Bro | Chapter 57

After finishing his meal, Alex wiped his mouth, looking like a big cat that had just contentedly polished off a pouch of gourmet pet food. He narrowed those eyes of his, their color a little off because of his mixed heritage, and hunched his shoulders and stretched out his claws in a lazy stretch.

Then he lifted his head and saw the expression on Song Xiaobao’s face, like she had just been struck by lightning. Unable to help himself, he scratched his chin irritably and lodged a solemn protest. “What’s with you, Song Lili? Are you discriminating against us? Wasn’t it you who’s always reading hardcore-flavor novels on your phone all day? I even caught a glimpse yesterday of that… what was it… oh right, that story about two tentacle-type octopuses getting it on.”

Song Xiaobao’s tongue tied itself into knots. For a moment she wanted to explain, deny it, ask for clarification, and yell at Alex for talking nonsense, all at once. None of those thoughts could sort out their order, and each of them wanted to cut in line, so they all jammed together in her throat. In the end, she stammered out, “My second brother doesn’t discriminate against you, bullshit!”

Alex was so shocked his eyes widened. “What? Even farting gets discriminated against? Does the air in your intestines naturally escape through your pores? That’s way too high-tech!”

Song Xiaobao was completely at a loss for words. Left with no other option, she could only beat him up.

After the one-sided beating, thick-skinned Alex unconcernedly tidied up the hairstyle she had slapped into disarray and watched as Song Xiaobao, exhausted, dropped onto the edge of the hotel bed with a long bitter-melon face.

He reached out one finger and lightly poked her in a teasing way. “What’s wrong? Is it really that hard to accept?”

“Of course it is. That’s my brother, how can it be the same?” Song Xiaobao slapped his paw away, then clutched her head in both hands. “What am I supposed to do? If my da-ge finds out, he’ll definitely beat him to death.”

“Your da-ge?” Alex asked in confusion. “He’s that controlling?”

Xiao Bao said, “Didn’t I tell you? The three of us siblings grew up without parents. My da-ge raised the two of us.”

“Oh, feudal patriarch.” Alex nodded in sudden understanding, shrugged to show sympathy, then leaned in again with a lecherous grin. “Hey, sis, is your da-ge handsome? Got a photo? Pull it out and let me see.”

This time, Xiao Bao adopted a drive-him-out style of beating and chased the cheap bastard all the way out.

After driving Cheap A away, she flopped heavily back onto the bed hard enough to dent it. Then she irritably rolled around several times before finally, unable to hold back, slowly pulled out her phone. After hesitating again and again, she dialed the new number Wei Zhiyuan had left her.

Wei Zhiyuan lived a healthy, regular life and had already gone to sleep. It took him a while to answer, and when he did, his voice still carried a trace of drowsiness. “Xiao Bao? What happened?”

Song Xiaobao pretended not to notice that she had woken him. She thought recklessly that Wei Zhiyuan would not mind anyway. Ever since childhood, the number of times she had been annoying was too many to count. Her brothers should already be used to it.

She started by rambling aimlessly for quite a while, and Wei Zhiyuan kept her company patiently the whole time. In the end, though, it was Song Xiaobao herself who had something on her mind, and she ran out of things to say and could not keep the conversation going. After a brief awkward silence, Wei Zhiyuan finally asked, “Do you have something you want to say to me?”

Xiao Bao gave a dry cough and, in a strained voice, awkwardly tried to imitate a joking tone as she circled around the point. “Let me tell you something especially funny. That fake foreigner who went with me to pick you up today is gay. The guy’s mouth is unbelievably mean. The moment he sees a handsome man, he can’t move his feet. After we got back, he nagged me for over half an hour. Eight out of ten sentences were about how handsome you are, and he was even fantasizing in front of me that you are too.”

Without letting anything show, Wei Zhiyuan smiled slightly. “I’m what too?”

Song Xiaobao said, “Uh… that…”

She was standing there in pure embarrassment, not knowing how to say it, when in the very next moment Wei Zhiyuan said, “He got it right. I really am.”

Song Xiaobao: “…”

At that instant, it felt as though tens of thousands of frogs were all sitting upright inside her heart, heads tipped back to the sky, and all letting out one deafening “Ribbit!” in unison right next to her ears.

Song Xiaobao could not help but hold her breath. She held it until she was almost suffocating, then finally shakily exhaled, her ears ringing.

Hearing no sound from her for a long while, Wei Zhiyuan said in an even tone, “That scared you, didn’t it? I just feel like there’s nothing in this world that can’t be said openly to people. It’s all nothing all that serious. If you spend your whole life hiding things away and treading on thin ice, there isn’t much meaning in that either. It’s all right if you can’t accept it right away.”

His attitude was calm and open. Song Xiaobao fell silent for a moment, and could not help being pulled by him into that same calm context.

She thought about it and realized, that was true enough. She got along pretty well with Alex. No matter what her second brother turned into, to her he would still be that same person. There was not really much difference.

Xiao Bao’s strength was that she was timid but knew how to let things go. Just like that, she successfully cleared away the huge stone in her heart. Feeling lighter herself, she even kindly showed some concern for Wei Zhiyuan. “That may be true, but you absolutely cannot be this honest with Ge too. I’m telling you, right now he’s basically…”

The smile at Wei Zhiyuan’s mouth deepened. “He knows.”

Unlucky Xiao Bao got choked by him all over again and coughed so hard the world spun. Only after a good while did she weakly say, “What unbelievable lustful courage you have, young hero. You even dared confess? Aren’t you afraid that tyrant will wipe out your whole family?”

Wei Zhiyuan suddenly seemed to find it rather entertaining to hear her go ji-liao ji-liao and explode like this. At this point, there really was no longer any need to keep hiding it from her, so he bluntly dropped the final bombshell. “Because the person I like is him.”

The phone in Song Xiaobao’s hand finally rolled onto the floor with a smack. She felt like she needed a bottle of quick-acting heart pills.

By the time Wei Qian had dealt with everything in an almost evasive way and finally dragged himself home, he nearly thought he had opened the wrong door.

Both he and Xiao Bao were often not at home. Since they were out for long stretches of time, of course all the doors and windows had to be shut. So usually, every time he pushed the door open, the first thing he felt was the stuffy, airless heaviness inside, and it always took a long while to clear.

If it was nighttime, then in addition to that empty, stifling heaviness, there would also be a pitch-black stillness in the room, without the slightest sound.

Wei Qian always came in dragging a body full of exhaustion, switched on the lights, opened the windows, then turned on the television, so that even if it was only advertisements, at least there would be a little noise in the room. Then he would collapse into the sofa like a lump of mud and call the hourly cleaner.

Sometimes Wei Qian even thought about getting a pet. In the past he had hated those little fur-shedding animals most of all, and Xiao Bao’s repeated childhood requests to keep a puppy had all been rejected. Now, though, he felt that whether it was a cat, a dog, or even a rat, at least there would be some living thing in the house that breathed. Even if all he could do when he came home was squat down and say a couple of words to a cat or dog, it would at least feel less stupid.

Unfortunately, that was not possible. Nobody was home all day. Forget living things that needed food, water, peeing, and pooping, even an electronic pet would die.

As time went on, “going home” became something he did not look forward to at all.

But this time, as soon as he pushed the door open, the first thing he smelled was a faint trace of laundry detergent drifting in the air. He walked in and glanced toward the balcony, only to see bedsheets, pillow towels, and a few items of clothing hanging there, fluttering in the wind.

After that, the rich smell of meat simmering over a low flame slowly emerged, stretching long and deep through the air. In the kitchen, the little clay pot that nobody had used in ages was bubbling away with a pot of stewed meat. Using a small hand towel to shield his hand, Wei Qian carefully lifted the lid, and the burst of fragrance that rose up nearly hit him hard enough to knock him over.

A thought immediately rose in him, To hell with healthy living, eating meat is the true kingly path, and he no longer wanted to touch soy sauce soup mixed with plain boiled lettuce.

“You’re back?” Wei Zhiyuan suddenly walked over, producing a pair of chopsticks from who knew where. His hand brushed lightly across Wei Qian’s side waist as he reached past him from behind and gently poked at the meat in the pot. “Almost done.”

Wei Zhiyuan had filled out quite a bit compared to when he left home. Standing behind him, he felt especially present and imposing, which made Wei Qian vaguely uncomfortable.

But Wei Qian firmly believed that this sense of pressure came entirely from his own imagination. In terms of sheer build, there was no way Wei Zhiyuan could compare to the naturally gifted San Pang. Every time San Pang got near him, the only simple thought Wei Qian ever had was, This guy really takes up space.

Wei Qian suspected that Wei Zhiyuan had made his nerves somewhat oversensitive. For all these years, he had thought he no longer cared about the offense his younger brother had committed in those rash, hot-blooded days of youth, but now it seemed that was not quite the case.

Although this time, after Wei Zhiyuan came back, his speech, manner, gaze, and attitude had all matured by more than just a little, and that was something Wei Qian found gratifying, he nevertheless vaguely felt that in some respects… Xiao Yuan seemed to have become even more “off his rocker.” And now that he was older, his courage had swelled too. He was getting harder and harder to handle. Every time Wei Zhiyuan approached him, whether intentionally or casually, Wei Qian, although not quite to the point of dodging away, still could not help tensing up a little.

And at that very moment, Wei Qian very quickly regretted why he had not dodged.

Because Wei Zhiyuan then fished out a piece of pure lean meat from the pot, carefully blew away some of the scorching steam, and before he could react, suddenly lifted his hand and lightly brushed it against the corner of Wei Qian’s mouth. The chopsticks came to rest at his lips, and right by the ear that was especially easy to tickle, Wei Zhiyuan said, “Try it.”

Wei Qian: “…”

Pretending not to see the jump in Wei Qian’s temple after he gave a slight shiver, Wei Zhiyuan stepped back a little, still smiling as he said, “It’s not hot anymore. Right, did you look at my proposal? What did you think?”

Wei Qian had no choice but to bite the piece of meat off the chopsticks and, as though nothing had happened, begin discussing the investment in their online game with him.

This was only the beginning. For a long stretch of time afterward, Wei Qian lived on the strange border between collapse and enjoyment.

What drove him toward collapse was Wei Zhiyuan’s attitude toward him.

Wei Zhiyuan often came close to him with little ambiguous gestures. If Wei Qian ignored him stonily, he would suddenly cross the line, only to slide back to the safe side the very instant before Wei Qian could flare up, then ingratiatingly claim that he had only been fooling around, and immediately afterward talk to Wei Qian with a completely serious face about something else as if nothing had happened.

Wei Zhiyuan had brought the sixteen-character guerrilla warfare strategy, “If the enemy advances, we retreat; if the enemy camps, we harass; if the enemy tires, we strike; if the enemy retreats, we pursue,” to its absolute peak. He was like a mole that had dug a hundred and eighty holes in the ground, always popping out in some unknown place with a grin. Before Wei Qian could lift a club and smash down on him, he would already have shrunk back into the hole and run off, only to pop out again somewhere else at some other unknown time.

When Wei Zhiyuan had been disobedient as a child, Wei Qian could simply pick him up and beat him in a straightforward, rough way. After he got older, beating him up was obviously no longer realistic, but in the days before Wei Zhiyuan had gone abroad, Wei Qian had discovered that as long as he became even a little cold, the boy would become like someone who had lost his soul and could be kneaded and handled however he pleased.

Now, Wei Qian was certain that both of those methods for dealing with Wei Zhiyuan had stopped working.

And before he figured out how to clean things up if that tottering sheet of window paper were ever actually pierced through, Wei Qian did not want to risk making everything worse.

For the moment, he could only endure it first, feeling every day as if he were living under the ten-sided ambush of a Wei Zhiyuan who could “pop out” from anywhere at any time.

What he enjoyed was that ever since Wei Zhiyuan came back, this house had finally started to feel like a home.

For one thing, there was now someone to talk to as soon as he walked in. Genuine communication and real conversation were different from perfunctory or merely polite chatter. No matter how self-centered or withdrawn a person might be, it was hard to resist the pleasure the former brought.

Xiao Bao could not do that. Wei Qian’s aesthetic sensibilities were limited. Even if all ten directions of form and beauty dazzled with endless grace, it still could not change the fact that the audience was face-blind. Although, out of concern for his younger sister, he was somewhat interested in the things that happened in her circle, he never could tell who the people she was always mentioning actually were. And as for the things he himself did every day, she could not really understand those either.

Wei Zhiyuan was different. Wei Qian discovered that Xiao Yuan especially liked to trace things back to the root from the level of definition and explain his views on them that way. His interest lay in making all kinds of online games and stand-alone games. Setting aside the technical side, Wei Zhiyuan loved formulating game rules, or abstracting and refining them. His line of thought was extremely clear, and he was very good at simulating all sorts of possible evolutions, somewhat similar in spirit to Ma Chunming.

The only difference was that Ma Chunming was poor at expressing himself. Sometimes he would think of something, but fail to say it where it mattered, and if you fell even slightly behind his train of thought, the whole thing would turn into chickens and ducks talking past each other. Wei Zhiyuan seemed to have one extra built-in intelligent interaction platform for dealing with clients.

After he came back, Wei Qian felt that in that single month, he had spoken more than he had in the entire previous year.

By the end of it, he had almost gotten used to the daily routine of Wei Zhiyuan cutting fruit in the kitchen while he leaned against the doorway and talked to him.

To have a home that was soothing, relaxing, and genuinely pleasant was something many people searched for all their lives and never found.

But of course, this kind of bizarre state of balance was only temporary.

Wei Qian could not keep deceiving himself and drag out this illusion forever, and naturally Wei Zhiyuan was not content to go on merely probing him again and again. As Wei Zhiyuan’s boldness escalated, the balance on the surface grew more and more precarious, only waiting for the final straw to break the camel’s back.

And then the straw arrived.

That day, after Wei Qian got home from work, he half reclined on the sofa to rest for a while. While resting his eyes, he almost fell asleep. In that half-dream, half-waking state, he sensed something and suddenly startled awake, only to find Wei Zhiyuan kneeling on the floor beside the sofa. One hand, which had just been lightly stroking his cheek and chin, had not even had time to withdraw.

Wei Zhiyuan seemed to have cultivated an indestructible diamond body and a face with the thickness of bronze walls and iron ramparts. Even though he had been caught red-handed in the middle of doing something bad, he looked not the slightest bit flustered. Instead, taking advantage of the fact that Wei Qian had not yet fully woken up, he pushed his luck further. His hand slid down along Wei Qian’s arm, then finally took hold of his hand and, in an act packed with implication, lightly licked one slow circle around his fingers.

Warm, slightly rough tongue wrapped around fingers connected straight to the heart. His hot breath brushed over the extremely sensitive webbing between the fingers. Wei Qian felt his scalp explode on the spot, and the heartbeat that had only just awakened in his chest nearly began clattering outright.

Like he had been shocked by electricity, he yanked his hand back at once and realized that this absolutely could not keep going on like this.

“Xiao Yuan.” It took him quite a while before he managed to speak.

This time, Wei Qian did not get angry. He simply sat up from the sofa and said seriously, “I need to talk to you about this.”

Wei Zhiyuan raised one finger and placed it against his lips. “Shh. Not today. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, okay? Tomorrow’s the weekend. At least take one day off and don’t go to the office. Come fishing with me.”

Wei Qian did not object. He also felt that the calmer he was, the better. One night to settle things and think carefully would do him good.

The next morning, the two of them really did go once again to the fish pond they had visited before. It had already changed owners, gone through several rounds of renovation, and gone up in price quite a bit. The weather had turned cold in autumn, and the visitors had grown sparse. The little pavilion they had occupied back then, however, was still there, newly refurbished. The tiles on its pointed roof had been painted a bright, glossy color that looked a little fake.

Wei Zhiyuan walked in the whole way, revisiting the old place, and with practiced ease baited the hook, cast the line, and set the rod.

Wei Qian, however, had no mind for fishing at all. He sat beside Wei Zhiyuan in silence for a long time, then decided not to beat around the bush and say it bluntly. “Give it up. It’s impossible.”

Wei Zhiyuan’s gaze stayed fixed on the float in the water not far away, without the slightest ripple. Hearing this, he merely replied with equal calm, “Ge, you can’t make me give up. Even I can’t make myself give up. People can’t control their own hearts.”

Wei Qian asked him, “Then what exactly do you want to do from now on?”

Only then did Wei Zhiyuan smile lightly. He unscrewed two bottles of mineral water, handed one back to Wei Qian, and said, “For the last four years, I’ve been thinking about nothing but these questions. What should I do? How can I make you accept me? What if you don’t want me? The more I thought, the more I trapped myself. When the plane took off, my head was full of the image of your back as you pried my hand away. At the time, it felt like my heart was hurting so badly it had split open. Only later did I slowly come to understand that none of those things had any meaning.”

Wei Qian leaned against the pillar beside him, arms folded across his chest, waiting to hear the bizarre path of his inner thoughts. His mood was grim, almost tragic. He felt like someone holding a knife to cut rot from a festering wound on his own body. No matter how ill-suited he was for it, he still had to face it.

“At first, I thought that if my possessiveness toward you could never be satisfied, or if my feelings could never be answered, then it would be better to just kill me. I was crazily jealous of every imagined person who might want to get close to you. In my fantasies, I made those people up, then killed them all, just to ease my own anxiety.”

“But then on the day your phone cord tripped you and I thought something had happened to you, even though San-ge told me you were safe, that night I still had a nightmare. In the dream, there were a lot of people around you. One after another, they turned transparent and disappeared, until in the end only you were left in my field of vision, alone. I watched you coming and going alone every day. When you got sick, you fainted in the living room, and no one knew. You could only wait to wake up on your own, then stagger up by yourself and go look for medicine. After that, for a long, long stretch of time, every time I closed my eyes, I would see that scene.”

“I think it was after almost a month of that. One day, in my fantasy, I saw a blurred figure appear beside you. I couldn’t tell whether that person was male or female, beautiful or ugly. They only stayed beside you the whole time, like a shadow, like a ghost. Under normal logic, the reason I invented these people in my fantasies was so I could eventually kill them. But afterward, I didn’t do it, because I saw the way you lowered your head and smiled at that person. How long had it been since I’d seen you smile in my dreams? I almost couldn’t count it anymore.”

Wei Zhiyuan’s voice was low, even, and unhurried, as he told it all as gently as if it were the distant light and drifting shadows of clouds reflected on the mirror-smooth surface of water. Yet Wei Qian felt his chest grow tight as he listened.

If the person Wei Zhiyuan was talking about had been someone else, then now that it had come to this, as the big brother, Wei Qian would have tied that person up and dragged them back if necessary.

But why did it have to be him?

And from the day he was born, Wei Qian had always felt that no one had ever truly expected him, let alone loved him this deeply.

Wei Zhiyuan’s words were like the smooth round wooden beads in his hand, each one rolling out one after another, unremarkable in appearance, yet each carrying a feeling too great to name, and one that, if spoken aloud directly, would be deafening.

But why did the person saying it have to be his younger brother?

“Suddenly, I felt as though everything had opened up.” Wei Zhiyuan said, “At that time I thought, when I graduate and return to the country a few years later, even if I really see you married to someone else, I won’t go insane over it anymore. I can go on loving you. If some unknown woman loves you more than I do, then I can stay silent for the rest of my life. Of course it would hurt terribly, but I could also treat that pain as a kind of spiritual practice.”

Like a religion founded from pain born in this world and bliss that could never be reached, building a spiritual bridge between the two.

Wei Qian asked softly, “Practice toward what?”

Wei Zhiyuan turned his head and looked at him quietly in the breeze without answering, but the answer was already there on the verge of sound.

Of course, it was to practice toward a whole lifetime of joy, peace, and security for you.

He suddenly reached out and gripped the hand Wei Qian had resting on the railing. Wei Qian reflexively tried to pull away, but was held down by force. The matching wooden bead bracelets on their wrists knocked together, giving off a faint little sound. Even the sound of the water seemed to fall still.

A fish bit the hook, and the float bobbed violently up and down, but neither of them paid it any attention.

No one knew how much time passed. Wei Qian felt that his palm had already grown slick with sweat, but his expression remained pale and unmoved.

He seized Wei Zhiyuan’s wrist and forced him to let go. Then he said, with finality, “I’ll say the same thing again. Give up on this completely.”

Wei Zhiyuan smiled slightly and said nothing more. He picked up the rod, flicked and lifted his wrist, and a great fish arced out of the water, its glittering scales flashing with droplets.

No matter how well he put on an act, he still wavered, Wei Zhiyuan thought happily. His pulse just now was clearly faster.