Bro | Chapter 37

Wei Qian did not open his eyes. He only gave him a very faint response.

Xiong-saozi had installed a distinctive reading lamp by the sofa. Wei Zhiyuan reached out and turned it on, and warm light immediately spilled down, spreading across the entire sofa.

It was neither harsh nor dim, like the sunlight of some winter afternoon, creating exactly the right sort of comfort, one degree more would have been affected, one degree less would have been lacking.

This was Wei Zhiyuan’s first time turning on that lamp. He fumbled around twice before finding the switch, then paused in a daze.

The light seemed to work like a master’s brush, edging Wei Qian in a faint golden outline. Even the scarf he had not yet had time to take off seemed to soften into a mound of snow, hiding half his chin.

Wei Qian turned his face slightly and raised a hand to block the light from his eyes. The shadow of that arm joined with his long brows, seeming as though it would disappear all the way into his crow-feather-dark sideburns.

Grace restrained within, hidden light flowing underneath.

Wei Zhiyuan’s heart began to pound violently. All this time, desire and reason had been two inescapable forces lodged in his heart. The latter held ten thousand reasons, while the former had only one, want, like, unable to cut away what felt like severed entrails.

And at this moment, Wei Zhiyuan felt that all those ten thousand reasons inside him were collapsing, barely leaving behind a single lonely support, like a lighthouse standing by itself, its motionless light falling on one person alone.

The boy’s throat moved involuntarily. Only after quite a while did he manage to suppress the rise and fall of his emotions. He gave Wei Qian a light push and said in a low voice, “Go sleep in your room. It’s cold here.”

Wei Qian pressed down on his hand and weakly shook his head.

Wei Zhiyuan studied his expression. “Ge, did you drink too much? Should I pour you a cup of water?”

Wei Qian shook his head again. His brows gradually drew together. After quite a while, he took a deep breath, half-opened his eyes, glanced at Wei Zhiyuan, then waved a hand and said, “Stop minding me. Go to sleep.”

Wei Zhiyuan looked at him steadily. “What’s wrong with you?”

Wei Qian was silent for a long while. He felt exhausted, so exhausted that he did not want to say a single word, especially not to deal with a child.

But perhaps his heart felt too awful, or perhaps the alcohol had gone to his head. Wei Qian suddenly shifted his gaze away, and to Wei Zhiyuan’s surprise, he caught a fleeting trace of vulnerability on his face.

Wei Qian said hoarsely, “I feel kind of awful.”

The moment those words left his mouth, he regretted them. Wei Qian felt that the floodgate inside his heart had slipped open by accident, opening a tiny crack. He hurriedly struggled to force it shut again, afraid that even one thread or wisp more might show.

He closed his mouth, and closed his eyes too. He said nothing more, pretending he was merely dizzy from drink and wanted to sleep it off.

Wei Zhiyuan waited a while. Regretfully, no further words came. So he quietly went into Wei Qian’s bedroom, brought out a blanket and draped it over him, then turned and poured a cup of warm boiled water. After that, he went into the kitchen, took out the bowl of leftover rice from dinner, poured hot water over it to loosen it up, then chopped some leafy greens and ham, beat in an egg, and cooked it together over the fire for a while. He kept cooking until the rice grains turned soft and glutinous and split open completely, becoming inseparable from the milky white rice broth. Only then did Wei Zhiyuan stir it once with a spoon, sprinkle in a little salt very carefully, and turn off the heat.

Wei Zhiyuan could make a lot of simple late-night snacks. When he had been growing taller, he often woke up hungry in the middle of the night, and by now he was used to climbing up by himself to look for something to eat.

“If you feel bad, drink a couple of mouthfuls while it’s hot. You’ll feel better after you finish it.” Wei Zhiyuan placed the spoon into his hand, then sat down under the light himself, picked up a book, and quietly kept him company.

The steam from the porridge rose to his face, carrying a special fragrance with it.

Wei Qian sat there blankly for a moment, then rustled as he pushed himself upright and lifted the bowl to drink. His icy fingertips were scalded into a faint flush of color by the hot porcelain bowl, and the stone weighing down his stomach miraculously melted away.

The single word “home” seemed to have dissolved into that bowl of thin rice porridge slowly cooked in a small pot over a low flame.

As though it could cure every illness. Once he finished drinking it, he really did feel better.

Wei Zhiyuan stayed with him until Wei Qian stood up and went back to his room to sleep. Only then did he clean up the bowls and chopsticks, turn off the light, and return to his own bedroom.

There was a cardboard box under his bed. They had only moved into the new place not long ago, but quite a few things had already piled up in that box.

On top was a yellowed old photo of Wei Qian. Under it was a stack of porn magazines, most of them still unopened.

…Unconventionally, there was not a single woman inside them.

At first, out of curiosity, Wei Zhiyuan had flipped through two of them. Very quickly, he lost interest in the cookie-cutter physical response that came as automatically as a conditioned reflex. However, when Wei Zhiyuan had still been torn back and forth by two conflicting emotions, he had irrationally kept these bomb-like things hidden under his bed. Although he had always kept them hidden, he had all along faintly harbored a crazy hope in his heart that big brother would discover them.

Unfortunately, Wei Qian trusted him too much. He had never gone through his things, and so had never found them.

Now, the contradiction in Wei Zhiyuan’s heart had been resolved. He had made up his mind, so he decided to deal with all of them and begin what he was best at, advancing step by step, securing every move.

Wei Zhiyuan pulled out big brother’s photo and tucked it into the bag he carried with him. The next day, he mixed the magazines in among some other books and took them outside to dispose of them.

Unfortunately, this time, luck seemed to have abandoned him.

Wei Zhiyuan’s bed was a little low, and the box had to be tipped over before it could be dragged out. Early that morning, Xiao Bao had been urging him from outside the whole time. Wei Zhiyuan answered her once, and one opened magazine took the chance to roll into the deepest part under the bed. Wei Zhiyuan did not hear it.

To make sure nothing had been left behind, Wei Zhiyuan even used a long clothes hanger to sweep under the bed once, to ensure there would be no mistake. But when he reached the very back, the hanger got hooked on the bed leg, and it took a good effort before he finally got it loose again.

The open magazine lying quietly beneath the bed leg became a perfect bit of darkness right under the lamp. In the end, he still failed to sweep it out.

As soon as the heavy snow began to fall, winter vacation quickly arrived.

Wei Zhiyuan once again began his training sessions. Song Xiaobao thought he had it rough. Ever since Wei Zhiyuan first skipped a grade and was no longer in her class, Xiao Bao had felt that he had in fact jumped into another dimension, and from then on lived a life of misery. He had never watched television for a whole evening, never had a single complete winter or summer vacation, and year after year went out early and came back late.

After getting home, apart from helping Grandma and big brother with things, he also spent most of his time hiding in his room doing exercises.

Grandma Song no longer went out collecting scrap, but every month she still bundled up Wei Zhiyuan’s used scratch paper and exercise books and took them out to sell, enough to buy a big bowl of stir-fried field snails.

Under such circumstances, Song Xiaobao, a perfectly normal teenage girl, was almost contrasted by Wei Zhiyuan into some good-for-nothing underachiever.

Even so, Xiao Bao did not have much of an opinion about her little older brother. The main reason was that Wei Qian always cut off her spending money, but never cut off Wei Zhiyuan’s, so Wei Zhiyuan became her main source of mooching food and drink, half an economic provider to her.

On the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth lunar month, with the year-end right upon them, Wei Qian was in the office arguing with Lao Xiong.

It was still about that out-of-town project. Back then it had been introduced by a friend of Lao Xiong’s. The local government had set aside a commercial district, and now it had gradually taken shape. The surrounding residential land had risen along with the tide and become prime meat, instantly attracting some covetous eyes fixed greedily on it.

Lao Xiong knew his own limits well and had not planned to stick a foot into it. He had only brought Wei Qian along to broaden his horizons a little.

As it turned out, those broadened horizons led to trouble.

Wei Qian had practically come down lovesick for that parcel of land. For a stretch of time, he could not get through three sentences without bringing up that project. He had nearly reached the point of obsession, forgetting tea and food. And now it was already deep winter. In the north, winter meant you simply could not break ground and start construction, so this was the best time to get the land and run all the various early procedures. If things were done efficiently, once spring came and the frost thawed, they could start right away.

For this matter, Wei Qian had already been locked in a tug-of-war in Lao Xiong’s office with him for more than half a month.

San Pang was in Lao Xiong’s office playing Tetris. Lao Xiong was pretending to be refined while fussing with the incense ash in his censer. Wei Qian sat opposite him. Looking at that leisurely, infuriatingly bear-like manner of his, he wished he could use a huge palm fan to blow all the incense ash straight into his nostrils.

“Give me thirty million. Thirty million and I guarantee I can get this done for you.”

Lao Xiong hurriedly reached out to shield the flame from the breeze, carefully protecting his incense, and said to Wei Qian with a mournful face, “Setting aside whether you can get it done or not, hey, brother, take a look at me, do I look like thirty million?”

Wei Qian said, “That’s not the issue. Didn’t you say…”

Lao Xiong waved a hand for him to shut up. Carefully, he struck a match and lit the incense, covered the censer again, took a great deep sniff, twitched his nose, and shook his head and blinked a few times as though he were about to sneeze the next second. This idiot was plainly using seal incense like snuff.

Then, with all the grace of a cow chewing peonies, he delivered his lofty assessment of that refined incense. “Fragrant!”

Wei Qian rolled his eyes.

Only then did Lao Xiong smack his lips and say to him, “Young people, once fame and profit rush your head, you can’t even tell north from south anymore.”

Wei Qian crossed one leg over the other and leaned heavily back into the chair, arms folded over his chest, enduring Lao Xiong with veins standing out.

“I told you a long time ago, kid, you’re too eager for quick results. Just because you’ve gone out on the road a few times, you think you’ve gained some insight?” Lao Xiong said in a sing-song cadence like he was reciting poetry. “I read those feasibility analyses you wrote, sigh, total bullshit. There’s a big slab of fatty meat sitting right there. What’s there to analyze? Anyone who isn’t stupid wants to take a bite. But did you ever stop to think, why should that fatty meat be yours to bite? Are your teeth gold-inlaid jade?”

San Pang shivered.

Lao Xiong cast him a glance. “What’s wrong with you?”

San Pang said, “Could you switch up your tone, Xiong Laoban? When you talk like that, I feel like several hundred snails are crawling all over me. It’s creepily numb.”

Lao Xiong said, “…”

Then San Pang lowered his voice and said to Wei Qian, “Good grief, thirty million, not three thousand. Could you not open your mouth like a lion the second you speak? You scared me half to death.”

Lao Xiong hummed twice and chimed in, “Qian’er, with your brains, if you had even half of San’s steadiness and smoothness, you’d become a great man someday.”

San Pang slapped his thigh. “Isn’t that right!”

A moment later, San Pang thought it over and realized the flavor of that sentence was off. “Wait, that didn’t sound like you were praising me just now. Were you saying I’m not that smart?”

“That’s called great wisdom looking like foolishness,” Lao Xiong soothed him with one sentence, then continued to Wei Qian, “How many people are staring at that piece of land? Fine, let’s say your Xiong-ge abuses the power of his backing for once and relies on the old man in my family to get you this thirty million. You think thirty million is enough to move this project? Stop dreaming, kid. You can’t even get the land. Believe it or not?”

Wei Qian fell silent for a moment, then said in a low voice, “What you mean is that we still aren’t ready. We don’t have the strength to fight one battle, right?”

Lao Xiong felt the incense ash he had sniffed was making his nose itch, so he turned his head and blew his nose, speaking thickly through it. “You only just figured that out? Then you ought to get yourself a pair of glasses.”

Wei Qian ignored his mockery. His gaze went sharp as he stared straight at Lao Xiong. “Xiong Laoban, by your logic, we’ll never be ready. The plums nobody picks by the roadside are always bitter, and every good project has mouths waiting underneath it. This is only a small project in a third-tier city, something big consortiums and large state-owned enterprises can’t even be bothered to look at. It’s already the lowest and most ideal threshold we can find at this stage. If you still can’t step across even this one, sooner or later you’ll be thrown out by the rules of the game, and forget getting through the door, you won’t even get near it. Haven’t you noticed? Land prices are rising. Can you be sure you’ll get ready faster than they rise? What if there’s no time left?”

Lao Xiong said leisurely, “Then that’s fate.”

Wei Qian slammed hard on the armrest of the chair. “If I accepted fate in this life, I would never have lived long enough to sit here today and challenge you!”

Xiong Laoban did not meet him head-on. He still lounged back in his chair and asked lightly, “So right now we just can’t get through the door. So what? Do you have the qualifications? Can you get project approval? Do you have connections in the local government? Can you smooth over that whole stack of permits? Do you have enough money? Say you scrape together ten or eight million from all over the place, what if that land goes to public auction? Can you outbid them? You can tell at a glance you’ve never played cards before. You dare sit at the table holding chips worth a mere eighty-fens, and one big bet from the dealer is enough to squeeze you right out.”

Wei Qian said, “Those are all problems, but they aren’t unsolvable.”

Lao Xiong immediately pressed one hand lightly against the desk. “Then where’s the solution? Go on, say it!”

Wei Qian paused.

Lao Xiong eased his tone. “I really admire that spirit of yours, the kind that wants to grab any opportunity no matter what the cost once you see it, but… young man, be a little more steady and stay within your place.”

A young man in his twenties and a mature man in his thirties sat on opposite sides of one business desk. In the end, the older man won.

Lao Xiong stepped away with his square, measured gait to one side and made a phone call to ask his household leader what vegetables he should buy that evening.

San Pang walked over and patted Wei Qian on the shoulder. “Young man, let’s go.”

Wei Qian shrugged off his bear paw. “Get lost. Stop talking crap.”

The biting snow buried the whole city. Cheerful San Pang and heavy-hearted Wei Qian were like a pair of No Brains and Unhappy, each carrying two huge bags filled with hotpot ingredients and vegetables as they headed home.

On the way, San Pang asked Wei Qian, “Didn’t you use to dream of being some scientist in a white coat in a laboratory? Why didn’t you take the postgraduate entrance exam this year?”

Wei Qian seemed to be thinking about something else. Hearing that, he froze for a moment. “Did I ever say that?”

San Pang said, “Are you a rat or something? The second you let go, you forget?”

Wei Qian recalled it very carefully. A trace of self-mockery appeared on his face, gloomy as the sky. “When I was little I was an idiot. I thought that once you got into college, you could become a scientist. Now I’ve realized that was wrong, and I’m working hard to correct it.”

San Pang did not know why, but with a hint of hope he asked, “Working hard to correct the technical issues and keep moving toward the goal?”

Wei Qian smiled faintly and exhaled a mouthful of white breath. “Working hard to correct the route and move away from an impossible land like utopia. I don’t believe it. I’m going to get this project done no matter what.”

San Pang did not say anything more. The happiness of carrying three jin of snowflake beef in his hands was suddenly diluted, and an undercurrent of disappointment rose in his heart for no reason at all.

At that moment, someone called out from behind, “Ge!”

San Pang and Wei Qian turned to look. It was Wei Zhiyuan. With his bag slung diagonally across his body, he rode up from behind on his bicycle. The training class had just ended.

Wei Qian immediately stuffed everything in his hands into Wei Zhiyuan’s bike basket without the slightest politeness, then turned sideways and leapt onto the back seat, patting Wei Zhiyuan on the lower back. “Go on, let that fatty run a bit.”

Wei Zhiyuan immediately sped up, steady as could be.

San Pang could only chase after them from behind, yelling curses.

At last, some of the gloom on Wei Qian’s face cleared. He laughed loudly. Looking up, he saw Wei Zhiyuan’s ears had been reddened by the cold, so he casually pulled off a glove and cupped one of Wei Zhiyuan’s ears in his hand.

The bicycle, which had been moving along smooth and steady, suddenly wobbled. Wei Zhiyuan’s ear grew even redder inside his palm.

Unfortunately, Wei Qian’s improved mood did not last long. The winter break report card arrived.

Wei Zhiyuan only swept one glance over Song Xiaobao’s report card and knew that a level-eight tsunami warning was coming.

Sure enough…

“Song Xiaobao!” Wei Qian slapped his sister’s report card down onto the table with one palm.

Grandma Song, although she also hated the fact that iron refused to become steel, unconsciously took on the role of the good cop in the face of Wei Qian’s absolute black face. As she scolded Xiao Bao, “Saying these things is for your own good. How can this girl be so unwilling to amount to anything?”

At the same time, she tugged at Wei Qian and said, “Her brother, I heard there was some kind of activity at their school a while ago. It might have delayed her studies a little. She can make it up next time. Don’t be too angry…”

That line would have been better left unspoken. The moment she mentioned it, Wei Qian thought of Song Xiaobao’s ridiculous dance team.

In Wei Qian’s eyes, all of that was just entertainment. If Song Xiaobao could be as worry-free as Wei Zhiyuan, then never mind that she wanted to dance for amusement, even if she wanted to spend all day bungee jumping, Wei Qian would not care.

But right now it would not do. Song Xiaobao was neglecting what mattered for the sake of frivolous amusements, absolutely neglecting what mattered.

Wei Qian looked her up and down critically. No matter whether he looked across or up and down, everything about her displeased him. In the dead of winter, Xiao Bao was wearing a red sweater and a short plaid skirt that, in Wei Qian’s eyes, looked neither fish nor fowl. Her small face looked all the fairer and cleaner for it. Her long satin-like hair draped over her shoulders, and for the sake of vanity she refused to tie it up. When she smiled, her fine brows and narrow eyes were already beginning to show the first traces of feminine charm. On that standard oval face, her lips were red and her teeth were white.

A girl in the bloom of sixteen, there was a kind of dazzling beauty on her body that was on the verge of bursting into full flower.

Wei Qian, however, had absolutely no appreciation for it. In his mind, a good girl ought to wear her hair short, ought to be dressed in an ill-fitting school uniform, dragging trouser legs that had clearly grown too long, wearing a coat whose hem drooped all the way to the knees.

It was as though only that plainness and ugliness, neither male nor female, with a long torso and short legs, counted as the proper look of a decent person.

Unconsciously, he once again thought of the girl he had run into at Xiong-saozi’s place that day. Pure female beauty made him feel nauseated. He associated that sort of beauty with things that were bad, unclean, touched by the dust of the world. And when those things appeared on Xiao Bao, Wei Qian began to feel a certain kind of crisis.

He felt that Xiao Bao had already grown beyond the boundaries of his psychological sense of safety, had crossed the line and gone too far off the rails.

The fiery red hem of her clothing, the tiny breasts deliberately emphasized by it, all made Wei Qian feel as though the pure land in his heart had been polluted. Shameful and secret memories, coupled with anger, made the five parts of fire in his heart surge at once into ten.

The angrier Wei Qian became, the calmer his expression turned. His dark, heavy eyes swept over Xiao Bao once, and he said lightly, “Vacation’s started, right?”

Xiao Bao nodded, not understanding why.

Who could have guessed that the next sentence would be a bolt from the blue for her?

Wei Qian said, “Tomorrow happens to be free. I’ll take you to get your hair cut.”

“Have I been too indulgent with you?” Wei Qian looked her over from head to toe and, not satisfied, stabbed in another blow. “Look at what you’re wearing. What kind of appearance is that? Do you look like a student?”

Song Xiaobao’s mind went completely blank. She could not get a word out.

At last Grandma Song was truly caught in the middle. On one hand, as an elder, she also hoped Xiao Bao would achieve something, and she could understand Wei Qian’s authoritarianism and irrationality. On the other hand, as a woman, she could also understand her little granddaughter’s wish to be pretty.

“So… her brother,” Grandma Song could not help speaking up for Xiao Bao, “why not let her keep her hair for now? It seems they still have to go perform during the New Year, and I heard there’s even a TV station…”

“Dance?” Wei Qian’s cold single word finally shattered all of Song Xiaobao’s hopes. “With your books read into a state like this, you still have the face to go dance? During winter vacation I’ll hire you a tutor. You’re not going anywhere. Stay at home.”

At home, his accumulated authority was overwhelming. Song Xiaobao really only dared to act spoiled when he was in a good mood. Most of the time, she would not dare talk back to him. But for a girl of this age, having her hair cut was already a form of torture worse than death. Not being allowed to dance was even more serious, just like destroying her entire “career” and locking her up completely.

So Song Xiaobao exploded like Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai rebelling against a feudal patriarch. “You’re completely unreasonable! Everything has to be exactly the way you say. You’re a dictator, you’re Napoleon, you’re Hitler!”

One had to give her credit for being able to produce a couple of historical figures. One could tell the moment one heard her that she was an ignorant little student. Hitler was one thing, but what exactly was Napoleon supposed to mean? Wei Qian could not even tell whether she was cursing him or praising him. So he said all the more firmly, “That’s right. I’m the one who decides.”

If Comrade Song Xiaobao really had the guts to die the second she said she would, then she would have become a top student with this much middle-school coursework a long time ago. Why would she still be here jumping around at him?

Xiao Bao’s skills at crying, making a scene, and threatening to hang herself had all been learned from Grandma. Back in the day, Grandma, as a seasoned shrew, if not for the fact that Wei Qian had to worry about the sister and thus feared breaking the porcelain while striking at the rat, she would not have been able to beat the teenage version of big brother anyway. Not to mention that Xiao Bao had only learned half of it, while the present big brother was no longer what he had once been, he had practically cultivated himself into a demon.

Grandma Song was powerless to help. Unable to bear watching, but also unable not to, she finally turned around silently and went into the kitchen to tidy up.

Wei Zhiyuan played dead at one side, staying silent from beginning to end as though he did not exist.

Seeing there was no hope left, Song Xiaobao finally burst into loud sobbing.

Her hair was so beautiful. Everyone who saw it praised it. She had gone to great pains to stand out from among a crowd of dull, grey-faced middle school students, and before she had even had the chance to feel pleased with herself, big brother had already trampled over it mercilessly.

No matter what, at this moment, Song Xiaobao hated this cold-faced, cold-hearted big brother.

So she began to speak recklessly, blurting out anything without care. “I know. You just don’t like me! You always favor Er-ge in everything. Ever since we were little, he’s always had more spending money than me! You even secretly bought him a computer! What have you ever given me? You won’t even show me a good face!”

Wei Qian was nearly amused by anger.

Never mind which one of them was actually blood-related. Even if both were blood-related, an older brother would usually dote on his younger sister more.

At last Wei Qian eased his tone a little and reasoned with her patiently. “I’m biased? Xiao Yuan skipped grades twice, got into a key school without taking the exam, comes first in his year on exams, never wastes money, and never runs around outside during vacations. If you insist on comparing yourself to him, could you at least compare yourself in a way that shows some ambition? You…”

It was rare for him to reason with her like this, but Song Xiaobao simply could not hear it.

“You are biased!” she screamed. “I’m your real little sister! I know why you don’t like me. Isn’t it because of Mom that you hate me?”

Wei Qian’s temples began to throb.

And Song Xiaobao still had no idea when to stop, hopping in place as she shouted, “You hate Mom, and after Mom died you just kept on hating me! You think she was shameful, so I must definitely be shameful too! No matter what I do, I’m always not learning well, because deep down you already think I can’t ever learn well! My mom was a whore, and a whore’s daughter is…”

Wei Qian’s fierce slap had already come down.

That slap came roaring through the air with sharp force. Song Xiaobao’s mind went blank, and she had no idea how to dodge. But the slap did not land on her face, because Wei Zhiyuan, who had been playing dead, finally came out to stop him.

He wrapped both arms around Wei Qian’s waist from the side, dragged him backward, and with both hands and feet pinned him onto the sofa. Then he turned his head and glared at Song Xiaobao, full of grief at her misfortune and anger at her failure to improve. “Will you shut up already!”