Sheng Renxing clicked his tongue.
He turned his head to look out the window.
The car twisted through turn after turn.
The surroundings grew more remote.
Eventually even the paved road became dirt.
“A farmhouse restaurant?”
Sheng Renxing looked at the Hui-style building outside.
The sign read:
GUESTS.
The character for “Have” was huge.
“Guest” was tiny.
A pile of plants by the entrance hid half the storefront.
Only when they got closer did he notice another character hanging behind the sign.
Together, the whole phrase read:
“Guests Go.”
“?”
Go where?
The moment Sheng Renxing asked, he realized that although the place looked like a rural farmhouse restaurant, it probably was not.
Because several men stood by the half of the entrance not hidden by plants.
They wore suits and leather shoes and were smoking and chatting.
Sure enough.
Wei Huan smiled.
“No. It’s a private club. The food is good, though.”
Sheng Renxing believed that part.
Otherwise his uncle would not have driven half an hour to get here.
After parking, Wei Huan led him inside.
As they passed the men in suits, they greeted Wei Huan.
“President Wei, here for dinner?”
Wei Huan smiled and nodded back.
“President Zhang. President Mu.”
Once they were farther away, Sheng Renxing asked,
“Didn’t you say you only own a bar?”
Wei Huan glanced at him.
“The owner of the biggest bar in East Bay doesn’t deserve to be called ‘President’?”
Seeing Sheng Renxing freeze, he laughed.
“Little brat. It’s courtesy.”
“Stop calling me that.”
Sheng Renxing frowned.
He understood now.
“President” here was probably like “Mr.”
It did not necessarily represent any actual position.
Wei Huan waved toward a server.
“When you grow taller.”
“…” Sheng Renxing looked at the half-head of height Wei Huan had over him.
“I don’t need to hold up the sky!”
“Then you’re way too short. Is Sheng Qiong abusing you?”
Wei Huan said it casually.
When speaking about Sheng Renxing’s father, he sounded as though discussing a stranger.
Sheng Renxing had been about to argue.
Hearing that, he instantly changed direction.
“Not impossible.”
Wei Huan froze, then laughed and gave him a thumbs-up.
Sheng Renxing shrugged carelessly.
The two sat in a private room.
It was fairly small.
One wall was made of bamboo.
Half a window reflected the pond and artificial hill outside, making it look like a classical garden.
So Sheng Renxing asked.
“This place originally was a garden.”
Wei Huan poured tea unhurriedly.
“Later it was sold to the current owner. If you want to look around, go out along that covered corridor. The scenery is prettier there.”
“How do you know this place so well?”
Sheng Renxing turned toward him.
“Because I’m the one who sold it.”
Sheng Renxing raised his cup to him.
“President Wei.”
Wei Huan laughed loudly.
“Too bad I sold it early. Otherwise this place would belong to you now.”
“?”
Sheng Renxing looked at him.
“Aren’t you still looking for a place to live?”
“Oh.”
Sheng Renxing pushed his hair back, slightly irritated.
“Yeah.”
He still had not found an apartment he wanted.
So he was still living at that Five-Star Hotel.
“But you can buy this place back now too.”
He tilted his head.
Wei Huan smiled.
“Of course you can!”
Then changed course.
“But not here.”
He took out a set of keys.
“An apartment in Qinyuan Community. Twenty minutes from your school. Buy a bicycle and you can zip there every day.”
Sheng Renxing watched him put the keys on the table.
He did not take them.
“No need. I’ll keep looking myself.”
Wei Huan looked at him.
“If you don’t take it, I’m renting it to someone else. That’s troublesome. Easier to rent it to you.”
Sheng Renxing pressed his lips together.
Then he remembered the miserable apartments he had viewed these past few days.
“How much is the rent?”
“Twelve thousand.”
Sheng Renxing stopped his hand halfway toward the keys.
He looked at his biological uncle.
“How much?”
The agent had also shown him apartments in Qinyuan Community.
Usually they were two-bedroom, one-living-room units.
Wei Huan stared at him for a long moment, then could not hold back and laughed.
“If you don’t move anything inside, one thousand. Pay rent monthly.”
Sheng Renxing confirmed his uncle was no longer messing with him and took the keys.
Once the dishes arrived, the two chatted.
Wei Huan asked about No. 13 High.
“Your school seems pretty chaotic.”
Sheng Renxing felt his uncle had asked several times now.
The attitude was a little strange.
He thought and answered,
“There are a lot of little delinquents.”
More than a lot.
Even the teachers carried the aura of the martial world.
Wei Huan read his expression almost immediately.
“They bothered you?”
As he spoke, his gaze swept over Sheng Renxing’s already-scabbed knuckles.
“…” Sheng Renxing knew he had noticed the fight.
“Nothing serious.”
Wei Huan lifted a brow but did not say anything.
“Chen Ying was bragging about it in Moments yesterday.”
“He didn’t block you?”
Sheng Renxing was incredulous.
Wasn’t blocking elders from that kind of post basic knowledge?
Of course, Sheng Renxing himself never blocked Sheng Qiong from posts about skipping class or fighting either.
Better if it pissed him to death.
“…” Wei Huan smiled with dignity.
“Because I have a good image.”
Sheng Renxing muttered inwardly and looked at him.
After thinking, he asked,
“Chen Ying said you told him not to provoke Xing Ye?”
Wei Huan looked at him.
A barely visible frown appeared.
The smile vanished.
“You fought with him?”
Sheng Renxing did not say whether he had.
“He can’t be provoked?”
Wei Huan’s brow furrowed more obviously.
His finger tapped the table.
“Better not. Why did you fight?”
“We didn’t really fight.”
Sheng Renxing lifted a brow as though he did not care.
“He’s just a high-school student, isn’t he?”
He tilted his head and pictured Xing Ye.
“Oh. He looks like someone who mixes with rough people.”
Since arriving in Xuancheng, the thing Sheng Renxing had seen most often was delinquents.
Wei Huan only looked at him and slowly shook his head.
“He’s different from those people.”
“What’s different about you compared to those people outside?!”
His mother pointed through the window at someone collapsed beside the road—homeless man or beggar, impossible to tell—and screamed at him.
The person lay motionless.
Who knew whether he was drunk or dead.
Either way, it did not matter.
People walking past could not even be bothered to look.
Xing Ye slowly withdrew his gaze and looked at the woman.
His face showed no expression.
“Talk! Stop fucking pretending you’re mute!”
His mother was furious.
Her finger stabbed toward his nose.
The rhinestones on her nails flashed into his eyes.
“There isn’t any difference.”
Xing Ye looked at her and shook his head.
“If you say there isn’t, then there isn’t.”
“Don’t give me that fucking face! Do I owe you something?!”
His mother’s hands trembled.
Her voice rose higher from anger.
“Hit a teacher! Why not just hit the principal? Wouldn’t beating the principal make you look even more capable?”
“Attempted.”
Xing Ye remained unmoved and added the two words his mother had ignored.
She kicked his chair.
It did not move.
“Keep acting educated! Big mouth, no fear! Is this what your teachers teach you? That Wang—”
She clearly had not remembered the teacher’s name and got stuck.
“Wang Dahai,” Xing Ye supplied.
“I don’t care if he’s Wang Dahai or Pang Dahai! If you weren’t the one who hit that teacher, I’ll cut my own head off! Trying to bullshit me? When I was lying to people, you were still in your father’s dick…”
The local curses became increasingly filthy after that.
Xing Ye only frowned at the beginning.
Then his face returned to blankness.
He expressionlessly watched the woman in front of him.
When she threw a tantrum, she abandoned all restraint.
Her leopard-print skirt had ridden up to the root of her thighs.
Beneath thick, vulgar makeup, her face twisted larger and larger, like dough kneaded from too many colors.
The sharp, cheap smell of perfume wrapped around it.
It wrapped around Xing Ye tightly too,
leaving no air.
Nausea rolled upward from his stomach.
Only then did he remember he had not eaten dinner.
Yet Xing Ye seemed determined to oppose himself.
He inhaled the polluted air deeply, each breath using all his strength.
He allowed the desire to vomit inside him to overturn everything.
Within it, he found an almost self-punishing pleasure.
Who knew how long passed.
Eventually the woman became tired of cursing.
“Talk!”
Perhaps she was too angry.
The way she looked at Xing Ye resembled the way someone looked at an enemy.
“You spend the money I make selling myself to go hit teachers and you’re proud of yourself?”
“I earned that money myself,” Xing Ye said.
That single sentence was like lighting a powder keg.
His mother froze for one instant.
Then her anger exploded even harder.
“Where did you earn it?! Did you—did you go fight again?!”
Xing Ye silently looked at her.
His mother’s finger trembled.
She stopped cursing.
She glared fiercely, but her eyes slowly reddened.
Through clenched teeth:
“Get out! Go as far away as you can! I worked that hard to find you a school, and all you want is to bury yourself in the mud! Get out!”
As she spoke, she grabbed something at hand and hurled it at Xing Ye.
It struck his shoulder.
A book.
Its hard corner scraped across his collarbone.
He looked at the woman as though he wanted to say something.
In the end, he turned and left without a word.
“Underground boxing?” Sheng Renxing frowned.
He remembered what he had seen at West Bend.
A faint smile appeared at Wei Huan’s lips.
“It’s called a privately organized, unofficial small-scale combat competition.”
Sheng Renxing sneered.
“They’re good at naming it.”
Wei Huan skipped over that.
“In short, those places are chaotic. The ordinary delinquents you see on the street can’t compare.”
He gave one final warning.
“Don’t provoke him.”
After returning, Sheng Renxing kept thinking about what his uncle had said and the evasive attitude he had taken.
When Sheng Renxing tried asking further, Wei Huan refused to say anything more.
Leaning against the sofa, Sheng Renxing licked his lips and searched for underground boxing.
A whole list of results appeared.
Sheng Renxing went from curious anticipation at the beginning to complete indifference.
Forget that the stories were obviously made up.
The writing was terrible too.
He had no idea what he was even doing all this for.
Sheng Renxing sighed inwardly, opened QQ, and casually scrolled.
He saw a new status from Yellow Hair, whom he had added earlier:
[I heard my parents discussing whether to use the wooden one or the iron one!!! Xiaoqing Temple did absolutely nothing!!!]
It already had dozens of likes.
The comments were a full row of:
[Rest in peace.]
Only after reading did Sheng Renxing understand:
Yellow Hair’s parents were discussing what weapon to use when beating him.
Growing up, Sheng Renxing had been hit so few times he could count them on one hand and still have fingers left.
The thought had not occurred to him at all.
He laughed for a while.
He had intended to leave a comment too.
But the post was already half an hour old.
By now the corpse was probably cold.
So he only liked it.
Afterward, he tapped “and 67 other friends.”
He scanned the list.
No “Not Adding Friends.”
He clicked his tongue inwardly, returned, opened the conversation, and asked:
Not Adding Friends:
[Still alive? /cute]
No reply.
When Xing Ye left home, he brought nothing.
After walking several streets, he finally slowed down inside a dark, quiet alley.
He stood still and let out a long breath.
After staring blankly for a while, Xing Ye searched his pockets.
His phone.
Several banknotes.
Some coins.
Altogether, less than a hundred yuan.
He looked around.
The sounds of the alleys were some distance away.
The streetlight above him was solidly dark.
Spiderwebs had been stretched across it for who knew how long.
Wind blew and tugged the strands.
The temperature had dropped sharply at night.
He had not brought a jacket.
His stomach was empty too.
Xing Ye slowly leaned against the streetlight and sat down.
While spacing out, he thought:
If I changed genders, I’d be a low-budget version of the Little Match Girl.
He stuffed the money back into his pocket and held the phone.
Opened it.
Closed it.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
His gaze, however, was not actually on the screen.
Until a bright patch of yellow flashed through the edge of his vision.
He barely returned to himself and looked down.
He discovered he had accidentally opened his conversation with Sheng Renxing.
Looking at the words above, he thought blankly:
How would I know?
He did not reply.
Xing Ye exited QQ.
There were no more red notification marks on the list.
Yellow Hair and the others were currently overwhelmed with their own problems.
But even normally, they did not message Xing Ye much.
Xing Ye pressed at the phone.
When he came back to himself again, it had already dialed Sheng Renxing.
From the speaker came Sheng Renxing’s voice thick with sleep:
“Hello?”
The sound abruptly shocked Xing Ye awake.
He wanted to hang up.
But Sheng Renxing had already reacted.
“Xing Ye?”
There was an old saying that when a child was badly frightened, their soul could be scared away.
To call the soul back, you shouted the person’s name.
Xing Ye did not think he was a child.
Nor had he been frightened.
Yet that one call stopped his movement.
Like his feet had reached the ground.
“Mm,” Xing Ye answered.
Rustling came from the other end.
After a while:
“What is it?”
The voice was low, hoarse, and lazy.
Xing Ye judged that Sheng Renxing was probably still lying in bed.
What is it?
Xing Ye froze.
What did he mean, what is it?
The silence lasted a little too long.
The other side made a nasal “Mm?” with the ending rising.
Xing Ye remembered Sheng Renxing reading English to him in the bookstore.
Soft and gentle.
He said:
“That poem you read to me last time. I looked it up.”
“Mm,” Sheng Renxing answered.
He said nothing more.
After a long moment, Sheng Renxing suddenly came fully awake.
“Hm?”
His voice held disbelief.
“You called me in the middle of the night just to say that?”
His tone practically said:
What the hell?
On this side, Xing Ye’s lips lifted.
Before the curve fully formed, it fell by itself.
“No.”
“Just telling you I’m still alive.”
The other side seemed speechless.
A breathy sound came through, almost a laugh.
“Okay. Then keep living properly. Good night.”
“Mm.”
Xing Ye leaned his head back and looked at the sky.
There were few stars.
The moon was dim too.
A thin layer of light scattered here, bitten apart by darkness until almost nothing remained except what came from his phone.
If it went out, there would be nothing.
He stared blankly at the moon.
Sheng Renxing did not hang up.
No more sound came from him either.
It was almost as though he had fallen asleep.
In the empty silence around Xing Ye, he could hear Sheng Renxing breathing.
Who knew how long passed.
His feet were nearly numb from the cold.
Then a motorcycle suddenly roared from the neighboring alley.
The sound tore through the night with overwhelming force.
Xing Ye immediately heard Sheng Renxing’s breathing change.
As though he had been abruptly startled awake.
A moment later, Sheng Renxing’s confused voice came through the receiver.
“You still haven’t hung up?”
Xing Ye asked quietly,
“Why did you send me that message?”
“Huh?”
Sheng Renxing thought about it and hesitated.
“What else was I supposed to ask—whether you were dead? That’s not very auspicious.”
More rustling came through.
He seemed to sit up.
“Because your brothers have already started praying for themselves. You looked so scared this afternoon, so in the spirit of humanitarian concern, I checked on you.”
As he spoke, he yawned.
Xing Ye asked, “What did I look like?”
Sheng Renxing paused, hearing something unusual.
“You weren’t in a good mood then.”
“My mood was bad?”
“Are you asking me?”
Silence again.
Sheng Renxing muttered quietly,
“Anyone with eyes could see it, okay.”
Xing Ye said nothing.
Inside, he objected:
No.
At least Jiang Jing and the others had been there too.
None of them had seen.
“You didn’t get kicked out of your house, did you?”
Perhaps unable to stand the silence anymore, Sheng Renxing asked.
Xing Ye’s breath caught.
Before he could react, Sheng Renxing continued, “Where are you? I’ll come find you.”
