Bro | Chapter 59

Wei Qian bent over, carefully tending to the small scattered wounds on Wei Zhiyuan’s body.

There was a somewhat deep cut on the back of Wei Zhiyuan’s neck, though no one knew what had hit him. It had already been treated at the hospital. The rest were only minor injuries that were not very noticeable. Wei Qian was dipping cotton in alcohol and disinfecting them one by one before applying medicine, his expression extremely ugly.

Wei Zhiyuan had taken off his shirt and tossed it aside. He sat there looking all proper and put-together, and even when something hurt, he did not make a sound. His eyes kept following Wei Qian’s face.

After a while, he suddenly said, “Ge, can you stop frowning all the time?”

Wei Qian said irritably, “Is that any of your business? I’m not even charging you. And now you’re picking at my service attitude?”

“Not that.” Wei Zhiyuan explained blandly. After a short pause, he seemed to hesitate over whether he should say what came next. After a moment, he decided to be frank, so he said, “The main thing is, if you keep doing that, I’m about to get a reaction.”

Wei Qian seemed to be thinking about something else and did not react right away. Two seconds later, he caught the meaning. “Wei Zhiyuan, are you getting cocky and pushing your luck now?”

Wei Zhiyuan looked at him, then slowly lowered his head again. After a moment, he smiled a little, with a trace of bitterness.

Wei Qian clearly knew he was pretending to look pitiful, yet a thought still rose uncontrollably in his heart, why did he look like a little dog that had run up joyfully begging for a bone, only to get kicked into a tumble?

Yet before Wei Qian had even finished feeling sorry for him, Wei Zhiyuan turned his head again and sincerely asked, “Then can I kiss you once? Not on the mouth. Just my face or forehead is fine.”

Unable to bear it anymore, Wei Qian raised his head and glared at him.

Wei Zhiyuan still had no idea when to stop and even made a gesture with his hand. “Just once.”

“…Once my ass.” Feeling that what little sympathy he had was being wasted like this, Chairman Wei, all dignified and proper, could not help swearing.

Wei Zhiyuan laughed. It was as though even if he did not get the kiss, just getting scolded a couple of times was enough to make him happy.

At that moment, someone knocked on the door. Wei Qian went to open it and let San Pang and Ma Chunming in.

“What happened? Let me see. Oh, my god, little brother, did you just crawl back out of a trench in Iraq?” The moment San Pang entered, he sized Wei Zhiyuan up from top to bottom, then pointed at the little bottle in Wei Qian’s hand and asked, “What’s that stuff?”

Wei Qian thought back. “Someone gave me a bottle of baijiu last time, over fifty proof.”

“What kind of grudge is this? Are you planning to dismember him alive?” San Pang said. “Where’s the wound medicine? Didn’t the doctor prescribe any?”

“I think there wasn’t much of it. Besides, it was sticky, and it didn’t seem like it disinfected anything,” Wei Qian said. He glanced at Wei Zhiyuan and asked, “Does it hurt?”

Wei Zhiyuan very obviously shook his head as if he were enjoying it.

Before he had even finished shaking his head, San Pang smacked him on the forehead.

“Look how shameless you are!” San Pang scolded in exasperation, hating that he would not improve, then said to Wei Qian, “You can get lost now.”

Wei Qian tossed the little bottle of liquor aside. Fine, then, this lord here would stop serving him. With a cigarette hanging from his mouth, he sauntered out onto the balcony with Ma Chunming.

Ma Chunming forced himself to pull a little fighting spirit out of the whirlpool of heartbreak and lowered his voice as he said to Wei Qian, “Was it an accident?”

Wei Qian’s face darkened. “Most likely not.”

Ma Chunming lowered his voice even more. “Was it because of that plot of land in A City? They can chase you all the way here? This is too much. Can we call the police?”

Without the slightest hurry, Wei Qian blew out a ring of smoke. “We can, but there’s no evidence.”

In A City, there was a piece of land that had originally been planned as a plaza. It was the only clean parcel of land left in the central core district. The government had let word slip that they intended to rezone it as commercial land. Wei Qian and the others had had their eyes on it for more than half a year already.

There were more monks than porridge when it came to prime land. Another local company was equally determined to get it.

Rumor had it that the boss on the other side was named Wang Dongliang, a man in his fifties who kept a large gang of former labor-camp men under him. He had never been anything good in his early years. These days his business had been whitewashed, but he was still a local tyrant who could not stop eating shit.

At first, they had sent someone over to negotiate and offered to pay fifty million as the price for Wei Qian’s side to withdraw from the competition.

But even an idiot knew that was just a tyrannical joke of a condition meant to fool people. Compared with how much that land would appreciate in value, fifty million was nothing but a scrap of mosquito meat.

A strong dragon cannot suppress the local snake. Wang Dongliang had never expected some outsider to make him lose face. He had rampaged across A City for so long that he was like a mantis shrimp learning to walk from a crab, now he only knew how to go sideways and had long since forgotten how to walk upright.

So Wang Dongliang immediately flew into shame and rage.

Even before that incident, several threatening letters had already been sent to Wei Qian’s office.

At first, Xiao Fei had made a great fuss and called the police, but they could not trace the source. Even with lab analysis, there was no evidence pointing to Wang Dongliang. Besides, the local police could not reach into A City. Whether it was coordination or investigation, there were difficulties everywhere.

In the end, Wei Qian simply told Xiao Fei not to make a fuss and used the threatening letters to wipe the tar off his cigarette filters.

Probably seeing that intimidation was useless, and with the date for the tender, auction, and listing growing closer and closer, Wang Dongliang got anxious and began losing his mind, taking the crooked edge of the sword.

“It’s only one piece of land. If they want us to withdraw, then let’s withdraw. Our country has 9.6 million square kilometers, do we really need to lock horns with him over this one plot?” Ma Chunming said. “Besides, we’re doing legitimate business. That Wang Dongliang is a thug. He doesn’t follow rules at all. How are we supposed to fight him? This time he found someone to ram you with a car. Next time, is he going to mail a bomb to your house? This is total lawlessness. He’s basically a terrorist!”

Wei Qian did not even lift his eyelids as he said, “Impossible. Even if that land lands in my hands one day, the very next day I’ll sign it over to a third party for one-yuan, and I still absolutely won’t let it fall into the hands of that Wang bastard.”

Ma Chunming sighed and earnestly advised him, “Don’t act out of temper…”

“Out of temper? I’m not.” Wei Qian flicked the ash into the balcony trash can. “What, being a thug is that impressive? I am too.”

Doctor Ma was struck dumb. Never in his life had he seen anyone scrambling to take the post of “thug.”

“How can you be like this…” Doctor Ma protested weakly. “Are you planning to use violence to fight violence? Stop joking.”

Wei Qian looked at him with a half-smile. “Yo, you even dare talk back to me now? Got guts, have you?”

Ma Chunming said, “I’m reminding you to be rational.”

Wei Qian shot back, “Then where was your rationality when you stood outside the hotel all night?”

Ma Chunming: “…”

That knife landed right in the middle of his chest and choked him speechless for quite a while. Three seconds later, Ma Chunming flung his sleeve and strode out, cursing in a soft, limp voice, “You are simply… simply an asshole! A huge asshole!”

No matter how one listened to it, he sounded like an upright, respectable man who had been teased and taken advantage of. Wei Qian gave a soft laugh, stretched out his legs, and sat down on the squat little sofa on the balcony. Looking at the crisp, clear autumn sky outside the window, he finished the cigarette in his hand.

After a while, San Pang came in too. Wei Qian lifted his head and gave him an inquiring look.

San Pang tugged up his trouser leg and sat down beside him. “That kid’s fine, but the two of you had a close call today.”

“A close call?” Wei Qian stood up, bracing both hands on either side of the balcony window and looking down from above. “There are people watching near my house. Work late tonight. Go back to the office and sort out the contact list. Pull on every connection we can find.”

San Pang froze. “You’re planning to lock horns with Wang Dongliang to the bitter end?”

“It’s him who wants to lock horns with me to the bitter end.” Wei Qian lifted his eyes and looked at San Pang. “What, are you going to give me that cynicism routine too, like Ma Chunming?”

“Not that,” San Pang shook his head.

Ma Chunming was a child from a perfectly proper family. He had studied all the way through life in smooth sailing fashion and become a highly educated intellectual. Even now, his hobby in his spare time was still staying home and reading. He was a typical scholar. Scholars were unwilling to get mixed up in things like this. They felt the price was too high, and besides, it was beneath them.

But San Pang understood this principle. The “good people” who had to be dragged forward and would only back up when beaten were the easiest ones to stir up trouble for. Everyone knew that persimmons were picked soft.

San Pang voiced his concern. “The problem is, can we really win if we go head-to-head with him?”

Wei Qian turned his head and glanced at him. “If he were SiyeHu, I’d avoid him. But is he?”

“You mean…”

“If the underworld wants to keep going, then even the underworld has to have its rules. Bringing these thug tricks into the business world, does he really think he’s the boss and heaven’s second?” Wei Qian let out a cold laugh. “Using business to feed the underworld can’t keep going for long. That land is certainly good, but it hasn’t reached the point of being priceless. He’s willing to have someone ram me with a car just to snatch it, so why do you think that is?”

San Pang lowered his voice. “Their funds are tight. They’re afraid we’ll raise the price when the bidding starts.”

“He’s almost unable to keep ‘feeding’ them anymore. This is a cornered dog jumping a wall,” Wei Qian said.

San Pang hesitated for a moment. “Then what about safety…”

“Tell everyone to be more careful lately. Management staff who don’t feel at ease can hire people to follow them. If they spot suspicious people near their homes, they can call the police and say they think a theft ring has its eye on them… call Director Zhao and let him know what’s going on. In a couple of days I’ll invite him to dinner. All expenses incurred will be reimbursed.”

Wei Qian was the kind of person people could rely on. On certain levels, he was more reliable than Lao Xiong, who drifted around acting all mystical all day, and Le-ge was still lying dead with his eyes open.

San Pang knew that what he had going for him was smoothness. At the end of the day, he was not someone with great ability. But he believed Wei Qian was. So after hearing what Wei Qian said, he stopped talking and decided that from now on he would follow Wei Qian’s lead in everything.

At that point, San Pang changed the subject. “Hey, I say, how did Xiao Yuan get that huge gash on the back of his neck? If it had gone a little off, it would’ve killed him.”

Wei Qian seemed to recall something. After a pause, he answered as simply as possible, “The glass on the driver’s side shattered. Maybe something cut him.”

Although he only gave that one light sentence, Comrade San Pang, despite his burly exterior, was sharp as a monkey inside. The moment he heard the tone and looked again at Wei Qian, who was completely unscathed, he thought it over a little and figured out what the scene must have been like at the time.

San Pang frowned. After quite a while, he said with a sigh that was half emotion and half worry, “The way he feels about you… ai, it’s really…”

The moment that was brought up, the composed coldness that had been on Wei Qian’s face just now immediately fell apart. He frowned and sat down hard on the little sofa from before, nearly folding up his legs awkwardly. No matter how he sat, he felt uncomfortable. Irritably he changed position and waved his hand. “Don’t bring it up. It’s driving me crazy.”

San Pang was quiet for a moment. “My wife, she’s been pregnant lately, right? No one at the company dares let her do much work, so she’s idle all day and bought a huge pile of weird novels. It’s not enough that she reads them herself, she even forces me to read them too. If I protest, she says I don’t love her anymore. I pinched my nose and read a few. I thought they were all nonsense. It’s just ordinary people living ordinary lives together. At most, when they first meet, hormones make them lose their heads for a little while. Once time passes, what is there left to say? But yours is another matter. It’s been more than ten years and he still hasn’t gotten tired of it. Then you sent him away for more than four years, fine, and now he’s back, and from what I can see, he’s only getting worse. What do you think is going on in his head?”

Wei Qian said irritably, “No, Fatty, what exactly do you mean by that? Aren’t you the one who used to stuff girls’ photos into my room behind my back when I wasn’t around?”

San Pang said, “If Xiao Yuan were a girl, I’d tie you straight to his bed.”

At this point, the conversation had become so bizarre it could no longer continue. The two of them sat there staring at each other for a while. Then Wei Qian raised one finger, pointed at the door, and said, “Get out.”

San Pang sprang to his feet, pressed down Wei Qian’s hand, and patted the back of it twice. “The two of you, just take care of yourselves.”

After saying that, he strolled out with a square, swaggering gait and ran into Ma Chunming, who still looked dispirited and was sulking. “Come on, Turtle Immortal, stop standing here unable to come around. These days, thug tactics can’t beat a ‘proper man’ with a thug’s heart… ai, you’re pretty childlike too.”

The two of them left. When Wei Qian came out to look, he saw that bastard Ma Chunming had used a marker to draw two little turtles in armor behind the balcony door. Each one was holding a sewing needle and glaring fiercely at the other. On their heads, like Ninja Turtles, they each had a strip of cloth tied across the forehead, and on each strip was written the character “son.”

From it, Wei Qian read Ma Chunming’s message, the two little turtle sons were going to war.

…That this kind of bastard could still live quite well under his command, drawing a salary and sometimes even talking back to him, made Wei Qian feel that he truly was a wise ruler.

He heard suppressed laughter. When he turned around, he discovered that Wei Zhiyuan had somehow come to stand behind him.

Wei Zhiyuan still was not wearing a shirt. His shoulders were broad and straight, the lines of muscle across his exposed upper body clear and beautiful. Even the miserable-looking wounds did not seem all that unsightly, instead adding a bit of vigorous wildness to him.

Wei Qian had seen this brat bare-assed more times than he could count, but he had never felt as awkward as he did now. His gaze touched Wei Zhiyuan’s body and immediately slid away, concentrating as hard as possible on Wei Zhiyuan’s nose. “I’ll have Xiao Fei make arrangements on Xiao Bao’s side. You should also go out less for the next two days. I’ve run into some trouble on my end. What happened today implicated…”

Before he could finish, Wei Zhiyuan suddenly interrupted him. “Actually, today I was especially happy.”

Wei Qian fell silent. Instinctively, he knew what Wei Zhiyuan was about to say. Instinctively, he wanted to stop him. But his temples throbbed, and for a moment he could not force out a single word.

Wei Zhiyuan slowly stepped closer to him and braced both hands against the wall behind Wei Qian.

“Ever since I was little, I hoped that one day I’d be able to protect you too,” Wei Zhiyuan said softly. “But you never gave me the chance. Today, after all that time, I finally managed to grab one.”

Wei Qian’s throat bobbed slightly, almost imperceptibly, yet because his eyelids were lowered, his expression looked as though it had not changed in the slightest.

Wei Qian said coldly, “You’re seriously sick.”

Wei Zhiyuan smiled bitterly, looking somewhat melancholy. “Xiong-ge said I should examine myself three times a day, and before sleeping every night I should stand facing the wall and go over all the thoughts, large and small, that passed through my head that day. For a period of time, I was making a single-player disaster game with a few friends. Back then, there was one thought I could never get out of my head. I hoped a huge earthquake would suddenly come, that the brick-and-earth framework would all collapse and bury the whole city, and then I could use this body of flesh and bone to撑开 one opening for you, let you watch me be crushed to pieces in your arms.”

He stared into Wei Qian’s eyes. The hands braced against the wall slowly slid down and lightly came to rest against Wei Qian’s body. “But later I analyzed it and realized that the reason I had that thought was purely because I hated you. It was a roundabout way of fantasizing about revenge on you, a typical loser’s way of thinking. So after that, I started making myself stop thinking in that direction, though once in a while it still comes out once or twice…”

He drew closer and closer to Wei Qian. After gently closing his eyes for a moment, he revealed a childlike smile. “Just once. I’ve got so many wounds all over me, my skin is practically ripped cloth. If you’ve got the guts, then hit me.”

Wei Qian: “…”

Wei Zhiyuan’s smile grew even brighter. “That’s right, Ge. I’m threatening you.”

Yet even while saying that, in the end he still behaved properly and did not do anything outrageous. He only kissed the space between Wei Qian’s brows with extreme gentleness and care, as lightly as a dragonfly touching the water. After lingering for a brief moment, he pulled away.

Then he let go and stepped back. “Fuck, I’m so happy. Even if you beat me to death, it’d still be worth it.”

Wei Qian had absolutely no idea why he was standing here like a wooden post, listening to this lunatic spout nonsense, and even less did he know why he had not hit him, why he had not shoved him away, why he was still standing there like a dumb goose at attention, letting him act as wildly as he pleased.

Wei Zhiyuan’s eyes, Wei Zhiyuan’s voice, San Pang’s parting words of “take care of yourselves,” all of it twisted together inside Wei Qian’s head into one big lump of paste.

In the end, expressionless, Wei Qian turned left, walked back into the room without saying a word, and slammed the door shut with a bang.

From that day on, Wei Zhiyuan clung to Wei Qian no matter what. Every day he absolutely insisted on going to work with him. Wherever Wei Qian went, he followed. In the daytime, Xiao Fei set up another desk for him in Wei Qian’s office, and he would wear headphones and do his own work there. At night, if there was a business dinner, he tagged along to freeload a meal. If there was not, then they went home together. It got to the point where for all twenty-four hours in a day, so long as Wei Qian had not closed his eyes, he could see this thing every single moment.

A few days later, Song Xiaobao came back, escorted by Alex and a retired female special police officer whom Xiao Fei had found to help.

Wei Qian had no choice but to go with Wei Zhiyuan to pick her up.

It was Alex’s first time seeing Wei Qian. The whole way there, he stared at him the whole way and was practically drooling. In the end, Wei Zhiyuan could not bear it any longer and stepped in to block his line of sight, shooting him a warning look.

Alex secretly whispered in Xiao Bao’s ear, “So stingy. I’m only looking.”

Song Xiaobao stretched out her thin high heel and viciously ground it down on his foot. “Have. Some. Fucking. Shame.”

Alex’s face was thick as a city wall, so he did not care in the slightest. If he was not allowed to look at that one, then he looked at something else. He shifted his gaze to Wei Zhiyuan and practically licked every line of muscle on Wei Zhiyuan’s body through his clothes with his eyes. After he was done licking and smacked his lips, he gave Song Xiaobao a critical, disdainful look and went back to whispering in her ear. “Actually, you’re the one who got picked up off the street, right?”

Song Xiaobao had truly had enough of this bastard and was just about ready to beat him on the spot for three hundred rounds. But right then, Alex, a professional punching bag who never fought back, suddenly raised one hand and effortlessly pressed her down. At the same time, his expression turned serious. “Wait, stop messing around.”

As he said that, Alex suddenly whipped his head around. It seemed as though a figure had flashed by in the distance. By the time they walked over to look, the person had already run off.

“Someone’s been following us this whole while,” Wei Qian said. “I’m almost used to it.”

“It’s not that someone’s following you,” Alex said. “I think this person may have been secretly taking pictures of you.”

Alex might have been a complete bastard, but he really was a top model through and through. In recent years he had even gotten one foot into the film and television industry. Even someone like Wei Qian, who did not watch television, found his face familiar. Dealing with paparazzi had practically become part of his daily life, so he was especially sensitive to hidden cameras.

He had hit the nail on the head.

It was hard to know whether the other party realized they had been noticed, but the next day, Wei Qian received a package in his office, a thick stack of photographs. Some of them were fairly clear, while some were much blurrier.

And the blurrier the photographs were, the more ambiguous the content looked. One in particular seemed to have been taken from outside the window at a long distance. At the time, Wei Zhiyuan had only said a couple of words to him and lightly pecked his forehead, but in the picture it looked as though Wei Zhiyuan had pinned him against the wall and was kissing him.

Wei Zhiyuan immediately walked over. “Was it sent by one of those people under that Wang whatever-his-name-is?”

Frowning tightly, he picked up the most outrageous photo. “Sorry. My oversight.”

Entrepreneurs and political figures were not part of the entertainment industry. The whole of society demanded a “sense of corporate social responsibility” from them. Especially the people Wei Qian usually dealt with were local government officials and business partners from major companies. What age group were those people? Shameless old men like President Zhang were few and far between. What would those people think?

As for Wei Zhiyuan’s background, Wei Qian had always explained very little to others. He only said he was his younger brother, same as Xiao Bao. Who would know they were not blood-related?

In an era where homosexuality itself was still something shameful to bring into daylight… brothers in an incestuous relationship?

This had gone too far.

“You don’t need to worry. I’ll shoulder this matter.” Wei Zhiyuan calmed himself and, in an instant, several flawless plans ran through his mind, ways to take everything onto himself and remove Wei Qian from it completely. Leaving aside the fact that this had been his one-sided wish from the start, and his brother was innocent and had only been forced by him, even if Wei Qian really did… he still intended to spend his whole life doing everything in his power to make sure his brother never had to deal with even the slightest bit of trouble again.

Just then, the phone on Wei Qian’s desk rang.

Wei Qian raised a hand to stop Wei Zhiyuan from continuing and picked it up.

The other person began speaking in a slow drawl. “Chairman Wei, getting a chance to say a few words to you is really difficult.”