Bro | Chapter 38

Wei Qian was so infuriated by Song Xiaobao that his ears rang in waves and his whole body went weak. Wei Zhiyuan, tall and broad, pinned him down, and even after struggling twice, Wei Qian still could not break free.

Grandma Song, who was in the kitchen, hurriedly threw down her broom and strode in. When she saw the scene in front of her, she was truly afraid Wei Qian might, without knowing his own strength, start hitting Xiao Bao. So she quickly protected her own in a sly and subtle way. She gave Xiao Bao a light smack on the back first, then scolded her, “How can you talk to your Ge like that? Have you gone crazy?”

Song Xiaobao held her neck stiffly, still wanting to put on a show of being tough and absolutely unwilling to back down, but her tears came first, pouring down like a torrential rain.

Grandma Song sighed. Standing in the middle of this whirlpool of family conflict, between Wei Qian and Xiao Bao, she took on the attitude of someone presiding over the whole situation and smoothing things over. “If you ask me, Xiao Bao, this is all your fault. Did your Ge say anything wrong? You’re still so young, and if you don’t study properly, what are you going to do in the future? You can’t even figure out the change when you go with me to the vegetable market to buy groceries, and you call yourself a middle school student, ai!”

Xiao Bao fiercely wiped away her tears. “What middle school students learn isn’t just counting change!”

From her own unique perspective as a complete illiterate, Grandma Song retorted with full confidence, “Bullshit! The party secretary in our village was a middle school student, and back then he was excellent with an abacus.”

After Grandma Song’s completely unreasonable meddling, the head that had been throbbing so hard Wei Qian’s veins were jumping finally calmed down a little. He tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling for a while. Then he drew in a deep breath, eased his tone, and said to Wei Zhiyuan, “Let go of me.”

Wei Zhiyuan had been restraining him the whole time. Only when he felt Wei Qian’s violent heartbeat gradually calm down bit by bit did he slowly release the hand that had been pinning Wei Qian’s wrist. Lowering his head, he saw that his brother’s wrist had already been squeezed red in a large patch.

Wei Zhiyuan quickly gathered that wrist gently into his palm and rubbed it with his fingertips. “Ge, when you’re not around, Xiao Bao is really sensible. She’s just acting spoiled with you. Look, that girl is practically crying herself into Meng Jiangnü. Don’t be mad anymore.”

Grandma Song, standing to one side, nodded again and again. At the same time, she regretted inwardly that this was exactly the difference between having an education and not having one. Why was it that she just could not say something that sounded so pleasant to the ear?

Grandma Song quickly chimed in, “Exactly. Her brother, if there’s something to say, say it properly.”

Wei Qian had never learned in all his life what it meant to “talk things out properly.” At this moment, he did not want to say anything at all anymore. A kind of exhaustion almost like hunger and bitter cold surged up inside him, even though he did not want to eat anything, and the heat in the house was more than warm enough.

Wei Qian slowly got to his feet. His chest hurt a little. He seemed too weary to spare Song Xiaobao even one more glance. He walked straight past her, turned, went back to his room, and flung the door shut behind him.

With one crisis over, Grandma Song finally turned around and glared at Xiao Bao, scolding in a low voice, “You’re still crying! What do you have to feel wronged about? Are you asking to get hit on purpose?”

Song Xiaobao let out a loud howl at her. “I’m not cutting my hair! I just won’t!”

Wei Zhiyuan shot her an utterly baffled look. Never mind the two strands of hair on her head, if big brother said the word, even if his whole head were shaved bald and hung in the living room as a light bulb, he would not say a single word in objection.

Song Xiaobao sharply read the fact that she had no allies from the looks in both their eyes. For a moment, she felt like a lone little boat adrift in the boundless universe and the sea of stars. That shoreless loneliness filled her with utter heartbreak. Xiao Bao plopped herself down on the sofa and cried her heart out all by herself. She was about to be parted forever from her beloved long hair.

Unfortunately, no one could understand the sorrow of a young girl.

Grandma Song did not want to watch her throw a childish tantrum, so she went back to the kitchen to continue cleaning. Wei Zhiyuan, meanwhile, quietly returned to his room, busy savoring again that full embrace from his brother in the urgency of the moment. After Wei Zhiyuan understood what it was he wanted, he stopped restraining himself and began to indulge his own fantasies. It was as if those fantasies had built a world for him. Whenever he sat in that world for a while, Wei Zhiyuan could always find enough comfort and peace there.

That bit of youthful feeling unique to adolescence, as tender as the third month of spring, was astonishingly powerful. It even diluted quite a lot of the innate stubbornness and coldness in his nature.

After facing her big brother’s terrifying violence head-on, Song Xiaobao was then met with the whole family’s neglect, as though none of them took her seriously at all. Sulking, she thought angrily, So as long as he treats all of you well, it means he just hates me alone.

In that instant, two abnormal lines in Song Xiaobao’s brain suddenly connected in a completely illogical way. The sparks of a short circuit crackled once, and she made up her mind. She was going to run away from home.

Once she left, the sea would be wide and the sky vast from then on. No one would force her to go to school and do homework ever again. No one would force her to wear ugly school uniforms anymore. And no one would force her to cut her hair into that bizarre style, even in front and back and stopping at her ears.

Like the freedom fighters who, generation after generation through the ages, had fought against their elders, Song Xiaobao brought out a once-in-a-century burst of rare initiative and put that spark-filled idea into action.

Usually, the first person up in the morning was Grandma Song. Even though Wei Qian had told her not to do heavy work anymore, she had spent her whole life as a working woman. Enjoying an easy life was a skill she had never learned, so every morning she still insisted on going out to sell tea eggs and boiled corn.

The second to get up was Wei Qian. Going to university had not made his life any easier. The course schedule for science and engineering majors was demanding in itself, and on top of that he had to squeeze out time to make money everywhere he could. Being able to sleep five hours a day already counted as pretty good. Right now it was vacation, so although he did not need to go to school, he had happened to run into a confrontation with Lao Xiong over the project, so he still had to get up early to prepare. There was another hard battle waiting for him at the meeting that morning.

As for Wei Zhiyuan, his teachers had already gone mad to a transcendent degree. During the entire winter vacation, Wei Zhiyuan and the others only got three days off, New Year’s Eve and the first and second days of the New Year. Other than that, they were in class and training the whole time, with no weekends and no holidays. Wei Zhiyuan basically got up and left right away every day, taking his breakfast with him to eat on the road.

For all of those reasons, not a single one of the three left the house after seven-thirty in the morning. It was too early, and because of that, no one went to wake Song Xiaobao.

But on this particular day, the last one to leave, Wei Qian, locked the door from the outside. Angry as he was, he truly did not intend to let Xiao Bao keep running wild outside all day like some unbroken horse.

But he did not know that what he had done was unnecessary. He also did not know that Song Xiaobao was already no longer at home.

Late the previous night, the more Xiao Bao thought about it, the more upset she became. So after everything had gone quiet and everyone was asleep, she dug out all the pocket money she had saved up, a total of two hundred and eight-yuan and fifty mao. Because her allowance could be docked at any time over one or two small mistakes, Xiao Bao had long since gotten used to leaving herself emergency rations like a little hamster.

As for her ordinary spending, most of what she used came from mooching off Wei Zhiyuan.

Xiao Bao put on her warmest clothes on the outside, stuffed a few changes of clothes into a bag, brought along her favorite flower hair ties and hair clips, packed her water bottle and a bag of little bread rolls, and just like that, set out while thinking she was thoroughly prepared.

An entire busy morning went by, and not a single person in the family noticed.

Wei Qian was still wholeheartedly busy tormenting Lao Xiong. Early that morning, he had laid out the entire operating model of the project in meticulous detail in front of Lao Xiong. Once printed out, it was a full half a centimeter thick. No one knew how he had managed to put it together in such a short time.

This was the prelude to being possessed by a ghost, ah… Lao Xiong said helplessly, “You brat really are like a turtle that swallowed a scale weight, dead set on this, huh?”

“The solutions to the few questions you asked me that day are all written in there.” Wei Qian did not joke around with him. He simply explained, then picked up his cup and gulped down half of it in one go. It was hard to say whether he had caught a chill or whether Xiao Bao had angered him so much that internal heat flared up, but from the moment he woke up that morning, his throat had felt terrible. Even swallowing his own saliva hurt, like the prelude to inflammation.

Lao Xiong sighed and took the proposal from him, feeling as though what sat across from him was a living debt collector come to demand payment.

He flipped through it briefly and was rather astonished. Lao Xiong had hired quite a few young men around Wei Qian’s age before, and among them there had been no shortage of dreamers with wild ideas, but even added together, none of them were as outrageously bold as this guy.

Lao Xiong shifted in his seat and straightened up, gave a dry cough, and put on a face of businesslike impartiality. “Leaving aside practical operability, some parts do have a bit of insight, and they’re pretty creative too. But not one young person running around all over the streets lacks creativity. What I don’t need is a plan based on ‘the bolder the man, the greater the harvest from the land.’ Dumplings stuffed with saccharin would be unprecedented too, right? Go ahead and try cooking up a pot and selling them on the street and see if anyone buys. If you bring me this, you can’t persuade me.”

Wei Qian looked at him and said evenly, “I never indulge in unrealistic fantasies. If I can write it, then I can do it.”

Lao Xiong fixed his gaze on Wei Qian’s eyes. The man’s look was, as always, warm and gentle, yet there was always a hidden needle inside the cotton. Wei Qian refused to yield a single inch and said, enunciating each word, “As long as it’s something I want, even if it’s the moon in the sky, I’ll still bite it down like a mooncake. Do you believe that?”

Outwardly, Lao Xiong did not show a thing, but inwardly he felt this really was exactly the kind of thing Wei Qian would say. And from Lao Xiong’s understanding of him over the past few years, he just might actually be able to pull it off.

For one short moment, Lao Xiong was almost infected by that all-in desperation on Wei Qian’s body. Probably a person who is truly steadfast and charges forward without hesitation can set other people’s blood alight as well.

But after all, it was only “almost.”

Lao Xiong sighed inwardly. In the end, he really was still young.

Men in their thirties and forties are still vigorous and full of life in their careers. They are energetic, in their prime, and as conditions ripen, their ambition reaches the very peak of a person’s life. But the headlong recklessness that belongs to a young man in his early twenties can never be found again.

Lao Xiong could hardly remember anymore what things had been like when he himself was ten years younger. As he looked at Wei Qian, he began to suspect that maybe he really was getting old.

How was it that this kid, after reaching the point he had reached now, could still struggle as though he had absolutely nothing?

Maybe on some level Wei Qian still believed himself to “have nothing,” or maybe by nature he was simply a madman of a gambler.

No matter how many stirring years flashed through Lao Xiong’s mind, not a single trace of it showed on his face, a face that made him look dull and honest like a big-headed carp. Lao Xiong laced his fingers together, set them on the table, and asked Wei Qian word by word, “All right then, let me discuss one last problem with you. Thirty million. I can’t bear that kind of funding risk right now. If I get the money for you and you still can’t secure the project, then what? If you can’t get the project approved, and can’t provide any guarantees, then nobody will even dare arrange bridge financing for you. By that point, just the interest on tying up that money would be no less than ten thousand a day. What reason do I have to shoulder that capital cost for you?”

Without even blinking, Wei Qian said, “I have a whole family to support. I can’t touch the house. Other than that, with the savings I’ve built up over these years, I can scrape together a little under two hundred thousand for you. If you agree, I’ll head over tonight, overnight if I have to. In twenty days, whether it works or not, I’ll at least give you a rough result. If there’s truly no chance at all, then even if I have to smash the cooking pot and sell the iron, I’ll still pay you back.”

Lao Xiong shook his head and smiled. “Smash the cooking pot and sell the iron, but not the house yet. So you’re not quite a desperate outlaw after all.”

Wei Qian said, “Do you agree?”

Lao Xiong thought it over for a moment. Maybe the young man had stirred up the blood of his own youth, or maybe he had been moved by Wei Qian’s assurances. In the end, Lao Xiong gave way. “How about this. In the next couple of days, I’ll think of a way to get the money for you. But even if I get my old man to act as guarantor, it’ll still take around twenty days to almost a month. Counting it all together, I’ll give you a month and a half. I’m not asking for a planning permit. At the very least, you have to bring me a land-use agreement with the government. If that happens, then this time I’ll really go all out and act like a fool with you for once. How about it?”

Wei Qian’s eyes lit up in an instant.

Afraid he might get so pleased he would forget himself, Lao Xiong tapped the table. “But let me say the ugly words first. Even real brothers settle accounts clearly. If you really can’t get it, then come back as soon as possible and compensate me. Hear me?”

The first smile of the whole day finally appeared on Wei Qian’s face. Only then did he feel just how badly his throat was dry and aching. Before the smile could fully spread, a cough blocked it back.

Just then, the phone in Wei Qian’s pocket rang abruptly. He lowered his head and looked at the caller ID. It was actually a call from home.

Tired, Wei Qian let out a sigh. He had no idea what kind of trouble Song Xiaobao was stirring up again, and for a moment even his temples tightened. He hurriedly drank a few mouthfuls of warm water to suppress the coughing, then picked up the call. “Hello…”

But the one on the other end was not Song Xiaobao, calling specifically to make trouble. What Wei Qian heard was Grandma Song’s somewhat trembling voice. “Her brother, were you the last one out? Did you lock the door?”

Wei Qian said, “Yeah. What’s wrong?”

Grandma Song said, “Xiao Bao is gone!”

Wei Qian said, “What?”

He could no longer care about arguing whether the project was a fatty cut of meat or a lean one, nor whether this was a reckless gamble or a carefully designed contest. Outside the window, endless goose-feather snow came crashing down, and in Wei Qian’s chaotic head, only one question remained.

In this cold weather, where could Xiao Bao have gone? Did she have money? Was she wearing enough clothes? What was she going to eat? What was she going to drink?

When Wei Qian rushed out of Lao Xiong’s office like a man who had lost his soul, he happened to slam headfirst into Xiong-saozi, who had come to deliver food to Lao Xiong. Puzzled by the way he was hurrying along like he was racing to be reincarnated, she asked in confusion, “Did his house catch fire?”

Lao Xiong reached into the lunch box, pinched out a dumpling, and perfectly demonstrated what it meant to be “slow-tempered.” Only after leisurely chewing and swallowing did he reply, “No. A little girl ran away from home.”

At that, Xiong-saozi opened her apricot-pit eyes wide and swung a palm at Lao Xiong’s head like a dark cloud blotting out the sky. “Then what are you still eating for? Are you trying to die? Hurry up and get people to help look for her!”

Lao Xiong nearly choked to death from that explosive attack like heavenly thunder, collapsing weakly over the table and pounding his chest desperately for quite a while.

Sneaking a look at his wife’s expression, he had no choice but to respectfully obey the imperial decree and, wronged and hungry, trail after his brisk and energetic Xiong-saozi, helping search for the runaway teenager. He had met Xiao Bao a few times and knew what kind of heedless, empty-headed little girl she was, so he did not think for a second that she could have gotten very far.

Who had not run away from home at least once in the madness of youth? Once she spent all her money, naturally she would come back. What was there to panic about?

After getting the news, Wei Zhiyuan temporarily took half a day off and came back. Once he got home, he pried open Xiao Bao’s piggy bank, looked inside, and immediately concluded, “She took more than two hundred-yuan.”

Grandma Song said, “Where did she get that much money?”

Wei Zhiyuan glanced at her. “…She got it from me.”

Grandma Song, sick with anxiety and grabbing at anything in desperation, instinctively started blaming whoever she could. Slapping her thigh, she nearly broke into a crying tone. “If she asked you for it, you just gave it to her? Why do you indulge that habit of hers? This isn’t doting on her, this is harming her!”

“Enough. Stop adding to the chaos.” Wei Qian walked out of Xiao Bao’s room and cut off Grandma Song, then took out his phone and said to San Pang on the other end, “She should be wearing a white down jacket and carrying a bag… Huh? What kind of bag? The bag…”

As he spoke, he frowned. His temples squeezed tighter and tighter, and his head hurt more and more. Wei Qian pressed hard at the center of his brow.

At his side, Wei Zhiyuan softly prompted him, “An orange backpack. There’s a Mickey Mouse head hanging from the zipper.”

Wei Qian quickly repeated those words, then hung up the phone. “I’m going out to look again.”

Grandma Song immediately sprang up. “I’m going too!”

Wei Qian ignored her. He had already flung open the front door and left.

Wei Zhiyuan hurriedly threw on an outer coat and said to Grandma Song, “Don’t go with him. The snow is too heavy outside. If you slip and fall, it’ll only make things even more chaotic. I’ll go take a look.”

Grandma Song really did listen to him.

This was the second time. She was already used to it. Whenever everyone else wilted and panicked, Wei Zhiyuan remained abnormally calm, the same as always. Grandma Song had never known whether that meant he was simply somewhat slow-tempered, or whether he was just born cold-blooded, unable to develop very deep feelings no matter how they lived together day in and day out.

She did not know what could move Wei Zhiyuan. Looking at it this way, it seemed as though nothing could. He simply always knew what he should do.

The moment snow touched human faces, it melted. People moving back and forth through the blizzard quickly ended up soaked over the head and face. By the time Wei Zhiyuan caught up with Wei Qian, he noticed that Wei Qian’s cheeks seemed to be flushed an unhealthy red.

Wei Zhiyuan hurried after him and said, “Her quilt was neat. I don’t think she deliberately folded it before leaving. She probably didn’t sleep at all last night and just left in the middle of the night. Last night it was more than ten below zero. Water would freeze the moment it dripped. She couldn’t possibly have wandered around outside. Most likely she called a car and found somewhere to stay… Ge, are you sick?”

Wei Qian shook his head. “Where could she stay?”

Wei Zhiyuan frowned and thought for a few seconds, then said in an orderly way, “Xiao Bao isn’t that brave. It’s very unlikely she’d go somewhere unfamiliar in the middle of the night. And by then it was already so late, so it was impossible that she went to a classmate’s house. Near the school… near the school should be unlikely too. She just fought with you over her grades, so she probably doesn’t want to go to school. How about we go look around the place where she rehearses?”

Wei Qian stopped in place, his headache splitting.

He opened his mouth, wanting to ask where the place Xiao Bao rehearsed at was, but he could not force the words out no matter what.

Somewhat blankly, Wei Qian thought, Just how badly have I neglected my little girl? I don’t even know what she likes to play at, who she likes being with, or where she likes to go and what she likes to do there.

What in the world had he been doing all day long?

“I know the place.” Wei Zhiyuan read his expression and immediately understood what he was thinking, so he quickly added, “It’s in the dance classroom of the Children’s Activity Center downtown. I’ll take you there.”

In weather like this, even hailing a car was difficult. After a long wait, they finally managed to stop one.

Who knew what had happened, but halfway there, the road ahead had jammed up into an open-air parking lot and simply would not move.

Wei Qian turned around and asked, “How far is it still?”

Wei Zhiyuan said, “About one bus stop.”

Wei Qian directly paid the fare and began running wildly through the ice and snow.

Wei Zhiyuan quickly followed after him. He still felt Wei Qian’s complexion was not quite right, so he hurried up, removed his own scarf, and hung it around Wei Qian’s neck.

The two of them did not know how long they went on in the heavy snow. The skin left exposed to the air had frozen to the point of almost going numb.

Then they saw the source of the traffic jam. There seemed to have been a car accident at the intersection. Several police cars were there, and a large crowd had already gathered around.

Wei Qian was just about to push through the crowd when fragments of conversation from passersby suddenly drifted into his ears.

“The girl wasn’t very old,” someone said. “What a sin. In snow this heavy, why wasn’t the driver going slower?”

Wei Qian’s scalp exploded on the spot, and a vicious chill crawled up his spine.

He did not know how he managed to ask the question. By the time he realized what had happened, he had already heard his own voice, as if it were coming from someone else’s mouth.

“…What girl?”

“Just now, a little girl got hit at the intersection. She was only sixteen or seventeen, maybe. The blood… ai yo, I’m afraid she’s probably not going to make it.”

Another person turned around and gestured as he described it to him. “Isn’t that so? The traffic light here has been broken for days and no one’s come to fix it, and now with snow this heavy, I just watched with my own eyes as a little girl in white…”

Wei Qian could no longer hear the rest. He felt as if someone had smashed a hammer into his chest. Whatever was holding his breastbone together shattered, and his internal organs were almost twisted into pulp.

The world spun around him.

Author’s Note:

Note: “Bridge financing,” the swapping of short-term and long-term loans.