It was over.
Fang Peizhi’s words struck Zhao Sheng like a bolt of lightning aimed straight at his head.
Outside, the night sky was calm and the breeze gentle. Inside the apartment, thunder and lightning raged. Zhao Sheng opened his email and saw that the short paper he’d submitted earlier that day had been sent back.
It had been returned a little after six. He was only seeing it now.
The moment he opened the rejected paper, it was as if someone had lit a fuse. WeChat messages started popping up one after another. Not a single member of the group who’d gathered at the café that afternoon had been spared. Every paper had been returned.
Messages in the group chat:
“Run for it! The sky is falling!”
“How come my phone never sent me a disaster warning for something this bad?”
“Even the ceiling beam looks attractive to me now. Maybe it’ll let me hang around.”
“I think I’ve developed a superpower. The moment I read that email, I stopped needing to breathe.”
“I’m gonna dieeeee, stinky baby.”
Every one of them looked at their inbox and wanted to die. They’d expected a good night’s sleep after submitting their papers, but now it seemed the only sleep they’d get was the eternal kind.
The graduate students admitted under Fang Peizhi were, without exception, self-disciplined, efficient people who held themselves to high standards.
Now that their reports had been sent back, the city had gained another group of sleepless souls.
Zhao Sheng carried his water glass back to the bedroom to get his computer.
Zhao Buxi had just stepped out of the shower. A shower on a late-summer evening left him feeling refreshed, and at ten o’clock it was nearly bedtime. Then he saw Zhao Sheng heading out with his laptop.
He called after him, “Little Tiger, where are you going? It’s bedtime.”
Wearing a miserable expression, Zhao Sheng said, “Ge, you go ahead and sleep. I’ve still got some things to finish.”
At this hour? It was already bedtime. “What things?” Zhao Buxi asked.
“Schoolwork,” Zhao Sheng said gloomily.
He took his laptop and left. Zhao Buxi, who’d been in a wonderful mood after showering, felt as though he had been struck by lightning under a clear sky. His heart went cold.
Schoolwork in the middle of the night?
Schoolwork for Zhao Sheng meant assignments from Fang Peizhi.
The exploitation had already started, silently and without warning, all under the impossible-to-refuse pretext of training and education.
In that news report Zhao had watched before, a student victim described how her unscrupulous supervisor required her to be on call twenty-four hours a day. He even messaged her late at night, making her carry out academic tasks and compile materials for him in the name of improving her skills.
Overcome with grief, the student had pressed a tissue to her tear-soaked eyes. “Every time, I work right through the night. I haven’t had a proper rest or a good night’s sleep in ages.”
Little Tiger was now in the early stages of becoming just such a victim.
And little did he know this was only the beginning. Once he could no longer stand doing endless work for his supervisor and finally tried to resist, that supervisor would threaten his graduation and future employment, forcing him straight back into a life of servitude.
If a supervisor wanted to control a student, there were so many dirty tricks that even an entire book couldn’t list them all.
No. Zhao Buxi had to earn money faster.
Otherwise, Little Tiger might never get to sleep again.
Zhao Buxi now had not only a salary and the five statutory social insurances but also the prospect of a share of the profits if their project succeeded.
Little Lu had told him that if it worked out, Zhao’s share would start at no less than a hundred thousand yuan.
That was no small sum.
Then he could use the money to buy Fang Peizhi a luxury gift.
He had considered getting a higher-grade imitation from Old Jiang first. In fact, he’d contacted him a few days earlier.
Old Jiang had talked up his merchandise to the skies. “Same factory, same leather. The stuff sold overseas is all contract-manufactured in Chinese factories. They make it here, ship it abroad, and stamp a logo or sew in a label.”
“One-to-one replicas! Guaranteed identical. Carry it down the street or wear it out and nobody will spot a fake at a glance. They could stare ten times and still struggle. No one can tell!”
Then he’d asked whom Zhao was buying for. “Who’s the recipient? What’s their annual income bracket, their A-number?”
Zhao asked what an “A-number” was.
Old Jiang explained that it meant how much someone earned in a year.
Zhao Buxi said he didn’t know, only that the person was very rich and drove a car worth more than ten million yuan.
Old Jiang fell silent.
He’d assumed that the person this brat Zhao Erniu wanted to give a gift to might make a few hundred thousand yuan a year at most. Instead, Zhao had just hit him with an A11.
Without A11-level wealth, who could afford a car worth more than ten million?
Elio’s Notes: An ‘A11’ is an internet wealth-tier label for extremely high wealth. Old Jiang explains the A-number as annual income in this scene, although the label is more commonly used for asset value; the mismatch is in the source dialogue.
When the silence went on, Zhao Buxi asked, “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
Old Jiang replied, “Actually, someone might still be able to tell.”
“…”
Whether the fake would be recognized was uncertain, but when the recipient was that rich, it was better to be safe than sorry.
What if there was an authentication expert in the household? They’d be finished.
Old Jiang mocked him. “Then buy a real one. You’ve been out in the world for years. Don’t tell me you have no savings.”
“I don’t,” Zhao said into the voice-message button. “I used it all to pay back debts.”
Some had also gone toward Little Tiger’s education.
But Zhao didn’t mention that. Supporting his younger brother’s schooling was simply what an older brother was supposed to do.
Old Jiang scolded him. “Your parents died. Their debts died with them. You shouldn’t have paid anything back. If you hadn’t, would you still have needed to come into the city?”
Zhao Erniu’s parents had spent a fortune on medical treatment. When their money ran out, they’d had to borrow, some from villagers and some from banks.
As far as Old Jiang was concerned, since you had to see fellow villagers all the time, you could repay them a token amount. But why repay the banks at all?
The family had only a small plot of land and a modest one-story house, hardly any inheritance. When both parents died, Zhao Erniu and Little Tiger had still been children. Even if someone had come to demand repayment, there wouldn’t have been a single cent to take.
Where would children find that kind of money?
If Zhao had been thicker-skinned, he wouldn’t have repaid the villagers either. The two boys were young, newly orphaned, and so pitiful that who could bring themselves to demand money from them?
But Zhao Erniu, shameless enough in everyday matters, had insisted on repaying every debt incurred for his parents’ treatment when it really mattered.
He had declared, “I will pay back what my parents owe, even if I have to dig out my eyes and sell my kidneys!”
Not a cent more or less: he’d paid it all off last year, with Little Tiger contributing scholarship money toward the debt too.
The kid had somehow managed to repay several hundred thousand yuan.
That kind of money could have bought him a nice small building in their county town, and he need never have left.
If Zhao Erniu hadn’t cared for his brother and had simply left Little Tiger in the children’s welfare home, he’d have saved enough to marry long ago, just like the other young men in the village.
That brat Zhao Erniu was a fool. Being clever in small matters was useless if you turned muddleheaded and stubborn as a donkey over the important ones.
“How could I not pay back money my parents owed?” Zhao Buxi asked.
Old Jiang couldn’t bear to listen. There he goes again.
Zhao refused to accept Old Jiang’s reasoning. If he left the debt unpaid just because his parents were gone, what would that make of them?
Since Old Jiang’s higher-grade replicas were out of the question, Zhao could only pin his hopes on the project going through and the share of the profits he would receive.
Zhao had little memory of when Zhao Sheng returned. He only recalled being so sleepy his eyes were already closed. When Little Tiger came back, he mumbled, “All finished?” and promptly fell fast asleep.
When he woke again, it was seven the next morning. Zhao Buxi ate breakfast in a hurry and went to work.
Just before leaving, he doubled back to the bedroom. He had forgotten his notes from yesterday’s lesson, with all twenty words he’d studied. Each word had its pinyin written above it, so he wouldn’t forget how to pronounce it.
He needed to bring the sheet and review it when he had a spare moment. Tonight he had a dictation test waiting for him.
The sky was overcast. By the time he reached the office building, Zhao watched a dark cloud drift directly over its roof.
He went to work as usual, but as soon as he entered the employee area, he felt a tremendous weight in the atmosphere.
Inside the office, Lu Fengtong looked half dead, as though his entire being was begging, Let me die, just let me die.
He sprawled in his chair, completely devoid of life.
What had happened to everyone? One night had passed and the whole office looked as though someone had doused them with paraquat. Hadn’t they all been celebrating their fresh idea yesterday?
So this was what an office job was like? A new mood every day?
“What happened at the company today?” Zhao Buxi asked as he entered.
At the sight of him, Lu Fengtong rushed over. “Little Zhao, it’s over. Everything’s over.”
Zhao was bewildered. “What’s over?”
The assistant explained from the side, “Last night, someone exposed how President Lu’s late father spent years cheating on and betraying the wife who’d built the business with him from nothing.”
Whoever did it had deliberately chosen the middle of the night, when everyone was asleep. By the time they discovered the story, public opinion had already spiraled out of control.
Morning rush hour meant commuters bent over their phones in subways and rideshares. It was nearly the end of summer break but school hadn’t started yet, so students had time to scroll too, whether they’d stayed up all night gaming or otherwise. Anyone who browsed online would see the news about the late President Lu.
The story had clearly been boosted through paid publicity. Influencer and marketing accounts all over the internet were racing to report the terrible things the late President Lu had done.
And the main customers for the game collaboration’s merchandise were women.
Why would they want the game they loved to collaborate with the company of an adulterer?
Who could possibly stomach that?
Zhao Buxi pieced the whole thing together. “Does that mean my share of the profits is gone too?!”
Lu Fengtong wailed, “The entire project is about to vanish! What are we going to do?!”
Everything had been going so well. Only yesterday afternoon, he’d received good news from the company’s potential partner. They’d said they really liked and approved of the idea of including candy with the products.
They had even offered to commission special designs for the candy wrappers to match the game’s theme.
Everything they’d said pointed to a collaboration. They believed in the proposal.
But as soon as the news broke, messages were left on read. The collaboration seemed to have sunk without a trace.
His father had pretended to be poor and refused to give him money while he was alive, and now he was still causing trouble from beyond the grave.
Lu Fengtong’s world had fallen apart.
He was only a recent university graduate. His family had never been peaceful: his parents had fought about divorce since he was little, and he’d spent over twenty years short on money, short on love, and listening to people complain that they were poor. He’d barely started enjoying his newfound wealth when he ran straight into this vicious commercial warfare.
Whatever failed to kill him just kept beating him.
At this rate, the constant beating would turn him into a masochist. Lu Fengtong wanted to drop to his knees and howl at the heavens: What the hell was his safeword?
Now the project had fallen apart, and the company’s reputation was ruined too.
It was obvious who had released the story. Nobody but a competitor would dig into someone else’s family history for no reason.
Even Zhao Buxi, new to this sort of office politics, could tell that President Liang was behind it.
Unable to beat their product, he’d launched a public-opinion war instead.
How utterly rotten.
He might as well stop calling himself President Liang and start going by President Scumbag.
“Have we got any way to fight back?” Zhao Buxi asked.
The assistant pushed up his glasses. “I had someone transfer a single mao (0.1 yuan) to their company’s official account.”
Meanwhile, he’d dispatched their marketing and public relations teams to explain online that President Lu, the man who’d cheated, had died last year; that his mistress hadn’t received a penny; and that all his assets had gone to his lawful wife and children. Young President Lu had even changed his surname to his mother’s, Lu.
In a way, it was the kind of satisfying conclusion you found in a wish-fulfillment novel, where suffering finally gave way to happiness.
But their explanations were being buried by the viral story. So far, not one marketing account had picked up and reposted their response.
When it came to news, the general public preferred an ugly scandal. The more bizarre, sordid, and immoral it was, the more people wanted to watch, and the bigger it became.
Lu Fengtong was about to collapse. President Liang had already monopolized so many projects in the past; just when Lu had finally managed to get ahead, he’d been dealt another devastating blow.
His ability to take a beating had reached new heights, but he himself was about ready to disappear.
Not long afterward, a call came to the company. It was from Liang Shujia’s side, inviting Lu Fengtong out for dinner.
Eat, eat, eat! Always eating!
The nerve! He’d only just pulled a dirty trick on them, and now he wanted to buy them dinner? What did he take them for? This was bullying, plain and simple!
Lu Fengtong was beside himself. “How many meals does he think I can eat with him?”
“Do I even know him? Why is he inviting me to dinner? When he was stealing one job after another from me, why didn’t he invite me then? Now that he’s taken this huge project, suddenly he wants dinner! Is he normal? Is he even human? We’ve already eaten together once! What’s he showing off for? What does he want from me?!”
The assistant said, “He says there’s an enormous king crab being flown in, and he’d like us to try it fresh.”
Zhao Buxi and Lu Fengtong looked at each other.
“Hello, baby, looks like I’m getting a free meal again…”
“Hello, Little Tiger, tonight…”
The assistant: “…” He then took out his phone and called his own second uncle.
A free dinner was a free dinner. Besides, they wanted to see what other dirty tricks Liang Shujia had up his sleeve.
Perhaps to avoid a repeat of their previous dinner, Liang Shujia’s secretary had specified that only Young President Lu and Mr. Zhao were invited.
The assistant asked, “What about Chen Zhimao?”
“Who’s Chen Zhimao?” the secretary asked.
“Me,” the assistant replied.
“Sorry, you weren’t invited.”
The assistant: “…” Why invite anyone to dinner if you can’t afford it? Can’t even pay for one extra person?!
The assistant grumbled and complained, but when the appointed time arrived that evening, he drove Lu Fengtong and Zhao Buxi to the dinner.
On the way, they kept discussing how to catch Liang Shujia doing something he shouldn’t and give him a taste of his own medicine.
But Liang Shujia had always been a careful man, and there wasn’t usually much anyone could use against him.
Nobody even knew he liked men, and Zhao Buxi’s group certainly didn’t.
“Maybe there’s something wrong with his taxes,” Zhao Buxi suggested.
Lu Fengtong immediately perked up. “Really?”
“No,” Zhao said. “I’m guessing.”
“Why would you guess that?”
“I ran into him outside the bathroom before, and he offered me several hundred thousand a month to poach me. What decent person pays a bodyguard that much?”
Lu Fengtong was deeply moved. “Little Zhao, he offered you hundreds of thousands and you still didn’t leave me! What a brother!”
Then he burst into song. “Good brothers, for a lifetime~~”
Zhao hadn’t said this to let Lu know he’d been approached by Liang. He was genuinely offering an idea. If he’d wanted Lu to know about the offer, he would have told him the day it happened.
Only if they brought Liang Shujia down would their own company stand a chance of securing the project, and only then could Zhao get his profit share.
Throughout the journey, they still couldn’t figure out why Liang Shujia had kept inviting them out for meals lately.
It felt like a trap.
But they were out of options, and refusing would only mean missing out on a free king crab.
They arrived at a private dining restaurant, where Lu Fengtong and Zhao Buxi were shown inside.
At the sight of Zhao Buxi, Liang Shujia rose from his seat with a smile.
“Well, if it isn’t young President Lu.”
Zhao Buxi and Lu Fengtong exchanged comments through barely moving lips.
“How does he have the nerve to smile?” Zhao muttered.
“No idea. Shameless bastard,” Lu muttered.
Liang Shujia came over and patted Lu Fengtong on the back. “I saw the news about your family today, Brother Lu. Who would stir up trouble at a moment like this? I hope it hasn’t upset you.”
It has! It absolutely has!
Ten thousand imaginary grass-mud horses stampeded through Lu Fengtong’s mind. In the end, all he said was, “Not at all. We’ve already cleared it up.”
Liang Shujia put on a sympathetic act. “I was worried you’d be upset, Brother Lu. That’s why I arranged tonight’s gathering.”
As he spoke, his gaze fell on Zhao Buxi.
“Enjoy the food.” Liang gave Lu Fengtong’s shoulder a heavy pat.
Eat your own damn ancestors, all eighteen generations of them!
Clearly, the only one enjoying the dinner was Liang Shujia. He even ordered two bottles of fine wine. Lu Fengtong could only turn his grief and anger into appetite and eat and drink with Zhao Buxi.
Liang Shujia was riding high and drank a few glasses too many. By the time dinner ended, he was a little tipsy.
“I recently acquired a famous painting for my home. Would Brother Lu do me the honor of coming over to see it?”
The painting was only an excuse. What Liang really wanted was for that country bumpkin to see his house and realize just how successful he was, how much money he had spent buying a residence in land-starved Beijing.
“It’s a masterpiece by Qi Baishi. I paid quite a lot to acquire it.”
Elio’s Notes: Qi Baishi (齐白石) was a renowned Chinese painter, especially known for his lively ink paintings of animals and plants.
Qi Baishi?
Who’s that?
Zhao Buxi had barely been to school and had no idea.
Nor did he particularly want to go. He still had a test to take at home.
But Lu Fengtong’s girlfriend worked in arts education. Once he’d heard it was a work by a great master, Lu felt he had to go see it, whether he wanted to or not.
Lu Fengtong and Zhao Buxi got into the car and went to Liang’s home.
They drove to an upscale villa community in Chaoyang District. By the time they got out, the alcohol had gone to Liang Shujia’s head and he was thoroughly drunk.
No one attended to Zhao and Lu when they got out. The servants and secretary were all busy taking care of Liang.
The two stood around in the man’s courtyard, exposed to the night wind. Nobody paid them the slightest attention.
Lu Fengtong asked quietly, “Are we still going to get to see the painting?”
“Hard to say,” Zhao replied.
The driver knew they were the defeated rivals whose business had been stolen, and wouldn’t even look at them. As soon as they got out, the car drove off, leaving Zhao and Lu without a clear way home.
They’d have to walk two or three kilometers out of the residential complex before they could hail a car.
Fine. If nobody was going to look after them, they might as well wander around. They were already here, and Liang’s garden landscaping was quite good.
Zhao Buxi and Lu Fengtong strolled around, making critical comments here and there to take their frustration out on the garden.
As they passed one corner, Zhao Buxi stopped and examined something closely. Then he blurted, “Holy shit!” and called Lu over.
Thinking Zhao had spotted something amazing, Lu Fengtong opened his phone camera and hurried over.
“What is it? What did you see?”
Zhao Buxi told him, “Our project might be saved.”
Two clumps of flowers stood in the grass beside him, their buds just starting to open in the summer night.
“There are two kinds of flowers like these. The ones with prickly stems are called corn poppies.”
Lu Fengtong examined the plants. Their stems had no prickles. “What about the ones without?”
“Call 110,” Zhao Buxi said.
Elio’s Notes: Zhao suspects the smooth-stemmed flowers might be opium poppies (罂粟). Unlike ornamental corn poppies (虞美人), whose stems have fine hairs, opium poppies have smooth stems. Growing them is illegal in China, so he tells Lu to call 110, the police emergency number.