TA • Chapter 1

“Waste of space!”

Cheng Ke was sitting on the steps by the roadside, bracing himself against the north wind, fishing a cigarette out of his pocket and holding it between his teeth.

That was the last thing he had heard before leaving home. It had probably been his dad, no, his whole family’s final verdict on him.

Waste of space.

Cheng Ke nodded and felt that assessment was pretty fair.

After trying every cigarette-lighting pose he could think of, head bowed, arm hooked across his face, jacket pulled up to block the wind, even turning his back to it, and still failing to get the cigarette in his mouth lit, he tossed the lighter into the roadside bushes.

“Go to hell,” Cheng Ke said.

A waste of space who couldn’t even light a cigarette.

But he still had to light one. After all, for a useless waste of space like him, it had already been two years and he still hadn’t quit smoking, and there was no way he could take the opportunity to quit now.

Cheng Ke looked at the patch of bushes where the lighter had disappeared.

The dead grass was pretty dense.

There were also some unidentified shrubs growing there.

He imagined himself crouching down there, fishing around blind and coming up with some bizarre thing all over his hand…

Cheng Ke looked around. There were actually a lot of people out now, hurrying past in the yellow leaves whipped up by the wind.

He had always had a lot of free time, and he had never experienced this kind of life, where you walked down the street without even having time to glance at someone.

After about five minutes, he finally made eye contact for half a second with a young man who had just tossed away his cigarette butt.

“Hey, man,” Cheng Ke stopped him, “got a light?”

“Oh.” The young man took out his lighter.

Pop.

Click.

Click.

Pop.

The young man pressed the lighter over and over with complete focus, while Cheng Ke quietly held the cigarette in his mouth and waited, holding his breath.

Just as he felt like he was about to suffocate, the lighter’s top flew off with a sharp crack.

Cheng Ke looked up at the young man.

“S-sorry,” the young man said, extremely embarrassed. “It was working fine when I lit my cigarette just now.”

“Thanks for your hard work,” Cheng Ke nodded, inhaled twice, and said, “Thanks.”

The young man hurried away. Cheng Ke put the cigarette back into his pocket.

He also dug around in his pocket a couple more times to make sure there was nothing else in there besides the cigarette pack.

His phone and wallet had both been left at home along with that one word, “waste of space.”

That place he probably would never go back to.

He walked back to the bushes and stood there, peering into them through the dead grass and branches. He didn’t see the lighter he had thrown in earlier, only two wads of tissue.

He turned and headed toward a small convenience store nearby.

Cheng Ke wasn’t even that addicted to smoking, but people were strange like that. If cigarettes and a lighter were right at hand, he could go a whole day without touching them, maybe even. But once he wanted one and couldn’t smoke, it felt like some kind of illness he couldn’t stand.

“Good evening,” the girl at the register greeted him.

“Good evening.” Cheng Ke walked over and took a lighter from the two rows lined up on the counter.

Before the girl had even realized he might be buying one, he had already lit his cigarette, put the lighter back where it had been, and pushed open the door to leave.

Smooth as flowing water.

That was the thickest-skinned move he had ever pulled in his life, and it had gone off without a hitch.

He sat in a metal chair by the street and finished one cigarette. Then Cheng Ke stood up, the cold that had seeped through his butt and into his lower back making him sigh.

He glanced at his watch. It was after nine.

He wasn’t used to wearing a watch. This Jaeger was a gift from Cheng Yi last month, which had surprised him. He had thought maybe it was the beginning of a thaw in their relationship, so he had kept wearing it.

He had never expected an even more surprising event to be waiting for him. A month later, his own father personally threw him out of the house.

And what he had thought before had probably just been an awkward misunderstanding.

How much of this was Cheng Yi’s handiwork, how much blame had been dumped onto him, Cheng Ke had never thought it through in detail, and he didn’t plan to think about it anymore. He hadn’t even asked a single question about what was going on.

Just like his dad had said.

You’re already useless to the point that you don’t even know where to begin asking why?

Ah.

Yes.

He wasn’t interested in business. If they insisted on forcing him to work with Cheng Yi, he felt like all he was doing was running errands for Cheng Yi anyway. He had only put up with being a waste of space for so many years because he wanted to make his dad a little happier.

He really didn’t know where to begin asking. He had just felt surprised.

Compared with what the hell had actually happened, where he was supposed to stay now that he had nothing on him was the more urgent question.

Cheng Ke walked along the road. Liu Tiancheng should be at his place now. It wasn’t exactly close, but if he strolled over, it would take… an hour, maybe.

After walking for a while, the wind picked up, and the people on the street started to thin out. The red lights and bright signs on both sides of the road began to come alive.

A short blast of a horn sounded from behind him.

Cheng Ke didn’t turn around and kept walking. A red sports car drove past him and stopped two or three meters ahead.

It was Cheng Yi’s Maybach.

He had been driving this car a lot lately, to the point that he was practically putting the driver out of a job, so Cheng Ke knew it very well. He didn’t need to hear the engine or look at the license plate. One whiff of the exhaust and he knew. It had that same stifled smell.

The front passenger window rolled down, and Cheng Yi leaned out with half his face visible. “Where are you going?”

“Heaven,” Cheng Ke answered, then kept walking.

“Want a ride?” Cheng Yi said.

“Don’t get too confident,” Cheng Ke stopped. “What if you’re the one going down?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Cheng Yi smiled and handed out a wallet through the window. “Here. You left it at home.”

Cheng Ke said nothing and reached out to take the wallet.

Only the wallet. No phone.

“Your phone’s in the house. I didn’t go in,” Cheng Yi said.

“Oh.” Cheng Ke glanced at him. “So my wallet just wandered out of the house on its own, did it?”

“The wallet was in the jacket you left in the living room,” Cheng Yi said. “If you need anything else, just tell me. I’ll take you back to get it when Dad isn’t home.”

The words sounded considerate enough. Cheng Ke couldn’t help wanting to sneer, but the corners of his mouth only twitched, and he couldn’t manage a smile.

“Just find a hostel and stay there first,” Cheng Yi said, looking at him. His mouth was still curved in a smile, but his eyes had gone a little cold. “Those useless drinking buddies of yours won’t dare take you in now.”

Cheng Ke still said nothing and just looked at him.

“Start over on your own,” Cheng Yi said. “Don’t think you can rely on the family for everything.”

Cheng Ke stayed silent. This time he really had nothing to say. Who in this family, apart from their dad, had ever “started over from scratch”? He couldn’t understand the position Cheng Yi was taking while saying something so serious to him.

“Drive,” Cheng Yi told the driver, then rolled up the window.

Cheng Ke couldn’t quite say what he felt at that moment. He stared blankly in the direction the car had gone for a long time before lowering his head and opening the wallet.

An ID card.

Cheng Ke frowned.

Besides that, there wasn’t another object in there that was the same shape. None of his various free food and drink membership cards, bank cards, or credit cards were inside.

“Damn,” Cheng Ke muttered as he rifled through the inner compartments.

He had only thought Cheng Yi was mocking him when Cheng Yi told him to find a hostel. It wasn’t until he saw the money in the inner pocket that he understood.

Cheng Yi had been telling the truth.

One hundred yuan.

At best, that would only cover a bunk in some cheap hostel on the outskirts.

And besides, he usually didn’t even keep cash in his wallet. That hundred yuan had been put in there by Cheng Yi специально.

Cheng Ke pinched out the red bill and could clearly see his fingers trembling, probably from anger.

He could also feel all the emotions that had been floating around in confusion inside him begin to gather the moment he saw that hundred-yuan note, spreading slowly through his body starting from his fingertips.

He hadn’t felt this kind of rage when his own younger brother had schemed against him, when his own father had kicked him out of the house, when he had been told his friends wouldn’t take him in, or even when his lighter had gone missing just as he wanted a cigarette.

Now, though, this humiliating, victorious little insult had lit it in an instant.

“Fuck!” Cheng Ke swore under his breath, and with a vicious motion, slammed everything in his hand into the trash can beside him.

Whenever he threw something into a trash can, if the distance was more than a meter, he usually had to take a second shot. But from two or three meters away, the wallet flew straight into the bin with accuracy.

Only the hundred-yuan bill drifted down to the ground.

Cheng Ke walked over, picked it up, crushed it in his fist, and threw it in again, hard enough that his arm hurt a little from the swing.

Then he turned and strode off down the road.

He kept walking until he reached the intersection. Only when he saw the green pedestrian signal ahead did Cheng Ke stop.

His original plan had been to go to Liu Tiancheng’s place first, but now that clearly wasn’t happening.

He believed Cheng Yi’s words. If Cheng Yi could personally kick him out of the house, then cutting off his last way back would be nothing to Cheng Yi.

He didn’t have any friends he truly cared about. They were all people he had met while eating, drinking, and having fun, and those kinds of relationships were mostly built on more eating, drinking, and having fun. Someone like him, who didn’t like to go out and play, couldn’t keep even that sort of friendship solid.

So now, as Cheng Yi wished, he probably had nowhere to go.

So…

Cheng Ke stared at the light across the street, which had already turned red, for a long time. In the end, he sighed and turned back the way he had come.

He needed somewhere to stay tonight, and he could think of a way tomorrow.

At least a hundred yuan could handle a small emergency.

He had to go back and get it.

The trash cans were large green square bins.

Two of them, set side by side.

The lids that had been open before had been shut by some unknown good citizen by now.

The bin bodies reflected the neon lights from the bar across the street in a strangely glossy way, making them look unusually distinctive. Even the little white stick figures printed on them looked like they were DJing.

Cheng Ke stood there for a long time without moving.

First, because someone passed by.

Second, because he had never imagined that one day he would be digging through trash, and his inner self was struggling and rolling around on the ground with great intensity.

Third, because he had forgotten whether he had thrown the wallet and the money into the same bin, or into two separate ones.

Damn it.

In the end he chose the one on the left at random. He walked over, carefully hooked a finger under the lid and lifted it, then peered inside.

The trash can wasn’t full, and he couldn’t see clearly what was in it, but as clean as it looked from the outside, it still stank like hell up close.

Cheng Ke raised his left hand, then lowered it. He raised his right hand, then lowered it again.

After repeating those two motions once more, he stopped. He felt his breathing go a little tight, his eyes growing uncomfortably swollen, and he could even count the throbs of the blood vessel at his temple.

The rage that had already been scattered by the thought of digging through the trash can suddenly exploded in that instant and shot straight to the top of his head.

Cheng Ke stepped back and kicked the trash can hard.

The loud thud was incredibly satisfying, and the garbage inside cooperated magnificently, spilling everywhere with a crash.

Broken packaging bags, old newspapers, fast-food boxes dripping with soup, skewers with bits of meat still on them… Cheng Ke was just about to gather his focus and observe from a distance to see whether the wallet and the hundred-yuan bill were in there when something in the mess suddenly shifted. All the hair on his body stood up at once.

Rats, spiders, snakes, the three things he feared most.

A rat?

Before he could retreat in disgust, a shadow suddenly sprang out from the darkness on the other side of the bin. Cheng Ke didn’t even make out what it was before a heavy punch landed squarely on his face.

Oh.

It was a person.

The punch, launched in one flying leap from the trash pile, was very heavy. Cheng Ke, completely caught off guard, took at least three seconds to recover.

From childhood to now, apart from training at the dojo, this was the first time he had been hit in the face with a bare fist, without any protective gear on, and in the middle of the street, no less.

“Are you crazy!” Cheng Ke turned and shouted after he saw the person clearly. That was his first reaction, that he had run into a lunatic.

“Are you the one who’s crazy?” the other man shouted almost at the same time.

The pain on Cheng Ke’s face was only just waking up now. He almost thought the pain was so bad that he had imagined hearing that: “Huh?”

“Who the fuck told you to kick it?” the man glared at him.

“I kicked…” Cheng Ke finally came to his senses, and the rage that had drifted off for a moment immediately returned to his chest. “I fucking kicked your relative by mistake, sorry about that!”

The other man said nothing and simply lifted a leg to kick him.

It was a powerful push kick, but it was obviously some self-taught rough-and-ready style. Since Cheng Ke was already on guard, he avoided it easily, and at the same time threw a left hook into the man’s chin.

The man swayed and came to a stop where he stood.

Not bad, very stable.

Cheng Ke quickly took advantage of the neon lights flashing green to size him up from head to toe.

He was tall, wearing a ski cap pulled low. The lighting kept shifting between green, red, and yellow, so Cheng Ke couldn’t make out his face clearly. All he could see was a scar on the left side of his temple that ran down toward his ear.

Just from that scar, this guy couldn’t be anything decent.

Cheng Ke pulled him out of the crazy category and put him into the thug category.

But after thinking about it, he still felt like he should put him back.

After all, with the weather like this, plenty of people had already started wearing down jackets. This guy only had on a short-sleeved T-shirt.

He looked cold. Cheng Ke almost couldn’t bear to hit him anymore.

But this scar-faced one had absolutely no such mercy. Before Cheng Ke had even finished looking him over, he shifted to the side and kicked. Cheng Ke didn’t dodge. The kick came up high, so he braced it with his arm and shoved the man’s leg aside, then chopped a hand down into the inner side of his thigh.

“Fuck!” he shouted.

“Fuck.” Cheng Ke frowned. Not bad, this guy still hadn’t gone down.

When Scar Face tried to kick again, Cheng Ke pointed at him. “Not done yet, are you? This isn’t your fucking trash can, is it?”

“You’re the one digging through trash, and you still care whose trash can it is?” Scar Face pointed right back. “Then tell me, whose trash can wouldn’t you dig through?”

“Your damn…” The words Cheng Ke ground out through his teeth were so sharp he could feel the edge on them himself.

He had a stomach full of fury with nowhere to put it, and that sentence made it burst open in an instant. He lunged at Scar Face.

Scar Face also threw a punch without any hesitation.

After that, the fight lost all structure. Even though Cheng Ke knew in his head that every technical move he made had gone off course, because he was venting his anger, his hands and feet were still a chaotic mess.

And by then he also realized that he had still underestimated this scar-faced guy. The style was rough, yes, but the strikes were vicious and powerful. Locks, twists, chops, from Cheng Ke’s perspective, not a single move was textbook, but not a single move missed either.

He didn’t know which move lit his fighting spirit, but he used techniques that were on par with Scar Face’s, and in an instant the two of them went from fairly graceful striking to wrestling.

It was only when a string of horns sounded behind him that Cheng Ke suddenly came back to himself.

At this point, he didn’t care whether pedestrians were watching, and he didn’t care whether the police would come. The only thing he cared about was… not letting Cheng Yi see this.

He shoved Scar Face away hard and turned to look.

His heart had tensed up first, then eased only after he saw clearly what it was. A white Range Rover.

Then he felt a sudden wave of disgust. He had actually managed to end up like this in less than two hours?

A person jumped out of the car, holding something that looked like either a metal rod or a wooden stick, and came at him while pointing it. “You fucking looking to die!”

“I’m fucking looking for you,” Cheng Ke said, staring at him.

“Cut the crap,” Scar Face said coldly from the side. “My coat.”

“Oh.” The man with the stick glared at Cheng Ke two more times, then reached back through the car window and snatched out a jacket, throwing it to Scar Face. “What’s going on here? I’ll call a few people…”

“Go get the cat out,” Scar Face cut him off, turning to look at the trash can. “Fuck!”

Cheng Ke followed his gaze and immediately felt a wave of nausea. He whipped off his own jacket and shook it furiously.

That overturned trash can, for some unknown reason, had already been split apart and crushed out of shape.

Cheng Ke no longer wanted to think about how a fight could have rolled all the way onto the trash can. He just felt sick in waves, feeling like he smelled all over.

“Mimi?” Scar Face wasn’t picky at all. He braced himself with one hand on the ground and crouched down to angle his head toward the bin. “Meow? Mimi~ Mimi~ meow~”

Cheng Ke wiped at the corner of his mouth and stared at him in shock.

“Mi…” The one holding the stick also crouched down and tried to call along. He had only just started when Scar Face interrupted him.

“Go dig it out,” Scar Face said.

He nodded and, without the slightest hesitation, bent over and reached both hand and arm into the overturned, already deformed trash can on the ground.

Then he felt around inside.

Just as Cheng Ke felt his stomach starting to churn violently, he pulled his arm back out, and in his palm was a filthy gray kitten the size of a fist.

Cheng Ke froze for two seconds, then turned to leave.

After all that chaos, he no longer knew whether his overwhelming rage had been scattered, distracted, or just stunned numb.

He had only taken two steps before Scar Face’s laughter came from behind him. “Kid, were you looking for this?”

Cheng Ke looked back and followed Scar Face’s pointing finger down to a hundred-yuan bill lying in a pile of trash.

His chest tightened. It hurt.

But in the end he still didn’t say anything. He turned and kept walking forward. After a few steps, he suddenly felt very tired.

The kind of tired where his feet could barely keep moving.

The Range Rover drove past him toward the intersection, and he stared at the back of the car for a while before turning around and starting back the way he had come.

He couldn’t be stubborn at a time like this. Even if he ended up with no money at all tonight, he wasn’t about to die on the street. But if he could pick up a hundred yuan on the way…

“Go back,” Jiang Yuduo said, leaning his head against the front passenger window and using a wet tissue to wipe the filthy fur on the cat while speaking.

“What?” Chen Qing froze for a moment, but still stepped on the brake and turned the car around. “Go back for what?”

“Take a look at that guy,” Jiang Yuduo said.

“No, seriously,” Chen Qing looked at him. “You beat up some homeless guy and now you want to go back and look at him for what?”

“Your homeless guy was dressed like that?” Jiang Yuduo reached back to the rear seat and yanked Chen Qing’s jacket over to wrap the cat in it before setting it back on the seat. “Didn’t you see he was wearing a Jaeger on his wrist?”

“Jaeger?” Chen Qing looked blank. “A watch?”

“Yeah.” Jiang Yuduo was already too irritated to talk.

“Fine,” Chen Qing nodded. “As long as San-ge says the word, leave the rest to me. We’ll go back and rob him right now.”

Jiang Yuduo looked at him.

“Relax,” Chen Qing looked back at him. “I brought tools. One smash and one snatch, and it’s done. I guarantee…”

“Shut up,” Jiang Yuduo said.

Author’s note:

This is a very rich story o(≧口≦)o.