Bro | Chapter 43

Wei Qian had originally thought that when he got his university diploma, he would be so excited that he would stay awake all night over finally obtaining the thing he had dreamed of for so long. But in reality, that period of his life had been so chaotic that it was only a full year later that he remembered he had not even managed to attend his own graduation ceremony.

He had thought he was still crawling. Yet without realizing it, he had already stood up and started running.

Lao Xiong and the others had always had companies before too, only they had all looked rather makeshift. They hired a bunch of temporary workers, and most of the time the few of them did everything personally. If they were selling tea, they registered Some Tea Company. If they were selling medical equipment, they came up with a name like Some Foreign Trade Company.

Like a guerrilla force, they had gradually scraped together a pile of miscellaneous businesses and an even more miscellaneous set of connections.

But after Wei Qian and the others completed their first project involving large-scale capital, the three of them finally sat down properly. They rented an entire floor in an office building downtown, carefully wrote out the company charter, revised it several times before finalizing it, formally established a proper company, and renamed those knockoff shell-company style outfits like Some Tea Company and Some Foreign Trade Company. They unified the branding and formed a group.

At the very beginning, the only actual members were Lao Xiong, San Pang, and Wei Qian. Later, as they expanded, they gradually recruited quite a few more people. The whole company was like a balloon being filled with air, beginning to develop complicated internal organs.

The state of the three sworn brothers, Wei Qian and the others, also gradually changed from “like dead dogs” to “looking polished on the outside, but actually still exhausted like dead dogs.”

This ship had begun cautiously testing the waters close to shore.

In the second year, Lao Xiong and the others went on to do another two or three short, fast-turnover small projects. They were no longer invisible shareholders. Openly and aboveboard, they stepped from behind the scenes into the spotlight.

And Lao Xiong’s ambition swelled day by day. It seemed he could already vaguely see the golden age that was about to arrive.

That was on the public side. On the private side, Wei Qian had not been talking for show when he said he would straighten Wei Zhiyuan back out. He had always been the kind of person who did exactly what he said. Once he made up his mind, he acted immediately.

So after making discreet inquiries through various channels, Wei Qian privately got in touch with a psychological counseling center that looked very formal and respectable. Not long after booking an appointment, he rushed over there in a huge pair of sunglasses that nearly covered half his face, sneaking around even more furtively than an underage girl going to get an abortion.

In the end, the white coat with the smiling-tiger face pocketed the consultation fee, then gently and amiably told him, “Although homosexuality still has not been legally recognized, our country removed it from the category of sexual perversion two years ago. The kind of situation you described may simply be a certain tendency that appears during adolescence and development, and it may gradually disappear as he becomes more mature physically and mentally. Of course, it is also possible that he is genuinely homosexual. The causes may be quite complicated, and we can discuss those later. But the psychological pressure this can bring to adolescents is very great, and their family needs to deal with it scientifically. Do not react too strongly. You have to guide him slowly.”

Hearing such professional-sounding words, Wei Qian immediately seized on a sliver of hope and asked, “And after the guidance? Can he be straightened back out?”

The white coat beamed kindly and said in a tone fit for delivering salvation to all living beings, “Through patient guidance, we can help the child build sufficient confidence, calmly face the fact that he is different from himself and others, and in the end find a road to happiness that belongs to him.”

Wei Qian looked at the counselor, then at the ashtray on the corner of the desk, and seriously considered what kind of meeting it would be if he opened one for this guy with the ashtray.

After this experience, Wei Qian decided these psychologists were all half-baked and not reliable in the least. Even after receiving this so-called scientific answer, he still refused to give up. A few days later, he somehow got hold of a wall calendar featuring a great beauty and hung it up on the living-room wall.

Wei Qian’s taste was honestly pretty worrying. He personally could not appreciate beauties in the traditional Eastern mold, so he entrusted San Pang with the search.

If San Pang could be relied on, then sows really could climb trees.

Who knew where he dug up that calendar set? Every single page was full of blonde, blue-eyed, big-breasted women, every one of them bearing chest and back, all looking like they had been stamped out from the same mold, with huge eyes and double eyelids, beaming brilliantly at the Chinese people as if to wish them prosperity. It was bright enough to blind both humans and dogs.

Wei Qian hung the thing in the living room, perfectly destroying the artsy homey atmosphere that Xiong-saozi had created. In an instant, he dragged the place’s aesthetic level down to the outskirts where the city met the countryside, and the entire house began to exude the festive smell of “grand opening of a donkey-burger shop.”

Wei Qian had been trying to awaken Wei Zhiyuan’s interest in women through the most basic physical desire. In the end, before Wei Zhiyuan even had a chance to express any opinion, Grandma Song was the first to object. Planting her breath in her dantian, she roared, “Oh my god, why are these women all running around in nothing but underpants? Who hung this up? What? Your brother? I think your brother has too much time on his hands. The older he gets, the further backward he goes! This is outrageous. Hurry up and take it down!”

So while Wei Qian was not at home, they took the calendar down. Song Xiaobao immediately took the chance to smuggle in her own preferences and hung up on some newly popular Japanese and Korean male celebrities instead.

That evening, the moment Wei Qian pushed open the door when he got home, he saw Wei Zhiyuan standing by the wall, looking up at that whole crowd of slick, glossy little pretty boys. The older brother exploded with indignation on the spot.

He strode over in big steps, his face dark as water, and asked, “Look good?”

Wei Zhiyuan turned his head, carrying a smile that meant something unclear, and gave him a deep look. “So-so. I’ve seen better-looking ones.”

Wei Qian was so shaken by the amount of information packed into that sentence that his gallbladder nearly trembled. He immediately rolled up all those little pretty-boy posters Xiao Bao had hung, threw them out, and at the same time decided he was going to investigate exactly who Wei Zhiyuan usually associated with. What did he mean, he had “seen better-looking ones”?

What little fox spirit was luring a teenager onto the wrong path?

And it was a male fox spirit.

What an agonizing phrase.

In the end, the New Year calendar that got hung up was “Spring Blossoms and Autumn Fruits,” which suited Grandma Song’s taste.

…It still radiated a very grounded sort of rustic pastoral charm.

Both attempts ended in nothing, and Wei Qian quieted down for a while. Later, he learned from some irresponsible research report from who knew where that some male homosexuals were caused by a lack of fatherly love and father-son interaction from childhood.

Wei Qian obviously could not conjure a father out of thin air for Wei Zhiyuan, so he had no choice but to grit his teeth and take the role on himself.

After spring warmed the air and flowers began to bloom, he forcibly squeezed out a single free day on a weekend and decided to take Wei Zhiyuan to do some manly leisure activity, fishing.

It was not easy for Wei Qian to squeeze out a whole day. During that stretch, his life was utter chaos. Every day was lived at a rhythm fit for dying of overwork. There was no longer any such concept as overtime or not overtime. From the moment he opened his eyes in the morning to the moment he closed them at night, he was working nonstop.

He vaguely felt as though he had gone back to those days when the moment he opened his eyes in the morning, he had to start calculating how he was going to get through the entire day.

The day before they set out, Wei Zhiyuan checked through the things he needed to bring one final time before going to bed.

He belonged to the kind of person who never needed an alarm clock. Usually he woke up on time by biological clock alone, and if there was something the next day that required him to get up especially early, then he would naturally wake up especially early too. It was as if there were a wound spring inside his body.

Of course, that talent also had its bad side. If he knew he had to get up early for something the next day, it was easy for him to sleep poorly.

Wei Zhiyuan woke once at three in the morning. After lying back down, he started dreaming.

His dream was fragmented, with hardly a single complete plotline. He dreamed he passed through many places. Sometimes it was a speeding train. Sometimes it was a filthy corner by a wall. Sometimes it was a cramped, narrow room. Every place had a lid over it. Every place was sunless and dark, with monotonous, dim colors.

Wei Zhiyuan shifted uncomfortably on the bed, but he did not wake. There were no monsters suddenly jumping out to startle him in the dream, no cliff that suddenly dropped away beneath him. Yet he seemed trapped inside that long, realistic nightmare all the same. He was not agitated, and he was not afraid. He only felt an extreme oppression, so habitual it had become numb.

In the dream, all around him there were eyes of every kind. The various people passing by him all had blurred faces, and on each flat face there was only a pair of eyes, exactly the same as all the others. Every one of those eyes cast a malicious gaze onto him.

Those lines of sight were like tiny sesame-sized insects. They were not fatal, but they crawled over his body without pause, slowly, bringing with them an indescribable shiver.

All sound disappeared. All sensation was false. And everywhere his eyes could reach, there were only those ill-intentioned stares. At last, Wei Zhiyuan started running.

He ran himself awake.

Drenched in sweat, Wei Zhiyuan sat upright in bed and pressed on the bedside lamp. It was 4:45 a.m.

He paused. Bracing his elbows on his thighs, he scrubbed a hand over the sweat on his face and sat there regulating his breathing.

It felt as though a lump of cotton had been stuffed into his chest, making it hard to breathe. Wei Zhiyuan could no longer lie back down, so he got up and washed.

In the mirror, he saw what he looked like now. Tall and handsome, shoulders that had matured early and spread wide like opened wings, every movement full of vivid strength.

Perhaps because he had not fully come out of the nightmare, Wei Zhiyuan suddenly remembered something from long ago.

At that time he had been… six? Seven, maybe. In any case, he was still wandering aimlessly then. Civilized society and he seemed to be separated by a wall, transparent and impossible to touch, yet unmistakably and clearly refusing him entry.

One day he had been resting on a street corner when he saw someone walk out of a little restaurant carrying two boxes of food. The disposable lunch boxes were probably not very sturdy. The person had only walked a few steps when the box underneath leaked. He got scalded, loosened his grip, and a whole box of rice and dishes spilled all over the ground.

That person turned around cursing and went back to argue with the restaurant staff. The smell of food spread everywhere. To a hungry child, that tempting aroma of hot dishes was like opium with a fatal attraction.

Wei Zhiyuan truly could not endure it. In the end, he finally worked up his courage and quietly walked over.

He crouched on the ground and secretly used his hand to pick it up and eat it. The person who was in the middle of arguing spotted him and at once gave a huge start. Wei Zhiyuan still remembered that expression clearly, eyes bulging, hair practically standing on end, as though he had seen a rat in the gutter, both disgusted and revolted.

Then the man started shouting abuse at him, as though Wei Zhiyuan had not merely picked up the food he had dropped to eat, but had somehow contaminated his appetite itself.

“So disgusting!” Wei Zhiyuan remembered the man saying that, and right after that, he got kicked hard without the slightest politeness. The splashing hot soup landed on the tender skin of the child and scalded the inside of his wrist. To this day, there was still a scar there, so small it was almost impossible to see.

That was the invisible wall. In other people’s eyes, he did not count as a person at all.

Those who pitied him pitied him the way they would pity a stray cat or dog. Those who thought he was filthy felt toward him the same loathing they would feel on seeing a stray cat or dog. Those who harbored bad intentions toward him sized him up with hidden motives the same way certain people might calculate how many jin of meat a cat or dog had on it.

They might have thought he was a foolish child, or mentally not quite normal. No one would ever think he was mentally normal, or even exceptionally intelligent. More than that, no one knew that he too possessed ordinary human joys, angers, sorrows, and delights.

All that malice was openly carved into the surface of the earth itself, laid out in front of Wei Zhiyuan line by line and sentence by sentence, until it grew into the venom that arose from within him.

Hard to erase, hard to defeat.

Wei Zhiyuan had thought he had already forgotten. Yet these memories at the very bottom of the trunk always surfaced at the wrong moment. It was as though there were a little screening room inside his head that from time to time would play old films, vivid and clear, as though it were yesterday.

But after all, it really was not yesterday anymore.

Wei Zhiyuan stared indifferently at the scar on his wrist for several seconds.

Even now, he still disliked being looked at for no reason, but he no longer feared those gazes. He still knew that he pursued strength in an almost pathological way, but so what?

The boy thought that one day, sooner or later, he would have the strength to trample this whole world flat. When that day came, no one would be able to stop him. He even arrogantly dreamed of becoming strong enough to influence the rules of the world itself.

Just then, another person suddenly flashed before Wei Zhiyuan’s eyes. He gave a slight start, and it was as if he once again saw the face of that nameless pervert whom he had gradually lured into the cold storage and frozen to death. It was said that the human brain automatically screened out unpleasant memories, but Wei Zhiyuan’s brain was like a cold, indifferent hard drive that never allowed him to forget anything.

Why think of him all of a sudden? He was dead already.

Wei Zhiyuan laughed at himself, turned, and walked out of the bathroom. The moment he stepped out, he nearly ran into Wei Qian.

Wei Qian’s steps were practically staggering. They had agreed to get up at five in the morning and leave, but when Wei Qian got home the previous night it had already been 2:30 a.m. After hastily washing up, plus being too overtired to fall asleep right away, it was estimated that by the time he actually managed to close his eyes, it had to be well past three.

Wei Qian felt as though he had just entered deep sleep when the alarm drilled brutally into his brain and annihilated his delicate sleep in one blow.

It had taken willpower on the level of kicking an addiction for him to crawl out of bed.

Wei Zhiyuan watched as his brother swayed left and right like one of those roly-poly toys for a good while, then accidentally bumped into the wall. Wei Qian almost slid straight down the wall and slept there at the base of it.

Wei Zhiyuan caught him by the shoulder and helped steady him, asking softly, “Why don’t you sleep a little longer? Don’t go today.”

Without saying a word, Wei Qian waved a hand, struggled upright, and walked into the bathroom.

Only after the shock of cold water hit him did Wei Qian become a little more awake. Not a single cell in his body wanted to go out. Every one of them was clamoring for sleep, but all of them were collectively suppressed.

Wei Qian thought, Kid, your brother is really risking his life for your sake.

Places for fishing were generally out in the suburbs. It took nearly two hours to drive there. Wei Qian had only just gotten his driver’s license and usually drove a mid-to-low-end family sedan. He had a bit of money on hand by now after all these years, yet he still did not really spend it on himself. It was not that he was, while still so young, inherently steady by nature, free of vanity, saintly and above showing off.

It was simply that he still was not rich enough to feel safe.

How much money would it take to feel safe?

Wei Qian could not say. But he figured that with his not especially refined character and his shallow ideological realm, if that day ever really came, then maybe he really would do something extravagantly wasteful like drinking one bowl and pouring one bowl out.

Poverty had already been carved into his genes, directly affecting the synthesis of every protein molecule in his body.

Meanwhile, Wei Zhiyuan at his side, perhaps because he had not fully woken up yet or perhaps for some other reason, simply propped up his chin and looked out the window without speaking.

Wei Zhiyuan had never fished before. Wei Qian had only done it once himself, back when he was little, when his stepfather and biological mother were still alive and San Pang’s father had taken the three of them out to play.

At that time San Pang’s father had still been young, cut from exactly the same mold as the San Pang of today, with the same good temper and slick tongue. He led along three little boys of different heights, builds, and shapes, and as they walked, the boys roughhoused with each other. San Pang’s father did not bother himself with it, only turning back to maintain order once in a while when things went too far, in case they fell into the river.

When they sat down waiting for fish to bite, San Pang’s father and San Pang would take turns, one sentence after another, making snide little attacks on San Pang’s mother behind her back, exactly like two newly liberated peasants singing songs of freedom while jointly denouncing the oppressive ruling class.

Fishing, at times, was more like a gentlemen’s tea gathering. They could get together and discuss women without restraint, complain about life, and gripe about the little brats at home who were eternally troublemakers.

The two of them had not arrived especially early. There were already people there with their rods set up. They found a small pavilion by the water where they could rest and keep out of the sun, sat down on the steps, and laid out their equipment.

With his very thin store of experience, Wei Qian clumsily taught Wei Zhiyuan how to put the bait onto the hook, how to watch the float, and how to cast the line.

Wei Zhiyuan deliberately acted all thumbs, intentionally playing dumb, and in the end his brother had no choice but to pinch up a worm himself and, hand over hand, help him thread it onto the hook.

Upon that worm that could not rest in peace, there fell sweetness from between their fingers. Every tiny bit of it, Wei Zhiyuan seized the time to enjoy.

The float rested quietly on the water. The sun had not yet fully risen. Wei Qian remembered something San Pang’s father had once said while squatting by the river, so he casually repeated it to Wei Zhiyuan. “The joy of fishing lies in the process of waiting for it.”

Wei Zhiyuan turned his head to look at him. “And if you wait and wait, and still don’t catch a single fish? Then all that waiting was for nothing. Wouldn’t that be disappointing?”

Wei Qian choked on that. Back then, not one of the three dumb little boys would ever have asked something so sharp.

He activated the brain that had rusted from lack of sleep, but in the end failed to come up with anything especially educational to say. So he could only tell the plain truth. “That’d probably be pretty depressing too. But the chances are low. Fish ponds all charge money now. If the owner ran his business that dishonestly and let people fail to catch even one fish, then no one would come again in the future.”

After saying that, Wei Qian stretched lazily and leaned against one of the stone pillars. “But if you really end up empty-handed, then just treat it as enjoying the lake and mountain scenery.”

The sky gradually darkened. After a while, it actually began to rain. Since they were sitting inside the pavilion, they did not have to worry about getting soaked. A little wind carrying water vapor rolled over from the lake, and beside him, Wei Zhiyuan watched as the eyes Wei Qian had been holding open slowly closed bit by bit. At last, with one hand still resting on the fishing rod set on its stand, he fell asleep just like that.

The soft rustling rain gradually joined into a single continuous line. The surface of the fish pond was disturbed and rippling. Further off was a stretch of farmland, connected to a vast empty wilderness under a sky of the same color.

The curtain of rain gradually blocked the eye. The lake light and mountain colors all blurred together.

Wei Zhiyuan had already withdrawn his gaze long ago. Turning his head to the side, he concentrated on Wei Qian’s quiet sleeping face.

A moment later, he carefully reached out a hand and tentatively touched Wei Qian’s hair. Wei Qian did not react. He really was asleep.

Wei Zhiyuan lowered his head, pressed two fingers together, and lightly placed them at his lips, kissing them with reverence. Then he stretched out his arm and let those two fingers brush faintly across Wei Qian’s lips.

At last, all the gloom was swept from his face, revealing a somewhat childlike smile.

Wei Zhiyuan stretched out his legs. The dark knot that had been stuck in his heart all morning seemed to receive a brief soothing, obediently crouching down.

In that instant, he felt the “joy of anticipation,” and he also saw the true “lake light and mountain colors.”

Wei Qian was jolted awake when the fishing rod in his hand suddenly sank, the butt end springing up and striking his arm. He hurriedly grabbed the end of the rod, snapped his wrist, and stood up, winding the line back in loop by loop as a large fish of at least two jin was dragged ashore, sinking and surfacing as it came.

Wei Qian turned and said to Wei Zhiyuan, “The fish basket. Hand me the fish basket. Where is it?”

Wei Zhiyuan bent over, yanked out the fish basket that had been stuck in the mud by the shore, and caught the fish. Once the hook was removed, it dropped into the basket, flopped about uneasily for a couple of moments, and when Wei Zhiyuan lowered the basket back into the water, its tail flicked up a string of droplets.

Wei Qian was fully awake now and in an extremely good mood. He had even dreamed of fish, and then been awakened by a fish. That had to be a good omen.

Yet just as he sat back down again, before he even had time to summarize his stage victory, Wei Zhiyuan spoke.

Through the pattering of the rain, he said in a calm voice, “Ge, I like men. You knew that already, didn’t you?”