Guiying sat down and picked up the menu anyway.
He hoped the tea was not going to ruin him.
He had exactly ¥50,000 in a savings account he had opened years ago without his family's knowledge, set aside carefully and quietly over a long period of time. It was not nothing.
It was also not the kind of money you spent on tea in a restaurant that did not list its prices.
He ordered the cheapest thing he could identify on the menu, which turned out to be a pot of white tea that he was choosing not to think too hard about, and settled in to wait.
The restaurant was full of Alphas and Omegas. He could tell even through the mask, the ambient scent of it thick enough to register despite the barrier.
He was grateful for the mask. Without it the combination of unfamiliar pheromones in a confined space would have been genuinely unpleasant.
He was on his second cup of tea when the door opened.
The person who walked in looked, at first glance, like someone who had not slept in several days and had made peace with that fact a long time ago.
He was around Guiying's age, slight in build, with dark hair that fell in heavy curtains across his forehead, covering his eyebrows entirely and coming close to obscuring his eyes.
The dark circles beneath those eyes were impressive in their commitment. He was wearing all black, which combined with the general energy he was projecting gave the impression of someone attending a funeral they had organized themselves.
He scanned the room once, found Guiying, and walked over without hurrying.
He sat down across the table, pushed his hair out of his face for approximately one second before it fell back into exactly the same position, and looked at Guiying with the flat, assessing gaze of someone conducting a professional evaluation.
"You are younger than I expected," he said. His voice was dry and unhurried.
Guiying looked at him. "You as well."
404 picked up the menu, looked at it briefly, and set it back down. He did not offer a name. Guiying did not ask for one. That was not how this worked, and they both understood that without needing to say it.
He folded his hands on the table.
"So," he said. "What is the job?"
"I need an informant," Guiying said.
"Specifically I need to be ten steps ahead of five people at all times. My father, my stepmother, my grandmother, my older brothers, and a man named Shen Zihao. I need daily reports on their movements, communications, and internal affairs.
Anything significant gets flagged to me immediately. Long term contract."
404 looked at him with the flat expression of someone processing information at a speed that did not require visible effort.
He was quiet for a moment.
Not the quiet of someone overwhelmed. The quiet of someone calculating.
"That is five separate targets," he said.
"Spread across how many locations?"
"The Xue family household covers four of them. Shen Zihao is separate."
"Two locations, five targets, long term." 404 picked up his tea and took a slow sip.
"¥500,000 monthly. Daily reports, emergency alerts included. First two months upfront. Non negotiable."
Guiying looked at him.
He only had ¥50,000 in his savings account.
"I will pay after I see evidence of your work," he said. "No upfront payment."
404 looked at him. "That is not how I operate."
"And hiring someone I have never worked with before and paying them half a million yuan before seeing a single result is not how I operate," Guiying said pleasantly.
"Bring me something worth paying for. Then we discuss the contract."
The silence that followed was the particular silence of two people waiting to see if the other would fold first.
404 pushed his hair out of his face. It fell back immediately.
"One week trial," he said finally. "You see the work. If you are satisfied, the first month payment arrives within twenty four hours of you confirming. After that payment arrives on the first of every month without exception."
"Agreed," Guiying said.
"Payment goes to an offshore account. Details change with every transaction. I will send the information each time a payment is due." He folded his hands on the table.
"Priority flags?"
"All outgoing communications. Visitor logs. Any mention of my name. Shen Zihao's movements especially. I want to know everywhere he goes."
404 did not ask why. That was clearly not his business.
"First report tonight," he said, and stood up.
He pushed his hair out of his face one final time, achieved nothing, and walked out without looking back.
Guiying watched him go.
Under all those eye bangs and dark circles and the all black ensemble and the general atmosphere of a man who had opted out of experiencing joy as a concept, it was a face that was genuinely quite remarkable. The kind of face that would stop people in the street if its owner ever got enough sleep and stood in decent lighting.
He filed that observation away, paid the bill without looking at the total, and walked back out to where Wang Chengli was waiting beside the car with the patient expression of someone who had never once in his life been surprised by anything.
He was going to need to make that money back very quickly.
Guiying settled into the backseat as the car pulled away from the restaurant.
He watched the streets move past the window, tallying the meeting in his head.
The trial period was reasonable.
404 had not pushed back harder than expected, which either meant he was confident enough in his work to accept the terms or desperate enough for the contract to accept them.
Either way the result was the same.
After a while he noticed the streets were not looking familiar.
He looked out the window more carefully. The direction was wrong. They were not heading back toward the mansion.
"Uncle Wang," he said. "Where are we going?"