According to He Chu San’s original plan, after the wedding, he and Xia Liu Yi were supposed to spend three days and three nights tangled together at home without leaving the bed except to eat. He had stocked the refrigerator with snacks, fruit, and meals he had personally prepared in advance. He had even prepared twenty sets of bedsheets and duvet covers, neatly folded inside the wardrobe. He had bought four entire boxes of condoms in assorted flavors as well, although they had yet to use a single one.
Who could have expected the bed to collapse during their very first all-nighter?
He Chu San was about to call Kevin and ask him to order a new bed, but Xia Liu Yi snatched away the phone with a green face. “There’s no need to tell him something like this!”
“It’s fine. K-zai knows everything. He even helped draw on all my bullet abs.”
Xia Liu Yi scowled. “Mention those bullet abs again and I’ll…” He had originally intended to say beat you, but then remembered Father He’s threat to smash his head open. “…kiss you.”
He Chu San said delightedly, “Bullet abs, bullet abs, bullet abs.”
Still scowling, Xia Liu Yi pulled him over and kissed him three times.
He Chu San pushed his luck. “Bullet—owww!” He was bitten hard on one of his bullet abs.
In the end, they first called cleaners to tidy the room and dismantle the broken bed frame. He Chu San stood downstairs directing them while supporting his waist. Meanwhile, Xia Liu Yi wrapped himself in a clean bedsheet and hid on the rooftop terrace, sunbathing and eating a mango to fill his stomach.
However, his insides were still full of the warm substance He Chu San had pumped into him. Above, he was peeling a dripping-wet mango; below, his still-gaping entrance continued leaking wetly. After two bites, he could no longer eat. Helplessly wrapping the thin sheet more tightly around himself, he lay down on the sofa. The early-morning sunlight was warm and gentle, and the sea breeze brushed softly across him. The rooftop had been renovated several years earlier and was now covered in wooden decking, with flowers, plants, branches, and leaves everywhere, lush with greenery. He half closed his eyes and gazed at his surroundings. Faintly, he could hear He Chu San speaking to the workers downstairs in his gentle, refined voice.
He truly could not believe this day was real.
He Chu San finally sent the workers away. The large bathtub in the adjoining apartment had also finished filling with hot water. This old home was, after all, rather small. He had purchased the neighboring apartment long ago and connected the entire floor, moving his study and several other essential living facilities into the expanded space. Supporting his waist, he slowly climbed upstairs to fetch his Brother Liu Yi.
When he arrived, he found Xia Liu Yi wrapped inside the bedsheet like a caterpillar, asleep with his head resting on a stack of books. The corners of his lips were slightly raised, and his face looked peaceful and content.
He Chu San sat beside him and gazed down at him for a long time. As he watched, he neurotically pinched his own thigh. He truly could not believe this day was real. He had experienced this exact dream countless times before, only to awaken, turn toward the calendar beside his bed, and feel his heart suddenly become empty.
He gazed at Xia Liu Yi longingly for quite some time before bending down and kissing his forehead. “Brother Liu Yi, let’s go downstairs and soak in the bath.”
They rested at home for most of the day and ate and drank their fill. In the evening, they left hand in hand to buy a bed. As they walked through the streets of Tsim Sha Tsui, most of the surrounding landmarks remained much as they had been in the past. However, the decorations along both sides of the road and the pedestrians’ brightly colored clothing had changed considerably. Kowloon Park, which had opened the year they first met, was still there, although it had already become an old park. Small groups of elderly people sat inside resting. Beyond Kowloon Park, a new building was under construction, the site hidden behind barriers bearing a sign that read “iSQUARE.” Xia Liu Yi looked around curiously throughout the journey.
“Why are there so many mainlanders?”
“People like coming here to travel now.”
“Why is everyone carrying milk powder? Do mainlanders all have that many children?”
“The milk powder here is probably better.”
“What is that person holding?”
“A mobile phone.”
“Why doesn’t it look like yours?”
“That one flips open. Mine slides open.”
“Why is everyone staring at their phones? Does it take that long to read a phone book?”
“People can access the internet through 2G now. Mobile phones can browse webpages.”
“What’s that handsome boy holding?”
“Uh… I don’t know.”
“I’ll go look… It’s probably a game console. There are little animals jumping around inside.”
“Oh, that should be a handheld console. I’ve heard of them.”
“There are things even you don’t know?”
“I don’t play those.”
“Let’s buy one! Let’s buy one! I want to play.”
Xia Liu Yi pulled He Chu San directly into the crowd, using his clumsy Mandarin to apologize to the tourists he bumped into. “Nee how! Nee how! Dway boo chee!” He looked around with joyful excitement. He Chu San smiled at his back as though he were watching a fourteen-year-old boy. There was no trace of a man in his forties.
Xia Liu Yi soon obtained the latest PSP handheld console. Standing at the counter, he held the machine curiously, pressing buttons here and there and tilting it from side to side.
“You turn it on like this,” the young saleswoman said, placing a hand on the console to press the button for him. When she accidentally brushed against Xia Liu Yi’s warm fingers, she glanced up at him. Xia Liu Yi remained focused on the screen, looking as delighted as a child. “Pretty girl, open one of the newest games for me. Anything will do. Let me try it.”
“Games have to be purchased separately. Press this, then this.” The pretty saleswoman stood close beside him. Enveloped by his broad chest and handsome face, her cheeks flushed and her heart raced.
He Chu San returned from the cashier holding the receipt and happened to witness the scene. He had never imagined that even after becoming a middle-aged man, his Brother Liu Yi could still radiate romantic attraction everywhere he went. Sourly, he squeezed between them and separated the two. “You can play slowly when we get home. K-zai knows how to use this. We’ll ask him to teach you later.”
Without raising his head, Xia Liu Yi awkwardly pressed the buttons with one hand. He swung his other hand around and pinched He Chu San’s lips with astonishing accuracy. “You’re only allowed to mention K-zai three times a day. Any more than that and I’ll beat—bite you.”
After smothering the young saleswoman in the sour stench of their romance, the two visited the neighboring shop to buy mobile phones. Xia Liu Yi soon obtained a Nokia slider identical to He Chu San’s. As they walked, he impatiently asked He Chu San to teach him how to use it. Relying on his memory, he manually entered and saved the numbers of He Chu San, Cui Dong Dong, and Xiao Ma, then cautiously asked He Chu San for Father He’s number and hurriedly saved that too.
As Xia Liu Yi entered the number, he said, “Let’s buy more gifts later. We’ll visit Dad and Mom tomorrow.”
“Hahaha. Since when were you so sensible?”
Xia Liu Yi glared at him. “You weren’t the one threatened with having your head smashed open.”
“What about Xin Xin’s number? I want K-zai’s too.” As Xia Liu Yi spoke, he suddenly remembered something. “Why hasn’t your phone rung all day? Nobody is calling President He?”
He Chu San took out his phone and waved it at him. It was switched off. “I told everyone I would be unreachable for three days and that nobody was allowed to contact me. If you weren’t on parole and forbidden from leaving Hong Kong, I would have taken three months off and brought you traveling everywhere.”
As he spoke, He Chu San ignored all the surrounding stares and wrapped his arms around Xia Liu Yi. “Once your parole period ends, I’ll sell the company. We’ll buy an island in the Bahamas and live there.”
“Hahahahaha!” Xia Liu Yi laughed delightedly. “Surrounded by the sea on every side, with only the two of us together from morning until night?”
“So sappy! Hahahaha!”
“I’m serious. What’s sappy about it…” He Chu San tried to cling to him affectionately, but Xia Liu Yi’s sharp eyes suddenly spotted something. “Beef offal! They’re selling beef offal over there!” He grabbed He Chu San’s hand and hurried toward it.
Holding a steaming bowl of curry radish and beef offal, Xia Liu Yi first picked up a piece of radish dripping with broth and placed the tender, soft morsel into his mouth. He closed his eyes in ecstasy and savored it for a long while before slowly swallowing and exclaiming, “Fuck! That’s incredible! I’ve missed this so much.”
Turning around, he saw He Chu San still pretending to sulk in an exceedingly gay fashion. Smiling, Xia Liu Yi picked up a piece of tripe and fed it into his mouth. “Eat, Best Actor He! Living on an island would be easy. I used to own a house on Lamma Island. Dong Dong probably bought it later. I’ll take you there on weekends. It’s halfway up the mountain and completely isolated from the world. I guarantee you’ll see nobody but me all day. You’ll be sick of me within three days.”
He Chu San genuinely had not known that Xia Liu Yi owned a house on Lamma Island. When Xia Liu Yi was sentenced to prison, he had also been required to pay an enormous fine, and all his personal property apart from the Xiao Qi Hall parent company had been auctioned off. At the time, He Chu San had spent enormous sums deceiving Master Qiao and the Old Shopkeeper and lacked the money to participate in the auction. Only many years later did he gradually accumulate enough wealth to buy back, one by one, the home they had rented together, Xia Liu Yi’s village house, and Azure Dragon’s villa. Had he known that Xia Liu Yi possessed another property, he would certainly have bought it long ago.
“When did you own a house there? You had a house and never told me? Sister Dong Dong never told me either? More than ten years passed, and you never mentioned it once?” “Aiya, I forgot, I forgot. Who would still remember something like that?” Carrying large and small shopping bags, the two bickered and muttered all the way down the street, gradually disappearing into the neon-lit crowd.
When Xia Liu Yi said he would sell durians, he truly did. Before long, he took over two adjoining stalls at the Yau Ma Tei Fruit Market and openly began selling fruit. He gave one stall to Limping Sha to supplement Old Sha’s retirement expenses. Each of them also took in several elderly former prison companions who had recently been released and struggled to find new employment, hiring them to mind the stalls and transport goods. After setting off several strings of bright-red firecrackers and displaying several enormous flower stands, they opened for business amid tremendous prosperity and celebration.
A Broadway cinema stood nearby, along with an old Cantonese opera theater that had been there for many years. Whenever they had nothing to do, the old friends went to watch films or opera together. Otherwise, they sat shirtless inside the shop, watching the stalls while shouting noisily over games of bridge. Their retirement life could not have been more comfortable.
“Twin-Blade Xia, have you no shame?” Limping Sha cursed while playing a card. “How old are you? Yet you’ve already joined us in retirement?”
“How am I retired?” Xia Liu Yi argued confidently. “I’m a househusband now. I buy groceries and cook every day, contributing labor to the household and creating GDP like everyone else. Understand?”
“What—what the hell is G-D-pee?”
“G—D—P! That’s what you get for refusing to study English properly.”
“Ha! A househusband! Hurry and tell everyone why you had to move house recently!”
“…” Xia Liu Yi’s face turned green. “Shut your mouth. If you spout any nonsense, I’ll cripple your other leg too.”
Limping Sha burst into laughter, leapt up on his elderly leg, and fled while shouting at the top of his lungs, “Househusband Xia made his wife soft-shelled turtle soup, then went downstairs to buy salt. He squatted beside the road playing his game, became so absorbed that he forgot to go home, and burned down their entire floor! Hahahahaha!”
“You old bastard! Didn’t you hear me tell you to shut up?” Xia Liu Yi cursed while chasing after him. They ran from the shop into the street, where Limping Sha nearly collided with a Ferrari parked beside the road.
“Be careful!” Xia Liu Yi reacted quickly and pulled him back, protecting his elderly leg and waist. “Fuck, are you all right?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine.”
“Good. Don’t scratch their paint with that rotten walking stick of yours! A poor shop owner like me can’t afford to compensate them.”
“Then let your wife pay.”
“Get lost!”
While the two were fooling around, the Ferrari’s rear window slid down slightly. Someone inside glanced at them and released a disdainful snort.
Xia Liu Yi heard the cold, provocative sound but paid it no attention. Supporting Limping Sha, he walked back toward the shop. Before leaving, he glanced inside the car from the corner of his eye and saw only a head of vividly dyed red hair.
The Ferrari soon drove away, and Xia Liu Yi returned to the fruit stall with Limping Sha to continue playing cards. As Limping Sha played another card, he chattered, “Public security really has improved. We’ve been running this stall for more than two months, and nobody has come to collect protection money.”
Another old friend sighed. “Aiya, you were released two years later, so you don’t know. The cops are hardworking now. Patrols are everywhere, and surveillance cameras cover every street. Nobody knows where all those one-woman brothels have been driven off to. Smuggling heroin is less profitable than smuggling milk powder. You can’t even sell porn videos on the street anymore. Youngsters watch them online—two dollars for ten films. Gangsters aren’t the only ones changing careers. Even film directors have stopped making gangster movies and gone to the mainland to shoot patriotic films.”
“Then haven’t you encountered nothing but good times?” Limping Sha laughed. “Back when protection money was collected, you were the one receiving it. Now you’re the one who would have to pay it, but nobody collects it anymore!”
“Bah!” The old friend sighed. “How can these be called good times? I spent twenty years in prison and came out in my fifties or sixties. The best years of my life were all spent behind bars. When I look at my life, there’s only one word for it: miserable!”
Xia Liu Yi handed him a cigarette and felt around beneath the table for a long time before finding a brand-new lighter. He lit the cigarette for the miserable old man and waited until he began smoking with a furrowed brow before advising him, “All right, Uncle Banana. Don’t dwell on it. Who among us sitting here wasn’t once powerful and successful? Who among us didn’t live by stepping on other people? We brought our suffering upon ourselves. We deserved it. Now that we’ve paid for our crimes and come out, we should enjoy whatever years remain. Who says a person’s life has one particular period that counts as their best years? Whenever you’re happy and living freely, those are your best years. The news reported the day before yesterday that an old woman in her eighties won an award for dancing ballet. Weren’t those her best years? Look at you now—sitting in the sun, smoking, playing cards, with soft drinks to drink and mangoes to eat. Isn’t that good enough?”
“Xiao Liu is right! Good, good!” the old friend exclaimed emotionally, clinking his bottle of soda against Xia Liu Yi’s.
Just then, two young female customers peered curiously around the fruit stall. Xia Liu Yi’s sharp eyes spotted them immediately, and he hurriedly stood. “Hello! What would you like to buy?”
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