Fang Peizhi still had business to attend to that evening. After stopping by the apartment to pick up some documents, he drove straight to a technology company.
The company was more or less a side venture for him. He was one of its founding partners.
A facial-recognition scanner checked him as he entered the offices. The electronic doors slid open on both sides, and the unmistakable atmosphere of labor-law violations washed over him.
“Why is everyone still here?”
He strode inside. Every employee had hair that looked as though it had been hit by artillery fire, and everyone was run ragged.
Technology stocks had plunged recently, and the company’s figures and product market performance had reached unprecedented lows.
Another partner came over. “If we don’t break a few laws, we’re going under.”
“The road to profit is written right there in the laws and regulations. Fortune favors the bold. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. You can’t catch a wolf without bait. If there’s a tiger on the mountain, march straight toward it anyway.”
His partner transformed into a walking book of three hundred proverbs, hoping to scare Fang Peizhi a little. Fang did not so much as blink.
His partner said, “Aren’t you afraid the employees will sue us?”
Fang Peizhi replied, “I’m not the company’s registered legal representative.”
His partner, who was the registered legal representative: …
Jokes aside, things were nowhere near that serious. Ups and downs were normal in the tech industry.
The company also paid overtime in accordance with the law.
Knowing they would be working until late into the night, Fang Peizhi took out his phone to order everyone some supper.
Whenever he happened to be at the company during overtime, he always treated the staff.
His partner had no intention of refusing. Free food was free food. A businessperson knew better than to pass up even a small advantage.
Fang ordered drinks to go with the food, too.
Usually it was milk tea or fruit tea. Why not coffee? Overtime was bitter enough already. If even the drinks tasted bitter, they might end up watching the horizon rise toward the office rooftop.
The food itself varied.
“What are we eating tonight?” His partner leaned over to look at Fang’s phone and stared in horror. “You’ve got to be kidding. Dumplings again?”
How many times had they eaten dumplings in the last two days? His partner demanded, “Are you having some kind of dream romance with dumplings?”
Fang Peizhi sighed. “In the end, they’re all substitutes.”
His partner’s expression said it all: Have you lost your mind? Did you step on some old lady’s Chihuahua outside, and did she beat you stupid with a bag of frozen dumplings she’d pulled out of her freezer?
Fang ordered dumplings for himself. The employees took a vote to decide what the rest of them would eat.
Remembering something, his partner reminded him, “Oh, right. Your gifts arrived at the office half a month ago. Remember to take them home this time.”
The gifts had come from a British company they worked with. Some holiday or other over there. Who knew which one? The British seemed to have eight hundred holidays a month.
The company had sent the gifts as a friendly gesture between business partners.
Fang visited this office a moderate number of times each month. The gifts had actually arrived a month ago, yet he had never taken them away.
The British side had sent quite a lot, and the boxes took up space. This time his partner made a point of reminding him to take them.
After Zhao Sheng returned with the groceries, the brothers made a few simple dishes together.
Their parents had died young, so they had both learned to cook early in life. They put the unused vegetables and meat in the refrigerator. Zhao Sheng had done more of the cooking today and was drenched in sweat from the hot kitchen, so Zhao Buxi decided he would make breakfast the next morning.
While they ate, Zhao Buxi asked indirectly, “Little Tiger, what’s your supervisor like? Does he treat you well?”
“Pretty well,” Zhao Sheng replied. “Treats everyone about the same.”
They had only known each other for a few days, so Zhao Sheng could not claim to know him inside out. Still, Fang had treated people well ever since registration day.
He did not put on airs, and his conversation was witty and entertaining.
As his graduate supervisor, though, Fang was bound to make his students feel some pressure. That was normal given their social relationship.
In the past few years, Fang’s academic monographs and patents in his technology field had become well-known and highly regarded by both industry and academia.
He was already famous. The graduate students who won places under him had no idea how many competitors they had to elbow out with their grades.
Part of the reason he was such a popular choice among graduate students in the field was the unfavorable comparison offered by his colleagues.
When Zhao Sheng had first looked for a supervisor, all he could see were old men. While preparing for the first entrance exam, he spent every waking day revising and researching old men.
An older female student who had prepared for the exam alongside him had wailed in despair.
“Old men, old men, they’re all old men! I’m dreaming about old men now!”
Older academics might have plenty of experience, but there were also hidebound fossils and insufferable old coots among them. Young supervisors like Fang Peizhi did exist, but people who achieved success at a young age often turned into ruthless believers in achievement above all else.
They would casually drop hints about their achievements or launch into self-congratulatory speeches. By the time they finished boasting, half the class would be over.
Zhao Sheng had suffered plenty of that as an undergraduate. Some professors would teach for a while, then launch into their ten-thousand-and-eighty-sixth account of their son or daughter studying overseas, or my husband, my wife…
Nobody wanted to hear it. Nobody wanted to know how many people lived in their household, or that they had a dog named Lisa.
Zhao Sheng just wanted to study. He had no interest in the details of his teachers’ domestic lives. If he had his way, the next news he heard about their children would be that a shark was chasing them.
Fang Peizhi never did anything of the sort. That was one reason Zhao Sheng had fought so desperately for a place among his graduate students.
From childhood, Zhao Sheng had known his family was poor and education was his only chance to change his fate. He still wanted to buy his brother a big house in Beijing, take him traveling around the world, and give him a good life.
He had talent for studying, but the effort he had put in to reach this point far surpassed his natural gifts.
Zhao Buxi’s worries did not disappear after hearing his brother’s answer.
They’ve only known each other a few days. His true colors probably haven’t shown yet. Students interviewed on the news had all said that their supervisors initially pretended to be good people. Later, if the students would not cooperate at the expense of their own interests, the professors would suddenly transform, changing faces like a Sichuan-opera performer.
After eating and cleaning up, the brothers went back to their room rather than wandering around the apartment.
The next day, Zhao Buxi needed to look for work first, then get his ears pierced.
Zhao Sheng’s bedroom had its own bathroom. Zhao Buxi stood in front of the mirror and touched his earlobes.
Old Jiang had told him that men could wear stud earrings too.
He had never seen a man wearing them himself. But that figured: he had always lived in small places and knew little about the changing fashions of big cities.
Now, perhaps, he could start catching up.
He poked his head out of the bathroom. “Little Tiger.”
Zhao Sheng turned and saw his brother’s head poking out from the bathroom doorway like a mushroom growing from a tree. “What is it, Bro?” He was busy with study materials, wearing glasses so thick they looked bulletproof.
“Do you think your brother would look good with his ears pierced?” Zhao Buxi asked.
“Of course. You look good no matter what you do, Bro.”
“Really?” Delighted, Zhao Buxi turned back to the mirror and touched his ears again. He would give it a try. You ought to try everything at least once.
Early the next morning, Zhao Buxi got up to make breakfast. Then he returned to his room and asked Doubao where he could get his ears pierced near Capital University.
Studying was the one thing Zhao Sheng would never allow himself to neglect. He never slept in, and even on mornings with eight o’clock classes, he reached the library an hour early to study and wake up his brain.
After breakfast, he hurried out.
It was already seven-thirty when Fang Peizhi emerged from his room. He had come home late the night before and was not fully awake. Acting on muscle memory, he took bagels and vegetables out of the refrigerator.
There were two cooking pots on the counter, one belonging to Zhao Sheng and one to him.
When he had finished preparing his bagel and coffee and sat at the dining table, he discovered a plate of dumplings covered in plastic wrap sitting there in plain sight.
A powerful soundtrack, accompanied by the cry of a phoenix, burst into Fang Peizhi’s head.
True love has arrived!
Zhao Sheng had already gone. Fang had heard the door open earlier. Beside the plate of dumplings was a card.
Nof enuff. Pott haz moar.
Fang stared at the crooked, scattered characters on the card, puzzling over them for ages. At last, with an astonishing feat of interpretation, he deciphered the message: If that isn’t enough, there’s more in the pot.
Zhao Sheng must have left the dumplings for him.
Fang looked down at his bagel and coffee, then at the dumplings, and decisively chose the latter.
When Zhao Buxi had found a piercing studio, saved its details, and come out for breakfast, he saw a dining table that looked as though a whirlwind had swept through it. Fang Peizhi was sitting there.
At the sound of the door opening, Fang turned around.
“…”
“…”
For a full minute, the apartment was completely silent.
How could one describe such an encounter? Like losing a rag doll on a rainy day, only to come home at midnight and find it waiting outside your door.
A ghost story.
For a moment, both men curled their toes tightly inside their slippers.
The same thought appeared in both their heads: Holy crap, why is he here?
At the sight of Fang Peizhi, Zhao Buxi felt as though he had confessed his love to a ceiling beam, and the beam had kept leading him on.
His face was flushed, and he could barely breathe. How very romantic.
After an agonizing silence, Zhao Buxi spoke first. “Hello, Professor Fang.”
Despite his private prejudice against Mr. Bad Temper as a potentially unscrupulous supervisor, Fang was still the person he wanted to give a present. No matter how reluctant he felt, Zhao Buxi would greet him for Little Tiger’s sake.
Besides, the man had agreed to let him stay in the apartment. Though if Fang had known who his visitor was beforehand, Zhao Buxi privately suspected that permission would never have been granted.
Fang Peizhi had never expected to run into Zhao Buxi again and again and again and again and again. “You’re Zhao Sheng’s relative?”
Yesterday this man had tried giving him a present. Not long afterward, Zhao Sheng had messaged him to ask whether a relative visiting Beijing could stay in the apartment.
It was not that Fang had failed to consider the possibility that the gift-giver and Zhao Sheng’s relative were one and the same.
He had simply dismissed it almost immediately.
Zhao Sheng’s family was not well-off, whereas the man who came with gifts was dressed in designer labels from head to toe. They could not possibly be from the same household.
Today’s appearance by Zhao Buxi had slapped that conclusion right across his face.
“That’s right,” Zhao Buxi said. “I’m Little Tiger’s older brother. Name’s Zhao Erniu.”
However much they disliked each other, they now had a professor-and-family-member relationship to maintain. A little politeness was in order.
The two men were courteous on the surface and at odds underneath.
Fang Peizhi had never imagined that becoming a graduate supervisor would involve meeting a student’s family.
“Hello. I’m Fang Peizhi.”
Zhao Buxi walked to the table, intending to eat breakfast. He made casual conversation. “Have you eaten, Professor Fang? I made dumplings this morning.”
Then he noticed the dumplings on the table were gone.
He added, “There are more in the pot.”
With that, he went to the kitchen, only to lift the lid and find the pot completely empty.
Zhao Buxi: …
If he remembered right, he had made a full forty dumplings that morning.
Returning to the dining room, Zhao Buxi looked at Fang Peizhi. His voice was a little hoarse with shock. “Did you eat all of them?”
The instant Fang heard that Zhao Buxi had made the dumplings, he understood: the card had been left for Zhao Sheng, not for him.
Zhao Buxi had originally planned to leave a good impression on Mr. Bad Temper, whatever it took, and speak pleasantly to him. But the shock of seeing someone eat more than thirty dumplings first thing in the morning made his usual bluntness burst straight out. “Are you a pig?”
A world-shaking pig squeal seemed to ring through the air.
Fang Peizhi: …
What decent person ate thirty dumplings for breakfast?
Fang Peizhi did not transform into Judge Bao or pull a sour face. He sat there silently, guilty as charged, with even a tiny shred of vegetable still clinging to the corner of his mouth.
Zhao Buxi looked at him, forced to revise his opinion once again.
Bad temper. And greedy as anything.