Bro | Chapter 58

Wei Qian was practically terrified of Wei Zhiyuan.

Wei Qian had never been the kind of person who could just keep running away forever. He always tried every possible way to face a problem, given the habit he had developed from childhood, that if he did not shoulder things, no one would.

But he had racked his brains and still could not come up with any solution that could convince even himself. So he could only keep thinking, until his head was practically about to explode.

Fortunately, Wei Zhiyuan seemed to have noticed too. After they came back from the pond that day, he stopped constantly pestering Wei Qian. He had his own things to keep him busy. Sometimes he went out, sometimes he shut himself in his room to work or hold remote online meetings. But for some reason, Wei Qian had no idea how he managed it, even though that brat’s sense of presence was no longer so strong, it had somehow become omnipresent instead.

Wei Zhiyuan’s eyes were on the larger side compared with most people’s. Usually, when they were simply open, it was not obvious. But when he smiled, they carried a hint of peach blossom eyes. A single sweep of his gaze seemed able to sweep across a whole stretch. His look was almost tangible, and it kept falling on Wei Qian.

Sometimes it was gentle, sometimes intent… that much Wei Qian could still endure. What he could not endure was that sometimes, when Wei Zhiyuan merely came out to pour himself some water or grab something to eat, he would think of something he should not be thinking of, and then his gaze would turn blatantly explicit, almost enough to count as eye-fucking.

At long last there was a weekend for rest, yet Wei Qian spent that “rest” weekend feeling like he had thorns in his back.

He finally made it through to Monday. Early that morning, Wei Qian hid himself at the office. This freakishly workaholic man, upon seeing all the reports piled high across his desk waiting for his review, actually felt his spirits open up, as though he had breathed a sigh of relief.

Even when he went to attend the regular Monday morning meeting, Wei Qian was still turning things over in his mind resentfully: What am I afraid of him for? What do I have to feel guilty about?

He was distracted when someone with a dazed expression suddenly came straight toward him, nearly crashing into him.

Wei Qian focused and saw that it was Ma Chunming. He immediately said irritably, “What, did you just finish doing drugs? What kind of state are you in?”

Ma Chunming had been born with a long, narrow melon-seed face, all pointy mouth and monkey cheeks, with large double-lidded eyes that bulged a little. All in all, it could be said that he did not exactly fit the masses’ standard of beauty. Fortunately, he was usually always smiling, so at least he could be taken for a golden snub-nosed monkey with a friendly expression, which made him fairly likable.

But for some reason, right now he was sporting a messy head of hair sticking up toward the sun, his steps were unsteady, his face was pale and sickly, and his eye rims were red, which made those already bulging eyes look even more prominent. His whole person looked like an ET with a huge head and a skinny little neck.

Ma Chunming shot him a wronged and resentful look, successfully making Wei Qian, who had already suffered a whole weekend of visual torture, break out in goosebumps all over. Then Dr. Ma, in a tone as mournful as if he were at a funeral, said heavily to Wei Qian, “Good morning, Chairman Wei.”

“…” Wei Qian said, “Morning.”

Ma Chunming, his gaze blank and his soul seemingly gone, brushed past him.

Comrade Ma Chunming, his risk control consultant and executive vice president, was someone who loved work very much. Dr. Ma always remembered that getting this job back then had not been easy, and reaching his current position was even more like winning the lottery by accident, so he cherished it deeply and had always worked conscientiously and diligently.

But at that morning meeting, he stayed silent from beginning to end, the whole person sunk into a state of profound distraction. When Wei Qian asked about this week’s arrangements for risk control work, he called Ma Chunming twice, and Ma Chunming did not hear him either time. In the end, it was San Pang, sitting across from him, who rolled up a paper ball and threw it at his forehead. Only then did Dr. Ma, whose soul had left his body, finally notice that there were still so many stupid humans around him.

Ma Chunming said, “Ah… I… I don’t have anything to add.”

Wei Qian lifted his eyelids. “Did I ask you to add anything?”

Ma Chunming looked blank. The manager from the risk control department hurriedly reported the work in his place at rapid speed, and that was enough to smooth things over.

Wei Qian shot Dr. Ma a warning glance. He did not slap him in the face in public, but after the regular meeting ended, he brought him into his office.

Sitting behind his desk like some great demon king, he crossed one leg over the other, lit a cigarette, lowered his eyes, and asked coldly, “Doctor, let me ask you this, was the theme of today’s meeting sleepwalking?”

Ma Chunming stood off to the side, not daring to raise his head or speak.

After all, he was an old subordinate of many years. Seeing him looking like a ghost, Wei Qian still felt a bit of human sympathy rise in him after all, so his next sentence softened a little. He said, “If something happened at home, then go back and deal with it first. Taking a couple days off won’t matter.”

At that moment, Ma Chunming suddenly opened his mouth and asked, completely out of nowhere, “…Would I count as successful in my career?”

Wei Qian said, “Huh? What the hell are you talking about?”

Ma Chunming staggered over to a chair, found it, and collapsed into it in one plop. Then he began lamenting and wallowing in self-pity like Xianglin’s Wife. “You pay me such a high salary and have me handle so many things. Sometimes I even get the illusion that I’m very successful. But what use is that? I still get abandoned all the same. No matter how hard I work, I still get abandoned.”

Wei Qian: “…”

He was listening so intently he forgot to even bring the cigarette to his mouth.

As Ma Chunming spoke, tears started pouring down like rain. The tears pattered down noisily. His expression was heart-wrenchingly torn apart, but in terms of sound he was not bawling at the top of his lungs, only choking back little sobs in a wronged, aggrieved voice.

Wei Qian said, “Oh? Did you have a fight with your wife? Don’t tell me it’s because I keep sending you out on business trips and it hurt your married life.”

At last Ma Chunming could not hold it in. He braced his elbows on his knees, covered his face with both hands, bent over, and collapsed. “I dated her for three years, and we’ve been married for more than two. I know she’s beautiful and has a good family background, and that I’m a little beneath her. But after all these years, as long as it was something I had, if she wanted it, I got it for her. If she wanted to eat a human heart, I could split open my chest, slice it up, and fry it for her…”

“Could you please change to a less disgusting way of saying that?” Wei Qian wrinkled his nose. Hearing this much, his breakfast was starting to rise back up.

Ma Chunming paid him no attention. “…But why would she go behind my back and be with someone else?”

Wei Qian was startled. “What? How do you know? Did you see it?”

Ma Chunming wiped away a handful of tears. “I saw it with my own eyes. Didn’t I just come back from out of town with a partner last night? I got their accommodations and meals arranged, and while I was seeing them all the way into the hotel, I saw her walk in arm in arm with a man. She didn’t know I came back yesterday… I… I stood outside the hotel the whole night.”

As he spoke, he inhaled sharply through his nose. He seemed to be coming down with a bit of a cold.

“Hold on, I’ve got cold medicine here.” Wei Qian rummaged through his drawer and pulled out a few packets of cold remedy for him. “Stood outside the hotel all night? Sigh, while other people were fucking, you were standing guard outside. Tell me, isn’t there something wrong with you?”

At a time like this, this man could still manage to drive the knife in further with such mean, utterly unsympathetic words. Ma Chunming immediately cried so hard he could barely make a sound, devastated beyond measure.

Wei Qian waved a hand and crushed out his cigarette. “How about this. Tell me what you’re planning to do. Divorce? Lawsuit? Or what? Did you get a clear look at which bastard was fooling around with someone else’s wife? Want me to find someone to investigate it for you?”

“That’s not what this is about at all!” Ma Chunming’s voice rose. “I don’t care who that person is at all! In this life, I’ve only ever liked this one woman. I knew I wasn’t good enough for her, so I didn’t mind if I gave her ten parts of my heart and she only returned one. But how could she trample someone else’s sincere feelings like this?”

The words “trample someone else’s sincere feelings” were like the barb on a wasp’s tail, pricking Wei Qian’s heart, neither too hard nor too lightly.

He involuntarily thought of Wei Zhiyuan.

At the same time that Wei Zhiyuan’s feelings, transformed from blazing intensity into something deep and heavy, became something Wei Qian could not accept, Wei Qian also vaguely felt a few traces of panic, like the kind of panic felt by a child who was usually not very likable and had no sense of presence, when all of a sudden that child became the focus of everyone’s attention.

To use a highly inappropriate metaphor, if a person who had gone hungry year round were suddenly stuffed with two steamed buns dipped in human blood, then no matter how much the morality in his heart rejected them, no matter how unwilling he was to eat them, he would still put them away carefully and treasure them. He would not just toss them aside.

Ma Chunming said, “Why did you keep me back then? Was it because I look like a monkey, and that amused you? I’m completely worthless.”

That howl brought Wei Qian back to himself. He was still absent-minded, and only offered a dry line of comfort. “Enough. It’s not your fault. Stop belittling yourself here.”

Ma Chunming heard the consolation in his words. He knew that the fact Wei Qian was not kicking him while he was down, and could even produce comfort at this level, was already quite good for him. So he gave Wei Qian a bleak, miserable smile. “Thank you.”

Then the smile disappeared, leaving only bleak misery behind. “You wouldn’t understand people like us failures. For someone who’s been abandoned, it feels like your whole existence has been denied. I’m not angry at her, and it’s not that my pride as a man was hurt. I… I can’t find any meaning to my own existence…”

After saying that, Ma Chunming got shakily to his feet. “Chairman Wei, I’m taking two days off.”

Wei Qian heard another layer of meaning in that and hurriedly said, “Hey, wait, come back!”

But Ma Chunming really did seem as if his heart had already died. It was like he had not heard him at all. Like a walking corpse, he left the office.

Wei Qian had no choice but to call Xiao Fei on the internal line. “Get someone… right, Ma’s assistant, I guess. Have them keep an eye on him for the next couple days. Why do I feel like this is the prelude to him buying a rope and hanging himself?”

After a while, Xiao Fei knocked on the door to his office. She had a coat in her hand. “I’ve had someone keep an eye on Manager Ma’s side.”

Wei Qian stared at the thing in her hand for a moment. “That looks like my coat.”

“Mm, Xiao Yuan brought it over just now. He said it’ll get colder this afternoon.” Xiao Fei hung the coat by the door. “I haven’t seen him for years, I almost didn’t recognize him just now.”

As she spoke, Xiao Fei took out a tea bag from the drawer and, with practiced ease, picked up Wei Qian’s cup and made him a steaming hot cup of tea. “I heard about Manager Ma. His wife really was pretty heartless. Actually, for some people, romantic love is like a more advanced copy of those childhood family parent-child relationships. If it suddenly disappears, it’s like a little kid being thrown away by their parents. Just thinking about it makes it feel unbearably painful.”

Wei Qian said, “…A little kid being thrown away by their parents? What does that have to do with anything?”

Xiao Fei shrugged. “Of course not everyone is like that, but there really are some people who have that kind of feeling. Maybe it’s because the feelings really are deep. When two people have been together for a long time, it’s easy to become especially dependent on the other person, desperately trying to please them like a clumsy little kid or a puppy… Manager Ma has such a good temper, I really think he’s pitiful. Wagging his tail around that woman of his, thinking all the effort he put in out there was for her. In the end, she didn’t care at all and kicked him aside with one foot.”

She spoke vividly and expressively. In Wei Qian’s mind, a scene involuntarily formed, Ma Chunming in the deep autumn night, drooping and dejected, tail tucked between his legs, neck hunched, shoulders drawn in, swaying in the wind and rain like a bamboo pole as he stood outside the hotel all night…

And then the protagonist of that scene abruptly changed. In the wild spread of his thoughts, it turned into Wei Zhiyuan.

Wei Qian suddenly jolted and looked up at Xiao Fei. “Where is he?”

Xiao Fei said, “Who?”

“Xiao Yuan.”

Xiao Fei said, baffled, “He went home. I saw him talking to someone from the investment department for a couple of minutes before he left. It sounded like it was about investing in that game. Then he said you hate being disturbed, so he wouldn’t bother you.”

Wei Qian waved a hand and sent her out.

The materials in front of him suddenly became unreadable. Those words floated before his eyes one by one, but none of them could make it into his eyes. Wei Qian tilted his head back and leaned heavily against the back of his chair, one hand covering his face.

“Xiao Yuan, Xiao Yuan…” he murmured weakly in his heart, and in the end it all collapsed into one lingering sigh.

This worry was going to kill him.

When the frost came down, the maple leaves turned red.

Wei Qian had both hands in his pockets, standing mixed in among the crowd of people on an autumn outing in the suburbs, waiting for Wei Zhiyuan, who was excitedly taking pictures all over the place.

Even now he could not figure out why he had agreed to come. It seemed the whole thing started because of Ma Chunming and Xiao Fei. Those two bastards, as though they had colluded beforehand, kept poking at his heart intentionally and unintentionally, until every time he saw Wei Zhiyuan, it felt exactly like seeing a creditor.

Later, Ma Chunming had not gone on to try to die or anything. He came back to work. It seemed he had talked it out with his wife, and the two of them were planning to divorce. San Pang was busy helping him find a lawyer and helping him split up the household.

Ma Chunming himself was completely out of it, like he had swallowed rat poison, listless all day long.

Every time Wei Qian saw him, he could not help filling in the scene with Wei Zhiyuan instead. The vague panic and guilt from the beginning gradually became heavier and heavier.

So much so that when Wei Zhiyuan said he wanted to go out to the suburbs to see the red maple leaves, Wei Qian thought in his heart, Are you full and have nothing better to do?

But after hesitating a moment, he still replied against his true feelings, “Fine.”

From halfway up the mountain came the ringing of a temple bell. A little girl of four or five ran past right under his feet and said in a milky childish voice, “Far up the cold mountain, the stone path slopes.”

Seeing Wei Qian glance at her, the little girl bounced in place a few times. She was not shy of strangers at all. As if she were showing off her cleverness, she grinned and shouted another line at him, “Frosted leaves are redder than flowers in the second month!”

“What a little brat, and she even knows how to chop off the beginning and end,” Wei Qian thought. He squeezed out a fake smile at her, exhaled a ring of smoke, and sighed another grief-stricken sigh in his heart. “This is what they call humiliating the nation and forfeiting sovereignty.”

The two of them walked side by side all the way up on foot to the temple in the mountains. Only then did Wei Qian remember that this seemed to be the place where Lao Xiong had become a monk.

Wei Zhiyuan, on the other hand, really looked the part. The way he lit incense and kowtowed looked almost like textbook standard movements, attracting other worshippers to imitate him one after another. Wei Qian, however, did not buy into this at all. With his hands behind his back, he stood off to one side like some old master, unmoved, waiting for him.

Probably some monk felt that this patron really was too much of a bastard, not even willing to go through the motions, showing immense disrespect toward the Buddha, so he came over to him, bowed with palms pressed together, and said, “Benefactor, you are someone with affinity. Draw a fortune stick.”

Wei Qian shook his head.

The monk said benevolently, “Today, for those with affinity, fortune interpretation is free. Benefactor, just draw one. It’s all right.”

The young monk was terribly clingy. Wei Qian was bored to begin with, so in the end, half for amusement, he drew one. On it were written four lines of poetry that ignored tonal meter completely and were only half comprehensible.

The little monk took one look and immediately cried out in alarm, “Aiyo, benefactor, this is a worst-of-the-worst fortune stick!”

Wei Qian: “…”

He had known it would be this routine.

The little monk continued, “This indicates an unlucky year. Benefactor, you may even suffer a bloody calamity in the near future. Amitabha, my Buddha is compassionate. Since this humble monk happened to run into you, it is fate, and I will definitely do everything in my power to help you resolve it. I absolutely will not…”

Wei Qian asked coolly, “Just tell me how much.”

Seeing how straightforward he was, the little monk beamed with delight. “Consecrated protection talismans are fifty-yuan. They ward off evil, attract wealth, and protect the health and safety of your family. Cheap price, many functions. Benefactor, take one?”

Wei Qian raised a hand and pointed behind him. “You. About-face. Quick march.”

The little monk shook his head and sighed, preparing to patiently persuade this “benefactor,” who would rather give up his life than part with his money, but Wei Qian said nothing more and directly took out his phone to make a call. “Xiong Yingjun, where are you? Get your ass to the main hall. Yeah, I’m at your temple. Where did you people recruit this kid from? Does he have any sense or not? Is there really a rule about targeting acquaintances to scam?”

As soon as Xiong Yingjun heard, he rushed over like the wind. He did not sell tickets anymore. He was a “high monk” now, responsible every day for chanting sutras and consecrating objects for visitors.

By now he was fat as a ball. No telling how many monastic rules he had secretly broken.

High Monk Xiong Yingjun scolded the clueless little novice, then invited the two acquaintances into his meditation room. The moment he laid eyes on Wei Zhiyuan, he seemed startled. In the end, he said nothing, only shook his head vaguely. “Terrible. Terrible.”

Wei Zhiyuan, seeing him, felt rather warmly toward him instead. “Xiong-ge, back then you gave me quite a lot of guidance. Thank you. In the future, I’ll come back to repay the vow.”

Lao Xiong waved his hand and sighed, dragging out each phrase as he said, “A turtle lives a thousand years, a tortoise ten thousand. A fox that endures a thousand years becomes a spirit. When I first saw it, it had not yet taken human form. In the blink of an eye, it has already passed through its tribulation… Ai, what a sin, what a sin. Good, good.”

Wei Zhiyuan seemed to be exchanging Zen riddles with him, only smiling without speaking.

Wei Qian, meanwhile, frowned. “Can you two speak like normal people?”

Lao Xiong looked at him in exasperation and kicked him out of the Buddhist place of purity. “Ignorant mortal. I told you long ago our values don’t align. Hurry up and drive your ‘sanitary pad’ back into the mortal dust where you belong.”

Who would have thought that day would turn out so strange.

Maybe some human beings really were transformed from crows, opening their mouths casually, and none of the good things they said ever came true while every bad thing did.

Wei Qian sat in the passenger seat, flipping through Wei Zhiyuan’s camera. After going through it for a bit, he felt something was off. “What did you even take pictures of? Where are the maple leaves?”

Photo after photo, large and small, from different angles, some decorated with one or two maple trees, some with a patch of flaming red leaves, but what they had all captured was a person, himself.

Wei Qian did not really like having his picture taken. He felt he looked strange from that angle.

There were shots of his back with his head lowered, close side profiles of him looking up toward the mountainside. Wei Qian had no idea when Wei Zhiyuan had been circling around him taking these candid shots, and the quality was actually quite high, almost like a personal photo album.

There was even one close-up where one of his legs was planted on the step above, a cigarette pinched between his fingers, one eyebrow slightly raised. Sunlight fell across his face. He narrowed his eyes, the corners of his mouth carrying a trace of teasing amusement as he watched a little girl whose feet were off the ground as she bounced in place.

The timing of the candid shot had been unbelievably perfect, capturing exactly that fleeting micro-expression on his face, as if someone had been holding their breath behind the lens and watching him for who knew how long, only then able to preserve, with absolute precision, such a vivid instant.

“This one’s my favorite,” Wei Zhiyuan said. “I’m planning to have it developed and carry it with me, so I can take it out and look at it every night before I sleep.”

Wei Qian lifted his head and glanced at him.

Wei Zhiyuan revealed that explicit, deep look again and said softly, “I’ll keep it for jerking off in my dreams.”

Wei Qian had no reply. With that wicked, merciless mouth of his, he had ten thousand lines at his disposal, all of them enough to send the other person fleeing with his head in his hands. Every last one marched grandly through his heart in formation, but Wei Qian discovered that none of them would be appropriate. In the end, he could only continue staring at Wei Zhiyuan woodenly.

Wei Zhiyuan laughed. “I’m kidding. Ge, fasten your seat belt.”

Wei Qian said nothing and fastened it. Whether the person in the passenger seat wore a seat belt or not was always something traffic enforcement checked strictly for a while and then loosely for a while. If Wei Zhiyuan had not reminded him, he would never have put it on himself.

Thinking back later, this sort of proper safety awareness really was necessary.

Because when Wei Zhiyuan drove through an intersection, for some reason, a car suddenly rushed out from the crossing like it had a death wish and slammed head-on into a car traveling in the lane beside them. Coincidentally enough, that car happened to be the exact same model and color as Wei Qian’s.

The struck car flipped over on the spot and came hurtling toward them. Wei Zhiyuan violently jerked the steering wheel, and the harsh sounds of scraping and impact rang out. The glass in the window on their left shattered completely, shards spraying everywhere, most of them blocked by Wei Zhiyuan as he twisted sideways.

Wei Qian, on the other hand, was completely unhurt. But the section of Wei Zhiyuan’s arm where his sleeve had rolled up, along with the back of his neck, were covered in cuts of various sizes.

This time, it really had turned into a bloody calamity.

Author’s Note:

[Note]: “Sanitary pad” refers to the shape of the Chevrolet logo. I am really not a Chevrolet hater, I swear [gets punched]…