Chapter Text
The thing about the Mei Hanxue twins, Mo Ran decided, was that everyone else got it completely wrong about which of them was the more open one.
“You mean a Song of Ice and Fire?” scoffed Nangong Si. They were spread out across Nangong Si’s couch in Nangong Si’s motorhome, which was a Rufeng motorhome and so was approximately three times the size of Sisheng Peak’s trailer side-by-side and stacked. The room was decked out like a Dubai hotel suite. Sparkling water in hand, Nangong Si scrolled on his phone, occasionally glanced up at the TV replay of their qualifying race, and pretended he was not waiting for someone to come knocking on his door. He allowed Mo Ran just a moment of pure, focused attention. “What brought this up?”
“Just a random thought,” Mo Ran said vaguely. His own phone dinged; Xue Meng was coming, although he’d let his displeasure be known about Mo Ran’s spending time with the enemy. They had all come up together through the karting circuit, and then the junior F4, and then F3, and Mo Ran was just a latecomer who apparently had flouted all social conventions and made himself at home in whichever motorhome was most hospitable at the moment.
Rufeng was complicated for Mo Ran specifically. Nangong Si’s presence made it considerably more tolerable. He regarded the cousin he could not openly claim, watched the way Nangong Si melded into his surrounding like it had all been made to accommodate him personally, and suppressed a sigh.
They had made the twins’ acquaintance in Melbourne; or at least, it was Mo Ran’s first time, and Xue Meng and Nangong Si’s approximately gazillionth time, the competitions drawing them together like clockwork. The Kunlun Taxue’s motorhome had been very, very nice. Mei Hanxue had been an excellent host; his brother less so, but inoffensive enough that the evening had passed amicably, if one ignored the way Xue Meng and the older twin seemed to be exchanging eye contact in the most obvious pigtail-pulling way Mo Ran had seen since he was in actual middle school.
Words were that before Mei Hänxue left the racing scene behind for actual school and took over as Mei Hanxue’s race engineer, he had been something of a wild card when they were still karting, and had placed second to Xue Meng’s first in their final competition together.
For some reason, Xue Meng had never forgiven the older twin for that.
“You think Xiao Mei is hard to read?” Nangong Si tossed his phone onto the couch at last, arms crossed. “What’s hard about it? He’s a playboy. He’s slightly more capable behind the wheel than he looks. There’s not much going on upstairs. If anything, his brother’s the scary one. Even I don’t want to piss him off. But Xiao Mei… he’s simple enough.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Eight years competing against him,” Nangong Si scoffed. “Eight years partying with him post-race. Look, is this some kind of psychological warfare? Trying to pit me against an old”—he paused, searching for the right word and landing tentatively on one that didn’t seem to fit, going by the slight scrunch of his nose—“friend?”
Mo Ran shrugged. “Nothing like that. And in any case, we should actually all be hating you instead, pole-sitter.” Nangong Si, freshly wounded in the ego from Melbourne, had done very well at the qualifying and was now comfortably atop the field. “I just think… there’s kinda more to him than meets the eye. I get the sense that he’s hiding something.”
“Like, an illegal mod?” Nangong Si’s eyes brightened. Mo Ran bit back another sigh; there certainly wasn’t much going on upstairs somewhere.
“Didn’t you guys already spread that rumor last week?”
“I didn’t spread anything,” Nangong Si protested. “We’re not that kind of people.”
Mo Ran’s eyebrows rose. “Your PR team suggested my Chu-laoshi’s new diffuser design was skirting the legal limits. Directly to Mu Yanli. Which started an investigation.”
Xue Meng had been furious about that; Chu Wanning, his engineer, had taken the investigation in stride, as they had nothing to hide and everything in the cutting-edge of Chu Wanning’s engineering to thank. But Mo Ran understood that whatever dirty game Rufeng was playing, Nangong Si was too forthright to have been a part of it. And in any case, he’d had reasons to trust Nangong Si that Xue Meng would not—could not—know about.
“Your Chu-laoshi?” Nangong Si muttered, clearly miffed. “He was my laoshi first.”
And that was another straw on the camel’s back for Xue Meng—the fact that Chu Wanning had been with Rufeng for a brief stint before leaving the established powerhouse for a scrappy upstart team that barely had the budget to meet his demand for materials.
Sisheng Peak had been Xue Zhengyong’s passion project, and then it became all of theirs.
But passion projects required money—the kind of money that Rufeng’s Nangong Liu and Guyueye’s Jiang Xi threw around without a thought, and was still something Chu Wanning worried about every time Mo Ran spun out on the track.
His Wanning, Mo Ran sighed. His gorgeous, hard-working Wanning, who right now was probably bent over his computer screen, glasses askew, running simulations for yet another update on Mo Ran’s car before Japan. The thought sent a frisson of excitement down Mo Ran’s spine. He had half a mind to send a text—
“Are you even listening—” But Nangong Si didn’t have time to finish his complaint. The door slammed open then; Xue Meng stood with his arms crossed, stalking in the second he located Mo Ran. Behind him, the slight figure of Ye Wangxi waved a keycard in lieu of a greeting.
“Some teammate,” Nangong Si muttered. “Not even a knock. No such thing as privacy around here.”
“Dad’s looking for you,” Xue Meng announced without preamble, plopping down on the armchair across from Mo Ran and pretending Nangong Si simply didn’t exist. “So is Chu-laoshi. They thought you were at the gym—turns out you’re—”
“Colluding with the enemy, yes,” Mo Ran sighed. “Hey, Mengmeng. Jiejie. Looking strong.”
Ye Wangxi’s expression shifted so subtly that most people would not notice. She ran a hand through her hair, styled in a wolf cut, and shook out the slightly damp locks. Here was someone who had actually recently hit the gym and came back from it invigorated. She was extremely popular with the female fans, Mo Ran knew, with the cool, androgynous tomboy style that had made her the cover of several fashion magazines in just the last few months. There was a dedicated fanbase, and they were vocal on social media. Her legion of female fans rivaled those of any of the male racers, although no one had done the exact accounting for fear of Ye Wangxi accidentally coming out on top.
Everyone called her jiejie, even those who could have been her peers. And Mo Ran was no exception.
Ye Wangxi’s voice came out warm and deep. “It’s good to see A-Si having friends that aren’t groupies.”
“I don’t have groupies.” In Ye Wangxi’s presence, Nangong Si seemed as if he could not make up his mind between sitting up straighter and spreading more forcefully on the couch; in the end, he made an aborted gesture and rubbed the back of his head, trying for nonchalance and settling instead for cold. “I thought you weren’t coming back till later. What are you doing here?”
A flash of hurt. Ye Wangxi stood straighter, her hands clenched. “Like it or not, this isn’t your private residence. Sorry if that inconveniences the young master.”
Whatever was going on between the two of them, Mo Ran was firmly on Ye Wangxi’s side. He patted the couch. “Sit, sit! We were just discussing the twins.”
“What about the twins?” Xue Meng asked darkly. “Annoying bastards. Mei Hanxue almost rammed into me earlier today. There was no reason to even come that close!”
“That’s not nice to say… I heard they were orphans, you can’t call them that,” Nangong Si broke in. “Mo Ran was just saying how Xiao Mei was hard to read.”
“Probably because he’s always hiding behind his groupies.” That took Mo Ran by surprise; he had never known Ye Wangxi to be uncharitable towards someone else. Settling into the couch, Ye Wangxi pressed her lips together, legs crossed at the knee. “We fought once. It wasn’t pretty.”
“Did you win?” Mo Ran asked, invested. “He would hit a girl?”
Ye Wangxi’s face darkened. “Define winning—hard to tell because he doesn’t fight his own battles. But anyways, I don’t want to waste time talking about him either.”
They chatted about nothing and everything. Nangong Si prattled on and on about his car—Naobaijin, as everyone knew, because Nangong Si didn’t refer to the car as anything but. Ye Wangxi was subdued and responded to questions only when asked. They avoided talking about Chu Wanning, a sore topic for Xue Meng; Mei Hanxue, another sore point for various reasons; or the Guyueye boy who had won the Melbourne Grand Prix, whom everyone cautiously disliked, and so there was nothing else to focus on but the upcoming race.
“If you didn’t mess up the qualifying you would have been right behind me. Now Guyueye, Kunlun Taxue, and Bitan are between us,” Nangong Si said offhandedly, for the fifth time putting his foot in his mouth where Ye Wangxi was concerned.
“Maybe I don’t want to be,” came the snipped response. “Maybe it’s not about where you are, A-Si. I’m racing you, not guarding you.”
“Who cares about starting positions,” Xue Meng muttered, who had finished mid-pack much to his own disappointment, although still ahead of Mo Ran, which should have soothed the sting somewhat. “Fifty-six laps is plenty of time to make up for any initial advantage.”
“Just don’t spin out on your shitty car when you try to turn,” Nangong Si said, clearly stung from Ye Wangxi’s remark. His comment earned another round of glares from the other occupants of the room.
“The fuck did you say about Longcheng?!”
They continued like that until their rumbling stomachs forced them to leave for dinner; Ye Wangxi and Nangong Si danced on an uncomfortable edge between overt familiarity and something more undefinable; Xue Meng radiated slightly hostile energy towards people he had known for a very, very long time and were his direct competitors on the track.
And then there were the ghosts of the Mei Hanxue twins settling into the absence of their mention.
Back at the Sisheng Peak hospitality, with Xue Meng complaining incessantly about the evening and Nangong Si and Mei Hanxue and that cold bastard Mei Hänxue, why does he keep bullying me, what did I do, Mo Ran listened with half a mind, nodding when his contribution was wanted.
He was still stuck on what was behind the younger twin’s ever-present smile and why no one had recognized the shape of this particular concealment technique.
What Mo Ran never had the chance to explain before they were interrupted was this: At the dinner Kunlun Taxue hosted two nights ago, toward the end of the evening, Mei Hanxue had stepped outside onto the hospitality unit's small upper balcony. After a while, Mo Ran followed; the room had gotten warm and loud, crowded with the celebration of the start of another Grand Prix after Melbourne had worn most everyone down. Or mostly the cadre from Rufeng was celebrating, and some of the younger mechanics from Kunlun Taxue, and exactly one driver from Guyueye because the other begged sick, and somewhere in the background was Xue Meng drunkenly muttering that he was robbed in Melbourne because Mei Hanxue had been on his heel and there was no reason for all that because Mei Hanxue had already lapped him and the smug bastard just wanted to fuck with him.
If anyone asked Mei Hanxue, he was Xue Meng’s best friend. If anyone asked Xue Meng, they were mortal enemies.
If anyone asked the older twin, they would be met with a stare so impassive, so absent of human warmth, that they would regret ever asking.
Mo Ran had meant to go outside and text Chu Wanning. But there was Mei Hanxue, occupying a sliver of the balcony with a drink in hand and a faraway look on his usually open expression. There was nothing that immediately captured the attention; no event, no happening, just the crisp night air of Shanghai brimming with anticipation and winter’s last grasp. And Mei Hanxue wasn’t on his phone or scrolling social media or waiting for anyone, by the comfortable way his body had already settled into the metal railing.
He was just looking at the general direction of the Guyueye motorhome, which from that angle was only visible as a lit rectangle in the middle distance.
“Hey.” Mo Ran came to stand nearby. Mei Hanxue smiled absently at him. Mo Ran tried to look in the same direction but found nothing of interest, and so took to casually sending emojis to Chu Wanning, who replied with silence. Sighing, he shoved the phone back in his pocket. “Where did your brother go?”
“He doesn’t like loud music, so probably back to work. He wants to push a slight modification through before the deadline.”
“Is it weird, having your twin as your race engineer?”
Mei Hanxue shrugged. Mei Hanxue, all golden haired and jade-eyed, stood almost at Mo Ran’s towering height or just a few centimeters shorter, yet had somehow learned to make himself seem… unassuming. Beautiful, glittering, but approachable the way his twin brother was not. A Song of Ice and Fire, he would later recall from Nangong Si’s description. “Ge gets me.”
“You’re like one person in two places at once,” Mo Ran observed. “You barely even talk over the radio. It’s like…”
“… We don’t actually have telepathy,” Mei Hanxue interjected playfully. “But yes. He gets me. I get him. Sometimes words are unnecessary.”
“But is it weird that he quit racing himself?” Mo Ran pressed.
At this, Mei Hanxue took a longer pause. “It was his decision. As you said… it may be somewhat more interesting to be one person in two places at once than two drivers on the same track. He’d never enjoyed the public spectacle part of it. And in any case, I think he actually enjoys telling me what to do more.” He let out a light laugh. “And I don’t mind following. And I drive faster around the corners.”
“You guys make a good team,” Mo Ran observed. “Uncle Xue said he’d always liked you guys. When you podium’ed in Melbourne, he was actually really happy about it.”
“And we like him. We like Sisheng Peak,” Mei Hanxue confirmed. “We like Mengmeng very much too.”
Mo Ran’s eyebrows rose at that. “How much?”
“Ask Ge.” Mei Hanxue chuckled. “All I can say is that if I didn’t know better, I would have gone for it. But I do know better and value my life.”
The twins and Xue Meng went way back; too far back, according to Xue Meng’s ominous declaration. Xue Zhengyong had hosted a summer camp for the go-kart kids when they were all around five or six, and the impression all the boys had left on each other at that time had laid the foundation for a lifelong sort of rivalry.
At least, it was a rivalry from Xue Meng’s side.
Mo Ran wasn’t sure what it was called when the older twin kept sending ideas for improvements to Xue Meng’s current race engineer to boost Xue Meng’s car performance even as his brother raced Xue Meng directly around the track.
“He’s not as scary as he appears.”
“Ge isn’t scary.” From a distance, the sound of drunken laughter floated out from the party. “He’s very sweet and caring. He’s just shy.”
“I wouldn’t have described him that way,” Mo Ran said cautiously.
There was something soft in the set of Mei Hanxue’s features. “I suppose most people wouldn’t. Some are… harder to read. But the effort is worth it, I’ve found. Beneath the thorns, there could be a small, injured bird. You risk cutting yourself in the process, of course, but once you have that tiny little creature in your palms… there’s nothing quite like that trust.”
Mei Hänxue was something, but an injured bird, he was not. “Are we still talking about your brother?” Mo Ran had a feeling the conversation had derailed somewhere he had not followed adequately. But he understood all too well what Mei Hanxue meant.
Beneath the sharp claws could also lay a sweet, lonely cat, only able to show its soft belly to a select few in fear of the eyes of the world.
“Mm?” Mei Hanxue shook his head ruefully. “Sorry. I zoned out.”
They regarded each other. A hint of amusement danced in Mei Hanxue’s eyes, and something that Mo Ran thought was a certain kind of kinship. “What’s it like having Chu Wanning as your race engineer?” Mei Hanxue was his usual gregarious self again. “Mengmeng wasn’t happy with that change. He’d idolized Chu-laoshi for ages. I thought he was going to quit racing altogether when you took his laoshi. I’d never seen a public crashout that bad.”
“Mengmeng isn’t happy about a lot of things even when he has every reason to be. Tanlang is a great race engineer to work with.” His cousin was spoiled, lovingly so. “Chu-laoshi is…” He searched for the words and found them all inadequate to describe the essence of what made Chu Wanning special. “I don’t deserve him. I know that much.”
“Everyone has been trying to poach him from Sisheng Peak for ages. And before that, from Rufeng.” Mei Hanxue’s eyes twinkled knowingly. “In fact, I know an offer came very recently. Staggering number. But he said he wouldn’t leave Sisheng Peak and his driver for anything.”
Mo Ran felt a little faint. “Is that so.”
“Mm. I suppose congratulations are in order.” Mei Hanxue was far too perceptive for his own good. That faint smile curled around his lips, like a well-fed fox perennially pleased with its lot in life. “That level of devotion is rare. I wonder if Ge would have taken the offer had it come to him.”
“I doubt it.” Mo Ran was not blind to the particular kind of fanbase the twins commanded with their… dynamic.
“You’re right.” A low chuckle. “Although I often wonder… but never mind.”
They stood in comfortable silence, each one nursing his own drink. Mo Ran’s mind was somewhere else in the paddock; where Mei Hanxue’s mind was, he didn’t know. After a while, Mo Ran broke the silence, gesturing vaguely at the light of Guyueye. “Tough competition.”
“They’re good,” Mei Hanxue agreed. “Do you know Jiang Xi?”
“Not personally," Mo Ran said. “I heard he’s a hardass, but fair.” Like someone else he knew, which to Mo Ran meant that his estimation of Jiang Xi was a favorable one. The owner and principal of Guyueye was not so much an enigmatic figure as one who had decided the rest of the world was beneath his notice, and had, as a matter of course, declined invitation to most of the circuit events. Mo Ran had met him once a few months ago, pre-Melbourne, even, when he had sustained a minor injury after a too-enthusiastic practice session and was caught limping along the maze of motorhomes late at night by Jiang Xi.
His first impression had been: an ink scroll painting from the Ming Dynasty, if Ming Dynasty beauties wore bespoke couture and a scowl to rival Bao Gong’s.
His second impression had been: Stop that, or Laoshi will kill you.
Trained as a physician before he had taken over the family pharmaceutical business, Jiang Xi had dispensed a prescription pad from nowhere, held out the paper as if he were bestowing an imperial edict, and turned away before Mo Ran could thank him.
All in all, it wasn’t terrible, as far as impressions went.
Mei Hanxue, of course, had no way of knowing any of this. Mei Hanxue only regarded him for a moment with those unsettling green eyes, then flicked his attention towards the light of Guyueye in the distance.
“Fair.” He turned his wine glass in his hands. Crimson droplets gathered in the bowl; thin traces of an old wine, with long legs rimming the crystal. Kunlun Taxue had spared no expenses after their golden boy podium’ed at Melbourne. “I suppose that’s a fair assessment. He would like that.”
“Do you know Jiang Xi?”
Mei Hanxue had smiled, which was not an answer, and gone back inside, but not before placing his hand on Mo Ran’s shoulder.
“Tell Mengmeng don’t stay up too late. Ge will get grumpy if he shows up with dark circles, and then I’ll hear about it ad nauseam through practice.”
Curious turn of phrase. Mo Ran stood on the balcony for a moment after he left. Shanghai in March was cooler than optimal by most standards, but not cold by his. Coming from Sichuan, the weather was positively balmy. He debated the merit of another drink, thought about what Chu Wanning would say, and decided against it.
In any case, Xue Meng had sent three messages in the last ten minutes about the diffuser investigation and one voice note that Mo Ran could tell from the waveform alone was at least two minutes of sustained grievance. All that, with the party noises in the background. Mo Ran deleted the messages without listening and crushed the beer can in his hand until it was unrecognizable as a former object, molded now into an entirely different shape.
He played with the metal slab, calloused fingers along the sharp edges. The wind picked up. His jacket was sturdy enough, a more than suitable shield against the elements. Mo Ran should be thinking about the upcoming qualifying race, and then the Shanghai Grand Prix, and winning, and how to make Chu Wanning proud of him.
Instead, he thought about Mei Hänxue. The mind wandered along paths familiar and unknown both. Mei Hänxue, who had been one of the most promising juniors coming up through the circuit, who had given up a driver seat to stand behind a pit wall and put his voice in his brother's ear. Who had apparently been watching Xue Meng long enough to have opinions about his sleep schedule and who could not help but want Xue Meng’s car to go faster even on opposing teams. Who, for all the impenetrable glacier that he was, seemed the more transparent of the two, with his priorities laid out for anyone to see if they dared to look.
And he thought about Mei Hanxue, who had spent the better part of an hour looking at a lit window across the paddock and had chosen the word fair very carefully and then smiled and walked away; the bright sun with its blinding rays, whose light forcefully coaxed observers’ eyes away from the source and towards where it wished to direct their attention.
The Mei twins, Mo Ran decided, were operating on a frequency that everyone else was only receiving as static. The terrifying part was that he was becoming increasingly convinced they had designed it that way.
Mo Ran was a curious person by nature. Whatever it was Mei Hanxue was hiding, Mo Ran would like very much to get to the bottom of it.
Call it opposition research, or call it simply what it was—nosiness.
He went back inside to bring Xue Meng home and wisely did not say anything about dark circles.