Bro | Chapter 69

Only Parting in Death, Never Again Parting While Alive

Wei Qian’s phone chimed once. He pulled it out and saw that it was a picture message. The moment he opened the image, it startled him. The face of a newborn baby abruptly filled the entire frame.

Newborn little things were ugly to begin with, their skin as red as tomatoes, their faces full of wrinkles, all their features scrunched together as though they were holding back one huge wail. On top of that, the camera had been too close, so the image was a little distorted. Wei Qian leaned back and thought, What on earth did they give birth to? Don’t tell me some neighboring civilization in outer space sent it to Earth for peaceful evolution?

A second sound followed immediately after. San Pang’s text had come in.

My daughter! This is my fucking daughter!

A whole string of exclamation marks followed after that. Wei Qian did not count them carefully. One rough glance suggested there were enough to make up a reinforced company. From those few short words and punctuation marks alone, he could practically hear San Pang’s roaring voice spraying spit.

Taking advantage of the company lunch break, Wei Qian rushed to the hospital. San Pang’s parents and his wife Lin Qing’s parents were all there. The four old folks were enthusiastically discussing how to go out and make up a mahjong table, and happily left together.

San Pang’s whole face was glowing red. Every three seconds, he had to reach out and touch the baby on the bed. His daughter, who had only just gone through a life-and-death ordeal, was trying to have a good sleep, yet kept getting harassed by this inexplicably creepy man. Before long, she had had enough and let out a mighty howl.

Her voice rang out like a bell, full of strength and energy. This little girl had been born sturdier than other babies, probably a lucky little thing.

Lin Qing was a mother for the first time and still not very skilled at soothing a baby. She immediately panicked and started fumbling all over the place, but no matter what she did, she could not calm the little girl down. The baby cried so heartbreakingly it sounded as if her liver and intestines were breaking, almost to the point of choking herself breathless.

Wei Qian leaned over to take a look. “Hey, give her to me.”

He took the infant from Lin Qing’s arms. At first he was a bit clumsy, but the moment he touched that tiny little body, he quickly found again the old feeling from when he had taken care of Xiao Bao as a child. Strangely enough, the little girl seemed to have a real affinity with him. He only gently rocked her once, and her crying gradually weakened, until in the end she actually fell asleep in his arms.

“What’s her name?”

“I said we should just call her ‘Tan in Love.’ Romantic and easy to remember. Her mother absolutely refused… ai, if my own mother had once been able to stand firm like that, I wouldn’t have ended up… tsk, the more I say, the more it’s all tears.” San Pang shook his head. “In the end, her maternal grandfather picked the name. Said she’d be called Tan Ming, with the ming from tomorrow, and it has nothing to do with that idiot Ma Chunming.”

Wei Qian laughed, bent down, and gently laid the freshly minted little Tan Ming back down. Then he took two small boxes out of his pocket and placed them by her side.

Lin Qing took one look and saw that one box contained a gold lock and the other a small jade bracelet, making up a set of “gold and jade fill the house.” She immediately sat up and whispered, “Director Wei, her eyes aren’t even open yet. This is too extravagant a gift for a child. And why did you buy two pieces all by yourself?”

Wei Qian said, “Just keep them. I’ve only got this one niece, and if I’m not spending money on her, who else am I supposed to spend it on? One is from me. The other I’m giving on behalf of someone else.”

“What someone else?” Lin Qing did not understand.

San Pang, however, immediately understood and suddenly spoke from the side. “It’s fine. Just keep them for the child.”

Back then, of the three little brothers from the alley, one was now missing.

At the time, Wei Qian had been a gloomy-faced chuunibyou kid who looked like a juvenile delinquent, San Pang had been a fat boy squatting on the ground in a sleeveless undershirt with a crossbeam pattern while gnawing watermelon, and Mazi had been helping his mother fry youtiao by the roadside, both of them drenched in sweat.

“How many years has it been?” San Pang asked.

“Sixteen years.” Wei Qian said. “If he’d had a good reincarnation, he ought to be in high school by now.”

“Wouldn’t he just?” San Pang sighed. As he spoke, he once again got itchy hands and reached out to tease his little daughter by pinching her nose.

Lin Qing had already been bombarded by the little thing’s demonic cries all morning and quickly slapped San Pang’s paw away. “She finally fell asleep, let her rest for a while! Are you annoying or not?”

See? Everything had changed.

“Where’s Xiao Yuan?” San Pang asked. “When’s he coming back?”

“He should be arriving about now. I’m going to the airport to pick him up in a bit.” Wei Qian glanced at his watch, then bent down again and gently touched the little girl’s cheek with his fingertip. “Missy, uncle’s going.”

After saying that, even he himself felt a surge of emotion. Just like that, he had been upgraded from “big brother” to “uncle.”

Wei Zhiyuan had just made a trip abroad. The road game they had spent several years preparing had entered public beta with the force of bursting onto the scene from nowhere. Because funding had been abundant, they had spread out one enormous map across the globe. From early-stage publicity to packaging, everything had been stacked full of gimmicks and selling points. Its popularity had been expected.

Wei Zhiyuan had been away for over two months. When he came back, he was thinner from exhaustion. Wei Qian did not go back to the company at all, but took him straight home.

Wei Zhiyuan was so sleepy he could barely keep his eyelids open, yet he still stubbornly clung to Wei Qian and refused to let go, as though trying to make up for the full two months at once.

“Chairman, I’m awesome, right?” He was like a great big dog rolling around asking to be praised, so pleased with himself he was practically about to stick his tongue out.

Wei Qian rubbed his chin. “So fucking awesome it’s exploding.”

Wei Zhiyuan wrapped his arms around his waist and buried his exhausted face in Wei Qian’s arms. “Then where’s my reward?”

“Reward?” Wei Qian sat bolt upright on the sofa, dignified as if conducting business negotiations. Then he lowered his head seriously and asked, “What kind of reward do you want? A clothed reward, or an unclothed reward?”

Wei Zhiyuan’s hands loosened and he almost fell off the sofa.

His face flushed bright red, and even the sleep bugs vanished without a trace. His throat suddenly felt a little dry, and he stared blankly at Wei Qian.

Wei Qian reached out and pushed him on the shoulder, making him sit back up, then said very gravely, “Tsk. What are you thinking about in broad daylight, you brat? I meant I’m getting you a little gold statuette for Best Model Worker. Do you want the clothed version or the unclothed version? Want something to eat? I’ll go check what’s in the fridge…”

Before he could finish, Wei Zhiyuan pounced on him and knocked him flat.

The two of them shamelessly fooling around on the sofa for a while, Wei Qian was almost stripped from “beast in fine clothes” down to “beast with no clothes at all,” when suddenly his phone rang.

“Don’t tie my hands up with my tie. This damn strip of cloth is expensive, you’ve twisted it into pickled vegetable already.” While complaining and struggling free, Wei Qian pulled out his phone, glanced at the caller ID, and answered, “Lao Xiong, you again…”

Lao Xiong’s side was extremely noisy, and mixed into it seemed to be the sound of children crying. Without caring about anything else, he shouted at Wei Qian, “The only national highway heading east out of G Province, marked 1.5 kilometers from the F exit, quick…”

A tremendous crash made Wei Qian instinctively squeeze his eyes shut. It almost felt as though something had punched through the phone and struck him by the ear. By the time he came back to himself, the other side had already gone dead.

Wei Qian stared blankly for two seconds before finally remembering that before Lao Xiong left, he had told him in advance that the police in G Province had smashed a trafficking den for women and children, followed the trail to a large number of downstream links, and rescued several trafficking victims. As soon as the news was posted on the website, a lot of people got in touch.

Among them were a number of family members of victims who, because of age, illness, disability, and so on, could no longer travel long distances. With police approval, Lao Xiong had personally gone as the liaison to pick those people up and take them home.

Judging by the timing, they should have been halfway back by now.

Lao Xiong was very thorough in his work. No matter where he went, he always left an emergency contact. The fact that he had not called the police, but instead phoned Wei Qian directly to tell him his location, meant the situation had already become urgent to a certain degree. He must have been afraid that he would not be able to explain himself clearly enough to the police dispatcher in a few short sentences.

Wei Qian swiftly made several calls and immediately learned that because of a sudden torrential rain, the area had suffered a landslide and mudslide, and the national highway was now cut off. He reported Lao Xiong’s exact coordinates to the official rescue personnel and, the next day, rushed to G Province together with Wei Zhiyuan.

The rescue workers found the wreckage of the vehicle at the scene, but for the moment they had not found any people. The chances of survival were probably still fairly high.

Wei Qian mobilized every resource he could think of. Another day passed, and Xiong Yingjun was still nowhere to be found.

At last Wei Qian said, “Call Xiong-daye. His connections run broader than mine. One thing is one thing. His son is now missing, with life or death unknown. I refuse to believe he’s still sulking.”

Back in those days, when Lao Xiong had gone too far, blown his whole fortune, and left home to become a monk, he had so enraged his father that the old man had nearly fainted on the spot, and declared then and there that he was severing all ties with that unfilial thing.

But whether it was really severed or only pretended to be severed, outsiders had no way of knowing. In any case, one phone call from Wei Qian moved Xiong-daye into action. More people joined the search. Another two days passed, and just as Wei Qian felt as though anxiety was making his throat bleed, that bastard Xiong Yingjun was finally found.

Wei Qian and the others had to lead a team on foot for more than ten kilometers along a road that had still not yet been reopened before they finally reached that godforsaken little village and found Lao Xiong, his head wrapped in bandages and still somewhat unclear in the mind.

All things considered, this wine-and-meat monk Xiong Yingjun really did perhaps have the Buddha’s protection. His life was surprisingly hard to kill.

The insignificance of human beings in the face of nature hardly needed saying. At that moment, what had happened before their eyes had seemed like the mountains themselves collapsing. A rock smashed the front windshield of the car to pieces on the spot, and Lao Xiong immediately shouted for everyone to run.

But among the rescued victims riding in the same car there had been one child who, whether intellectually or mentally, seemed to have some problem and could not communicate normally. In the chaos, the boy slipped out of sight for one moment, then stood there stupidly not knowing where to go, nearly swept into the avalanche of stones.

While urgently trying to contact Wei Qian, Lao Xiong lunged over, grabbed the child with one hand, tucked him under his arm, and ran for his life. But he had only gotten one sentence out when a rock rolling down the mountain smashed into the hand holding his phone. The phone shattered instantly, and Lao Xiong, together with the foolish little boy, went down as well.

The impact dazed Lao Xiong so badly that he could not hear other people desperately shouting his name.

Mud and broken stone from the mountain were just about to pour down like a deluge. At that critical moment, Lao Xiong miraculously got back to his feet. Then, at an unbelievable speed, he dragged and hauled that child toward a relatively safe area. According to those who saw it, it was almost as though some invisible person had given them a fierce shove.

The other piece of luck was that among the accompanying personnel there had happened to be a doctor. Coincidentally, it was that very Dr. Liu who had once spoken with Lao Xiong during Wei Qian’s hospitalization. Their hospital was constantly pulling weird stunts, and had regulations saying that when a resident doctor was promoted to second-line status, not only did their academic qualifications and experience have to meet the standard, they also had to have a record of unpaid social service.

Dr. Liu thought that many of the victims had suffered abuse and were exactly in need of a doctor, so this time he had simply come along with Lao Xiong.

The moment Dr. Liu saw what had happened, he hurried over and dragged the crawling, stumbling Lao Xiong out. The group did not dare linger where they were and immediately retreated along the road. In their rush to get out of the car, Dr. Liu’s belongings had been left inside the now-ruined vehicle. When he checked himself, he found all his electronic devices were gone too.

There was no sign of human habitation nearby, and nobody knew how far they had run, until finally they encountered a villager driving a pickup truck so old it was practically about to die.

The villager brought them back to his home, and Dr. Liu immediately treated Lao Xiong’s injuries.

But the rural area there was relatively underdeveloped, and ordinarily already had little contact with the outside world. Once a natural disaster hit, transport and communications were cut off at once. It was not until several days had passed, with the help of that local’s wreck of a pickup, that Dr. Liu accidentally and by dumb luck managed to contact one of the people searching for them.

Lao Xiong was carried onto an ambulance.

Wei Qian and Wei Zhiyuan accompanied him. In order to find him, Wei Qian had gone without rest for several days, and his lips had cracked from dryness, which worried Wei Zhiyuan terribly. He unscrewed a bottle of mineral water and handed it to him, saying quietly, “Ge, drink some water first. In a little while lean on me and rest for a bit.”

Lao Xiong heard him speaking and slowly cracked one eye open, a faint gleam surfacing in it.

This time he did not scorn Wei Zhiyuan for showing off his affection in front of him. He only suddenly said softly, “I saw Chen Lu.”

“Wouldn’t you know it.” Wei Qian gulped down over half the bottle in one go. “You almost went with her.”

“She didn’t want me. That time, when the rock smashed me on the head, fuck, it nearly knocked me straight under the Buddha’s throne. I was all dazed, and then I saw our little deer. She bent down and asked me, ‘Are you so full you’ve got nothing better to do? Running all the way out to this poor backwater place just to get hit by rocks? Does it hurt?’ I told her, ‘I sought what I wanted and got what I wanted. Why would I care if it hurts? At worst you can just lead me back and the two of us can be reunited over there as husband and wife.’”

Lao Xiong’s voice was very light and a little blurred, thin as silk threads, seeming as though it might snap at a touch.

“She hauled me up and said, ‘You giant dumbfuck, you won’t even let me have peace after death. I already found a pretty boy over there long ago. Who’s waiting around to reunite with an ugly old bastard like you? Hurry up and get lost!’ Then she shoved me right out, that palm strike of hers, the power’s still the same as ever…”

By this point his voice gradually dropped lower and lower. The indistinct, relieved smile still lingered at the corner of his mouth. His head tilted to the side, and just like that, he fainted.

The living and the dead always travel different roads, yet all return in the end to the same destination.

To seek what one seeks and truly obtain it is the greatest fortune.

Later on, Lao Xiong ended up with a scar on his bald head, and even got on the TV news because of it. He babbled all kinds of mystical nonsense, yet somehow wound up with a great many fans genuinely worshipping him as an eminent monk.

After that experience, Wei Qian figured one thing out thoroughly: any bit of sympathy spent on that bastard was a waste of feelings.

Around the same time, another person also began to become active on the silver screen, classmate Song Xiaobao.

Even though Wei Qian had backed her with money all the way and cleared obstacles for her, after several years in the business she was still neither famous nor obscure, and seemed more like she was just dabbling. Nobody had expected her to make much of anything of herself. Who would have guessed that by a series of accidents she would land a major supporting female role in a low-budget film and suddenly, just like that, become popular?

After that there was no stopping it. Song Xiaobao even won several awards in a row and started to look surprisingly much like the real deal.

One day Song Xiaobao called home in a flurry. “Ge, I’m coming home! The premiere for our new film’s publicity run is at the movie theater right across from our place. You absolutely have to come. The two of you have to squeeze out the time even if you’ve got to smash the pot and sell the iron!”

“Fine.” Wei Qian agreed immediately, then asked, “Right, what role did you play again?”

Song Xiaobao said, “A female lunatic.”

“…” Wei Qian paused, then ransacked his brain and finally came up with one line of praise. “Really? Then that’s true color casting.”

“Pah!” Song Xiaobao said. “I’m going to do makeup. You and er-ge come early tonight.”

“Hey, Xiao Bao, wait.” Wei Qian suddenly stopped her. He hesitated a bit and asked, “Do you know what day today is?”

“What day?” Song Xiaobao thought for a moment. “It’s the fourteenth. The fourteenth of every month is some kind of color-coded Valentine’s Day. This month is…”

Wei Qian: “…”

He smiled helplessly. “Forget it. Go do your makeup.”

That day was his mother’s death anniversary.

This time, for once, Wei Qian did not fall asleep in the movie theater. He watched all the way through Song Xiaobao’s passionately committed portrayal of a madwoman, and seriously thought she had actually played it quite convincingly. She was such a young girl, yet could act so hysterically on camera without caring about preserving her image. She was genuinely hardworking. There was probably some reason she had become popular after all.

By the time the premiere ended, it was already very late. Xiao Bao was dragged off by the film crew to celebrate, but Wei Qian quietly left without a sound. He went to the cemetery on the outskirts of the city and found his mother’s grave. Back then, burials had still been cheap. If you swapped it for the current era of land costing its weight in gold, then even selling all her little sisters by the pound would not have bought that plot.

Beside this grave were several other tombstones: a pockmarked-faced young Sun Shuzhi, an old woman who at a glance did not look like any good sort, and a middle-aged woman whose features held a trace of timidity. Grandma Song’s grave and Mazi’s mother’s grave were both cenotaphs, because their bodies had never been found.

But they still believed the women would one day return and live as neighbors beside their loved ones.

Wei Qian greeted each grave in turn, then finally sat down in front of his mother’s. “After my grandma went down there, she didn’t hold back on dealing with you, did she? Serves you right. That’s exactly why I moved her over here.”

No one answered him.

Wei Qian continued talking to himself. “I raised your daughter properly. That girl’s now doing all right for herself too, though she did get held back a bit by her father’s looks. Anyway, no matter how much makeup she uses now, she’s still not as pretty as you were back then. But so what? She can act in films. She’s got prospects. Who knows how many viewers like her. You? In eight lifetimes you still couldn’t catch up.”

Wei Qian disrespectfully flicked the tombstone with his fingers, then stood up. “No particular reason. Just came to show off.”

He dusted the dirt off his clothes and was about to turn and leave, but then seemed to remember something. He turned sideways again and pressed one hand to the cold stone stele.

After a moment, Wei Qian said softly, “Let’s just call our grievances settled like this. I don’t want to hate you anymore. I’ve hated you for more than thirty years already. I’m nearly exhausted to death.”

After saying this, he walked out. Wei Zhiyuan was still waiting for him at the cemetery gate.

Wei Qian got into the car and closed the door. As Wei Zhiyuan slowly drove out, Wei Qian suddenly said, “I don’t want to do it anymore.”

Wei Zhiyuan said, “Hm?”

Wei Qian gazed at the flickering streetlights ahead and said quietly, “I want to resign from the chairman’s position. Just let them give me my dividends every year. Leave the rest for you all to mess around with. I’m planning to go back to my old school and continue studying life science, do a master’s and then a doctorate. After that I’ll just muddle through my days at school…”

His original dream had been to become a scientist, wearing a white lab coat, moving around in the lab, recording all kinds of data, writing papers, running material tests, researching things, researching while eating, researching while sleeping, caring about nothing except what he was researching, with no worries about food or clothing.

As he spoke, in that comfortably warm car, Wei Qian simply fell asleep.

Wei Zhiyuan gently pulled the car over to the roadside, lowered the seatback, took the blanket from the back seat and covered him with it, tucked it around him, then brushed aside his hair and bent down to kiss him on the forehead. Since Wei Qian could no longer hear him, Wei Zhiyuan smiled with quiet satisfaction and answered, “All right.”

Whatever you like is how it will be.

From this day forward, between us there will only be parting by death, never again parting while alive.

Author’s note:

End of the main story.