The brass key slid into the keyhole and turned once, but the door still had to be rammed hard before the latch would spring open.
Zhou Ruo An pulled the door open. The room inside was dark, with only the television’s standby light glowing, a single red dot piercing through the darkness. It was weirdly creepy.
After turning on the light, Zhou Ruo An casually set the takeout bag on the coffee table. He walked a few steps and pushed open the door to one bedroom. No one was there.
The next moment, he heard the old lock turn again, and the door panel was slammed hard once more.
Due to long neglect and disrepair, the hinges sometimes creaked softly and sometimes loudly. This time, the sound was especially grating. A young man stepped into the apartment to that teeth-aching noise. He wore a hat and mask, bundled up tightly with only his eyes showing.
“You went out?” Zhou Ruo An’s voice carried a hint of surprise.
The young man wore a down jacket, yet still looked like nothing more than a narrow strip. One of his legs was lame; his steps dragged, weak and sluggish.
As he passed Zhou Ruo An, he did not even spare him a glance. Limping, he walked to his room and pushed open the old wooden door.
Zhou Ruo An seemed long used to this attitude of his. He sat down on the sofa and idly flicked a coin, only speaking when the door was about to close. “I brought you a late-night snack.”
The young man did not stand on ceremony either. Dragging his leg, he walked back and picked up the takeout bag. Zhou Ruo An’s gaze followed instinctively, and on that hand covered in white patches, he saw large abrasions.
The coin that had been flicked high into the air was caught in his palm. Zhou Ruo An looked away and gave a scoff. “Zhang Jin, do you think you’re not dying fast enough already?”
The hand gripping the takeout bag slowly tightened. The next moment, the young man forcefully yanked off his hat, pulled down his mask, and revealed the wounds and bruises scattered across his face, some deep, some shallow.
Zhou Ruo An was startled, but not from shock, much less from heartache. Usually, when Lin Yi beat people into bloody gourds, he could sit nearby slurping instant noodles without his expression changing. The injuries on Zhang Jin’s face were like the fine drizzle of March—not even enough to wet one’s clothes, not worth a fart.
It was only that the face, already covered in white patches and unusually gaunt, was now crisscrossed with wounds, bloodshot marks, and bruises. Mixed together with its already mottled base color, it was truly unpleasant to look at.
Zhou Ruo An felt around the coffee table for a pack of cigarettes, pulled one out, and held it between his fingers. Looking up at Zhang Jin, he asked, “With that wrecked body of yours, after getting beaten, you didn’t even extort some money?” He put the cigarette between his lips, drawled out an “Ah,” and said, “Right, I forgot. You’re a model citizen. You look down on underhanded tricks like mine.”
Zhang Jin stood ramrod straight, his lowered gaze carrying a vicious, deranged edge. “How much would it cost to have Lin Yi beat them back for me?”
Zhou Ruo An sank back into the sofa and smiled. “Lin Yi doesn’t come cheap, but if you tell me why you got beaten, I can make him give you a discount.”
“I… I went to find someone to sleep with. They wouldn’t take me as a client. They said that if they did it with me, my vitiligo would infect them, and also said I had cancer, that if I died halfway on top of them, they’d get dragged into a lawsuit.”
Zhou Ruo An was not very addicted to smoking. He only smoked when he was especially pleased or especially displeased. Now he lit the cigarette, his eyes full of laughter. “They weren’t wrong. With that wrecked body of yours, one round really might send you straight to your grave.”
Zhang Jin took a step forward, that face like a vengeful ghost pressing close to Zhou Ruo An. “I’m fucking twenty-two. I’m about to die, but I still haven’t even tasted what a woman is like. If I die like this, I won’t be able to close my eyes in death!”
Zhou Ruo An slowly reined in the smile on his face and handed the cigarette to Zhang Jin. “Even if they wouldn’t take you as a client, they didn’t have to beat you, did they?”
Zhang Jin stuffed the cigarette into his mouth with trembling hands. The wound at the corner of his lips was shallowly torn open again, and the pain made his brows pinch together. “I clung there and refused to leave, so the thugs in their shop beat me.”
Zhou Ruo An sighed and held up his payment QR code. “Lin Yi charges a lot to fight. He collects debts for big bosses. For a little matter like yours, just give two thousand.”
Zhang Jin choked on a mouthful of smoke and coughed like the heavens and earth were collapsing. Afraid that he might cough himself to death right in front of him, Zhou Ruo An could only change his words. “Then eighteen hundred.”
“Where would I have money?!”
Zhang Jin’s voice at this moment was like a bellows on the verge of going on strike. Zhou Ruo An dug at his ear, wearing a smiling face again. “Although the old man adopted both of us, he was always biased toward you. Before he died, he transferred the scrap collection station to your name. I heard you sold it a few days ago and got eighty thousand.”
“I planned to use that money to buy myself a burial plot, then make some paper carriages, horses, and a house to burn for myself. While alive, my life has been rotten and worthless. After I die, I should at least enjoy some comfort.”
Zhou Ruo An gave an “Mm.” “Make a few paper beauties too. You can open meat over there all the same.”
“Zhou Ruo An!”
“All right, all right.” Zhou Ruo An raised both hands in surrender. “Fifteen hundred, not a cent less. Lin Yi beating someone up—guaranteed satisfaction.”
“Fine.” Zhang Jin took out his phone and scanned the code. “When the time comes, record a video and send it to me.”
After transferring the money, Zhang Jin grabbed the takeout bag and dragged his leg back toward his room. Zhou Ruo An looked at his unusually gaunt back and suddenly spoke. “You really don’t plan to acknowledge your ancestors and return to the clan, go back and be your little young master? Even if your illness can’t be cured, at least you could live a little better while you’re still alive.”
“Although that mother of yours, the one who abandoned her own son, is hateful to the extreme, hasn’t she been trying all this time lately to get you to return to the Zhou family?”
The person who had already become little more than skin and bones stood in front of the door and slowly turned back, hatred gathered tightly between his brows. “A sickly illegitimate child who’s about to die—go back to be despised and humiliated? Or to be used as a joke for their amusement? And in the end, find some corner in the Zhou family ancestral grave, so I can’t even rest peacefully after I die?”
He raised one hand and looked at the white patches on it. “As if being born with this disease wasn’t enough, now I have a terminal illness too. The sins they committed have all fallen onto me. I wish they would all go die, and you’re still advising me to go back and be some little young master?”
“Little young master?” Zhang Jin tugged at that mottled, multicolored face, whether smiling or angry impossible to tell. “In this lifetime, I will never change my surname back to Zhou.”
Zhou Ruo An was silent for a moment. He propped both legs on the coffee table, picked up the remote control, and turned on the television. “Then why don’t you give that chance to me? It just so happens that my surname is Zhou, same as that bastard biological father of yours. Thinking about it this way, I seem even more like his son than you, the real young master who took your mother’s surname.”
Zhang Jin’s body could no longer support him continuing to make a scene. He lowered his head, turned, and slowly closed the door. From the crack in the door, only his soft, weak voice squeezed out. “Zhou Ruo An, you really are boring.”
Lin Yi was collecting a debt. A man ruined by gambling knelt at his feet.
“Please, don’t do this in front of the child. Please, let him go into the room.”
In the corner of the room stood a boy, about seven or eight years old, wearing cartoon pajamas.
Lin Yi only glanced at him once before looking away. He bit his cigarette between his lips, freed one hand, picked up an ashtray, and patted it against the man’s face. “Good father. When you borrowed money to gamble, did you ever think of him?”
The ashtray did not hit his face with much force, yet the man was so frightened he tightly hugged his head.
The child began to cry, his thin, small body squeezing hard into the corner of the wall.
Lin Yi leaned against the table with one leg braced on the ground. After taking a drag from the cigarette, he straightened and walked toward the boy. The man clung to his leg like a dog, but was immediately held down where he was by the others.
“When you grow up, will you gamble?” Lin Yi crouched in front of the boy and asked, cigarette between his teeth.
“Speak!”
“No… I won’t gamble.”
“I won’t…” Whether this answer satisfied Lin Yi or not was unclear. He remained crouched in that corner the entire time, watching the gambling addict kowtow over and over, begging for mercy. Clusters of smoke went from thick to thin again and again. The sobbing child in the corner thought he seemed to hear a low, deep sentence, wrapped in the rising smoke and blurred beyond clarity.
“I used to think that when I grew up, I wouldn’t walk his old path either.”
Only when the phone in his pocket rang did Lin Yi look away and answer it. “Speak.”
The person opposite him was quite impolite. “Come back and help me beat someone up.”
Lin Yi gave an “Mm” and hung up. He took the cigarette from his mouth, then unhurriedly lifted the boy’s pajama shirt. Amid the terrified screams, he pressed the cigarette butt against Ultraman’s eye.
Raising his eyes, he said, “Remember this. There are no guardian gods in this world.”
He stood and walked toward the door. “Make him sign the house mortgage contract. I still have something to do, so I’m leaving first.”
Zhou Ruo An crouched by the roadside watching Lin Yi beat someone up. Holding his phone to record, he saw the tall man in the screen throw another punch and frowned slightly. “Hit him according to the fifteen-hundred fee. You’ve gone over standard.”
Lin Yi kicked the man away, turned, and walked toward Zhou Ruo An’s camera. Against the light, his brows and eyes were not clear, and the killing aura around him had not yet faded, making him appear somewhat dangerous.
Only when he was so close that the screen could no longer fit his face did Lin Yi ask the person holding the phone, “Handsome?”
Zhou Ruo An pressed the stop button and lifted his head from within the shadows to look at Lin Yi. The man’s bone structure was extremely superior, with prominent brow bones, a high nose bridge, and a jawline that seemed cut by knives and axes. He always gave people a cold and severe impression.
Lin Yi and Zhou Ruo An both had the kind of looks that girls liked, but because the latter looked more handsome, graceful, and easygoing, he was a little more favored.
Zhou Ruo An was very fair, almost to the point that one could see the blue veins beneath his skin. Now his ears had been reddened by the cold wind, and his voice was a little tight. “So handsome I could die, Brother Lin. From now on, Bai Ban and I will both follow you.”
“Right, right.” Squatting beside Zhou Ruo An was Bai Ban. He was holding a pornographic novel and reading it ravenously; even through his padded pants, the bulge in his crotch was visible. Even his bootlicking of Lin Yi was perfunctory.
Bai Ban only had an elementary-school education and did not recognize many characters. He shoved the book in front of Zhou Ruo An. “How do you read these two characters?”
Zhou Ruo An and Lin Yi had both only graduated from middle school. Lin Yi’s father had died in a gang fight when Lin Yi was seven. Supposedly, when he died, five or six knives had been stuck into him. His mother had died even earlier than his short-lived father, so much so that now, Lin Yi could not even find a single photograph of his mother.
Relying on policy, Lin Yi muddled through nine years of compulsory education, then became a lackey and mixed in gang circles. Because he was vicious, ruthless, and had no feelings, he had also gained a bit of a reputation in certain shady fields.
Now, when people who knew him ran into him, they either gave him a wide berth or put on a fake show of bowing and scraping. But once Lin Yi left, they would all spit and curse, “A rat’s son knows how to dig holes, all right. Who knows how many knives will be stuck in him one day.”
Zhou Ruo An, on the other hand, had been good at studying. But Old Man Ding, who adopted him, only supported him through middle school. In name, it was because his strength was lacking. In truth, it was because he had seen that Zhou Ruo An was a thing with a crooked heart, destined to walk the wrong path.
In Old Man Ding’s Sichuan dialect, it was: “This kid is no damn good.”
But Zhou Ruo An had self-studied the high school curriculum and even read a few law books in passable fashion, successfully standing out by a tiny point in the cultural lowland that was the three of them.
Now, looking at the pornographic novel Bai Ban shoved in front of him, he replied, “Filth. Making a woman’s body covered in filth.”
“What does it mean?”
The three of them squatted side by side in a row along the base of the wall. Lin Yi pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Zhou Ruo An. Seeing him wave it off, he put it in his own mouth. As if casually making conversation, he also asked, “What does it mean?”
Zhou Ruo An took out the phone he had just put away. “Since you two are so eager to learn, let’s look up the exact meaning.”
Bai Ban’s crotch had been uncomfortable the whole time. He grabbed himself through the fabric and stood up. “I’m going to take a piss. Brother Zhou, wait until I come back before you look it up.”
Amid the dragging and shuffling footsteps, the webpage had already popped up. Bai Ban was Lin Yi’s dog; when things happened, if he bared his teeth, he would even bite Zhou Ruo An. As if Zhou Ruo An would fucking wait for him. Narrowing his eyes, he drew out his voice and read:
“Filth is a Chinese term, pronounced wū huì. First, it refers to something dirty or unclean; second, it describes a person of low or humble status; third, as a verb, it means to soil; fourth, it refers to obscenity or violation.”
He gave a roundabout “tsk” and pointed at the phone. “Lin Yi, this word is talking about the two of us.”
Lin Yi had already worked half of one cigarette into himself. The breath near his mouth tangled together with the smoke, obscuring most of his gaze. He seemed to cast a sidelong glance at Zhou Ruo An’s phone and asked, “What does the fourth meaning mean?”
Zhou Ruo An chuckled. “That one probably refers to our future, like what’s written in Bai Ban’s book.”
Lin Yi laughed too. He rested one arm on his knee and flicked ash from his cigarette. Once the cigarette was farther away, his gaze gradually became clear, settling heavily on Zhou Ruo An. “Our shared future, or separate futures?”
“Fuck, Lin Yi, I’ve realized that you’re seriously boring.” Zhou Ruo An stood and kicked the person with the cigarette in his mouth. “Let’s go, to the funeral goods shop.”
“Where are we going?” Lin Yi followed.
Walking in front, Zhou Ruo An only turned his neck slightly and said with a smile, “To buy Zhang Jin burial clothes.”
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