“You’re loan sharks! Why do you have to have a conscience?” the boy demanded in despair.
The burly man with tattoos covering his arms patted the lettering on his electric-blue undershirt. “We’re Iron Fist Conscience High-Interest Loans! We have a conscience, and we stand for honor and righteousness!”
The other lender, a bald man, chimed in, “Safe and worry-free! Nobody gets hurt!”
Then the two joined voices and shouted, “Iron Fist Conscience High-Interest Loans, your best friend when you urgently need cash!”
Once they’d finished, they bumped fists, turned toward the crowd, bared two full rows of teeth, and smiled like models in a promotional poster.
The boy: “…”
Ji Tan: “…Are they always like this?”
The man from the neighborhood gave a couple of dry chuckles and said quietly, “I think it’s company policy. Once they start the first line, they have to finish the whole slogan.”
Sister Xu’s son spotted Ji Tan among the onlookers, and his eyes lit up. “Then can we take out a loan in my mother’s name?”
Both burly men shook their heads together.
“When Doctor Ji lost his mind, he borrowed money in his own name!” the boy protested, pointing toward Ji Sinan, who was hurrying toward them from some distance away.
The tattooed man spread his hands. “Doctor Ji has a respectable job.”
The bald man nodded. “Once he regains his sanity, he can earn enough to repay the loan.”
The tattooed man continued, “But Ms. Xu Duoyan…”
The bald man finished, “…doesn’t have the same expected ability to repay as Ji Sinan.”
Just then, Ji Sinan ran over, a thick white envelope in his hand. Panting, he planted himself in front of Ji Tan and handed the envelope to the two men. “I have money! Don’t touch my little brother!”
“Brother, where did you get that money?”
“I took an advance on a year’s salary from Quick Knife.”
The tattooed man and the bald man spread their hands in perfect unison. “See?”
The boy: “…”
Ji Tan: “Does your company put you through some kind of training in finishing each other’s sentences?”
The tattooed man accepted Ji Sinan’s envelope and pulled out a stack of City A banknotes in thousand-unit denominations. He licked his thumb and began counting. The bald man scratched his nonexistent hair and replied with a sheepish grin, “It’s part of our company culture. The boss upstairs likes this sort of thing. Last year the two of us even won the Crosstalk Rising Star Award, and our salaries went up twenty percent.”
Ji Tan’s mouth twitched. He looked toward the young boy, who was crouched on the ground with his head in his hands.
No matter how funny a crosstalk routine was, it could not cheer up someone driven to despair by a lack of money. It sounded more like mockery. The boss of this company was either a ruthless, iron-hearted character or… someone who really, genuinely loved crosstalk.
“I can do that too.” Xie Zhi appeared from behind him and muttered in Ji Tan’s ear, “Black fertilizer turning gray is forbidden here. Fiery-red phoenixes powdering phoenixes is forbidden here. Ji Tan remembering to mail rice balls is forbidden here.”¹
Elio’s Note ¹: Xie Zhi is turning Chinese tongue twisters and chains of similar-sounding syllables into mock prohibitions. The absurd wording is intentional: he is playing with the verbal form of his rule-based ability, not issuing meaningful bans.
Ji Tan shot him a sideways look. “You can’t use prohibitions anyway. What are you practicing for?”
Xie Zhi: “…”
“Your payment was three days late this month, so there’s an additional collection fee of three hundred,” the tattooed man said after counting the money, holding out his hand to Ji Sinan.
“Will you be able to pay on time next month? Would you like to arrange installments in advance? We’re offering a discount on installment interest right now.” The bald man handed Ji Tan a flyer that read: [Can you pay for your installment plan in more installments? Fist Conscience is here to help. Limited-time offer: 25% off!]
Ji Tan was astonished. “You weren’t nearly this civilized when you came to collect a few days ago.” He slapped away the three hundred Xie Zhi was offering and paid the fee out of his own pocket instead.
The bald man looked just as astonished. “We only come to your door after a payment’s been overdue for three days!”
They compared their accounts, and Ji Tan couldn’t help clenching his fists. The loan company actually collected its payments automatically from a designated account opened in Ji Sinan’s name. If the deduction failed, they phoned to remind him. Only if the money still hadn’t been collected three days later would someone come to the house.
But that other group had come on the very same day, even mentioning that “the Huo family hadn’t sent the money.” Yet even the loan company couldn’t know whether there was money in a private account until it attempted a deduction and, twenty-four hours later, the system reported that it had failed.
In other words, those men had been sent by the Huo family! They had deliberately timed their visit to Ji Sinan. If Ji Tan refused to do as he was told, those men could film the scene right there and use the footage to threaten him.
“Huo Zhaixing, you absolute bastard!” Ji Tan ground out through clenched teeth.
“Exactly. He ought to be hammered into a pancake,” Xie Zhi agreed.
The more Ji Tan thought about it, the angrier he became. He couldn’t let the original owner of this body suffer all that for nothing. The initial two hundred thousand was nowhere near enough to compensate for the harm done to the brothers. He hurried back inside, took out the scanned copy of his marriage certificate that the Public Security Office had printed for him, and handed it to the bald man. “I’m currently the legal spouse of Huo Zhaixing, the young master of the Huo family in Beichen District. Can I take out a loan in his name?”
His brother still needed at least one injection of the blank-prescription medication, and that would cost a staggering one million. Huo Zhaixing ought to be the one paying for it. Ideally, the loan sharks would go all the way to the Northern District and beat him up while collecting.
The tattooed man leaned over to take a look, bent his head to examine the document, and thought for a moment before saying sincerely, “With the Huo family’s credit rating, you could actually get a normal bank loan. The interest would be lower than ours.”
The bald man nodded his bald head and handed the document back.
Ji Tan: “…” They really have that much of a conscience?
“What’s everyone gathering here for?” An officer from the Public Security Office came over to disperse the crowd. The moment he spotted the two men in electric-blue undershirts, he barked, “Are you two using violence to collect debts?”
“No, no! We’re Iron Fist Conscience High-Interest Loans! We have a conscience, and we stand for honor and righteousness!”
“Safe and worry-free! Nobody gets hurt!”
The two men bumped fists and smiled again. “Iron Fist Conscience…”
“Enough, enough!” The Public Security Office officer hurriedly interrupted their incantation before they could finish the advertising slogan. Promoting high-interest loans right in front of law enforcement was hardly appropriate.
The two men, unable to finish their lines, turned bright red from holding the words in. They waved goodbye to Ji Sinan, then left looking deeply aggrieved, muttering the whole way, “Iron Fist Conscience High-Interest Loans, your best friend when you urgently need cash.”
Two people in silver uniforms were following the Public Security Office officer. When they saw Xie Zhi standing behind Ji Tan in trendy hip-hop clothes, they immediately snapped to attention and saluted. “Sir!”
Ji Tan had wanted to ask about this since last night. “Aren’t you a motorcycle-taxi driver in the Western District? How come you’re their superior too?”
“Uh…” The two silver-uniformed officers looked helplessly at Xie Zhi, wondering whether they’d just ruined their superior’s undercover operation.
Xie Zhi pulled his motorcycle keys out of his pocket and twirled them. He answered earnestly, “My main job is driving a motorcycle taxi. I help run the Order Administration Bureau on the side.”
Ji Tan: “The bar for part-time jobs in City A is pretty high.”
“You bet. Ask these two if you don’t believe me.” Xie Zhi tipped up his chin.
The two young men stood ramrod straight, their eyes darting about. The skinny, tall one was nudged by his chubby companion and volunteered, “That’s right. My name is Zhang Mian. I work part-time in the Inspection Division of the Order Administration Bureau in Xili District. My main job, my main job is… selling grilled sausages.”
The young man was clearly no good at lying. He had plainly made that up on the spot.
Ji Tan glanced at the chubby one beside him, who was sweating profusely as he tried to think of what his real job was supposed to be. Ji Tan cleared his throat and refrained from asking more questions. Instead, he asked why they’d come. When he learned that they were investigating last night’s incident, he handed Little Zhang the promotional card Sister Xu had given him.
“The Order Administration Bureau has desk jobs too?” Ji Tan asked curiously.
“Of course.” Relieved that no one was asking about his “real job” anymore, the chubby officer eagerly joined the conversation. “Strictly speaking, the TS Task Force refers to those roughnecks in the Sequence-Breaking Unit. Our Inspection Division is much more civilized.”
He had barely finished speaking when he suddenly roared, “Stop right there!”
Ji Tan saw only a flash of silver streak past him. Then, with the force of Mount Tai crashing down, the chubby officer pinned a middle-aged man who had tried to flee around the corner to the ground.
“That’s him! Er Mazi! He’s the one who stuffed little advertisements through the crack in my door!” The neighbor who’d been watching the commotion immediately stepped forward to identify him. “I even saw him having a midnight rendezvous with a widow in black robes!”
Black robes? A widow?
Something about that description sounded familiar to Ji Tan. “Brother Wang, how do you know she was a widow?”
“I heard him call her ‘Big Sis.’” Brother Wang’s eyes lit up as he warmed to the gossip. He leaned closer to Ji Tan and whispered, “I heard something else too, heh heh. The widow said, ‘Help me, Mazi! Oh, I’m dying!’ It was pretty intense. Only her accent sounded a little like someone from a village in the Southern District.”
Little Zhang tried to clarify things with the witness. “Sir, think again. Could it have been ‘Fuer-Zas-Os! Keh-keh-keh!’?”²
Elio’s Note ²: Brother Wang misheard the cult’s chant as a suggestive exchange between lovers. The Chinese phrase he imitates, “扶俺，麻子，噢死咧,” sounds comically close to the chant “弗尔-扎斯-欧斯,” especially in his imagined rural accent.
Brother Wang clicked his tongue. “What would a youngster like you know?”