Pei Yan did not stay long at Zhuang Xiao’s house. He soon stood and took his leave. It was his first time imposing on the man, he had arrived uninvited and even gotten into a fight, and he did not have the shamelessness to linger and refuse to leave.
He still rose with an easy expression, neither humble nor overbearing. Before stepping out, he turned and gave Zhuang Xiao a clasped-fist salute. It was the beginning of a gentleman’s acquaintance. Both men understood where they stood.
The moment Pei Yan stepped through the gate of the Zhuang residence, he headed briskly toward his car with Johnny Wu following behind. Pei Yan always walked quickly and took long strides. Johnny Wu could never keep up, so his old godfather-agent trotted along after him.
“Aiya, your ear…” Johnny Wu saw something was wrong.
Of course Pei Yan knew. It hurt. Talking, offering tea, switching cups, the damn thing had been hurting for a while already.
He abruptly lowered his head and covered his left ear, then looked at his palm. Blood.
Johnny Wu went pale at the sight, frantic with worry. “Aiya, what about that magazine shoot this afternoon? Everything’s already scheduled… and once we get back you’re going straight into a production. Your ear’s badly hurt. This won’t scar your face, will it? Old Pei, let me wipe it. Don’t let it get infected…”
“What scar? Zhuang Xiao didn’t actually hit my face!” Pei Yan frowned and kept walking with one hand over his ear.
Johnny Wu’s suit jacket was still on him. It would have to go to the dry cleaner, and who knew whether the scattered bloodstains would even come out.
When Pei Yan left, Zhuang Xiao returned the clasped-fist salute and watched his guest walk out.
Zhuang Xiao turned immediately to the sofa. Sure enough, there were two drops of blood where Pei Yan had been sitting. The man had even stained his furniture.
Zhuang Xiao had actually noticed long before. While Pei Yan sat with him talking and offering tea, blood had begun welling steadily from his left ear. The skin was obviously injured, but Pei Yan said nothing and acted as though absolutely nothing had happened.
Pei Yan refused to show weakness and would not make a sound about the pain. Naturally, Zhuang Xiao would not point it out either. He gave the other man every bit of face he wanted.
A very thin line of blood had run from Mr. Pei’s earlobe, slipped down his neck, and finally stained the suit. The earlobe was probably torn.
Zhuang Xiao quickly walked to the window and looked through the glass, following Pei Yan’s back with his eyes.
The man surnamed Pei was striding away at almost the speed of someone fleeing in defeat, one hand still clamped over his ear as he escaped into the car. So he really had been hurt. He would probably need stitches at a hospital…
The moment Pei Yan left, the house became lively again. The group of younger men who had voluntarily retreated into the backyard came swarming back in, reclaimed the sofas and every corner of the living room, and immediately began gossiping.
Fatty Bao could finally strip off his fake cold mask and reveal his true self. He slapped his thigh on the sofa. “Holy shit, I nearly died of fright just now. I told them on the phone, don’t come, what are you coming for, looking for trouble? Isn’t this obviously going to turn into a fight? Who knew that Pei guy would really dare come see you, Boss?”
Zhuang Xiao had already wiped the sofa clean. A faint pink mark might never come out completely. Mr. Pei had left some DNA behind.
Zhuang Xiao gave a soft snort. “That kid. Does he look like there’s anything he wouldn’t dare do?”
Fatty Bao turned and pointed at Sa Risheng. “And you, Xiao-Sa. With that temper of yours, what exactly were you trying to do today? I’ll tell you the truth. We were lucky it was Pei Yan who twisted your leg and only strained it. What if you’d twisted his leg and broken it? We couldn’t afford the compensation for delaying his work. His schedule’s packed. Precious young star, can’t damage him!”
Sa Risheng limped over on the leg with the pulled muscle and sat down nearby, silent as a gourd. After a long while, he muttered, “I just can’t stand him.”
“Aiya, ge is terrified of you, Grassland Little Prince!” Fatty Bao leaned backward. “Who the hell can stand that Pei guy? He walks around so arrogant, with a face just begging to be slapped. Only our ge would dare actually slap him. But no matter how much you dislike him, next time you see him you still can’t start a fight. You two might end up on the same set this time. You planning to keep brawling there too?”
They were all veterans of the Zhuang Stunt Team, bonded almost like sworn brothers who had kowtowed and mixed blood. Behind closed doors, they were family, which was why they could speak honestly.
Sa Risheng was a young, handsome martial artist. Within the Zhuang team, his nickname was “Grassland Little Prince,” because he really was that good-looking. In a sense, he truly was a little prince. Tracing his family through the surname led back to a distinguished line, the surname having been granted by a Mongol prince during the Yuan dynasty. The Sa clan of Yanmen had a famous name in martial circles, producing several notable figures through the Ming, Qing, and modern eras.
Within the same industry, bodies and lives really did have different prices. Fatty Bao was merely stating the ugly truth.
Bao Pengzhi said, “Xiao-Sa, you’re a stuntman. A stunt double gets paid fifty thousand yuan. That means your leg is worth fifty thousand yuan. Pei Yan is a star. Do you know how high his current fee is? Twenty million yuan at least. Of that twenty million, at least ten million is the value of his two legs. The other ten million is the price of that face. So you cannot hurt him. Contracts aren’t money? Production schedules aren’t money? If we wreck his schedule, we can’t afford it.”
Sa Risheng lowered his head and fell silent, jaw tight, miserable.
Zhuang Xiao walked over smiling and gave Xiao-Sa’s shoulder a solid pat. “Heh. Don’t scare the kid. It’s fine. Come eat with me tonight.”
Fatty Bao had not meant to humiliate his own artist and close brother. He was teaching Xiao-Sa to keep his temper under control and stay low-key in this business. If you did not yet have the standing of a heavyweight, then you did not go looking for trouble. That was the full calculation of an agent. His mind was not on one moment of swagger or hot blood, but on contracts, schedules, billing, fees, and the reputation and future of the entire Zhuang Stunt Team.
When their ge said he would take Xiao-Sa out for dinner, it was simply a way of soothing his brother.
Zhuang Xiao said there were risks in their line of work. Think before doing something. If trouble happened, do not blame people and do not take revenge. Look forward in everything. Stop grinding yourself down over what had already happened.
Zhuang Xiao also said, You think I don’t feel bad? When I feel bad, I think about protecting all of you properly, letting all of you earn your money safely and steadily. We make our living while we’re young. None of you should get hurt.
Bao Pengzhi studied Zhuang Xiao’s face. “Boss, you believe what that Pei guy said? I heard him just now. He says it was an accident, so it really was an accident? You believe him?”
Zhuang Xiao changed the subject. “Did you see Pei Yan’s ear bleeding just now? His earlobe split open.”
The younger men erupted into buzzing discussion. Bleeding? Fuck, Boss really is Boss. That Pei guy came here to smash the place up, and one slap taught him manners. Didn’t he deserve it?
Zhuang Xiao said, “I didn’t hit hard. I had absolutely no intention of damaging his face or making him bleed.”
“It was just short-range force and bad luck. Then I noticed he had a stud in his left ear. Nothing in the right, only the left earlobe. My palm landed on that stud. It probably drove the metal inward and tore his own earlobe open.”
Bao Pengzhi and Sa Risheng stared with their mouths open. “Oh…”
“Pei Yan knows it too. The earring tore the flesh. You can’t really count that as me injuring him, because I never intended to hurt him. That’s why he didn’t say anything, didn’t complain about the pain, and didn’t ask me to pay his medical bills. He’s definitely at the hospital getting stitches right now. That ear will probably need a few days. I’m the one who delayed his schedule back home. As long as his face isn’t scarred, that’s good.”
As Zhuang Xiao spoke, the miscellaneous buzzing in the room naturally faded away. Everyone understood the meaning behind his words.
*
Zhuang Xiao had guessed correctly. Johnny Wu drove Pei Yan straight to a local hospital to have the ear disinfected and patched up.
The earlobe was split fairly badly and had bled a lot. The doctor on duty spent quite some time removing the diamond stud. That was what short-range force could do. A tiny decoration worn for style had managed to cut a substantial gash into him.
The magazine shoot that afternoon had to be canceled. Johnny Wu paced in circles, grabbing his hair and lamenting the waste. It was a famous Hollywood celebrity photographer who specialized in international movie stars, shooting a black-and-white series with dozens of stars appearing in individual portraits and group photos. Do not underestimate two photographs. Who got into them and who did not mattered. The company had fought to get this opportunity for you, Old Pei!
While they were at the hospital, Johnny Wu also received a message from Bao Pengzhi.
An agent was basically the artist’s minister of external affairs. When small conflicts happened, agents had to wipe up the mess. Fatty Bao’s tone was very polite now. On WeChat he wrote: Is Mr. Pei all right? Nothing serious? Our younger brother was impulsive today and should not have started a fight. Please ask Mr. Pei not to take it to heart. If he feels unwell, call and let us know. We will take responsibility.
Bao Pengzhi also said that if Mr. Pei was not rushing back home, everyone should arrange a meal together.
Fatty Bao saying that meant he was speaking for the boss of the Zhuang team. Zhuang Xiao wanted the two sides to put old grievances aside. They were all from the martial-arts world. They could make friends and stop mentioning the unpleasant history.
Pei Yan took Johnny Wu’s phone and began tapping out a reply with so much force that every press went pa-pa-pa.
Johnny Wu stared at him replying. Every time, he wished he could draft the message first and make his artist submit it for agent approval.
Pei Yan frowned. “What? I’m just replying with one sentence.”
Johnny Wu said, “Aiya, don’t say it’s you. Reply in my voice.”
Pei Yan looked up. “I’m the one replying. Why would I use your voice?”
Johnny Wu said, “Then why are you using my phone and my WeChat?”
Pei Yan said, “Fatty sent it to you.”
Johnny Wu glared at him. “Exactly. Mr. Bao sent it to me. So why are you grabbing it to reply?”
Pei Yan said, “…”
Johnny Wu snatched the phone back and typed while nagging. “You press so hard you’re going to break my HOME button, okay…”
Pei Yan mimicked his tone. “O-kay…”
What Uncle Johnny meant was that agents contacted agents. Artists did not need to manage these little matters. If Pei Yan said something wrong or badly phrased something, Johnny Wu would still have to repair it afterward. Little child, with that mouth of yours, you would be better off not speaking. Put on a little status and posture too. It was not as though Zhuang Xiao himself had contacted them.
Pei Yan was straightforward by nature. Whatever was in his heart, he wanted to say directly. He disliked putting on artificial airs. He watched Johnny Wu finish the reply, then his gaze slipped to the contacts list, where he seemed to see Mr. Zhuang’s WeChat and phone number too.
He looked twice more and quietly saved Zhuang Xiao’s number into his own phone…
Pei Yan’s schedule was extremely rushed. He had little time to tour Southern California or make friends.
He still arrived at the photographer’s studio on time. Johnny Wu had simply panicked at the sight of blood. It was only an injured earlobe, not a missing arm or leg. With gauze over the left ear, they could still photograph the right side of his face.
So for the next three hours, the photographer concentrated on posing Mr. Pei’s handsome right profile, never showing the left.
During makeup, they only had to fuss over the right side. Even the body paint on his bald head was done entirely on the right hemisphere. In his broken English, Pei Yan joked with the makeup artist that they could skip the left side altogether. No foundation or eye shadow there. He did not like those things anyway. They smothered his pores until they could not breathe.
Of course the kung-fu kid had to strike unusual poses that other people could not manage. Pei Yan did one shot frozen in midair during a one-handed backflip, his long legs turning overhead and splitting apart in suspension. It looked extremely cool. In another, he held both palms before him in the opening posture of Baguazhang. He posed professionally. After all, he had the foundation.
He only dared play with a few Baguazhang poses for still photos. In front of people who truly understood the art, he would never show off and expose his ignorance.
He could not help remembering the palm he had taken in Zhuang Xiao’s house, the one that chopped across his jaw. “White Ape Presents Fruit” was one of Baguazhang’s signature techniques, the internal martial art on which Zhuang Xiao had built his name in the film world.
The audition trip ended, and Pei Yan rushed straight back home to make promotional appearances for the movie he had just finished. When he emerged from the airport, he wore a hoodie deliberately pulled around his ears so reporters and fans would not photograph the injury at the side of his face.
The fans following him at the airport were actually disappointed. On Weibo they sighed that they had failed to photograph A-Pei’s devastatingly handsome bald head.
Pei Yan had been crowned “the handsomest bald man in history” within the entertainment world. Whenever he appeared at an airport, his freshly shaved scalp gleamed under everyone’s stare, openly displaying his unruly arrogance and refusal to conform. He was not deliberately chasing cameras. He had started shaving his own head at thirteen. Once that became his signature style, his management company loved it too and strongly demanded that he preserve the head exactly as it was and never grow hair.
Anyone could grow hair. Among all those pretty young stars, you were the only one who dared shave it off. In this business, the worst thing was having no style and being impossible for audiences to remember. So go ahead, act cool and handsome as hard as you possibly could.
One of the planning staff traveling with the company, a man named Zhang Huan, had once calculated the publicity value of the injury. On the plane, Zhang Huan leaned over and suggested, “Old Pei, what if we don’t wear the hoodie and let the ear show?”
Pei Yan understood immediately. “Why? Planning to extort somebody?”
Zhang Huan sounded half joking and half serious. “Extort whoever slapped you! No, wait, we can’t call that extortion, can we? Isn’t it just telling the fans the factual truth? We wouldn’t be lying. You didn’t smear chicken blood all over your face.”
It was excellent publicity material. Step onto the airport runway with a bloody ear wrapped in bandages, and he could compete for that day’s entertainment headline.
The headline could read: “Secret Infighting in the Kung-Fu World: Zhuang and Pei Come to Blows While Competing for American Drunken Fist.”
They could even make it harsher: “Old Ring Grudge Still Unsettled: Zhuang Xiao Strikes Dirty and Injures Fellow Actor.”
Pei Yan rejected it immediately. “Let people see Zhuang Xiao slapped me across the face and nearly knocked my ear off? Someday I’m going to return that palm. You want people laughing at me first? Heh… I’m never anyone’s joke.”