Bro | Chapter 60

Wei Qian’s reaction was very flat. Whether it was the photographs, Wei Zhiyuan’s words, or the sudden phone call, he showed almost no expression. He lowered the hand he had raised, signaling for Wei Zhiyuan to sit down first, then said to the person on the other end of the line, “Wang Laoban.”

Wang Dongliang first let out a long sigh and gave a string of sentimental remarks. “Ai, you people have come all the way to our hometown to take part in our city’s development. And me? Heh heh, I haven’t amounted to much, just enough that a few people around here recognize my face, barely enough to count as having a little standing. I haven’t even had the chance to invite Chairman Wei to a meal yet. I wonder whether Chairman Wei would be willing to give me that face?”

Wei Qian gave a faint snort of laughter, and it was impossible to tell whether it was mockery or sarcasm. Then his gaze dropped to the corner of his desk, and his fingers tapped lightly. Wei Zhiyuan immediately understood what he meant, brought over the cigarette case, lit one, and handed it to him.

“Wang Laoban is too polite.”

Wang Dongliang gave what sounded like a hearty laugh. “Not at all. I’ve long heard of Chairman Wei, a talented young man, capable and accomplished… aiya, speaking of it, the two of us actually have quite a bit of connection.”

Without betraying anything on his face, Wei Qian flicked the ash from his cigarette. “How so?”

“You know, Wang-ge here likes making friends. A hero is never judged by his origins, right? These friends of mine come from all sorts of backgrounds and circles. Among them are some people who may have made a few mistakes when they were young, haha, though of course they’ve all turned over a new leaf now. Among my friends there happens to be one such person. He’s pushing sixty this year, surname Ji, called Ji Xuewen. I wonder whether you have any impression of him.”

That big hoodlum Wang Dongliang always talked in this crooked, roundabout way. Wei Qian frowned. He did not immediately grasp what exactly the man was barking about. After hesitating slightly for a moment, Wei Qian cautiously picked up where he had left off. “I truly haven’t heard of this friend of yours. I wonder what exalted figure he is.”

Wang Dongliang began another of his long-winded speeches that said plenty and meant nothing, sighing for a good while over the unpredictability of life, with a few scraps of Tang and Song poetry mixed in here and there without regard for whether they fit, sour as unsweetened sour plum soup. During that gap, Wei Qian smoked a full three cigarettes… and the fourth was forcibly snatched away and taken over by Wei Zhiyuan.

At long last, after taking a full lap around the globe, Wang Dongliang returned to the point.

“Indeed,” said the hoodlum, “so many years have passed, and Chairman Wei is still young. You probably don’t remember the earlier matters. As it happens, this Ji Xuewen just so went to prison the year you were born, and he had quite a bit of history with your mother…”

Only at that moment did Wei Qian’s expression change for the first time.

Then they heard Wang Dongliang slowly spit out the rest. “No, how can I call it ‘quite a bit of history’? Wang-ge isn’t educated, this mouth of mine is always failing to say the right thing, so don’t mind it. Although there wasn’t any normal marital relationship, well, without him there wouldn’t be you. How should I put this… that… blood is thicker than water, and all that…”

Wei Qian abruptly cut him off. “Is Wang Laoban planning some grand opening sale, directly assigning me a father? Then that father is really rather cheap.”

Wang Dongliang laughed smugly. “Why does Chairman Wei speak with such thorns in every word? What, did your little brother fail to serve you properly today? Doesn’t sound like your mood is very good. Though just from appearances, Chairman Wei doesn’t resemble this friend of mine very much. Chairman Wei takes more after your mother’s side, I’d say. But the moment my friend saw your photo, aiyo, his eyes went straight. He said those brows and those eyes were exactly the same. Sure enough, the old saying is right, ‘a son resembles his mother, a daughter resembles her father’… hahahaha. I’ve said too much. Of course, Brother here is only an outsider. If I keep butting into you ‘family people’s’ affairs, I’ll only become annoying. Same as I said before, you must come by another day. Brother here has to treat you properly, invite you to eat one of our local specialties. There’s a ‘live-person restaurant,’ where living people serve as the platters, every single one of them handsome young men with thick brows and big eyes. Chairman Wei will definitely have a taste for that. When the time comes, absolutely don’t stand on ceremony with me.”

The instant the words “a son resembles his mother” came out, the veins at Wei Qian’s temples began to stand out and twitch. Wei Zhiyuan could clearly feel his breathing halt for a beat.

And yet Wei Qian still did not let Wang Dongliang catch the slightest hint of anything. He patiently listened to that whole passage of meaningful-sounding ghost talk. Only then did the corner of his mouth twitch slightly as he said with a half-smile that was not quite a smile, “Wang Laoban certainly has an excellent appetite. Looks like this younger brother must accompany you and let you enjoy yourself to the fullest.”

The instant he put down the phone, Wei Qian let out a soft breath, as though he had been holding it in for quite a while. Even his breathing trembled a little. His lips looked as though they had been frozen, bluish-white, drained of all blood.

Wei Zhiyuan called him softly, “Ge…”

Wei Qian did not respond. Leaning across the desk, Wei Zhiyuan reached out and gripped his shoulder. “Ge!”

Only then did Wei Qian seem to come back to himself. He raised his head and looked fixedly at Wei Zhiyuan for a moment, then slowly bent down, took a document out of the drawer, and handed it to Wei Zhiyuan. Somewhat weakly, he said, “This is the draft cooperation agreement the investment department prepared regarding your game. Legal has already looked it over. Take it and go through it first. If there are any problems, go straight to the manager in charge and communicate with him.”

Wei Zhiyuan froze for a moment and was just about to say something, but Wei Qian lowered his eyes. “Go out first. Let me stay by myself for a while.”

Wei Zhiyuan frowned.

Wei Qian raised his voice slightly. “Out.”

Wei Zhiyuan could see that he was upset, and did not want to add fuel to the fire at this moment, so he silently picked up the draft contract from the desk, turned, walked out, and gently closed the door behind him.

It was already after work, yet Wei Qian still had not come out of his office even once. It was not until almost everyone at headquarters had already left that Wei Zhiyuan took a turn around and knocked on his door. “Ge? It’s time, are we going home?”

There was no sound from inside for quite a while. Just as Wei Zhiyuan was about to raise his hand and knock again, the door opened from the inside.

Wei Qian’s expression looked terrible. He took out the car keys from his pocket, handed them to Wei Zhiyuan, and said only one sentence by way of instruction. “You drive.”

There was nothing more after that.

“This afternoon I talked a lot with your department manager. It was pretty interesting… oh right, Ge, is there still food at home? Let’s pick up some groceries on the way. What do you want to eat?”

Wei Zhiyuan tried to start up a conversation. But Wei Qian either answered with a simple sound of acknowledgment, or else simply leaned weakly against the car seat and said nothing at all.

In the end, Wei Zhiyuan also fell silent. When they entered the residential compound, he slowed the car down until it was moving at about the speed of a bicycle, guiding it slowly along the lane. Freeing one hand, he wrapped it over the back of Wei Qian’s hand. That hand was ice-cold.

Wei Qian only opened his eyes, glanced at him blandly, neither warm nor cold, then closed them again.

He neither protested with any movement nor withdrew his hand. He seemed simply sunk in a kind of numb, self-abandoning apathy.

Something was definitely wrong, Wei Zhiyuan thought.

By the time he drove into their own garage, Wei Zhiyuan had finally managed to warm his hand up. Wei Qian opened a narrow slit of his eyes, as though his circulation had only just resumed. He moved his stiff fingers and slowly asked Wei Zhiyuan, “Does it feel good to touch?”

Wei Zhiyuan knew enough to stop while he was ahead. He immediately became proper again and withdrew his paw. “Ge, are you okay?”

Wei Qian said, “Mm.”

Then he undid his seatbelt and got out of the car, heading straight upstairs. Wei Zhiyuan hurriedly caught up to him. “Ge, about the photographs, I was thinking…”

Wei Qian walked ahead of him with his back still turned, raised one hand, and held up two fingers. “We’ll talk about that later.”

Wei Zhiyuan said, “Huh?”

“Tomorrow. Xiao Bao is still at home.”

Xiao Bao was currently sprawled over a coffee table together with Alex, looking through old photographs. This had been Alex’s shameless, pestering request. Out of the simple warmth and hospitality of the common people, Song Xiaobao had naively agreed in a moment of innocence, and very quickly regretted it.

Bitchy A’s original intention had been to admire handsome men in their childhood years, but who knew that he would soon find something even more entertaining, childhood Song Xiaobao. Toward that, he launched an utterly inhumane round of mockery.

“Hahahaha, how could you possibly have grown up looking like this when you were little? This is too bizarre! Lili, secretly tell Ge, just how many knife jobs did you get done over in Smecta-land before you obtained your current disguised human identity? It’s fine, I won’t interrogate you about what your purpose is in coming to Earth. Just tell me.”

Song Xiaobao said, “What are you talking about! How was I that ugly?”

Bitchy A bared a mouthful of gleaming white teeth and said very seriously, “No, miss, not ugly at all. It’s just that by human standards, the situation is slightly tragic.”

Song Xiaobao: “…”

Bitchy A leaned close and examined her. “You’re not nearsighted? Ai, lucky thing, otherwise with that nose of yours that looked like it had been smacked by a door panel when you were little, I’m afraid you wouldn’t even have been able to wear glasses, right? A little girl tying her glasses to her head with a string all day long, looking like a patient who had just undergone surgery for brain damage, tsk, just how miserable would that have been?”

Song Xiaobao glared furiously at him.

Her glare held no lethality whatsoever for Bitchy A. While casually flipping through the family’s rare old photo album, Alex said, “Last time you told me your eldest brother is blood-related, but your er-ge isn’t, right? Ai, it would’ve been great if you had looked more like your eldest brother… holy shit, who’s this?!”

On the last page of the album was a woman.

Because of the era and the level of photography at the time, the woman’s expression looked somewhat stiff. Her permed hair, in modern eyes, looked extremely gaudy. She wore vivid blood-red lipstick. Her cheeks were hollowed in thinly. Her complexion was dull and lifeless. Her numb eyes looked toward the camera as she was trying hard to squeeze out a little unnatural smile.

By all logic, this ought to have been a very unflattering photograph, one that might even have made Xi Shi look plain. Yet Alex stared at the woman’s face for a long while. If Xiao Bao had not known that he was so gay he had practically bent into pi itself, she would certainly have thought that he had fallen in love with the woman in the picture at first sight.

“Beautiful…” Alex murmured only after quite some time.

Xiao Bao said in confusion, “Huh? What’s beautiful about it? It looks so silly.”

Alex waved a hand. “You don’t get it. Look, she’s like a wax dummy, her whole body stiff, standing unnaturally in front of the lens. There’s also something especially ashen and defeated in her eyes, making them seem dull and the expression sluggish. At first glance she’s just an ordinary middle-aged woman, but when you look carefully, you realize this woman is really… beautiful, just like…”

He seemed to run out of words all of a sudden. After gesturing and fumbling for quite a while, he finally said in a jumble, “Like the kind of flower that’s about to die, you know? The outer petals have already deteriorated into a dying brownish yellow, and you can see the shriveled veins of the plant inside. Only at the flower’s center there’s still a scrap of ruined life left, carrying moisture that is just about to disappear…”

Song Xiaobao said, “Aren’t you just trying to say ‘a faded flower and a broken willow’?”

“My ass! Do you have any aesthetic sense at all? If you don’t know how to talk, then shut up. I’ve realized your mouth really can’t spit out ivory from a dog’s mouth.” Alex irritably sprayed that line at her, then lowered his head again and stared at the photograph with fascination. In a low voice he said, “There’s a kind of beauty to it that feels as though it is on the brink of destruction. Just one look and you can’t help imagining what that flower was like at the moment it bloomed most fully… hey, who is this?”

“My mom,” Song Xiaobao said. As she spoke, she pulled the photograph out and looked at the date written on it. “I don’t remember what she looked like. Mybrother said that… oh, at this time she should already have started taking drugs. No wonder she was so skinny she looked like a ghost wrapped in skin.”

Alex abruptly realized that he seemed to have touched on the family’s painful matter. He instantly came back to himself from his fervent photography-enthusiast state and said awkwardly, “Lili, I’m sorry…”

“It’s okay. I don’t have even the slightest impression of her.” Song Xiaobao shrugged in a deliberately carefree way, then added, “I don’t have any of my dad either.”

At that exact moment, Wei Qian and Wei Zhiyuan came home. Wei Qian’s gaze involuntarily fell on the photograph in Xiao Bao’s hand. No emotion could be seen on his face. He merely walked over, tidied things up himself, stuffed their mother’s photograph back into the album, and lightly smacked Xiao Bao on the top of the head. “Out of all things to play with, you had to play with photographs.”

Although Alex very much wanted to linger a little longer and feast his eyes on the beauty of handsome men, he knew how to read expressions. Seeing that Wei Qian’s face was clouded, he could only tactfully take his leave within five minutes and head back to the hotel where he was staying.

Wei Qian forced himself to rally his spirits and chatted with Xiao Bao for a few sentences, then went back to his room before nine o’clock.

Only after entering his own room did Wei Qian close the door and fiercely pinch the bridge of his brow. His head felt as though it were splitting apart.

He only washed up perfunctorily. He did not even wipe his hair dry before rolling straight onto the bed. Very quickly, exhausted in both body and mind, he fell asleep. Before he completely sank into slumber, the events of the whole day clamored chaotically through his head, and in the end they froze on that old photograph held in Xiao Bao’s hand.

First he vaguely returned to an old dream, dreaming of himself as a child leaning against the pregnant woman, listening to her tell him the story of the river and the child.

Then the woman and the sound of reading disappeared, and it seemed as though that story still had a continuation.

The woman’s full cheeks hollowed in, and the tip of her nose, already high and prominent, seemed so sharp that it might pierce the sky. Her gaze became more and more gloomy and numb, and behind those crimson lips there always seemed to lurk a kind of frenzied dead silence.

Wei Qian seemed to retreat back into his own teenage years. The moment he pushed open the door, he saw the woman standing woodenly in front of Xiao Bao’s bed, still holding the syringe she used for drugs, staring fixedly at the little girl lying on the bed.

The careless, heedless little girl slept on, oblivious to everything.

Wei Qian’s scalp exploded. He crossed the room in two strides, shoved the woman aside in one movement, and blocked the front of Xiao Bao’s bed. “What are you doing?”

The woman was thin as a bamboo pole in the wind. When he raised his hand and pushed her, she staggered, stumbled backward several steps, and landed on the floor with a thump.

“What am I doing?” she laughed in a low voice. The hand that had fallen to the corner happened to touch Wei Qian’s childhood storybook. She picked it up and, as though amusing herself, unhurriedly tore it page by page. Slowly she said, “You two little bastards born of a whore, what are you even living for? Better to die earlier and be reborn into a good family next life.”

As she spoke, her gaze fell between the torn pages. “Little lamb, little lamb, round and plump, ah-woo, one bite and down you go, not a single one of you gets away… hahahaha, not a single one gets away.”

Wei Qian said, “Madwoman.”

He did not want to look at her any longer, and bent down to check on Xiao Bao in the little bed. This child had been a little pig ever since she was small. With such a big commotion right next to her, she still simply could not be woken.

Her little face was plump and round. Her tiny paws, like lumps of soft meat, rested at her sides, opening and closing unconsciously as though she were trying to grab hold of something.

The teenager let out a breath and gently tucked the girl’s little hand into the blanket, feeling that she seemed to cling to his fingers in dependence.

But before he could register the warmth carried in the child’s palm, two hands suddenly wrapped around him from behind. He smelled the nauseatingly cheap fragrance on the woman’s body. Those hands were so thin they had lost all shape. The backs of them were marked with dried-out lines one after another. There was not a trace of blood in the fingertips, yet the touch was extremely slick and greasy, like two cold fish sliding into his clothes. One hand pinched his waist and then moved up onto his chest. The other hand touched his crotch and began to rub in a teasing way.

The boy’s body was only just starting to develop and had not yet entered puberty. He was young and ignorant, and did not understand what was happening at all. He froze on the spot.

As unfamiliar agitation surged into his blood vessels and with a boom rushed into his brain, Wei Qian finally came to himself. He violently struggled and, turning around, struck the woman across the face.

With a sharp smack, the room fell silent for a moment. Xiao Bao was finally woken by the noise and began to bawl in a voice loud as a bell.

The woman licked her scarlet lips, covered one side of her face with a hand, and remained kneeling on the floor as she laughed lightly and brokenly. For an instant, her expression of madness actually looked a little girlish and affected. “Aiya, precious son, so it turns out you still don’t understand?”

Wei Qian’s blood turned cold. He felt as though the sensation of the woman’s touch still remained on him, like a snake winding around his body. A wave of nausea struck him, and bracing himself on the table, he began to retch.

The woman stopped laughing and looked at him indifferently. “You men, don’t you just like this sort of thing? What, you think your mom is disgusting? So what if you do? More than ten years ago, the blood in your body was mine. You don’t find yourself disgusting? Hm?”

After saying that, she smoothed her hair, lifted her chin, and stood up with composed coldness, yet lightly hummed under her breath, “Little lamb, little lamb, round and plump, ah-woo, one bite and down you go, not a single one gets away…”

Humming as she went, she stepped into her high heels, loosened her collar a little, and staggered toward the door. When she reached the doorway, she suddenly turned back, opened her eyes so wide that the eyeballs looked almost ready to pop out of their sockets, stared fixedly at Wei Qian, and babbled nonsense. “I told you not to cross the river, not to cross the river, but you still insisted on crossing! Well then? Song Dawei is dead, right? You’re finished too, right? About to get swallowed up in one ah-woo bite too, right! Ahahahahaha…”

Her laughter became sharper and sharper, until in the end it sounded like a crow shrieking in the night through a pinched throat, giving rise to a kind of ominousness so intense it seemed to tear at the heart.

Wei Qian jolted awake with a start, his heart pounding like thunder.

He had forgotten to close the window before sleeping. The cold wind of late autumn blew in, making him shudder violently. Only then did he discover that he was actually naked.

Wei Qian frowned. Usually the pressure on him was immense, and his time for rest was extraordinarily precious. In general, the moment he lay down he simply went to sleep, not paying much attention to those sorts of needs. Once in a while it happened, too, but he would only deal with it perfunctorily with his hand.

But that night, he felt somewhat repulsed by it. He did not reach down to touch himself. He merely leaned against the headboard and quietly waited for the desire to pass. He did not even go to close the window, simply allowing the wind to keep blowing over him.

He did not know how much time passed before both his heartbeat and his body gradually calmed down. Wei Qian got up, intending to pour himself a cup of water. Struggling out of the nightmare, he found it a little laughable, both the dream and Wang Dongliang.

Once, he had tried as hard as he could to keep his back straight, leaving school, then, because of that ridiculous bit of self-respect, going to work as Le-ge’s thug and earning money with his life on the line.

But so what?

He thought, if he wanted to now, if Le Xiaodong’s nightclub were still there, he could buy two or three of the place and throw them around for fun. Who would be able to shake his self-respect?

Money and profit would always weave a vast net. It was only a matter of whose net was bigger, whose net was stronger.

In just a few short days, Wei Qian had already thoroughly figured Wang Dongliang out.

Wang Dongliang’s brother-in-law, whom he valued highly, had beaten someone to death during the forced relocation process. Wang had suppressed the matter locally, but as it turned out, someone in the dead man’s family had a distant relative whose background was not so simple. Right now, there was likely already someone preparing to investigate Wang.

And then there was that bunch of reformed criminals under Wang Dongliang. Although they all depended on him for food and did his dirty work for him, the more lawless they became, the harder they were to restrain. Wang Dongliang had now already had one leg dragged into the water.

He certainly needed money, a great deal of money. He was so strapped that he was nearly at the point of a cornered dog jumping a wall.

Rumor had it that he currently had a sum of funds that had been laundered through Macau and urgently needed a legitimate route through which it could flow back into the mainland. There was almost no method more ideal than turning this plaza redevelopment project into residential housing.

As for the A City project, Ma Chunming had previously produced an extremely accurate market research report. Local pre-sale supervision was not especially strict. It was absolutely possible to recover the vast majority of the funds before the main structure was topped out, perhaps even sell out entirely. If the early-stage operations were handled properly, the whole return-of-funds cycle might not even exceed half a year, a rare project with high profits and the advantages of being short, flat, and fast.

Wang Dongliang absolutely had to get his hands on that piece of land as quickly as possible.

Wei Qian put down the water cup and stared at the water’s surface, where a little faint glimmer was reflected. The hand holding the cup was his own, the long, strong fingers of an adult man. He thought to himself: I absolutely must make sure you cannot get it.

At that very moment, Wei Zhiyuan’s bedroom door suddenly opened.

Wei Qian returned to himself, cast a glance at the wall clock, and lowered his voice as he asked, “Why are you still not asleep at this hour? Living on jet-lag time?”

Wei Zhiyuan walked over. “Mm, just discussing something with a few friends overseas… Ge, I’m a little worried about you.”

Wei Qian felt that at the time he had been calm. He felt that when he received Wang Dongliang’s phone call he had been calm. The nightmare had only been a coincidence brought about by his normally late-sleeping, early-rising body clock being disturbed. Just now he had still been coolly and methodically thinking through how to deal with that big hoodlum. By all rights, he ought to have been rational.

And yet at this moment, amid that very calm and rationality, the madwoman’s repeated nonsense from the dream surged up in his heart against his own will.

Cross the river…

Cross the river? Then cross it, so what?

What did it matter if neither parent was human?

What did homosexuality count for? What did incest count for?

“Trying to threaten me with this kind of neither-painful-nor-itchy thing?” Wei Qian thought. “Words like wind-blades, frost-swords, speech like snow? If you’ve got the ability, bury me. Who the hell have I ever been afraid of? Fuck that.”

“Come with me.”

Wei Qian said it neither heavily nor lightly, as if he were merely planning to speak with Wei Zhiyuan about how the investment funds should go through the proper procedures.

But after closing the door behind them, he abruptly slammed Wei Zhiyuan against the door. Before Wei Zhiyuan had even figured out what was happening, Wei Qian leaned in with no care for force or restraint and bit down on Wei Zhiyuan’s lips.

On the spot, Wei Zhiyuan felt his steady heartbeat go “ka” and forget how to beat.