The passenger-side door was pulled open, and Zhang Chi bent down and got in, bringing a gust of cold air with him.
Xue Bao Tian shivered, his expression darkening ominously. “Did I say you could get in? Get out!”
Zhang Chi picked up the proposal from the center console. The crisp rustle of turning pages accompanied his unhurried voice. “There aren’t any buses running now. Two Hundred, you have to take care of me.”
Xue Bao Tian was so angry he laughed. “What kind of relationship do we have that I have to take care of you?”
Zhang Chi turned another page without even looking up. “One night as husband and wife earns a hundred days of affection.”
That sentence was like poking a hornet’s nest. The curse was already on Xue Bao Tian’s lips when the proposal was suddenly held up in front of him, cutting him off.
“What’s this character pronounced?” Zhang Chi asked.
Xue Bao Tian had never been one to swallow his curses, but faced with Zhang Chi’s admiring expression, the urge to show off the knowledge he had been suppressing all day won out.
He glanced at it. “Shan, as in medicinal cuisine. It means combining Chinese medicinal ingredients with certain foods and cooking them together. Look at what I wrote here. It uses medicine as food and food as medicine, helping prevent and treat illness while strengthening the body.”
Zhang Chi nodded as if everything had become clear. He reached out and ruffled Xue Bao Tian’s hair, his thumb brushing twice across his forehead. “You wrote it really well.”
Xue Bao Tian barely dodged him, looking a little pleased. “Really? Sigh, too bad no one reads it.”
“I want to read it and learn something. Can I?” Under the dome light, Zhang Chi looked especially sincere, a faint trace of admiration hidden in his deep-set eyes.
Xue Bao Tian was secretly delighted, though he put on a reluctant expression. “Wanting to improve yourself is a good thing. Fine, I’ll lend it to you.”
“What if there’s something I don’t understand?”
Xue Bao Tian immediately perked up. “Ask me. I’ll answer all your questions.”
“Then don’t cancel the hotel room.” Zhang Chi calmly turned another page. “We can go there later, and you can explain it to me.”
Xue Bao Tian froze. Only then did he remember the suite he had booked half an hour earlier for Zhang Chi and Candidate Number Two.
“You said that once you help someone, you should see it through to the end.” Zhang Chi lightly stroked the proposal. “You still can.”
“Fuck.” Xue Bao Tian’s slowly spreading smile carried both irritation and menace. “Zhang Chi, your damn abacus is clacking so loudly the whole country can hear it.”
He snapped off the dome light, hiding the faint disappointment on his face in the darkness. “I actually thought you wanted to read it.”
The soft rustle of paper sounded again. Zhang Chi slowly leaned closer and lowered his voice. “I do want to read it… and I really want you too.”
The air inside the car seemed to freeze for a moment. Xue Bao Tian’s heartbeat stumbled unexpectedly. He leaned back, suppressing the sudden unfamiliar sensation, then laughed. “Not bad, Zhang’er. You’ve even learned how to sweet-talk people. In the future, you’ll have your little lovers wrapped around your finger.”
His expression immediately sharpened again. “You think Master Xue is that easy to fool? Set a trap and I’ll just walk straight into it? Get out, get out, get out!”
Zhang Chi neither admitted nor denied it. After looking at Xue Bao Tian for a moment, he did not press further. “Then I’ll take it back and read it. If there’s anything I don’t understand, I’ll call you.”
He opened the car door, and the man traded places with the cold wind. Only after the chill trapped inside the car slowly faded, and the retreating figure was nearly out of sight, did a curse come from inside. “Fuck. I really should find myself a woman.”
Xue Bao Tian pulled out his phone and opened his WeChat contact groups. His thumb scrolled all the way to the bottom without finding anyone who caught his eye. Among a pile of sharp-chinned profile pictures, he randomly tapped one and sent a message.
Before the other person could reply, his phone rang. Seeing the name flashing on the screen, Xue Bao Tian’s lips curved into a smile. The moment he answered, his tone became obedient. “Aunt Ping, why are you calling so late?”
Noisy shouting came through first, followed by Aunt Ping’s tearful voice. “Bao Tian, someone’s causing trouble at the shop. They just won’t let it go. I didn’t know what else to do, so I called you.”
Xue Bao Tian’s expression instantly darkened. The sports car roared to life, his voice carrying a cold edge. “I’m coming over right now. Tell Uncle Cheng not to fight them. Let them make all the trouble they want. I’ll deal with it when I get there.”
As the sports car sped past Zhang Chi, it kicked up a fierce gust of wind and sent dust billowing into the air. The dust had barely begun to settle when the car suddenly reversed at high speed, stirring it all up again.
The window rolled down, and Xue Bao Tian looked over at him. “Get in!”
Through the haze of dust, Zhang Chi’s gaze swept across his face before he opened the door and climbed in. “What happened?”
The sign for Xiao Wei Skewers flickered dimly in the night, blinking on and off, making the place look particularly desolate.
Xue Bao Tian found a metal rod in a corner, weighed it in his hand, then turned to push open the shop door. His wrist was lightly caught, and Zhang Chi’s voice came from behind him. “With me here, Master Xue doesn’t need to lift a finger. Throw the rod away.”
There was no boasting or bravado in Zhang Chi’s tone, only calm certainty, as if he were stating the most ordinary fact in the world. Xue Bao Tian stared coldly at him for several seconds before tossing the rod aside, dusting off his hands, and pushing open the door.
The moment he stepped inside, a wave of hot, greasy air hit him, making it difficult to breathe. His eyes swept across the room, taking in the chaos.
The conveyor belt on the table crawled along slowly, but there was hardly any food left on it. A small individual hot pot sat on each heater, every one of them packed to the brim with ingredients. The food had soaked and swollen in the boiling broth until it looked bloated and thoroughly unappetizing.
Seven or eight young men and women in their twenties lounged around the table. Large, vicious-looking tattoos covered their exposed skin. Seeing the newcomers, they laughed mockingly. “Old lady, these are the reinforcements you called? Two people? What, are they here to entertain us?”
In one corner, Uncle Cheng and Aunt Ping stood together, furious yet helpless, shielding a young woman behind them. She had been shrinking back but cautiously peeked out when she heard someone enter. The moment she saw Xue Bao Tian, her eyes curved into a smile. “Xiao Xue.”
Xue Bao Tian quickly walked over. The darkness on his face immediately softened when he looked at her. “Zhou Zhou,” he called gently. He took two breath-freshening candies from a club and placed them in her hand. “Want to sit in my car? I changed the CD again. The music’s pretty good. Go listen.”
The woman looked about his age and had delicate features. She popped the candy into her mouth and nodded with a small smile. Xue Bao Tian guided her out from behind Uncle Cheng and Aunt Ping, half wrapping an arm around her protectively as he escorted her toward the door.
The tattooed group immediately began shouting. “Who said she could leave? Nobody in this room is allowed to—”
Their threatening voices abruptly died. The tall man who had entered with Xue Bao Tian stepped forward, casually picked up a handful of wooden skewers from the table, rolled them between his fingers, then brought the sharp ends down against the tabletop as though wielding a blade.
Crack! The skewers snapped cleanly, splinters scattering across the table.
“Nobody’s allowed… to move… Let’s see who dares…” It took the group a long moment to recover enough to finish their threat, but whatever momentum they had was already gone, their voices fading until they were barely audible.
Zhang Chi tossed the broken skewers into the trash. Looking at the group of young people around his own age, he spoke calmly, almost like an elder giving advice. “If there’s a problem, say what it is. Don’t shout. Sit down and talk. Things can be resolved.”
His voice was neither loud nor harsh. The gentleness of his tone made it difficult to believe he had been the one to snap those skewers moments earlier. The blond-haired leader spat and sneered. “Who the hell are you? Putting on that big-shot act?”
“A pencil case is supposed to hold pens. If you’re not putting pens in it, what the fuck are you putting on airs for?” Xue Bao Tian said as he pushed the door open and returned to Zhang Chi’s side. He leaned lazily against the wall. “What’s all the commotion about? Let’s hear it.”
Elio’s Notes: Xue Bao Tian is making a Chinese sound-based joke here. “Putting pens in” a pencil case sounds similar to a vulgar expression meaning “putting on airs” or “acting pretentious.”
As he spoke, he switched off two of the small hot pots beside him. Watching the broth gradually stop boiling, he glanced at Zhang Chi, who immediately understood. Zhang Chi circled the table, switching off every boiling pot one by one and even politely saying “excuse me” whenever he passed one of the troublemakers.
The blond-haired man snorted, now turning all his attention toward Xue Bao Tian. He wrapped an arm around the heavily made-up girl beside him. “My girlfriend got sick after eating here. We came to demand an explanation. Is that unreasonable?”
“No, that’s not what happened,” Aunt Ping suddenly said. “They’ve come here to cause trouble several times already. We were afraid of offending them, so we apologized and paid compensation, but they still come back every few days. Now I can barely keep the shop open. No one even dares to eat here anymore.”
“Did you call the police?” Zhang Chi asked.
Aunt Ping rubbed her hands against her clothes, unable to answer. Uncle Cheng stepped forward and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “We were afraid they’d hurt Zhou Zhou, so we didn’t dare call the police.”
Xue Bao Tian’s expression darkened. He put a cigarette between his lips. “So what do you want? Money?” His gaze swept around the shop. “This place has practically been stripped bare already. There isn’t much left for you to squeeze out of it.”
He pulled open a drawer, expertly found the lighter inside, and asked Uncle Cheng, “Have they been causing trouble at any of the other shops?”
After receiving a negative answer, Xue Bao Tian nodded and lit his cigarette. “Hey, Blondie, what’s your relationship with that new skewer shop on the corner? Did you grow up drinking gutter oil together, or did you both drink too much Sanlu milk powder? You’re working awfully hard just to drive this place out of business.”
Elio’s Notes: Sanlu was at the center of the 2008 Chinese milk-powder scandal, in which infant formula was found to contain melamine. References to “drinking too much Sanlu milk powder” became a crude way of insulting someone’s intelligence or development.
There was no need to ask anything more. The expressions on Blondie and his companions’ faces said everything now that their scheme had been exposed. Xue Bao Tian cursed, “Fuck, are you really that jealous? You can’t even beat a roadside shop selling vegetable skewers, so you resort to this kind of dirty trick?”
He tapped his chin with his thumb. “How does that saying go? What makes you jealous isn’t how strong your opponent is, but the pettiness and misery hidden inside yourself.” He smirked. “Makes damn good sense. Blondie, if your brain can’t remember it, write it down. Carry it around for the rest of your life. Maybe you’ll improve.”
Blondie exploded. “You’re fucking asking to die! Nobody in this territory dares talk to me like that!”
He lunged forward, but Zhang Chi, who had been standing off to one side, abruptly shoved him down into a chair. “Don’t get angry. It’s better to resolve things calmly.”
Seeing Zhang Chi backing him up, Xue Bao Tian became even more arrogant. “Your territory? What gutter did you crawl out of? Your survival skills are impressive. Even after getting splattered on a wall, you somehow managed to survive, but your development clearly stopped halfway. You’re two strokes short of being human.”
Elio’s Notes: The Chinese character 人, meaning “person” or “human,” is written with two strokes. Xue Bao Tian is crudely implying that Blondie survived as a sperm cell but never finished developing into a human being.
“I’ll fucking kill you! Guys, get him! Beat his ass!”
The previously fearless Xue Bao Tian abruptly sprang up from his seat because he realized that although Zhang Chi had Blondie pinned down, he was making absolutely no effort to stop the others from attacking him.
“Zhang Chi! You said that with you here, I wouldn’t have to lift a finger! You’re going back on your word!” Xue Bao Tian retreated, dodging a kick from the front, only to take a punch from behind.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, he glanced toward Zhang Chi and saw him still effortlessly restraining the struggling Blondie with one hand while fiddling with his phone with the other, apparently completely unconcerned about Xue Bao Tian’s predicament.
“Fuck!” Xue Bao Tian gritted his teeth and shouted, “I’ll keep the damn room, alright?!”
Before he had even finished speaking, Zhang Chi pressed the voice-message button and, in a voice only he and Blondie could hear, sent a short message. “Old Bai, sorry. I have to deal with your people today.”
The moment he released the button, he suddenly forced Blondie down toward one of the hot pots that had somehow been switched back on. The man’s face stopped less than an inch above the bubbling broth. Scalding liquid splashed upward, making him scream.
Without Zhang Chi needing to say another word, the thugs attacking Xue Bao Tian immediately stopped. They stood there awkwardly, suddenly unsure of what to do.
“Can we settle this now?” Zhang Chi’s voice remained calm, but a chill seemed to seep from every word.
“Let go of my boyfriend!” The heavily made-up girl suddenly rushed forward and desperately tugged at Zhang Chi’s arm, trying to save her man.
This was the second time Xue Bao Tian had seen helplessness appear on Zhang Chi’s face, and this time he looked even more flustered than before. Xue Bao Tian’s lips curled into a cold, sinister smile as he leaned against the table and rubbed his aching shoulder.
“Like I’m the only one without a boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend.” He locked eyes with Zhang Chi. “Finish him.”