When he learned from Lin Wuyang that Zhang Qiren was actually in charge of the Miracle Nightclub, Chu Ge's face turned very grim. This was not the usual matter of a little vice; much more was involved. And...
Wasn't he the one who wanted to kill Yueying?
Chu Ge felt that nothing in the world could be more absurd than this. He badly wanted to ask what on earth was going on.
Zhang Qiren glanced in the direction of Qiu Wuji's room, lowered his voice, and said, "Step out for a walk? And don't tell me you're going to keep holding up those durians forever."
Chu Ge took the opportunity to set the durians down. "Let's go. Want to grab some skewers?"
Qiu Wuji gave a little hmph from inside the room, but she didn't interfere with him taking the durians down without permission. And Zhang Qiren still thinks he can hide things from me? Then again, even if he'd been able to see Chu Ge at the time, he definitely couldn't have seen her.
In his eyes, I really am just a female fan...
So that's one more relationship to add to the list?
The two left the apartment. Zhang Qiren looked at the unit across the hall and was silent for a long while. He didn't say much, only silently pressed the elevator button.
Chu Ge didn't speak either. The two stood quietly in the elevator, watching the floor numbers change, as if both were gathering their words.
Only after they left the residential compound and caught the smell of skewers did Zhang Qiren smile. "Let's skip the skewers. Too many people—if someone overhears what we're discussing, that's no good. Let's walk along the road over there."
Chu Ge nodded and walked silently beside him along the quiet night street, taking it slow.
"The underground boxing wasn't my doing. You know I just took over—that business has been around for years," Zhang Qiren said suddenly.
Chu Ge grunted, "Mm."
"My useless brother was in charge before. Not only did he run it into the ground and let the profits slide every month, he caused no end of trouble." Zhang Qiren smiled bitterly. "That's why I felt I was there to be the fall guy."
Chu Ge said, "You're not the type to just accept your fate. You had three books flop on you, were delivering takeout, and still kept writing—and you finished every single one. That takes no ordinary willpower. So since you took this on, it wasn't just to enjoy a few days before being made the scapegoat."
Zhang Qiren said calmly, "Of course not. Since I took this mess on, I have my own ideas. That brother really is useless. Whether my father actually wants to groom me or just needs a fall guy, as long as I do well, is there really no chance I could rise? I'm his son too. Whoever can make his later years comfortable—I trust he's neither blind nor stupid."
Chu Ge nodded. For two years now, the old man had been intent on having Zhang Qiren take charge of something. Whether it was grooming or not, there was surely an intent to observe and compare.
Zhang Qiren lowered his voice. "The underground boxing was losing money before. Before I came, that useless brother probably felt threatened, so he started planning a way to make a lot of money fast. Yueying had been winning fight after fight, so the odds were skewed absurdly. If she lost, they'd make a killing on that single bet."
Chu Ge turned to look at him.
Zhang Qiren continued, "In my first few days there, I was still getting familiar with the work and hadn't taken over yet. He had already tried to bribe Yueying and was flatly refused. So the bastard flew into a rage and got in touch with someone who had a wall-walking power. He had him follow Yueying and tried to use methods outside the ring—drugging her, that sort of thing."
Chu Ge let out a laugh. "Useless, all right."
Zhang Qiren laughed too. "Absolutely."
Zhang Qiren said, "He couldn't even manage it on his own turf—the home ground where it should be easiest—and he had to take it outside the venue. What kind of wiring does that brain have? Maybe because he'd caused trouble before, he didn't want to stir things up in his own house this time?"
Sure enough, Zhang Qiren said, "He'd been reamed out by the old man, so this time he didn't want to make trouble at home and planned to move it off-site. That much I can understand. But I personally felt uneasy. That morning, when the wall-walker started following Yueying, I took a few brothers and followed the wall-walker. Not that I meant to do anything—I just felt that once it moved off-site, it was out of control, and I needed to have some idea of which way things were heading."
Chu Ge sighed. "Then you chased him to the shopping district nearby, lost him, and happened to see me shopping. You even told me you were catching a thief."
"Yes." Zhang Qiren smiled. "Was that 'sister-in-law' with you then? I was too far away to see her face clearly."
Chu Ge stamped his foot. "For the last time, I did not fuck a fan!"
Zhang Qiren: "..."
He's still hung up on that?
Chu Ge cleared his throat twice and asked, "And then?"
"Then heaven knows what brick wall the wall-walker ran into—he ended up in Lin Wuyang's hands for no apparent reason, and that made things complicated." Zhang Qiren said resentfully, "It also proved my unease had been right. In fact, you could say that useless brother had screwed up again, so the old man urgently changed the legal representative, handed the whole mess to me, and pulled him back."
At this point, Zhang Qiren turned and looked Chu Ge over, then said suddenly, "Later I started suspecting that brick wall was you."
"Why did you suspect that?"
"Because you went to meet Yueying. There had to be some story connecting you and Yueying, and the two of you teaming up against the wall-walker is a fairly reasonable guess. That was also when I realized you actually have a power. Strange—even now I can't see any sign of it on you, let alone tell what kind. What is your power, anyway?"
Zhang Qiren had brought this up a second time; clearly it had been bothering him a great deal. Chu Ge only shook his head. He's guessed this much—did it never occur to him that there's a much more direct reason Yueying and I are connected?
She lives right across the hall, bro.
Maybe it wasn't that Zhang Qiren couldn't guess—maybe he didn't want to.
He sighed. "After you took over yourself, you kept going after Yueying too?"
Zhang Qiren said, "Of course. It really was the perfect angle for producing results right after taking over. I talked to Yueying too. It would have been best if she knew what was good for her, but unfortunately that woman is stubborn beyond reason... My approach was different, though. In my own venue, making Yueying lose quietly would have been all too easy—why go to all that trouble? That day's fight was the last underground bout for a good while; if I wanted to do it, it had to be fast."
Chu Ge turned and stared at him, saying word by word, "What you did... wasn't just about making her lose. It was more like making her die. Even that useless brother you keep talking about never thought of killing her."
Zhang Qiren didn't quite dare meet Chu Ge's eyes and lowered his head to look at the road. "With the drugging he was planning, if she actually got in the ring, she might have died too."
"I don't give a damn about him—I'm talking about you." Chu Ge gritted his teeth. "Zhang Qiren, you're killing someone!"
Zhang Qiren was gritting his teeth too. "In the underground fight ring, plenty of people die that way. I'm not the first to arrange it, and I won't be the last."
"You..."
"Brother Chu, what did I just tell you?" Zhang Qiren whipped his head around to look at him. "When someone destroys years of my hard work with a flick of their fingers, do they ever think about whether innocent me deserved to bear it? If I couldn't take it and jumped to my death, wouldn't they have been killing me?"
Chu Ge looked steadily into his eyes. The two held each other's gaze in silence, the streetlights stretching long shadows across the road.
After quite a while, Zhang Qiren let out a soft breath and softened his tone. "Brother Chu, this world eats people. Why should we just let ourselves be bullied and even worry about whether fighting back is excessive? When you're the one who does the bullying, people fear you instead, respect you, drink the best liquor, drive the best cars. Brother Chu, the world isn't fair. Don't be naive."
Chu Ge didn't argue. He only said, "So your 'Bully With Backup' really was a prophecy come true after all? What kind of power is that, anyway—a jinx's mouth?"
Seeing that Chu Ge's tone seemed to have softened, Zhang Qiren seemed to relax as well.
He smiled.
"My power's a little strange. I won't say more. Brother Chu, I treat you like a brother, so I'm speaking from the bottom of my heart. I just think it's unfair. Why is it that some people are utterly useless, yet they can play with women, drive nice cars, live in fancy houses, do every evil thing and still find someone to take the blame—while we do honest work, eat chaff and swallow scraps, and still get destroyed? You say I'm doing evil. Fine. If I keep being honest, I might not even have bones left."
Chu Ge said in a low voice, "Doing evil... it does come back on you."
Zhang Qiren said calmly, "At least for now, Lin Wuyang has no way to touch me—unless you report me. And as things stand, even if you report me, it won't do any good. It's only attempted, and the rest has nothing to do with me."
Chu Ge sighed. "But have you ever considered that retribution might come from somewhere else?"
Zhang Qiren laughed despite himself. "I've known you this long—how did I not know you believed in that sort of thing?"
Chu Ge turned his head aside, unable to bear it, and said in a low voice, "I don't believe you've really never wondered how Yueying and I met."
Zhang Qiren's smile faded, and his expression slowly changed.
"Yueying always wears a mask. You don't know what she looks like, do you? Right—you never even spoke to her before. You don't even know her voice. And your power is untrained; you can't see that I have one, and you can't see hers either." Chu Ge lowered his voice. "But Qiren, you really... almost killed with your own hands the girl you've been secretly in love with."
Zhang Qiren stood there woodenly, utterly motionless.
Every muscle in his body was drawn tight. His frame trembled slightly, his throat working uncontrollably, as if something would come bursting out of him the next moment.
"I..." His voice came out hoarse. "I never thought in that direction before... It only hit me when I saw you go to meet her... but I didn't want to guess that... After all, it was already done. Too late... I could only force myself to believe it was just a coincidence, that it couldn't be her... I even had people look for her on purpose, hoping they'd find her and it wasn't her... It couldn't be her..."
Chu Ge was silent, with nothing to say.
"Brother Chu, you're lying to me, right? Yueying is such a cold, ruthless fighter, and she doesn't touch alcohol. But the girl across the hall is often tipsy... They're not the same person, right?"
Chu Ge said slowly, "What if she drinks only to kill the pain?"
Zhang Qiren went completely silent.
Chu Ge watched helplessly as a full-grown man slowly crouched down and curled into a ball.
The stretched-out shadow withdrew as he curled in on himself, until from Chu Ge's angle it was almost impossible to see anymore.