Bro | Chapter 41

Wei Qian truly had no interest at all in what was inside Wei Zhiyuan’s room.

Wei Zhiyuan’s increasingly withdrawn temperament had, for a time, made him worry, but he still believed the boy was already old enough to know his limits in everything.

In Wei Qian’s eyes, Xiao Bao and Xiao Yuan had always been different.

Song Xiaobao was a girl, after all, and for Wei Qian to understand her was honestly a bit difficult. She looked too young, and her personality was not exactly very grown-up either. Sometimes Wei Qian did know that she could barely be counted as a young lady now. At the very least, she knew enough to care about face and dignity, so she could no longer say whatever she wanted and curse however she pleased the way she had when she was little. But he still could not help seeing her as a child.

That problem did not exist with Wei Zhiyuan.

When Wei Qian looked at him, he would occasionally think of what he himself had been like at that age. Strangely enough, he only felt that Wei Zhiyuan was “young,” yet more and more, he no longer felt that he was a child.

Since he was not a child, Wei Qian did not want to seem too meddlesome.

So after sending Song Xiaobao away, Wei Qian pulled Wei Zhiyuan’s door shut from the outside and left.

That evening, when Wei Zhiyuan came back to inspect the glorious achievements of that silly girl Song Xiaobao, he pushed open the door and, with a single glance, knew no one had come into the room.

He had left several tells in the room, to judge what had happened while he was away. Setting aside the ones farther in, there were two relatively obvious ones inside the room. When he left that morning, the chair in front of the desk had been deliberately left crooked, with one square chair leg lodged right in a crack between the floorboards. That crack was his reference mark. If anyone wanted to rummage through his bookcase, they would definitely have to either straighten that chair or move it aside, because it was too much in the way.

There was also the inside doorknob, where he had stuck an extremely thin layer of plastic film. Like a phone screen, the film would normally gather tiny specks of dust invisible to the eye, so the moment someone grabbed it, a clear fingerprint would be left behind. If someone entered his room and then came back out, of course they would have to pull the doorknob, and traces would be left.

But the chair had not moved, and the inside handle was just as clean as when he had left.

Only the strand of hair tied in the crack of the door had been tugged and snapped. If the door had been pushed open gently, the hair would have fallen off. Snapping directly like that meant someone had shoved his door open with brute force. It was very unlikely to have been his brother. It was probably that careless idiot Song Xiaobao.

And big brother, he had probably just taken a glance, driven Xiao Bao away, then pulled the door shut for him again.

By that point, Wei Zhiyuan had, astonishingly, guessed eight or nine parts out of ten of what had happened that morning.

Wei Zhiyuan’s mood instantly became very complicated. He was not someone who laid bare his heart and lungs for others. On some level, he was even a little solitary. Most of his dealings with other people were just surface work, and the times when he was truly sincere were few.

Even if there had been an element of deliberate guidance in it, he was still, in the end, a young man who was a complete blank slate when it came to feelings. When he showed part of himself to his big brother, he could never help but feel uneasy, shy, and even somewhat worried.

But Wei Qian did not even look.

Had big brother’s curiosity all been carried off by a dog?

Wei Zhiyuan felt as if a great deal of feeling had been wasted, with nowhere to land. At the same time, his mood turned subtly complicated.

If Xiao Bao were the one acting very wrong, would big brother also have stopped at the doorway? Of course, Xiao Bao was a girl, so it certainly would not have been convenient. But if she were a boy instead?

Wei Zhiyuan slowly set his chair straight and sat down in front of the desk.

Between Wei Zhiyuan and Xiao Bao, one caused no worry and the other caused endless worry. Out of both feeling and reason, big brother would naturally keep a closer eye on the one who caused trouble. That would make both of them uncomfortable. Xiao Bao felt that their brother was always targeting her, always finding fault with her, never giving her any freedom. And as for Wei Zhiyuan…

He felt terribly conflicted. When he tried as hard as he could to make himself as perfect as possible for that person’s sake, that person instead stopped paying attention to him.

Wei Zhiyuan knew this line of thinking was unreasonable. He also knew his heart was in chaos. But he could not calm himself.

If he could calm down, if this matter would stop tormenting him like a fishbone lodged in his throat, then perhaps it would not have been a feeling that was so impossible to give up in the first place.

If he had even a trace more reason, he would never have defied the whole world and thrown himself into this fire.

But Wei Zhiyuan was, after all, a man of action. Since this path would not work, he quickly found a second opportunity.

While Wei Qian was flipping through a newspaper, Wei Zhiyuan passed by and, as if inadvertently, pointed to a recommended title on one of the arts pages and said, “This one is pretty good. I have it. Ge, do you want to read it?”

Wei Qian had been bored out of his mind staying at home, so he gladly accepted the recommendation.

Wei Zhiyuan brought him the book, then waited patiently for a while.

Wei Qian had no concept whatsoever of respecting books. He always tossed them aside casually after finishing them, searched all over the place for them when he wanted to read them again, and folded a huge dog-ear wherever he had gotten to. He treated books about the same way he treated his socks.

For Wei Zhiyuan, that made his reading progress very easy to track.

After Wei Qian finished one book, Wei Zhiyuan repeated the same method at the right moment and handed him a second.

Wei Qian rarely had the leisure to sit quietly at home and read, and this reminded him of those two years in high school, sitting in the classroom. Those were probably the easiest years of his entire life.

And Wei Zhiyuan knew that never a third time. One more time after this, and once Wei Qian finished reading, he would go into his room and take a book himself without even asking.

…Two days later, Wei Qian did indeed help himself, just as he had wished.

At first, he would stuff the book back and casually pull out another one. After about a week of this, Wei Qian gradually started treating Wei Zhiyuan’s room like a reading room, because Wei Zhiyuan’s room was cleaner and tidier than his own.

Wei Qian discovered that the books his younger brother collected were strangely esoteric. Some were obscure translated foreign editions. Their clouded, baffling narrative styles and utterly incomprehensible translations both made reading more difficult and made them seem terribly dull. Yet the reason classics became classics was definitely not because they were obscure and hard to understand. There had to be some reason for it.

When a person has lived through enough, when he can intuitively grasp certain things, then he will be able to draw some degree of resonance or disagreement from them regardless of the form in which the author expresses them. And those two things are the foundation that lets reading go on.

But Wei Qian had been sick the entire winter and had never had proper rest. Even relying on youth to recover quickly, he was still somewhat run-down now. Earlier, when there had always been a taut string in his heart, he had been able to endure it. But now that he had finally relaxed, his whole spirit seemed to weaken along with him.

If he sat too long, he would feel a little tired. So sometimes he would simply lie down on Wei Zhiyuan’s bed and find a comfortable position. If he got comfortable enough, he might even fall asleep.

Wei Zhiyuan was too smart for his own good. Of course, intelligence itself was a good thing, and not frightening. What was frightening was that he treated it as if he possessed nothing else and had only this one thing to rely on, and so became excessively enamored with it and dependent on it. He thought everything could be logically explained and arrive at an inevitable outcome, like a game controlled in his own hands.

But just because he was clever enough and careful enough, could he make the Earth run backward along its orbit?

He still did not understand what it meant to “do all that lies in human power, then leave the rest to fate.”

And he also did not know that, just when he thought he had already brought his big brother into his spiritual world with perfect timing and was preparing to weave a web inside it to trap his prey, fate, no, perhaps it was better to say those miraculous, omnipresent low-probability events, leapt out and mocked his overestimation of himself.

One day, Wei Qian took a brief nap on Wei Zhiyuan’s single bed. Suddenly, his leg cramped, and the pain jolted him awake.

To stretch out the seized muscle, Wei Qian braced his already twisted foot against the wall on one side of the bed and forcefully straightened his leg. The foot pressing against the wall kicked the bed away from it, opening up a gap between the bed and the wall about a palm’s width wide.

Wei Qian had originally meant to turn over, get up, and shove the bed back. But when he casually lowered his head, he unexpectedly saw a dusty, finely made magazine inside that palm-wide gap.

He could not think what would have fallen there, so he reached into the gap, flapped away some dust, and picked up the magazine.

On the cover was a man wearing nothing but a pair of briefs. One of the guy’s hands was stuck inside his shorts, which were barely a palm’s length long. His expression was coquettish and suggestive, and his pose was positively preening. Although Wei Qian froze for a moment at first because the person on the cover was a man, the explicit cover quickly made him understand that this was a restricted pornographic magazine.

They were both men, and he had gone through the same age himself. Back then, though he had been worn out like a dead dog and had no energy to spare for anything else, he still knew what the restlessness brought on by rapid physical changes felt like.

At Wei Zhiyuan’s age, keeping a few things like this, though it made Wei Qian as a guardian feel somewhat awkward, was still basically understandable to him as an older brother. It was just a little embarrassing.

With that awkward feeling in mind, Wei Qian casually flipped through two pages. But when those high-definition glossy-paper images, presented with such blunt honesty that they could not even be bothered to add mosaic blur, slammed into Wei Qian’s eyes with full force, the awkwardness on his face froze.

Wei Qian was shocked first. Very quickly, the shock turned into confusion and disbelief. In the end, his expression was practically blank.

A minute later, Wei Qian suddenly sprang up from the bed. Whether from anger or something else, his face, which had been a bit pale to begin with, flushed all the way red to the roots of his ears.

With a rustle, he flung the magazine aside and said in a fury, “That little bastard!”

It was the middle of the afternoon, so naturally Xiao Bao and Xiao Yuan had both gone to school. Grandma Song was taking her afternoon nap next door. She was getting old, and in the last two years her hearing had grown worse and worse. She was sleeping soundly, and even though Wei Qian made such a racket, he still failed to disturb her.

Wei Qian confiscated the magazine and prowled around the room several times like a trapped beast. The fire rising and falling inside him tormented him so badly his throat seemed to smoke. He wanted to cough a couple of times, but then remembered the doctor had said coughing would hurt his lungs and told him to hold it back whenever he could, so he forcibly suppressed it and raised his hand to smash the porcelain cup on the desk.

In short, every single cell in Wei Qian’s body, from the ends of his hair to the tips of his toenails, had risen up in revolt. At the height of that burning fury, Wei Qian stormed into his own room and picked out the hardest, heaviest belt he had. He was determined that when Wei Zhiyuan got home from school later, he would first haul him in for a full-scale interrogation. And if the boy dared admit it, he would whip that bastard into a spinning top.

So he had never hit him before. All of it had been saved up to let the kid climb onto the roof and tear off the tiles now.

Wei Qian had originally thought Song Xiaobao was already the ultimate limit of a bratty child. He had never expected that this “never crosses the line” good child, Wei Zhiyuan, had been lying in wait for him here. Wei Qian lowered his head and glanced again at the spread-open magazine on the table. A bunch of naked men were tumbling together in a completely shameless heap, and they even seemed to be batting their eyes at him. It made his heart and liver tremble with anger all over again.

Wei Zhiyuan had made his brother personally experience what it felt like to be a cardiac patient. It was as if ten machine guns had been installed in Wei Qian’s blood vessels and had all started firing at once. He took several deep breaths and felt waves of pain spreading through his chest.

It was simply, morally depraved.

Wei Qian dropped heavily into a seat nearby, wishing he could pry open Wei Zhiyuan’s brain and see exactly what that kid was thinking, or what kind of thing had possessed his younger brother’s body and come to Earth, and what exactly its purpose was.

Those chaotic emotions, all jumbled together by his towering rage, finally merged through a completely illogical process, like rivers flowing into the sea, into a single thought. He had decided he was going to beat Wei Zhiyuan, that little bastard, to death.

This business came to light in the afternoon, and Wei Zhiyuan usually stayed at evening self-study until after nine. Since he was twelve or thirteen, he had had the habit of running at night. Usually after evening self-study, he would run a few laps on his own to loosen up. By the time he came back, it would be close to ten.

Those seven or eight hours in between were enough time for Wei Qian to calm down.

Grandma Song still put her heart into making dinner, but Wei Qian had neither the mood nor the appetite. He hastily ate two bites and left.

He returned to his own desk, sat facing the pornographic magazine that had infuriated him that afternoon, and at last began to think about the matter with a human brain, instead of with a cardiovascular system firing like machine guns.

Wei Qian did not know whether this was just a moment of curiosity on Wei Zhiyuan’s part, or whether the boy himself truly had those tendencies.

He could not think of any cause, nor of any reason.

Among the sages of old, there had also been feelings between people of the same sex that surpassed friendship, but Wei Qian generally believed those were the result of people studying scholarship until they had gone half-crazy, just another way madness expressed itself.

He had never come into contact with any real homosexuals, nor did he understand them. He had no idea what people like that were supposed to be like, so he could only make wild guesses according to the mainstream imagination, taking it for granted that most men who liked men were the kind of sissies that made people feel uncomfortable just by looking at them.

Wei Qian leaned back and let his body sag against the chair, his neck drooping limply backward.

“Our Xiao Yuan,” he thought blankly, “fights clean, accurate, and ruthless. He has never minced around with limp little orchid fingers, never twisted his hips when he walks, and I’ve never seen him take any strange interest in things girls play with either… how could he be that sort of person? Impossible.”

It was really just curiosity. It had to be impossible. Right?

Wei Qian covered his face with both hands and rubbed hard up and down several times, thinking, This is going to worry me to death.

Only then did he gain a little understanding of what Song Xiaobao had meant when she said, “Er-ge might be getting autism.” Even though Xiao Bao had no common sense and had expressed it inaccurately, it had definitely been Wei Zhiyuan’s abnormal silence and bad mood that had made her think of that. Otherwise, why would she have spread rumors out of nowhere?

And then there was that whole cabinet of books… that indoor environment so neat it was nearly severe, and the strange, bizarre Van Gogh poster stuck behind the door. All of it highlighted a kind of repression and struggle that did not belong in a teenage boy.

Wei Qian suddenly realized how belated his awareness had been. Shouldn’t boys this age be liking certain sports stars? The more individualistic ones might at most idolize some scientists or famous tycoons. Who would turn his room into a sociology library?

And he had not even taken it seriously.

Wei Qian genuinely suspected he was just as heartless and careless as Comrade Song Xiaobao.

That night, when Wei Zhiyuan came in carrying his schoolbag in one hand and his coat in the other, he discovered that big brother was sitting on the sofa in the living room, apparently waiting for him.

“Wei Qian said, “Xiao Yuan, come here.”

Wei Zhiyuan answered him, but felt that his attitude was a little off. His mind quickly ran through everything he had done recently, but for the moment he still could not figure out what exactly had happened.

Wei Qian did not know why he had called him over either. He wanted to ask about the magazine, but the words would not come out. The boy’s gaze was clear and intent. When he looked down at him from above, there was even a trace of endearing gentleness in it.

The belt he had prepared was hanging quietly in the room. The shards of the cup he had smashed in a fit of rage had already been wrapped up and were lying in the trash can. And yet, he still could not say a single word.

Wei Qian suddenly stood up and raised an arm around Wei Zhiyuan’s shoulders.

Wei Zhiyuan seemed to be startled by something. He jolted, then abruptly stiffened, and after that struggled ever so slightly, as though he was both a little uneasy and unwilling to pull away like that. Somewhat embarrassed, he explained softly, “Ge, I’m all sweaty, I…”

Wei Qian patted him hard on the back. His heart felt sore. He forced out a smile, then let go of Wei Zhiyuan. “Don’t tire yourself out too much. If there’s anything bothering you, tell Ge, all right?”

Wei Zhiyuan was full of confusion inside and did not understand what tune he was suddenly singing, but instinct told him he had better not ask. So he obediently nodded and answered.

Wei Qian watched him go back to his room, let out a heavy sigh, and went to the balcony to smoke, his heart filled with endless weariness.

He had the feeling of having elders above him and children below him. He was clearly just a young man, yet all he worried about were middle-aged people’s concerns. Thinking of how Lao Xiong had joked a couple of days earlier that he would introduce him to someone, Wei Qian thought in bitter indignation, I don’t even have a partner of my own yet, and I’ve already started worrying about these little brats dating. How did I end up living such a twisted life?

Wei Qian could not help looking for San Pang, who was still stationed in another city guarding the battlefield, to vent.

San Pang had finally gotten one peaceful night and had already fallen fast asleep, only to be brutally dragged out of his dreams by a phone call from him. On the spot, he nearly wanted to cut ties with the brat.

Wei Qian let out a heavy sigh. His sighing like this made San Pang deeply unaccustomed. San Pang flapped his head around to wake himself up and asked, “What’s wrong, Qian’er? Has your pneumonia spread?”

Wei Qian said with terrible conflict, “San-ge, let me tell you, Xiao Yuan, this kid… this kid… sigh, he might be about to go off the rails.”

San Pang had thought it was something huge. The moment he heard that, he immediately relaxed and burst out laughing. “Go off the rails? Hahahaha, don’t joke around with your San-ge in the middle of the night. In this world, how many people can go off the rails more than you? You’re killing me, Qian’er. Damn, I’m not sleepy anymore. Do you know what hearing this feels like to me? It’s like that Liangshan hero Li Kui mincing up to his big brother Song Jiang in tiny little steps, whimpering, ‘There are bandits down the mountain robbing travelers, I’m scared, I don’t dare go on.’”

Wei Qian: “…”

He paused for a moment, then shouted into the receiver, “Fuck your uncle, you dead phlegm bucket.”

Then, without another word, he hung up and went off to brood alone.

The next day, after evening self-study, Wei Zhiyuan came to the school sports field as usual. He tossed down his schoolbag, warmed up for a moment, and was just about to run a couple of laps. He was in the middle of rotating his ankle when he happened to lift his head, nearly twisting it for real. Wei Qian was in the stands, watching him as soundlessly as a ghost.

Wei Zhiyuan: “…Ge?”

Wei Qian cleared his throat. “Mm. I… cough, I came over to exercise.”

Wei Zhiyuan looked him up and down for a moment in utter bafflement, then said uncertainly, “Then… all right, I guess. Just take it slow and don’t breathe in cold air. Didn’t the doctor say you weren’t supposed to do strenuous exercise?”

And indeed, there was no strenuous exercise. Wei Zhiyuan ran more than twice as slowly as usual. The two of them jogged around the track at something like a strolling pace, getting overtaken from time to time by classmates crossing the field on foot after school. In the end, Wei Qian could not take it anymore and dropped out to stand by the side. “You go on. I’ll wait for you here.”

After finishing his run, Wei Zhiyuan pushed his bicycle and slowly walked back together with Wei Qian. They chatted on and off. After who knew how long, Wei Zhiyuan suddenly heard Wei Qian say, “Xiao Yuan, with me, you’re the same as Xiao Bao.”

Wei Zhiyuan looked up at him. Wei Qian shifted his gaze elsewhere, seeming unaccustomed to playing this kind of earnest, heartfelt role. He tried to recall how the teachers at school used to do it, and softened his voice. Even after trying his best, though, his tone still came out a little stiff. “Xiao Bao… she’s always pulling all kinds of nonsense, so I can’t help keeping a closer eye on her. You’re more sensible. Um, I don’t really know how to put it. Anyway, in my heart I’m not favoring her over you. You’re just like my own little brother. Sigh, you know what I mean, right?”

In truth, Wei Zhiyuan did not know, but that did not stop him from enjoying this rare warmth from his big brother.

He suddenly stopped. “Ge, can I hug you?”

Wei Qian: “…”

He felt it was a little mushy, but he was afraid of hurting that “delicate and sensitive” young heart he had imagined in his own head, so he forced down his awkwardness and agreed.

Wei Zhiyuan pulled him into a full embrace, holding him tightly, burying his face in the hollow of Wei Qian’s neck. He closed his eyes, and his lips brushed across Wei Qian’s neck, seemingly by accident and yet not quite, leaving behind a kiss that was not quite one thing or the other.

Wei Qian instinctively shuddered. But he thought it was just an accident and did not want to make too much of it, so he silently endured it.

The two of them walked all the way home. But the moment they opened the door, they were met head-on by Grandma Song’s furious roar at Xiao Bao. “What do you do all day, every day? What do you do all day? What is all this written here? Don’t give me that nonsense. I don’t believe it!”

Xiao Bao’s schoolbag had fallen onto the floor, and several sheets of paper had drifted everywhere. The moment she looked up and caught sight of Wei Qian coming back, she gave a little shudder first.

Wei Qian leaned weakly against the doorframe. “Ancestors, what fresh bang-clang-opera is this now?”