Bro | Chapter 22

Wei Qian originally did not want the whole family to be plunged into gloom because of him. So although he still kept thinking about the matter, he went right on going to the factory every day as if nothing were wrong. In those years following Le Xiaodong, he had spent far too much time carrying heavy worries. Over time, he had developed this tender, youthful kind of calculating self-control.

But there were always people who just would not let him have any peace.

The first among them was Wei Zhiyuan. Wei Zhiyuan used to be such a good kid, clingy without being troublesome, obedient and good at reading people’s expressions. But now he had actually turned into a chatterbox duck, asking him eagerly about it once every morning and evening like clockwork, until Wei Qian was utterly sick of it.

Then there was Grandma Song. Grandma Song did not need to change, she was already a broken-record chatterbox to begin with. One person could match five hundred ducks. Compared to her, Wei Zhiyuan’s little bit of nagging was barely worth mentioning. Wei Qian was practically scared of her. One day, he pushed the door open and came home just as Grandma Song was coming out of the kitchen. The moment she saw him, she stopped and opened her mouth. To Wei Qian, it was like seeing some terrifying blood-filled maw. Without a second word, he turned around and headed right back out the door…

Of course, as it turned out, the old woman had only wanted to sneeze.

And then there was San Pang.

San Pang was uniquely, peerlessly cheap. One day, while Wei Qian was not home, he took a brush dipped in red paint and painted a line of huge characters outside his door:

Study for the rise of China.

In that gloomy corridor, those blood-red characters…

The nasty old woman across the hall got up early. At a little after four in the morning, she went out for a walk before dawn, and before the sky was even fully light, she was hit with that kind of shock. She stood frozen in the doorway for three seconds, let out a short scream, grabbed up her pants and slammed the door behind her as she ran back into her room… She had very nearly pissed herself.

Under this kind of enemy-on-all-sides siege, Wei Qian found his only scrap of peace from Song Xiaobao.

In private, Song Xiaobao said to him very seriously, “Ge, if you don’t want to go, then don’t go.”

Wei Qian looked up at her in surprise.

Song Xiaobao had a chunk of watermelon hanging from her mouth, and said with complete sincerity, “You don’t want to go to school, right?”

Wei Qian hesitated for a moment, then nodded against his conscience.

Song Xiaobao shook her head, sighed theatrically, and in a deliberately world-weary tone said, “Ai, there’s nothing to be done. I understand all your difficulties.”

Wei Qian was startled. He thought that without him noticing, she had actually become this sensible already. He felt a little warm inside and asked, “What exactly do you… understand?”

Song Xiaobao spat with a “ptui,” neatly shooting a watermelon seed into the ashtray, and said in fellow-feeling, “Let me tell you the truth, Ge. Actually, I don’t want to go to school either.”

Wei Qian: “…”

That very night, Song Xiaobao was ordered to copy out the longest passage in her Chinese textbook twice.

But speaking of it, it was rather miraculous. Sometimes coincidences really did happen that way. When someone could not stop thinking about something, sometimes a turn would really appear right at a dead end, though not necessarily a good turn.

That day, Wei Qian had changed out of his work clothes and was just pushing his bicycle, about to get on and ride away, when a man suddenly called out to him.

The man was dressed in expensive clothes and looked polished on the surface, wearing a pair of sunglasses. Wei Qian did not know him, but there was something familiar about the aura around him.

Right then, Wei Qian had a premonition. Sure enough, when the man spotted him, he strode toward him.

Wei Qian had long since washed his hands of all that and did not want anything to do with it, so he swung onto the bicycle to leave. But the man reached out, grabbed the handlebar, and stepped on the wheel. “This would be Xiao Wei-ge, right? I want to say a few words to you.”

Wei Qian’s hand clenched tight on the handlebar, veins bulging out, and he warned in a low voice, “Let go.”

The man took off his sunglasses. His nose was slightly crooked, and there was a scar over one eyelid, making one eye look bigger and the other smaller. He had a vicious, crafty face. He pulled a business card from his pocket and waved it in front of Wei Qian. “Hu Siye, surely Wei-ge still remembers the old gentleman?”

The first time Wei Qian had fought off a whole crowd by himself and made his name that way, there really had been someone calling himself Hu Siye who had given him a business card, clearly meant to recruit him. Hu Siye had been one of Le-ge’s VIP guests. Although Wei Qian had refused at the time, he had left a deep impression on him, because the way the man looked at people was strange. It was as if, in his eyes, people were not people at all, just pigs, horses, cattle, and sheep that could be led off to market and sold.

Later, Wei Qian had heard people mention that the old man called Hu Siye dabbled in everything, prostitution, gambling, and drugs, touching all three evenly. He was bad in a ten-skills-all-maxed sort of way. Under his name were three or four famous underground black boxing rings, and he recruited enforcers and athletes he took a fancy to from all over, especially people like Wei Qian who treated fighting like a profession and did it as if they did not care whether they lived or died.

Wei Qian’s eyelid twitched right then. He knew this was someone he could not afford to offend, so he put one foot on the ground to stop the bicycle and asked politely, “How should I address you, big brother?”

Seeing that he understood the situation, the sunglasses man was very satisfied. He rubbed his hands and let go of the bicycle. “I wouldn’t dare. I’m Zhao Laojiu. Just call me Lao Jiu.”

Wei Qian smiled. “Oh, so it’s Jiu-ge. Hu Siye doesn’t come around often, so he may not know, Le…”

Zhao Laojiu said, “Le Xiaodong’s dead. It’s been half a year already. We knew it long ago.”

Wei Qian lowered his eyes and paused. “Right. So I’m already out of this line of work. Honestly, since Hu Siye and Jiu-ge think highly of me, I shouldn’t keep pushing it off, but you can see, I’ve got a family dragging behind me, I can’t get away from anything, and it really is…”

Zhao Laojiu’s eyes turned once, and he nodded. “Ai, I understand. Everybody has their difficulties. Is Hu Siye the kind of man who’s unreasonable? The main thing is this, the old gentleman just opened a new ‘point,’ and the ‘venue’ hasn’t even had time to warm up yet. He’s especially short on people to warm the place up, urgently needs a few capable ones to go prop things up. Sure, it’ll interfere with your day job, but on the matter of price, you can rest easy. Hu Siye absolutely never mistreats his own people.”

By the later period when Wei Qian followed Le Xiaodong around, he had gone in and out of many places and more or less knew a little about many things. He understood what Zhao Laojiu meant. Hu Siye had opened yet another underground black boxing ring and wanted him to go warm up the venue.

The black boxing market in Liangguang had a long history. The outrageous profits came in exchange for risking your life. Some underground boxing rings really did have true experts, and in the mid-1990s, those people could make tens of thousands from a single match. As for the unimportant small fry brought in to warm up the venue, they made a few thousand per match, depending.

Wei Qian gave a self-mocking smile. “Jiu-ge, don’t kid me. How many jin and liang I’ve got, don’t I know that myself? A real boxing or sanda expert could crush me with one finger. Whether I live or die doesn’t matter, but it wouldn’t be good if I made Hu Siye and you lose face.”

Wei Qian knew that if he agreed, he would count as one of Zhao Laojiu’s people. Zhao Laojiu was doing errands for Hu Siye and recruiting people for him, and he was definitely taking a cut in the middle. Whether the people he brought in won or lost, he got a share. Wei Qian understood all of that clearly.

“What you’re saying is wrong, that’s not how it works.” Zhao Laojiu waved a hand. “Real experts aren’t cabbages, how can they be found that easily? Hu Siye has a sharp eye. If he thinks highly of you, there’s no need for you to belittle yourself…”

At that point, Jiu-ge suddenly looked around, then lowered his voice and said to Wei Qian, “Besides, let Jiu-ge tell you the truth. In the ring, you really only need to be so-so. You make a few rounds, pull in eight or ten thousand-yuan, then take the money and leave. This money comes easy and nothing happens. If you’re truly powerful to a certain level, that’s actually bad. Top-level fighters can’t get down once they get onto the high-tier rings. There’s always someone stronger, and in the end the outcome is dying up there.”

Something twitched at the corner of Wei Qian’s eye.

“I’m not feeding you empty talk.” Zhao Laojiu watched his expression and lowered his voice even more. “Hu Siye sent us out, and I’ve looked for a lot of people already. For someone like you, the entry price is two thousand. After that, whether there are bonuses and percentages depends on your personal performance. As for those people… those strongest ones, thirty or fifty thousand just to enter doesn’t even begin to cover it. That’s the price for staking your life. Even if you wanted to play at that level with them, you wouldn’t even reach that level, understand?”

Wei Qian stayed silent. There really was some truth in what Zhao Laojiu had said.

“Ai, brother, I’m just telling you the general market rate, not trying to scare you. This time, we’re not even following the ordinary market rate. Our job this round is just to warm the venue, to heat up the new boxing ring, basically a grand opening special, you get me? It’s just a side act. The risk is very small, not to the point of staking your life.” Zhao Laojiu patted his shoulder familiarly and stuffed a train ticket into his hand. “Ticket for next Monday. My phone number’s on the back. If you’re willing, then go over there and look me up. If not, forget it. I’m just asking a brother to help out with a small favor. Even if the deal doesn’t happen, our goodwill still remains, right?”

Wei Qian tucked away the train ticket and spent the whole night lying in bed without closing his eyes once.

Zhao Laojiu’s appearance was almost like someone bringing him a pillow just as he started to nod off.

Wei Qian had thought before, if he went back to school, how was he supposed to keep the family going? Zhao Laojiu had given him an answer. The entry fee alone was two thousand. He did not need much. If he could just hold out through two or three matches, that would be five or six thousand-yuan.

Five or six thousand was not an enormous amount, but at the time, in an ordinary household, it was already no small sum. And with someone at home like Grandma Song, who could split one-fen into eight pieces when spending it, Wei Qian believed that with her thrift, using that money to comfortably arrange the family’s livelihood for a whole year would not be a problem at all.

But…

Money was hard to earn, and shit was hard to eat, everybody knew that truth. There were no pies that just fell from the sky. Wei Qian understood very clearly that all the things Zhao Laojiu had said about “grand opening specials” and “side acts” were complete bullshit.

Why had they come after him in particular? From south to north, the distance was this great, and there were countless people who could fight.

The more Wei Qian thought about it, the more he felt that it was probably only because Le Xiaodong was dead that Hu Siye had come all this way after him. What he wanted was exactly a person like him, someone with no roots and no backing.

In front of him was a pool of water, so clear you could see straight to the bottom. At the bottom, there was gold plain to the naked eye. But Wei Qian had no idea, if he dove headfirst in, just how deep that water really was. Nor did he know whether, once he jumped down, he would still be able to come back up.

Before Ma Zi died, hadn’t he also made one big pile of money?

Wei Qian turned over. He had been lying there too long, and his muscles had begun to ache. He got up quietly and carefully, trying his best not to wake Wei Zhiyuan. It was too hot, the child’s whole forehead was covered in sweat, and for him to be sleeping this soundly was rare.

Wei Qian went downstairs and started walking in circles around the old tube-style building in the shantytown, round and round like a donkey grinding a mill, trying to grind out a little Zen from it.

Wei Qian felt that all of this was because he was too greedy. The burdens were already heavy enough, but he still wanted them all to live relatively easier, better lives.

He kept thinking that if his mother could raise him by selling herself, then was he really not even better than a chicken? How could he let Xiao Bao and Xiao Yuan live the kind of life he had lived as a child?

And even that was still not enough. He still had the nerve to hope to go to school.

In the faint light of dawn, with fresh dew falling on him, Wei Qian harshly interrogated his own heart like some great demon crossing a tribulation and fighting off his inner devil.

He told himself fiercely, what use was school? If he went to high school, did that guarantee he would get into university? If he got into university, did that guarantee he would finish it? If he finished it, did that guarantee he would find a good job? And even if he found a good job, would it make up for those six or seven years from high school through university that he had spent?

In his own mind, Wei Qian listed every reason he could think of for why going to school was not worth it.

At that moment, he saw the owner of the little shop downstairs opening up with a yawn.

Wei Qian kicked away a small stone and said to himself, the hell with school, why don’t you think about going to heaven while you’re at it?

He bought a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the little shop, officially declaring that after half a year of quitting smoking, he had failed completely.

Wei Qian squatted by the roadside and finished smoking that cigarette. Then he made a decision completely opposite to what he had just been thinking.

Isn’t it just Guangdong? I’m going.