Rick’s introduction of Ever as his girlfriend at his family’s mansion in Tianmu turns a practical favor into a performance that both conceals and intensifies their attraction. The plan is meant to deflect his relatives’ pressure to reconcile with Jenna, but as Rick takes Ever’s hand and speaks as if her feelings are real, the distinction between acting and intimacy becomes harder to maintain.

The Proposal and Its Purpose

Rick is facing an unwanted family visit and the prospect of enduring it alone. Ever considers his earlier kindnesses: he brought her home after she passed out drunk, found her a fan, tried to help locate her artist, and once pretended to be her boyfriend at Club KISS to rescue her from an unwanted advance. She proposes reversing that favor by posing as the Loveboat girlfriend he could bring home.

Rick sees a strategic advantage in the arrangement. If his relatives believe he and Ever are together, he can demonstrate that he has tried to meet their expectations; when the supposed relationship ends a month later, he can use the breakup as an explanation for returning to Jenna. His eagerness gives the proposal a second edge: it is not only a temporary shield from family pressure but a way to settle the issue of Jenna with his relatives permanently. Ever agrees while resisting the physical implications of the part, insisting that they will not behave like a real couple.

Arrival at the Zhang Residence

The scale of the visit makes the pretense difficult to keep private. Guards in crisp blue open wrought-iron gates onto the driveway, and a driver salutes as the car enters. The Zhang residence stands in Tianmu, one of Taipei’s most expensive neighborhoods: stone walls border pink rosebushes described as imported from England, while flagstones and clipped grass lead to a white, two-story mansion with green shutters.

Ever and Rick try to tell Sophie and Xavier that their dating status has changed, but Sophie is occupied with the family and the house. Inside, Aunty Claire greets the visitors in a tailored sea-green qipao and emeralds. Rick is initially encumbered by his cousins Fannie and Felix; once free, he takes Ever’s hand and presents her as his girlfriend. The announcement produces a stunned silence. Fannie runs upstairs wailing, while Ever fears Aunty Claire may rebuke Rick for bringing home the wrong kind of partner. The moment immediately demonstrates how much social and familial judgment Ever imagines gathered around the introduction.

Playing the Part

The family gathering expands beyond the small visit Ever and Rick had anticipated. Aunty Claire has called the wider clan, and relatives and Xavier assemble in a spacious living room whose dark lattice ceiling frames painted Chinese mythology. Jade dragons and phoenixes, a five-masted ship sailing through clouds, and a jade-and-cypress screen place the arrival amid an elaborate display of family and cultural imagery. Rick apologizes to Ever for the scale of the gathering as he leads her toward the velvet settees, still holding her hand.

When conversation gives Rick an opening, Ever describes how her resentment toward him fell away after she recognized him upon arriving in Taiwan. Rick answers by interlacing his fingers with hers and responding as though he had not known she felt that way. His grip is firm; Ever tries to pull free, feels warmth rush to her face, and curses him silently. The practiced gesture advances the cover story, but the bodily response and her effort to escape it expose the attraction that the arrangement was supposed to contain. Aunty Claire, toying with her wedding band, responds with relief and happiness, welcoming what she believes to be a genuine relationship.

Consequences and Significance

The encounter establishes the central irony of the visit: Ever and Rick invent a relationship to manage other people’s expectations, yet the act gives them a socially sanctioned reason to hold hands and speak intimately. Rick’s plan also reveals how his family’s insistence on Jenna constrains his choices; the proposed month-long relationship is designed as evidence that he has tried, followed by an explanation for why he is no longer with Jenna. For Ever, helping him is a repayment of care, but it places her inside an emotionally charged role she had explicitly resisted.

The couple’s presentation belongs to a broader pattern of staged identity in the book. The Gang of Five name Asian-male stereotypes, including the expectation of effeminacy, and later reclaim the stereotype through a beauty-contest performance. In Rick and Ever’s visit, the performance is instead a private, heterosexual couplehood staged for relatives. In both cases, a role devised for an audience becomes a way to negotiate expectations; here, its most consequential effect is the unplanned intimacy produced by the act itself.