TA • Chapter 2

Cheng Ke stared at the little guy DJing. He looked for about ten seconds, then gritted his teeth and walked over.

Just as he bent down to pick up the money, someone behind him called out, “Hey!”

Cheng Ke did not turn around. He heard the sound of an engine, and all he wanted was to bury his head and be done with it.

Maybe because he had been too focused, he had not even noticed a car pull up and stop. And this voice was embarrassing to the extreme.

It was pretty magnetic. He could tell it was the scarface from just now.

“You really are doing this for that hundred bucks?” Scarface sounded amused. If Cheng Ke looked back, he would definitely see the smile on his face.

“Pick it up. Hurry up,” Scarface said. “If you keep dawdling, someone else is going to get it.”

Cheng Ke straightened and turned around. “Then leave it for someone who needs it more.”

“Hm?” Scarface leaned against the car window and looked at him.

“Go pick it up,” Cheng Ke said. “No need to make a wasted trip.”

Scarface laughed, took a cigarette from somewhere and put it in his mouth, then flipped out a lighter and clicked it on with a snap. “There’s another wallet inside too, that’s yours, right?”

Cheng Ke said nothing.

“I’m not taking you for some junk picker,” Scarface exhaled a thin stream of smoke. “If you’d spent all that time talking, you’d have finished picking it up already.”

“Give it to me,” Cheng Ke said.

“What?” Scarface looked at him.

“The lighter.” Cheng Ke said.

Scarface paused, then handed it over. “Burning money is illegal. Besides, it’s only one bill. Even if you burned it, it wouldn’t look very impressive.”

Cheng Ke took out a cigarette, lit it, and casually put the lighter into his own pocket.

Scarface looked at his pocket.

“Thanks.” Cheng Ke nodded at him.

Scarface did not say anything. He fumbled around in his own pocket for a while, then handed over a card. “Tough luck, young master. This is my business card. If you need anything, you can call me.”

Cheng Ke stood there without moving.

Scarface added, “My name’s Jiang Yuduo, just call me San-ge.”

Jiang Yuduo? San-ge?

Cheng Ke still did not move.

“Fuck, do you have any sense at all? This is San-ge! This whole area belongs to San-ge!” The driver leaned over from the car and pointed at him. “San-ge already said it, so why the hell are you still acting all cold and aloof?”

Territory?

Cheng Ke thought back to his previous one-on-one with this San-ge, a boss who had fought so hard with someone that they rolled around on top of a trash can. Territory?

Was he in charge of forty-nine trash cans in this area? One of them had just been flattened by the boss himself.

Cheng Ke could not help but look up and study this San-ge, Jiang Yuduo, more carefully.

Without the hat now, he looked only a little over twenty, just an ordinary handsome guy. But the faint, inexplicable viciousness in his face still made people wary. Maybe it was helped along by that scar.

“Take it,” Jiang Yuduo said, flicking the fingers holding the card at him. “It never hurts to leave yourself some way out.”

After hesitating for two seconds, Cheng Ke took the card from him.

Just as he lowered his head to look at it, Jiang Yuduo rolled up the car window, and the car drove off.

Cheng Ke glanced at the card, then suddenly looked up and glared at the direction the car had gone for a long time.

Was this guy really not mentally ill?

He could not help looking down at the card again.

He had received countless business cards before, exquisite ones, casual ones, businesslike ones, elite ones, avant-garde ones… This was the first time he had ever received one in cigarette-pack style.

Jiang Yuduo’s “business card” was cut, no, to be exact, torn out of a cigarette pack, a piece of stiff cardboard.

Three characters were written on it in ballpoint pen, Jiang Yuduo.

Below that was a phone number.

What a class act. What standards!

At best, it looked like something a corner shop owner had scribbled bills on. San-ge? Territory? He probably only held a two percent stake in forty-nine trash cans, if that!

“San-ge,” Chen Qing said, driving while turning his head to look at Jiang Yuduo’s face, “are you okay? Nobody’s robbing anything. Why did we come back?”

“I said to have a look.” Jiang Yuduo said.

“…Look at what?” Chen Qing was very confused. Then he thought about it and nodded. “Were you practicing your judgment? I took a careful look just now. That guy definitely wasn’t a junk picker. He was dressed pretty well, and he even looked like a young mast…”

“Watch the road.” Jiang Yuduo cut him off.

“Okay.” Chen Qing turned his head and stared forward, and before Jiang Yuduo could remind him, he had already driven through the red light.

“I’ll give you twenty yuan,” Jiang Yuduo pinched the bridge of his nose, “go get your brain checked, okay?”

“Twenty yuan won’t even get my brain checked.” Chen Qing said.

“With a brain that doesn’t even know to stop at a red light!” Jiang Yuduo slapped the back of his head. “Fifteen yuan would be enough!”

“Fuck!” Chen Qing yelled. “I didn’t notice!”

Jiang Yuduo slapped the back of his head again. “I even gave you an extra five so you could buy breakfast!”

“It’s fine,” Chen Qing thought for a moment. “The car belongs to Yang Laogui. Let him deal with the ticket. He gets so many traffic violations every day he’s practically eligible for an annual pass. He probably can’t remember them anyway.”

Jiang Yuduo sighed.

“Headed straight back?” Chen Qing asked. “I’ll take you home and swing by your sister’s place to play a couple rounds of cards.”

“Mm.” Jiang Yuduo gave a response.

“What about the cat?” Chen Qing asked again. “It’s too small to eat, so we should probably raise it first.”

“How the fuck did I end up growing up with you?” Jiang Yuduo looked at him. “How did you not die young?”

“We’re that close, man,” Chen Qing laughed. “If you hadn’t fished me out of the river that time, I definitely would’ve died young.”

Jiang Yuduo said nothing and turned to look out the window.

“That young master from just now,” Chen Qing said, “did you want to save him a little so you could get something out of it later?”

Jiang Yuduo still did not say anything.

“I was right, wasn’t I? Anyway, the way he looked, he didn’t seem like someone sent to cause you trouble,” Chen Qing did not need a response and kept analyzing on his own. “But you didn’t even ask him his name. Or what’s going on right now… Want me to get a few people to follow him?”

“Why don’t you just go tell him yourself,” Jiang Yuduo said, turning to look at him.

Chen Qing laughed. “Alright, I get it. Can’t be that obvious.”

Cheng Ke felt that he really did not understand life at all, or to put it in a less flattering way, he was pretty useless.

For example, when all he had on him for the moment was a hundred yuan and an ID card, what was he supposed to do?

Other than sitting in McDonald’s and spacing out, he really could not think of a second plan.

Still, it was fine. There were not many people in McDonald’s at the moment. A few travelers with luggage, three or five students bent over the tables doing practice problems. No one was talking. It was quiet, and warm.

Cheng Ke looked at the cup of coffee in front of him and yawned.

He was sleepy.

He had already washed his face twice. The first time was to clean the cut Jiang Yuduo had smashed open on his face. The second time was because he felt dizzy from the heater.

Cheng Ke touched the corner of his eye. It was a fairly large cut. He was not very afraid of pain. When he fought with Cheng Yi as a child, Cheng Yi had smashed his head open with a chair and he had needed several stitches, but he had borne it without making a sound.

But strangely enough, even now he still did not feel pain from the cut on his face.

This was not a matter of whether he could endure pain. Maybe Jiang Yuduo’s punch had given him a crooked mouth.

Cheng Ke lowered his head, smiled at the coffee, and lay down on the table.

Or maybe there was something else, some other pain, covering over the insignificant pain from this insignificant wound on his face.

This was the first time Cheng Ke had slept like this anywhere other than a bedroom, and he actually fell asleep.

Not only did he fall asleep, he dreamed.

From the distant memory of his dad saying, “Respectful and cautious, that is the meaning of the character ke,” all the way to the blue ballpoint pen writing the name Jiang Yuduo.

By rights, the dream should have been very long. If it had to be named, it could have been called *My Little First Half of Life*, but many of the scenes in the middle were mercilessly cut away because they were too repetitive and meaningless, so it felt like it ended after just a few shots.

When Cheng Ke opened his eyes, he could not help thinking that if not for this dream, he would never have realized that more than twenty years of his life had actually been this boring.

There were already quite a few people around him, coming and going with trays. When Cheng Ke looked up, he immediately met several dissatisfied gazes.

He checked the time. Given this situation, this environment, and this posture, he had actually slept until past eight in the morning. He did not know whether that counted as some kind of ability.

He got up from the table, went to the bathroom, washed his face, and when he came back out he still felt like he was not fully awake. He was a little dazed, his steps unsteady, as if he still had not completely woken from that hollow, uninteresting dream.

He had no direction when he came out. There was a small supermarket across the street, so he went in, bought a bottle of mouthwash, and came back into McDonald’s.

Actually, rinsing his mouth a little by the roadside would have been enough, but he still wanted to distinguish himself from a homeless man by a little bit.

By the time he came out again, he felt much clearer.

Cheng Ke stood by the roadside and suddenly felt that same confusion from last night again. He stared blankly for a long time.

He needed to replace his bank card, withdraw money, then buy a phone, and get a new number… Actually, he did not even know how much money was in his bank account. Anyway, whenever he needed to use it, there was always money in there, but he really did not have many big expenses. Just meals, a couple of clothes, that sort of thing.

Cheng Ke suddenly got a little uncertain. What if the exact amount in there was just enough for meals and a couple of clothes?

No, no, that should not be possible. Even if he was a useless piece of trash, in the eyes of the whole family he was not even as good as one of Cheng Yi’s fingernails, but he still had income.

It should not be…

Cheng Ke turned to head for the intersection, planning to find any bank and ask how to do it first.

Before he even took a step, his shoulder slammed hard into someone walking toward him.

“You blind, fuck!” the man cursed.

Cheng Ke’s “Sorry” was choked back in his throat by that shout right into his ear.

He made no sound, did not look at the man, and just kept walking forward.

If this had been before yesterday, this guy would not even have gotten the sentence out.

He was in no mood at all. No mood to be vicious, and no mood to back down. He only wanted to get the things he could do done as quickly as possible, withdraw money, buy a phone, he urgently needed…

Someone slammed into his right shoulder hard from behind.

A phone.

Cheng Ke stumbled forward two or three steps before stopping.

When he turned back, he saw that there were four people standing behind him.

Probably hungover and not yet home. Even from that far away, he could smell something like the trash can behind a bar.

Cheng Ke brushed his shoulder twice, shifted his body back slightly, and made the gesture of leaving.

As he expected, those people lunged at him. He dropped the posture and swung his right fist back into the face of the man at the front, sending him lurching several steps to the side before he could steady himself.

He was a pretty solid guy, and pretty resistant to being hit. The punch even made Cheng Ke’s wrist ache a little from the shock.

He was not someone who liked causing trouble. Usually he moved in packs with those “good-for-nothing drinking buddies,” and if there was any trouble, he never had to face it alone.

He did not know what was wrong with the last couple of days. The irritating bad luck followed him like a shadow, and even turning around could make him step on a thorn.

That punch had basically just been him blowing off steam.

Yesterday, in that ground-rolling, flesh-on-flesh brawl with Jiang Yuduo, he had not gained much of the upper hand. He had several injuries on his face and body. This punch now was truly satisfying.

But the consequences of this kind of impulsive venting still had to be borne by him. Among the other four, three had already started reaching into their pockets, and whatever they pulled out, he might not be able to handle it anymore.

In that 0.1 second, Cheng Ke made a decisive move.

He turned around and broke into a run toward the intersection.

There were quite a lot of people heading to work at the moment. After only a few steps, his escape route was blocked, so he had to change direction and run toward a place with a little less foot traffic. After all, running was not his strong suit, and the people behind him showed no intention of giving up.

After running frantically for a while, Cheng Ke was extremely frustrated. He had still underestimated the determination of a few drunkards who had not sobered up to keep relentlessly chasing him over something this small.

They were probably locals in this area. They knew the terrain very well. When Cheng Ke turned three corners and ran out into a small side street, two of them had actually cut him off from the front.

“What the fuck?” Cheng Ke was almost out of breath. He looked back and only then realized that the four of them had somehow split into two groups.

Cheng Ke thought he was actually a very easy person to give up. Any tiny setback could suddenly drain him of all willpower, so in this situation, there was actually a moment when the thought had flashed through his mind that maybe he should just stop running and let them beat him up if he really could not win.

Luckily, his eyes caught a passageway between two apartment buildings three meters ahead.

One last try. If he still could not get away after going through there, then he would give up.

Cheng Ke gritted his teeth and charged into the passageway.

On the other side there were still two apartment buildings, and another identical passageway. He kept rushing forward.

When he ran out again, he froze.

This was the back side of a few residential buildings, an open little street park, a very ordinary, very common place, the sort of place where people walked birds and exercised during the day and danced square-dance at night.

But right now, it was not very ordinary.

By the flowerbed directly in front of him, a big group of people were sitting or standing. At a glance there were at least twenty of them, and among them, sitting there with a cigarette in his mouth, was Jiang Yuduo.

The moment Cheng Ke burst out, the whole group turned to look at him, all of them staring in unison. He could practically hear those gazes shouting together, We’re all fucking bad people here.

The only one who was different was Jiang Yuduo. Whether it was his expression or his eyes, he looked completely calm. From the moment Cheng Ke appeared, Cheng Ke could see a smile at the corner of his mouth.

In this awkward stalemate, the pursuers behind him caught up.

The one running in front of the pack lunged forward the moment he burst out. Cheng Ke dodged, and the man lunged into empty air.

Jiang Yuduo, who had been sitting still all along, finally lifted an arm and stretched.

The people around him seemed to receive some sort of command. They all rushed over together, hopping and darting like a swarm.

Cheng Ke immediately felt as if there were people in front of him, behind him, left and right, and even above and below. He could not even see which direction they were coming from. But that feeling disappeared very quickly. In just a few seconds, the four men and the whole crowd had vanished without a trace.

All that remained on the scene was him and Jiang Yuduo.

“What a coincidence.” Jiang Yuduo took the cigarette from his mouth and looked at him with a smile.

Cheng Ke thought Jiang Yuduo looked a little more pleasant by day than at night, but his face really was not suited to this kind of benevolent smile. No matter how he looked at it, it made the back of his neck go cold.

He cleared his throat and turned to look in the direction where the crowd had suddenly disappeared. From far away, he could hear cursing, and he did not know whether they were fighting or ganging up on someone.

“Those people…” Cheng Ke pointed in the direction of the sounds.

“The local troublemakers in this area,” Jiang Yuduo said. “How did you piss them off? Did you fight them over a trash can again?”

Cheng Ke looked at him.

“If it weren’t for me,” Jiang Yuduo pressed the cigarette butt out on the ground, “you wouldn’t have gotten out of this area today.”

“…Thanks.” After some hesitation, Cheng Ke thanked him, although he could not tell whether the people who had just rushed out were following Jiang Yuduo’s orders to save him or whether they had already had a grudge with those guys.

“Didn’t I say you could come to me if you had trouble?” Jiang Yuduo said.

“Oh.” Subconsciously, Cheng Ke touched his pocket and realized the cigarette-pack card Jiang Yuduo had given him was no longer there.

“Lost my business card?” Jiang Yuduo asked.

“…What do you call that thing?” Cheng Ke could not help asking back.

“It’s fine,” Jiang Yuduo said, pulling a flattened piece of cigarette-pack cardboard out from under his own ass. “I’ll give you another one.”

“No need,” Cheng Ke hurriedly waved his hands. “Really, no need, thanks.”

Jiang Yuduo looked at him and narrowed his eyes. The expression on his face became somewhat unreadable.

“Thanks.” Cheng Ke stepped back two paces, turned around, and walked quickly toward the main road.

He did not want to understand why this man was so passionate about tearing cigarette packs for strangers. All he knew was that the smile Jiang Yuduo had been hanging at the corner of his mouth disappeared when he refused to accept the business card again.

Whether he really controlled trash cans or not, this man was still a boss who could stretch once and have more than twenty people rush out. The key was that those more than twenty people were still around. Cheng Ke did not want to get into any more trouble.

Withdraw money, buy a phone.

He had never thought that one day he would feel such longing for these two things.

“Send someone to follow that kid.” Jiang Yuduo lit a cigarette and said to Chen Qing, who had just run over.

“Which kid?” Chen Qing asked.

“Your father.” Jiang Yuduo frowned.

“Got it, Jiga,” Chen Qing nodded. “I’ll go follow him. Safer that way.”

Jiang Yuduo said nothing. Chen Qing turned and strode off with great confidence.

“On the right.” Jiang Yuduo sighed.

“Huh?” Chen Qing turned to look at him.

“He’s fucking going to the right!” Jiang Yuduo shouted, pointing at him. “You’ve got three seconds. After three seconds I’m going to beat the fucking foam out of your mouth!”

“My car’s parked over there anyway…” Chen Qing immediately sprinted to the right.

Jiang Yuduo sat by the flowerbed and finished his cigarette, then got up and left the little park.

What to eat for breakfast every day was a very troubling question. Jiang Yuduo liked the morning tea at Tingfu Restaurant on the street corner very much, but by now it was past that hour, and he had eaten there continuously for half a month. There really was not anything else to eat.

“San-ge!” someone called him from behind.

Jiang Yuduo’s hand in his pocket instinctively tightened around the knife before he turned his head.

“Had breakfast yet?” A kid called Shouhou ran over. He ran so unsteadily that if the wind was a little stronger, it looked like he would be jogging in place. “Wanna eat together?”

“Soy milk and fried dough sticks?” Jiang Yuduo looked at him with obvious disdain.

“How could that be? At the very least it has to be braised beef,” Shouhou said. “If I’m treating San-ge to breakfast, how could there not be meat?”

Jiang Yuduo followed Shouhou into a newly opened breakfast shop next door. Looking at the pile of food Shouhou brought over, he frowned and asked, “Who the fuck did you go out on an overnight job with again?”

“No one!” Shouhou got anxious. “Didn’t I listen to you and go work as a waiter at an internet cafe? I got paid yesterday! As soon as I did, I thought of coming to find you…”

“Got it,” Jiang Yuduo picked up his chopsticks. “Stop bringing more. That’s your whole month’s salary right here, isn’t it?”

“No way,” Shouhou said happily, patting his pocket. “I’ve still got more.”

After only a couple of bites, Jiang Yuduo’s phone rang. It was Chen Qing.

“Come over and eat breakfast.” Jiang Yuduo answered the call.

“Jiga went into a bank,” Chen Qing said. “He talked to the lobby manager for a long time. Is he about to withdraw a big amount or what? Should I get a couple of people to wait for him to come out…”

“Go buy two buns and eat them right now.” Jiang Yuduo said.

“Huh?” Chen Qing froze.

“Not eating breakfast is bad for intelligence.” Jiang Yuduo hung up.

This young master in trouble really did seem to have a problem. Yesterday, when they had fought, he had already searched every pocket on the young master’s body. Aside from half a pack of cigarettes, there had been nothing.

Even if he had picked up that hundred yuan, it would only have been a hundred yuan plus half a pack of cigarettes, and he had gone to the bank with that?

Jiang Yuduo frowned. Very suspicious.