Chapter 12

It was that look again.

That same feeling of punching cotton.

Qi Yang couldn’t even be bothered to get angry with him anymore, but before National Day, that notion of just letting it go had vanished like smoke with that one look from Mu Yicong.

He was determined to see this through with Mu Yicong.

When the homeroom teacher came in for the first class, she had Qi Yang and Liu Dameng, who hadn’t done their homework, go stand outside as usual.

Seeing that Mu Yicong wasn’t wearing his school uniform, she asked about it. Mu Yicong just said it was torn, not mentioning the urine at all.

“Forget it, the summer uniform is going to be changed soon anyway. You can order the autumn/winter ones with the class.”

Qi Yang listened to the homeroom teacher finish talking outside the classroom, then lifted his leg and kicked Liu Dameng.

“What?” Liu Dameng, still standing as punishment, was busy sneaking bites of a steamed bun.

“Was it you?” Qi Yang asked.

“What did I do now?” Liu Dameng seemed genuinely clueless, wearing a stupid expression.

After Qi Yang explained, he too was disgusted enough that he could hardly drink his soy milk anymore.

“Hey, am I really that dirty?” He spat out the soy milk foam from his mouth. “I’m not a dog, I wouldn’t pee on someone’s clothes.”

“But how do you know?” he asked Qi Yang again. “Did Mu Yicong come looking for you?”

Qi Yang stared at him for a while. Judging by Liu Dameng’s reaction, the urine on Mu Yicong’s school uniform probably wasn’t his doing.

He figured everyone thought peeing on someone’s uniform was too low, and none of Lai Jiahao’s crew admitted to it either.

Not only did they not admit it, but each one acted especially convincing, praising this unknown hero for being so awesome, coming up with such a disgusting trick.

One sharper guy, seeing Qi Yang’s grim expression, asked, “What’s up, Yangzi? You unhappy?”

Hearing this, a few people all looked at Qi Yang’s face.

“Yeah, what’s there to be unhappy about?” Lai Jiahao asked. “Even if it was us brothers who did it, it was to get back at him for you.”

“Your tongue feels like a shoe insole, and you’re trying to mimic the Beijing accent,” Qi Yang sneered at him.

“Hey, what does my tongue have to do with anything!” Lai Jiahao looked wronged.

The group laughed for a bit. Qi Yang crouched down, picked up a couple of small pebbles to toss around, and said, “It’s not that I’m unhappy.”

It was just that what happened was indeed pretty dirty.

Recalling the smell of the school uniform Mu Yicong had thrown in his face, his stomach still churned.

But he also understood what Lai Jiahao meant. Whether whoever did it admitted it or not, it came from that so-called brotherly loyalty.

“It doesn’t matter who peed on it. The point is, he’s sure it was me. Right before break, he came straight to me with the uniform,” Qi Yang said.

“No way,” Liu Dameng jumped up. “You fought? Why didn’t you call me!”

A few of them clamored to go find Mu Yicong right then, but Qi Yang impatiently yelled, “Enough. He didn’t bring anyone.”

“Didn’t get beaten,” he recalled Mu Yicong’s disheveled look in the alley. “I guess it was a draw.”

“So that’s it?” Liu Dameng felt this was a hard pill to swallow. “You’re just letting it go, like you said before break?”

Let it go?

“If he hadn’t come looking for me, I probably would have just let it go.” Qi Yang’s eyelids drooped. “But I’m not done with this bastard.”

The little group of delinquents felt like they’d gotten their interesting toy back, and they cheered and echoed, “Let’s get him again!”

A long time later—though not that long—when Qi Yang truly developed a complete worldview, learned to do things and be a person with his head, he looked back on that whole year of ninth grade and thought he was absolutely ridiculous.

And also very punchable.

Later, Qi Yang forgot where he saw a saying: The malice of a child is the most terrifying, because a child is ignorant.

Because of ignorance, they blindly seek gangs, thinking it makes them look tough; because of ignorance, they don’t even need a reason to make another kid their enemy, leading everyone to insult and isolate him; because of ignorance, they have no sense of proportion, feeling no shame in these acts, only smug self-satisfaction.

But Qi Yang in ninth grade wasn’t a child, and neither were Liu Dameng or Lai Jiahao.

They already had a basic sense of right and wrong.

At that stage, they were simply bad.

The long revenge lasted for a whole semester. Mu Yicong’s attitude of not complaining, not reacting, only emboldened Liu Dameng and his crew. At a rate of about once or twice a week, they kept on targeting Mu Yicong.

Their methods were the same as before: destroy his things, pick fights on purpose, and lead everyone they knew to isolate him.

But Mu Yicong didn’t just take it all.

Just like with the peed-on uniform, when the bullying went too far, he wouldn’t bother asking who did it; he’d just go straight to Qi Yang for a fight.

So during the more than month-long winter break without any fights, Qi Yang couldn’t see Mu Yicong and actually felt a bit bored.

He was so bored he sent Mu Yicong a text message, telling him to call him daddy.

Mu Yicong never replied with a single word.

This campus bullying against Mu Yicong took a turn three months before the High School Entrance Exam.

Not because Qi Yang and his group suddenly turned over a new leaf, but because Qi Xing was born.

It was a very coincidental day. Qi Yang didn’t want to go to class, so he skipped school and went to an internet cafe. He slept in the morning and played games in the afternoon.

When he finished playing around seven in the evening, he stretched and planned to go home for dinner.

He hadn’t walked far from the internet cafe when, at the same intersection a block from his home, in the same dusky evening, there was that infuriating figure leaning against the wall of the alley, waiting for him.

“What’s your problem now?” Qi Yang stopped, staring at Mu Yicong. “I haven’t bothered you much lately. Don’t come near me.”

With the exam approaching, Lai Jiahao was being strictly controlled by his mom, who was also a homeroom teacher, and Liu Dameng was also under close watch at home.

Except for Qi Yang’s family, who didn’t care—Qi Dahai had flat-out said boys at this age being a bit wild showed promise, and he’d already arranged a high school for Qi Yang—the rest of the little gang was basically grounded.

Mu Yicong didn’t waste words. He raised his hand and threw a bunch of junk into Qi Yang’s arms.

It really was junk. Two ragged boards connected by a few wires. Qi Yang had to catch it to keep it from falling apart.

He squinted under the streetlight. Through the screen cracked like a spiderweb, he barely recognised it. It was Mu Yicong’s phone.

“What are you showing me this for?” He threw it back to Mu Yicong. “I wasn’t at school today.”

Even as he said this, he cursed Liu Dameng and the others in his head. No sense of proportion.

“I’m only looking for you,” Mu Yicong said. “You pay for it.”

“I don’t know whether to call you a pushover or just stubborn.” Qi Yang nearly laughed in exasperation.

From a certain perspective, this dynamic between him and Mu Yicong was actually pretty stable.

Liu Dameng and Lai Jiahao would mess with Mu Yicong every few days, and Mu Yicong would come find Qi Yang for a fight every few days. Qi Yang’s annoyance with Mu Yicong was almost gone. Sometimes, he felt like he was the damn guardian of this whole bunch of bastards.

“It’s nothing.” Qi Yang tossed his own phone over. “I’ll give you mine, alright?”

Mu Yicong didn’t stand on ceremony. He caught Qi Yang’s phone, turned around, and left.

Qi Yang didn’t even bother taking the SIM card out of his old phone. He got on his bike and continued home.

He was waiting for the light at the intersection when Mu Yicong came back up behind him and kicked his bike tire.

“Bother me again, and I’ll really hit you.” Qi Yang turned and pointed at Mu Yicong’s face.

Mu Yicong blocked his hand and threw the phone back. “Your mom’s on the phone.”

Qi Yang glared at him for two seconds, then skeptically pressed the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

“Yangyang,” Zou Meizhu’s voice came through, breathless and sounding pained. “Your dad is out of town and can’t come back. Mom’s going into labor! Oh, it hurts so much, Mom can’t take it!”

Qi Yang was stunned. He clutched the phone, jumped off his bike, shoved the handlebars towards Mu Yicong, and ran home.

Mu Yicong, who had been silent the whole time, stuck his leg out and tripped him. Qi Yang stumbled and rolled two meters across the zebra crossing.

There were gasps all around. Qi Yang looked up to see two big truck tires screeching to a halt right in front of him. The driver was leaning out the window, cursing him.

“Bastard,” Qi Yang said, getting up and backing away, pointing at Mu Yicong. “Just you wait.”

Usually, that intersection felt close, but now, running into the complex and up to the fourth floor, he was panting so hard he felt his heart was about to jump out of his throat.

Zou Meizhu’s waters had broken. She was enduring the contractions, legs spread apart, putting on lipstick in front of the full-length mirror.

After he got his mom into a taxi and safely to the hospital, Qi Yang sat on a chair outside the labor room, holding his forehead and catching his breath for a long time before he felt the fiery pain from his right knee up to his thigh, and from his elbow and shoulder.

All scraped raw.

Fuck.

He ran his hand through his hair, realizing belatedly: why did he run instead of riding the bike?

A line from one of the few classes he’d actually paid attention to in middle school floated into his mind: More haste, less speed, indeed.

Zou Meizhu was screaming bloody murder on the phone, but the delivery itself was incredibly smooth.

It was a very healthy baby girl, weighing 3.15 kilograms.

By the time Qi Dahai rushed to the hospital in a hurry, it was already past five in the morning.

Qi Yang hadn’t slept a wink because of Zou Meizhu’s antics. When he saw Qi Dahai, he went up and grabbed him, pretending to wrestle.

“Good son, good son.” Qi Dahai soothed him repeatedly. “Now you’re a little man who can take care of your mom.”

Hearing Qi Dahai’s voice, Zou Meizhu didn’t care about the other women in the room. She burst into loud wails. “Qi Dahai, you heartless bastard!”

“I’m wrong, honey.” Qi Dahai quickly shook off Qi Yang to go comfort his wife. “Don’t yell, don’t yell.”

“I didn’t think your due date would be so accurate. When I had Yangyang… okay, go ahead, slap me hard. Once we’re out of the hospital, we’ll go buy you some gold.”

The couple were all lovey-dovey. Qi Yang watched with his arms crossed for a bit. Feeling like there was nothing left for him to do, he picked up his backpack and left.

He went home first, took a shower, and changed clothes.

His bike was nowhere to be found. While eating breakfast at a stall outside the complex, he pulled out his phone and dialed Mu Yicong’s number.

He thought Mu Yicong wouldn’t answer without a phone, but it rang only four times before a sleepy “Hello” came from the other end.

“Where do you live?” Qi Yang asked right away.

“What is it?” Mu Yicong said.

“We’ll have a proper fight, and then we’re done,” Qi Yang said.

There was a sound of getting up from the other end. Mu Yicong yawned leisurely, then unhurriedly named a neighborhood.

“Yeah.” Qi Yang gulped down the last of his soy milk, threw a ten-yuan note on the table, got up, and went to hail a taxi.