Lan Zhan comes in early the next day after dropping Mianmian off at the airport. He and she aren't the sentimental type; they are close without the emotional attachment, and it's an arrangement that has worked beautifully for them so far. They don't even hug, and that's a mutual unspoken rule between them. Lan Zhan goes with her to drop off her luggage and get her checked in, and she gives him a little wave, he tilts his head in response and then she's gone, through to the security checks.

The drive back is tinged with melancholy, but if Lan Zhan was asked why, there's nothing he could put his finger on and claim it to be the reason for his mood. The flat seems awfully quiet, and it's way too early for Wei Ying to come around; although the day he moves in can't come fast enough. Perhaps Lan Zhan shouldn't have mentioned it so soon after they confessed their feelings to one another. But then, he's always been the impatient kind of person when it comes to something he wants, and he definitely wants Wei Ying.

It's not even the physical side of their relationship that comes to the forefront of his mind. Wei Ying has broadened his emotional horizons, so to speak, and that's monumental by itself, but his willingness to be available whenever Lan Zhan needs him is on another level. Suffice to say, Wei Ying ticks all his boxes even before Lan Zhan HAD boxes to tick.

So Lan Zhan decides to potter around in the shop and see what changes Mianmian and Wei Ying have brought about in his absence. The strangest thing is, he thinks while watching the shutter slowly creep upwards, is that he feels closer to his mother whenever he's working in what used to be her space than even in the apartment above the shop where his mother actually lived.

Listening to her recorded messages has also become easier. Maybe it's because he's had almost a month of time to get used to the idea of hearing her voice, maybe it's also because the choice was taken out of his hands and all he could do was lament his metaphorical hands being tied - since the old laptop remained in the UK while he was in Suzhou, he was forced to wait. It has helped a lot, XiChen asking him to send copies of her files, something he figured out how to do when he was waiting for Mianmian to get out of the shower. XiChen was asleep now, but when he woke up, it would be a nice surprise. Lan Zhan has also forwarded the picture files too. If XiChen shares all of this with their Uncle Qiren, then that'll keep them too busy to stick their noses in his and Wei Ying's business for now.

Lan Zhan hadn't been joking when he'd suggested that he and Wei Ying keep this time for themselves for now; if all goes according to plan and Wei Ying agrees to marry him, then the family back home is going to turn their event into a circus and then, there'll be nothing they can do about it. This quiet time to enjoy themselves and each other is a gift, one Lan Zhan fully appreciates and wants to relish for as long as possible. He is going to romance the hell out of Wei Ying and get a yes out of him, based on their mutual agreement and wishes, and Lan Zhan is willing to stand against his own family if that's what Wei Ying wants.

The problem is, he knows what Wei Ying is like, right down to the stuff ingrained in his marrow. Lan Zhan's had a good six months to be by his side and observe Wei Ying's kindness, his overall compassion, the bravado he's too quick to hide behind, and the way he simply offers himself up when he thinks his own needs do not matter as much as somebody else's.

So this is going to be their time, Lan Zhan vows to himself, just as his fingers press the switches down for the lights.

The brightness in the shop is what immediately alerts him that everything is not what it should be, at least, not the way he'd left the shop a month ago. There are beautiful LED fairy lights in uneven loops and turns around hundreds of photos held up by tiny little pegs on a fishing wire. He cannot help himself; his feet walk forward devoid of personal wish, looking up at each one in awe and wonder.

Each photo tells a story, a moment captured in someone's life immortalised here as a reminder of the past.

There's a group of middle-aged ladies sitting on the floor and sewing a patchwork quilt together, cups of tea carefully put behind their bodies protecting the colourful artwork in their hands. They're all wearing different expressions; some are smiling, a few even laughing with open mouths as if a joke has been cracked moments earlier. A few are concentrating hard, their eyes fixed on a particular segment of the quilt, hands with needles raised above their heads ready to fly down and pierce the soft cotton in their delicate hands.

Another photo shows a tiny boy in awe, not even looking at the camera but at himself, his little chubby hands hovering over the gorgeous green silk brocade of his waistcoat. He's so smartly dressed like a miniature Prince getting ready to go out somewhere special. His mother is out of focus behind him, only her skirt and bare ankles in range, blurred.

Moving on, Lan Zhan lets his eyes roam over the pretty dazzling lights illuminating each preserved joy. His mother, if she was the one who took all these pictures, had a real talent for capturing the emotions of her chosen subjects.

He pauses at another lovely photo. This one is of a Ugandan lady wearing a traditional gomasi garment, a length of fabric five and a half metres long wound around her body and brought over her shoulder to cover her head. Her smile is what makes this picture even better, and her natural dimples have Lan Zhan smiling too.

He hears the door opening behind him and then an arm comes to rest at his waist. Soft lips touch the delicate skin of his neck and he senses the smile on Wei Ying's mouth as he says, "Good morning, my love. Like what you see?"

All Lan Zhan has to say is, "Mn."

*****************

It takes Wei Ying a few weeks to get Wen Popo awake AND coherent enough for them to have a proper conversation. A-Yuan is fast asleep upstairs in the room he shares with his granny, and the Wen siblings have left home for their night-shift jobs.

It's just Wen Popo and Wei Ying in the kitchen, and Wei Ying's nerves come back with a vengeance.

"Popo, can I talk to you?" Wei Ying says to her back as she finishes washing a few dishes in the sink. He's chewing on his bottom lip anxiously. It's late in the evening and Wei Ying was going to retire to his bedroom, but he heard noises in the kitchen and decided to chance it.

Wen Popo takes one look at him and says, "Is it time for some hot chocolate? We haven't done that in a long time, no?"

Wei Ying nods, scrambling to get her everything she needs to work her magic, from the milk in the fridge, to the chocolate shavings in the pantry, and the sugar and the hot chocolate sachets from the side cabinet next to the stove. Popo grabs two extra large mugs and gets to work. The kitchen is quiet except for the sounds of her working, the clink of the china touching the granite counters, the soft tear of paper when she opens up the packets of the chocolate mixture. The thunk of the microwave door opening and closing, and then as Popo grabs the cookie jar, Wei Ying hurries to put plates on the breakfast bar. He situates the chairs so Wen Popo can take the weight off her feet.

The microwave pings as she sits down and Wei Ying takes out the steaming mugs of chocolate deliciousness, sprinkling a few marshmallows on top for good measure.

"Uh, oh, must be something serious," Popo says, scrutinising him.

"Mn." Wei Ying puts them down while Popo shares out the quadruple chocolate chunk goodness.

"Alright, let's both eat one each, fortify ourselves before we get down to the nitty-gritty," she urges with a wink.

That first bite of chocolatey goodness makes them both close their eyes in helpless devotion and soon, there are only guilty crumbs left on their plates.

"Now tell me, what's got your knickers in a twist?"

Wei Ying nearly spits out the mouthful of hot chocolate he was about to swallow, and it's only with a few hearty smacks on his back that he recovers. Eyes watering, he fake-glares at Popo.

"I bet it's that nice young man. Am I right?" She beams when Wei Ying nods reluctantly. Wen Popo reaches across the counter to pat Wei Ying's hand gently. "That's good, my dear. I would like to see you settle down with someone like that. He's good for you, I can tell."

"He wants to get married."

Wen Popo gasps but with a cheeky grin. "He's proposed already? Why he no come to ask me?"

"No, no, not yet, but that's where this is going," Wei Ying hurries to correct her assumption before it turns into something threatening. "He wants to court me."

"Oh." She thinks for a minute. "Outdated, but I like it."

"His family is posh," Wei Ying nudges their shoulders together. "I bet they've got records detailing their ancestors right from the beginning of time."

Wen Popo snickers. "You know, it's nice to be wooed. The fun is all in the chase."

"Is that what happened to you? When you got married." Wei Ying has never found out about Popo's life when she was younger, and he's intrigued.

"Ah, well, about that," Popo actually blushes, feeding his curiosity even more. "I was quite the looker back in the day. A distant cousin of mine asked me to be one of the flower girls at her traditional wedding, and her being a socialite, all the prominent families were in attendance. After that event, my parents were inundated with requests for arrangements to be made, but my mother wasn't born yesterday. Her mother had told her to be careful when I came of age and be wary of sweet-talking mothers gushing about their progeny as if gold coins fell from their lips. "Honeyed-tongues when they want to steal your daughters," my grandmother used to say, and so my mother asked around. The things she learned? Just wow! The rumour mongers had a field day, tales of backstabbing relatives and thwarted wives, who was divorced, widowed or just downright awful, you name it, if there was a scandal then my mother sniffed it out.

"Course, there's no winning public favour because it wasn't too long that those same people accused her of being too choosy and if she kept nitpicking among the many suitors, there'd be no one left for me to marry. But I have to say, she was undeterred. She often told me it was better to be safe than sorry, because in those days, if any married couple got divorced, it was always the ladies who suffered the most. The men could just dust themselves off and start courting another, and that was just the way the world worked back then." Popo sighs into her mug.

"Who did you get married to after all that attention?" Wei Ying puts another cookie on each of their plates, and she smiles wistfully.

"I ended up eloping with the gardener's son."

"WHAT?" Wei Ying splutters out, laughing with her.

"Well, all that wooing, it was nice for a while, but the drama, you know? And in between what my grandmother wanted, what my mother and father wanted, how none of them could decide, it was getting me down. Whereas the gardener's family, well, they were good people and I'd known my husband-to-be all of our lives up till then. We were already friends so being married let the love grow naturally. We didn't fight, which is always a plus point." She shrugs to herself. "And we were incredibly happy. I guess that's what is most important. It wasn't the wild I'm-going-to-rip-your-clothes-off kind of love, because we were both way too practical for that. But there's a lot to be said for someone who is willing to be your rock, to give you shelter from a world that is suddenly too much."

"I can see that," Wei Ying agrees, goodnaturedly.

"As for courting, we'd already eloped so that was a moot point. But he brought me many presents over our time together, sometimes just because something reminded him of me. Whenever I went out, I also would get him a treat. Your grandfather had a sweet tooth, you know. But I would always keep him guessing. Sometimes tanghulu, sometimes mocchi, sweet rice balls, and of course, moon cakes in the right season." Her eyelids droop and Wei Ying realises his time is up.

Popo is ready to sleep now and while the talk was entertaining, he's not much closer to knowing how to woo Lan Zhan. He helps Popo upstairs to her room and decides to talk to Uncle Four tomorrow. Maybe he'll have something interesting to tell Wei Ying that will actually help.

*******************

Wei Ying's chance to chat to Uncle Four comes about when Lan Zhan takes A-Yuan to bed and reads him a story.

"Si-Shushu, I need to talk to you," Wei Ying says in a low voice, simultaneously pushing him out the back door into the small garden outside, for good measure. He doesn't want to chance Lan Zhan even getting a whiff of what he's up to.

Uncle Four, to his credit, goes along with this, hiding the mischievous twinkle in his eyes with a furrowed brow.

"What's with all the secrecy?" He whispers back in the same urgent tone.

Whatever. Wei Ying does not have the patience for this, not when Lan Zhan could be back at any minute and be looking for him, especially if A-Yuan is sleepy and drops off in record time.

"Look, Lan Zhan is courting me and I need to know some things," he replies, looking around them to make sure they're the only ones out here and within listening distance of each other.

"Congratulations. Is this something that we, you know, have to do on the sly? Is it a crime now?" Thankfully, Uncle Four refrains from snickering.

"No, no, I just don't want him to do all the work. But the thing is, I've never been in this position before, where someone wants to do that. For me. Then I thought, well, I can do that too, right? But I don't know what to do, or how I should go about proving to him that I'm worth it. Or that he's worth it for me. Uncle Four, how does one go about courting the man of their dreams?" Wei Ying scrubs his face with both of his hands, waiting for Uncle Four to answer him.

"Hmm. That IS difficult," he agrees, mirroring Wei Ying's expression.

"And...I think I'm a bit scared."

"Of what?"

"Well, how do you know that it's going to last? What if I'm a passing fancy for Lan Zhan? Sure, he might feel this strongly now about me, but what if he changes his mind? What if I'm only a piece of tanghulu right now, and that's okay, but then he finds out that he wanted mooncake all along? What then?" Wei Ying stares at him unblinkingly, eyes bright reflecting the light spilling out of the kitchen window.

Is he serious?

"A-Ying, I've never had to court anyone before, and it's kind of unusual. Normally, people back home, they just let their parents organise everything, and then the pressure of being in the same society, the same social circles, keeps the marriage together. I doubt that love has anything to do with it." Uncle Four says truthfully, and then realises that he's not actually helping matters, because Wei Ying looks even more anxious and begins to pace rather frantically.

"So you've never done it?"

"No. But I can't imagine it's difficult. How hard can it be?"

Wei Ying throws him a look.

"Alright, alright, let's think about it properly, okay?" Uncle Four goes up to Wei Ying and puts his hands on his shoulders to steady him. Also to get him to stop moving around like a target. "Think about it this way. When we walk into an empty room, it's easy to imagine what would look right in that space, isn't it? We can roughly measure with our eyes and draw up a temporary picture of what the final layout will be, right?"

Wei Ying nods, even if he's not sure where Uncle Four is going with this analogy.

"But say we come across unforeseen problems, like maybe there's a fireplace in the way, or the wall juts out in the wrong place, what are we gonna do?"

"Find another solution. Either take the fireplace out, or if that's not an option, then change things around. We've done it before." Wei Ying scratches his head. "What does this have to do with courting?"

"I'm getting there," Uncle Four admonishes him, blinking fast because now he's lost his train of thought and has to mentally scramble for the point he's trying to make. "What we think it's gonna be like and what it IS at the end, might be two different things, but it's the journey of getting there." Uncle Four slings his arm around Wei Ying's shoulders and brings him closer, motioning in a majestic sweeping gesture across the horizon with his other hand. "No one knows what that room is gonna end up like, but the important thing is that you do it together. You get it?"

Before Wei Ying can answer, the back door swings open. "Wei Ying?" Lan Zhan says, looking right at him.

"Okay, good talk," Uncle Four says loudly, and follows that up with a completely unnecessary slap on Wei Ying's back after which he saunters into the kitchen again, past an equally puzzled Lan Zhan who is now fixing Wei Ying with a quizzical look of his own.

"What was all that about?" Lan Zhan asks him, coming outside to wrap his arms around a very confused Wei Ying.

"You know what? I have absolutely no idea," Wei Ying replies honestly.

******************

Since the oldest people in the house have let him down, Wei Ying manages to corner Wen Qing and Wen Ning one evening after dinner. A-Yuan is playing with Uncle Four upstairs in the bathroom, and Lan Zhan has a video call with Mianmian so it's the perfect and rare opportunity to ask what he wants to. Plus Wei Ying hasn't got a lot of time before the Wen siblings have to go to work.

"Do either of you know how to court anyone?" He blurts out from anxiety.

This results in Wen Qing dropping the dish she was scrubbing into the sink with a loud splash, covering herself in soap suds and swearing because of that, while Wen Ning accidentally traps his fingers in the cutlery drawer because he misjudged his own strength out of shock.

"Ow!"

Wen Qing flings off her yellow kitchen gloves and dives for the freezer to extract an ice pack. Then, once it's where it needs to be, namely on Wen Ning's throbbing red digits, she glares at Wei Ying with the force of a thousand suns.

Oh, great. This talk is already going so well.

"Some conversations need to be done sitting down." Wen Qing says that meaningfully, ditching the cleanup to pull out a chair aggressively.

Wen Ning obediently comes to sit next to her and gives Wei Ying a sympathetic glance, though Wei Ying isn't sure his position is chosen from fear of his formidable sister instead. Reluctantly, he pulls out the chair opposite them both and sits down meekly.

"Explain." Wen Qing pointedly looks at her watch.

"Well, er, obviously, things are going great between me and Lan Zhan. He said we ought to take this time to court, well, actually, he wants to court me." Wei Ying rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, willing his red cheeks to go back to his normal temperature pronto.

"Does he now?"

Uh oh. That sounds vaguely threatening.

"Has he talked to Popo? Uncle Four?"

"Um, no?" It comes out like a squeak.

"Well, no one's come to ask me," Wen Qing glares at the table in disgust.

Definitely threatening, Wei Ying decides cautiously.

"So anyway, I thought, why does he get to have all the fun, right? RIGHT?" Wei Ying concentrates on Wen Ning's face, willing him to look up, but the sweet kid that he is, is finding the tablecloth pattern utterly captivating. "So, if I was going to, you know, court him, how should I go about it, do you think?"

Wen Qing slams a powerful hand on the unyielding, hard surface of their only table. "You're absolutely right. I'm offended on your behalf. He should definitely have come to see us first. You know what you're going to do?" She demands, her dark eyes pulsing with fury.

Wei Ying's head shakes out a 'no' before he can think about it.

"You're going to leave it up to us. We'll sort him out. Who does he think he is, trying to steal you out from under us, without going through the proper channels? Well, we won't let him get away with it. A-Ning, when is your next day off?" The Wen siblings, quick as a flash, pull out their phones and start looking for a mutual time while Wei Ying looks on, baffled at her response.

"Um, we talked about A-Yuan?" Wei Ying mumbles.

He is summarily ignored while the brother and sister carry on a serious if hushed, private conversation between themselves.

"Pwetty-Gege likes chocolate?" A-Yuan says, suddenly appearing next to Wei Ying. "You should give him chocolate, Xian-Gege!" he cheers with two chubby fists in the air.

"Where did you come from, Bun?" Wei Ying asks him, picking him up to sit him on his lap. He ruffles A-Yuan's lovely soft curls, the baby hairs framing his round face.

"Heard Xian-Gege in the kitchen," the boy says, smiling toothily back at him.

"Right, this coming Wednesday, make sure Lan WangJi is at home by five o'clock in the evening. You can wait with him if you like." Wen Qing stands up, and then she and Wen Ning put their phones away in a scarily synchronised move.

Uncle Four comes in and tells them they can go to work while he finishes up in the kitchen and Wei Ying should go read a bedtime story with A-Yuan.

"What was all that?" Wei Ying whispers, still in a daze as he walks out of there hugging A-Yuan close.

A-Yuan grabs his chin and looks deeply into his eyes and says seriously, "The Dwagon looks after everyone."

Well, there's no arguing with THAT, Wei Ying thinks.

***************

A/N

Dear Lovely Readers,

Sorry for the long wait, but I hope you like this chapter! I'm running on fumes and God knows how I'll cope today because I've barely slept so there'll be no maths mathing today! Don't worry, it wasn't cos I was writing, I also don't actually know why I couldn't sleep, but it should be fine tonight as a result.

I have to say, some of these conversations between Wei Ying and his family made me giggle throughout but maybe it's because I'm slap-happy right now.

All my love,
Charlie

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