The thumb flicked the cigarette butt twice. The loosely held cigarette was brought back to his lips. The tobacco slowly burned away, the deep red ember flaring one final time before the cigarette’s brief life came to an end. It was tossed to the ground and crushed beneath a shoe.
With a finger, Xue Bao Tian pushed up the sunglasses that had slipped slightly down his nose, hiding his sharp eyes once more. Adjusting the backpack on his shoulder, he strode into the departure hall.
Moments later, a pair of sneakers stepped onto the spot where Xue Bao Tian had just been standing. Someone bent down, picked up the still-warm cigarette butt, and threw it into a trash can more than ten meters away.
Once aboard the plane, Xue Bao Tian helped the elderly members of a tour group stow their luggage with a dark expression. One wanted a tea egg, another needed a radio retrieved. After running back and forth several times and finally getting everyone settled, he was thanked repeatedly. His mood, however, did not improve. He dropped heavily into his seat, looking thoroughly annoyed.
It was the first time in more than ten years that he had flown economy class. The cramped, noisy cabin only worsened his mood. Pulling out an eye mask, he put it on, determined to block out the world.
He had barely slept for two nights straight. Yan Ye was at that age when he seemed to have endless energy and wanted to climb to the heavens. Every day he gnawed bones raw and ate meat cooked, never giving Xue Bao Tian a moment’s peace.
Sleeping on a plane was naturally uncomfortable. His head kept nodding as he drifted between sleep and wakefulness. In his haze, a warm hand gently guided his head into the shelter of a broad shoulder.
The tightly pressed corners of his lips finally loosened. “Fuck,” Xue Bao Tian muttered. He did not remove the eye mask or straighten up. Remaining nestled against the man’s neck, he cursed softly, “Yan Ye, you really are a fucking idiot.”
The man beside him pulled him a little closer, making it easier to lean comfortably. “I didn’t sign the papers. I sent the financial reports to a professional auditing firm. If there are any problems, they’ll contact me immediately.”
“Sheng Yu agreed to let you drag it out?”
“No. He gathered some of the company veterans and employees and had them collectively criticize me for slowing down the audit process and delaying their bonuses and year-end dividends.”
Even from his lips alone, Xue Bao Tian’s displeasure was obvious. “How did you deal with it?”
“I handed the pen to the person leading the complaints and told him I’d cooperate in changing the company’s legal representative so he could sign everything himself and speed things up.”
Xue Bao Tian curled his lips into a mischievous grin. “Our General Manager Yan has finally stopped acting like a pushover.”
Yan Ye lowered his head and sniffed lightly at Xue Bao Tian’s hair, sounding rather helpless. “I’m not a pushover.”
“Sure. The dogs that bite never bark.”
Laughing, Yan Ye ruffled his hair. “Get some sleep. We still have a tough battle ahead of us.”
A long time later, he heard a voice barely above a whisper. “Thank you, Yan Ye.”
The plane landed in Kunming. Without stopping to rest, the two men transferred to ground transportation and continued on to Honggu Prefecture. The moment they stepped out of the high-speed rail station, they saw a short, dark-skinned man waving at Yan Ye from the distance.
“Kang De. He’s worked for the largest security company in this area for twelve years. Excellent with a blade, agile, and skilled at tracking people,” Yan Ye introduced quietly as they walked.
“You know him well?” Xue Bao Tian asked.
“Not really. We met through industry exchanges and crossed paths a few times. I asked contacts along every route with potential smuggling access—sea routes, land routes, all of them—to keep an eye out. Nobody else had any news. He’s the only one who came back with information.”
After speaking, Yan Ye deepened the smile on his face, stepped forward, and clasped hands with the approaching man. “Brother Kang.”
Following a brief exchange of greetings, Xue Bao Tian and Yan Ye got into Kang De’s vehicle and spent several more hours driving to a small border town under Honggu Prefecture.
The town was not large. Houses climbed the mountainside, most of them two- or three-story buildings hidden among trees growing from rocky cliffs.
Perhaps because it was evening, the streets were lively. Low tables stood outside every shop, groups of three or five people gathered around meals, chatting and laughing. Elderly women in ethnic dress sat by walls smoking tobacco pipes, the wrinkles on their faces resembling the famous terraced fields of the region, each line carrying the weight of years gone by.
The locals showed little curiosity toward outsiders. Most glanced over them once and then looked away. Only the younger women took a second look at Yan Ye before stealing another glance at Xue Bao Tian.
“Honggu is an autonomous prefecture with a large ethnic minority population. Most of the people here aren’t Han Chinese.” Closing the car door, Kang De pointed at a small hotel. “You’ll be staying there tonight.”
After showering, Yan Ye emerged from the bathroom to find Xue Bao Tian standing by the window smoking. The evening breeze stirred his still-damp hair, carrying away both the faint scent of shampoo and the white smoke drifting from his lips.
The towel still carrying traces of Yan Ye’s warmth landed over Xue Bao Tian’s head. “You washed your hair and didn’t dry it? You’ll catch a cold.”
From beneath the towel came a curse. “Yan Ye, is all the water in your brain there because you never dry your hair? Relax. Not everyone’s as stupid as you.”
He flipped the towel back and put the cigarette between his lips again. “Old Kang booked two rooms, didn’t he? Get lost and use the other one.”
Yan Ye smoothed Xue Bao Tian’s messy hair back and leaned against the window. “What’s bothering you, Master Xue?”
The fierce act disappeared from Xue Bao Tian’s face. Looking out toward the endless mountains, he slowly exhaled a mouthful of smoke. “Repeat what Old Kang said at dinner today.”
Taking hold of the hand resting on the windowsill, Yan Ye summarized briefly. “He said anyone who wants to cross the border illegally here has to go through a smuggler. Every smuggler works with a handful of trusted brokers, and only those brokers can connect clients to the smugglers. So anyone planning to leave illegally must go through a broker. Old Kang said that three days ago, he happened to see a man who looked a lot like Wei Hua at one broker’s place. Unfortunately, he was on a job at the time and couldn’t follow him.”
Xue Bao Tian shot him a sharp glance. “He also said that as long as the broker is still around, Wei Hua can’t disappear.”
Yan Ye nodded. “That’s right.” He squeezed the fingers in his hand. “We’ll stake the place out tomorrow. We won’t let Wei Hua get away.”
Xue Bao Tian dropped the final token into the arcade machine and slapped the start button. Casually gripping the trigger, he fired virtual bullets while keeping his eyes fixed on a tea shop across the street amid the machine’s constant sounds of gunfire.
For three straight days he had monopolized the arcade machine nearest the entrance. Every day he started more than a hundred games, yet every day he came up empty-handed.
As evening approached, the tall man who spent his days playing chess at the opposite intersection sent away his final opponent. Rising to his feet, he looked over from afar with a solemn expression.
The tea shop locked its doors once more. Its thin, undersized owner left on schedule to pick up his child from kindergarten.
Once again, neither Xue Bao Tian nor Yan Ye had seen any sign of Wei Hua.
In the unfamiliar town, dialects filled their ears. Walking side by side, they let the none-too-gentle evening wind of a foreign place tug at their hair and clothes.
At a street corner, a woman in ethnic dress was selling bamboo-tube rice, tapping the bamboo tubes with a wooden stick to attract customers. Xue Bao Tian walked over and crouched down, holding up two fingers. Yan Ye scanned the payment code with his phone.
The town had been built into the mountains, and rocks lined the roadside. Sometimes Xue Bao Tian could be so picky that even the finest delicacies seemed too old and tough for his taste. Other times he was so easygoing that nothing mattered. Today he found a relatively flat boulder by the roadside, sat down with one leg crossed over the other, and ate his simple street food.
“What’s the longest stakeout you’ve ever done?”
“Several months.” Yan Ye sat on a rock opposite Xue Bao Tian, scooping rice from the bamboo tube with a spoon. “The one at that construction site on the outskirts.”
“The one where you ran into me?”
“Mm.”
“Fuck. Don’t tell me I’m going to be stuck playing arcade games here for months.” Xue Bao Tian set aside the bamboo-tube rice after only a few bites and reached for a cigarette. “At this rate, the arcade owner’s about to upgrade me to a gold membership card.”
Yan Ye plucked the cigarette from between his fingers. “Eat your food properly. You’ve lost weight again.”
Xue Bao Tian suddenly remembered that the previous night, when Yan Ye had kissed his waist, he had said the exact same thing. Right now, he was too preoccupied with catching Wei Hua to even bother cursing Yan Ye. He absentmindedly took another couple of bites before suddenly asking, “Old Kang only saw Wei Hua’s photograph. Are you sure he couldn’t have mistaken him for someone else?”
“He wouldn’t.” Yan Ye’s tone was calm. “People in our line of work are trained for that sort of thing. We generally don’t misidentify people, unless…”
“Unless what?”
Yan Ye’s gaze darkened as he looked at Xue Bao Tian.
“Unless Old Kang gave us false information.”
Author’s Notes: Other than the place names Yunnan and Kunming, all locations mentioned in this novel are fictional and have no connection to any real-world region. I’d like to make that clear here.
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