Chapter 4
GU FEI BROUGHT the motorcycle around outside the store, and Gu Miao deftly climbed onto the backseat with her skateboard in tow. She grabbed onto Gu Fei’s sides and pressed her face against his back.
Gu Fei turned around. “Let me see your face.” Gu Miao tilted her face up at him. “There’s still tears. Give it a wipe.”
Gu Miao rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, then rubbed her nose with her sleeve.
“Ay…” Gu Fei sighed. “Even if you were a boy, you’d be the most rough-and-tumble kind.”
Gu Miao smiled and pressed her face against his back again.
Rolling out on the motorcycle, they headed straight for downtown. For Gu Miao, “something good” could only mean the all-you-can-eat barbecue joint in the shopping mall. The little girl had a remarkable stubbornness when it came to certain things, one of which was that she refused to eat at any other restaurant whenever they went out.
One of the benefits of a small city was that there was only one downtown;
no matter which neighborhood he set out from, it didn’t take very long for Gu Fei to get there. By the time they arrived, it was the height of the lunch rush and there were hardly any free tables left in the restaurant.
“Do you have any specials today?” Gu Fei asked the server as he pulled out his phone to check for digital coupons. He flicked Gu Miao’s head with his finger. “Hey you, go find a table.”
Gu Miao set the skateboard on the floor and put her foot on it, but Gu Fei quickly stopped her with his own foot. “Walk.”
“Do you need to keep the skateboard at the front counter?” the server asked with a smile.
Gu Miao shook her head, then swiftly bent down, grabbed her board, and held it tightly in her arms.
“She’ll hold onto it herself,” Gu Fei said as Gu Miao ran inside with the skateboard.
***
“Geez, you’re making me hungry.” Pan Zhi gulped on the other end of the phone. “I’m serious. I’ll go visit you in a couple days and you can take me out to eat. There’s no way we can get that much food here for that price!”
“Did your family donate all their money to charity during the New Year or something?” said Jiang Cheng, holding the phone between his head and his shoulder. He had a plate in one hand, a pair of tongs in the other, and was methodically filling his plate: pork belly, sliced beef, pork belly, sliced beef… Honestly, no matter how varied the food selection was, he’d always get the same things. These were his favorites.
“It wouldn’t be the same,” Pan Zhi said wistfully. “Last semester we agreed to eat barbecue together at New Year’s. But now there’s no meat to eat and no you to eat with.”
“You can stay at a hotel when you get here.” Jiang Cheng put the tongs down, stacked another empty plate on top of the one he’d already loaded with meat, and piled more meat onto the new plate. “And book it yourself; I don’t feel like doing anything these days.”
“But I can just stay with you,” said Pan Zhi.
“No.” Jiang Cheng frowned. Where he was living now… He didn’t want to stay there any more than he had to himself. “Just book a standard room. I’ll go to you.”
Pan Zhi thought about it for a second. “…You don’t have a great relationship with your biological dad, huh?”
“There’s no relationship to speak of just yet.” Carrying the two plates of meat, Jiang Cheng went to grab a bottle of beer. “So there’s no telling if it’ll be good or bad…” As he made his way back to his own table, he stopped in his tracks.
The table was a four-top, and one of the seats was currently occupied by a skateboard. A little bald kid dressed in blue sat in another. And on the table was…a green knit cap adorned with pink flowers.
Jiang Cheng looked at her in shock. “Gu Miao?”
Gu Miao nodded, though she didn’t seem at all surprised. She stowed her skateboard under the table.
“You…” As he set his plates down on the table, he noticed that Gu Miao was already eyeing the grill in eager anticipation. He waved a hand in front of Gu Miao’s eyes. “Who are you here with?”
Gu Miao stood up and pointed toward the door, then waved her hands.
Turning in the direction she pointed, Jiang Cheng spotted an equally surprised Gu Fei.
“We’ll find another table,” Gu Fei said as he walked over. “Gege is already sitting here.”
Gu Miao took one look around, swallowed, and didn’t budge from her seat.
“The server just told me there’s still a few tables over on that side.” Gu Fei pointed to the back of the restaurant. “We’ll go sit over there.”
Still, Gu Miao stayed put. She tilted her face up and held Gu Fei’s gaze, expressionless. It was anyone’s guess what she was trying to say. Gu Fei remained in a stalemate with her for a few seconds, then turned to Jiang Cheng.
“Hm?” Jiang Cheng looked back at him inquisitively.
“You here by yourself?” Gu Fei asked.
“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng answered, sitting down.
The server came by and turned on the gas, then laid down some parchment paper. Jiang Cheng picked up a few slices of meat and placed them on the grill, preparing to brush on the marinade.
“Then how about we…” Gu Fei hesitated for a long time before he finished his thought. “Sit together?”
Jiang Cheng lifted his eyes to peer at him. To be honest, he was inclined to say, “In your dreams! Why don’t you go and wash that blanket first?” But Gu Miao was still sitting across the table with her shiny head and her huge eyes staring right at him; he couldn’t let those words come out. He brushed some more marinade onto the meat slices, then nodded.
“Thanks,” Gu Fei said, then pointed at Gu Miao. “Sit here and wait for me. I’m going to get food.”
Gu Miao nodded. After Gu Fei walked away, Jiang Cheng placed another two slices of sliced beef onto the grill. “Which one do you like?” he asked Gu Miao. “There’s pork belly and sliced beef.”
Gu Miao pointed at the beef.
“Pork belly is good, too—wait ’til it’s sizzling hot and the grease seeps out… I can eat five or six plates.” Jiang Cheng flipped the meat over and brushed it with oil. “Can you handle spice?”
Gu Miao shook her head.
Jiang Cheng put a slice of cooked beef on the plate in front of her. “Eat up.” But Gu Miao was a little hesitant. She turned and looked in the direction Gu Fei had gone.
“It’s fine…” Jiang Cheng trailed off as he noticed a prominent scar stretching across the back of Gu Miao’s head. It had to be two inches long at least. He was shocked.
It seemed like Gu Miao couldn’t spot Gu Fei, so she turned back around and stuffed the meat into her mouth, smiling at Jiang Cheng.
“Wanna try a piece of pork belly?” Jiang Cheng asked her. Gu Miao nodded, and so he picked up a slice of pork belly and put it on her plate. As he moved the green hat from the table onto the chair beside her, he couldn’t help but click his tongue. “Who bought this for you?”
Gu Miao kept her head down and chewed in silence. Well, it was bad manners to talk with your mouth full. This little girl was probably the only person he’d ever met who followed that policy to perfection.
Gu Fei quickly came back with their food, though he was clearly not as skilled as Jiang Cheng in the art of all-you-can-eat barbecue—he only managed to bring back three plates. If Jiang Cheng hadn’t been talking to Pan Zhi on the phone, he could easily have filled six plates to satisfy his belly and had enough room to throw in some fruit at the end.
Their table was next to the wall. Jiang Cheng had taken a seat by the wall, while Gu Miao was happily chowing down in the seat diagonally across from him. Gu Fei hesitated for a moment, then sat down next to Jiang Cheng.
A somewhat reluctant Jiang Cheng was about to grill some food for him when Gu Fei reached across and gently poked Gu Miao’s head. “Go get the drinks yourself.”
After Gu Miao left for the drink counter, Gu Fei quickly got up and moved across the table. Jiang Cheng glanced up at him, then continued to grill his pork belly and beef slices.
“Still running a fever and you’re eating such greasy food?” Gu Fei asked.
“Hmm?” Jiang Cheng’s hand paused in mid-air as he watched the rice cakes cooking on Gu Fei’s side. “And you know this how?”
“You were burning hot when I dragged you inside. How could I not notice?”
“Dragged?” An image popped into Jiang Cheng’s mind of Gu Fei dragging him by the hair like an old sack.
“What, was I supposed to carry you bridal style?”
Gu Fei picked up two pieces of bacon and placed them on the grill. They each took up one half of the grill—the picture of harmony. Not quite sure how to continue the conversation, Jiang Cheng ate a piece of pork belly instead.
Gu Miao came back from her quest for drinks with a few bottles in her arms. She set all four open bottles of beer one by one onto the table, plus a glass of orange juice.
“You’re quite impressive.” Jiang Cheng looked at her in surprise. “Didn’t spill it all over the floor?”
Gu Miao shook her head and sat down at the table, then pushed a bottle of beer and the glass of orange juice in front of him.
“I don’t—” Jiang Cheng was just about to tell Gu Miao to drink the orange juice herself, but as he opened his mouth, Gu Miao had already grabbed a bottle of beer and poured it into her own glass. “You…?”
Gu Miao picked up the glass and took a big gulp, let out a satisfied sigh, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Jiang Cheng glanced at Gu Fei, only to see him wrapping a lettuce leaf around a piece of pork belly without so much as a glance in Gu Miao’s direction.
He had to ask. “She drinks?”
“Mm-hmm. Only when we eat barbecue, though.” Gu Fei held the rolled-up lettuce in front of Jiang Cheng. “She doesn’t drink apart from that.”
Jiang Cheng stared at the lettuce wrap. Gu Fei didn’t say anything, just continued holding it out.
“…Thanks.” Jiang Cheng had no choice but to accept the offering and take a bite.
“Doesn’t it feel greasy to eat the pork belly all by itself?” Gu Fei asked.
“It’s all right. I really like it,” Jiang Cheng said.
Gu Fei assembled two more wraps for Gu Miao. “You’re not from around here, are you? Judging by your accent.”
“No,” Jiang Cheng answered. He suddenly felt kind of irritated. The annoyance that he’d managed to suppress with pork belly and sliced beef made a valiant effort to rear its head once more.
Gu Fei kept probing. “What’s your relation to Li Baoguo?”
Jiang Cheng paused—how did Gu Fei know about Li Baoguo? But the question was quickly eclipsed by exasperation. He flung two more pieces of meat onto the grill. “What’s it to you?”
Gu Fei lifted his eyes to peer at him, then smiled wordlessly. He raised up his bottle of beer and clanked it gently against the bottle in front of Jiang Cheng, took a sip, then kept grilling.
It was the first time Jiang Cheng had eaten at a table face-to-face with a stranger. He hadn’t felt like talking anyway, but now he really had nothing to say. Across the table, Gu Fei didn’t seem to be in a chatty mood either—and his little sister seemed to be legitimately mute. She was quite happy alternating between bites of meat and swigs of beer.
Jiang Cheng finished four plates of meat in silence. He felt like his head was about to burst. It seemed like Gu Miao ate about as much as he did; Gu Fei went to top up the plates several times. Jiang Cheng had finished eating by the time she put down her chopsticks. She leaned back in the chair and rubbed her belly.
“You full?” Gu Fei asked.
She nodded.
“You eat way more than your brother,” Jiang Cheng put in, unable to keep from doling out this judgment.
“How did you get here?” Gu Fei set down his chopsticks as well. “We can take you back, it’s on the way.”
“Motorcycle?” Jiang Cheng asked.
Gu Fei nodded. “Mm.”
“Drunk driving and over capacity?”
Instead of answering, Gu Fei gave Jiang Cheng a long stare, with what might’ve been scorn or something equally stupid in his eyes, then patted Gu Miao’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”
After Gu Fei left with Gu Miao, Jiang Cheng got up and filled another half a plate with meat and grabbed a small basket of lettuce leaves. The pork belly lettuce wrap Gu Fei made him earlier was pretty good: crisp, refreshing, and not greasy. Once he finished this half plate of meat, he figured he might have to go back on foot in order to walk it all off.
However, it was way too cold outside. Shivering behind the thick curtain at the door of the shopping mall, he pulled out his phone to hail a rideshare, but five minutes went by and nobody accepted his request.
It was then that Pan Zhi called again. “There are two stations on this line, with different arrival times. Which station should I buy the ticket for?”
“East,” Jiang Cheng answered. “I only know the East Station.”
“All right. Come pick me up tomorrow afternoon at four. Send me your address later. I’ll look for hotels nearby.”
“There probably aren’t any.” Jiang Cheng recalled the general vibe of the neighborhood, and it didn’t seem like a place that would have hotels. “Just go ahead and book anywhere—it’s not that big of a city.”
After he hung up, a driver finally picked up his request. Jiang Cheng sat down inside the car, feeling thoroughly unwell. This must be what people meant when they said it took time to acclimatize to a new environment. He was the kind of guy who rarely ever caught colds, but a simple change of scenery had made him a delicate flower. He’d spent all morning fumbling around, and even eating his favorite foods didn’t seem to have helped. He was practically wilting.
Jiang Cheng closed his eyes and sighed.
All the people who’d stayed inside over the New Year had begun to emerge; the roads were jammed with cars. The driver was trigger-happy with the gas pedal, alternating frequently between accelerating and braking hard. Not even ten minutes into the ride, Jiang Cheng felt his stomach churn.
It wasn’t a long journey—perhaps half an hour in total—but as soon as he saw the turn for Gu Fei’s store, he simply couldn’t take it anymore. Unable to even open his mouth, it was all he could manage to slap the inside of the car door a few times in desperation.
“Here?” the driver asked.
He nodded, then banged the door a couple more times. The moment the driver stopped the car, he bounded out the door. As though propelled by the power of farts, he rushed to a garbage can by the side of the road and puked.
It was such a devastating scene that he couldn’t even bear to watch himself.
After this heaving bout of nausea, his insides finally calmed down, leaving behind an explosive headache. Bracing himself against the wall with one hand, he fished for a pack of tissues in his pocket, but after several minutes of rummaging, he came up empty.
Just as his temper was about to shoot all the way up from the soles of his feet, a small arm reached over from one side, holding out a few tissues. He grabbed them and wiped his mouth a few times before glancing to the side.
There really was no lack of coincidences in this universe. It was Gu Miao standing beside him in her green hat, with Gu Fei three steps behind her, looking thoroughly entertained.
“Thank you.” Jiang Cheng nodded at Gu Miao. It was kind of depressing to feel embarrassed and stuck in a spot where he couldn’t just turn and walk away, or say something like, “The fuck are you looking at?”
Gu Miao reached for his hand and tugged on it, as though wanting to walk with him.
“No thanks.” Jiang Cheng pulled his hand away.
Gu Miao grabbed his hand again, still trying to help.
“No, really,” Jiang Cheng insisted. “I’m fine.”
When he tried to take his hand away again, Gu Miao held on tight and didn’t let go.
“Er-Miao…” Gu Fei walked up to them. Still, Gu Miao didn’t let go.
Jiang Cheng had no idea how to communicate with her. All of his errant irritations converged to one point, and he shook off Gu Miao’s hand in annoyance. “I said I don’t need your help!”
Gu Miao didn’t move, her hand still raised in the air, frozen in place.
Before Jiang Cheng’s guilt had time to spread and fester, he felt pressure on his throat as Gu Fei yanked on his collar from behind, forcing him to stumble.
“Fuck…”
He turned, jabbing his elbow behind himself at the same time. Gu Fei caught his elbow with one hand and tightened his grip on Jiang Cheng’s collar.
Jiang Cheng had no choice but to back up and get cozy with Gu Fei. The chokehold he had on his throat was making him nauseous again.
“She likes you a lot.” Gu Fei spoke low in Jiang Cheng’s ear. “But she has trouble reading other people’s emotions sometimes. I politely ask that you try to be understanding.”
Jiang Cheng wanted to blurt out that in all seventeen fucking years he’d been alive, he’d never seen anyone “politely ask” for anything like this, but that was more words than he was capable of getting out right now.
Instead, he managed to squeeze out three words from between his teeth:
“I’m gonna puke.”
Gu Fei let him go. Jiang Cheng braced himself against the wall and dry heaved a couple of times.
After accepting a bottle of water from Gu Fei and gulping down two large mouthfuls, he finally caught his breath. Then he turned to Gu Miao and said, “I’m fine. I can walk on my own.”
Gu Miao nodded and retreated to Gu Fei’s side.
“I’m going, then.” Jiang Cheng threw the half-finished bottle of water into the garbage, then turned and headed down the block.
Fuck!
When Jiang Cheng got back to Li Baoguo’s place, the smell of home cooking was the first thing to hit his nose. Li Baoguo was standing in the living room, calling someone on this phone.
Jiang Cheng was just about to say something when his phone rang in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw Li Baoguo’s name on the caller ID. “You—” Hearing the ringtone, Li Baoguo turned around. “Hey!” he yelled in his usual loud voice. “When did you get back? I was just calling you!”
“Just now.” Jiang Cheng closed the door. “You…didn’t hear me?”
“My hearing isn’t the best.” Li Baoguo pointed to his ears. “Gotta turn my head toward the sound to hear clearly.”
“Oh.”
“Where were you?” Li Baoguo brought out a crock of soup from the kitchen. “I’ve been here waiting for you to eat lunch for a while.”
“I…” Jiang Cheng hesitated. He didn’t mention that he’d already indulged in all-you-can-eat barbecue. “Went to the hospital.”
“The hospital?” Li Baoguo immediately started hollering again, reaching over and feeling around Jiang Cheng’s cheeks. “Are you sick? Where does it hurt? Got a fever? Is it because of the new environment?”
“I already took some medicine. It’s not a big deal.” Considering the meal in front of him, Jiang Cheng tried his best not to reflexively slap away the dirty yellow hand that stank of old cigarettes.
“Listen, if you’re not feeling well, there’s no need to go to the hospital,” Li Baoguo said.(4) “There’s a community clinic on the next street over, and it’s pretty good. It’s just that the front of the building is kind of far back, so it’s hard to notice. It’s next to the little supermarket.”
“Oh.” Jiang Cheng pondered for a moment. “The little supermarket? You mean Gu Fei’s—” “How do you know Gu Fei?” Li Baoguo whipped around in shock. “You just got here, and you’re already hanging out with him?”
“Nah.” Jiang Cheng couldn’t be bothered to go into detail. “I just bought some stuff there this morning.”
“Listen.” Li Baoguo’s voice got even louder. His voice was always loud, but now it was especially emphatic. “Don’t get mixed up with him—that guy is bad news!”
“…Oh.” Jiang Cheng took off his jacket and tossed it into his room.
Li Baoguo watched him, probably waiting for him to ask why. After a while, when Jiang Cheng didn’t say anything, Li Baoguo leaned in again, looking eager to gossip. “Do you know why he’s bad news?”
Jiang Cheng played along despite having zero interest in any of this.
“Why?”
“Because he killed his own dad!” Li Baoguo boomed.
He was leaning a little too close, and his excited spit sprayed over half of Jiang Cheng’s face. Jiang Cheng jumped up from the chair to get out of the way, roughly rubbing at his face. Just as his temper was about to erupt, he suddenly realized what he’d heard.
“What? Killed who?”
“His dad!” Li Baoguo said, half yelling. “Drowned his own father.”
Jiang Cheng stared back at him in silence. From the gleeful expression on Li Baoguo’s face, he knew that they could spend a whole afternoon on gossip like this if he wanted to. Too bad Jiang Cheng didn’t believe it.
He sat back down by the table and pinched the throbbing area between his brows. “If he killed his father, wouldn’t he have to go to jail?”
“It was years and years ago—what jail?” Li Baoguo also sat down. “Plus, there were no witnesses.”
Jiang Cheng smirked. “Ah, so nobody saw it…” “We all know what happened. When the police arrived, his dad was in the lake, and he was standing on the shore, making that face…” Li Baoguo clicked his tongue several times in a row for effect. “He obviously did it… Hurry and eat up, see if the food is to your liking.”
Without a word, Jiang Cheng picked up a piece of short rib.
“He did it for that Er-Miao of theirs,” Li Baoguo added, seeing that Jiang Cheng didn’t seem to believe him. “His dad threw her so hard there was blood all over her head, and after that, she didn’t even know how to talk anymore.”
Jiang Cheng chewed on the rib, remembering the shocking scar on the back of Gu Miao’s head. “Ah.”
[4] In China, it’s common to go to a hospital for things like cold and flu.
Smaller health clinics are relatively uncommon and generally not seen as very trustworthy.