When Zitao returns, he makes haste in changing in the closet and hangs the outfit back on the hangers for Qian to dry-clean, before packing it back into its cellophane case and handing it to her. “Sorry about that,” he apologizes as he gives the outfit back. “I didn’t mean to leave before changing.”

“It’s not your fault,” she smiles and hangs the outfit back on the rack. “Is everything okay?”

Not knowing how to efficiently share his newfound information, the words die out on his tongue. I have an instinct that the president has a bias towards me and put me in Marketing because it makes more money. My mother is dying and I cried about it in my first interview in front of his cabinet. I’m the only one who was contracted late due to some unforeseen circumstance that I still don’t really know about or understand. Not knowing how exactly to fit all of his thoughts into one sentence, he settles with, “Everything is alright, now, he just had something to tell me about my pay rate.” 

“Oh,” she comments absentmindedly, and Zitao watches her blow out a tired breath that lifts the strands of her bangs away from her forehead, shiny and sweaty from running around in a lukewarm studio. “Well, I’m glad you’re not being fired after just an hour, you know?”

He blinks. Has it already been an hour since he’s started working? “Why, what time is it?”

Lips pursed, Qian reaches for her cell phone in her back pocket and turns on the screen with a press of the home button. “Ten forty-two.”

His eyes widen as he soaks up the statement, realizing being made up and having the shoot done hadn’t been the mere ten minutes they had seemed but had taken over an hour to complete. Had time really gotten that away from him? 

He supposes it can’t be all bad; when he had originally envisioned his shift schedule in his head, he had imagined that each shift would very nearly drag on and last all day, and only after he completed everything that was directly required of him would he realize it had only been an hour lost upon him. “Do you need anything else, Miss Qian?” He asks politely, fingertips lingering along the strap of his shoulder bag. He is not yet well-acquainted with the protocol for having nothing to do at the immediate moment in time - to say check the board feels too vague to Zitao, as someone who confuses easily.

“Not right now, sweetheart,” Qian tells him with a smile as the turns her back to him to rearrange the clothes hanging up on the rack, lifting some off and relocating them to another spot as though in a particular order, such as by size. “Why don’t you go to the foyer and see if there’s anything anybody needs you for? If not, you can come back and take an early lunch, if you’d like. We have an employee cafeteria on the third floor, straight ahead at the end of the hallway where the wings pan out.”

He blinks. “I can already take my break?”

“Of course,” Qian tells him with a blank expression, as though misunderstanding. “Remember, you only get two, so try to space them out, but lunch is the important break because all of our models need to eat.”

Oh, that’s right - his diet. “Should I eat anything specific?” He asks as he hoists his bag over his shoulder and gathers his portfolio and his cell phone. “Mr. Wu mentioned me being required to go on a diet, but he didn’t say what kind of diet or what foods I should limit myself to.”

Perplexed, Qian’s brows knot as she looks him over. “He didn’t assign you a regimen?”

In all honesty, Zitao isn’t sure he’s yet heard the word regimen leave the man’s mouth, but it would make sense for another domino to be added to the line of things everybody else gets to experience that Zitao does not. “No, but at this point, it’s not really shocking,” he sighs. “I seem to be missing a lot of things lately.”

Qian sighs, then, and tosses her hair behind her with a brisk rake through it. “Alright, well, the president isn’t normally this aloof, but according to company policy, you would be assigned a regimen through the nurse in our company infirmary that is tailored for each individual depending on your weight, your body mass index, your metabolism, your fat-to-muscle ratio, and other things. He didn’t mention any of that to you?”

He shakes his head, “No.”

“What is the matter with him,” Qian mumbles to herself as she presses her palm to her forehead in disbelief, and Zitao has to resist laughing a little. Is the president really this childish? “Alright, Yingtao. I’m not a nutritionist, but I’m going to say - because you are so muscular, you know, and you don’t really have much body fat - stick to water weighted foods and natural fats, so raw vegetables, and leafy greens, and also eggs and milk fats, so things like yogurt, cream cheese, hard or soft cheeses, and such. You should also have some kind of protein but keep in mind the eggs are also protein and you don’t need to build muscle, so have one protein per meal, whether it be meat or eggs, and stick to raw vegetables and organic fruits.”

“Thank you,” he smiles and bows in respect, and Qian gives him a quick pat on the shoulder, having to reach up since Zitao is that much taller than her, and she smiles in pride as though a mother teaching her child the ways of the world. “I’ll try to get a salad.”

“That’s a good girl,” she smiles. “And I’m serious about the diet, the president loves to find things to get angry at people for so if you eat anything unhealthy, you’ll never hear the end of it.”

He purses his lips, tightening his pull on his shoulder strap. “Thanks for the warning.”

“Do your best, Yingtao,” she smiles. “He’s a tough egg to crack. Don’t expect much in terms of manners from him, so just do the best you can to do your assignments and stay out of his way.”

“Duly noted,” he laughs. “Oh! When is your lunch, Miss Qian?”

“Yingtao, you can drop the Miss, you know,” Qian teases him. “And my lunch is usually at noon, why?”

Inappropriate work behavior flashes brightly in his mind, but Zitao has always been a fan of following his instincts, even if it gets himself in trouble for simply being a personable employee. “I was going to ask if we could have lunch together.”

Qian must not have expected such a request by the way her eyebrows raise and her lashes flare as her eyes widen, startled and off-balance. “Sorry,” he blurts out in a rush at the contextual twist in her expression. “If that’s not okay, don’t worry about it, I didn’t mean it in a weird way - ”

“Nobody has ever asked to share their lunch break with me,” she admits. “In fact, I think the girls are normally too intimidated by the president to try to have any kind of extraneous relationship with us.”

“I’m sorry,” he rushes. “I don’t want you to get in trouble, I just thought - I thought that would help us get to know each other better and would make working together less awkward.”

With a deep breath and a cross of her arms, Qian genuinely ponders this. “Yingtao,” she says flatly, the corners of her lips curling up into a shifty grin. “I’ve been here a long time, Yingtao. Never once in nearly six years of working as a makeup artist and coordination specialist have I ever had a girl disobey the president’s word and attempt to befriend one of the coordinators, let alone me. You really are something special, Yingtao, you know that?”

He flushes, shoulders drawing up. “Well, the president is just another person with another superiority complex, and if it’s really a big enough deal then he should talk to me personally or just fire me, not threaten me.”

She blows out a breath, astounded. “You really are unlike anybody I have ever met before, Yingtao. Sure, let’s go grab lunch. My treat.”

“So where are you from, Yingtao?”

He digs his fork into his salad, making sure to get a bite with the breaded chicken, an olive, and a sliver of red onion, idiosyncratically crossing one smooth, tapered leg over the other with feminine grace, and as he wipes his mouth free of the dressing, his hair tinkles down his shoulders onto the edge of the table beneath his . “I grew up in Qingdao,” he tells her, saccharine. “I lived with my parents until about eighteen or so, and things just… ended up happening, and I had to begin to adjust to living alone.”

“Oh?” She perks up as she takes a sip from the straw stuck out of her takeout cup. “Do you own, or do you rent?”

“I rent. I’m struggling a lot right now with money, which is why I took this job,” he explains, and her gaze turns soft as she reaches for another bite of her sandwich with a piteous simper. “What about you?”

Qian’s eyes go wide, then, and she has to cover with her hand as she swallows her food before saying, “Me too. Which end of Qingdao?”

“East end,” he tells her, reaching for his napkin to wipe his mouth. “I lived there until I was around eighteen, then once I went to college, I started interning in different cities as a casework assistant. Now, I live about twenty minutes from campus on the outskirts of town.”

“I’m from the north end,” she smiles. “I’m surprised we don’t already know each other.”

He laughs nervously and rifles through his salad for another olive sliver. “I didn’t really talk to anybody in town, and I don’t really have many friends. Well, I have one friend, my best friend, but he’s from out of town and he transferred to my school district to live with his uncle in south end when his parents passed away.”

Taken aback, her expression falters and her sandwich wrapper crinkles noisily. “I’m so sorry for his loss,” she coos sullenly, her tone longing as Zitao waves it off, smiling, simply used to it.

“It’s alright,” he promises her because it is alright; it had been so long ago, having happened when Luhan was very young whereas he does not have any prevalent attached memories to siphon emotions from. “It was a long time ago, and he’s very happy with where his life is right now.”

“Is he a good friend to you, Yingtao?” She asks with a grin on her lips, and Zitao finds himself smiling back as he nods and confirms her queries. “That’s good. Everybody needs a friend.”

Qian, as he hadn’t previously discovered, is a woman of many friends - all of the coordinators on the same floor, to be exact. And no, before you ask, she had told him when his mouth was full, I am not friends with the president. The president is extremely finicky with his friendships, as he doesn’t have very many. “What’s it like being a coordinator?” He asks her after a long beat of silence. “Like, is it tiring, is it annoying, do you enjoy it?”

She purses her lips, then, and sets down her sandwich. “It’s not too bad. Of course, being a makeup artist is a fun job, you get to style others and have your work photographed, but it’s really just the president that makes work less fun, sometimes. He can be very… unpredictable, to say the least. You’ve already seen how rude he can be. He’s been known to fire someone for simply talking back to him.”

That’s right - Qian had alluded to something earlier regarding the president’s mental health, but what had it meant? In the immediate context, Zitao had some confidence to conclude that something traumatic must have occurred within the president’s lifetime to have made him close in on himself this way, but what? 

“I’m guessing you and the other coordinators are used to it by now,” Zitao states in a curved undertone, as though unsure if he’s getting his facts straight. 

“More or less,” she sighs. “We’ve all learned the hard way that there’s nothing we can physically do to change him. Sorry, Yingtao, I wish we had a nicer boss, but Mr. Wu doesn’t like when people worry about him.”

This is where all of Zitao’s confusion lies - despite being self-centered and well-put-together, the president seems to not care when it comes to Zitao, as though he’s distracted, and Zitao doesn’t have a clue as to why that might be. “I just find it weird,” Zitao begins as he pokes around in his salad, suddenly bored with it, “how he’s proving to be weirdly forgetful when it comes to my work here. Like - like the contract, he never had me sign one and told me it was because he ran out of time during our second interview. And then there’s the being placed in Marketing when this is my first time ever working at this firm and everyone at initiation said I should be in Rec - ”

“Wait,” Qian stops him, expression hard and flat. “You’re new new?”

Zitao falters - right, he never actually told Qian he wasn’t experienced. Numbed, her reaction doesn’t shock Zitao much at all, simply used to being treated like a leper at this point. “That’s exactly my problem, everybody looks at me as though I’m a criminal because I’m the only one with no previous training here, and of course I have no idea why that is. All I know is I applied for the job, and that I apparently wasn’t supposed to be put in Marketing, but I was.”

“That’s impossible,” Qian deadpans, and Zitao sighs.

“I tried to get the president to reverse it,” Zitao tells her. “I know it’s unfair, and I hate being biased over others who deserve it more, but the president told me he just had an open spot in Marketing and that’s why I’m here.”

She shakes her head, however, and says, “The president doesn’t do that kind of thing, Yingtao. I’m not saying you’re lying to me, but I’ve watched many women in Rec beg at his very feet to be moved up to Marketing, and the president is simply not that lenient. As long as I’ve known him, the president has never been someone to falter and make silly little mistakes, he is very calculated and is very aware of the decisions he makes. I’ve never seen him lose focus when it comes to his business, Yingtao.”

“How do you think I feel?” Zitao sighs. “All I wanted was a job, I didn’t want bias, I didn’t want -kissing, I didn't want special treatment. Of course, he offered to reverse the position for me and drop me down to Rec at my request, but I desperately need the money.”

Her eyes go a little bit wide as she asks, “Is everything okay?”

Friendship is a two-way street - he knows this, and although it is a tender subject he is not too fond of discussing with anybody whether companion or colleague, he feels as though Qian has somewhat of a right to know. “My mother is dying,” he tells her, and her composure breaks as her eyes turn glassy and her straw drops from her lips. “She’s got terminal cancer, and the insurance doesn’t cover it. I was working minimum wage before, but since the insurance doesn’t cover all of her chemotherapy, the minimum wage wasn’t even making a dent in the payments, you know? This was the highest-paying job I could possibly find, so I didn’t know if like - if the president put me into Marketing because of my financial issue, or what, but everybody seems extremely displeased with what’s happened.”

“That sounds nothing like him,” she stresses the muscles on her forehead with rhythmic presses of her fingers and lets out a humorless chuckle. “I mean, sure, I believe the president has a soft spot somewhere in there, but he’s so icy and cold that you would never think he even bled red. I just… I don’t know, Yingtao. I’ve never seen him have pity on somebody before unless they were… Yingtao, are you… having with the president?”

He thanks every star in the sky that he hadn’t had anything in his mouth, for it would have shot out across the entire length of the table as he chokes and sputters and coughs, entirely taken aback by her statement. “No!” He grimaces, coughing helplessly. “I’ve never even met the guy.”

“I’m just making sure,” she laughs, extending a hand over the gap where the table lay between them and allows him to arch downward so she can pat his upper back to clear his airway, motherly and comforting. “There are a few girls here in the department that have gotten ually involved with him, and that’s how they manage to stay in Marketing even when they make mistakes that are normally against the president’s standards policy. I don’t judge,” she promises, laying a hand across her upper bosom, “I was just curious.”

Zitao makes a face, scowled and just slightly grossed-out. Zitao doesn’t judge, either, but he’s never been the schmoozing type. “That’s not really my kind of thing to do just for a job position,” he tells her, and she smiles at the response. “I mean, good for them for having that kind of bravery because who’s to say every boss in the world will be okay with that kind of illegality, you know?”

“Exactly,” she nods. “You’re very smart, Yingtao, you know that?”

A raised eyebrow, a friendly little grin. “Is that another one of your company-required-buttering-up-new-employees compliments or do you actually mean that?”

“Don’t make me tell the president on you, Missus,” she threatens, and the duo laughs as the joke tinkles around in the open air, lighthearted and warm. Truthfully, it’s none of Zitao’s business how the president manages his business - if he wants to cut corners and have ual relationships with his employees, that’s none of his business, either, because if anybody is going to be prosecuted and arrested for it or at the very least publicly ridiculed for it, it’s not going to be him. “You know,” she tells him airily, voice small and sugary, “you’re really nice to hang out with, Yingtao. In the least suggestive way possible, you’re a really great friend to have.”

He blinks. He’s never had friends in plural form. “Well… thank you, I guess.”

“If you ever need to talk about anything, don’t hesitate to talk to me, okay?” Qian smiles, and Zitao has to avert his eyes from the sheer brightness of her expression as he nods in response. “I’ll deal with the repercussions from the president, don’t worry.”

Zitao knows he will prove to be a bother, whether Qian wants to believe it won’t be a problem because Zitao always has problems - between his mother’s medical state, to his panic attacks, to his insomnia, to his everlasting worry that someone is going to find out he’s a man in the middle of work surrounded by women and a very angry president. There are always going to be things he will never be able to tell her, and it makes him feel like a bad friend that he can’t be as honest with her as she is with him. 

“By the way, Yingtao,” Qian says when he’s least expecting it, having submerged himself in his brittle subconscious, and he meets her eye as she speaks to him, curious what it may be about. “The president is having a practice for one of the Rec department walks. You being in Marketing, you obviously weren’t invited to actually walk in it, but since you have no experience with practicing walking like you would in Rec, would you like to go watch the walk?”

He stills. “Watch the walk?”

She nods, humming. “You know, get to see how the walks are conducted, how the models behave and perform, how the president treats everything and the organization of it and whatnot.”

“Am,” he swallows, timid, “am I allowed to go watch it?”

Qian shrugs, however, as she pushes her dish slightly away from her, confirming she is, in fact, satisfied and full. “Probably not, but I gave you permission, and under Mr. Wu, I’m technically in charge of you. Mr. Wu never lets the girls have any fun, believe me, and you deserve to have some fun. Make some friends, gain some experience.”

Zitao knows very well what may happen - knows very well that the president will more than likely throw a big fit over Zitao not staying stationed where he was told to, but Zitao is human, after all, and he thinks he deserves to get to explore the ins and outs of his own workforce, if he does say so himself. “Are you sure?” He double-checks. “I might get in a lot of trouble for this.”

Warmly, Qian only smiles and crosses her hands over the table as she says, “In the six years I’ve worked here, I have never once seen a girl be as headstrong as you, Yingtao. In all honesty, I think this is what the president needs - he needs an eye-opener, and I think if he really does have some bias over you, which, I couldn’t imagine happening in a million years, then you might actually be the long-awaited catalyst and you might be able to finally knock some sense into him.”

Well, if there’s one thing Zitao is good at, other than ruining events with his crippling anxiety attacks, it’s saying and doing things that normal people wouldn’t have the guts to do. He’s always been this way - he doesn’t think of it as y, but rather he doesn’t beat around the bush. And to stick it to his own boss knowing his boss more than likely won’t fire him because he’s got some kind of hold on him? Zitao is always game.

“Yeah,” he smiles, uncrossing his legs as he snaps the clasp on his wallet, “I’d love to go.”

The black-box is exactly the way Zitao remembers it being just hours earlier - still just as extravagant, still just as large, and still just as bustling with girls Zitao has never seen before.

Although this is a department walk, Zitao gets the idea that walks are selective - perhaps maybe less selective in the Rec department than maybe his own, but Zitao has a feeling that these thirty some-odd girls are not all that exist in this part of the firm and that they had been plucked from the bunch by Mr. Wu’s very own hands.

Gently grasping his upper arms, Qian guides him under her guise to one of the back rows as to not draw attention to himself, and Zitao gladly plops himself down in a seat, narcissistically draping his hair forward over his bosom and crossing one leg over the other. “You’re adorable,” Qian laughs at the way he’s positioned himself, and Zitao self-gloats with a smile. “I won’t be able to stay, though - I’ve got some other girls coming in for shoots in our studio. You understand, right?”

He blinks, smile attempting to dissipate. That’s right - Qian told him that sometimes girls from other studios come in to do shoots they’ve been requested for, and Zitao has to remember that Joohyun can’t do everything by herself in there. “It’s okay,” he tells her, forcing himself to accept that she can’t hover over him like a shadow. “When would you like me to come back?”

She ponders this for a moment, laying a hand on his shoulder and squeezing gently before she says, “How about this - you can watch as long as you like, and if your status on the bulletin board changes, I’ll send someone to come get you, alright?”

He nods, “Sounds good. Thank you, Miss Qian.”

A smile. “No problem, Yingtao. Enjoy.”

Her touch on his shoulder fades as she walks away, pushing herself past the double-doors before she disappears out of sight, and Zitao sighs as he crosses his arms over his chest and relaxes back into the cushioned seat. Although breaking a rule or two, Zitao finds this experience beneficial to himself and he soaks up the knowledge that it would be utterly foolish in the end for the president to get angry with him over it. If Zitao works to better his own performance and better integrate himself into this employment’s society, why should it be any trouble? Zitao finds it silly that the president acts as though he can dictate what people do and say, as though they are tarnishing his reputation even if it is something as trivial as grabbing lunch with a friend. Sighing, he turns his eyes to the walk.

The president is stood in front of the stage, back to him, his arms folded behind himself at the small of his back, resting comfortably at the curve of his lower spine. The girls are lined up before him on the stage, one right behind the other in a filed order, and Zitao watches as the president speaks to him, only managing to hear the overall din of his voice rather than the clarity of his words, and the girls begin to walk up toward him before turning on their heels and carting back toward the backstage. Zitao raises an eyebrow; it’s exactly like the way he had been instructed to walk in both interviews, straight-lined and calculated. 

As he watches, he notices how the girls each know how to instill several feet between each other all with regards to equal amounts of personal space, and how the president never once takes his eyes off of them. Zitao doesn’t think it looks like too hard of a skill to pick up - it’s just walking.

And as the minutes pass him by, Zitao begins to feel slightly less and less out of place. This is where he belongs now - this is his lifestyle now. Putting on clothes tailored for his size and sewn from scratch by other people, being photographed in said clothes and having to adjust his body to the world’s liking - this is what he has to do now. He sighs, fluttering his eyes shut as he relaxes into his seat, unable to fully wrap his mind around all of it. 

Truthfully, it feels nice to be able to sit down and simply breathe, as Zitao had been so tightly wound that he had felt all morning little more than sickly. It’s nerve-wracking keeping a secret that you know could very well mean the end of your world should it get out, and Zitao finds himself unable to keep thinking about all of the what ifs and whens. 

There’s a touch on his shoulder, and he nearly jumps out of his skin at the sudden feeling as he glances behind himself, half-expecting to see Qian standing there, and he is only half surprised when he notices it’s Minseo, sat in the seat behind him slightly angled higher than he along the inclined floor, her hand hovering over his space after she had tapped him. “Hey,” he whispers to her, gradually beginning to smile. “What are you doing up here? Shouldn’t you be down there?”

She follows along, keeping her voice just a step beneath a whisper as to, more than likely, not alert the president of their position, before she asks, “What are you doing here? You’re not in this department.”

Although nervous, Zitao attempts to appear impartial as he shrugs and tells her, “Miss Qian said I could come watch since I’m done with my work for now.”

“Does Mr. Wu know you’re in here?” Minseo asks him, and Zitao knows he’s probably pushing a few buttons by hanging back in the upper rows like this, and he also knows it’s only a matter of time before somebody notices them up here and the president grows angry. Smirking, Zitao shakes his head, and her eyes go wide. “Yingtao,” she gasps. “You can’t do that! The president is the one that gives all of the orders, you could get in trouble!”

“Let him get me in trouble,” Zitao whispers as he meets her eyes, large and round and glistening. “I didn’t do anything necessarily wrong. I finished my work, I’m not skipping, and I just finished my lunch break. Qian told me I’m far too new to have requests on the board so soon, so I had some time to kill before my next assignment in the afternoon.”

“Yingtao,” she sighs, shaking her head as her eyes flutter shut for a mere second. “You don’t know what kind of storm you’re walking into with that kind of thinking. You’ll get fired.”

Zitao, aft