Bro | Chapter 54

By the time Wei Zhiyuan left Lao Xiong’s place, the city lights were already coming on.

He walked along the silent, deserted road in search of the bus stop where he had gotten off. The sparse streetlights stretched his shadow out long. A gust of wind scattered the thin clouds, revealing a sky full of stars. The vast universe lay open at a glance, making the human world seem all the more hushed.

Because the temple was a tourist attraction, ticket sales stopped after four-thirty in the afternoon. Visiting hours were limited, so in order to save resources, after five-thirty each day, the last few buses heading back into the city came only once every forty-five minutes.

At the lonely bus stop, there was only Wei Zhiyuan, leaning against the station post with his head lowered, waiting for the bus.

Perhaps some places really are suited to thinking, the way prison suited Weil for the Riemann Hypothesis, or the great Bodhi tree suited Shakyamuni’s enlightenment. In that tiny meditation courtyard of Lao Xiong’s, the pain, conflict, and occasional vicious unwillingness in Wei Zhiyuan’s heart, after rising and falling, slowly began to settle.

At first, Wei Zhiyuan could not help thinking of Wei Qian over and over again. That was the person he longed for day and night. He even felt that he could describe every single strand of Wei Qian’s hair.

Wei Zhiyuan did not suppress himself. He let himself indulge that blasphemous yearning for the man, because very soon, he might no longer even have the right to miss him.

Yet as the sun sank westward and the oppressive summer heat gradually faded, the scent of sandalwood drifted out through the gaps in the old wooden shelves. His intense emotions rose and fell several times, and at last, exhausted, quieted down. For some reason, Wei Zhiyuan suddenly thought of the man who had died in the cold storage room.

For many years, Wei Zhiyuan had never repented, never believed he had been at fault in the slightest, and after the matter had died down, rarely even thought of it again.

Now, he could barely remember what that person looked like. Only the feeling from that time was still clearly branded in his heart. Wei Zhiyuan still remembered how, after learning that Wei Qian might never come back, he had returned alone from Lao Xiong’s pharmacy, propped the bicycle to one side, and when he bent down, touched that icy cold handlebar, with the faint smell of rust on it.

Why had he killed that person?

Hatred?

No… not to that extent. After all, that person had only been a coward. He had not caused him any real, substantial harm.

Was it for justice?

Of course even less so. Wei Zhiyuan felt that if there really were such a thing in his heart, then the first person he would have to kill would be himself.

His inner world was closed off, selfish, cold, and extreme. Perhaps now and then, in a good mood, he might out of the ease of a small gesture lift a little boy he met in an alley onto his bike, but that was already the limit.

If his brother had not gotten into trouble back then, would he really have gone that far?

The thread of meditation carried him back to the summer when he was thirteen. The memories replayed with every detail laid bare, and a certain familiar feeling surged up. All at once, Wei Zhiyuan understood. That was the nightmare that had haunted him for more than twenty years, that deep helplessness rooted all the way into his bones and blood.

Everything he had done was meant to compensate for that helplessness from his childhood. It made him constantly scheme and calculate, to the point that in the end he had gone as far as murder.

But those things were like a black hole with its mouth wide open. They would only pull a person deeper and deeper. Even if he became a serial killer in the end, he would still never be able to fill the emptiness in his own heart.

Fortunately, that hopeless secret love later became his new spiritual support. Looking back now, Wei Zhiyuan could knock on countless doors countless times for his big brother. Yet this once, after he had laid everything bare and the last shred of fantasy had been smashed, that pillar collapsed.

Since ancient times, there has only ever been one road up Mount Hua, and he had been walking on that road, growing narrower and narrower, refusing to stop even in death, refusing to turn back even in death. Even if a cliff lay ahead, he would keep walking to the very end, until he was smashed to pieces.

…As if that would let him comfort himself by saying that he was strong.

Just then, a wash of headlights swept over. Wei Zhiyuan thought the bus had arrived, but when he looked up, he saw Wei Qian’s car.

He parted his lips, not knowing what to say. Standing there stiffly like a marionette, he looked somewhat awkward and restrained.

Wei Qian rolled down the window and made a gesture telling him to get in.

Wei Zhiyuan hesitated for a moment, then got into the front passenger seat. Turning his head to glance at Wei Qian’s cold profile, he asked tentatively, “Did Xiong-ge tell you?”

Wei Qian answered briefly, “Mm.”

And there was nothing more after that.

He did not want to speak. Wei Zhiyuan could tell.

He was willing to drive across more than half the city in the middle of the night to pick him up, yet unwilling to say even two extra words to him.

Wei Zhiyuan leaned back against the seat. That endlessly recurring feeling of helplessness washed over him from head to toe. He thought, What exactly am I supposed to do?

The next day, Wei Qian did not go to the office. He drove Wei Zhiyuan to the airport.

Wei Qian carried one of his suitcases for him and silently escorted Wei Zhiyuan all the way to the customs checkpoint. He stood the suitcase upright on the ground, and for once actually looked him straight in the eye, then said one sentence to him: “Go on.”

After saying that, he turned and left, as if finally shaking off a heavy burden, as though he could not even be bothered to spare one more glance.

Wei Zhiyuan grabbed his arm in one swift motion.

“Ge, could you… could you let me hug you?”

Wei Qian lowered his eyes. His gaze fell on the hand gripping his arm so tightly it was nearly spasming. Then he slowly reached out and peeled Wei Zhiyuan’s hand away, and without saying a single word, turned and left just like that.

That was how hard-hearted he was. Once he rejected something, he did not leave even the slightest room to turn it around.

When Wei Zhiyuan passed through customs alone, it felt to him as if the whole national gate had shut behind him. An indescribable loneliness reflected off the gleaming floor tiles and stabbed painfully at his eyes.

But what he did not know was that Wei Qian had not actually gone far.

Wei Qian wandered alone outside the departure hall for a while, smoked a cigarette, then came back and found a fast food place to sit in. He ordered a drink and kept watching his wristwatch, waiting for Wei Zhiyuan’s flight to take off safely.

Only when he was by himself did the cold expression on his face finally crack apart.

In Wei Qian’s memory, Wei Zhiyuan was forever that little brat with skinny arms and skinny legs who would rustle his way into his arms. Even with his eyes closed, he could still picture what the little thing had looked like when he lost his first tooth, crying and begging him to sell it for him.

Wei Qian had even attended several of Wei Zhiyuan’s parent-teacher meetings. That had been a good assignment, because all he had to do was sit there properly, put on a serious face, and wait for the teacher to praise him. He never had to be prepared, like when he went as Xiao Bao’s guardian, to get scolded from start to finish.

Such a good child.

Then how had things ended up like this now? Wei Qian did not know how to face Wei Zhiyuan. All this time, the only thing he had been able to do was treat him coldly.

He knew this way of handling things was not appropriate either. Wei Zhiyuan had always been such a sensitive child. Every time he merely furrowed his brow a little, the boy would immediately fall silent with fear, and no matter whose fault it was, Wei Zhiyuan would first carefully reflect on himself.

Wei Qian could imagine how much this hurt, but what else was he supposed to do?

The airport was full of noise and voices. Everywhere were people hurrying back and forth, dragging suitcases behind them. Inside the fast food place, some foreign song with guitar accompaniment was playing, like a farewell no one else knew about.

That little brat… just left like that.

Wei Qian sighed, pushed aside the empty drink cup, and stood up to leave.

Xiao Bao had gotten into an arts college in the south and was living on campus there. And now Xiao Yuan had gone too.

The house next door that had belonged to Pockmark Mom remained empty the whole time. He regularly had someone clean it, as if she might still come back someday. And San Pang and Lin Qing had gotten married and moved out from their parents’ place.

His home, his neighbors, all seemed to have emptied out.

Many years ago, the scene of Wei Qian and San Pang scraping together savings and compensation money bit by bit to buy a house, carrying with them the excitement of finally escaping the shantytown forever when they moved into their new home, was still vivid before his eyes.

And now…

Wei Qian shook his head hard, forcing himself not to think anymore. If he also started indulging in melancholy over the passing seasons, he would have had no time left to do anything else.

In the blink of an eye, Wei Zhiyuan had already been gone for more than half a year.

Wei Zhiyuan adapted to life overseas very quickly. He could adapt very quickly to any kind of life.

Every day he went to class, worked on papers, went to the library, wore wooden Buddhist prayer beads wrapped around his wrist, and regularly went to church.

Like Lao Xiong, he believed neither in Eastern gods nor Western ones. He did not even want to find salvation in them. He only wanted to find a place where he could settle and quietly face himself.

Wei Zhiyuan always remembered the one sentence Lao Xiong gave him before he left: “For ordinary people, love, hatred, greed, anger, and delusion are all nothing more than matters of a single thought.”

A thousand people, a hundred different states, in truth amounted to nothing more than each person choosing differently which thoughts to magnify and which thoughts to suppress. Strip away ridiculous pride and arrogance, peel back skin and flesh, study thoroughly the filthy self hidden inside, and then you will have a sword that can pierce through the world.

Wei Zhiyuan regularly called the home landline at fixed times, wanting to hear that person’s voice. He did not dare call Wei Qian’s mobile phone, afraid of disturbing him at work.

But if Xiao Bao was not home on school break, then the phone at home was basically never answered. Wei Zhiyuan did not know whether Wei Qian saw the caller ID and deliberately avoided him, or whether he was so busy he could not even make it home.

…Oh, right. There had been one time when Wei Qian answered.

At the time, Wei Zhiyuan had not even had a chance to speak when from across the ocean there came the sound of something falling to the floor, followed by a whole mess of clattering, and then what seemed to be something heavy crashing down as well. After that, no matter how many times he called out “Hello,” there was no further sound from the other end.

Wei Zhiyuan did not dare hang up. He guessed Wei Qian had most likely knocked the phone off by accident, and if he hung up, he probably would not be able to get through again. He hurriedly switched phones and called Wei Qian’s mobile, but still no one answered.

Xiao Bao was too far away, just like him, too far to be of any help. In the end, Wei Zhiyuan had no choice but to contact San Pang.

He kept the headset from the phone on for a full hour and more before San Pang finally reached his place and picked up the house phone. “Little brother, you’re still there? It’s fine. Your brother just drank too much, tripped over the phone cord while answering, and then didn’t get back up. He’ll be fine after sleeping it off, don’t worry.”

This was fine?

What kind of days was he living over there?

Wei Zhiyuan wished he could book a plane ticket back immediately. But then he thought again that even if he went back, there was nothing he could do. His brother might not even bother to acknowledge him, let alone allow him to point fingers at the way he lived.

Not until the New Year, the Chinese lunar New Year.

There was a thirteen-hour time difference between Wei Zhiyuan and home. He calculated the time carefully and called the house half an hour before the New Year bell was to ring. This time, to his surprise, it rang only once before the other side picked up. A familiar voice flowed from the receiver. “Xiao Yuan, is that you?”

Wei Zhiyuan had thought he was already prepared, yet these simple few words still struck him so hard that he fell apart, nearly unable to control himself.

He did not know how long it had been since he had last heard his big brother speak to him so calmly.

That day, Wei Qian talked with him for quite a while. Just like when he had been little, he patiently listened to how he was living over there, what he had been studying at school, whether he had made new friends, until the conversation was interrupted by the firecracker noise from Wei Qian’s side, loud as a world war.

Wei Qian lowered his head and glanced at his watch. He had long since changed it to a dual-time-zone model, and it always displayed the time in another zone.

He said, “It’s almost lunchtime over there, right? It’s New Year’s today. Go find somewhere with a lot of Chinese people and eat something good.”

The noise in the background was so loud that Wei Zhiyuan could not hear clearly. “Ge, what did you say?”

Wei Qian gave a self-mocking laugh, raised his voice, and shouted into the phone, “Nothing. Just study hard. I can’t hear you anymore, I’m hanging up.”

The living room lights were off, and the television was off too. Wei Qian was simply sitting on the sofa, as if only waiting for someone’s call.

The large house he had specially bought back then so that everyone in the family could have their own room and live a little more comfortably now felt frighteningly empty. Xiao Bao, because of her talent for dance, had been chosen by a film crew, and even for the Spring Festival she had not been able to come back. Wei Qian had not told her that in fact he had also invested in that film.

Wei Qian put down the phone, pressed a hand to his uneasy stomach, and planned to cook himself a bowl of millet porridge for New Year’s Eve.

After Lao Xiong left, Wei Qian became the rightful core of the company. In just a year or two, the company expanded severalfold under his hand. It was not easy for a private business to survive. With several hundred employees following him, every time he opened new territory he had to appear in person, rack his brains to smooth out all sorts of connections and relationships. He was always rushing from place to place, always caught in endless social engagements, and more than half a kilo of baijiu would go down at the slightest occasion.

Wei Qian did not know how many more years he could keep pushing himself like this, but time spares no one. As he grew older, he was finally no longer that teenager who could take a heavy punch to the stomach and after two days of rest be full of life and vigor again. Tobacco, alcohol, and overwork were hollowing his body out little by little, and Wei Qian could feel the process.

At the beginning of winter, there was one time when Wei Qian came home drunk. The moment he stepped through the door, he vaguely heard Wei Zhiyuan’s call. The second he realized it was an overseas call, he immediately rushed to answer it, and that was how he accidentally tripped and fell.

At the time, he blacked out on the spot. Only when San Pang hurried over did he finally get dragged onto the bed. Who would have thought that from catching just that little bit of cold, it would actually trigger his pneumonia again?

It worried San Pang so much that the way he looked at Wei Qian almost made Wei Qian feel as if he did not have long left to live.

Wei Qian kept in touch with Feng Ning a few times in a lukewarm way, but in the end it still came to nothing. Feng Ning liked the type of man who was “cold and indifferent on the surface, but deeply affectionate inside,” not the type Wei Qian was, “polite on the surface, but inwardly indifferent and dispensable.”

Later, San Pang introduced him to quite a few more girls. There were no shortage of girls who liked Wei Qian, but all the especially shallow ones, the ones after money, the ones full of fantasies and not serious about everyday life, all the unreliable ones, were filtered out by professional matchmaker San Pang. He chose very carefully, looking only for good girls who genuinely liked Wei Qian himself and were willing to live a proper life with him.

But good girls who were not after money and were not especially vain usually wanted pure and beautiful love. Which one of them would be willing to tolerate a man dealing with her the way he might complete a task?

In the end, Wei Qian still got used to the days of being all alone.

He himself did not particularly mind, but every time San Pang saw him, San Pang wore a worried, long-suffering expression, as if his matchmaking had been unprofessional and he had somehow badly let his brother down. Later on, San Pang even volunteered to become his designated shield for drinking. In the past, only one of them would collapse. Now it was often the two of them going down together. Nothing much came of it besides the fact that Lin Qing had a great many complaints.

Just as Wei Qian set the porridge pot on the stove, the door made a sound. Before he even had time to turn around, he heard Xiao Bao’s loud, bustling voice. “Ow, I nearly tripped. Ge, are you home? Why aren’t the lights on?”

Wei Qian was almost in disbelief. “How did you get back?”

“I couldn’t let you spend New Year’s alone, so I took half a day off and flew back. I’m leaving again at four tomorrow morning. My flight’s a little after six, and then I have to rush right back.” Song Xiaobao bounced into the kitchen. “What are you making? Oh my god! You’re not seriously planning to eat this stuff, are you? Move, move, I’m going to knead dough. I want dumplings!”

Fortunately, there was still this girl.

And just like that, another four years passed in the blink of an eye.

Four years later, Wei Qian had never imagined that he would see Wei Zhiyuan again under those circumstances.