“You got nothing better to do than agree to shit on my behalf?”
Qi Yang hadn’t said yes or no to meeting up. He’d just brushed Mu Yicong off and hung up, then immediately called Liu Dameng. The moment the line connected, he started cursing.
“You bored out of your mind? Go make a baby or something, you dickhead!”
Liu Dameng had tried calling Qi Yang twice himself, but both times the line was busy. He had a ton of things he wanted to say too.
But hearing Qi Yang’s prosecutorial tone, he didn’t dare respond. He waited for Qi Yang to finish yelling before speaking, his voice laced with careful hesitation: “You don’t want to?”
Want your fucking head.
Qi Yang bit down on his cigarette and lowered his head to light it, but he was out of fuel. He scraped the wheel for ages, only getting sparks.
Annoyed, he tossed the lighter into a snowbank.
“I figured that bastard Ren Wei pissed you off, so I was trying to get your dignity back for you, buddy.” Liu Dameng actually wanted to laugh hearing Qi Yang this angry, but he held it in, trying to smooth things over.
“Get my dignity back for what?”
Qi Yang couldn’t understand Liu Dameng’s logic at all.
“Who the hell does he think he is that I need to get my dignity back from him?”
“He’s not even a blip on my radar.”
“And besides, I’m a car rental guy, you run a shitty little stationery store. What are we gonna do, beat them with our shoe soles?”
The main target of Qi Yang’s last sentence wasn’t Ren Wei. It was Mu Yicong.
He really didn’t give a damn about Ren Wei. This wasn’t like the hot-headed days of his youth anymore. The slaps life had dealt him were far more real than anything else. Just being able to raise Qi Xing safely and make sure the family had food to eat and a place to sleep was enough for Qi Yang now.
He didn’t give a shit about face or dignity. He didn’t even have the energy to compare himself to others, to see who was doing better or worse.
As long as Ren Wei didn’t literally shit on his head and announce it to the UN with a megaphone, Qi Yang couldn’t care less.
But Mu Yicong was different.
Qi Yang could lay his current life bare and exposed in front of anyone, loser or mess that he was.
Anyone except Mu Yicong.
“Yangzi, getting this pissed doesn’t suit you.” Liu Dameng could feel Qi Yang was off. He clicked his tongue, thinking. “Is it because of Mu Yicong?”
Qi Yang bit down on his cigarette filter, walking out of the neighborhood to find the sweet potato seller, the snow crunching under his feet.
“If it’s because of Mu Yicong, then I gotta say something to you, brother.”
Liu Dameng rarely spoke so seriously.
“To be honest, I don’t really care about Ren Wei either. If he hadn’t said Mu Yicong was coming, I wouldn’t have wanted to organize this class reunion.”
“I’ll be straight with you, I do feel guilty towards Mu Yicong. If we hadn’t met and I didn’t think about him, it’d be fine. But suddenly running into him, it’s like a weight on my mind.”
“You feel bad about it too, don’t you? Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reacting this strongly.”
“Let’s just go, drink a peace offering, and sincerely apologize. We’re grown men. If we did wrong, we admit it. It’s not a loss of face.”
“We say what we need to say, clear our conscience, and it’s over and done with.”
Liu Dameng rambled on for a while, but Qi Yang still didn’t feel like responding.
He couldn’t deny that he did feel guilty towards Mu Yicong.
“And besides,” Liu Dameng backtracked to emphasize, “What do you mean ‘shitty little stationery store’? What I do is called ‘creative culture’. Young ladies love that shit, you know? Get with the times, man.”
“Get with your grandpa.” Qi Yang cursed.
“Don’t keep calling it stickers and pictures all day. That’s so tacky.” Liu Dameng knew Qi Yang was fine as long as he was willing to respond. He corrected him, dragging out his words. “What our Xingxing plays with is called handcraft jour-nals.”
Journals or foot-nals, Qi Yang didn’t give a shit.
On his way back from buying the sweet potatoes, he bent down and dug his lighter out of the snowbank.
Cost him over three hundred bucks. If he was really going to the reunion on the weekend, he’d have to bring it.
When he got home and was peeling the sweet potato, trying to get Qi Xing to eat it, Ren Wei sent a friend request and re-added Qi Yang on WeChat.
Qi Yang clicked accept and threw his phone aside. When he picked it up half an hour later, Ren Wei had liked every single one of his past Moments posts like a goddamn lunatic.
Cui Wu heard about the class reunion from Liu Dameng and called Qi Yang specially. He asked straight away, “What’s going on, Yangzi? Back in touch with Mu Yicong?”
Qi Yang honestly answered that he was just as confused as Cui Wu was and told him to ask Liu Dameng.
“Yeah, it’d be good to see him.” Cui Wu was cheerful, either because he was easygoing or because being a civil servant had driven him crazy. “It has been a while since we old classmates got together.”
“You coming?” Qi Yang asked.
“Yeah, why not?” Cui Wu agreed. “Saturday night at the Nanyang Star Hotel, right? Dameng already told me.”
Qi Yang bit down on his cigarette filter again. “Alright.”
The high school class group chat, which hadn’t seen a message in years, slowly started to get some activity, orchestrated by Ren Wei and Liu Dameng.
Some people were enthusiastic, others made excuses about being busy with work, having a wife in confinement, or living out of town.
There was even one asshole who never talked to anyone in school, a guy Qi Yang couldn’t even remember if he was in their class or not, who took the opportunity to post an electronic wedding invitation and shamelessly announced he was getting married.
Everyone pretended to be blind and deaf when he popped up, not wanting to cough up the gift money.
What was funnier was that after Ren Wei added Mu Yicong to the group, he brazenly introduced Mu Yicong as his current boss, the CEO of M&K.
The group was also awkwardly silent for a long time.
No one joined Ren Wei in kissing ass. Mu Yicong didn’t say a word in the group either.
Qi Yang stared at his profile picture, clicking on it and closing it again and again. He must have done it twenty times over two days, but Mu Yicong never added him as a friend.
He went back to his call logs, found the number Mu Yicong had called him from that day, held the phone and thought for a long time, then finally saved it to his contacts.
There were about fifty or sixty people in their class back then. In the end, after all the counting, a good dozen or so were willing to come to the reunion.
“How come Ren Wei is so eager?”
The afternoon before the class reunion, Liu Dameng came to Qi Yang’s workplace. He was lounging in Qi Yang’s big swivel chair, scrolling through the group chat and laughing. “What a pathetic show-off. Clinging to Mu Yicong like he’s a living dragon.”
“Hey, you think those two could actually have something going on? Back in school, you said Mu Yicong’s orientation was a bit…”
With the Spring Festival approaching, there were a lot of rental customers. Qi Yang was so busy his phone and WeChat hadn’t stopped ringing. He was getting annoyed with Liu Dameng constantly bringing up Mu Yicong’s name.
“What did you come here for?” He shoved the computer at Liu Dameng. “If you’re bored, enter this spreadsheet for me.”
“I came to wait for you to get off work and treat you to something nice. My wife’s card got us a men’s deep skincare treatment.” Liu Dameng propped his legs up on the desk, grabbed the keyboard, and started typing. “Why are you doing it manually? Don’t you know how to use Exciting?”
Qi Yang had never scored higher than 60 in English since elementary school.
But he held his phone and thought for a moment before looking at Liu Dameng with confusion. “You mean ‘interesting’?”
“Inte…” Liu Dameng mumbled, trying to recite it. “That starts with an ‘I’, you illiterate.”
A customer came in, so Qi Yang stopped his cultural debate with Liu Dameng.
After he was done, he came back, looking exhausted, pushed the door open, and asked Liu Dameng again, “What did your wife book for us? What kind of skincare do two grown men need?”
“Amateur,” Liu Dameng strongly disagreed. “Men need to take care of their skin too these days. If you don’t keep it fresh, your wife will get sick of looking at you.”
“I’m not going.” Qi Yang just wanted to go home and sleep.
“Money’s already spent, don’t be a pain. It was expensive too.” Liu Dameng got up and dragged him. “Don’t think just because you were called the campus heartthrob for a few years that you’re actually that good-looking. Let me tell you, Mu Yicong is all done up now, and he looks fucking sharp.”
Qi Yang couldn’t refuse Liu Dameng. He was half-pulled, half-dragged to get a facial.
Mainly because the wife’s money had already been spent. It would be rude not to go.
He couldn’t tell if the skincare made him look better, but the massage therapist rubbed his face and neck so relaxingly he almost fell asleep.
Coming out of the beauty salon, Liu Dameng went to the mall to buy a new outfit. He spun around in front of the mirror eight hundred times and insisted on getting Qi Yang’s opinion. “Is this outfit okay for the reunion tomorrow?”
“Show your wife.” Qi Yang was getting annoyed. “Don’t ask me.”
“But you have good taste in clothes!” Liu Dameng said with utmost piety. “Hurry up, are these pants okay or not?”
Qi Yang took a step back to look at him, then went back to the rack and grabbed a pair of loose, washed-color casual pants instead of the skinny ones. “Pair them with your cowhide leather shoes.”
“Got it!” Liu Dameng didn’t hesitate for a second. He grabbed the right size and went to pay.
They agreed to meet the next evening and head straight from Che Li to the Nanyang Star Hotel. Qi Yang went home and stood in front of his wardrobe for ten minutes.
He pulled out two jackets, thought about it for a moment, then suddenly felt stupid. It was like he’d been infected by Ren Wei and Liu Dameng. He finally decided to just wear whatever he normally wore to the reunion tomorrow.
He’d made up his mind the day before, but the next day, just before he was about to leave, Qi Yang still took off his cotton coat and put on a more stylish fleece-lined jacket. He even ran his fingers through his hair.
The Nanyang Star Hotel was a high-end place. If he dressed too casually and got stopped at the door, that would be a genuine loss of face.
“Wow.” Zou Meizhu came out of the kitchen holding a spatula, circling around Qi Yang. “My son is so handsome. Going on a blind date?”
“Can you stop dreaming?” Qi Yang wordlessly tied his boot laces, stood up, and glanced at Qi Xing. “I’m not eating at home tonight. Don’t go out to play cards.”
“Mom still has a pair of sunglasses!” Zou Meizhu ignored him completely.
Qi Yang slammed the door and left.
Liu Dameng had figured they’d be drinking tonight, so he didn’t drive. He hitched a ride in Qi Yang’s car.
Of course, today was especially busy at the shop. By the time they got to the Nanyang Star Hotel, they were already more than ten minutes late for the agreed 7 PM meeting time. Cui Wu had sent five messages in a row, urging them to hurry.
They confirmed with Ren Wei that they were in the night view private room on the top floor. Before they even got to the door, Liu Dameng had stopped to tug at his pants at least five times. “Fuck, this is more nerve-wracking than the first time I went to my in-laws’ house.”
“Pathetic.” Qi Yang found it amusing. He stepped forward and pushed the door open.
Qi Yang was sure he heard a lot of noise, laughing and talking, coming from inside when he was still outside the door.
The moment the door opened, he was met with a dozen pairs of eyes that all snapped towards him. In the sudden, abrupt silence, he squinted.
“Keep talking,” he said, looking behind him. “My homeroom teacher following me?”
“Hey, is this Qi Yang?” someone shouted, and the table erupted. “The campus heartthrob still has it! Ten years and he hasn’t aged a bit!”
Qi Yang smiled, took off his jacket, and walked in.
Liu Dameng followed behind him, yelling, “Everyone only sees Yangzi? No one’s noticing Dameng?”
Ren Wei, dressed in a suit, stood up from the table, like a waiter, and said with false formality, “I was just about to go downstairs to meet you guys.”
Cui Wu raised his hand from the side near the floor-to-ceiling windows. He was still big and burly. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted at Qi Yang, “Yangzi, over here.”
Qi Yang and Liu Dameng went over and sat down. They nodded at the old classmates across from them and exchanged a few brief greetings.
Qi Yang quickly swept his eyes around the room. He didn’t see the face he was looking for. He tilted his head and asked Cui Wu softly, “Mu Yicong didn’t come?”
“Said he’d be a bit late.” Cui Wu lowered his voice too. “If you guys hadn’t come, no one would be sitting next to me. Fuck.”
“With that rotten look of yours,” Liu Dameng laughed, putting his arm around Cui Wu’s shoulder. “Even as a public servant, you’re not a good person.”
“You two are the good ones,” Cui Wu punched him in the ribs. “I saw you two swaggering in behind Yangzi, and for a second I thought you were here to pick a fight.”
“You’re all the same.” Two female classmates who were already unrecognizable chimed in. “We were sick of you guys back in school.”
Qi Yang picked up the kettle and poured himself some water. His eyelashes drooped, and a slight smile unconsciously tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Even though he had no interest in this class reunion deep down, actually being in this atmosphere, it was hard not to be a little moved.
Time flies.
Just as he was starting to feel a little pleasant, Ren Wei scraped his chair back with a loud ‘squeak’, stood up, and answered his phone: “Ah, Yicong. Yes, the top floor.”
The private room fell silent again. Liu Dameng and Cui Wu exchanged a look, their eyes hiding a knowing contempt.
Qi Yang rested his elbow on the table and sipped his water slowly. He felt like Ren Wei’s nose bridge looked a bit… translucent.
“Wait for me, I’ll come down to get…” Ren Wei was about to walk out when he suddenly stopped, glanced at Qi Yang, and lowered his voice. “Already here? Okay, then come on up.”
Ren Wei walked out of the private room, and the table started buzzing again.
The old classmates huddled in small groups, whispering to each other. Some of the more perceptive ones had already started casting meaningful glances towards Qi Yang and his group.
“I feel like,” Cui Wu leaned in and said quietly, “this whole thing tonight is kinda targeted at you.”
“A Hongmen Banquet?” Liu Dameng also sensed something was off.
Qi Yang didn’t say anything. He leaned back in his chair, staring at the dark gold, luxurious door of the private room.
