Bro | Chapter 39

Yet even though it felt as if his insides were burning, Wei Qian only swayed slightly, so slightly that no one noticed except Wei Zhiyuan.

Wei Zhiyuan grabbed his hand at once and felt how burning hot it was. Alarm shot through him. “Ge, you…”

Wei Qian turned a deaf ear, shook off his hand, and strode straight into the crowd.

Even if what was waiting for him on the ground really was a corpse smashed into an unrecognizable mess, he still had to see it clearly with his own eyes.

Just as Wei Zhiyuan was about to lift his foot and chase after him, he suddenly heard someone calling from the distance, “Qian’er! Xiao Yuan!”

Wei Zhiyuan turned his head and saw Lao Xiong’s car parked not far away. There were too many people, so they could not get through. The car door was open, and Xiong-saozi was standing there with an umbrella, bouncing and shouting for them. Beside her was Xiao Bao, who did not even dare raise her head.

Right, of course. Wei Zhiyuan let out a breath. He realized he had actually forgotten about that too. If some civilian expert caught one glance of Xiao Bao, who would possibly have fiery eyes sharp enough to see that her real age was already sixteen?

Wei Zhiyuan hurried forward two steps, grabbed Wei Qian by the arm, and forcibly dragged him out of the crowd, then turned him around by the shoulders. “Ge, don’t panic. Xiao Bao’s been found. She’s over there.”

Wei Qian followed the direction of his finger and looked. A moment later, his body, taut as a drawn bow, suddenly slackened. Unable to help himself, Wei Qian staggered half a step to the side.

Then he steadied himself, expressionless. There was no sign of joy on his face, and no sign of anger either. Only then, belatedly, did he realize that from head to toe, even his cold sweat mixed with melted snow had already soaked him through.

He shivered hard.

Xiong-saozi was a loud, warmhearted person. The moment she heard what had happened, she mobilized a whole bunch of friends to keep an eye out. By coincidence, one of her close friends happened to work part-time as a choir instructor at the youth activity center. Xiao Bao’s outfit was bright and eye-catching, and that teacher just happened to have seen her and remembered her. That was why Lao Xiong and his wife had driven over to try their luck.

Actually, this classmate Xiao Bao had always been a coward since childhood. In her bones, she was a prime seedling for a traitor and a turncoat. It was rare enough for hot blood to rush to her head and let her pull off a feat like this.

But heroism and boldness had always been as fleeting in her life as an epiphyllum in bloom. The moment the cold wind hit her, her hot blood cooled, and she instantly regretted it. Xiao Bao’s first reaction at the time had been to sneak back home in the night and pretend none of this had ever happened. But when she reached into her pocket, she discovered that in her hurry to get out, she had forgotten to bring her keys.

That charming little thing called a key had simply been born to keep thwarting her.

It was easy to imagine what would happen if she went home and knocked, waking everyone up. Then her attempt to run away from home would definitely be exposed, and at that point big brother would surely skin her alive. Not even Grandma would be able to save her little life.

At the thought of that bloody and violent scene, even Xiao Bao’s liver trembled. In the end, she had no choice but to steel her heart and, like someone driven up Liangshan, forced herself to continue her grand undertaking of running away from home.

She ran to a small inn near the youth activity center, planning to scrape by there for one night. Who knew that next door was a pair of wild lovers, resolute in will, who had braved the bitter cold to book a room together. The cruel natural conditions had not in the slightest affected their determination to fight for the reproduction of the human race through the ages. The bed creaked all night long. The little inn had poor soundproofing, and Xiao Bao did not sleep a wink the whole night.

In such a harsh environment, Xiao Bao’s nature of never learning her lesson showed itself again. All the grievance in her chest, the kind of grievance so great it could bring snow in June, on par with Dou E, vanished completely amid the sounds of the neighboring bed. She started to feel anxious and afraid instead.

By the time Lao Xiong and the others found her, Xiao Bao was pacing in circles around the sports field behind the youth activity center, utterly at a loss.

Lao Xiong pointed at her smugly and said to his wife, “See? Didn’t I say she wouldn’t get lost?”

By the time Wei Qian got there, Xiong-saozi, who had already asked enough questions to understand what happened, was in the middle of scolding Xiao Bao. “You little girl, how can your nerve be this big? Running off over such a tiny thing, what if you’d run into bad people? What if you didn’t have enough money to spend? What if something happened to you? You’d work your Ge to death!”

Xiao Bao picked at her fingers. When she saw Wei Qian walking over, she nervously raised her head and glanced at him, then quickly lowered it again into a posture of repentance, her ten fingers kneading together into a messy lump like soft putty.

Lao Xiong pulled a towel from who knew where and handed it to the bedraggled brothers. “Hey, you two drowned rats, hurry up and dry yourselves off.”

When Xiong-saozi saw Wei Qian, following the principle of giving both sides fifty strokes of the paddle, she did not let him off either. “You, what kind of brother are you? Cutting your little sister’s hair, why don’t you just take a knife and slash her face while you’re at it? What’s wrong with people who dance? Are dancers somehow inferior? All the beauty in the world is presented by people like us, people who don’t do proper work. You’re so narrow-minded. You’re still so young and already like this. When you get old, who knows what kind of annoying old fossil you’ll turn into.”

Unable to endure any more, Lao Xiong tugged at her. “All right, enough already. Why are you like this everywhere? Why are you so eager to give speeches? Save some of those words. One day if I make something of myself, I’ll let you give a speech at the United Nations, okay?”

But Wei Qian did not know whether it was that he had nothing to say or simply could not say it. He did not answer. He only lifted the corner of his mouth a little stiffly, smiled at Xiong-saozi, and said softly, “Thank you, saozi.”

Xiong-saozi, who had originally been ready to suppress Lao Xiong for another three hundred rounds over the matter of speaking rights, was inexplicably left speechless by that smile of his. She could only shut her mouth awkwardly.

The whole way back, Wei Qian did not say a word. Glancing at his ugly expression, Xiao Bao felt more and more uneasy.

Lao Xiong informed San Pang and the others, and only after driving them all the way home did he take his leave.

But the moment Xiao Bao pushed open the door, she was hit by Grandma Song’s outburst.

The night before, Grandma Song had been afraid Wei Qian would hit her, and had used all kinds of little tricks to protect Xiao Bao. Today, however, she rolled up her sleeves and took the field herself.

When Grandma Song got the notice that “she’s been found,” the heart she had been holding high crashed back down into place, and she hurriedly muttered a few lines thanking the Bodhisattva for protection.

After thanking the Bodhisattva, she stood at the doorway holding a broom, fully prepared for a women’s singles match. The moment the first “Grandma” left Xiao Bao’s mouth, Grandma Song swung the broom handle in a full arc and beat her up from head to toe as if she were swatting flies.

Whenever Grandma Song wanted to do anything, it had to be done with chickens flying and dogs jumping, and there had to be enough room for her to really put on a performance.

Wei Zhiyuan and Wei Qian consciously stayed away from the battle zone and plastered themselves against the wall.

Wei Zhiyuan was still wondering why big brother was not stopping it when, all of a sudden, there was a weight on his shoulder. One of Wei Qian’s hands had pressed down there.

“Help me.” Wei Qian’s voice was so faint it was almost impossible to hear. His eyelids seemed as if they were about to stick together. He struggled to force open a narrow slit, but could barely see anything. Cold sweat at his temple kept sliding down the bridge of his nose, and he could hardly catch his breath.

Before Wei Zhiyuan even had time to reach out, Wei Qian’s knees went weak. His whole body swayed, and he pitched straight down.

With one sweep of his arm, Wei Zhiyuan caught him. Even through the thick winter clothes, he could still feel the man’s body burning as if full of hot coals.

Grandma Song froze for a moment, then immediately threw down the broom and ran over in a fluster, shouting, “What happened? What happened?”

Wei Zhiyuan reached out and felt Wei Qian’s forehead. Good, it was hot enough to boil an egg. He immediately bent down and hoisted the already unconscious Wei Qian onto his back. “He has a fever. Grandma, go find the thermometer and the usual medicine.”

Grandma Song answered him, then turned and saw Xiao Bao still standing there at a complete loss. At once, her anger flared up again. “What are you staring for? It’s all your fault! He’s sick because of you!”

Wei Zhiyuan hushed her. “Don’t make noise.”

For some reason, Grandma Song obediently followed his instruction. She did not know from when it had begun, but she had already started trusting this half-grown boy the same way she had trusted Wei Qian back then.

Wei Zhiyuan carried Wei Qian back to his bedroom, sent Xiao Bao and Grandma scurrying in circles with errands, stripped off Wei Qian’s damp outer clothes, and poured hot water to feed him medicine.

By then, Wei Qian had already woken up from that brief spell of unconsciousness.

He pushed Wei Zhiyuan once. “It’s probably a cold. Stay farther away from me, or I’ll pass it on to you.”

Wei Zhiyuan got pushed away, then moved right back exactly as before.

The boy did not argue with him. He just watched him finish taking the medicine, then added another layer of blanket over him and carefully tucked down the edges.

At that moment, someone knocked lightly and cautiously on the door outside. One could tell at once it was Xiao Bao, because Grandma Song had never learned how to knock. She usually just pounded on doors.

Wei Zhiyuan looked to Wei Qian for instruction with his eyes. Wei Qian, meanwhile, silently turned his face to the side and closed his eyes, apparently falling asleep at the speed of light. Wei Zhiyuan smiled once and immediately understood what he meant.

Xiao Bao stood at the door looking at Wei Zhiyuan, who had come to answer it. By now the height difference between the two had reached a degree that could make one worry about hair quality. If they stood too close, Xiao Bao had to crane her neck just to see Wei Zhiyuan’s face. She was like a sunflower wilted by the sun, looking up at him while still hiccuping with sobs.

Wei Zhiyuan raised one index finger and set it against his lips. “He took medicine and went to sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

Through blurred, tear-filled eyes, Xiao Bao felt there was something inscrutable in his gaze. With her intelligence and life experience, she could not make out what it was, and had no way to deal with it. So she could only nod obediently, then leave while looking back every few steps.

After sending her off, Wei Zhiyuan shut the door again, moved over a chair, took a book, and sat by the bedside to keep watch over Wei Qian.

After a while, the sleep-inducing ingredient in the medicine took effect, and Wei Qian really fell asleep.

The book open in Wei Zhiyuan’s hands did not advance by even one page. In the end he simply tossed it aside, steepled his fingers together, and stared at Wei Qian without the slightest restraint.

In that strange stillness and peace, he suddenly realized that he understood big brother’s silence at home.

By nature, Wei Qian was absolutely not the particularly quiet and introverted type. Otherwise, he would have long since been driven to death by San Pang’s incessant chattering. There was no way he could ever have gotten along with him. Wei Qian actually talked quite a lot, and when his temper rose, his tongue could be pretty vicious. It was only with family that he was especially stingy with words.

At home, he never confided in anyone, and hardly even communicated. It was as if even having someone speaking in his ear would make him feel they were noisy.

Why?

Wei Zhiyuan looked at Wei Qian’s face, which had gradually been sweated over a little under the heavy blanket, and could not help reaching out to brush aside one damp strand of hair from his forehead. The boy suddenly understood, because that was big brother’s own unique way of avoiding things, and of being weak.

With his gaze, Wei Zhiyuan traced out Wei Qian’s features and thought to himself: when this person had been even younger, even weaker, and even more helpless than now, carrying an entire family on his back, though his mouth had stayed shut, could his heart truly have been completely free of resentment?

Could he really have remained calm the whole time, without grievance and without regret?

How was that possible? He was not a stone.

Everything this man had desired in his life had wounded him deeply.

And everything he had hated in his life had lingered in his soul and dreams.

He was practically like a tiny shoot of a tree, forced out over hundreds of millions of years from the crack in a rock, trembling on the verge of collapse, twisted in form, yet lush and flourishing.

Wei Zhiyuan knew that in terms of personality, he was not very sound. He lacked the ability to sympathize. And this lack was not the sort of coldness adults acquire after being worn down by life, but rather that most of the time, he simply did not know how to sympathize.

Whenever Xiao Bao and Grandma Song cried their hearts out at soap operas, he felt unable to understand.

This had nothing to do with age, and nothing to do with intelligence either. Very small children are influenced by the emotions of the adults around them, and even a puppy will comfort a crying stranger in its own animal way.

Wei Zhiyuan realized that it was very hard for him to share in other people’s emotions, and even harder to form emotional bonds with them. Most of the time, he adopted a certain degree of sociable disguise purely in order to blend into his environment.

Only big brother was different.

Wei Zhiyuan pondered Wei Qian’s feelings as though he were a child prying open the roof of a temple to peek inside, sensing that precious emotional connection.

About a person he had once worshiped as a god in childhood, every real joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness, strength and weakness.

It was as though a transparent soul were laid out before him. Wei Zhiyuan even felt that his own heart was about to melt.

When Wei Qian woke up the next day, he discovered that he was actually lying in Wei Zhiyuan’s arms.

Probably in his fevered sleep he had unconsciously tried to kick off the blanket, so Wei Zhiyuan had simply wrapped his arms around him together with the blanket.

This should have been nothing. They had lived together since childhood. But at the instant he opened his eyes, Wei Qian still felt inexplicably awkward.

Wei Zhiyuan’s sense of presence was too strong.

He occupied half the bed, and in an instant turned what should have been a spacious area into something cramped. His arms and legs were all tangled around Wei Qian. Wei Qian felt he was probably overthinking it, but he still had that animal-like sense of danger, the kind that comes when one’s territory has been invaded.

When they took his temperature again that morning, Wei Qian had already gone from a high fever to a low one.

Grandma Song brought Xiao Bao in under pressure to apologize. Xiao Bao had probably slept badly for another whole night. Her eyes were as red as a little rabbit’s, and she looked at Wei Qian eagerly, expressing her grave sins in a stumbling, incoherent way.

Wei Qian no longer brought up the matter of cutting her hair or quitting the dance troupe either. Just like that, the matter was muddled through and quietly let go.

In front of one’s closest family, all those principles and bottom lines are made of paper. One gust of wind and they rot into scraps. In the end, when all is counted, what seems to remain is only muddled compromise and making do.

At noon, Xiong-saozi came, as one who never visits the Hall of the Three Treasures without a reason. She had taken a fancy to Xiao Bao’s natural potential and wanted to take her back and teach her herself.

Wei Qian did not stop her either. He forced himself to perk up enough to exchange a few words with Xiong-saozi, thanked her, and completely turned a blind eye to Xiao Bao from then on.

Watching coldly from the sidelines, Wei Zhiyuan could not help thinking: one day, will you tolerate me like this too, over and over, with no bottom line at all?

That afternoon, Wei Qian told Wei Zhiyuan to go to class if he was supposed to go to class. But this kid lowered his brows and behaved obediently, answering every sentence with “Yes,” while somehow still managing to openly obey in secret defiance and ignore his opinion.

Wei Qian coughed twice. “Did you hear me or not?”

“Mhm, got it. Ah, Ge, look at this.” Wei Zhiyuan acted like some intellectually disabled child who could not understand human speech. He had heard him, ignored him, and then, as if presenting a treasure, took out the laptop he used himself and opened a little game on it. “This is one of the assignments I recently turned in. It’s not completely original. I borrowed a little from that Sokoban game and improved it. Play it to pass the time.”

Wei Qian said irritably, “Push your own head.”

Half an hour later, he was lying on the bed playing this idiotic little game called “Push Your Own Head.”

Wei Zhiyuan sat solidly in his bedroom doing homework, and now and then would come over to bother him, for instance by forcing him to drink water, or forcing him to put back on the second blanket he had kicked off.

For the first time, Wei Qian vividly felt the fact that this kid had somehow already grown so big without him noticing. It made him a little uncomfortable, but that discomfort was quickly drawn away by Wei Zhiyuan’s little game.

The game was very well designed. At the beginning, it proceeded step by step in an orderly progression, letting people accumulate a sense of achievement bit by bit. At first, each level had only one lock, and if you undid it, you could pass. From the middle and later stages onward, each level started to have seven or eight locks, and the challenge and sense of achievement built step by step, luring people into addiction.

By the later stages, Wei Qian discovered that his little character was basically trapped in the middle of a huge formation as dazzling and tangled as a spider web.

Wei Qian got stuck on the final level and absolutely could not clear it. After failing countless times, he started to suspect there was something wrong with the program, and that it simply could not be solved at all.

The two brothers argued for a while like a pair of children over whether a certain player was too stupid, or whether the game itself had been designed badly.

In the end, Wei Zhiyuan squeezed in beside him and showed him step by step how this utterly insane level managed to produce eighteen interlocking chains. Then he looked at Wei Qian somewhat smugly, showing off like a little peacock as he said, “I’m smart, right?”

“Tch, something for amusing little kids.” Saying that, Wei Qian pushed the computer farther away to show he was distancing himself from it, as if the person who had been clutching it and refusing to let go just now had not been him.

Wei Qian lit a cigarette on the bed. His fever had gone down, and his body still felt a little weak, but overall he felt much better. The workaholic heart in him, temporarily lying low, started to stir restlessly again.

Though his mouth was stubborn, he really had received a certain kind of inspiration from Wei Zhiyuan’s little game, and had vaguely caught hold of a line of thought for how to win approval for that project.

Wei Qian became so absorbed in thinking that he nearly set his own bedsheet on fire. Luckily, Wei Zhiyuan reacted quickly and snatched the cigarette away.

Standing there like some medical authority, Wei Zhiyuan said with a good deal of dignity, “Ge, you should rest now.”

Stunned, Wei Qian thought, Am I being controlled by this kid? The nerve of him.

Wei Zhiyuan really was preparing to raise the banner of rebellion. He forcibly turned off the bedside lamp, then used his weight and brute strength to press his sick and weak big brother back into the blanket, and sat there like a supervisor waiting to make sure he rested.

Wei Qian was so shocked he actually forgot to resist.

After some time, Wei Zhiyuan suddenly heard Wei Qian ask, “How did you know where Xiao Bao was going that night?”

Wei Zhiyuan was debugging a program. Without even looking up, he said, “I guessed. Anyone who sincerely wanted to run away from home wouldn’t wear whatever looked brightest the way she did. They’d definitely be terrified of getting caught halfway and dragged home, and would wish they could smear two jin of mud on their face.”

Only then did Wei Qian suddenly remember that this boy, who now looked just like any other ordinary teenager going to class and doing homework, had had a childhood like an orphan wandering through bitter hardships. All at once, Wei Qian felt a little heartache for him.

But Wei Qian did not know how to express it. He hesitated for a long while before finally asking in a tone like, How about Ge buys you a popsicle? “Hey, kid, your grades are so good. In the future, do you want to go abroad? I can start saving up for you…”

Before he could finish the sentence, Wei Zhiyuan suddenly raised his head. With the glow of the display screen shining blue-green across it, his face looked awful, as if he had just heard something frightening.

Only after quite a while did Wei Zhiyuan himself seem to realize he had overreacted. Then he hurriedly lowered his eyes and said in a low voice, as if hiding something, “I don’t want to. Go to sleep early. Stop talking.”

Wei Qian rested for only that one day. The next day, he got up as usual, booked a train ticket to the location of the project, and went off to work as if his life depended on it.

Lao Xiong assigned San Pang to follow him. Lao Xiong believed that San Pang, this man, was as round on the inside as he was on the outside, and more steady than Wei Qian.

Wearing a mask, coughing his lungs out on the train, Wei Qian looked like a consumptive. San Pang had no choice but to laboriously look after him, and along the way tossed out a few cheap-mouthed complaints too. “Your San-ge, me, this supervising official, really is pathetic. I’m nothing but a little eunuch here to wait on the young master.”

Wei Qian said, “Mm, pretty fitting. Supervising officials are mostly eunuchs.”

“Your mom!” San Pang gloomily punched Wei Qian once. Thinking of the thirty million hanging over his back, he felt like throwing himself into the Songhua River. Completely at a loss, he started humming miserably, “The north wind blows, the snowflakes drift…”

Wei Qian gave him a cold look.

San Pang asked bitterly, “Daddy, if it really doesn’t work out, are you planning to sell me, Xi’er, to pay off the debt?”

“No,” Wei Qian said.

San Pang was deeply comforted.

Wei Qian added, “Daughter, you’re too ugly. I’m afraid Huang Shiren would wet his pants when he sees you.”

San Pang let out a long sigh. “Tell me, are you sick, Comrade? You’ve got a house, a career, and your college diploma is practically in hand. Damn it, you’re riding high in the spring breeze. What are you looking to die for? Seriously, the two of us can get off at the next stop, sell the return tickets, and head straight home. It’s still not too late.”

Wei Qian flipped through the project materials as though he wanted to imprint every last punctuation mark in his brain. “I can get it.”

Shaking his head with a sigh, San Pang said, “You’re a stone in the latrine, smelly and hard!”

His big fan-like hands rubbed at his knees uneasily. After a long while, he slapped his thigh as though shattering his cooking pot and sinking his boats. “Fine, then. Your San-ge must have owed you in a past life. Say it then, what do we do?”