Bro | Chapter 47

From appearances alone, Wei Qian was certainly the sort who looked thoroughly presentable.

He was tall and long-legged, and the skill of putting on airs that he had cultivated since childhood had by now reached the point where he could wield it with perfect ease.

At the office, he looked too young, and unlike San Pang, he was not the kind of person who could strike up a rapport with everyone wherever he went. He spent all year traveling on business, always rushing in and out. His buttons were habitually done all the way up to the top, which made him look even more stern and unapproachable. Even when he occasionally had nothing to do and stayed in the office, he kept the door shut and stayed by himself. He would rather sit in his room doodling turtles like some autistic child than come out and joke around with the young women in the company.

After keeping up that kind of abnormal manner for so long, he had naturally refined a serious sort of aura that seemed to warn strangers to keep away.

The unfamiliar woman at the door took him for some important person and immediately grew awkward. Clutching her bag unconsciously, she forced out a somewhat ingratiating smile and said, “Oh… I’m a relative from her hometown, the eldest aunt on her eldest son’s side.”

Wei Qian’s brows drew together even more tightly. “Eldest aunt? How come I’ve never heard she had a saozi from back home?”

The strange woman’s expression turned a little ugly, but she could not figure out who Wei Qian was, so she did not dare flare up rashly. She could only keep smiling apologetically. She looked like the sort of person long used to bowing and scraping, with a face that came with its own timid deference.

Wei Qian glanced at her, then went next door and knocked on Ma Zi’s mother’s door. “Auntie, it’s me. Someone claiming to be a relative of your family has come. Come out and see if you recognize her.”

After that, Wei Qian turned back and flicked a glance at the woman standing stiffly and dryly in the corridor. His gaze was like a knife, scraping over her from top to bottom with cutting disdain.

Even if she was not pretending, Ma Zi’s father had been dead for so many years. When Ma Zi’s mother had to sell fried dough sticks every day, alone with an orphaned child, where had this so-called “eldest aunt” been?

When Ma Zi’s mother had gotten into trouble, and Ma Zi, still such a small child, had been lured by bad people into trafficking drugs, where had she been then?

Ever since he could remember, Wei Qian had lived next door to Ma Zi’s family. He had never once seen a single living relative come to their house.

Meeting his cold, appraising stare, the woman drew back in fear and unconsciously pressed herself against the wall, standing straighter.

Ma Zi’s mother had difficulty moving. It took a while before she opened the door, and her faint female voice came from inside. “Qian’er, when did you get back? Have you eaten?”

Only then did Wei Qian’s expression soften. He bent down and exchanged a few words with her, then turned and gently pushed her out of the room. “This is the person who came looking for you.”

The unfamiliar middle-aged woman stared at Ma Zi’s mother in shock, her eyes nearly falling out of their sockets. After a long moment, she suddenly covered her mouth and cried out in alarm, “Oh my God! You… you’re Xiuhong? You really are Xiuhong? You… how did you end up like this? Oh my God!”

Ma Zi’s mother stood there blankly for a long time before a voice squeezed out from her throat like a wisp of air. “You… you’re Dajie?”

The woman looked at Ma Zi’s mother for a few moments, then could not hold back anymore. Tears started streaming down her face as if they cost nothing.

Wei Qian pushed Ma Zi’s mother back into the room and let this so-called “eldest aunt” from who knew where in as well. The two of them immediately clung to each other and burst into tears.

Wei Qian quietly withdrew. But as he left, he stayed cautious and deliberately did not pull Ma Zi’s mother’s door fully shut, leaving a crack open so that if anything happened, he would be able to hear it from next door.

Even San Pang heard the commotion and came out to see what was going on. The moment he saw Wei Qian, he shamelessly ran over to mooch a meal at his place.

“Relatives? Forget you, even I don’t remember them having any relatives. What kind of relatives don’t show up for thirty years?” San Pang stuffed a fried shrimp ball into his mouth and smacked his lips as he savored it. “Oh wow, this is really good. Your Xiao Yuan’s cooking is absolutely peerless. He’s more thoughtful and attentive than somebody else’s little wife. Who knows who’ll get to benefit from him in the future.”

San Pang’s mouth was like a train station, anything at all could come running out of it, and under normal circumstances no one took him seriously.

But Wei Zhiyuan’s sexual orientation had always been a sore point in Wei Qian’s heart. His compromise was real, but the distress was real too, and that part was beyond his control.

The words “little wife” stepped right on Wei Qian’s mine without warning, and he immediately blew up. “Get lost. You’re the little wife!”

He had only just finished cursing, and before the words had even had time to land, Wei Zhiyuan came out carrying a dish and wearing an apron, looking especially domestic and virtuous, and with pure action slapped his brother in the face.

Wei Qian and San Pang’s gazes fell on him at the same time. Wei Qian rolled his eyes helplessly and said to Wei Zhiyuan, who had gotten innocently caught in the crossfire, “Tomorrow I’m hiring an hourly worker. I saw there’s some amateur sanda team in that club downstairs, right? If you’ve got time, go work out more, or go play more ball games or something. Stop hovering around the stove all day.”

Wei Zhiyuan treated his words like an imperial decree and nodded without hesitation. Then he raised his head and asked with a smile, “Ge, so it turns out you like men who practice sanda and have good bodies?”

San Pang, for some reason, seemed to think of something indecent and covered his face as he started laughing.

Who knew whether the kid was doing it on purpose. In any case, the more Wei Qian listened, the more that sentence sounded wrong. It felt like he was being flirted with. “I like… like your uncle! What kind of way is that for a little bastard to talk?”

San Pang was only interested in having fun. He did not notice the undercurrent at all, and cheerfully kept adding fuel to the fire. “Come on now, little brother. With your brother’s rotten temper, he definitely needs someone soft like San-ge here. Only softness can overcome hardness, and only someone like that could stand his three daily fits. As for a build like mine…”

He patted his belly, round as an overripe watermelon. “At most, I come from a sumo background.”

Wei Qian kicked at him, but San Pang dodged it with the practiced ease of long training. Still pinching his voice into something sickeningly coy, he disgusted him on purpose. “Oh my, what’s this, husband? Domestic violence just because you don’t agree? If you beat your wife to death, who’s going to bear your children?”

Wei Qian’s desire to beat him to death came straight from the bottom of his heart.

And Wei Zhiyuan, afraid the world was not chaotic enough, took advantage of San Pang’s joke to get in a bit of cheap satisfaction for himself. Half real and half in jest, he seized Wei Qian’s hand and kissed the back of it with exaggerated affection. “Then beat him to death. It’s fine, I’ll give birth for you.”

San Pang laughed so hard all his fat started wobbling.

Wei Qian yanked his hand back at once and felt such a fierce stomachache.

After Wei Zhiyuan served food to Grandma Song and took it in to her, he came back and forcibly squeezed San Pang aside, putting himself between the two of them.

Wei Qian said, “What are you doing now?”

Wei Zhiyuan replied, “Competing for favor.”

“Hey, this brat, bullying your brother is getting addictive, huh?” San Pang shifted over a little and smacked Wei Zhiyuan on the back of the head, then craned his neck to say to Wei Qian, “Right, Qian’er… no, President Wei, while you’ve been away on business, there’s something I need to report to you.”

Without even lifting his eyelids, Wei Qian dragged out the words lazily. “If you’ve got something to say, say it. If you’ve got a fart, let it out.”

San Pang’s expression turned exceptionally obscene. “Scum… I mean, our HR department, doesn’t it have that pretty girl in charge of compensation and performance, that little Lin Qing? Heh heh… she’s a nice person, and she and I get along pretty well…”

Wei Qian froze for a moment before he understood. “You beast. If you’re going to root up somebody’s good cabbage, could you at least not pick one right under our noses? Even rabbits don’t eat the grass by their own burrow.”

“I just like her, and that girl isn’t some shallow woman who only looks at appearances. The other day I asked her, ‘Little sister, who do you think is better-looking, me or President Wei?’ Guess what she said?”

Wei Qian said, “I’m not guessing. And stop coming over here to mooch meals all the time. Just looking at you ruins my appetite.”

Patting his belly, San Pang looked smug and turned to Wei Zhiyuan. “Jealous, little brother? See that? This is the shameless envy, jealousy, and resentment of a despicable bachelor toward a man basking in sweetness and happiness.”

Wei Zhiyuan asked with interest, “What did she say?”

“Our Lin Qing said,” San Pang replied, pinching his voice thin as he imitated her, “‘With President Wei’s coffin-board face, I don’t even dare look him in the eye when I greet him every morning. What’s the use of handsome? It’s already enough having to live every day like serving a ruler as if serving a tiger, all jumpy and frightened. Unlike Tan-ge, he makes people feel especially warm, and especially safe.’ Listen to that, isn’t that seeing through appearances straight to the essence? That’s wisdom!”

Smiling, Wei Zhiyuan glanced at Wei Qian, snatched up the last fried shrimp ball with quick hands, and dropped it into Wei Qian’s bowl. “Ge, you really should smile more.”

Wei Qian gave him a smile that did not quite reach his flesh, but his expression was gentle, the corners of his eyes and brows full of a certain helpless indulgence.

San Pang did not know whether he was simply being oversensitive, but his heart suddenly gave a jolt. For one instant, he felt that there was something not quite right in the way these brothers were exchanging looks, especially Wei Zhiyuan.

San Pang could not help calling out, “Xiao Yuan?”

Wei Zhiyuan said, “Hm?”

There was truly something very strange about Wei Zhiyuan’s gaze. It was normal to look more relaxed with family than with outsiders, but he was not simply relaxed. San Pang had seen it clearly. He felt that Wei Zhiyuan’s expression was like an artist looking at a peerless masterpiece, a collector looking at a flawless piece of Hetian jade, like… like a man looking at his lover, full of a kind of ardent tenderness that soaked in silently without a sound.

Had they gone too far just now?

San Pang hesitated for a moment, then shook his head. “Oh, nothing.”

Then he found some random excuse to cover it up. “Did you save food for Auntie? She’s got a guest in her room today.”

Wei Zhiyuan’s expression remained perfectly normal. “I called for delivery. Since there’s a guest, it wouldn’t be appropriate to treat her to plain home cooking.”

Even as he spoke, they heard the doorbell ring, and the delivery man outside asked, “Did someone here order food?”

“I’ll go.” Wei Qian stood up, took some loose change from his coin pouch, and went out to get the delivery. He was about to push the door open directly and take it in to Ma Zi’s mother, but at the doorway he heard voices from inside.

Ma Zi’s eldest aunt had been living all along in a county in a neighboring province, less than five hours away by car from their city. It was not exactly nearby, but it was certainly no vast distance either.

Ma Zi’s father and this eldest aunt were not biological siblings. Ma Zi’s grandfather and grandmother had each remarried after being widowed, and the two of them had been forcibly pieced together as a stepbrother and stepsister with different surnames. There was no blood tie, and the affection between them was limited.

By the time the eldest aunt found out she had this bargain-bin younger brother, she was already grown and married. The relationship between the two of them had only ever been a matter of appearances. Later, after the old folks from back home had all died off, Ma Zi’s father married and had children and left his home region to make a living elsewhere, and the two families stopped having anything to do with each other.

The eldest aunt’s husband had died early. She had raised two sons alone. Her elder son already worked in the county town, while the younger was only sixteen. He was no good at school and had dropped out early, but his heart was restless and wild, always wanting to run off somewhere far away and work.

Her precious little darling had been pampered from childhood, and of course the eldest aunt could not bear to let him go alone, so she followed him all the way here from a thousand li away to “accompany him at work.” Only after arriving did she remember that the younger son still had a neither-close-nor-distant uncle on his mother’s side in this city.

That was how she got the idea of coming to seek refuge with them.

Carrying a contact address from many years ago, she had gone around asking for quite a while before finally learning that her bargain-bin younger brother had long since died, and that Ma Zi’s mother had moved to the city center.

At first, seeing Ma Zi’s mother in that state, eldest aunt had almost failed to recognize her. The tearful embrace that followed had been sincere enough. But when the two of them sat down together and finished catching up, and Ma Zi’s mother began recounting what had happened over the years, the trace of feminine sympathy in eldest aunt’s heart was gradually suppressed by the cold, calculating shrewdness of a middle-aged person, especially after she confirmed that Ma Zi was dead.

With one hand on the doorknob, Wei Qian stood there just in time to hear eldest aunt lower her voice and say to Ma Zi’s mother, “Little sister, are you stupid? They’re all outsiders, not related to you by blood or anything. They’ve taken such painstaking care of you all these years, and you haven’t even thought about what they’re after?”

Ma Zi’s mother had not seen outsiders in a long time, and her reactions were somewhat slow. “After… after what? What do I even have that they could want?”

In a display of what looked like affection, the eldest aunt clasped her dry, withered hand covered in burn scars and clicked her tongue repeatedly. “What else could it be? This apartment of yours, obviously. Little sister, you stay at home all day and don’t know anything about what’s going on outside anymore. Do you know how much this place is worth?”

Ma Zi’s mother could not answer. She only stared at her saozi in shock.

The eldest aunt lowered her voice even more. “This location, this size. Just think about it. Even if you live to a hundred, how much could one person eat or use? Could any of that compare to the value of this place? You really don’t have any sense… sigh, but then again, it’s no wonder. There’s no one left around you, and it hurts me to see you like this. How about this, tomorrow I will bring your little nephew to see you. That boy, he’s sturdy and bright-eyed, a fine one. He just happens to have come here looking for work. If you’re willing, your older sister can let him come keep you company. We’re all family…”

“What a loudly clacking abacus that family is working with.”

Her words were suddenly cut off. The door opened, and Wei Qian stood in the entrance holding several bags of takeout.

Caught speaking ill of someone only for that very person to hear it, the eldest aunt’s face immediately could not hold up. On instinct she tried to brazen it out. “You, you, how can you just barge into somebody else’s home like this?”

Wei Qian walked inside, let out a cold laugh, put the food down on the table, and said mercilessly, “Eat. When you’re done, get out.”

Ma Zi’s mother tugged on him carefully. “Qian’er…”

Bracing both hands on the table, Wei Qian looked down at the red-faced, thick-necked eldest aunt from above.

He had a high nose bridge, thin lips, and his lowered eyelids only made the slight upward tilt at the corners of his eyes more pronounced. Put together, it all amounted to overbearing arrogance. “Do you know where my brother is buried? Do you know where Uncle is buried? Do you know how Ma Zi, Sun Shuzhi, died? Do you even know how to write the three characters ‘Sun Shuzhi’?”

He slapped the table, and the eldest aunt gave a vicious shudder.

Wei Qian said, “What kind of relative are you supposed to be?”

The eldest aunt did not have the level for this, and she still cared about saving face. She really could not withstand this kind of assault, so she hurriedly fled in a panic. Grandma Song, having heard the commotion, struggled out while bracing herself against the wall. Her old skill at unleashing a battle of curses that could shake ten villages was no longer what it used to be, but she was still capable of spitting out one crisp, neatly enunciated curse to show her support.

San Pang hurriedly said, “Grandma, I know you’re formidable, but the enemy firepower is too weak. There’s no need for you to personally go into battle. Hurry back and rest. Guardsman, why aren’t you helping the chief back?”

Wei Zhiyuan helped Grandma Song up and sent her back to her room.

Wei Qian carefully took out tableware for Ma Zi’s mother and dished out the food Wei Zhiyuan had ordered for her.

But Ma Zi’s mother did not pick up her chopsticks. She took hold of Wei Qian and, for the first time, asked the question that had long been buried in her heart.

“Qian’er, how did Shuzhi die?”

Wei Qian said softly, “Bad people killed him.”

Ma Zi’s mother’s eyes filled with tears. “And those bad people?”

Wei Qian’s palm gently brushed over the top of her grizzled head. “They’ve gone down below to serve my Ma Zi-ge like oxen and horses. We avenged him, so don’t worry.”

Ma Zi’s mother wiped away a handful of tears and with difficulty showed him an ugly, terrifying smile.

At the time, this absurd visit from the so-called eldest aunt might have seemed only a small interlude, yet somehow it was like a certain cruel movement of music had been activated in the dark.

Ma Zi’s mother did not feel sad or upset. Instead, some indescribable kind of joy welled up in her heart. She had found the reason why she had kept on living in such a miserable, compromised way. She herself was worth the price of an apartment.

After the trouble on Ma Zi’s mother’s side had been dealt with, San Pang followed Wei Qian into his room to talk business.

San Pang asked, “How’s the presale permit? Can we get it soon?”

Wei Qian lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the bed. “That part’s not a problem. The relevant local regulations are a complete mess. There are plenty of cases of people cutting first and reporting later, starting sales before getting permits…”

San Pang said, “Wait, what do you mean, ‘plenty of cases’?”

Wei Qian blew out a big mouthful of smoke and said irritably, “I think the local government is so broke they’ve gone mad. It’s just one piddling hill, and they’ve already carved out several villa land parcels on it and sold them to several different companies. I kept wondering, with all those economic forests all over the mountain, how come there were barely any farmers nearby? Turns out they’d all been cleared out.”

San Pang said, “Then what do we do? Is it still in time for us to pull out now?”

“Don’t talk nonsense.” Wei Qian waved a hand. “We’ve already poured the bulk of the early-stage money into it. Several hundred million are hanging there. How could we pull out? We moved too fast. There should have been clauses in the land-use agreement from the beginning… sigh, it’s too late to talk about that now. I’ve got a bad feeling this is going to be trouble.”

San Pang asked, “Then what does Xiong-ge say? What about Zhang Laoban?”

Wei Qian shook his head and gave a bitter laugh. “Those two… sigh. That surname Zhang still thinks his health-retreat theme is unmatched under heaven, and that the other competitors are no competitors at all. I came back first this time because I wanted to urgently gather everyone and hold a meeting to see whether there’s anything we can do to patch this up.”

The two of them sat facing each other in silence for a long while. Then San Pang suddenly leaned heavily against Wei Qian’s desk. “Sigh, with all these things one after another, I’ve got a suggestion. Tell me if you think it’s any good…”

Wei Qian put on an expression of attentive listening and waited for his profound wisdom.

San Pang said, “How about Sunday the two of us go to a temple and pray, get rid of some bad luck.”

Wei Qian: “…”

Half a minute later, San Pang was chased out of Wei Qian’s room. Wei Zhiyuan was just about to knock, carrying a plate of fruit. Seeing this, he quickly stepped to the side so he would not get caught in the crossfire.

San Pang said, “Why are you being so unfriendly? What I said was the truth too. Life and death are up to fate, wealth and rank rest in heaven, right? You should think as openly as your San-ge here… worst comes to worst, we file for bankruptcy, and after that we can go back and sell pork with my dad.”

Wei Qian said, “Get lost.”

“Sigh, young man, such blazing firepower, such a foul temper…” As San Pang spoke, he fished around in his back pocket and pulled out a photograph of a girl. Looking up, he smiled at Wei Qian. “Right, I was just about to tell you before, but that eldest aunt who crawled out of a crack in the floor next door interrupted me. This is a classmate of our Lin Qing’s. Local girl, pretty, good personality too, just with a somewhat unusual taste. I heard she likes exactly the type of man who acts cold and indifferent. The second I heard it, I thought, isn’t that my brother right here? So I hurried and got her photo and contact information. See? San-ge thinks about you, doesn’t he?”

As he spoke, he held the photograph out toward Wei Qian. But halfway there, it was blocked by a cold hand.

The back of Wei Zhiyuan’s hand was pale, and his fingertips seemed to carry a frosty chill. Standing with his back to Wei Qian, he took the photo from San Pang and said, with something like a joking ease in his voice, as though he were being light and lively, “San-ge, my Ge here is a volcano on the verge of erupting. If you still don’t run, are you planning to take a bath in lava?”

San Pang’s gaze happened to collide with Wei Zhiyuan’s, and his heart gave a jolt.

Wei Zhiyuan’s lips were pulling upward on both sides in an unnatural, mechanical way, but there was not a trace of amusement in his eyes. His dark pupils looked like some kind of lifeless stone, with a cold sheen floating over the surface, brimming over with something sinister.

One corner of the photograph had already been pinched out of shape in his hand.

At first San Pang had thought he was just being oversensitive, but now he could not help letting his thoughts drift somewhere crooked. That attitude of Wei Zhiyuan’s… that expression… was that how brothers acted?

San Pang’s nerves tightened, and he could not resist probing a little more. “Her contact information is written on the back. Qian’er, if you’ve got time, why don’t we all go out and have a meal together this weekend?”

Wei Qian, however, noticed nothing. He lifted a brow and asked, “Didn’t Lin Qing say she loses her appetite the moment she sees me?”

Drawing himself up proudly, San Pang declared, “With me as the pagoda suppressing you, the river demon, she can eat and drink in total peace.”

Wei Qian made a dismissive sound at him, took the photo from Wei Zhiyuan’s hand, and waved it off without much concern. “We’ll talk about it later.”

After saying that, he turned and went into his room. Standing half-turned toward San Pang, Wei Zhiyuan let the photo be taken away by his brother. Watching Wei Qian’s back, his expression instantly turned dark and unreadable.

Seeing this at close range, San Pang felt as though with one loud clang, his entire worldview had smashed to the floor and he could no longer find it.

After sending San Pang off, Wei Qian finally took a careful look at the photo of the young woman in his hand. She looked clean and quiet, neither flashy nor striking, not especially beautiful either.

Yet she was exactly suitable, just enough to be pleasing to Wei Qian’s eye.

As Wei Qian looked at the picture, he was hesitating inwardly. San Pang did have a point. There had been too many aggravating things lately. It really might do him good to go out and ease his mood over the weekend. Asking her out for a meal would not be impossible… just then, Wei Zhiyuan came in.

Wei Zhiyuan was holding a delicate little box. “Ge.”

Wei Qian turned around.

Wei Qian was sitting in the chair, so Wei Zhiyuan crouched down in front of him, lowering himself to a position even below his. He opened the box for him to see. “The first gift I bought with money I earned myself.”

Inside was a necktie that looked expensive at a glance. Wei Qian had never in his life received a gift before. He stared blankly for a moment before reacting. “Huh? For me?”

Wei Zhiyuan lifted a hand and buttoned the collar of Wei Qian’s shirt, then personally put the tie on him.

His fingers brushed, deliberately or not, over the exposed skin at Wei Qian’s neck. That touch always felt wrong. Wei Qian had the illusion that Wei Zhiyuan’s touch was not accidental at all, but rather… that the kid had been deliberately rubbing his neck the whole time.

Wei Qian could not help frowning as he dodged aside a little.

Wei Zhiyuan lifted his face innocently. “What’s wrong?”

Wei Qian studied him for a moment, then dismissed the frantic thought in his mind. He felt he had been worrying so much all day long over Wei Zhiyuan’s affairs that he was practically starting to hallucinate and indulge in random fantasies.

Wei Zhiyuan stepped back a little and quietly admired the proper, clothed-beast look of his brother in that outfit, so full of abstinent restraint, and he felt as though all the blood in his body were beginning to boil.

An irresistible impulse and desire rose in him, the urge to rip open this man’s clothes. The way he looked at Wei Qian was almost hungry.

“Ge,” Wei Zhiyuan said, “today you asked me, if that person wouldn’t accept me and went off to get married instead, what would I do?”

The way he was being looked at made Wei Qian’s heart skip uneasily. The young man’s gaze gave him a prickling sensation, as though all his body hair were standing on end.

“I don’t know what I’d do either.” Wei Zhiyuan smiled, then went on, “But I’d probably go crazy, wouldn’t I?”

After saying that, he brought over the fruit he had set aside earlier and arranged it in front of Wei Qian. Putting that warm, gentle expression of a caring little padded jacket back on, he said to him, “Ge, eat some of this. You need vitamins.”