7. Card Game Part 2

“Why do you want to play such a grim and bitter game?”

Yin Yan sat up, one hand stroking Lu Zhengming’s neck. He looked gentle and sincere, but Lu Zhengming knew that expression didn’t belong in this situation. It was the look Yin Yan wore in classrooms, in front of a canvas, when facing nervous students.

Lu Zhengming silently watched him. Before long, that thin layer of tenderness began to erode, revealing the coldness underneath.

“Lu Zhengming, are your hookups not satisfying you? Or is playing around with me more exciting?”

Lu Zhengming took Yin Yan’s hand off his neck and kissed it lightly.

He wasn’t sure why he did it. Yin Yan wasn’t his lover, and what they had couldn’t be called love. Lu Zhengming inwardly mocked himself. He was just as hypocritical as Yin Yan, pretending to feel love while acting like a lover. He’d done it so often that his casual flings frequently mistook his affection for something real and fell into one-sided obsession.

Yin Yan sneered mercilessly. “You’re trying really hard to seduce me.”

Lu Zhengming smiled. “You’re the one seducing me.”

“Do we really need to do this?” Yin Yan’s smile faded. “We both know each other’s secrets, so now we’re bribing each other with sex to bury the risk of exposure?”

“It’s not like that.”

“Don’t tell me it’s because of what happened two years ago. You think I’ve been punishing myself ever since, and now you’re trying to take responsibility, trying to redeem me through this ‘joyful suffering’ while also saving your own soul?”

Lu Zhengming was struck by a sudden realization.

In the past two years, Yin Yan had never been this honest. His sharp sarcasm was oddly comforting. It reminded Lu Zhengming of when they’d been just friends, back when Yin Yan’s aggression had been a sign of trust. He only showed this side to people he felt completely safe with. No one else had seen this face beneath his usual gentleness.

“I think we can still be good friends, like we used to be,” Lu Zhengming said seriously. “I miss that.”

Yin Yan burst out laughing. “Friends who screw each other naked?”

Lu Zhengming felt a twinge of guilt but admitted frankly, “I also want to sleep with you. I didn’t think about it before, but after that day… I realized there’s more we could be.”

Lu Zhengming’s bluntness left Yin Yan defeated. “Lu Zhengming, you’re truly shameless.”

“That’s why you’re hypocritical, and I’m shameless. Isn’t it perfect for us to keep being scoundrel friends?”

“This is the first time I’ve heard of someone trying to restore a friendship this way.” Yin Yan rubbed his temples, clearly eager to escape the awkward situation.

Lu Zhengming pressed on. “So you finally admit that there’s been a problem with our friendship. Still, these past two years, I’ve felt really guilty. I’ve never forgotten Yan Yan…”

“Stop bringing her up!” Yin Yan suddenly turned cold. “If you want to play, I’ll play along, but don’t try to take off your shackles, and don’t expect me to become as cynical as you.”

There was a hint of anger in Yin Yan’s voice, but it only made Lu Zhengming’s heart swell with satisfaction. The sharper Yin Yan became, the more fulfilled he felt. That raw, naked emotion excited him more than Yin Yan’s bare body. Unable to restrain himself, Lu Zhengming felt a rising desire.

He grabbed Yin Yan’s hand and tugged him toward the bedroom. They stumbled together, shedding clothes like reckless young men, and fell onto the bed. Lu Zhengming’s heated body pressed down on Yin Yan’s cooler skin as he resumed his fervent, ice-on-fire pursuit of intimacy.

“Lend me your hand.”

He kissed Yin Yan’s stiff lips, guiding his hand down to grasp his arousal. Their hurried passion found an outlet, clashing against Yin Yan’s aloof, detached hand, which gradually absorbed the warmth. Every breath Lu Zhengming took was mingled with the pulse beneath Yin Yan’s skin. Beneath that cool surface, Lu Zhengming was convinced there lay something deeper, like magma beneath the earth’s crust. He was determined to find proof of that hidden heat.

“Yin Yan… Yin Yan…”

The veins on Lu Zhengming’s forearm bulged, and the sweat in his palm made Yin Yan’s hand even paler, highlighting Lu Zhengming’s flushed, swollen cock like a menacing weapon.

Yin Yan remained eerily calm. His hand tightened at just the right moment.

He synced his motions with Lu Zhengming’s rhythm, his thumb brushing over the most sensitive spots. Occasionally, when Lu Zhengming’s face betrayed his craving, Yin Yan would offer him a brief, fleeting kiss.

In the end, Lu Zhengming surrendered entirely, releasing his grip and allowing Yin Yan to take full control of his desires. His husky moans spilled out, unrestrained. He purposely let loose, attempting to rouse Yin Yan’s desire just as Yin Yan had provoked his, hoping to transform this one-sided release into mutual indulgence.

As he approached climax, Lu Zhengming clung to Yin Yan desperately, seeking his lips in a heated kiss. But Yin Yan pressed him down instead, one hand firmly pushing him away while the other held him in place. He gazed coldly down at Lu Zhengming’s disheveled state, maintaining a detached, dominant air. He would rather let Lu Zhengming climax alone, even if it meant being sprayed with his release, than grant him the deep kiss he so obviously craved.

Even so, Lu Zhengming felt an odd sense of satisfaction. The long-standing tension within him had finally been released. Even if the aftermath was tinged with discomfort, he was willing to endure it.

As he lay there catching his breath, he realized how their roles had reversed. Gently tracing Yin Yan’s face with his fingers, he smiled and asked, “Is this your version of mind control?”

But Yin Yan showed no interest in lingering. He cleaned himself up, got dressed quickly, and slipped back into his usual aloof demeanor. Standing by the bed, cold and distant, he replied, “You’re being controlled by your own desires.”

Lu Zhengming accompanied Yin Yan to the door and saw him out of the studio. Just as he unlocked his car to give him a ride, Yin Yan waved him off and declined the offer. So, Lu Zhengming walked with him to the main road to wait for a taxi instead.

The nearest taxi was stuck at a red light on the street ahead. While they waited, Yin Yan casually turned around and asked, as if it were an afterthought, “Are you free tomorrow night?”

“Yeah.”

“Want to come to Dean Ma’s gathering?” Yin Yan asked.

Lu Zhengming hesitated.

Dean Ma Pingchuan wasn’t just any faculty member. He had serious connections. His father was a former president of the Academy of Fine Arts and currently served as a consultant to the National Artists’ Association. His uncle’s artwork hung in the Great Hall of the People, often appearing in televised meetings with foreign dignitaries.

Lu Zhengming had a minor grudge against Dean Ma, a matter that wasn’t exactly a secret in the Oil Painting Department.

Several years ago, when Lu Zhengming was still just a lecturer, the academy had been preparing for a high-profile evaluation by an inspection team. To impress the visiting officials, each department was assigned tasks to showcase their teaching achievements. As one of the rising stars in the Oil Painting Department, Lu Zhengming had been the obvious choice to lead one of these showcase classes.

At that time, Lu Zhengming was still teaching in the Basics Department. He had planned to have the students work on life-sized plaster cast sketches on full-size drawing paper. With the evaluation team’s visit scheduled within a week, the students would be able to fill their canvases adequately, creating an impressive display of progress and teaching outcomes.

However, Ma Pingchuan, the newly appointed vice dean, dismissed the plan with a shake of his head after hearing it. “Full-size paper is too small. You’ll need to aim for a six-foot effect for it to look impressive.”

Lu Zhengming felt his breath catch. Ma Pingchuan was from the Chinese Painting Department, specializing in landscape ink washes. For him, painting a 1.8-meter splash-ink landscape could be done in a single day, and they’d even have time to produce backup pieces. But sketching a plaster cast with background details, using nothing but pencil to painstakingly fill a one-meter canvas with fine lines, was already a challenge to complete in a week. Doubling the scale to six feet not only meant double the workload but also presented a logistical problem—there simply weren’t sketch pads or boards in that size.

Even so, the department head standing beside Ma Pingchuan didn’t offer any support, leaving Lu Zhengming with no choice but to grit his teeth and agree. To meet the demand, the department procured a batch of full-size wooden boards as makeshift easels and purchased an expensive roll of imported watercolor paper, 10 meters long, cutting it down to six-foot sheets.

As he got to work, Lu Zhengming sarcastically marveled at the Oil Painting Department’s unmatched ability to execute unreasonable demands while privately stressing over how to fill such massive canvases in so little time. After agonizing over it all night, he came up with a plan: he moved every projector from the teaching equipment storage room into the sketching studio and projected photos of plaster casts from different angles onto the paper, instructing students to trace the outlines directly. This would at least cut down the time needed to calibrate the proportions by two days. As for filling the backgrounds, he bought a batch of charcoal sticks out of his own pocket, ground them into fine powder, and had the students dilute the powder with water to brush large shadow areas as if they were painting with watercolor.

This technique wasn’t exactly revolutionary. Using projectors was famously part of Gerhard Richter’s method, and wet-sketching with charcoal was a common technique among Soviet academic painters. Still, when Ma Pingchuan came to inspect the class preparations, he was furious. He launched into a lengthy tirade, criticizing the approach. He was a staunch advocate of Xu Beihong’s “hard work” philosophy, insisting that students should rely on nothing but a single pencil to draw, without the crutch of modern tools.

With only two days left before the evaluation, Lu Zhengming and his students had been working late into the night, practically living in the classroom. After enduring Ma Pingchuan’s outburst, Lu Zhengming finally snapped and argued back. Ma Pingchuan didn’t react at the time, but after the evaluation team left, Lu Zhengming was ordered to write a formal self-criticism.

Yin Yan knew about that incident but still invited Lu Zhengming to join him. Lu Zhengming wasn’t sure about his intentions and hesitated to respond.

A taxi pulled up in front of them. Yin Yan didn’t press him further, as if he had just asked casually. He opened the car door and said goodbye. Watching Yin Yan get into the taxi, Lu Zhengming suddenly felt a strange sense of disappointment. Just as the door was about to close, he blurted out:

“Yin Yan, I’ll go.”

“Alright,” Yin Yan replied, pausing just in time to stop the door from closing, as if he had expected Lu Zhengming to agree. “Wait for me after class tomorrow. We’ll take my car.”

The so-called health and wellness gathering turned out to be a mahjong session at a teahouse.

When Ma Pingchuan saw Lu Zhengming, he looked slightly surprised, but seeing Yin Yan’s composed expression, he kept his cool and even poured tea for Lu Zhengming with a gracious air. Lu Zhengming played along, pretending to be flattered, and reflected aloud on how immature he had been back then. He admitted that he hadn’t fully appreciated Dean Ma’s efforts to instill strong foundational skills in his students.

Apart from the three of them, there was also an associate professor from the Chinese Painting Department at the table. At first, Lu Zhengming felt puzzled about why Yin Yan seemed so close to this particular vice dean. But as the game progressed, he began to piece things together.

Next year, the current dean would be retiring, and two candidates were being considered to replace him: one was the head of the Art History and Theory Department, and the other was Ma Pingchuan.

The candidate from the Art History Department had authored the art academy’s textbook on Western art history. He had also followed the example of Beijing’s 798 Art District and, leveraging the provincial and municipal governments’ push for creative industry hubs, transformed an old textile factory in the western suburbs into a contemporary art zone. Acting as the curator, he had repurposed the soon-to-be-demolished factory buildings, turning them into cultural assets. Not only did this give the otherwise unremarkable western suburb a new cultural landmark, but it also boosted the local economy and doubled property prices in the area.

Ma Pingchuan wanted to defeat the other candidate and was working hard to build his political achievements. He had contributed significantly to the construction of the Pingyuan Art Museum, a major cultural project for the province and city. He also founded the Pingyuan School of Painting during his tenure, which was based on realism, with the aim of expanding the academic influence of this local art academy nationwide.

Increasing the influence of the Pingyuan School of Painting became Ma Pingchuan’s primary focus, so he recruited members not only from the Chinese Painting Department but also from the Oil Painting, Printmaking, and even the Design Departments.

When the leadership of the academy changed, the Oil Painting Department would also undergo a reshuffling. Before this, Lu Zhengming had never noticed any ambition from Yin Yan, and he hadn’t even sought the position of studio director. It was only now that he realized Yin Yan’s aspirations were not confined to the Oil Painting Department; his goal was to leap over the department and go straight for the position of Vice Dean.

From his style of playing Mahjong, Lu Zhengming also noticed something else. Yin Yan’s poker skills were nowhere near as clumsy as he made them seem. A Mahjong master who could count cards would never be bad at poker. Whether he won or lost only depended on whether he wanted to.

As for why he had brought Lu Zhengming into this game, the answer was revealed at the end of the session.

As the most prominent artist in the Academy’s Oil Painting Department, Yin Yan had always been at the top of Ma Pingchuan’s recruitment list, but he had never accepted the invitation, and this session was no exception.

This time, his reason for turning it down was:

“I’m currently collaborating with Zhengming to prepare for the National Art Exhibition. If we are selected, joining the school would be more honorable.”