TA •Chapter 92

Chapter 92

Cheng Ke felt that all the good mood of the day had been ruined by that second non-hallucination that had appeared twice, but he really could not figure out who else would be following Jiang Yuduo.

It should not be Cheng Yi anymore. That trick had no bite left. Everything he could let his dad know, and everything he could not let his dad know, had already been laid out in front of his dad. Besides, these past few months had been peaceful enough… The moment Jiang Yuduo came back, someone started tailing him, but if you said it was an enemy, that really did not seem very likely either…

But after Jiang Yuduo reached a conclusion, he did not seem to keep thinking about it. As long as it was not a hallucination, that was a happy thing for him. He was not too affected and kept playing on his phone, which was fully charged.

Cheng Ke teased Miao for a while, yawned, and started feeling sleepy.

"Reading a novel?" He glanced at Jiang Yuduo, who was still staring at his phone.

"No," Jiang Yuduo looked up at him, a little embarrassed. "I… I was looking at local job postings."

Cheng Ke froze. "Looking for work?"

"Mm. I’d been thinking about it while I was in the hospital," Jiang Yuduo said. "Now that I’m back, I want to find something proper to do."

"What kind of work do you want?" Cheng Ke leaned over beside him and glanced at the screen. The listings were mostly for waiters and security guards.

"I don’t know," Jiang Yuduo said. "Right now it’s not about what kind of job I want, it’s about what kind of job will take me."

Cheng Ke smiled. "Then what kind do you think would take you right now?"

"Just these, probably. But even security guards and waiters need a middle school education. And that’s for kind of crappy little shops," Jiang Yuduo said. "I don’t even have a kindergarten diploma."

When he said that, both his voice and his eyes were full of obvious disappointment.

"Why don’t you try our shop?" Cheng Ke said. "Our waitresses are all girls anyway, hiring a handsome guy would be nice too."

"No," Jiang Yuduo refused immediately. "I’m still taking medicine. I don’t want to… cause you trouble. If something does happen, I should go ruin someone else’s shop instead."

Cheng Ke felt bad for him, and his heart ached, but he still found it funny and laughed for a long time.

Jiang Yuduo laughed along with him for a bit, then lowered his head and kept looking at his phone.

Cheng Ke looked at him in silence for a long while. In the end, he nudged his shoulder with his foot. "Third Brother, I’m going to point you to a bright road."

"Point away," Jiang Yuduo said.

"Open your own shop," Cheng Ke said.

"Open a shop?" Jiang Yuduo turned to look at him. "I thought about that too, but… I don’t have enough money."

Cheng Ke had actually always assumed Jiang Yuduo did not have any money at all. He had not expected him to say not enough, instead of none.

"How much do you have?" Cheng Ke asked.

"Sixty to seventy thousand, I guess," Jiang Yuduo thought about it. "Not enough to open a shop. Enough to set up a street stall, though."

"Open a milk tea shop," Cheng Ke said. "Don’t you like drinking it?"

"…Still not enough money," Jiang Yuduo said.

"Cheng Yi can invest in you," Cheng Ke said.

"What?" Jiang Yuduo’s voice shot up several notches, and his brows knitted tightly. "Are you…"

Cheng Ke looked at him and said nothing.

"There’s still money on that card?" Jiang Yuduo realized after a few seconds of staring him down.

"Obviously. You think a bunch of people like Chen Qing ordering a cup of orange juice each at the bar could have spent a million that fast?" Cheng Ke laughed.

"Oh." Jiang Yuduo gave a short reply.

Then he did not continue.

Cheng Ke waited a bit longer, then pinched his face. "What’s wrong? I said Cheng Yi would invest, that was just a joke. The money is in my hands now, of course it’s the useless young master investing for you."

"I don’t want to…" Jiang Yuduo looked at him, hesitating. "Wouldn’t that be the same as you raising me?"

"…Fuck," Cheng Ke laughed. "Raising you? Dream on. I’m just putting in some money. I get a share."

Jiang Yuduo clicked his tongue.

Cheng Ke flicked his nose. "It’s only you. For someone as smart as me, if it were anyone else, I’d just put up the money to open a shop, then you come work for me…"

"Okay." Jiang Yuduo cut in immediately.

"Huh?" Cheng Ke froze.

"You open the shop, I’ll work for you," Jiang Yuduo said. "That works."

"Then aren’t we just back where we started? Didn’t you say you wanted to go ruin someone else’s shop?" Cheng Ke said. "That’s why I said I’d invest in you. You’d count as half the boss, and you’d ruin your own place."

Jiang Yuduo fell silent and thought about it.

"Go to sleep first," Cheng Ke said, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. "Think it over slowly. Tomorrow I have to go to the shop and report on the inspection results."

"What the hell are you even going to report?" Jiang Yuduo stood up.

"You’re underestimating me," Cheng Ke said, getting up and stretching. "I’ve been writing whenever I wasn’t at the hospital these past few days."

"…You mean making it up, right? For Xu Ding to look at, or for the people at the shop?" Jiang Yuduo asked.

"What the hell would I be making up for? It’s not for anyone to see. I was just writing a plan. I’ll explain it to them tomorrow," Cheng Ke said. "For the inspection, just play dead… Are you coming to check it out tomorrow? The table and chairs you helped make, you still haven’t properly experienced the ass-feel, have you?"

"What is ass-feel…?" Jiang Yuduo said, then understood. "Oh, I get it. But right now my ass-feel is just not very comfortable, so I probably won’t be able to appreciate anything else."

"Get lost." Cheng Ke turned and went into the bedroom.

"Cheng Ke," Jiang Yuduo quickly followed behind him. "You…"

"We’re just sleeping tonight. No other work," Cheng Ke answered quickly.

"I know, I wasn’t planning to do anything!" Jiang Yuduo said.

At last, Cheng Ke heard a trace of embarrassment in his tone. He could not help looking back at him. "Good boy."

Jiang Yuduo really was very well-behaved. Maybe he was tired, or maybe he was just relaxed, but he fell asleep very quickly. Cheng Ke was still playing on his phone when Jiang Yuduo had already fallen asleep face-down on the pillow.

When Cheng Ke lay down, he could not resist being a little hands-on. He very carefully pinched one of Jiang Yuduo’s eyelashes and tugged it, but Jiang Yuduo did not move at all.

"Good night," Cheng Ke said softly.

It had been a long time since he had said those two words to Jiang Yuduo. Hearing himself say them now, he felt a wave of emotion. Everything from the past few months surged up all at once.

Jiang Yuduo shifted and mumbled groggily, "…Good night."

Everything in the shop was as usual. When Cheng Ke went in, he found that there were a few more potted plants in the shop. One glance was enough to tell they had not been bought by them. If they had bought them themselves, they would not have chosen pots like that. Too expensive. Wasteful.

"Where did these come from?" Cheng Ke asked.

"Brother Xu said they were sent by a backer," Huihui said.

"…Xu Ding’s backer?" Cheng Ke found that hard to imagine.

"Don’t know," Huihui said with a laugh. "That’s just what he said."

"He probably managed to get some money from somewhere," Cheng Ke said. "Didn’t he say before that this place was too small? I’ll ask him later."

When introducing Jiang Yuduo to the shop staff, he had really wanted to say this is my boyfriend, but seeing that Jiang Yuduo seemed a little nervous, he only said he was a buddy, then took Jiang Yuduo up to the third floor.

"Usually only the first floor has people in the morning. Upstairs is empty," he said to Jiang Yuduo as they went up.

"Mm," Jiang Yuduo followed behind him. "I was a little nervous just now, but I didn’t even know what I was nervous about."

"It’s fine," Cheng Ke said, turning back to touch his face. "You’ll get used to it slowly. I’ll have a little meeting with them later. Want to hang out on the third floor for a bit?"

"I’ll stay on that terrace," Jiang Yuduo said. "Feel the ass-feel for a while."

"Okay." Cheng Ke smiled.

After a short meeting with the employees, Cheng Ke went upstairs while making a call to Xu Ding. "Where did you find some backer? If you wanted to invest yourself, couldn’t you just do it? Did you really need to find someone else?"

"The backer found me, but right now he doesn’t plan to put in money," Xu Ding said with a smile. "If you have time, you can look around for a suitable place. If things go smoothly on this side, I want to do another one. What do you think?"

"I don’t have any objections. You can decide all that yourself," Cheng Ke said.

"Did the inspection go smoothly?" Xu Ding asked.

"Pretty smoothly," Cheng Ke said. "Come out for a meal when you have time."

"Mm, bring Old Three along too," Xu Ding said.

"Okay," Cheng Ke hesitated for a moment. "I’ll ask him."

Jiang Yuduo was sitting on the terrace chair, looking at his phone. When he heard Cheng Ke speaking, he looked up. "You’re inviting Xu Ding to dinner?"

"He wants you to come too. Are you going?" Cheng Ke sat down and glanced at Jiang Yuduo’s phone lying on the table, which had not yet gone dark.

Just one look and he saw several red-marked entries with "milk tea shop". He smiled.

"If you want me to go, I’ll go," Jiang Yuduo locked his phone. "What are you smiling at?"

"Made up your mind yet?" Cheng Ke asked.

"…I looked into it, and it’s not very difficult. The main thing is location," Jiang Yuduo said. "Our place gets cold in winter. If it isn’t inside a mall, winter business won’t be much. But opening in a mall means high costs, and it’s not like you can just get in if you want to."

Cheng Ke was actually a little surprised. Jiang Yuduo was much more careful and thoughtful than he had imagined.

"Getting into a mall isn’t a big problem," Cheng Ke said. "You can ask Xu Ding for help. He counts as your friend, and he has quite a few connections with malls."

Jiang Yuduo looked at him. After a moment, he smiled. "I never thought Xu Ding was my friend."

"Third Brother, at times like this, what friend means isn’t defined the way you think…" Cheng Ke tried to explain.

"I know," Jiang Yuduo interrupted, lighting a cigarette. "I just never thought that one day I’d be able to call someone like Xu Ding my friend."

"If you put it that way…" Cheng Ke took a cigarette from him. "There are plenty of things you never thought about."

"Mm. I never thought I’d know someone like you either, or have a boyfriend like you… no, I never thought I’d end up with a boyfriend at all… fuck," Jiang Yuduo frowned. "I really never thought about that, not even when I was beaten to mush…"

"You can leave if you regret it," Cheng Ke said with a cigarette between his teeth, narrowing his eyes. "It’s not like you’ve never left before. Look, I haven’t even lost any weight."

"Idiot," Jiang Yuduo laughed at him. "How long are you going to hold a grudge for?"

"Ten or twenty years, I guess," Cheng Ke said.

"Can it really last that long?" Jiang Yuduo looked at him.

"I’m especially good at holding grudges over some things. As long as you’re still hanging around in front of me, I can remember this grudge forever," Cheng Ke said.

"Really?" Jiang Yuduo asked.

"Mm." Cheng Ke nodded solemnly.

"That’s great," Jiang Yuduo said with a smile.

After carefully analyzing the pros and cons of finding a job versus opening a shop, Jiang Yuduo chose to open a shop, and even pulled Chen Qing in to work as an employee. But he could not decide between opening a milk tea shop or a fried chicken shop.

Cheng Ke had originally wanted to remind him that the two did not conflict, that a milk tea shop could also sell fried chicken, but in order to let Jiang Yuduo fully enjoy the happiness of making the decision himself, he did not say anything.

After wracking his brains for a whole day, he finally made up his mind.

"I’ve decided," Jiang Yuduo slapped the table. "We’ll sell both!"

"Good." Cheng Ke applauded.

"Isn’t that creative?" Jiang Yuduo looked pleased with himself.

"Very imaginative." Cheng Ke kept applauding.

Jiang Yuduo happily picked up his phone and called Chen Qing.

A minute later, he walked back into the living room in a somewhat depressed mood. "Fuck."

"Mm? What’s wrong?" Cheng Ke looked at him.

"Am I possessed or something?" Jiang Yuduo pointed at the window. "That place over there, the one where I bought milk tea for you. That shop only sells fried chicken, and it also sells what the hell, takoyaki and oden."

"Oh? Really?" Cheng Ke had been trying to hold it in, but he really could not, and burst out laughing as soon as he finished speaking. "Sorry, I’m not laughing at you."

"Then who the hell are you laughing at?" Jiang Yuduo glared at him. "I’ve been thinking about this for two days, and you just stand there watching the joke!"

"But this was something you came up with yourself, right? Not copied from anyone else," Cheng Ke said between laughs.

"This is about the same as me coming up with the idea that people need to wear pants when they go out. What’s the point?" Jiang Yuduo said.

Cheng Ke had not been laughing that hard before, but hearing that, he laughed so much he could not sit still and flopped onto the sofa.

"Young master," Jiang Yuduo looked at him. "How old are you, and you’re still bullying people like this?"

"Get lost!" Cheng Ke glared at him. "I’m not even thirty yet."

"When you turn thirty, just wait. I’ll definitely throw you a huge celebration so everyone in this area knows that while you don’t look mature, you’re actually over forty," Jiang Yuduo said.

"I’ll knock you flat tonight," Cheng Ke said viciously.

Jiang Yuduo said nothing. He lowered his head, opened his phone, and looked at it. "It’s not your turn yet."

"Your uncle," Cheng Ke was speechless. He jumped up and tried to grab his phone. "You’re keeping score now?"

"I’m just casually tallying it," Jiang Yuduo dodged quickly and shoved the phone into his pocket. "I’ll total it up at the end of the year…"

"…I’ve run away from home." Cheng Ke opened the door.

"Run away to where?" Jiang Yuduo asked.

"The tobacco and liquor shop at the corner," Cheng Ke said.

"Then have the老板 deliver a case of beer too," Jiang Yuduo said. "The fridge is empty."

"Okay." Cheng Ke nodded and walked out.

Actually, he could have just called and had cigarettes and liquor delivered too. Cheng Ke also wanted to pick up a lottery ticket on the way. He had never played these things before, but Chen Qing bought one every drawing, looking incredibly into it, and had once won as much as two hundred yuan, so Cheng Ke started buying them too, each time using a mix of Jiang Yuduo’s birthday and his own.

The main purpose was not to win money, but to collect the tickets.

Every lottery ticket had him and Jiang Yuduo on it, the dates moving forward one day at a time. He would collect a thousand of them and give them to Jiang Yuduo, or if he could not wait that long, then… three hundred. Anyway, it was pretty interesting.

Jiang Yuduo had never had a sense of security, always afraid that no one would remember him. Maybe these lottery tickets could let him see that the days they had spent together were all real.

Cheng Ke felt that he was truly very imaginative, truly a very considerate boyfriend.

Thinking about the expression Jiang Yuduo would have when he saw a pile of lottery tickets, he could not help smiling at a stranger standing in the stairwell.

But this person’s reaction was a little extreme. The moment he saw Cheng Ke smile, he turned and ran, even colliding with the broken chair that Jiang Yuduo’s grandmother had placed in the stairwell when she was three and a half.

After freezing for half a second, Cheng Ke took off after him. Passing the window, he shouted, "Jiang Yuduo!"

The man ran very fast. Cheng Ke thought he was already pretty quick himself, but this person’s speed felt almost on par with Jiang Yuduo’s.

After only a few steps in pursuit, he had already turned into the narrow alley diagonally across the way.

Cheng Ke had a shadow over this narrow alley. The first time he had seen Jiang Yuduo chase "them," it had been here.

But this person was definitely not one of them, and even less likely to be an ordinary passerby.

As Cheng Ke chased madly after him, he had thought that maybe this was just a thief scouting the area. But he could not miss this chance. Even if there was only a one in ten thousand possibility, he could not let it go.

The man may not have been very familiar with the terrain. He tripped awkwardly on a section of concrete ledge that had already been torn out but still stood a few centimeters high.

Taking advantage of that, Cheng Ke sprinted a few more steps and practically lunged out, grabbing his arm.

"Let go of me!" After the man was tackled to the ground, he threw an elbow back at Cheng Ke’s face.

Cheng Ke still had forward momentum and could not dodge it, but he still kept hold of him and did not let go.

On the second move, the man grabbed Cheng Ke’s wrist. One squeeze, one twist, and he pressed downward.

Cheng Ke instantly felt a wave of numb soreness in his wrist, and the grip slipped free.

But in that instant, Cheng Ke had already judged that this person was not an ordinary thief, nor an ordinary thug!

That familiar, fluid, not quite standard set of moves…

Before Cheng Ke could recover, the man had already sprung up from the ground and kept running forward.

Then a black shadow swept past him with the wind.

Cheng Ke heard Jiang Yuduo’s voice. "He’s a little pup."

"Fuck." Cheng Ke leapt up sharply and stayed right behind Jiang Yuduo.

Jiang Yuduo was much faster than him. He turned out of the alley ahead of Cheng Ke by quite a bit. By the time Cheng Ke rushed over, he saw that Jiang Yuduo had already pinned the man against a wall, one hand gripping his collar, the other holding a nail he had somehow fished out from nowhere, pressing it to the man’s eyelid.

"Jiang Yuduo." Cheng Ke hurriedly called to him in a low voice.

The nail in Jiang Yuduo’s hand moved away. He stared at the man’s face. "Who are you?"

"You don’t recognize me anymore, do you?" The man also looked at him. "But I… don’t recognize you anymore either."

"Who are you." Jiang Yuduo tightened his hand and asked again.

"I’m Little Ant," the man said.

Jiang Yuduo froze.

Author’s Note:

"I’m Little Mantis," said Third Brother.