Amidst their playing and bickering, several other motorcycles approached from the opposite direction. As they brushed past, the lead rider spotted Xiao Man, and a mocking voice drifted through the wind. “Hahaha! Isn’t that the whore from the poster?”
Liu Yi slammed on the brakes abruptly, causing Xiao Man to bump into the youth’s firm back. The motorcycle tires let out a piercing screech.
“What did you say?” Liu Yi said, his voice carrying a bone-chilling coldness.
The rider also stopped his bike, turning his head provocatively. “I said, isn’t this the ‘Xiao Hai Xing’ girl who invites customers at our brothel entrance?”
Xiao Man instantly buried her face in Liu Yi’s back, her entire body beginning to tremble. Liu Yi took off his jacket to cover her and was about to dismount when—Boom!—a heavy crash resounded! That rider, along with his bike, was sent flying a great distance by Cui Dong Dong’s motorcycle!
Cui Dong Dong herself tumbled to the ground but leaped up in a flash. She rushed forward, grabbed the rider by the collar, and smashed a stone right into his helmet! Several of the rider’s companions surrounded her with shouts and cries, but Cui Dong Dong raised her knee and pulled a dagger from her boot, glaring at them coldly.
Liu Yi drew his twin blades to help. Xiao Man pulled at him and screamed, “Don’t fight! Liu Yi, stay here and don’t move!” She then shouted at the rider sitting on the ground with his shattered helmet, “You insulted me, and she broke your helmet. We’re even! No one fight anymore!”
The rider struggled several times before tearing off his helmet, saying spitefully, “This is a racing track; what’s with the fighting? If you’re a racer, settle it with a race!”
“Fine! I’ll race you!” Cui Dong Dong snarled.
“I’m not racing a foul-mouthed broad like you!” The rider pointed a finger at Liu Yi. “Aren’t you her brother? You race!”
……
What happened next went by as fast as a gust of wind. During the race, a lost truck suddenly appeared at a turn in the road. The rider couldn’t swerve in time and was about to collide, bike and all, but Liu Yi leaped through the air and tackled him off the bike just in time. The two of them rolled to the ground together, and Liu Yi let out a cry of agony.
Liu Yi saved that foul-mouthed kid, but he broke his leg in the process.
Looking at Liu Yi’s bloody and mangled leg, the rider wept bitterly as he apologized: “Thank you! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to insult your sister. No, I did mean it, I was wrong, I was wrong. It’s because your Xiao Qi Hall leaders committed an underworld betrayal and swallowed our goods. I was just upset, so…”
Liu Yi’s face was scrunched up in pain, yet he still found the breath to curse at him, “Nonsense! Who betrayed you! Azure Dragon isn’t that kind of person!”
“It wasn’t the Azure Dragon, it was that ‘Eagle,’ Xu Ying…”
Trembling with fear and gratitude, the rider scrambled to help the weeping Xiao Man take Liu Yi to the hospital. Cui Dong Dong, meanwhile, sped off to inform Azure Dragon—with something this big happening, there was no way they, as kids, could handle it on their own.
“You have quite the dog’s gall!” before leaving, Cui Dong Dong threatened the rider. “These are the siblings of the Azure Dragon. If anything happens to them, even several of your lives won’t be enough to pay!” She then instructed several others to guard Liu Yi and Xiao Man.
Azure Dragon soon arrived at the hospital with Cui Dong Dong. Seeing Azure Dragon and Xiao Man surrounding Liu Yi, and with the Xiao Qi Hall second-in-command, Xu Ying, also arriving, she realized she was of no more use there and left with her group.
As she departed, she looked at the profile of Xiao Man wiping away tears, and her heart let out a long, heavy sigh: The first meeting resulted in such a tragedy; surely it left nothing but bad memories for her. What a disastrous start.
But speaking of which, Xiao Man truly had a lot of tears. She hadn’t stopped crying since it started; she was truly a person as gentle as water. To be cared for so tenderly by such an angelic woman… it would truly be the blessing of three lifetimes.
Cui Dong Dong left, immersed in her fantasies of that gentle water-country.
……
However, her journey of pursuit did not turn from disaster to victory as she had hoped; it was practically a series of rejections, a failure to the very end. Expensive gifts were politely declined; every time she invited Xiao Man out, Liu Yi was there as a massive third wheel. Even after accepting the invitation of the Azure Dragon to join Xiao Qi Hall and going to the villa with full sincerity to cook for Xiao Man, using every method possible and confessing countless times, she only received one “good person card” after another.
“Aaaargh! Who wants to be a ‘good person’!” Cui Dong Dong roared, shaking Liu Yi’s shoulders with both hands. “I want to be a ‘Good Sweetie’! A ‘Good Darling’! A ‘Good BB’! A ‘Good Hubby’! … Speak! Is it you, kid, meddling in the background! What bad things did you say about me to your sister!”
“I didn’t say anything bad about you! You just aren’t a ‘Good Sweetie’ to begin with! You change girlfriends five times a month!” Liu Yi barked back. “You think she’s stupid? She isn’t the type to just play around like you people!”
“Damn it! Those weren’t my girlfriends! They were just booty calls, do you understand?! It’s mutual satisfaction, do you understand?! Cui Dong Dong has excellent skills! Women who want to sleep with me line up from here to the outside of the Walled City, do you understand?!” Cui Dong Dong wiped away haggard “tears.” “I only want to invite her to be my first girlfriend. She must have misunderstood me.”
Liu Yi was speechless before the heavens; he felt there was no misunderstanding at all. He knew too well what kind of life his sister liked—stable, tranquil, and peaceful. How could a gang leader who smoked, drank, raced, and chased girls all day provide that? Furthermore, he didn’t feel Xiao Man shared the interest of Dong Dong in women.
Thinking of this, he became very puzzled. From childhood to adulthood, Xiao Man—just like him—had no interest in men and no interest in women, never harboring a longing for anyone. He discussed this seriously with Dong Dong, worried if his sister might also be an asexual.
“Oh, please, where are there so many asexuals in this world? Aren’t you also secretly in love with your precious Azure Dragon?” Dong Dong said. “Xiao Man must have her heart set on someone. Otherwise, facing a suitor as beautiful, capable, and wealthy as me—the absolute best of the best, perfection among perfection—how could she remain unmoved? Tsk, I wonder who she actually likes? I notice she’s usually only good to you and Azure Dragon…”
At this point, Dong Dong choked on her own saliva, her face twisting as she turned her gaze toward Liu Yi.
“What are you looking at me for?”
“You said ‘she’s just like you’… it couldn’t be that she also…”
Liu Yi was also stunned. After a moment, he said flusteredly with a red face, “You’re talking nonsense!”
“I’m making an inference based on the facts.”
“Nonsense!” The youth turned and ran away in a panicked and confused state.
“Hey! Hey! Why are you running again?! Where did you learn this habit of turning and running like a girl in love? Was it from Xiao Man?” Cui Dong Dong shouted from behind.
“Sigh!” Cui Dong Dong put down the cup of cold coffee in her hand and sighed to He Chu San across the table. “So, from then on, Liu Yi and I were brothers in misfortune, starting our history of broken hearts together. Of course, his was a secret love, mine was open. But the result was the same. The temperament of Liu Yi changed in the following years; he became a boss, took in followers, and started putting on airs. Gradually, he wasn’t cute at all. He liked to keep his troubles bottled up and became more and more awkward about his feelings. Of course, he got a bit smarter, and his actions became more calculating—those last two things were thanks to my successful guidance, hahaha.”
He Chu San beckoned the server and ordered her a fresh coffee. Only after the server left did he ask, “What happened later?”
“Later,” Cui Dong Dong sighed, “later, Azure Dragon and Xiao Man got married.”
……
On the night of the wedding, Cui Dong Dong and Liu Yi snuck out from the banquet and got roaring drunk in the small apartment of Cui Dong Dong. They celebrated their “Broken Heart Alliance” failing to the bitter end, a total and complete defeat.
It was only that night, from the mouth of a drunkenly honest Liu Yi, that Cui Dong Dong learned: it was Liu Yi who had asked Azure Dragon to marry Xiao Man.
She mustered all her strength to pummel Liu Yi, and the two fought until the world turned dark in that room, even using attacks like hair-pulling and nose-poking. In the end, both were disheveled, their eyes swollen and noses crooked, their clothes in tatters. They sprawled out like the character for “big” (大) on the messy floor, weeping their eyes out at the ceiling.
“I didn’t want it to be like this,” Liu Yi cried, shielding his face with his arm. “But Xiao Man likes Azure Dragon the most. Since we were small, she gave me every thing she liked; I couldn’t take this from her, I couldn’t… This was best for them. They can be happy and complete from now on…”
“Happy and complete my ass,” Cui Dong Dong wailed. “How do you know if Azure Dragon will truly love her? I am the one who truly loves her! She wouldn’t be as happy with Azure Dragon as she would be with me!”
“She wouldn’t be happy with you at all,” Liu Yi sobbed. “Your ‘liking’ is just talk. You say you like her, yet have you lacked bed partners these years…”
Cui Dong Dong wiped her tears miserably. “That’s only because she always ignored me; I couldn’t help it.”
Liu Yi raised his hand and gave her face a light slap; she slapped him back. The two grabbed each other’s clothes to blow their noses.
After blowing their noses, Cui Dong Dong sighed with a nasal voice, “Why don’t the two of us just be together? Anyway, you look a little bit like Xiao Man; I can make do with you.”
“Bullshit! If we walked down the street together, people would think we were being gay.” Liu Yi also said with a nasal voice.
“You were a gay man to begin with.”
“I’m not! I’m not!”
“Sigh,” Cui Dong Dong let out a long sigh at his hopeless, wretched temperament. She slumped back onto the floor, sniffling for a good while before finally admitting helplessly, “Sometimes, I’ve thought… I do like Xiao Man, but maybe not to the extent of loving her. Even while thinking of her, I would still sleep with others.”
She wiped her face and sighed, “Maybe I just liked the sense of security and stability she gave off. Every time I saw her, I would think: it’s only a woman like her—gentle, beautiful, refined, and unique—who could make this wandering heart of mine truly settle down. If I had a woman like that at home, I wouldn’t have the mind to go out and live a life of debauchery…”
“And yet you still went out every day to live a life of debauchery,” Liu Yi pointed out cruelly.
Cui Dong Dong coughed awkwardly. “So I’m beyond saving. As for what the hell ‘love’ is, I guess I’ll never know in this lifetime. A woman as wandering and excellent as me is truly a natural heartbreaker; it’s better I’m not with anyone, lest I harm them…”
She reached out and slapped Liu Yi again. “A little repressed gay man like you should just stay single forever too. Look at your miserable self—aggressive on the outside but shrinking away on the inside. Only someone who is blind or has eaten a bear’s heart and leopard’s gall would fall in love with you!”
Liu Yi huffed, turned his back, and curled into a bitter little ball. Dong Dong crawled up and rummaged around the floor, finally finding a pack of cigarettes that had survived the fray. She shook Liu Yi awake and gave him one. The two losers smoked in a silent, resentful state.
As they smoked, Cui Dong Dong suddenly tilted her head slightly. “Hey, do you hear that?”
“What?”
“It sounds like someone is singing. Tsk, they sound just like Xiao Man!”
Cui Dong Dong rolled up in a hurry and ran outside, following that faint, flickering singing. The drunkenness of Liu Yi hadn’t worn off yet, and he chased after her unsteadily. “Wait for me!”
Futile Devices Scans 
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