Bro | Chapter 63

Have I really… been letting you down all this time? Wei Qian thought to himself.

But aside from that night, when Wei Zhiyuan had been pushed into a panic by him and let slip a few scattered traces of anger, Wei Qian could not remember him ever expressing even the slightest bit of negative emotion.

Wei Zhiyuan took the pillow out of Wei Qian’s hands and turned to put it back on Ma Chunming’s hospital bed, saying lightly, “My Ge isn’t that kind of person.”

Ma Chunming and Wei Qian asked in unison, “How do you know?”

The instant Wei Qian said it, he regretted it, and glared fiercely at the utterly baffled Ma Chunming.

Wei Zhiyuan just smiled. “Heartless, ungrateful people have that kind of face. They don’t look likable.”

Because Ma Chunming was such a loose-screw sort of person, with big eyes that leaked all the light out, he completely failed to notice that Wei Qian’s ears had turned red after hearing that. He still went on asking Wei Zhiyuan, stupid and innocent as ever, “Really?”

After saying that, he carefully recalled what his wife looked like. He only felt that she was quite pretty. Painful as it was to think of her, he still could not see where exactly she had the kind of face that was “unlikable.”

Ma Chunming asked Wei Zhiyuan very seriously, “Can you read faces? Can you read mine for me? Am I just destined to have no luck in marriage for this whole life?”

But Wei Zhiyuan had caught sight of Wei Qian’s expression, and the smile in his eyes deepened. With complete sincerity, he conned, no, comforted Dr. Ma. “No. Your luck just came late. Before, you were too impatient, so what you ran into were rotten peach blossoms. Your red phoenix star still hasn’t moved into the proper palace.”

“What?” Ma Chunming said incredulously. “I’m already in my thirties, pushing forty, and it still hasn’t reached the proper palace? That star’s orbital speed is way too slow.”

Wei Qian cut in coolly, “That’s because you draw too many turtles.”

Hearing that, Ma Chunming straightened his back like he was facing a great enemy. Then, with one of the only flashes of wit in his entire life, he came out with one of the only decent replies he had ever managed. “Makes sense. You like drawing turtles too, and you’re still single.”

Wei Qian: “…”

He sincerely wanted to go insane and silence Dr. Ma forever, but before he could put that into practice, there were new visitors to the hospital room. Xiao Fei and Ma Chunming’s assistant had come on behalf of their coworkers to see him.

Ma Chunming’s assistant was a little girl who had joined the company less than two years ago. Everyone called her Mengmeng. Big eyes, straight bangs, two dimples when she smiled. She was a little oddball too, carrying a battered notebook around all day like some little eunuch in charge of daily records. If you told her to take meeting minutes, she could stenograph every single word even after the meeting was over, right down to the idle bickering and bullshit people traded afterward.

That tiny meeting notebook could truly be said to be packed with all kinds of black history from the company executives…

The two girls had brought bags upon bags of gifts too.

Wei Zhiyuan quickly went out to help them carry things in. He set a big carton of milk at Ma Chunming’s bedside, with fresh fruit and snacks stacked on top of it, making it look like they had come to the hospital for a picnic.

Mengmeng said sweetly, “We picked high-calcium milk. It’s good for President Ma’s leg.”

Big Xiao Fei-jie added, “Right, and it’ll also help adults get weaned faster.”

Wei Qian knew that these newly hired kids like Mengmeng were all a little afraid of him, so he did not stay long. He turned and called for Wei Zhiyuan to leave. The two of them came out of the inpatient building and went downstairs. At the threshold, Wei Qian naturally steadied Wei Zhiyuan a little at the waist, using that intimate gesture to remind him to watch his step.

Wei Zhiyuan slammed on the brakes and turned his head back in disbelief.

Whenever Wei Qian was with him, he was always at first-level combat readiness, as if in his eyes, he had gone from a Transformer who could be casually grabbed by the back of the neck and slammed into the mud without dying, to a delicate Lin Daiyu who could sink into depression and die from a single look or one sentence.

Every time Wei Zhiyuan touched Wei Qian, he felt as if his gege were some almost-martyr sitting beside a mercury-rod bomb, tense all over, yet enduring it righteously without running away.

Seeing him look back, Wei Qian asked as if nothing had happened, “What’s wrong?”

Wei Zhiyuan did not want to waste even a second. He grabbed Wei Qian’s hand and dragged him running into the parking lot, then stuffed him into the car.

Wei Qian had been hauled along by force and winded himself swallowing a bellyful of cold air, which would have been one thing, but the key issue was that the way the two of them had sprinted all the way from the hospital entrance really looked like they had just escaped from psychiatry.

He coughed a few times and demanded between breaths, “Is there a place in the car for reincarnation?”

In the tone of someone who had just won five million and still felt like he was dreaming, Wei Zhiyuan said, “Did you… did you just put your arm around me?”

Wei Qian: “…”

He truly had not meant it that way. It was just that once one person’s attention began settling on another, and he was also trying his hardest to express a little tenderness in a roundabout way, those sorts of gestures came out unconsciously.

But Wei Qian could hear the delight and excitement in Wei Zhiyuan’s voice, and of course he also tacitly understood why he was so excited.

Looking back, when he had been around Wei Zhiyuan’s age, could he have been like him, so unshaken by favor or disgrace, so stubbornly unrepentant, for the sake of one person or one thing?

Wei Qian felt that he could not.

So he allowed Wei Zhiyuan to keep this tiny misunderstanding going. He did not explain. He only adjusted his seat back a little like some pampered old master and shot the person beside him a sidelong glance. “What, do I have to pay to put an arm around you? Even the raisin seller at the door lets you sample two before buying.”

Wei Zhiyuan stared at him with a blazing gaze like a high-temperature oven. “Eat as much as you want. Eat as much as you like.”

Wei Qian had always believed that deep down, he was not exactly a proper person, because birds of a feather flock together, and all you had to do was look at the bunch around him to know that. But he could never handle Wei Zhiyuan’s endless moves. If flirting with respectable women had ranks, then after going off to that depraved old capitalist overseas society and getting thoroughly steeped in luxury, this brat had clearly reached professional ninth dan.

Then immediately afterward, he felt there was something wrong with that thought.

What kind of logic is there in flirting with your own gege as though he were some respectable woman? Wei Qian thought, utterly baffled. Damn it, I raised this shameless little bastard through so much hardship. What the hell did all those books even put into his head?

Because Wei Zhiyuan kept harassing him the whole way with blatant, naked stares, Wei Qian had no choice but to manually push his face toward the other side every time they stopped at a red light.

At last, after a nerve-wracking drive all the way home, Wei Qian said irritably, “If you do that again, you can get in the back. Even elementary school kids know not to distract the driver for traffic safety…”

Wei Zhiyuan said aggrievedly, “But I didn’t even say anything. Can’t I even look?”

Wei Qian was left speechless for a moment. Then he sighed, raised a hand, and brushed it lightly against Wei Zhiyuan’s chin, speaking in the gentlest voice he had. “Let me try first, okay?”

After half a lifetime of being battered about, he had never once tried loving someone. He did not even know where to begin, much less what pace to follow or how to weigh the steps.

Wei Zhiyuan caught his hand in one grab. “If there are a hundred steps, then with just those words from you, I’d crawl the remaining ninety-nine if I had to… Ge, actually I’m way cheaper than Dr. Ma.”

Wei Qian suddenly let all his previous expressions fade. His gaze sank. In the same way he had once asked little Yuan, who at the time had only reached his waist, he now asked that same question again many years later.

“Has gege not treated you well?”

And after so many years, the little boy who had only known how to shake his head had grown up, and learned to speak.

This time, Wei Zhiyuan rubbed at his fingertips and said softly, “There’s never been a second person in this world who loved me like you do.”

There was neither joy nor anger on Wei Qian’s face. He just listened to that sentence and quietly asked in return, “Then I’ve cherished you for all these years just so you could act cheap?”

After saying that, he drew his hand back, curled a finger, and flicked Wei Zhiyuan hard on the forehead. Hearing the dull thock, he gave his evaluation. “This watermelon’s overripe.”

Then he undid his seat belt and got out of the car.

Wei Zhiyuan sat there dazed for a long while before finally catching all the twists and hidden turns in that sentence, and all at once his nose stung.

Dinner came together very quickly. Alex was going out of town for work, and Xiao Bao had originally agreed to go out and eat with him, but who knew, just as the evening news had started, she pushed the door open and came back in.

Wei Zhiyuan served her a bowl of preserved egg and lean pork congee and casually asked, “How’d you leave your friend by himself?”

Xiao Bao snorted angrily. “We passed by the entrance to bar street, and before we even went in, he got lured away by some foreign guy talking in a language I couldn’t understand.”

At that, Wei Qian rather unexpectedly put down his teacup. “What? I saw the two of you getting pretty close. I thought he was your boyfriend.”

Xiao Bao jumped three feet into the air. “Objection! Ge, that is a tremendous insult to both my character and my intelligence!”

“Oh, give me a break. Which of those two things do you even have?” Wei Qian shot her a look, then relaxed and muttered, “It’s better if he isn’t. I thought that young man looked flighty and unreliable too.”

“More than unreliable, he’s practically…” Before Song Xiaobao could finish, her phone rang.

On the other end, Alex, sounding a little drunk, asked, “Lili, did I leave something in your bag?”

He never carried a bag when he went out. Usually he just kept his phone and money in his pockets. If there was anything else, he stuffed it into Xiao Bao’s bag.

As Xiao Bao reached for the bag she had tossed on the sofa, she asked, “What is it?”

Alex said vaguely, “Ah… that. Anyway, just take a look for me.”

At that point Wei Qian’s attention had originally already shifted to the TV. Then suddenly, a high-pitched scream exploded by his ear like a thunderclap. He heard Xiao Bao let out an “Aoo!” and roar into the phone, “You cheap slutty A, shameless bastard, fuck your uncle, you actually dared shove condoms and lube into my bag!”

Without warning, Wei Qian sucked in a mouthful of hot water the wrong way and immediately started coughing his lungs out.

Only then did Xiao Bao realize what exactly she had just shouted right under her eldest brother’s nose. She instantly felt like a total idiot and could only end that shameless call in a huff. “Go buy another set yourself. I’m not delivering it for you. How does your manager even put up with you? If it were me, I’d have skinned you and boiled you by now.”

Before she hung up, Wei Qian could still hear Alex’s arrogant laughter through the phone, mixed with one line. “I could switch careers and go be an accountant for a cat food factory. The boss of that cat food factory contacted me again last time!”

Mortified to death, Song Xiaobao wanted to get rid of those certain items right there under the watchful eyes of her two gege. But Wei Zhiyuan had been staring blankly at the little unopened box and little bottle on the table the whole time. Right before she grabbed them up to throw them in the trash, absentminded Wei Zhiyuan could not help speaking up. “Hey, that…”

Before he could finish, he came back to his senses and immediately regretted it. Under the table, the string of beads on his wrist spun like a top, so fast it was nearly a blur. He was ashamed that lust had defeated him so easily.

Even more awkwardly, after hearing that, Xiao Bao seemed to “understand” something. She hesitated, then slowly put back what she had been about to throw away. Then she pressed her lips together and carefully nudged the items toward Wei Zhiyuan.

Song Xiaobao picked up her bowl of congee and, standing straight where she was, drank it down in two gulps with the spirit of Wu Song taking on a tiger after three bowls at the ridge. She very nearly choked to death. Then she pressed herself to the wall, scampered into the kitchen in a flurry of limbs to wash the bowls and chopsticks, and scampered back along the wall in tiny quick steps, never once lifting her head, before silently retreating to her room.

With that whole sequence of body language, she was saying without a sound that silence now said everything. Do as you please. Just pretend I’m not here.

That left Wei Zhiyuan and Wei Qian staring at each other. On the table between them sat those two tiny but overwhelmingly conspicuous items. On the television, the opening music for the weather forecast drifted along leisurely…

After quite a while, Wei Qian quickly looked away and pretended he had seen nothing at all. He began seriously studying the evening paper’s sudoku and riddle page, and even seemed to develop a sudden interest in some brain-dead little deduction game.

After a brutal round of internal struggle, and despite the prayer beads on his wrist spinning like a propeller, Wei Zhiyuan still could not stop his thoughts from galloping off in an indecent direction. So, without anyone noticing, he quietly pocketed the things on the table.

Wei Qian felt so uncomfortable sitting in the living room that it was like sitting on pins and needles. Before long, he found an excuse and went back to his room.

He sat upright before his desk and opened the computer with a grave expression. Then he opened the browser, hesitated for a moment, and finally typed into Baidu’s search bar with perfect seriousness a gloriously embarrassing question: “How do you find gay porn?”

After that, like he was doing market research, Wei Qian began analyzing all sorts of huge and chaotic information. But most of the online links he found had already been blocked, and obvious porn sites or unknown download links all looked like they would be full of viruses, so he did not really dare to click into them.

So in the end, Wei Qian, who had originally not even known what “bad thing” he wanted to do, spent the whole evening solemnly wrestling with the major search engines over this issue.

Who knew that before he could get anywhere with it, his door would suddenly be twisted open from the outside.

Wei Qian’s hand jerked. He hurriedly tried to close the search page, but somehow, no one knew what he had accidentally clicked. A strange sound immediately burst from the speakers, and every hair on his body stood on end.

Standing in the doorway, Wei Zhiyuan blankly raised the apple and fruit knife in his hands. “I just wanted to ask whether you wanted to eat…”

Wei Qian: “…”

What he felt most wronged about, of course, was that there was clearly nothing on the screen at all. That noise just now had simply been the background audio when that rotten site opened!

Wei Zhiyuan stood in the doorway for a few seconds, thinking over whether to be a sage or an ordinary mortal. In the blink of an eye, the little sage was beaten into a pile of scraps by the little mortal. He decisively threw down both the fruit knife and the apple, slipped sideways into Wei Qian’s room, and locked the door behind him.

With one click, it felt as though a string had snapped taut in the room, one that could break at any second, so tense it was nearly suffocating.

But then, the suffocating string loosened. Wei Zhiyuan caught sight of the search results filling Wei Qian’s screen and the grievance written all over the face of a man who had no way to explain himself. He instantly lost it and laughed so hard he practically slid from the desk to the floor, until Wei Qian kicked him out from under it. “What the hell are you laughing at?”

Leaning against the desk leg, Wei Zhiyuan sat on the floor and rubbed at the tears in the corners of his eyes from laughing. “Ge, I’ve got two gigs on my portable hard drive. The password is the full pinyin of your name. Want it? I’ll copy it all over for you.”

That sentence did not contain many words in total, but Wei Qian felt that he could find several different reasons in it to beat Wei Zhiyuan half to death. Yet once all those reasons piled together, they somehow produced the goddamn result of two negatives making a positive. An image rose uncontrollably in Wei Qian’s head: Wei Zhiyuan sitting alone in his room, typing out the full pinyin of his name, and then…

“Ge.”

While he was still drowning in chaos, Wei Zhiyuan had already stopped laughing at some point. He tentatively caught hold of Wei Qian’s ankle, easily rolled up the thin layer of pant leg, and laid a hand on Wei Qian’s leg.

Meeting Wei Qian’s gaze, Wei Zhiyuan said softly, “You’d still have to wait for me to go get a movie. Do you want the live version right now?”

As he spoke, he cupped Wei Qian’s bare foot and slowly rubbed against the side of it. Then he suddenly lowered his head and lightly kissed the top of Wei Qian’s foot.

Wei Qian jerked his foot back as though electrocuted. “Xiao Yuan!”

Taking advantage of that, Wei Zhiyuan stood up and braced both hands on the arms of Wei Qian’s chair, looking down at him from above. “Qian’er, do you want to try?”

The mild scent of body wash drifted from him. He raised a hand to shut Wei Qian’s computer, adjusted the desk lamp to its dimmest setting, and gently opened Wei Qian’s collar. “If you don’t want to, then kick me away like you just did, okay?”

In the dim light, Wei Qian’s expression was hard to read.

Wei Zhiyuan’s movements were extremely gentle, even though sweat had already beaded at his temples in the dead of winter.

He had already discovered it. For certain reasons, his gege was extremely resistant to overly intimate relationships and to skin-to-skin contact. He did not want to think too deeply about those “certain reasons,” but he could guess a little.

He did not want Wei Qian to feel uncomfortable, so he had been doing his best to hold himself back.

His entire ten-zhang world of soft red dust was now in the palm of his hand, and all airy clarity and meditative serenity had scattered into ash. He only wanted to drown himself in it.

Wei Qian called his name in a low voice. “Xiao Yuan.”

As if he had suddenly gone mad, Wei Zhiyuan yanked him up in one pull, then wrapped both arms around his waist and sent both himself and Wei Qian crashing down onto the bed.

The soft bed let out a hoarse, squeaking cry.

A gate that had been shut to him twenty years ago opened completely. Wei Qian closed his eyes and felt as though he could hear water murmuring past like a river.

It seemed to him that something inside him was slowly slipping away in that whirlpool of desire, while a fresh current flared again through blood vessels that had long been still.

If there had not been Wei Zhiyuan…

Then in his whole life, he would never have learned to be as playfully detached as Alex. At the very least, beat him to death and he still would not have been able to throw aside his own company and turn around to go work as an accountant for a cat food factory.

He also could not have learned to be like Ma Chunming, simply doing what he liked with that kind of straightforward sincerity. He did not even have a formed ideal, one he could clearly put into words.

Material abundance would hollow out his spirit. In a few years, Xiao Bao might become famous, or might get married. No matter which road she took, she would gradually leave him…

And then there would no longer be anyone who needed him to go without sleep, carrying heavy responsibility on his back, and working himself to the bone like a workaholic.

That had originally been his ending.

“Fuck, that hurts!” Wei Qian could not help cursing out loud, his voice gone off-key. “Can you be gentler? Are you butchering a pig?”

…But now, that probably was not his ending anymore.