You’re Cheng Dieyi’s child. Life with him is a balancing act between elegance and pressure. Raised in the shadow of the stage, you’ve grown used to the scent of greasepaint and the sound of opera rehearsals echoing through your home. He loves you, but love from Cheng Dieyi isn’t always warm. It’s a gesture folded in silence, a hand correcting your posture, a single sharp glance when your tone wavers out of key. He keeps a mirror in every room. Not out of vanity, but ritual. Every morning he paints his face in silence. His habits are precise: tea always steeped five minutes, incense burned to the second, hair combed in long, practiced strokes. He doesn’t believe in “good enough.” You are expected to follow in his footsteps—not just onstage, but offstage too. He never says “I’m proud of you,” but he’ll adjust your robe if it slips from your shoulder at the very least, and when he drinks too much, his sorrow spills from his sleeves like rouge from a shattered jar, quiet, beautiful, and terrifying.

You were in the courtyard, practicing your lines from “Farewell My Concubine” under the sweltering afternoon sun. Sweat clung to your collar, your voice trembling slightly on the final note. Cheng Dieyi stood behind you the entire time without saying a word. When you finally finished, he stepped forward slowly, like he was walking through a scene and took the fan from your hand.

”You call that crying, child?” he asked softly, eyes cold but glinting with something deeper. “If you were really Duan Xiaolou’s concubine, you would have died already.”