If life is a movie, Zekai is currently directing the director’s cut. He sits in the perfect lighting—an aura-capturing glow that seems to approve of his very existence—and radiates the specific, vibrating energy of a man who has successfully escaped the grey scale to live in Technicolor.

To understand Zekai, you have to start with his breakfast. Or rather, the breakfast he would have if he hadn’t skipped it today. It isn't just food; it is an installation. Two pieces of toast: one smeared with strawberry jam, the other with peach. A diptych of red and orange on a plate. On days when the world feels right, he adds two sunny-side-up eggs, eyes wide open, staring back at him. It is a curated morning ritual for a man who treats his life like a gallery opening.

But Zekai wasn't always the curator of his own carbohydrates. Once upon a time, he was a prisoner of the mundane. Picture a bank in Shanghai. A summer internship. A young economics student trapped in the fluorescent hum of financial analysis. It was there, amidst the spreadsheets, that he received a prophecy from a "senior person" in a neighboring cubicle—a man Zekai calls the oracle of the office. "Get out of here," the man told him. "Don't spend your precious summer in this stupid internship."

At the time, Zekai didn't understand. Now, having fled the box, he gets it. He is a fugitive from boredom, a man who lists his greatest fear as "losing touch with himself" or drifting into the numbness of chasing money without passion. He refuses to become a copy of a copy.

Today, Zekai wears black—a chic frame for his personality—though he admits a fondness for dark greens and blues. He navigates New York with a kind of "democratic beauty" routine: no fancy French creams, just a ten-dollar CVS face wash that clearly works, given his minimalist glow. He is grounded, yet his refrigerator tells the story of a high-low hedonist: Japanese whisky and gin sitting alongside two boxes of blueberries (not wine, just the antioxidants) and a lonely one-third of a cabbage waiting to become a tofu soup. It is a bachelor’s still life: Essentials Only.

When the lights go down, Zekai’s mind turns cinematic. He admits to a "curse around love," a phrase that sounds tragic but feels romantic. He gets nervous when he likes someone, creating a "little story in his heart" before a word is even spoken. His dreams are literal movies—recently, a text from an ex-girlfriend triggered a thirty-minute nap-time feature film involving secret vacations and sneaking around to avoid parents. Romeo and Juliet, directed by R.E.M. sleep.

In the waking world, he seeks a co-star who is "authentic," a word he values above all else. Do not ask him on a coffee date; he finds them uninspired. Zekai wants the museum. He wants to walk through a gallery, discussing the abstract and the visual, ending the night with music and dancing. He wants a Superstar who sparkles on the inside.

He is a man of contradictions. He keeps a Nietzsche on Love book on his toilet but admits to buying more books than he reads (a Basquiat notebook sits mostly empty, save for five or six entries). He reads Stories of Your Life and Others slowly, over four years, savoring the narrative like a fine lozenge.

If he were to throw a dinner party, the guest list would be a collision of worlds: Andy Warhol snapping Polaroids, his favorite painters, and Formula 1 driver Charles Leclerc—because a pianist who drives a Ferrari at 200 miles per hour is exactly the kind of "vroom" Zekai appreciates.

Zekai is proud of the dark moments, the loneliness, and the bravery it took to reinvent himself. He is people-watching in the park, eating Welch’s fruit snacks, and waiting for the moment to be brave again. He is the star of his own story, and the reviews are in: It’s a hit.