Bro | Chapter 4

The next day, when Wei Qian went out and looked, the little boy was actually still there. With his big head and skinny limbs, he had curled himself into a round little dumpling.

Wei Qian almost tripped over that ragged little bundle.

After a whole night had passed, most of the fire in his heart had already died down. Wei Qian lowered his head helplessly and looked at the little thing curled into a ball, not knowing what exactly this little brat was thinking.

Wei Qian felt that from head to toe, all he gave off was the light of wanting revenge on society. There was no Buddha’s radiance around him, and no Heavenly Worthy of Infinite Salvation either. Looking back on it, it seemed he had never once given the other party a kind look.

Wei Qian could not understand what exactly this little thing, which looked as if it was always ready to fight, had taken a liking to in him, that it had so easily put down its guard and actually latched onto him.

Good thing it was summer. If it had been winter, with a northern winter and one night spent sleeping outside, the little boy could have frozen to death on the spot.

Such a tiny little thing, once he stood up, looked about the same size as Xiao Bao. Wei Qian could not very well really go home, take out a cleaver, and hack him to death. So he stretched out his toe and nudged the little bundle at his feet. “Hey. Hey, hey. Get up. Don’t sleep here. Hear me? Our family hasn’t opened for business yet, what are you sleeping here for?”

The grimy little coal-ball bundle drowsily lifted his head. The moment he saw Wei Qian, he perked up at once, looking at him with a face full of hope, like a stumbling little milk kitten with a mottled face. Even the tip of its tail would have been trembling, yet it would still be trying hard to rub itself against someone’s feet, trying its best to show how obedient and harmless it was, begging to be taken in.

Anyone who saw him would feel softhearted. Unfortunately, he had happened to run into someone like Wei Qian, whose heart was as hard as iron and stone.

Wei Qian had no sympathy at all. Bullying cats and beating dogs, there was nothing he would not do. He decisively ignored the boy’s pitiful little gaze, and could not be bothered to waste another word on him. He reached back and locked the door behind him, bent down, grabbed the boy by his skinny arm, hauled him all the way downstairs, then flung him onto the untended patch of grass and said cleanly and directly, “Don’t push your luck. Scram.”

The boy fell into the weeds and looked at him eagerly as Wei Qian, like some kind of thug, walked away without turning his head back once.

It took the little boy quite a while before he climbed to his feet. He raised his head and looked at the shabby old dormitory building, which seemed very tall to him. A moment later, he lowered his head. His bare little toes twisted against each other, and he felt terribly disappointed.

This little fellow really was a child who had been trafficked before. Wei Qian had been right. His heart was hard, and his eye was sharp.

He had been stolen away when he was too young, and no longer remembered much of how it had all happened. The traffickers raised him for a few months, then resold him to a peasant family in a very remote area.

That in itself was nothing. A son was a son no matter whose son he was, and he even got to enjoy two years of life as an only child.

Who would have thought that in the third year, his adoptive mother, whom the village doctor had already declared incapable of bearing children, would miraculously get pregnant. Then a year later, she gave birth to a healthy, plump baby boy.

From then on, the little boy became superfluous in his adoptive parents’ home, and his life followed the same course, getting worse day by day.

That day, while he was washing dishes in icy well water, his fingers had gone numb from the cold, and he accidentally broke a bowl, enraging his adoptive father, who had come home dead drunk.

His adoptive father stripped off all his clothes and made him stand in the middle of the yard in the bitter cold of deep winter, when dripping water froze into ice.

The boy felt that he was going to freeze to death. At last, he made a decision that was shockingly bold for a child his age, he ran away.

The little boy stole a few pieces of adult clothing and pulled them on at random, then in the middle of the night he used a ladder to climb over the wall and escape. He quietly hid himself in a truck that was hauling winter-stored Chinese cabbages into the city, and that was how he ended up being carried into an unfamiliar city.

From then on, he became a little drifter.

A little boy like that, with no one taking care of him, was very easy prey. During that time, he came close to being trafficked again several times over. Some people wanted to sell him, some wanted to turn him into a thief, and two people even discussed selling his organs. The boy overheard them by accident when he got up in the middle of the night to pee, and that very night he ran again.

The fact that he had managed to live this long, and had successfully escaped every single time, meant that his luck was so good it was practically a miracle. He had become half an expert at running away.

He had secretly sneaked onto trains, changed cities several times in a row, and seen all kinds of people. Occasionally, someone would try to talk to him. He always pretended to be mute and unable to speak, then quickly found some way to escape. Among those people, there may well have been some who were genuinely kindhearted, but the boy did not dare let down his guard. Being sold off wholesale was one thing. What he was even more afraid of were the ones who planned to cut open his stomach and take out the parts inside him one by one to sell them retail.

Even so, though he was exposed to wind and foodless hardship, sometimes hungry and sometimes full, he still instinctively envied those people who had houses to live in, who had a home.

The little fellow had already forgotten for a long time what home felt like, yet he could never have one, because he was afraid to come into contact with anyone.

In the little boy’s eyes, there seemed to be only two kinds of people in the world. One kind thought he was dirty, detoured around him from far away, and would even throw stones at him and beat him. The other kind spoke gently and pleasantly to him, but inside they still wanted to sell him.

That was, until he met someone so unusual.

He had heard other people call him “Qian’er” in the local accent, with that distinctive erhua drawl. This person had helped him drive off the big wild dog and had given him food before, but every time, he would just toss it down and leave, never saying a single word to him.

Of course, more often than not, this person would act as if he did not see him at all.

Wei Qian’s indifference and refusal to communicate made the boy feel safe, and at the same time, his occasional acts of charity let the boy feel a trace of rare warmth.

The little boy actually changed where he slept all the time, but in order to secretly see this person every day, before he knew it, he had already stayed in this little alley for several months.

During those few months, after careful observation and careful analysis, using the brain of a child who was undernourished because he was never able to eat his fill, the little boy reached one conclusion, this big brother was a good person.

In all his time drifting from place to place, this was the first time that a desire to get close to someone had involuntarily sprung up in his heart… But what disappointed him was that when he stretched out his feelers and tried to touch, that bastard who seemed to be a “good person” apparently did not want to take him in.

The boy was disappointed and sad. He wandered around in place for a while, thinking about whether he should give up.

Before he had thought of an answer, it started to rain. Left with no choice, the boy had to hide back in the stairwell again.

The rain did not stop even by evening. At noon, San Pang’s mother came downstairs once to heat up food for Xiao Bao. When she saw the little boy curled up in the stairwell, she was startled and bent down to look him over carefully. “Oh, whose child is this?”

The boy immediately lifted his head like a little wild beast with its fur standing on end. His whole body tensed up, as if he were ready to rush up and bite her at any moment. The fierceness in his eyes startled San Pang’s mother so much that she took half a step back. “Oh my, this little beggar is crazy!”

Afraid of getting herself involved in trouble, San Pang’s mother gave the little boy a wary look, then quickly used the key Wei Qian had left behind to open the door and hurried inside in a few brisk steps.

That night, when Wei Qian came back from school and from his part-time job, he lowered his head and saw the little bundle in the corner. His expression immediately turned rather ugly.

He strode over, intending to throw this little brat who could not tell good from bad back out again. The moment the little bundle saw him coming over, it assumed it was about to get hit, and hurriedly shrank farther into the corner in terror, striking a defensive pose.

The fact that even this little brat knew fear gave rise to a strange sense of satisfaction in Wei Qian’s heart. This chuunibyou teenager gave a cold snort, lifted his head to glance at the rain outside the window, then turned and went inside, actually letting the little boy off this time.

In the hot summer, Wei Qian usually only closed the outer security door with its screen, and left the main door open so the inside of the house could air out.

When Xiao Bao saw there was a little friend outside, she asked in her milky little voice, “Ge, who’s that outside? How embarrassing, he’s not even wearing pants.”

Wei Qian said, “Play with your own things. Mind your own business.”

After a while, Xiao Bao said again, “Ge, he keeps peeking into our house.”

So Wei Qian walked over and stood in the doorway, then viciously shouted at the boy, “Get the hell farther away from me!”

The boy jumped in fright and hesitantly backed up a few steps.

But when Wei Qian came out of the kitchen carrying the dishes, he saw Xiao Bao squatting in the doorway and peering outside as she said, “Ge, he’s still looking into our house. Let him come in.”

This time, Wei Qian did not even bother to scare her. He simply ignored her, put the dishes on the table, then walked over and slammed the front door shut, completely cutting off those two envious, spying gazes from outside.

Let him in? Wei Qian thought, if he were a millionaire, then with little brats like this, he would be willing to raise ten or eight of them, line them up in a row every morning, and make them answer roll calls for fun.

But was he?

He was just a little hooligan who was outstandingly poor. He did not even know what monkey mountain he was supposed to climb to come up with the four hundred-yuan in tuition he would have to pay when school started!

Unfortunately, girls always sided with outsiders. This little girl Song Xiaobao was simply unbelievable. She had barely been out of diapers for two days, and she had already learned how to turn her elbow outward.

Not many days later, when Wei Qian came in through the door, he discovered that Xiao Bao had already let that little brat into the house.

Afraid that the little wild child outside might have some contagious disease or parasites that could be passed on to Xiao Bao, Wei Qian immediately let loose on his little sister in a burst of anger, frightening the little girl into bawling at the top of her lungs. Then he reached out, grabbed the undershirt on the little brat’s body, and tossed him back out again like he was throwing away a rag.

The little boy struggled in his hand. When he could not get free, he fixed Wei Qian with those black-bright, black-bright eyes. Those eyes were like black stones in the mountains that had just been washed by rain. On that grimy little face where the features could barely be made out, they stood out all the more sharply, looking so wild, and so full of resentment, disappointment, and a faint trace of pleading.

“Puppy bastard,” Wei Qian cursed at him.

Xiao Bao really was the kind who remembered the food but forgot the beating. Mainly because Wei Qian had never actually hit her. Although he did not show it much, in truth he treasured her so much that he had never even let a single strand of her hair get touched. As a result, as far as being scolded went, Comrade Song Xiaobao forgot all about it the moment she lowered her paws.

Less than three days passed before she brought that little brat back again.

This was really becoming a haunting now. This time, her cold, bad-tempered older brother was finally enraged. Wei Qian reached out to grab the boy. Sensing danger, the boy sprang up and dodged away, so that Wei Qian’s raised slap cut through empty air.

Wei Qian was furious. He raised his leg and planted a hard kick right in the boy’s chest. The boy was solidly kicked and hurt, yet he still did not cry out. He only let out a muffled grunt and dropped to his knees with the force, stretching out both arms to wrap around Wei Qian’s leg.

This little hellion Xiao Bao had finally seen something new. She had never imagined that the big brother she lived with day and night could actually be this violent. Frightened, she let out one loud howl and burst into tears, wailing, “Ge!”

For some reason, when the boy heard that word, something in his mind and heart seemed to be tugged. He had been pretending to be mute for more than a year, but now he suddenly opened his mouth to Wei Qian without rhyme or reason. His voice was so hoarse it did not sound like a child’s at all, and his pronunciation was strange too, but Wei Qian still understood what he said. Mimicking Xiao Bao, he called out, “Ge!”

Wei Qian’s foot, which he had lifted and was about to stomp down hard with, suddenly could not move.

What the hell was he doing? Wei Qian thought blankly. Beating a little brat like this? How was that any different from that cheap slut of a mother of his?

In the end, Wei Qian let out a sigh, slowly withdrew his foot, and without saying a word went into the kitchen. He hastily boiled a pot of plain noodle soup with no substance to it at all, then carried it in front of the little boy. “Eat.”

The boy did not want to make himself look too pathetic, but unfortunately, this bowl of noodles was like sweet rain after a long drought to him. The moment he smelled the fragrance, the words “self-respect” cheerfully abandoned him and eloped together.

He practically buried his face in the bowl, slurping and gulping down the noodles in a fierce rush. Like an autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves, he downed three whole bowls in a row, and his stomach was round and stretched full.

Wei Qian sat calmly beside him. After waiting for him to finish, he got up and cleaned away the bowls and chopsticks, then said to the boy, “You can understand human speech, right? Fine. I know you understand.”

Wei Qian flicked the dishwater off his hands and squatted down so that his line of sight was level with the little thing’s.

“I can’t afford to raise you,” he said, summoning almost the greatest patience of his life. “You, ah, you came to the wrong place.”

There was still some vegetable broth not wiped clean from the corners of the boy’s mouth. His eyes, bright as stars, stared fixedly at the youth in front of him.

Wei Qian gave him a light push on the shoulder. “All right. You’ve eaten your fill, now go.”

A minute later, for the first time, the boy walked upright out of his house instead of being violently thrown out by him.

For two or three days, Wei Qian did not see that clingy little boy. Then on the fourth evening, as he dragged his exhausted body home while calculating how much tuition money he was still short of, he saw the little boy again at the doorway of his home.

This time, Xiao Bao did not dare open the door. One child stood inside, the other stood outside. Hearing the sound of footsteps, both of them lifted their heads together and looked at him eagerly.

The boy standing at the door was dragging an enormous snakeskin sack. It clanked and rattled. Wei Qian lowered his eyes and glanced at it, then discovered that it was full of bottle caps and aluminum cans.

“This can be sold for money.” Only after he had stayed silent for a long time did the boy explain in a small voice. As if he were afraid Wei Qian would not believe him, he stretched out his grimy little hand. In his sweaty palm, he was clutching two paper bills, one five-jiao bill. “Really. I’ve sold them before.”

Wei Qian still said nothing.

Right on cue, Xiao Bao softly called out, “Ge.”

Wei Qian shut his eyes and thought, What the hell kind of situation is this?