so fast...? If I find out who it was, I'll tear them limb from limb! Ow, can you be gentler? That hurts!"

Yin Sufang had been on edge ever since the incident. Even though Pei Yang had reassured him with a stony face that accidents like this were unavoidable, and that as long as no visitors had been hurt, Sister Lan would only give him a brief scolding.

Yin Sufang was dubious and nearly lost a whole night's sleep. When he saw Lan Shuang's expression in the meeting room the next day, he reflected that his sixth sense really was accurate. He had thought he was doomed, and he really was.

Lan Shuang flew into a rage. Normally, she laughed and joked with Yin Sufang without putting on any airs as his boss. But in that day's meeting, she turned on him completely, berating and belittling him until he seemed utterly worthless. Everyone froze in shock. Yin Sufang shrank into his seat, his eyes full of disbelief and his eyelids painfully red.

Pei Yang frowned. Something about this felt wrong no matter how he looked at it.

This wasn't a trivial matter, but it wasn't a catastrophe either. It really didn't warrant such a severe reaction. The scorn in Lan Shuang's words made it sound as though she wanted to force Yin Sufang out of FK.

The meeting room fell terrifyingly quiet. While everyone else hardly dared to breathe, Pei Yang sat up straight and said, "The exhibition was already over when it happened, and almost all the visitors had left. No one was injured except Yin Sufang himself. Boss Lan, this might not be as serious as you think. There's no need to be so harsh."

"I'm being harsh? Pei Yang, do you think having someone at Headquarters protecting you means you can do whatever you want here?" Lan Shuang snapped viciously. "Do you know what kind of families those children came from? Their kindergarten is a famous elite kindergarten on the Northern Continent. Their parents have either money or power. If that wooden beam had hit any one of those children yesterday instead of Yin Sufang, who would have taken responsibility?"