Bro | Chapter 7

Wei Qian had once fantasized that one day, some reporter would discover people like him and his younger brother and sister living like dogs in an old workers’ apartment building like this. Then the reporter would snap a few photos and, with one grand sweep of the pen, write some tearjerking, nauseating headline like, “Ambitious Youth Works to Support Younger Siblings Through School, Tender Shoulders Carry an Entire Family.” Then some government office would come to their door with money, and all kinds of rich people with more cash than they knew what to do with would donate to their family. And all he would have to do was go on television and pose with them holding up one giant check for a commemorative photo.

But as it happened, the television still aired stories every day about “poor college students,” “poor middle school students,” and “poor elementary school students,” yet not a single one came looking for Wei Qian and the others.

Probably there were just too many poor people in those years, and even getting on TV required queuing up and entering a lottery, the way buying a car later did.

Final exams were almost here, and the weather was getting colder by the day. When Wei Qian went out in the morning, the sky was still dark. He rode his secondhand bicycle out under the stars and moon.

He had no gloves. By the time he got to school, both hands were almost frozen numb, so he could only lower his head and run upstairs while rubbing his hands together fast.

That day, when he was going upstairs, he happened to run into his homeroom teacher. She was a middle-aged woman surnamed Li, and she usually treated him very well. A student like Wei Qian, one who studied seriously, got good grades, kept a low profile, and did not cause trouble, if he also happened to be fairly bright-looking, and the teacher happened to be a woman, was basically destined to be the type of student who got specially doted on by teachers at school.

Miss Li called out to stop him. “Hey, just the young man I needed. Come over and help me carry some things.”

Wei Qian helped her pick up the newly distributed twenty jin of rice and two jugs of oil from the school and carried them all the way back to her office. Miss Li asked him with a smile, “Have you eaten breakfast yet?”

Wei Qian paused, then shook his head.

Miss Li pulled a bread roll and a sausage out from under her desk and handed them to him. “Slept in and got up late this morning, did you? Here, take them and eat.”

Wei Qian smiled a little awkwardly, accepted them, and thanked her.

Miss Li did not know about his family situation. At that time, high school kids all wore uniforms. Among the boys, apart from the occasional one who really liked being clean, they were all equally sloppy and unkempt. Branded bags and bags bought off a street stall were all stuffed full until you could not tell what shape they had originally been, and if they got an empty small potato chip canister from some girl after she finished eating, they would rinse it out, plunk it onto the desk, and use it as a pen holder.

Back then, people were unexpectedly equal. From a glance at the surface, you could not tell which one was the mayor’s son and which one was an orphan who had to rely on odd jobs just to scrape by.

There had only been one family background survey form at the beginning of school, and one of the blanks asked for parents’ work unit. Wei Qian had stared at that blank for a long time, and in the end had made something up and written the two characters for “self-employed”…

Anyway, no one had asked whether it was a living self-employed person or a dead one.

Miss Li rose on tiptoe and patted his shoulder, reminding him, “Hurry on. It’s Monday. You’ve got your flag-raising speech ready, right? Go back and read it over two more times so you don’t forget your lines later.”

Having students from each class take turns going up on stage to speak at the flag-raising ceremony was an old tradition at the school. Before stepping onto the podium, Wei Qian could not help straightening his back a little, not because he was nervous, but because he had taken a blow to the back in last night’s brawl. When he got up in the morning and looked, there had been a big bruise there, and it hurt like hell.

Wei Qian stood on the stage and delivered his speech from memory, smooth and fluent, rattling off his dream-filled, official-sounding speech draft like flowing water. As usual, below him came the perfunctory and polite applause of an audience of classmates yawning to the skies.

Wei Qian smiled very faintly, then stepped back two paces and gave the microphone over to the host.

Just before stepping down, Wei Qian stood one last time on the high podium and swept his gaze across the whole campus.

A row of ginkgo trees with their yellow leaves almost all gone, a standard four-hundred-meter track, red-brick classroom buildings, those uniformed students still too young to know much of the world… and also the few great cherry trees in front of the classroom building. It was said those trees were a hybrid of southern cherry trees and local stock. Every spring, the falling petals would pile up in a thick layer that could bury the tops of a person’s feet. Unfortunately, he had enrolled in autumn and had not yet had the chance to see it.

It was as though Wei Qian wanted to pack all of it into his eyes. Then he turned around and walked down the stone steps of the podium without looking back.

Before everyone had been dismissed, he returned to the classroom, quickly packed up all of his things, took the withdrawal application he had written in advance, and walked toward the academic affairs office.

The dean did not know the students’ individual circumstances, so he only asked the reason as a matter of routine. Wei Qian did not want to make himself look like some impoverished child forced out of school, and even if he said it, it would be useless. Maybe out of sympathy the school could, after some difficulty, scrape together financial aid for him. But his main problem was not financial aid. He needed more money, or more time to earn money and support the family.

If it could not solve the problem, then why drag out his fragile self-respect and put it on display for people to gawk at?

So, in one of his adolescent melodramatic moods, Wei Qian merely explained lightly that the family was moving out of town and he could not continue studying here.

After leaving the academic affairs office, he passed the basketball court, where the basketball specialty students were training. A ball flew toward him. He reached out deftly and caught it, gave a whistle, then tossed it back. A boy on the court waved at him from a distance. “Thanks, man!”

Wei Qian smiled at him, but right after that, the smile on his face went dry. He did not stay any longer and quickly lowered his head and walked on.

Wei Qian carried his heavy schoolbag to an old man nearby who collected scrap. He dumped out all the books and papers from his bag and sold them for one-yuan and two-jiao. Then Wei Qian added another eight-jiao to make it two-yuan, used the two-yuan to buy a carnation, and, while Miss Li was in class, slipped into her office and placed the flower on her desk. Then, carrying his completely empty bag, he left the school.

He rode his bicycle home. Ma Zi and his mother, who sold breakfast, had not yet packed up their stall. When Ma Zi saw Wei Qian, he asked in surprise, “Qi, Qi… Qian’er, y-you, why are you b-back? Did you f-forget, forget, forget some…”

Wei Qian got off the bike, slung the empty schoolbag behind him, and cut him off calmly. “No, Ma Zi. I’m not studying anymore.”

It was as though Ma Zi did not understand what he meant at first. He repeated dumbly, “N-not, not… not studying anymore?”

Wei Qian said, “Mm. I dropped out.”

Ma Zi’s reactions were always slow. Maybe there really was something a little wrong with his brain. Sometimes Wei Qian suspected that if you slapped him across the face, he would only realize it hurt a full minute later.

Brain-damaged Ma Zi stood there in a daze for more than half a minute. That face of his, layered with big lumps atop small lumps, turned red like a piece of burning iron coal. His chest rose and fell violently, and a moment later his eyes suddenly filled with tears.

Then Ma Zi lunged at him and gave him a fierce shove right in the chest. Wei Qian staggered, and the bicycle fell to the ground, its wheel still spinning in circles.

Ma Zi opened his mouth and blurted out a stream of “ah ah, wu wu.” The more anxious he got, the less he could speak. He held it in until his whole face and neck turned red, and in the end he could not take it anymore. He pulled at his throat and burst into tears. The sound was shrill, and the crying stabbed at the ears.

Though he could not speak properly, he had a fine voice for funeral wailing.

Wei Qian’s chest felt so blocked up it was almost about to explode.

Maybe in the long stretch of his life ahead, dropping out would not be such a big deal. But for a boy who had always studied hard and had hoped this could change his fate, dropping out was like the tottering sky he had been struggling to hold up finally collapsing.

But even if the sky had collapsed, Wei Qian did not want to clutch heads and cry with Ma Zi right there on the street. It would look ugly as hell.

So Wei Qian simply bent down, using the motion of righting the bicycle to hide the brief flash of grief that crossed his face. Then he raised his head and forced out a smile at Ma Zi, casual, almost even a little contemptuous. “What are you crying for? Idiot, I’m not dead yet. Dropping out is just dropping out. Didn’t the rest of you quit too? What kind of trivial problem is this, is it really worth crying over?”

Ma Zi cried even harder, until he was hoarse, forgetting himself completely.

In the end, Wei Qian could not say anything else. Carrying that old canvas bag and letting his hands hang at his sides, he stood two steps away from Ma Zi and watched his stupid brother wipe his tears with one hand.

The bitter, dry winter wind and the salty tears stung open the cracks frostbite had split in Ma Zi’s hands, revealing the young, bloody flesh underneath.

That long winter began with the great bear-like howling of the younger brother from the fried dough stick stall.

Wei Qian stepped onto his career as a professional hooligan. He became one of Le-ge’s obscure little hired thugs.

He was a half-grown kid of fourteen or fifteen, his frame only just beginning to shoot up, the flesh not yet having caught up to his bones, and there was still childishness on his face. He watched Le-ge’s places, taciturn every day, because he really did not have much to say to those grown men who could not go three sentences without talking about women. But when fights broke out, he was always fiercer than the others. It was as if there were some unspeakable anger stored inside him.

At first, Le-ge was deeply disappointed by this. After all, he had had high hopes for Wei Qian. Originally, he had wanted to send Wei Qian to university and have him study law or finance. Le-ge had been calculating that his business could not stay in the shadows forever. If he wanted fame and success, then the things on the legitimate side needed someone to manage them properly, someone who knew how to exploit legal loopholes and cook the books. That person had to be clever, and he also had to be someone Le-ge could trust completely. There was no one more suitable than Wei Qian.

Le-ge had originally already been sketching out a grand blueprint for the future in his chest like he was deploying troops, assigning each person their place and use one by one. But he had never expected the Wei Qian he had placed such hopes on to be such mud that would not stick to the wall, dropping out halfway through high school and refusing to continue.

For a period of time, Le-ge stopped paying attention to Wei Qian at all, because he was no longer useful.

But he had not expected that after lying low for a year, this kid would actually fight his way into a name for himself.

Wei Qian was still just a teenager after all, and in terms of stamina he could not really compare with full-grown adults. So for the kind of “physical labor” that hired thugs did, he did not hold much of an advantage. Le-ge also did not value him that highly, and generally only had him work the daytime shift. The entertainment venue under Le-ge’s name was really a nightclub. Although it opened during the day too, in the daytime it was only an ordinary place to eat. The main event came at night.

If real troublemakers were going to come, they usually came at night. That was common knowledge in the trade.

Who knew that among the thirty-six trades, every trade produced its own hooligans, and that even in the profession of hooliganism there could be bad practitioners, people who disregarded professional ethics. Those few belonged to another entertainment venue in the city. Their boss was rich and powerful and wanted to take down Le-ge, the local strongman. But unfortunately he himself was not in town and was beyond immediate reach, so he sent his underlings to make the arrangements.

One of his underlings was an extraordinary specimen, gathering in himself several major characteristics like cowardice, weak nerve, and shamelessness. Being that useless was rare.

After thinking it over carefully for a while, this person decided that if they went at night, they might not be able to beat Le-ge’s people, and was afraid they might get in but not get back out. But he also did not dare disobey the boss’s orders, so he came up with an original idea and ran over to the nightclub in broad daylight to cause trouble.

The other side brought more than a dozen hulking men who were all bark and no bite, and they strutted grandly into the sparsely staffed nightclub to challenge the house.

The people watching the place during the day were either security guards hired through proper channels, or half-grown kids like Wei Qian, whom Le-ge had set out there like flower vases. They looked the part, but when it came to actually fighting, they could not show real skill.

The troublemakers were clearly there with bad intentions, and once they barged in, no one dared stop them.

The one leading them plopped himself down in the middle of the lobby, making it obvious that he was there to stir up trouble. He shouted vulgar abuse at the top of his voice, harassed the little waitress carrying dishes, and smashed bottles all over the floor. There had not been many diners to begin with, and the ones there were all frightened enough to stand up and leave.

The lobby manager frowned and quietly instructed one of the younger guys below him to call Le-ge.

But before that younger guy could go, Wei Qian, wearing the nightclub uniform, walked over expressionlessly. One of the troublemakers thought he was some little security guard coming over to stop them. He grabbed Wei Qian by the collar and, not taking him seriously at all, said, “Get your boss out here. Smart kids shouldn’t come out and play cannon…”

Before the words “cannon fodder” could come out, his voice suddenly changed pitch. The man let out a scream, hastily released Wei Qian, and stumbled back five or six steps in terror.

There was a huge gash across his chest, and blood came spurting out like a fountain. Only then did everyone notice that Wei Qian was holding a heavy kitchen cleaver used for chopping bones.

When Wei Qian hacked at people, he did not show the slightest mercy. After one blow, he did not even bother wiping his face. In one hand he held the cleaver, and with the other he picked up a half-broken bottle from the floor. Without so much as a greeting, without saying a single word, he charged straight in and fought hand to hand as though he were facing the murderer of his father.

As the saying goes, the stunned fear the ruthless, and the ruthless fear those who do not care about their lives. These people had deliberately avoided the nighttime rush and picked the quiet of the daytime to come make trouble, which only showed that they were not really that ruthless to begin with.

So more than a dozen men were, right there on the spot, all taken down by a single man who did not fear death, and by means of their astonishingly handsome exteriors and utter cowardice within, they helped create this legendary tale.

By the time Le-ge heard what had happened and hurried over with his own people, the fight was already over. All he saw was a floor covered with blood and spilled liquor.

The boy, with half his body drenched in blood, had only one white undershirt left on him. He was sitting on the sofa with one arm stretched out, letting the trembling San Pang, who had rushed over after hearing the news, pick shards of glass from his arm. That hand hung at an unnatural angle, and it was impossible to tell whether it was dislocated or broken.

Yet he seemed not to know pain at all. He did not make a sound. He did not even glance at it. He only kept his head lowered, fully focused on smoking a cigarette.