this is an audio not!fic based on an idea i had, which
minnarr and i discussed for a while, so several of the ideas in this are hers (and i mostly, i think, remembered to say that as i was talking when it was relevant). the short pitch is: han ying lives and ends up working for ping'an as part of the bank/information network (a minna idea that is absolutely galaxy brain and my new favorite han ying lives au). he has a journey of self-discovery. he also ends up sleeping with wen kexing (my original idea that the rest of this spun backwards out of).
also some other things that i mentioned or referenced during this notfic: the summary for with inexplicable fondness by noelia_g which contains the line: "One, Han Ying would die for Zhou Zishu - and Wen Kexing likes that in a man." and also ao3 user acrobats's use of "ducklings" to refer to the tianchuang members who become siji disciples (as she mentions on the tags of this fic, this absolutely should become a popular tag). and LASTLY but also MOST IMPORTANTLY, this owes a lot to the hanwen dynamic in The Mating Rituals of Violent Men by LuckyDragon.
this is... a lot longer than i was expecting, which is apparently what happens when i give myself notes and a mic and no limits. so if you would like to hear about 45 minutes of me rambling about han ying, check it out! fair warning, since it's a notfic, i did minimal editing: especially obvious is that my heater was on at the beginning and the end. there's some discussion of sex and also discussion of murder but both are non-explicit references.