Bro | Chapter 15

That afternoon on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, Wei Qian bought two boxes of mooncakes. When he passed by the hospital, he went in on the way and left one box for Ma Zi’s mother.

Ma Zi was pushing his mother out for a turn around the grounds, but Ma Zi’s mother did not seem very comfortable. Half her face had been splashed by hot oil and was left pitted and uneven, basically ruined. She was especially sensitive to other people’s eyes. If someone looked at her face, she would panic and hide. But if someone deliberately avoided looking at her face, she would feel that she looked frightening and feel miserable inside.

Only when she saw Wei Qian and San Pang could she relax a little. The two of them came around even more often than Ma Zi did. Even if her face had been burned into a lump of black charcoal, the two of them had already gotten used to looking at it.

“Auntie, I bought some mooncakes. I’m leaving a box for you. It’s the holiday, just for the occasion, at least have a piece,” Wei Qian said. What he had bought was not loose mooncakes, but the kind that came in a proper gift box.

Ma Zi’s mother did not thank him. The first thing out of her mouth was, “What did you buy this for? You’re wasting money again!”

Wei Qian smoothly picked up her line of talk. “Exactly, right? I don’t know what’s so good about this greasy stuff either. But what can I do, my two ‘bosses’ both love it.”

Ma Zi’s mother laughed. “You can’t spoil them like that. If you spoil them too much, they’ll be completely out of hand.”

She did not say it aloud, but in her heart she always felt she was a heavy burden. No one had the money to hire a professional caregiver for her. Most of the time, Ma Zi’s mother could only stay by herself in the hospital, all alone, without even anyone to talk to. For her, having an acquaintance come by and chat about ordinary household trifles was already a tremendous kind of enjoyment.

Not to mention that her son had actually carved out an entire afternoon to push her around outside.

Ma Zi’s mother had not been this happy in a very long time. That day, even if her smile was ugly, it was ugly with complete sincerity.

Wei Qian was actually not used to sitting around and talking at length with people. He sat with Ma Zi’s mother for a while, nearly using up half a month’s worth of smiles in one go. By the time he left, he had talked himself dry, and even his face felt a little stiff.

During all this, Ma Zi, as usual, listened silently from the side.

When Wei Qian left the hospital, he felt a kind of lightness, as if he had put something down. He and San Pang had already hauled Ma Zi back. As for Ma Zi’s mother in the future, at worst they could just take turns looking after her. Anyway, he did not have a mother himself, so one more did not make much difference.

When Wei Qian got home and pushed the door open, the two little creatures who had been sitting on the sofa both turned their heads back in exactly the same way, like meerkats stretching their necks, looking so expectant their eyes were practically wearing through the door. Xiao Bao had just opened her mouth to complain, but who knew she would see the box in Wei Qian’s hand first. Her eyes went round, and she jumped up and blurted incoherently, “Mooncakes! The TV’s broken!”

“…” Wei Qian looked at her and said, “Fine. Let it fix it for you.”

Song Xiaobao wagged herself around. “Hehehehe.”

Wei Qian had talked too much that afternoon, and now he was too lazy to open his mouth again, so he only lifted one finger and pointed toward the kitchen. Song Xiaobao stared blankly in the direction of his hand. “There are mooncakes in the kitchen too?”

But Wei Zhiyuan had already, with the ease of long training, jumped off the sofa, darted into the kitchen, and pulled out the toolbox from underneath the storage box.

This little lackey had cultivated himself to the point of being able to read brainwaves. Wei Qian felt deeply gratified, and at the same time dissatisfied as he criticized Song Xiaobao. “Move aside. It’s basically impossible to communicate with you.”

Song Xiaobao felt wronged. “You didn’t say anything at all!”

Their television had been repaired more than once… In fact, there was nothing in their home that had not been repaired more than once.

Wei Qian was already an old hand. Sitting on the floor, he undid the TV casing in just a few quick moves. Song Xiaobao stared at the mooncake box with drool-worthy longing, fluttering her eyelashes at it, while Wei Zhiyuan lay across Wei Qian’s shoulder watching him check the problem, quiet and obedient.

Wei Qian glanced at him and felt that this kid was even cleaner-cut and prettier than the little girl, and even more like a thoughtful little padded jacket than she was.

Wei Zhiyuan looked at him worshipfully. “Ge is amazing. In the future, I want to be a TV repairman too.”

Wei Qian: “…”

Wei Zhiyuan stared at him with a pair of ignorant, wide-open eyes.

Wei Qian said, “I’m paying for your schooling so you can become a TV repairman?”

Wei Zhiyuan said hesitantly, “Then… can I be someone who sells TVs?”

Wei Qian laughed in spite of himself. The little brat was pretending to be stupid to act cute.

Ever since Wei Zhiyuan had started going to school properly, his report cards had already fully shown the boy’s talent. When Wei Qian himself had been little, he had already been unusually precocious and bright, but looking back on it now, he still might not have done as well as this kid.

That night, after Wei Qian fixed the television, he used a small knife to cut up the mooncakes, then sat down and watched TV with them while eating mooncakes.

In The Legend of the Condor Heroes, it had just reached the part where Guo Jing left Mongolia and followed the Seven Freaks of Jiangnan back to the Central Plains, when suddenly someone knocked on their door.

The person knocking was not using much force, as if they were not quite sure. They would knock a few times, then hesitate for a bit.

Wei Qian thought it was one of his brothers, and without even putting on a shirt, he went to answer the door, a cigarette in his mouth and bandages showing all over his body.

As soon as he opened it, he froze for a moment. Standing there before him was an unfamiliar old lady.

The old lady’s hair was grizzled white, but she looked alert and strong. She was not tall, not even up to Wei Qian’s shoulder, black-skinned and thin. On top she wore the kind of old-fashioned front-opening cloth jacket commonly seen on elderly country people when they went out, and below that a pair of cropped pants that were neither loose nor tight. The pant legs hung above her ankles, exposing her narrow, dried-up, bony ankles.

On her back she carried a dingy gray bundle, and in her hand she held a plastic bag stuffed with empty cans and drink bottles. Her hair was combed neatly, not a strand out of place, and her clothes were clean too. She was about sixty or seventy, but her waist was not bent and her back was not hunched.

This old lady was probably someone who picked through scrap, but she was the most respectable scrap-picker Wei Qian had ever seen.

At the same time, the old lady was looking the young man before her up and down with some fear. He clearly did not look like an ordinary law-abiding citizen, and she plainly had not expected the person opening the door to be someone like this. But she did not step back. Instead, she unconsciously straightened her chest and lifted her head, opening her mouth with full confidence to ask, “Does Song Dawei live here?”

Her attitude could not be called good. Hidden in it was even a certain kind of distinctly unfriendly vigilance. Wei Qian did not have time to take issue with it, he just felt that the three words “Song Dawei” sounded awfully familiar, but for a moment he could not remember who it was.

Seeing his blank expression and getting no answer, the old lady said again, “Then does Song Lili live here too?”

“Song Lili?” Wei Qian frowned and repeated. “What do you want with her?”

Xiao Bao heard it from inside and came hopping out. “Hey! Who’s looking for me?”

The moment she bounced out, that shriveled, skinny little old lady, who had been trying her best to show that she was not frightened at all, suddenly began to tremble. She looked greedily and intently at Song Xiaobao’s curious little head poking over, trembling harder and harder, and then, before Wei Qian could stop her, she grabbed the little girl into her arms and immediately burst into loud, ungraceful sobs.

Only then did Wei Qian belatedly remember that “Song Dawei” was that short-lived stepfather who had once given him a few years of decent living, Song Xiaobao’s father.

And in a very dramatic twist, this old lady was his stepfather’s own mother.

In those earlier years, for rural residents in remote regions, long-distance train tickets were expensive. The migrant labor tide had only just begun to take shape and was not yet widespread. In those days, it was completely normal for people who left home for work not to return for three or five years. Villages did not have convenient access to telephones, and family members mainly kept in touch by letters and remittances.

Later, when Song Dawei stopped sending any news, the old lady had originally wanted, in great anxiety, to come and take a look. But by sheer bad luck, at that exact juncture, her husband suffered a stroke. During those years she had no room to spare for anything else, and the several letters she had asked others to write to her son all vanished into silence one after another. At the time, Wei Qian’s mother had never even thought of contacting Song Dawei’s family. She had been entirely occupied with destructively popping pills and courting death.

Finally, just after the Dragon Boat Festival this year, the old lady’s sickly, ailing husband followed in the footsteps of the sages and completely kicked the bucket.

Grandma Song became a lone old woman through and through. She cried and made a great scene as she saw the old man off, packed up her few possessions, barely scraped together a bit of money, and all the way here relied on picking through scrap until she reached this northern city, whose name she had seen on the remittance slips at the post office, to come seek refuge with her son.

When the old lady knocked on the door, she had still been holding her chest high and her brows upright. Even though she carried a bag of cans she had not yet managed to sell, she was still trying as much as possible to preserve the dignity of a country person in this strange city.

And that dignity finally shattered into crumbs after she discovered that her son too had already died young.

Mid-Autumn Festival, the festival of reunion. All across China, families were gathering together, and no one knew that inside a shabby old tube-style apartment building, an old lady was panic-stricken to discover that her husband and son were both gone after all. Now there was no one left to provide for her in old age, and no one left to bury her when she died. The first half of her life had all been lived for nothing, and what remained for her old age was bleak desolation.

She sat on the floor and cried so piercingly it was like demonic noise drilling into people’s ears, ruining everyone’s mooncakes.

Wei Qian looked at the old black-and-white photograph the old lady had brought with her. The silly-looking young man in it faintly resembled his short-lived stepfather. He also checked the remittance slips she had brought and basically believed that she really was Xiao Bao’s biological grandmother.

After all, she was blood kin. Although Wei Qian felt that this foolish old woman was extremely annoying, in the end he still did not throw her out on the evening of the Mid-Autumn Festival. For the time being, he let her stay there and share a room with Xiao Bao.

But who could have known that this old woman would not know what was good for her. After wiping her tears dry, those little eyes of hers, exactly the same as Wei Qian’s stepfather Song Dawei’s, were filled with shrewd, crafty light. One glance was enough for her to know that Wei Qian was no good. She probed him from the side with a few questions. At first she was still pleasant and affable, but later, once she learned that he was actually a little thug who watched over a nightclub and used a knife there, the old lady finally could not endure it anymore.

In those days, old women from the countryside did not understand what a Young and Dangerous hoodlum was, or what the underworld meant. In her eyes, Wei Qian was simply a good-for-nothing hooligan.

…Of course, her view was not entirely wrong.

Naturally, the old lady could not let her precious granddaughter live together with a hooligan. But she could also see that Xiao Bao depended very heavily on this big brother.

This old thing had lived through the full sweep of modern Chinese history. She had caught every bit of it, two wars, dynastic change, and all kinds of political movements after the founding of the nation. Battling heaven and battling people had brought endless delight, and she was too shrewd to trade for even three monkeys.

She knew that everything required strategy, so she did not get red in the face and confront Wei Qian head-on. She decided to hold her position for now and think carefully about how to “save” her granddaughter from this hooligan’s hands.

But Wei Qian had no time to care what she was thinking, because that very night, something happened.

At three-thirty in the morning, Wei Qian’s front door was pounded hard. He jolted awake. Strangely, when he was wrenched out of his deepest sleep so roughly, his first reaction was not to start cursing, but to break out in a cold sweat first, as if he had a premonition that something had happened.

Wei Zhiyuan groggily wrapped himself in a blanket and got up too. He did not know what had happened, his mind was a lump of paste, but on instinct he jumped out of bed barefoot and followed Wei Qian to open the door.

Before Wei Qian had even fully pulled the door open, something stuffed in the crack dropped out. He picked it up and looked. It was an envelope, and inside the envelope was a thick stack of cash.

San Pang was standing outside, still bare-chested, wearing only slippers and big shorts, showing a whole body of pale flabby fat. He had obviously just rolled out of bed. In his hand he held an identical envelope. Before Wei Qian could react, San Pang quickly said, “It was Ma Zi! I only saw this envelope when I got up to piss in the middle of the night. It had to be that bastard Ma Zi who stuffed it in!”

At that moment, Wei Qian’s mind was shockingly calm. He asked in a low voice, “Where did he get that much money?”

San Pang said, “Could he have gone and sold for someone again…”

“Impossible!” Wei Qian cut him off. “Impossible. San-ge, you don’t understand that bunch. They want you to sell your life to them for the long haul, so they would absolutely keep you hanging bit by bit. There’s no way they’d hand over this much money in one go.”

Understanding Wei Qian’s implication that Ma Zi might have done something even more serious than dealing drugs, San Pang looked at him in a rare panic.

“This afternoon I saw him… I should’ve realized earlier that something was wrong.” Wei Qian’s thoughts were turning fast. He reached for the phone on the table and dialed a number, calling one of the brothers who was on duty in the latter half of the night. After quite a while, Wei Qian put down the phone, his face ugly to a terrifying degree.

“What…” San Pang unconsciously held his breath and lowered his voice.

“Something happened over there tonight. I heard a whole bunch of police came, searched the place inside and out, and took a lot of people away.” Wei Qian quickly pulled on his jacket and shoes. “No one saw Ma Zi. Let’s hope he has nothing to do with this…”

San Pang grabbed his arm. “He… how could he have anything to do with this?”

Wei Qian lowered his voice. “How should I know? I’m going over to take a look. You go to the hospital and ask the nurse on duty whether he was there tonight.”

Wei Zhiyuan hurriedly trotted after Wei Qian. Wei Qian caught him by the arm in one grab and hauled him back into the room. “What are you following me for? Go back to sleep. Don’t you have school tomorrow?”

Wei Zhiyuan said, “I’ll help you go look for Ma Zi-ge.”

“Little brat.” Wei Qian glared at him impatiently. “You not causing me trouble would already be a huge help.”

Wei Zhiyuan’s steps stopped abruptly, and the bright sparkle in his eyes immediately dimmed.

He suddenly felt the contradiction inside himself. If he showed his precocious maturity, then it would not be so easy for him to win his big brother’s attention. But if he acted silly like Xiao Bao, although that usually pleased his big brother, then at critical moments he would also be treated like a little kid, just like Xiao Bao.

At this moment those two “adults” were already flustered. Neither of them had any attention to spare to guess at the heart full of contradictions inside Wei Zhiyuan.

“Qian’er…” San Pang had not moved. His palms were full of cold sweat, and his voice was terribly dry. “If he gets caught by the police, what kind of ending will he have?”

In the dark living room, without any lights on, Wei Qian lifted his head and glanced at him. His eyes were stark black and white, his gaze sharp as a blade.

“What do you think?” he asked back.

San Pang’s heart sank.