Bro | Chapter 35

By the third day, everything in Wei Qian’s home had already completely returned to normal.

Even though Wei Qian had only come back to recuperate and hadn’t done a thing, his role was like a cross between a stabilizing pillar and a lucky mascot. As long as he stood there, everyone could calmly go about whatever they were supposed to be doing.

Early that morning, Wei Zhiyuan said hello, packed his bag, and got ready to head off to report for summer camp. The moment he opened the door, an enamel mug upstairs came crashing down with a loud clang. Wei Zhiyuan drew back his foot and looked up.

At the door of San Pang’s place upstairs stood a rather pretty woman, unleashing a million-decibel sonic assault with her voice toward San Pang’s home. “Xiong Yingjun, get your ass out here!”

Lao Xiong had locked the security gate and only pulled the inner door open a crack. Hiding inside, he gave a weak little mewl. “M-Madam, calm your anger.”

Madam could not calm down. Her eyes were red with fury, making her look like a whole big rabbit with double eyelids. “Fine, you’ve really grown capable now. Gone for months without a single word. I thought you were dead! Why didn’t you just die outside for good? The second you come back, you hole up in some little fox spirit’s house. Tell me, Xiong Yingjun, you’re not getting any younger, would it kill you to have some shame?!”

Wei Qian almost sprayed out his soy milk. He hurriedly came out, stumbling deep-foot, shallow-foot, and waved Wei Zhiyuan off. “Hurry up and get to school. Quit standing there watching the fun.”

Then he shut his own door behind him, leaned in the corridor with both arms folded across his chest, and listened to the “sounds of heaven” from upstairs with the kind of enjoyment usually reserved for a concert.

Seeing that a spectacle of the lawful wife catching the mistress was about to unfold outside, San Pang hurriedly shoved Lao Xiong aside with a miserable look on his face, opened his own security door, and said in a low, placating tone, “Tie Shan-saozi, I’m begging you, please take a careful look. Is there any ‘little fox spirit’ in the world that looks like me, your Lao Zhu?”

Mrs. Xiong was instantly stunned by San Pang’s huge face, which took over her entire field of vision. She did not make a sound for a full half minute.

That coward Lao Xiong took the chance to tiptoe backward into the house, but Mrs. Xiong quickly caught on to what he was trying to do.

With a great shout, she shot out her sharp nails and with a deft push sent San Pang aside, then charged two steps into the house, dragged Lao Xiong out, rolled up her sleeves, gave him a thoroughly one-sided round of domestic violence, and hauled him back home.

San Pang was filled with solemn admiration. Barehanded and bare-armed, he pantomimed taking off a hat and bent at the waist as he saw them off downstairs. Wei Qian could not help making the same hat-off salute as San Pang.

The two of them watched, delighted, as Lao Xiong was dragged away alive and kicking, and with a kind of mutual understanding no one else could have understood, they said in unison, “If someone’s cheap, heaven will collect the debt!”

… Lao Xiong’s expression was one of indescribable grief and indignation.

But two days later, Lao Xiong came back again.

He knocked on Wei Qian’s door. The first thing Wei Qian said when he saw him was, “You still haven’t been beaten to death?”

“…” Lao Xiong was silent for a moment. “Still alive and well. Sorry to disappoint you.”

Lao Xiong offered Wei Qian two options. One was that, based on a fair market price, Wei Qian could give him a slight discount and sell him the share Wei Qian had taken, then take the money and leave. The other was to treat Wei Qian’s money as a stake, let Lao Xiong sell everything together, and then split the profits with him.

As long as Wei Qian wasn’t an idiot, he would pick the second option. So Lao Xiong clapped his palms together and revealed the real purpose of this visit. “Excellent. Since you still haven’t started school, come sell medicine with me during summer vacation.”

Wei Qian stuck his injured leg out in front of Lao Xiong and asked him, “Xiong Laoban, touch your conscience and tell me it’s still there and hasn’t been carried off by a dog.”

Lao Xiong asked expressionlessly, “Don’t you want to watch with your own eyes how your long journey turns into RMB and comes wobbling into your account in a neat little line?”

Wei Qian: “…”

Lao Xiong’s eyes rolled, and he immediately came up with a new proposal. “I think Mr. San and I are very much kindred spirits. In the future we can drag him aboard the pirate ship too.”

Wei Qian asked from the bottom of his heart, “How exactly did you see that?”

Lao Xiong said, “I believe Mr. San is a person with profound Zen flavor. Just look at his name. It’s said that when he was little, a monk passed by his house and insisted that he had an affinity with the Buddha and wanted to take him away to be tonsured. But his worldly parents couldn’t bear to part with him, so they compromised and took the ‘yu’ from ‘wooden fish’ and named him Tan Yu.”

Wei Qian narrowed his eyes and listened for a while, then realized that San Pang’s skin had grown even thicker than before. He could actually twist a lifelong humiliating given name like ‘spittoon’ into something like this. So he asked, “Didn’t he tell you his surname was originally ‘Lin,’ that he fell from the sky, and that Leifeng Pagoda got smashed down when he hit the ground?”

Lao Xiong sighed long and deeply. “Our values are incompatible. Mere worldly man…”

Wei Qian said, “Go tell that to the granny who ‘stitched closely before your journey.’”

As they were speaking, Xiao Bao happened to come running back from outside. Lao Xiong looked her up and down carefully. “This is your little sister? How old is the girl?”

Wei Qian casually pressed a hand on Xiao Bao’s head. “She’ll be fourteen soon. Little Tuxingsun here still isn’t as tall as some ten-year-olds.”

“It’s fine, late bloomers grow later.” Lao Xiong looked at Xiao Bao kindly, seeing through the surface straight to the essence. “Look at those big feet of hers. She won’t end up short.”

Xiao Bao made a face of disgust. She really could not tell whether that was supposed to be praise or an insult.

Before leaving, Wei Qian walked Lao Xiong out. Lao Xiong asked as if casually, “Where’s your little brother?”

Wei Qian said, “He went to summer camp.”

Lao Xiong was silent for a moment. “Summer camp? He’s pretty good at studying, right?”

Wei Qian gave a hypocritical smile. “Not really. He’s nothing special, just so-so. Only a little better than me.”

“Smart, good at studying.” Lao Xiong shook his head as though sighing over something, then said to Wei Qian, “You really have to educate him properly.”

Wei Qian froze. “Huh?”

Lao Xiong slowly raised a hand and gestured. “A blade, when it gets thin enough, feels as if the whole thing has become nothing but its edge. Most wicked weapons and demon blades in ancient times followed that path. Things like that go off the orthodox road. Once drawn, they have to take away a layer of flesh and blood. But people are not steel. If a person lives too ‘thin,’ that’s too dangerous. Their blessings grow thin, their life grows thin too…”

“Wait a sec, I’m a bit uncultured,” Wei Qian said, digging at his ear. “Could I trouble you, respected elder, to express yourself in language that’s a bit more human?”

“…” Lao Xiong looked at him. A wronged expression slowly appeared on his immortal-sage-like face. “What the hell did I ever do to offend that little brat in your family? He actually tipped off my wife. If this keeps up, if this keeps up, I won’t spare him!”

With that, Lao Xiong stalked off in tiny murderous little steps.

As for Wei Zhiyuan reporting him behind his back, Wei Qian thought, how to put it? It was a bit immoral, but immoral in a deeply satisfying way.

Still, since the complaint had made its way to him, Wei Qian decided he ought to at least make some gesture. So when Wei Zhiyuan came home for the weekend, his older brother crooked a finger at him with a face that was all nose-not-nose and eyes-not-eyes. “You, get your ass over here!”

Wei Zhiyuan’s heart gave a jolt, and he obediently rolled over.

Wei Qian propped his injured leg on the low table to one side and lit a cigarette with a click. In a tone of confess-leniency, resist-severity, he asked Wei Zhiyuan, “Go on then, say it yourself. What exactly did you do?”

Wei Zhiyuan’s mind went blank on the spot. Instinctively, he thought the matter at the meat-processing factory had been discovered.

Yet his first reaction was not what would become of him, not whether the police would come arrest him, and not whether some charge would stick to him. It was what he should do now that his big brother knew.

Would big brother think he was scheming? Would he think he was frightening? Would he think the thing he had raised by his side was a hideous little demon?

Wei Zhiyuan panicked at once. His face turned pale in a flash.

Wei Qian had not expected such a huge reaction from him. He froze, then reflected on it and realized he really had not said anything particularly harsh.

He gave a dry cough and lifted his eyelids, making himself sound a little less fierce and evil. “Look at you. How old are you now, huh? Still doing this kind of thing. Fine, even if you did it, you still let people find out and come complain to me about it… Ahem. Of course, I’m not saying it would’ve been right as long as no one found out!”

Wei Zhiyuan’s drifting reason finally, little by little, returned to him. Right. With the tone his brother had used just now when calling him over, how could it possibly have been anything serious?

Besides, although the person in the warehouse had died, the door had been locked by the man changing shifts, and that person had walked in by himself. All Wei Zhiyuan had done was use the guy’s money to buy a little alcohol, that was all. Not only had he already cleaned everything up so no one would investigate, but even if someone did somehow trace the whole cause and effect, who could convict him on that alone?

Wei Zhiyuan’s rattled, loosened heart steadied itself and returned to its hard-as-iron state.

Glancing at Wei Qian, Wei Zhiyuan viciously despised himself for losing his composure like that just now.

This young boy’s heart was like a sea. On the surface it was calm and rippleless, always seeming rational and quiet, but inside it held enormous rebellion and ceaseless agitation, balanced for a long time at a dangerous, hair-trigger critical point.

In that sea of heart, Wei Zhiyuan thought, So what if big brother knows? Anyway, I already swore that from now on I would take good care of him for the rest of his life. Whatever I have, I’ll give to big brother. Even if he wants my life, I’ll count it as repaying the kindness of him picking me up and raising me back then. Then we’ll be square.

So what did it matter what big brother thought of him?

Wei Zhiyuan deceived himself, thinking, “I’m like this anyway. However other people see me, it doesn’t matter.”

But on the surface, toward Wei Qian, Wei Zhiyuan still maintained his usual obedient manner and admitted fault smoothly. “I was wrong. Next time I’ll definitely make an anonymous call.”

“Pah!” Wei Qian took a firm parental stand, outwardly showing disapproval while secretly expressing his own approval, and decided to give Wei Zhiyuan a reward.

He hopped up on one leg, slung an arm over Wei Zhiyuan’s shoulder, softened his tone, and said, “Tell Grandma not to cook later. We’re eating out.”

Wei Zhiyuan’s expression stayed natural, as though there was not the slightest abnormality, but the palm supporting Wei Qian around the waist had already sweated through.

During the last month of summer vacation, Wei Qian and San Pang followed Lao Xiong all over the place and negotiated quite a lot of business deals.

Only then did Wei Qian realize that Lao Xiong was absolutely nothing like the simpleton he pretended to be. His network ran extremely wide, and he had a hand in every kind of business. Thinking back to their trip to the Northwest, it became obvious. Even though everyone’s goal had been trafficking medicine, on the road they had not been influenced in the slightest by that final objective. As long as it could make money, as long as there was visible opportunity, they would traffic whatever was profitable.

Lao Xiong’s random hammer-here, club-there way of doing things did not seem to be the blind flailing of a headless fly either. He seemed to be accumulating something, feeling something out.

When there was nothing much to do, Wei Qian still liked hanging around Lao Xiong’s pharmacy. Occasionally he would deal with a few customers, but most of the time he just chatted, and every now and then he and San Pang would team up to needle Lao Xiong.

Lao Xiong had the stomach of a prime minister and could hold boats in it. He did not stoop to bickering with youngsters.

When they got onto the subject of Lao Xiong stubbornly insisting on buying those pots, San Pang could not help asking, “Xiong Laoban, for someone like our Qian’er here, a poor ghost with eyes only for money, sure, fine. But you, old sir, with such a big family business, why are you working this hard too?”

Lao Xiong said leisurely, “Of course it’s for profit. A so-called businessman is someone who earns profit by taking on certain risks. You agree, don’t you? Bearing risk and making prudent choices are a businessman’s basic skills.”

Wei Qian immediately tore down his platform. “Forgive my poor eyesight. All I’ve seen is your skill at taking risks, and dragging other people onto the pirate ship to share those risks with you. The rest is too subtle. I didn’t see it.”

Lao Xiong gave his opinion of that view in one brief comment. “Long hair, short sight.”

San Pang waved his palm fan and laughed so hard his gums showed.

Wei Qian decided that before school started, he really ought to cut the half-long hair that was heading in the direction of beast-type artist.

“Back then you were the one who shamelessly insisted on getting onto my pirate ship, Xiao Wei, so don’t go reversing black and white. Besides, you ought to thank me. The pirate ship I dragged you aboard is a real Noah’s Ark.” Lao Xiong smacked the table grandly and launched into a personal speech. “Let me tell you what kind of ten years the future ten years are going to be. First, labor-intensive industries have no future whatsoever. All those things like opening restaurants, manufacturing, contract processing, none of them will do. They can only be squeezed until they have no room left to survive under the day-after-day competition of their peers and rising labor costs.”

“For example, you.” Lao Xiong pointed at San Pang. “San-tongxue, that idea of yours about opening a hotpot place and selling pork belly, you’d better drop it. That thing of yours can maybe scrape by and feed you, but if you want to make it really work, it’s too difficult. With your IQ, stop dreaming about being especially successful.”

San Pang took a blow straight to the level of his life ideals and stared blankly at Xiong Laoban.

“As for technology-intensive enterprises, all those artsy ones, high-end ones, cutting-edge ones, count them all, they’ve got far more vitality than the first kind. So going to university has its benefits. Knowledge and technology really can change a person’s fate.” Lao Xiong shot Wei Qian a look and stressed the next part. “But the spring of technology-intensive enterprise is still only halfway here. Our whole society hasn’t had time to reach that level yet. Maybe ten years from now we’ll have cultivated the right soil for a technology sector, but not now. Right now it’s still sprouting. Over the next ten years, this kind of industry will grow stumblingly under the shadow of monopoly. Inside it, it’s easy for you to mix your way into the middle class, and it’s also possible for you to make something of yourself, but the latter will require time.”

Wei Qian shut up and listened carefully to Lao Xiong’s words.

Lao Xiong picked up his teacup, took a drink, and smacked his lips hard. “Only capital-intensive industries, those are the truly top-tier ones that won’t decline over the next ten years. One or two people, projects worth several hundred million, several billion, tens of billions, you can all leverage them. What sort of realm is that? Endless streams of cash flow through your hands, and in your head there won’t even be any stingy little concept like ‘making money.’ But there’s one thing. This kind of industry has a naturally high threshold. First, you have to have capital. Primitive capital accumulation is a painstaking, trail-blazing process. It’s harder than everything you’ll do later. Boarding my ark is the same as taking a shortcut through the primitive accumulation stage, got it? Tsk, you ungrateful little brat.”

San Pang jabbed Wei Qian with his elbow. “Qian’er, what he means is, following him through life and death once is luck like winning the lottery.”

Wei Qian said, “Exactly. So how come I didn’t use that rare bit of luck on buying lottery tickets?”

Lao Xiong shot him a sidelong look. His expression darkened a little. “But I admit I made a mistake. This time I did misjudge the situation and got the risk assessment wrong. I especially wronged Xiao Liu. It’s a pity there’s hardly anyone left in his family, otherwise I could still make it up somehow.”

At the mention of Xiao Liu, all three of them fell silent for a while. San Pang, the only one who had not been involved, sighed. “Brother just didn’t have that fate.”

Lao Xiong lit a cigarette and stuck it upside down in the ashtray, letting thread after thread of smoke rise by itself, as if he had planted an incense stick.

San Pang and Wei Qian exchanged a look and suddenly felt a bit of warmth. When the two of them had commemorated Ma Zi under the big locust tree, they had done the exact same thing, sticking a cigarette upside down.

Lao Xiong said to Wei Qian, “Actually, at first I didn’t want to bring you along. You’re the kind of person who…”

Wei Qian said, “Whose values don’t match yours.”

Lao Xiong rolled his eyes. After they had gone through life and death together, it would not be an exaggeration to say theirs was a friendship forged by fate. He no longer held back many things, so he spoke plainly. “The first time you came to help me watch the store, you were orderly and didn’t panic. At first I thought you were a talent, and facts proved you really were, bold, clever, and good at seizing opportunities. But that time when I gave you five thousand-yuan, you really just took it?”

Wei Qian said, “Oh, so you didn’t sincerely want to give it?”

“No…” Lao Xiong choked for a moment. “That’s not exactly what I mean. If it was more than what you deserved, you should at least have declined a little, right?”

Wei Qian said, “If I’d declined, would you still have given it?”

Lao Xiong said, “I still would have.”

Wei Qian rolled his eyes. “Are you sick, Comrade Xiong Yingjun?”

Lao Xiong sighed. “You need to understand that at your age, opportunities, judgment, insight, and experience are what matter most. Why are you staring so hard at those few coins? Money is temporary. Can it take you far in the long run? I’m telling you, money is water. The tighter you clutch it, the less you have. Believe it or not?”

Poverty had once been Wei Qian’s reverse scale. But by now there were already sixty or seventy thousand-yuan in his account. At that time, that was no small sum. Miraculously, without him even noticing it, his attitude toward that reverse scale had loosened a little too. He could even bring it out onto the table and discuss it with a kind of self-mockery.

Wei Qian smiled. “Don’t stand there talking without a backache. Who can’t preach grand principles? You think I don’t know money’s a bastard? You rich second-generation guy dripping with gold and silver, don’t pull that on us ordinary people. If you also had elders above and kids below to support, and had lived that kind of life where you never knew where the next meal was coming from and were constantly stretched thin, then you’d be pinching every penny the same as me.”

Lao Xiong grabbed Wei Qian’s face with both hands and forcibly yanked his eyelids downward. “Roll that eye-roll back in for me. Which one of us is the one talking without a backache? Your big brother here belongs square and proper to the generation from before Reform and Opening. Go home and ask your old lady. What did we have when we were kids? Our family was so poor we couldn’t even lift the lid off the pot. When I was barely in my teens and following my dad into business at the risk of losing our heads, you little bastards still didn’t even know what monkey mountain you were waving banners on.”

What he said was true, and Wei Qian and San Pang both fell silent.

“Long hair, short sight. You really are long hair, short sight.” Lao Xiong said in exasperation, hating that iron would not become steel. “What hurts people isn’t poverty or material deprivation. It’s comparison. Comparison, understand? You’re always looking at other people, feeling anxious, with no confidence.”

San Pang thought of all the bastard things Wei Qian had done and immediately clapped his hands in praise. “Qian’er, Xiong-ge is right!”

Wei Qian waved a hand. “What you’re saying is all nonsense. Those old monks in the deep mountains and old forests, the ones who are seventy or eighty, every one of them is more open-minded than you are. If you’ve got the skill, go compete with them in meditation. So what if I’ve got no experience? So what if I’m anxious? I’m just some young guy who rolled out of the mud. What am I supposed to use as confidence, sell my body? Honestly, what annoys me most is old men like you, strict with others and lenient with yourselves.”

San Pang thought about it and seemed to find that reasonable too, so he immediately switched sides. “Xiong-ge, Qian’er is right!”

Wei Qian and Lao Xiong both looked at him at the same time and ignored this wall-growing reed.

In September, Wei Qian finally left Lao Xiong’s shop for a short while and went to report to school. After military training, the skin that had only just barely gotten a little lighter again after more than a month turned dark again at light speed. When he came home carrying his luggage, he ran into San Pang, who pointed at him and laughed so hard his teeth showed but not his eyes. “Come on, brother, hurry up and sing a scene from The Case of Chen Shimei for me. With that look of yours, you don’t even need makeup. Stick on a crescent moon and you can ‘judge yin by night and judge yang by day’!”

Meanwhile, after Wei Zhiyuan entered middle school, he began to reveal an even less human side of himself. In the first year of junior high, he was in first year. In the second year, he jumped straight into the elite third-year class.

As if to verify Lao Xiong’s words, he really did grow thinner and thinner. Wei Qian, slow to notice, finally began paying attention to him. He discovered that when the child was not speaking and not smiling, there seemed to be two sharp little knives hidden inside his calm gaze. Only at home was he still as sensible and considerate as before.

But Wei Zhiyuan had known how to play dumb and act cute ever since he was little. Back then, traces of it could still be seen. Now, though, Wei Qian could no longer quite get a read on him.

Only occasionally, at the dinner table, when the whole family casually chatted along with the news on television, could Wei Qian catch from Wei Zhiyuan’s scattered remarks a few inadvertent traces of extremity.

And also, Wei Zhiyuan no longer liked sticking to him. Of course, once boys reached a certain age, that was a road they all had to walk. Wei Qian used to find the little brat’s clinginess annoying, but now he suddenly felt a little lost.

And in truth, Wei Zhiyuan toward him was more than just “not clingy.”

One day, Xiao Bao caught sight of the fact that the scratch paper Wei Zhiyuan was using was actually the school notice about the winter long-distance running competition, so she casually asked him about it.

Wei Zhiyuan shook his head. “I don’t want to participate. I’m not signing up.”

He said it politely enough, but what he was actually thinking was, running lap after lap around one thing was what donkeys did. Stupid as hell. No way was he going.

Luckily, what came out of his mouth sounded polite enough, so Song Xiaobao picked up the thread and continued. “I remember when da-ge was in junior high, I think he joined it once. I think he even got second prize… Hey, was it second or third? I can’t remember.”

Wei Zhiyuan’s pen paused.

Half a month later, Xiao Bao saw on his desk a certificate that said “First Prize in the Winter Long-Distance Running Competition” and a prize notebook.

At this age, Song Xiaobao’s late-developing mind had finally caught up to the average level. She was not stupid enough to blurt out that Wei Zhiyuan had said before that he did not want to participate. She only wondered quietly to herself: Is er-ge competing with big brother?

Wei Qian spent his college life in calm, half working and half studying. He selectively ignored Lao Xiong’s warning not to drill himself into a money hole and accepted the part about “anything can be trafficked.” From phone cards on campus to reselling medical equipment alongside Lao Xiong, he was busy from morning till night.

Other people’s free time was “playing ball, fooling around, falling in love.” Wei Qian’s free time was “selling things, selling things, selling lots and lots of things.”

Wei Zhiyuan also seemed to have become a dormant volcano, always tugging on one of Wei Qian’s nerves, yet he still remained well-behaved, studied hard, and improved every day. As long as no one provoked him, he did not do anything out of line.

Of course, whether he had done anything out of line was simply something Wei Qian did not know.

Eight days out of ten, Wei Qian was either outside with Lao Xiong or living at school. When he got busy, he could barely manage to come home once a week.

And every time he came home, sleep became torture for Wei Zhiyuan.

As Wei Zhiyuan grew taller bit by bit, catching up to and even faintly surpassing his older brother, a certain unspeakable agitation became harder and harder to ignore.

That small patch of shadow from his youth, which he had locked away in the deepest part of his heart, grew heavier and heavier, spread wider and wider.

Wei Zhiyuan instinctively resisted it, but day by day he became less able to withstand that nameless thirst and restlessness.

Fortunately, at this very time, that is, in Wei Qian’s senior year, it was as though everything had finally turned around after reaching rock bottom. The shantytown in their city, like a malignant tumor, was finally being renovated. They were going to move out of there at last.