At the street food stall, voices boiled over with noise.
The big red-willow skewers had been grilled until they were charred and fragrant. Feng Jia shook his head happily as he tore off a piece, chewing until his mouth was slick with oil.
With his words muffled by food, he asked, “After that time, you and Construction Worker Bro haven’t seen each other again?”
Xue Bao Tian had attended elegant banquets and squatted by roadside stalls; he could take a bite of anything, and he despised everything equally. After picking out a few boiled peanuts and eating them, he habitually went to look for a cigarette, only to feel a lollipop in his pocket.
“We saw each other once, at a dinner someone else organized.” Xue Bao Tian tossed the lollipop to Feng Jia and lit a cigarette. “He blocked a few drinks for me, smoked a cigarette with me, and we didn’t say much.”
That night, he and Yan Ye had been seated on opposite sides by the hosts, separated by flickering light and noisy clamor. Yan Ye’s gaze when he looked over was calm and gentle, and whenever their eyes occasionally met, his smile would deepen a little as he raised his glass from afar, which counted as greeting him.
Halfway through, Xue Bao Tian slipped out to clear the alcohol from his head. In the restroom, he fiddled with a cigarette, and when he came out, a cleaner handed him a lollipop.
“A gentleman asked me to give this to you.”
Xue Bao Tian lowered his eyes and looked at the candy in his palm for a while before asking, “Where is he?”
“He left.” The cleaner pointed in the direction of the private room. “He was standing here for about seven or eight minutes just now.”
Seven or eight minutes, the length of time it took to smoke one cigarette…
Feng Jia was clearly more interested in meat and rich food now. He put the lollipop aside and asked, “Brother Xue, you’re not planning to fight for him?”
Xue Bao Tian was pouring beer into a disposable paper cup, his cold, metallic voice mixing with the scent of malt. “They’re getting along just fine. What am I butting in for? Your Master Xue does all kinds of things, but I don’t fucking become a third party.”
Feng Jia bent down like a cat and slurped a sip of beer from the rim of the cup, asking softly, “Then do you still like him?”
Xue Bao Tian scoffed. “Liking someone won’t make you rich if you have more of it, and having less of it won’t leave you starving. I’ve got a whole pile of company matters to deal with. Where would I get that much idle time?”
Holding the cigarette between his lips, he glanced at the grilled oysters on the table. “It’s just fucking…”
“Empty in bed?” Feng Jia was exceptionally understanding in this regard.
Xue Bao Tian chuckled. He was thick-skinned and had nothing to be coy about. “Yes. Fucking empty for several months now.”
Feng Jia was a top-tier player in the field of pleasure and desire, and he had seen plenty who liked both men and women. “Sister Lisa…”
Xue Bao Tian did not hide it either. “Can’t really get interested.” Seeing Feng Jia’s face slowly turn red with an I understand expression, Xue Bao Tian kicked him from across the table. “What the fuck are you imagining?”
“Brother, men are easy. I’ve got plenty of resources. Tall, short, fat, thin, you can choose whatever you like. But you know it too. These people are after money, and most of the ones with real stamina are relying on chemical enhancement, pumped full of drugs.”
Xue Bao Tian picked up a peanut and slowly rubbed away its red skin, as though stripping away the bright and glamorous fig leaf from people’s bodies, exposing helplessness and embarrassment with nowhere to hide.
“They’re all fucking having a hard enough time as it is.” He waved his hand. “I never planned to think in that direction anyway.”
“Brother Xue, what about the one who chased you all the way to the club last time? You won’t consider him?”
Xue Bao Tian’s hand paused as he poured wine. “Who, you mean Tong Yan?”
Seeing Feng Jia nod, Xue Bao Tian cursed, “Fuck. Why are you joining in the mess too?”
He tried to enlighten Feng Jia. “Tong Yan was dumped by that bastard Sheng Yu. He’s still in his post-breakup crazy phase. I was fucking loose-mouthed too. I once warned him that Sheng Yu was no good, and somehow he remembered it, decided I was a good person, and insisted on dating me!”
With a cigarette between his lips, Xue Bao Tian looked like a street hoodlum. “He should go out and ask around about what kind of reputation Xue Bao Tian has. A good person? That adjective is fucking fresh and refined.”
Feng Jia took the bottle and refilled Xue Bao Tian’s cup, smiling as he said, “But Brother Xue really is pretty good. I don’t know about other people, but anyone in our nightclub who’s had contact with you says you’re generous and straightforward, and you don’t trample on people.”
Xue Bao Tian drank the full cup. After setting it down, he smiled and cursed, “Get the hell out of here. Is that what I meant?”
“Brother Tong doesn’t have anything bad about him. He’s tall and thin, handsome, educated, reasonable, and decent.”
Xue Bao Tian leaned his back into the chair, stretching his arm out across the table. The fingers holding the cigarette tapped against the tabletop again and again. “I fucking can’t serve that ancestor. Can’t hit him, can’t curse him. Two dirty words had barely jumped out of my mouth before his face tightened up. Last night he called me dear, and I said, don’t force me to fucking slap you. That very night, he actually wrote me a thousand-word essay, comprehensively and profoundly criticizing me. Fuck, I didn’t even recognize several of the words.”
Feng Jia listened as though it were a comedy routine, laughing so hard he bent forward and backward, yet afraid Xue Bao Tian would curse him, he lowered his head and said, “How could there be anyone who won’t hit back when beaten or talk back when cursed?”
“There is. Our family’s little idiot…”
Abruptly, the sound cut off. Xue Bao Tian raised his hand and slapped himself across the mouth.
“Stop playing matchmaker for no reason. Tong Yan and I are impossible.”
“Are you afraid your positions clash?” Feng Jia leaned over the table and whispered, “Sheng Yu doesn’t care about men or women, but with men, he’s the bottom. I heard it from someone in another nightclub.”
Although Xue Bao Tian had not expected the tall and burly Sheng Yu to be the bottom, he was not particularly interested either. “Feng’er, eat properly.”
“Brother Xue, do you think Brother Tong isn’t as mighty as Construction Worker Bro?” Feng Jia wore the expression of someone watching a country bumpkin enter the city. He placed the plate of grilled oysters in front of Xue Bao Tian and dragged out his tone. “Brother, some people look good but aren’t useful, like Sheng Yu. But there are also people who… are exactly the opposite.”
Xue Bao Tian looked at the plate of oysters that had already gone completely cold and slowly furrowed his brows.
After sitting through two meetings in a row and listening to a special report on the “medicine-food homology” TCM decoction-pieces project, Xue Bao Tian was exhausted. This project, once sent straight into the paper shredder, had now successfully secured a national special-support fund and reached the critical implementation stage, where not the slightest carelessness could be allowed.
Xue Bao Tian’s brain, stuffed full of all kinds of data, was heavy and muddled. He dialed the internal line and asked his secretary for a cup of coffee.
Delivered along with the coffee were a postcard and a souvenir gift.
On the postcard, a beautiful Mongolian girl stood on the grassland holding a hada in both hands, wearing a serene smile. On the back was Yan Ye’s awful handwriting: I hope Xue Bao Tian (friend) is happy every day.
Elio’s Notes: A hada is a ceremonial silk scarf offered as a sign of respect, goodwill, and blessing in Tibetan and Mongolian traditions.
Fuck. Every time Xue Bao Tian saw such idiotic yet sincere blessings, he felt fortunate that Yan Ye belonged to someone else.
As a bodyguard, Yan Ye followed Lin Zhi Yi on business trips all over the country. Whenever they arrived somewhere with distinctive local character, he would send back a postcard and local specialties from that place.
This time, it was a box of beef jerky. Xue Bao Tian kept one piece. “Give the rest to the colleagues.”
“President Xue,” the female secretary said with a meaningful smile, “Mr. Tong has been waiting for you in the reception room for a long time.”
Xue Bao Tian frowned. “Just say I’m not here.”
The female secretary said softly, “He watched you enter the office. He’s waiting right outside now.”
Xue Bao Tian set down his pen and smiled sinisterly. “Baby, with your abilities, you wouldn’t be unable to stop a guest your boss doesn’t like.”
The female secretary smiled and swept back her hair. “But Mr. Tong’s little cookies are quite delicious.”
“Fuck, the thief inside the house really is the hardest to guard against.” Xue Bao Tian looked helpless. “Let him in.”
The person who came in next was Tong Yan. His face was cool and distant, refined and outstanding. At a glance, he resembled a secluded orchid in an empty valley, genuinely beautiful. But every flower suited a different eye; Xue Bao Tian took one look at him and saw only trouble.
“I baked cookies. Try some.” He placed the food box in front of Xue Bao Tian. “Your secretary ate some just now and said they were pretty good.”
Xue Bao Tian pressed down on the lid of the food box. “Don’t bother. I don’t like sweet things.”
“I was afraid you’d use that kind of excuse, so there are both sweet and savory ones.”
“I don’t like cookies at all.”
“That’s because you haven’t eaten the ones I made.”
Xue Bao Tian took a deep breath and lifted his eyelids. “Tong Yan, don’t treat me like a good person. While I’m still giving you face, go wherever the hell you ought to go.”
Tong Yan’s expression looked somewhat ugly, but he neither retreated nor dodged. He took an envelope from his pocket and placed it in front of Xue Bao Tian. “I sent this to you on WeChat the day before yesterday, but I kept feeling it lacked formality, so today I copied it out on writing paper. Keep it.”
Xue Bao Tian was somewhat horrified. “That thousand-word little essay? You cursed me for being vulgar and unrestrained, and that still wasn’t enough, so you wrote it on paper to humiliate me again?”
Tong Yan furrowed his brows. “What I clearly wrote was that although your words are crude and vulgar, they are not your true intentions. This is a love letter. Where is there any humiliation?”
“Buddy, I can’t understand that thing of yours, and I don’t want to read it at all. I know you were hurt by Sheng Yu, but don’t put me on some moral high ground, all right? I’m a scumbag too. Go ask around the company and see who isn’t my baby.”
Tong Yan walked to the sofa and sat down, then began arranging the flowers he had brought into the vase. He never gave flowers as a whole bouquet, only three or five stems. Once he adjusted their staggered heights, they looked clear, elegant, and detached from the world.
After inserting a white orchid into the vase, Tong Yan went on to trim the second stem. His movements were elegant, and his tone was calm as well. “During the time Yan Ye was in detention, I heard from Sheng Yu about the things you did to preserve his position in the company. A person capable of doing such loyal and righteous things, I don’t believe he could be a scumbag.”
Xue Bao Tian pushed the envelope and food box beside his hand farther away, his voice cooling. “Then you should also know that without Yan Ye, my family and I would probably have been killed by debt collectors long ago. Without him, I never would have caught Wei Hua at all. And even if I had caught him, because I lost my temper and injured him, the person who should have gone to detention was me. Do you know that if Wei Hua’s injury had been assessed as serious, how many years Yan Ye might have spent in prison for me?!”
Xue Bao Tian put the postcard on the table into the drawer, then lifted his head and looked at Tong Yan. “All of those are things Yan Ye bore for me, so it was only right that I preserved his position for him. This has nothing to do with whether I’m a scumbag or not. It’s morality.”
Tong Yan was silent for a while, then set down the flower in his hand on the table and stood up, walking toward Xue Bao Tian. “Let’s put morality aside for now. I’ll just ask you this: do you still want to keep walking forward? In the future, do you still hope there will be someone by your side?”
Seeing the sudden bewilderment on Xue Bao Tian’s face, Tong Yan bent down and slowly moved closer to him. “The future is still very long. Are you sure you only want to live alone? If you don’t, I’m a decent option. We can gradually understand each other and enter each other’s lives.”
He took out two symphony orchestra tickets, placed them on the table, and slowly pushed them in front of Xue Bao Tian. “You accompany me to listen to the symphony, and I’ll accompany you to do the things you like. How about it?”
Xue Bao Tian sank backward, widening the distance between himself and Tong Yan, and lit a cigarette. He swallowed the smoke fiercely. When the sharp nicotine had numbed his nerves, he lifted his eyelids and asked, “You’re sure you’ll accompany me to do what I like?”
Straightening his back and leaning close to Tong Yan, he said in a low voice, “I like sex. The kind with no feelings involved. Can you do that?”
A trace of surprise flashed through Tong Yan’s eyes. After a moment of complicated silence, he nodded. “I can.”
“…”