Bro | Chapter 30

“Only when the currents run wild across the vast sea does a hero’s true character show.”, Guo Moruo.

Life over those two years was almost calm and uneventful.

Wei Qian entered the final year of high school as the top student in his class. Every day, when he saw himself in the mirror wearing that school uniform, the four words renmo gouyang would rise in his mind all on their own, looking like a decent human while being a complete mutt.

His heavy schoolwork ate into his free time, but it could not suppress that money-grubbing heart of his, burning like a star. All his winter and summer breaks, and every last weekend, were devoted to the great cause of part-time work. Of all those jobs, the best-paid one was the stint he did at Lao Xiong’s pharmacy.

Lao Xiong’s full name was shamelessly overblown, Xiong Yingjun. Whenever people called him by it, they could not help wanting to tack a “bah” onto the end, and after a while, nobody called him that anymore.

When he was younger, people called him Xiao Xiong. Sadly, he did not get to be “Xiao Xiong” for very many years. Though he was in reality only a fine young man in his early thirties, his looks had already raced ten years ahead of his actual age, and so he naturally became “Lao Xiong.”

Lao Xiong was a very unserious rich second-generation. He had his fingers in everything and wanted to stick his nose into every matter. Unfortunately, he could not split himself in two, so he was forever showing only his head and never his tail. The pharmacy was often left with nobody running it and frequently needed someone to help manage it. During summer vacation, Lao Xiong happened by chance to hire Wei Qian as a temporary hand, then tossed the whole shop to him and vanished off to who knew where. Wei Qian served as manager, clerk, accountant, and janitor all at once, and only after he had done that for two months did Lao Xiong come back.

The moment they met, Lao Xiong settled five thousand-yuan in wages with him.

They had originally agreed on one thousand-yuan a month, but this idiot had gone and forgotten it himself.

At first Wei Qian was so startled he was almost too embarrassed to take it. For that broken-down little pharmacy that looked ready to go under at any moment, whether it had even made four thousand-yuan in profit over those two months was still hard to say. But in the end he accepted it anyway. Wei Qian had figured it out, weren’t suckers like that put on this earth precisely so people could fleece them?

There was absolutely no need to waste even a shred of guilty feeling on rich people like that who deserved to be burned at the stake.

And after obediently studying for a year, Wei Zhiyuan skipped a grade straight into the graduating class. It seemed that, in order to make good on those promises he had forced out through held-back tears to his big brother in a late-night foreign place, he had been plotting and preparing for this the whole time ever since coming back from the south.

Wei Zhiyuan’s heart and body were both growing with impatient urgency.

The grade-skipping was something the little brat had gone and applied for himself right in front of the teacher, without so much as saying a word to the family first. He cut first and reported later. But when Wei Qian found out, he did not say much. Though he never brought it up aloud, he knew perfectly well that with Wei Zhiyuan’s intelligence, making him study the same material as Xiao Bao really was rather unfair to the kid.

While Xiao Bao was still laboring away in fifth grade, Wei Zhiyuan had already entered the graduating class.

Ordinarily, girls shoot up earlier than boys, but in their family it was completely reversed.

While Xiao Bao was still just a little girl, Wei Zhiyuan used only a bit more than half a year to spring from just above Wei Qian’s chest to nearly brushing his big brother’s nose.

What matched his inhuman growth rate was his increasingly terrifying appetite. The whole family used normal rice bowls, but for Wei Zhiyuan alone they switched to a big soup bowl.

That huge bowl was bigger than his face. Once, when San Pang came over to their house for a meal, he really had his horizons broadened, he personally watched Wei Zhiyuan use that face-sized bowl to eat two great mounded bowls of rice. At the end, when there were no dishes left, Wei Zhiyuan mixed himself a bowl of vegetable broth with hot water, drank it down in two gulps, and counted it as sealing up the cracks in his stomach.

San Pang asked shakily, “Little brother, are you full?”

After finishing the broth and wiping his mouth, Wei Zhiyuan answered with restraint, “More or less. Seven or eight tenths. I’m going out for a run tonight, so I’ll stop here for today.”

With a face full of bitter tears, San Pang complained to Wei Qian, “Why is it that this kid can eat as much in one meal as I do in two, and still isn’t even half as fat as me?”

Without even lifting his head, Wei Qian said, “Because you’re old, your metabolism’s slowed down, San-daye.”

Hearing such naked truth, San-daye, old and fat, could not help but feel all hope turn to ashes, and silently left.

Wei Qian had long since stopped finding glutton Wei Zhiyuan surprising. He knew that once Wei Zhiyuan came back from his run, he could still chew down another dry mantou with plain boiled water.

This kid’s combat power could instantly wipe out the whole human race, he could grind every last leftover scrap into dust.

Compared to that, Xiao Bao was practically anxiety-inducing. She had started school late to begin with, yet when she stood beside the other little girls in her class, she actually looked one or two years younger than they did.

Song Xiaobao’s growth and development were extraordinarily bizarre. From puberty until well into her twenties, she always maintained the uniform growth rate of two centimeters a year, neither hurried nor slow, neither anxious nor leisurely.

At twelve or thirteen, Song Xiaobao looked like a malnourished little cabbage. For a while, Wei Qian had suspected that this was just how she would be for the rest of her life, that even as an adult she would still be a female “square root of two.” Who would have thought that by fifteen or sixteen, when most girls had started to stop growing taller, she would come creeping up bit by bit like a snail. Then once she was grown and you looked again, she was not actually shorter than anyone.

In the year Wei Qian was about to take the college entrance exam, Grandma Song practically served him like he was the emperor himself. Any time she got the chance, all day long, she had to ask after his every need with endless chatter, using her own unique way of paying respects to His Majesty.

It annoyed Emperor Wei to death. He wished he could throw a bamboo clapper at her and order her immediate execution.

But every weekend, when a pot of chicken soup was set on the table and he saw the old lady urging him with the eager diligence of someone tending a woman in confinement to eat a few more bites, Wei Qian lost his temper with her no longer.

For a while, Grandma Song, heaven knew who had misled her, got mixed up with a small MLM group that had drifted into the area. Every day she went all over the place listening to people talk about the different health supplements and their prices.

It seemed she was planning to grit her teeth, stamp her foot, and somehow nourish Wei Qian’s one brain into two big ones.

…Fortunately, just when she was about to pay, San Pang’s mother saw her. San Pang hurried over to tip Wei Qian off, and that let Wei Qian rush to the health supplement presentation and bring Grandma Song back out.

When they came out, the MLM group’s hooligan nature showed itself in full. Seeing that they had not bought anything, one bespectacled fellow jumped out and blocked their way. And this hydrocephalic old lady even bustled over to introduce him, “This is my eldest grandson. He’s about to take the college entrance exam, and his grades are excellent. I just wanted to buy some of that, what was it, ‘Brain Power Strong,’ for him to eat…”

Wei Qian said, “Shut up. Eat your mother.”

The little bespectacled salesman had the style of a thug, but he was probably a bit slow in the head. Before he had even figured out what was going on, he hurriedly grabbed Wei Qian and tried to brainwash him, his lips flipping up and down as he said, “Classmate, our product has received patented approval from the relevant American authorities. After one treatment course, memory can improve by eighty percent…”

Wei Qian looked at him coldly. “I don’t need one treatment course. One brick is enough to make you live forever in the memory of the masses.”

His gangster aura was out in full force. That little bespectacled man had spent all his time cheating and swindling people and had never dealt with this type before. He immediately could not help swallowing and stepped back half a step. But Wei Qian still thought he was blocking the way, so he lifted a hand and shoved him flat onto his backside, then hauled the ever more unhinged old lady home.

Grandma Song’s meddling had the whole household in chaos and a state of panic. Wei Qian felt that if he were not the kind of poor family’s child who had grown up early, weathered a rough youth, and developed a firm will, she would have tormented him into an actual lunatic by now.

In early April that year, Wei Qian was in the classroom studying during self-study period when Miss Li pushed open the door and called him outside.

Wei Qian slept less than four or five hours a day. He rushed through his meals too, sometimes even eating while walking and dealing with it on the road. He had truly gotten a lot thinner. When that tall, sturdy figure of his stood in front of his teacher, his school uniform looked empty on him.

Starting from the second half of his second year of high school, Miss Li had made him class monitor. Perhaps because of his experiences out in society, he seemed steady, and at the same time he was especially good at handling those naughty little boys. Every one of those kids listened to him pretty well.

Miss Li’s own child was about the same age as Wei Qian. Whenever she compared the two, she always felt pain for him.

Miss Li called him into the corridor and said to him, “We’re a key class, you know that, right? Every year our school’s key classes get one guaranteed-admission spot for an outstanding student cadre. This year the slot is for A University. A University is of course a good school, and it’s local too. I was thinking your family circumstances are special, and if you stay local for university it’ll be easier to look after your family. Think it over. Do you want to go?”

Wei Qian stood there stunned for a full half minute before he asked a little uncertainly, “N-no, Teacher… you don’t mean, you want to recommend me for guaranteed admission, do you?”

Miss Li was amused by him and asked good-naturedly, “Otherwise what would I be asking you for?”

The news struck Wei Qian stupid. He had never imagined something like this would fall to him.

The motley society he had come into contact with too early in life had shaped in him a gloomy, cynical inner world. Although as he grew older and saw more, that youthful extremism was no longer as sharp as it had once been, deep down Wei Qian still believed in one principle, that for someone of his background to make something of himself, he had to be fiercer than everyone else, and he had to work harder than everyone else too. Other than himself, there was nobody he could count on.

And guaranteed admission to university, something so full of shady dealings, was that not the privilege of officials’ children, rich people’s children, people with connections?

He had never imagined that one such guaranteed-admission spot would land on him.

“I…” Wei Qian, rare as it was, found himself speechless. His head was a lump of paste, so he could only force himself to sound calm as he asked Miss Li, “Th-then giving it to me is okay? No one has objections? The other students, or the other classes…”

Miss Li said, “Why wouldn’t it be okay? I’m not the one who decides guaranteed admission by myself. It has to be discussed and finalized by the grade-level group, reviewed by the dean of studies, and then signed off on by the principal. The principal’s signature was just sent to my office. Do you want to see it?”

Wei Qian fell silent for a long time. A thousand words filled his chest, only to jam all at once in his throat. In front of his homeroom teacher, who was a full head shorter than he was, he lowered his head and clenched both hands tight. Only after a long while did he grit his teeth and say in a suppressed hoarse voice, “Thank you, Teacher.”

Miss Li looked at him and sighed. She knew that she herself had never left the school system all her life, and the storms and rises and falls she had gone through were in fact fewer than what this child had experienced. So she could not tell what she ought to say to him, or what she even could say to him.

After quite a while, Miss Li finally chose her words and said softly, “You’re talented, and what’s even more valuable is that you’re more willing than others to work hard. I have very high hopes for you, so I hope you can become a good person. Do you understand what I mean?”

Wei Qian nodded and said in a low voice, “I understand. You mean walking the straight road is harder than walking the crooked one.”

Because walking the straight road is harder than walking the crooked one, people who walk the straight road are stronger than those who walk the crooked one.

That is something everyone who has ever struggled to survive in the crack between two roads knows firsthand.

And isn’t a person always supposed to keep pursuing a stronger self?

Miss Li pushed up her glasses. “As long as you understand, I won’t say more. Go back. Come to my office during the evening study hall, fill out a few forms, and once you’re done you can go home and discuss with your family what major to choose.”

And just like that, Wei Qian brought his barely year-and-a-half-long high school life to a sloppy unfinished ending, an ending both baffling and wildly exhilarating.

He quickly submitted the forms, asked Miss Li’s advice, and chose the then-popular major of Life Sciences. Actually, the hottest major at the time was computer science, but the tuition for computer science was higher than that of other majors, and it also required you to provide your own computer. Wei Qian was somewhat reluctant to bear that cost.

So he officially became a prospective university student. When Wei Qian left school, the large cherry tree at the entrance to the academic building was in full bloom. He stood there for a while, and he really did have his feet buried by the petals falling down.

Wei Qian loafed around at home doing nothing for two days. After dealing with Grandma Song, who had very nearly worked herself into a heart attack from excitement, he finally remembered to show some concern for the two little brats he had been free-ranging.

By accident, he noticed that the little movements his younger sister made while doing homework had changed. In the past, when she could not work out a problem, she liked picking at her fingers. Now she had changed to winding her hair around the shaft of her pen. After winding it, she would pinch it once with her hand to set it, and a lock of hair in front of her eyes would briefly form into a wavy little curl. She would preen by herself for a while, then keep doing her homework.

Wei Qian took note of it and realized this girl had learned to care about looking pretty.

When she was little, Xiao Bao loved sleeping late and hated getting up early. It was always he who dragged her up and forcibly pressed her at the sink before she would lazily swipe some cold water over her face like a cat. Now she no longer needed her big brother to remind her to wash her face at all. On weekends at home, she washed it several times a day, and every time she stood in front of the bathroom mirror for ages.

And the changes in girls were practically another degree of biological metamorphosis. They really could go through that “girls change eighteen times as they grow” transformation and end up looking utterly different.

Song Xiaobao, who had been a little dark monkey as a child, was beginning to molt and transform as she turned whiter. Her eyes had started to lengthen, and she had grown long, thick eyelashes. Though the bridge of her nose was still not high, at least with her cartilage settling into shape, it no longer looked flat. Below her lips, a small chin had emerged. To Wei Qian’s astonishment, she was like a caterpillar that, in the blink of an eye, was growing in the direction of a butterfly. You could actually see the first outline of a little beauty in her.

But to her warlord-like big brother, that little bit of promise amounted to absolutely nothing.

In Wei Qian’s eyes, Song Xiaobao was still only “half a person.” Before these little brats grew up, they all looked equally neither male nor female. There was no such thing as gender to speak of.

She had no chest in front and no backside in back, just a skinny little bean sprout. Wei Qian could not understand what on earth there was for her to primp over.

He firmly believed that Xiao Bao’s vanity had no benefit whatsoever apart from wasting time and affecting her studies.

So when he caught sight once again of Xiao Bao curling her hair with a pen, he walked into her room and, in the manner Jia Zheng used on Jia Baoyu, had a very serious talk with her… no, not a talk, he lectured the little girl one-sidedly, and even searched a small bottle of nail polish out of Song Xiaobao’s desk and took it away.

In the end, he high-handedly decreed that Song Xiaobao was not allowed to spend more than one minute a day looking in the mirror.

Xiao Bao felt deeply wronged, and for the first time developed a rebellious streak toward her big brother. Yet Wei Qian still thought that was not enough. Before going out, he braced one hand on the little room’s doorframe and turned back in righteous indignation to say, “Oh, right. I saw that the other little girls at your school have all cut their hair. You might as well cut yours too. It’ll save time in the morning so you don’t spend forever combing it, and besides, I heard hair that’s too long absorbs nutrients and affects the brain.”

Those words met fierce resistance from Song Xiaobao. She leaped up and, with outrageous nerve, shouted at her big brother, “I’m not cutting my hair! I’m just not cutting it! If you cut my hair, then cut my head off with it too!”

Wei Qian froze for a moment. He had not expected hair to be this important to her. But before he could open his mouth to scold her, Xiao Bao was so frightened by her own rebellion that she burst into tears with a sobbing “wuwu” all on her own.

Wei Qian sighed. He could do nothing with her, so he could only put on a stern face. “What are you crying for? Cry again and I’ll smack you.”

He came up with a compromise and gave Song Xiaobao a suspended sentence. “Fine then. We’ll look at your grades and behavior. If you slip at the end of term, don’t you dare give me any nonsense. Get that lousy hair of yours cut right away. Hear me?”

Song Xiaobao sniffled and asked, “C-cut… cut it in what way?”

Without thinking, Wei Qian said, “Front and back, all even to the ears. Cool and breezy.”

Song Xiaobao imagined what hair cut to ear-length both front and back would look like, and was scared half out of her wits on the spot. From then on, she began the most studious stretch of reading in her whole life, determined to defend the tiny patch of land atop her little head and absolutely not let it fall into her big brother’s clutches.

When Wei Qian withdrew from Song Xiaobao’s room, he happened to be bumped by Wei Zhiyuan coming out of the kitchen. Wei Zhiyuan’s forehead nearly struck his nose, and he hurriedly braced one hand on the wall beside Wei Qian and turned sideways to avoid him.

Wei Zhiyuan gave a muffled, sullen “Ge.” He had started voice change. His throat was uncomfortable, so whenever he spoke he pressed his voice down another eight degrees, making him sound unexpectedly deep, like a grown man.

Wei Qian was momentarily dazed. He remembered that when he first picked him up, he had not even been as tall as a dog standing up. And now he had somehow become a half-grown young man.

Though the brothers still lived together, at some point Wei Zhiyuan had stopped burrowing into his arms… and even if he wanted to, he would not fit anymore.

Really… once a seedling sprouts, you never have to worry about it growing.

Wei Qian remembered Grandma Song’s instructions and went to the suburbs to wholesale some eggs, so he dragged out the bicycle and rode off to the chicken farm on the outskirts. On the way back, he happened to pass Lao Xiong’s shop and saw Lao Xiong directing several young men as they loaded luggage onto a vehicle, looking as though they were about to head far away.

Wei Qian stopped to greet him. “Lao Xiong, where are you exiling yourself to do poverty alleviation this time?”

Xiong Laoban glanced at him and drawled, “A dog’s mouth can’t spit out ivory.”

Wei Qian jumped off the bicycle and parked it to one side. “All right then, where are you making a fortune this time?”

Lao Xiong said, “Around the summer solstice is when people collect cordyceps. I’m planning to head into Tibet and deal in some Tibetan medicinal goods. Oh right, I was just looking for you. Are you still taking part-time work on weekends? Got time to watch the shop for me?”

Wei Qian’s heart stirred. Two years ago, he had brought back thirty thousand-yuan. After Grandma Song’s frugal housekeeping and the two of them seizing every possible moment to take work and subsidize the household, they still had twenty-two thousand left by now… and most of that had even been spent on Ma Zi’s mother.

Ten thousand, eight thousand… would that be enough for him to hitch a ride on Lao Xiong’s trip and also try his hand at flipping a little business on the side?