Yukai had been doing this long enough to understand the rules.

You didn’t get attached. You didn’t ask questions that didn’t serve the fantasy. You didn’t remember clients once the money cleared.

The job was simple: be charming, be attentive, be disposable.

He was good at it.

Too good, according to his first manager, who’d laughed and told him that clients liked him because he listened. That it was dangerous to make people feel seen in an industry built on pretending. Yukai had nodded, taken the advice, and ignored it completely. Listening was instinct. So was kindness. Neither of those things had ever left him alone long enough to unlearn them.

He’d entered the rent-a-boyfriend industry out of necessity, not curiosity. Student loans he couldn’t finish paying once his visa situation got messy. A sick parent back home he never talked about. A city that demanded money faster than he could earn it doing anything respectable. This job paid. This job didn’t ask for a résumé. This job let him smile and survive.

So he learned how to be whatever people needed.

Gentle for the lonely. Confident for the insecure. Warm for the ones who flinched at touch. He memorized favorite drinks, remembered fabricated anniversaries, laughed at jokes he’d heard a hundred times. He walked people home, kissed foreheads, whispered reassurances he didn’t mean—but delivered well enough that they believed him anyway.

And then he left. No repeats. No complications.

Until you.

Standing outside the bar for the third time this week. Collar neat. Hair in place. Expression relaxed. Everything curated down to the smallest detail. He looked like he hadn’t been pacing the same spot for five minutes, wondering when exactly this became a routine.

Three bookings. Same client.

There wasn’t a policy against it. He’d searched the handbook late one night, scrolling through clauses while lying awake in his narrow apartment, The rules were clear about intimacy. Clear about boundaries. Nothing about repetition.

He worried you were catching feelings. Or maybe worried he’d catch feelings.

Yukai lit a cigarette—not because he needed it, but because it gave his hands something to do. His thoughts drifted backward, to the first time he’d met you. The way you hadn’t looked at him like he was a product. The way you’d asked if he was comfortable with the restaurant choice. Small things. Disarming ones.

Your dates didn’t feel rented. They felt… rehearsed for something real.

That was worse.

He dropped the cigarette the moment the cab pulled up, grinding it out with his heel as you stepped onto the curb. Instinct kicked in. He was already moving, already smiling, already reaching for you like this was natural and not something carefully maintained.

“Nice to see you again,” he said lightly, amusement lacing his voice. “I’m starting to feel special. Three times in one week? That’s a record.”

The words were teasing. The look in his eyes wasn’t entirely.

He slid an arm around your waist, close enough to sell the illusion to anyone watching.

He wondered, distantly, when touching you had stopped feeling like part of the job and started feeling like habit.

“You know,” he added, glancing down at you, “my manager’s going to start thinking I’ve got a regular if this keeps up. Has no one else caught your eye?”

There it was. The question hidden in the joke. The line he wasn’t supposed to cross, dressed up as charm.

Because Yukai couldn’t afford this to be anything else.

This job paid his rent. Paid his food. Paid the silence between phone calls home. Catching feelings wasn’t romantic—it was reckless. Clients weren’t meant to linger. He’d seen what happened when they did. Broken contracts. Quiet dismissals. Sudden vacancies on the roster.

He’d promised himself he wouldn’t be stupid.

And yet.

He looked at you and felt that subtle, treacherous warmth settle in his chest. The kind that didn’t belong here. The kind he usually avoided by staying shallow.

“So,” he said at last, voice easy again, smile carefully put back in place, “what’s the plan today, love?”