Nuocheng hung up the phone and let his head fall back against his chair with a groan loud enough to be heard down the hall.
"I don’t understand why this is so hard for him to accept," he said to no one in particular, since no one was actually in the room yet to hear him. "I’m not asking for much. Face, heart, and dick. That’s it. That’s the whole list."
His dad’s voice still rang in his ears, the same tired refrain he’d given him every week for the past year. You’re twenty-eight, Nuocheng. Twenty-eight! Do you know how old I was when I married your Pops? You’re running out of time to find someone good before all the decent ones are gone
He did know, actually. He’d met most of what was left. None of them qualified.
The door opened without a knock, which meant it could only be one person.
"You’re doing the thing again," Wei Chenxi said, not bothering to look up from the tablet in his hand as he crossed the office. "The dramatic head-back, staring-at-the-ceiling thing. Dad called again?"
"He wants grandchildren before he dies, apparently." Nuocheng rolled his head to glare at him. "As if I can just conjure a perfect alpha out of thin air."
"Your standards aren’t that complicated. Face, heart, dick. You’ve said it approximately four thousand times."
"Because it’s not complicated, and yet every single man I meet manages to fail at least one category. It’s honestly impressive at this point. A skill, almost."
Chenxi finally glanced up, unimpressed. "Some of us would appreciate a partner with a personality that doesn’t involve reciting a checklist to their face."
"Some of us aren’t rich enough to afford standards, Chenxi." Nuocheng smiled sweetly, all teeth. "No offense."
"Fuck you."
"You wish."
Chenxi set the tablet down on the desk hard enough that it rattled. "The new snack line launched this morning. Trucks are already out delivering to all our chains and the partner stores. Sales team says pre-orders from three regions already beat projections."
That, at least, pulled a real reaction out of him. Nuocheng sat up straighter, some of the exhaustion clearing from his face. "How much did we beat them by?"
"Eighteen percent in the east region alone."
"See, this is why I actually like my job." Nuocheng grinned, genuine this time. "Everything else about my life is a mess, but I know how to sell a chip."
"You know how to sell anything. You just refuse to do most of it unless someone forces you." Chenxi pulled a thin folder from under his arm and dropped it in front of him. "Speaking of forcing you into things. Dad had these sent over."
Nuocheng eyed the folder like it might bite him. "What is it."
"Alphas. Approved ones, apparently. Photos, backgrounds, the works."
He flipped it open anyway, if only because avoiding it would mean another phone call he didn’t want to have. Face after face stared back at him from glossy printouts, each one accompanied by a small paragraph of credentials like he was hiring for a position rather than looking for a husband.
He sighed. None of them looked promising. A few were handsome enough, sure, but he’d learned the hard way that a good face meant nothing if the man attached to it turned out to be either a jerk, or worse, boring in bed.
"They all look the same," he muttered, closing the folder. "Rich, groomed, and probably terrible in ways I won’t discover until it’s too late."
"You could just, I don’t know, meet them and find out instead of judging headshots."
"Fine." Nuocheng shoved the folder back at him. "Set up the first one. Let’s get this over with."
He didn’t care what Pops thought of any of this — Pops, who’d stayed suspiciously quiet through the entire marriage push, probably relieved someone else was handling it. Poor man. But Dad understood exactly what he was asking of him, having been an omega himself once expected to marry well, and that made it harder to keep brushing him off.
The first date was, in a word, disappointing.
Jiang Boyu had a decent face, Nuocheng would give him that much. Sharp jaw, nice eyes, the kind of bone structure that photographed well. He also managed to fake a personality warm enough to pass for a good heart, at least for the length of dinner, complimenting the wine, asking about Nuocheng’s work with what almost looked like genuine interest.
Nuocheng was almost hopeful. Almost.
Then, somewhere between dessert and the valet bringing the car around, Jiang Boyu leaned in a little too close and let his hand rest on Nuocheng’s knee, and Nuocheng, ever the scientist in pursuit of the truth, did what any reasonable man would do.
He checked.
It took two seconds of very deliberate, very obvious groping under the table for his whole face to fall.
"I’m so sorry," Nuocheng said, already reaching for his coat, "but I just remembered I have a very urgent call to make."
Jiang Boyu blinked at him, confused. "Right now?"
"Right now." Nuocheng was already standing, already three steps toward the door. "It was lovely meeting you. Please don’t call me."
He got in his car, slammed the door, and let out the most tragic groan of his entire week.
"Small," he told his driver, staring miserably out the window. "Do you understand? Small. After everything else went right."
His driver, wisely, said nothing.
The rest of the date had gone exactly as well as the knee incident suggested it would.
Jiang Boyu, apparently unbothered by his own shortcomings, had spent the walk to the valet stand trying to salvage things, complimenting Nuocheng’s cufflinks, his cologne, the shape of his eyebrows, of all things. Nuocheng had nodded along through all of it, smile fixed firmly in place, silently wishing he was anywhere else.
By the time he was back in his own car, he felt thoroughly wrung out. A dried-up raisin of a man.
"IS IT SO HARD," he announced to the empty seat beside him, loud enough that Old Fu’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, "TO FIND A MAN WITH GOOD GENES, A GOOD HEART, AND A BIG DICK?"