They called him many things in the comment threads — "rich second generation," "male model," "time-traveler star," "the luckiest man alive." The tone of the internet was always a little silly and a little savage, a whirl of hot takes and petty certainties.
Yao Yao scrolled through the thread with the kind of small, growing unease that starts in the gut and then climbs to the skin.
"This guy is definitely a rich second generation, confirmed!" one comment snipped.
"I don't know about that, but he's definitely more handsome than the poster, confirmed!" another crowed.
"The poster is a pitiful single dog, confirmed. Keep the formation downstairs!" the chorus mocked.
"Please, poster, tell me where you took the picture, I want to find that handsome guy too, confirmed!"
The feed's frivolity should have made Yao Yao laugh. Instead it made the knuckles at her fingers go white. The man in the photos was the same man that Zhang Xiaodan — her boss, the woman she secretly idolized — had shown off like a prize earlier that morning.
Zhang had smiled, denied the world everything, and said in passing, "He's not a gigolo." The words hit Yao Yao like a dare.
Yao Yao's mind did its work like a little machine. She thought: expose him. Protect Zhang. Save a sister from being conned. The bright, righteous fury of it glowed in her chest.
But then the machine hiccuped: if he is a gigolo, what tricks does he have? How many safety nets, how many lies? If she were to storm in with accusation, who would believe a young employee over a rich, charismatic man who moved among a dozen women and left no jealousy in his wake?
The plan began to refine itself through that hesitation: don't create a spectacle. Meet him. Gather evidence. Then act. Yao Yao straightened her shoulders and said softly to herself, "There will always be a way. I, Yao Yao, will think of one."
By five the office smelled like evening and coffee. She waited in the parking lot in an odd kind of purpose-built nervousness, rehearsing the lines she would say. When Zhang Xiaodan finally swept out, flawless and sharp in her heels, Yao Yao caught her arm and said, in the voice of someone who had rehearsed both plea and ploy, "Director Zhang, may I go home with you today? I got into a fight with my parents and… I don't want to go back yet."
The question was small and intimate, and Zhang paused. She was generous, kind in private. "If you like," she said, and Yao Yao nearly dissolved with relief.
They drove. Zhang called Raj to say, casually, "One of my subordinate girls will stay a few days," as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Raj's voice answered with a small hum of amusement.
He asked Tie Shan and the others to move into the neighboring villa for a few days — a kindness and a precaution in one, meant to keep the numbers less alarming for a guest. The villa had already been in Raj's name for some time; he simply preferred family-style living. That night, practicality nudged him into discretion.
Zhang's villa smelled like citrus and new linen. Yao Yao followed her hostess inside in a state that mixed hungry curiosity with taut caution.
When Raj rose and greeted her — his hand broad and warm against hers — she felt something unexpected: a sense of safety, a veteran warmth that settled across the small of her back. For a moment she forgot the thread, the plan, the righteous mission. Her cheeks warmed.
But she did not forget for long. Yao Yao remembered her role. She sat at dinner listening to the interplay of the household — easy jokes, soft barbs, the comfortable cadence of people who had been in each other's orbit for long enough to resist friction — and continued the attempt at the controlled confrontation.
"Brother-in-law is so handsome," she put forth as a casual statement. The words were small bait.
Raj gave a quiet laugh. "I was never built for fame. Too cramped."
Yao Yao played her part: slightly coy, slightly challenging. She unfurled the accusation like a poker hand. "You're a gold-digger gigolo, right? You live off women's money."
The house smelled of soup and warm rice; everything felt ordinary and domestic, almost domestic to the point of absurdity. Raj's smile shifted, not in disdain but in a soft, amused calculation. He moved into the role she expected — then, crucially, he pushed it to the edge of farce.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked lightly. "Ask for money? A million? Ten million?"
Yao Yao offered a number like a clumsy spear. He parried with a ridiculous disdain. The conversation should have embarrassed her into retreat; instead it drew out a line she had not anticipated: when Raj's casual contempt crossed the line into play, it unsettled her.
She tried to stand firm, to get to the heart of the truth, and as she raised the bar he smiled and took a step closer. Her chest tightened.
Then, a movement — sudden, intimate, and without consent: Raj lowered his head and kissed her.
It was quick, forceful, and it knocked the wind from the plan. Yao Yao went slack as the world rotated around her. The contact was not what she had come to record; it replaced evidence with a dizzying, electric private moment that felt like an ambush.
She came back to herself confused and flushed. Her phone flashed in her hand and she realized, with a hot, sick clarity, that her recorded image — the very thing she'd planned to use as proof — had been replaced by something else: the confusion of her surprise, the seed of an unexpected sensation.
Raj stepped back as if nothing had happened. He said, drifting into the kind of cavalier banter that could ruin or redeem a dozen futures, "Consider this the price for insulting me with money. If you do it again, I'll kiss you again."
Yao Yao's indignation flared, then faltered, then coiled into a bright, private fury. She swore to herself that she would not be undone, that she would not hand over the keys to her autonomy in exchange for a smile. If he had robbed her of composure, she would reclaim the moment on her own terms.
Night—it was time to rest...
"I'm sleeping with Sister Zhang tonight!" Yao Yao wore Zhang Xiaodan's pajamas, hugged a pillow, and blocked the bedroom door, not letting Raj in.
"Honey, it looks like you'll have to sleep alone tonight..." Zhang Xiaodan smiled and winked at her man.
"Okay... Then I'll go sleep in the guest room myself..." Raj raised his eyebrows, indicating that he understood, and turned to leave the master bedroom...
He guessed that his woman meant for him to come over after Yao Yao fell asleep... Feeling that his guess was correct, Raj turned around and jumped out of the guest room window...
After all, she wasn't his only woman. There were many women waiting for him in the villa next door... It seemed like it was going to be another sleepless night...
Let's not worry about Raj, who went to find his women for some fun, and focus on Yao Yao, who was exposing Raj's crimes to Zhang Xiaodan.
"Sister Zhang, why do you like this Raj?" Yao Yao hugged a large stuffed bear and sat by the bed, looking at Zhang Xiaodan, who was reading a book beside her.
"Why do I like Raj?" Zhang Xiaodan took off her glasses, rubbed the corners of her eyes, and thought for a while before saying: "Because he's handsome, because he's strong, because he's family-oriented, because he's crazy..."
"Oh my god... You're almost a husband slave!" Yao Yao rolled her eyes. Since when had being crazy become a compliment?
"Hehe, isn't it right to love him and spoil him?" Zhang Xiaodan smiled and said.
"But... But..." Yao Yao thought for a long time, finally gritted her teeth, and took out her phone. She didn't want her Sister Zhang to be fooled by that gigolo like an idiot. "Sister Zhang... This is what I saw online..."
"Hmm?" Zhang Xiaodan took Yao Yao's phone and laughed when she saw it. It was full of photos of Raj and Tie Shan and the others... Clearly, it was the result of showing off their love... "That's it?"
"He's having an ambiguous relationship with these women. Aren't you afraid he's cheating you out of your money?" Seeing that Zhang Xiaodan didn't have the angry expression she expected, but instead looked calm, Yao Yao felt like her whole world was collapsing...
"If he wants that money, I'll give it all to him!" Zhang Xiaodan said with a smile: "And those women you said he's having an ambiguous relationship with have been with him even longer than me! Strictly speaking, I'm the one who cut in line..."
"Oh my god... What kind of mind-altering drug did that man give you?" Yao Yao looked incredulous.
"You're still young, there are many things you don't understand!" Zhang Xiaodan said with a knowing smile.
Afterwards, in the thick, soft night, Zhang Xiaodan's household reacted with a kind of gentle, modern complicity that Yao Yao understood in its own cultural logic but could not fully accept.
Zhang smiled like a woman who had been nourished and had turned those nutrients into a glow. Yao Yao watched, angry and scared in equal measure.
She was not alone in her complexity. Outside the villa's windows, the other house buzzed quietly — Tie Shan, Tie Fan, Yuxin, and the maids were safe and regrouping, and Raj, for his part, was already doing what he did best: thinking in blueprints.
The Guanyin incident had cracked something open in him. The flood of his guilt had been poured directly into planning; now he built.
But first, there was another kind of business. Raj had taken personal responsibility for his travails: Red Queen and Vaani had already started started making plans for the protection of his women and even maintaining precaution in case they fail as well as preparing multiple backup plans
While Raj cooked, Yao Yao wrestled with her last checkmate: expose him now, show Zhang the thread, force transparency — or wait and find proof so tight that the world could not laugh it away.
She chose to stall. Let him be seen as he wanted to be, for now. Let them trust. Then she would pull the trap closed.
The evening drifted into a late glow. Raj cleared plates, and Yao Yao asked for a private moment.
"Let's talk," she said, steel framing the softness.
"About what?" Raj asked with a look that was at once curious and indulgent.
She opened her phone and hands shook. The first image that popped up, though, was not the one she had intended to show. Mortified, she tried to call up the downloaded picture that would have sealed her accusation.
Instead, the screen displayed an accidental selfie she had taken earlier — a clumsy, intimate shot she had never meant to use for anything but private distraction. Raj made a joke that softened the sting: "Yes, your friend's camera angle was against me."
Yao Yao felt cornered by her own ineptitude. She threw the accusation in a rush: "I want you to leave Sister Zhang. If you really care about Sister Zhang, please don't fool her."
Raj's answer was something between a man's private rule and the casual theater he often used to deflect: "I do not measure love by money. If you want Sister Zhang to be willing, I want her to choose."
She, burning with righteous mission, attempted one last frankness. "Tell me — will you leave her if I pay you?"
He smiled with theatrical greed and began to play at bargaining, and then — the motion she had felt in the kitchen — he stepped closer, pressed her against the wall and said, low enough that the world shrunk to the sound of the air between them, "You think money can buy what she gives freely? Ten, twenty million—what can you give me?"
Overwhelmed, Yao Yao tried to maintain sternness. Then he suddenly kissed her. It was deep and passionate that made her mind dizzy.
When she came back to herself, she swore — quietly, furious — and fled the room to the solace of Zhang Xiaodan's company. She would not be kept in secret shame. She would not allow her voice to be stolen.
Outside, Tie Shan's voice rose and coaxed and regulated everything like a household general. She moved people, suggestions, small rituals.
Tie Fan, gentle and firm, sat down beside Raj and enjoyed the moment.
That night, Raj did not rest in smugness. He drafted in his head the next series of protections: micro-bracelets that interlocked and redistributed load; multiple spatial anchors set into walls and ground and the weave of the new safehouses he would buy; Red Queen nodes hidden in appliances and street-level utility points, watching for god-sight and saint-signal; Vaani beacons in jewelry that could recall a woman across planes; a small, elite guard trained for midnight snatches and plane-jumps; underground refuge chambers lined in anti-sense material.
The world outside kept spinning. Inside, Yao Yao pulled at the threads of her own future. She could choose to storm, to expose, to claim a hero-victim narrative. Or she could become the patient spider. She chose to wait. She would collect, watch, and then strike.
She lay awake in Zhang Xiaodan's guest room that night with the new weight of experiences — of a kiss that had been an ambush, of a plan that had not yet sprouted the evidence it needed, of a curiosity that had become something like longing, confusing and raw. When sleep finally took her, it came with small threads of fear and something that felt dangerously like desire.
Zhang Xiaodan, in the master bedroom, waited awake for him the way one waits for a tide — aware, wanting, and oddly unafraid. She had already chosen. She had traded caution for the heat of being known. She had given herself the right to be hungry for the man she loved.
And Raj, who would never again be caught unprepared, was already plotting the fortress that would make those he loved inviolable. He knew the cost. He also knew the price he would pay willingly.