Chapter 2

The hands of the clock hung above the blackboard pointed at 11.45am. Other than the class monitor and the subject representative, no one was listening in Chinese class. They were all impatiently tapping their feet, waiting for the lunch bell to ring. Once the bell rang, they all did a hundred-metre dash and immediately burst out of the narrow doorway.

A few seconds later, I was the only one left in the classroom. The director of teaching affairs was loudly reprimanding students who were running too fast. I strolled leisurely past my unlucky brothers[1] and stuck a Peppa Pig, which I had torn off the pencil case of the person sitting in front of me, on the director's back along the way. My brothers who had been made to stand as punishment all gave me a thumbs up.

I wasn't in a hurry; I had a Ge.

Only when everyone had run off already did I then slowly walk out of the classroom block. The moment I took out my phone, I suddenly remembered that yesterday my Ge had told me that he had a lunch outing to attend in the afternoon.

Shit. My lunch.

I was already on my way back home when I patted my pockets and realised I hadn't brought my keys with me, so I made my Ge send me his location. If he was near our house I could conveniently go and get the keys from him, and if he was far away I'd wait for the housekeeper to come and open the door for me.

I thought the 'lunch outing' my Ge had mentioned was referring to drinking with a circle of big bosses where everyone would puke on their way back home and become toilet-hugging piles of shit. When he had just started working, for the first two years, he would drink alcohol nonstop every day[2]. It had only gotten better recently.

When I called him, he didn't pick up. Out of fear that I would disturb his work, I gingerly pushed the door open a bit. Then it turned out that, fucking hell, there were only two people inside the private dining room: my Ge, and a woman opposite him.

I usually pitied girls a lot. There were a few girls in class who were as skinny as butterfly feelers. Because they couldn't reach the top of the blackboard, I always stayed in class for an extra ten minutes during the Monday afternoon classroom cleanups before escaping to play basketball[3].

The woman sitting in front of my Ge was probably about 25 or 26 years old. She had light makeup on and wore a short qipao[4]. She was quite pretty, but I didn't pity her, because the vase next to her hand had a rose in it.

Only when a man and a woman were on a date would there be a rose. Mum had pushed Ge to look for a partner again. Ge had only just turned 26 this year and he was already being urged and pestered past his tolerance level to get married.

That woman wore a pair of thin strapped sandals with sheer socks. Under the table, she was hooking my Ge's leg with her toes. She hadn't eaten more than a few mouthfuls, yet she was quite diligent with touching up her lipstick and powdering her face.

I was extremely dissatisfied with this choice of sister-in-law. I didn't care if my Ge liked her or not; either way, my sister-in-law had to be pleasant to my eyes.

My Ge waved a hand to call me over and made me call that woman 'Jie'[5]. I flung my bag next to my Ge's hand and sat next to him with my leg up. In a flash, that woman transformed into a female offender being interrogated in court.

I questioned her for her surname, her name and age. I told her the dowry didn't need to be large; an apartment in Beijing's 3rd Ring Road[6] was enough and it was best if she could give birth to six sons for my Ge within seven years.

The lady called me a lunatic (80% of the insult was directed at both of us), took her bag and left.

It turned out that she really was quite pretty. I thought the prettiest part of her was her back when she turned and left my Ge -- mainly 'her leaving' and not 'her back'.

My Ge scolded me, saying there was something wrong with me.

But I could see the tips of his canine teeth peeking out. This meant that he was smiling.

He kneaded the back of my neck. I could feel the weathered coarseness of his palm against my skin, thick and warm. My neck had been feeling sore from a whole morning of doing math and science general questions and now it felt much more relaxed.

He took out his phone which was vibrating and picked up Mum's call. He didn't wait for her to speak before saying, "Xiao Yan[7] is with me." I knew he was hinting to my mum not to talk too much.

Mum's voice was very sharp. Even though she wasn't on speaker mode, I could still hear her clearly, "What are you taking an old burden[8] to a date for? Whatever, how was that girl? She's an accountant in a state enterprise, her looks are pretty good, and her career is stable."

I thought my face was expressionless, but in reality the corner of my lips still lifted in distaste. I saw that no one had eaten the steak on the table so I wanted to bring it over to eat, but Ge frowned and used his eyes to signal to the waitress to take the dish away, then he passed me the menu and let me order.

While waiting for the food, I got hungry so I took my Ge's used fork and picked up some toasted bread to eat.

Mum was still yapping away on the phone. I thought it was funny that she had already married another man and given birth to her own kid, yet she still couldn't get rid of her bad habit of being a busybody.

When I was nine, my parents divorced. Mum took Ge away and left me with Dad because my Ge looked like her and I looked like Dad. She hated my father, so I was guilty by association.

As I ate, I said, Mum just wants to get you settled as soon as possible. She's already living her life peacefully in a family of three. In my Ge's heart, he definitely understood that going with my mum, once she had gotten married and had a child he would completely become an outsider. After he came out to work and live alone it was even more so; other than on special occasions, she wouldn't even utter a word to him.

As for myself, Dad was no different from dead. Sometimes he would even brazenly come and ask me for money.

This was what the saying 'both brothers have it equally bad' truly meant; biological ones.

"That's enough Mum, this is the last time. Don't concern yourself with this anymore, I'm going to eat with Xiao Yan." My Ge put down the phone and pinched the spot between his eyes. His speaking voice wasn't loud; he had always maintained this sort of calm and composed tone and volume. Once in a while, I would imitate him, intentionally or otherwise. In the end, my classmates said I was acting aloof and it was pretentious.

The same aura, when on my Ge's face, didn't look the least bit out of place. I was gazing at him when my Ge put an arm around my shoulder and started disciplining me, saying that my form teacher had called him to complain again.

"Your teacher said you submitted a blank paper in the exam."

I didn't care, at the time I wasn't feeling it so I didn't want to write anything.

"Your teacher also said that you smoked in the toilet."

I wasn't accepting this complaint, since when was the toilet a public area?

"You even used a lighter and lit the braid of the person sitting in front of you on fire, are you fucking sick in the head."

I laughed. I had thought the person sitting in front of me looked cute, but she had always hit me and ignored me so I wanted to make her laugh. In the end, she cried, while I laughed. In a relationship, there always had to be one person who cried. This was called the conservation of energy; I didn't want to cry, so I could only make someone else cry.

The steak I had ordered was served. I sat opposite my Ge and brought the vase with the rose in it closer, which just nicely ended up in between us. It made my Ge laugh, exasperated. The waitress thought it was awkward to have a flower in between us two men so she came over to take it away. My Ge lifted his chin at her, No need to take it away, just leave it.

Ge said smoking was not good. As he educated me, he couldn't help but light one up before continuing to boldly and assuredly give me a talking to.

Actually, I had picked it up from him. In the third year of middle school[9], in the middle of the night in winter, I had gotten up to pee when I saw Ge leaning against the railing of our small old balcony, smoking, surrounded by a cheap cloud of smoke. He was like a cold white statue, distanced from the noise of this world as he held a cigarette in his mouth and worked out our finances on the back of my used arithmetic draft paper. I leant against the windowsill and watched his side profile for half the night. In the morning, I caught a cold while he was fine. Fucking hell.

I stood up and grabbed his tie, pulling at it so he had no choice but to stand up and look me in the eye. I warned him, You're not allowed to get married, nor allowed to bring people home. I don't permit it.

I always had double standards. I could have this and that, but I wouldn't allow anyone to stain my Ge with cow dung. Correct, my Ge was a fresh flower, and anyone else regardless of gender was cow dung.

My Ge loosened his tie. He smiled, his alluring eyes curved into crescents. He stuck his hands in his pockets and sized me up. The little bastard is even intervening in his Ge's matters now, and pretty boldly too, he said.

Correct, I made the rules in this house.

Now, my household registration record only had my Ge and me. My Ge was the head of the household, but I was the one who made the rules. There was once when the school had us print the head of the household's page and our own page. I was strangely excited, feeling superior to everyone else because I was special. But in the end, they all pitied me for only having my Ge to raise me. How lame.

After satisfying my hunger and thirst, I bought an ice cream cone to eat. Usually when I ate ice cream, I would only eat the ice cream itself and then throw the cone to my Ge to eat. This time, I tried some cherry flavour and it tasted so bad that I only took a few licks before shoving the whole thing to my Ge.

He hesitated for a moment before taking the ice cream and licking it, his tongue slowly rolling the cream off and into his mouth.

At that moment, I thought to myself, if he wasn't my Ge, I would shove my cock into his mouth and let him lick all he wanted.

But my Ge wasn't provocative, he was handsome.

The whole way I was pondering, why couldn't I shove my cock into my Ge's mouth? Who set this rule? I wanted to ask Ge, because after all there was nothing we couldn't talk about, but my intuition made me keep my mouth shut. I had a feeling he would punch me.

At 2.30pm, my Ge drove me back to school. Just before I got off, he told me to listen well in class. Once his BMW drove off, I immediately climbed over the wall into the sports field and went to play basketball with my brothers from Class Four who were having physical education class.

"Duan Yan! Duan Yan's here!" I heard the girls from Class Four say in a small voice that I was really good at basketball, and handsome too. But hear me out: I was only so-so at basketball. They only said that because they had never truly seen the world -- it was my Ge who was truly handsome. He had thin lips, double eyelids, a high and sharp nose bridge and deep-set eyes. When he was my age, he was like a little mixed-blood prince.

Footnotes:

[1] - brothers: Referring to his friends

[2] - In China, during business lunches/dinners, it's rude to decline alcohol and it's expected that everyone drinks a substantial amount. His Ge drinking so much signifies that he was working very hard, most likely to negotiate deals or climb the ranks.

[3] - I'm not sure if it was conveyed clearly enough but when he says he's staying for an extra ten minutes, it means he wasn't planning to stay and cleanup the classroom at all; he was just going to skip it

[4] - Qipao: A traditional Chinese dress.

[5] - Jie: Elder sister (in this context it's just a way to politely refer to an older woman. There's no familial connotation)

[6] - 3rd Ring Road: Runs through the CBD area of Beijing. The apartments there are naturally exorbitantly priced

[7] - Xiao Yan: Saying 'xiao' is equivalent to saying 'little'. Paired with a name, it makes for an (usually) affectionate nickname, usually for a younger person by someone older.

[8] - old burden: Not a direct translation. The original is 拖油瓶, referring to the child of a previous marriage who's living with a parent in a new marriage. It does have the connotation of calling someone a burden.

[9] - Third year of middle school: About 14-15 years old