Bro | Chapter 14

Ma Zi seemed to know Wei Qian would be staking out his doorstep to block him, so he simply stopped going home.

He even stopped going to the hospital. Only when the money on the account was almost gone would he slip in like a dragon whose head appeared but tail did not, quietly paying in another sum. Ever since Wei Qian had spotted him once at the nightclub, he had hardened his heart and started avoiding Wei Qian.

That night, Wei Qian was off duty. He and San Pang were wandering around outside Ma Zi’s house for who knew how many times. San Pang snatched a cigarette out of Wei Qian’s hand, squatted down on the ground, stared at an anthill, and said, “That bastard really knows how to hide. Hey, Qian’er, tell me, back when that kid was in school, if he’d had this kind of roundabout brain, would he still have been unable to even count numbers properly?”

Wei Qian was irritated by his droning. “Shut up. So many words. Is your mouth leaking?”

San Pang clutched his chest. “You little bastards, all of you, once kids get grown they stop listening to their mother, is that it? I raised you with one handful of shit and one handful of piss…”

Wei Qian shot him a chilly glance.

San Pang’s voice came to an abrupt halt. A moment later, he said in a half-joking but meaningful tone, “Have you noticed your vicious streak’s been getting heavier lately? Ate too much spicy duck blood hotpot?”

Wei Qian ignored him. On the third floor, Wei Zhiyuan was lying against the window, pointing in a certain direction and mouthing something at them.

San Pang said, “What’s that monkey kid doing, clinging to the window like a gecko?”

Wei Qian grabbed San Pang and turned into the little alley behind Ma Zi’s house. In a low voice, he said, “I had him keep watch from a distance for me.”

San Pang was astonished. “For this, you even bought him binoculars?”

Wei Qian said, “No. He got some kind of plastic concave-convex lenses from who knows where, lined up the focal length himself, and pasted together a tube out of stiff paper.”

San Pang was overwhelmed with emotion. “Amazing. Clever hands, clever mind, perfect material for a scientist… holy shit, what’s this?”

Wei Qian lifted up a sack and a coil of rope from the corner of the wall. He picked up the sack himself and tossed the rope to San Pang. “Hiding from me? We’ll tie him up.”

San Pang looked down at the coil of rope in his hand, even more emotional than before. “Amazing. Kidnapping and tying people up, perfect material for a Liangshan bandit hero!”

Wei Qian took two steps, then belatedly realized what he had said. “Were you calling me a bandit?”

San Pang said, “Oh my, sweetheart, you really do have a strong sense of self-awareness.”

Wei Qian: “…”

San Pang could not stand him, so every few days he had to jab him a couple of times with a verbal barb. Wei Qian knew it in his heart, but he did not mind.

He was walking the road he had chosen himself, regardless of life or death, without complaint or regret.

But it was like walking alone through rain, in bitter wind and cold rain, mud all over his body. If someone was willing to cup their hands and warm him a little, he only felt soothed by it. He did not dislike it.

From a distance, Ma Zi cautiously checked the area. Only after making sure Fatty and Wei Qian were nowhere around did he sneak back to his own house like a thief. Ma Zi was so nervous it was unbearable. While fumbling for his key with trembling hands, he also kept darting his eyes around furtively. Finally, he got the key into the lock and let out a breath.

But before he had fully released it, his vision suddenly went black. Someone violently shoved him against the wall. A knee pinned him in place, and the hands twisting his arms behind him felt as if they were made of iron. A moment later, Ma Zi’s hands had been tied up.

Ma Zi’s heart sank. An uncontrollable urge to piss surged up inside him. His first thought was that the police had caught him. In his mind there were only two words, it’s over.

Wei Qian and San Pang supported Ma Zi, one on each side, and hauled him to Wei Qian’s house.

Song Xiaobao looked curiously at Ma Zi-ge, who had been tied up like a trussed chicken, then jumped out and shouted, “Kidnapping! Drop your weapons and you won’t be killed!”

San Pang smiled bitterly. “Dear little sister, you really do know how to make a mess worse.”

Wei Zhiyuan hurriedly grabbed her and shoved her toward the small room. Putting on a big brother’s tone, he said, “Did you finish your math homework? I’m not letting you copy mine.”

Having nowhere to copy homework from was a matter of life and death. Song Xiaobao pouted and instantly lost interest in the kidnapping.

Wei Zhiyuan pushed her into the room and took a glance outside through the crack in the door. San Pang saw it and immediately broke into a broad smile, giving him a thumbs-up in encouragement. Wei Zhiyuan smiled back at him to show friendliness, but still waited for his big brother’s reaction.

Wei Qian pulled out a box of the sort of mint candies the nightclub kept for guests free of charge and tossed it over. This time, Wei Zhiyuan’s face lit up. Beaming with delight, he reached out, caught it, and shut the door contentedly.

San Pang found the whole scene strangely familiar. Only later did he realize this was a textbook dog-training move, Wei Zhiyuan had only been one step away from opening his mouth to catch it.

“You,” San Pang said to Wei Qian, shaking his head, “you’re so immoral your ancestors are probably roasting lamb skewers on top of their graves.”

Then the two of them together pulled the sack off Ma Zi’s head.

Neither of them had expected Ma Zi to be so terrified. His eyes were unfocused. Only after a good long while, once he had clearly seen the two of them, did his dull eyeballs finally roll once. He sucked in a deep breath as if gasping for air, his legs went soft, and he dropped onto the floor on his ass.

“My second grandaunt’s uncle,” San Pang squatted down and carefully examined his complexion, “even your pimples have turned white from fright. Just how many guilty things have you done, little brother?”

Wei Qian had no intention of wasting words. He shoved San Pang aside. “Who was that person you met the other day? What did he give you? Why did he give you money? Why did you run the moment you saw me?”

San Pang tugged at him. “Slow down, slow down. Don’t fry his brain.”

“It’d be better if it was fried!” Wei Qian grabbed Ma Zi by the collar. “You want to talk yourself, or do you want me to search you?”

Ma Zi looked at his brother right in front of him. His tongue seemed to have tied itself in knots. He could not get out a single word. He could only look deeply at Wei Qian, his eyes reflecting a kind of heartbreaking grief.

Wei Qian did not care whether he was heartbroken or not. He did exactly what he said he would and immediately started searching him. Very quickly, he found several little paper packets in Ma Zi’s pocket.

Of course Wei Qian knew exactly what those were. He would never forget, even if he died, what kind of ghostlike state his mother had been in when she was dying. Yet for a moment he still found it hard to believe. After going still for an instant, he slowly unwrapped one of the paper packets, and the fine white powder inside finally became a reality he could not run from.

“What is this?” Wei Qian asked, and then his voice suddenly changed pitch. “What is this?!”

A line of tears slid from the corner of Ma Zi’s eye, like a turtle dying beside a dried-up riverbed.

Wei Qian suddenly jumped up and kicked him in the chest. Unfortunately he did not manage to land it solidly before San Pang grabbed him and dragged him backward onto the sofa. Wei Qian struggled with all his might to break free. “Since he doesn’t want to live anymore, I might as well just beat him to death directly. Clean, eco-friendly, energy-saving, emissions reduction!”

San Pang, a non-combatant, could not hold him down, and hurriedly said, “Kids, kids, those two kids are still in the room. Don’t start yelling about killing people in here.”

That one sentence miraculously calmed Wei Qian down. Wei Qian instinctively turned his head to glance toward the small room, and found the door was open by a crack. Two pairs of little eyes, one higher and one lower, were sneakily peeking out. The moment the two brats met his gaze, they were both startled. With a bang, they slammed the door shut in a blatantly obvious attempt to cover their tracks.

A big chunk of the anger in Wei Qian’s chest dissolved on the spot, half helpless, half amused.

Ma Zi, however, could no longer suppress himself. It was as if an entire world’s worth of barren despair had been bottled up in his chest. He threw himself backward, rolled sideways onto the floor. His hands were still tied, and he curled up into the shape of a big shrimp, knocking his head against the ground over and over, bawling his eyes out, as if there were no other way to vent even one ten-thousandth of the grief knotted inside him.

San Pang let go of Wei Qian and squatted down, his plump fingers dipping into a bit of the powder that had accidentally spilled on the floor.

He quietly waited for Ma Zi to cry for a while. Only when Ma Zi’s sobbing had weakened did San Pang speak softly and ask, “This is white flour, right?”

Ma Zi could only keep crying “wuwu,” unable to speak. San Pang lowered his head. When he raised it again, even his eyes had reddened. He desperately looked off in the other direction, trying to force the tears back, and his lips unconsciously pressed into a straight line.

“I know this definitely isn’t for you to smoke yourself. You wouldn’t do something like that. I also know it’s because our mom doesn’t have enough money…” San Pang’s voice was hoarse. At that point, though, he could not go on. He took several deep breaths, his broad back rising and falling like a bellows, before managing to continue. “But this is a dead road, little brother. Brother can’t just stand by and watch you walk down a dead road. If our mom found out, she could hang herself from the hospital radiator tonight. How could you… how come all of you are so damn insensible!”

Wei Qian kept a wooden face and said nothing. Ma Zi’s tears seemed to have run dry. He lay there half-dead, without any reaction.

San Pang wiped at his eyes with his fingers so no one would see he had cried.

The three of them sat facing one another in silence in the tiny living room for quite a while. Then suddenly Wei Qian walked to the bedside cabinet and pulled it open. Inside was a small stack of RMB, everything he had saved recently. He shoved the money into the pocket where Ma Zi had kept the drugs and said, one word at a time, “San-ge still has parents, he can’t make decisions for his family. In our family, I’m the one in charge. What I say goes. Look at this house of mine. If I sold it, how much could it fetch? How long could that support our mom? When the money runs out, you tell me. If I have money, I’ll give you money. If I don’t, I’ll sell this place.”

Ma Zi’s gaze slowly fell on the two of them, his eyes bloodshot all over.

Wei Qian said impatiently, “What are you looking at? You run into a little bit of trouble and the two of you just clutch your heads and bawl. What kind of promise do you have? Isn’t it just money? Isn’t it just money?”

When he got that far, he could not continue.

Yeah, what was so great about money? But they just did not have any!

Wei Qian stood up and dropped heavily onto the broken old sofa, doing his best to steady his heartbeat, because he could hear the sound of a trapped beast inside his chest.

San Pang sighed, untied Ma Zi’s ropes, helped him up, picked up the few packets of white flour, and flushed every last one of them down the toilet.

That night, Ma Zi took the money Wei Qian and San Pang had given him and left without saying a word.

When he reached the front of the building, the place where he and his mother had once fried youtiao, he suddenly stopped.

Ma Zi raised his head and shouted once toward the upstairs windows, “Ah!”

Wei Qian and San Pang pushed open the window and looked down.

With a thump, Ma Zi dropped to his knees on the spot. His bent back hunched into the shape of a shrimp. He kowtowed once to his brothers for their sincere loyalty and affection, then raised a hand to wipe the dirt and grass bits from his forehead, stood up, and left.

He was bad with words. At crucial moments, he simply could not speak. He had no choice but to do this.

A new crescent moon had risen in the sky. Once it rounded out again, it would be Mid-Autumn Festival.

That pervert who preyed on children still had not been found. The pervert probably had never expected that although among children there were many who were soft, sweet, and easy to bully, there could also be warriors like Wei Zhiyuan, who fought like they did not care whether they lived or died. Most likely that pervert had been jabbed with a pipe by Wei Zhiyuan badly enough to go impotent on the spot, and after that he never showed up again.

In the first week of the Mid-Autumn Festival season, Wei Qian took a major hit. As the saying goes, if you drift around in the jianghu, how can you avoid taking a blade? Right now he had only just managed to make a name for himself. If he really wanted to rise to fame in this tiny underworld, then without taking hundreds or thousands of cuts, he would never make it through.

This was the first time Wei Qian had been slashed with a cleaver. He was carried back. Even though they were all only flesh wounds, the blood all over his body was still terrifying enough.

Even so, though he had finally gone down at the end, at the time he had still managed to hold the scene. Le-ge was extremely grateful to him and also thought he was a talent worth grooming, so he gave him a huge holiday bonus and told him to go home and recuperate for a month or so before coming back. Wei Qian was put on paid leave.

Money could comfort Wei Qian’s heart, but it could not comfort Xiao Bao’s. In her whole life Xiao Bao had never seen so much blood before. On the spot she screamed as if a bamboo skewer had exploded under a rat’s ass, bawling at him with heaven-shaking force, like peals of thunder exploding one after another beside Wei Qian’s ears, annoying him nearly to death.

San Pang had completely degenerated into their household nanny, patting Xiao Bao on the back. “There, there, don’t cry, don’t cry. It’s okay. Your brother’s thick-skinned and tough. He’s fine.”

Xiao Bao cried so hard she started hiccuping.

“Sa-San-ge…” she said in broken stops, “My Ge, my Ge… is he… is he going to… die?”

“…” San Pang fell silent for a moment. “To hell with you, unlucky little brat. What kind of nonsense is that? Can’t you hope for something good?”

Xiao Bao cried even more heartbreakingly. “I-I saw him… roll up his eyes!”

San Pang let out a heavy sigh. “My little ancestor, that was obviously because you pissed him off!”

Compared with her earth-shaking reaction, Xiao Yuan’s reaction was much calmer. He kept his head lowered and stayed squatting silently beside Wei Qian’s bed the whole time, like some unnoticed ghost at a person’s back. Wei Qian’s head hurt from Xiao Bao’s racket, but seeing how heartbroken she was crying, it was not as if he could just silence her with a shout, so he could only try to distract himself.

Wei Qian stretched out a hand wrapped in gauze and roughly rubbed at Wei Zhiyuan’s head, gripping the back of his skull and making him raise his face. “Hey, what’re you hanging your head for, picking up money or something…”

Wei Qian’s voice broke off sharply in the middle.

He saw that Wei Zhiyuan, who had been keeping his head lowered, had red-rimmed eyes and was silently letting tears fall patter patter. He was biting his teeth hard and clenching his tiny fists, looking both heartbroken and furious.

Wei Zhiyuan was not yet ten that year. He had grown a little taller, but puberty’s explosive growth had not had time to begin yet. Deep in his heart he felt a grief and rage that were painfully clear and hard to endure, believing that he himself was dragging big brother down and forcing him to risk his life like this for a little money.

Only children raised in honey jars do not want to grow up. Wei Zhiyuan was not one of those. At that moment he desperately wanted to become stronger, desperately wanted to become a real man.

Song Xiaobao’s howling only made Wei Qian feel helpless, but Wei Zhiyuan moved him. Rarely softening, Wei Qian shifted a little to the side, making a small bit of room beside him, and patted it. “Get up here.”

Wei Zhiyuan obediently climbed onto the bed and carefully curled himself into Wei Qian’s arms.

Song Xiaobao looked at him longingly. “Ge, I want to sleep with you too.”

Wei Qian had no defense at all against that look from her, so he could only compromise. “Fine, you come over too. I’m warning you, Song Xiaobao, this is the last time. You’re a girl. Always sleeping with men, what kind of thing is that? How old are you already? You don’t know shit.”

San Pang clicked his tongue in wonder. Little wolf cub Wei Zhiyuan clung to Wei Qian’s clothes like a boneless cat and would not let go, sticky beyond belief. On the other side, Song Xiaobao had turned into a myna that could only repeat one sentence, over and over, “Ge, let’s not do this anymore. You’re not allowed to do this anymore.”

And Wei Qian, a person whose patience level was in the negatives, surprisingly did not lose his temper with either of them.

At first, every time Xiao Bao said it once, Wei Qian answered once. Later, when he realized she had turned the line into a wheel rolling around and around, he got so exasperated he laughed. “Hurry up and go to sleep. No talking.”

Xiao Bao said, “Ge, you’re not allowed to do this anymore.”

Wei Qian: “…”

He sighed, sat up with effort, and patted Xiao Bao to coax her to sleep. “I’ll listen to you. You’re my boss, all right?”

San Pang silently locked the door for them and left by himself. Suddenly he felt things were not that serious after all. With these two children tying him down, no matter what, Wei Qian would never sink so far as to stop recognizing even his own family.