WHF Ch 2 – You’ve changed quite a bit in the past two years.

He had been standing by the roadside, facing the wind, for four hours. In that time, fewer than twenty vehicles had passed. Fifteen were large freight trucks, five were small private cars, and there was also one motorcycle heading back to the countryside. Except for the motorcyclist who stopped to take a glance, every vehicle roared by, kicking up unmelted snow from the asphalt road, which swirled into the sleeves of the uncle and nephew.

“Uncle, I was wrong earlier. I shouldn’t have talked back to you.”

A meter away on the snowy ground, Tu Laoqi was sitting cross-legged. He didn’t make a sound. The back of his military coat was crusted with packed snow.

Morning by the lake, noon by the roadside, and half the afternoon had passed without so much as a sip of tangyuan soup.

“Uncle, can you say something?” He tucked his hands into his sleeves and looked back. The wind on the highway was stronger than by the lake, and the silence was truly unsettling.

“Nephew.” Tu Laowu’s voice cut through the north wind, heavy and earnest. “A man must have resolve. For example, right now, I need to fully immerse myself in the role I’m playing.”

Tu Laowu didn’t sound angry at all, but he seemed almost too calm, leaving his nephew feeling uneasy.

“Will this method really work?” He squinted toward the roadside. This was a windy spot, and the snow on the asphalt rolled like dust in a desert. “We’ve been waiting for almost five hours!”

The wind answered him. Tu Laowu sat as if meditating, his back ramrod straight. After a moment, his deep voice rang out.

“I’ve told you, a man must have resolve.” He narrowed his eyes, as if entering a Zen state. “Besides, your Uncle Fan has already found complete peace, and he’ll be at peace for the rest of his life. What’s a few hours of freezing for us?”

Mentioning the departed brought tears to Tu Laoqi’s eyes. He hurriedly wiped them away and asked, “Uncle, even if a car stops, what if the driver doesn’t let us hitch a ride?”

Tu Laowu opened one squinted eye and half-turned his head.

“The gear I got from your grandpa, isn’t it right there on your back?”

On the shoulders of Tu Laoqi’s worn, blackened military coat was indeed a dark brown strap slung diagonally across. But his hands never touched it, as if the item was too precious to handle.

“Remember what I said, Laoqi. In our line of work, you can lose your head, you can spill your blood, but your spine must never bend. You must never bow to anyone.”

“Uncle, stop talking, a car’s coming!” In the distance, a faint light appeared. Tu Laoqi hurriedly turned and shouted.

At this, Tu Laowu’s eyes snapped open. He lunged toward the highway, not just bending but sprawling flat on the ground. He turned his face to keep his nose and mouth out of the snow.

“Nephew, remember the role I told you to play!” With that, Tu Laowu closed his eyes and began twitching on the snowy ground.

His uncle’s words seemed to inspire him. Tu Laoqi took a deep breath, dropped to his knees in front of Tu Laowu, and, as the approaching truck drew closer, let out a wail.

“Uncle, you can’t die here! Somebody help me, somebody save us!”

Yu Tianbai hadn’t expected to set off so quickly. Ten kilometers into the drive, he was still replaying the morning’s events in his mind.

What did I do today? He had asked himself this question at least ten times in his head.

He woke up early to head into the city, picked up a cheap holiday worker he found on a local website, and discovered that the worker was not only a young master but also someone he had a grudge with from two years ago. As a result, the guy punched him, he snapped back with a half-hearted retort, and now, reluctantly, they were sitting in the same car, facing a long journey ahead.

Why?

He could have just slammed the car door, floored the gas pedal, and said, “Sorry, I didn’t pick you. I’m looking for someone who can work, not someone who’s just here to pick a fight.” That was so unlike him. That was so unlike Yu Tianbai.

The roadside snow hadn’t melted, and a layer of fresh morning snow had piled on top. Yu Tianbai pulled the brim of his baseball cap lower. The sunlight was inexplicably making him drowsy.

It must be a dream. This indecisive version of himself had to be a dream. If he just slept and woke up, time would rewind to yesterday, and the holiday worker he found on the local forum would definitely be an ordinary, normal person.

A car honked and roared past from behind. Yu Tianbai’s grip on the steering wheel tightened slightly. He opened his eyes, his face full of disappointment. This was, of course, not a dream.

“What are you doing?” Xiu Ma turned his face to ask. It was the first thing either of them had said in ten kilometers.

Yu Tianbai let out a sigh. “Can’t you tell? I’m driving.”

It wasn’t ten kilometers, actually—it was the first thing said since they got in the car. Yu Tianbai was trying his hardest to forget the irritating presence next to him, but his mental discipline wasn’t that advanced. A living, breathing, conspicuous creature couldn’t be ignored, no matter how hard he tried.

So Yu Tianbai chose not to turn his head to look at him.

“That’s not what I mean.” Even without looking, he could tell the kid had that same furrowed-brow expression. “You went quiet all of a sudden while driving. I thought you fell asleep.”

Yu Tianbai wished he could fall asleep. In a dream, he could ride his dream unicorn, galloping across rainbows toward a bright tomorrow, instead of sitting in the driver’s seat of a Wuling Hongguang, racking his brain over how to answer this kid’s pointless questions.

So Yu Tianbai chose not to answer him.

The Northeast wasn’t big, and neither was Changchun, but driving on these roads always made time feel agonizingly slow. Had it always been like this? Back in Beijing, he never felt this way. The snowy plains on either side of the road receded, and Xiu Ma turned his head to look out the window again. In the corner of his vision, all that remained was the golden glint of sunlight.

Yu Tianbai used to like gold—it felt warm and festive—but today, it irritated him. He wished he could drive the whole way with his eyes closed.

He blinked slowly, and a question suddenly popped into his mind.

“Hey,” he said lazily, “how old are you this year?”

Oddly enough, despite Xiu Ma’s aloof, untouchable young master demeanor, the moment Yu Tianbai spoke, he’d snap his head back. Was he afraid of being lonely? Or afraid of being ignored? Either way, it gave Yu Tianbai the creeps.

“Didn’t you read my resume?”

His body language aside, his tone was still as brash as ever.

“Nope,” Yu Tianbai replied before the kid’s tone even settled. “Why don’t you read it to me?”

After a sigh huffed through his nose, the car was filled only with the hum of tires against the asphalt.

“You should’ve read it. You’re the boss.” Xiu Ma had no intention of reading it aloud but stuck to his point. “My school and awards are all listed there.”

Yu Tianbai got the gist. So, the young master wasn’t just a young master—he was an accomplished one, probably from some prestigious top-tier university. But for a commoner like Yu Tianbai, anything outside of Tsinghua or Peking University was all the same. Even if he was from Tsinghua or Peking, it didn’t matter. Yu Tianbai could pretend not to hear, pretend not to know, or pretend both at the same time.

“Is that so?” Yu Tianbai shifted gears as the highway opened up. “So, you’ve graduated?”

“Not yet. Still need my diploma.” Xiu Ma paused. “I started school a year early.”

Yu Tianbai might’ve let out an “mm,” or maybe the car hit a pebble. Xiu Ma glanced at the hand gripping the steering wheel and added, “Because I took the college entrance exam in my second year of high school. Did pretty well, so I just went straight to university.”

Another muffled thud came from the car, and this time Xiu Ma was sure it was the chassis jolting on the gravel road.

Yu Tianbai had heard what he said, every word of it. If a third person were here to objectively evaluate the kid’s accomplishments, they’d probably seem impressive. But there was no third person, and Yu Tianbai’s mind was driving with its eyes closed. No one was going to clap earnestly.

“So,” Yu Tianbai raised his left hand and rubbed his eyelids, “how old are college graduates supposed to be these days? Eighteen?”

“You never took the college entrance exam?” Xiu Ma shot back.

“Nope,” but sincerity was always a killer move. “What dogshit university, dogshit exam—I’ve never been to either.”

Being crass helped too.

The car hadn’t left Changchun yet, but the view was wide open, probably because the Northeast didn’t have many dense clusters of buildings. Beyond the side road, in the snowy fields, smoke curled from the chimneys of a small village.

Xiu Ma stared at the white smoke rising from the chimneys for a while, then suddenly turned and shouted, “I’m twenty-one this year! Happy now?”

Yu Tianbai closed the eye closer to the passenger seat again, then slowly opened it, letting out a relieved sigh as a smile crept onto his lips.

“You could’ve just said that from the start.”

“How was I supposed to know you never even took the college entrance exam?” Xiu Ma’s volume didn’t drop, and Yu Tianbai’s brows furrowed slightly.

Sensing the mood had shifted, Xiu Ma crossed his arms and sank back into his seat. The little village outside the window was already gone, replaced by endless fields. There were no crops now, just bare land, with snow blanketing the rolling black soil, like a sea with white waves.

“Hey,” a car approached from the opposite direction, and Yu Tianbai swerved slightly, “you’ve changed quite a bit in the past two years.”

Xiu Ma lifted his eyes. In the rearview mirror, he got his first clear look at the face under the boss’s baseball cap.

Pointed chin, thin lips, pale, and strikingly clean-looking. It was hard to tell his age, but every word he spoke was steadier than Xiu Ma’s.

He hadn’t gotten a good look at the guy’s face two years ago, nor two hours ago. Back then, it was because he was too hot, too annoyed, and too indifferent. Earlier today, it was because he was too focused—focused on paying back that incident from two years ago. He didn’t even know the guy’s name.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

The driver answered the question with a laugh. He seemed to have many kinds of laughs, each one different, but none of them heartfelt.

“You don’t even know my name, and you dared to get in my car?”

Xiu Ma opened his mouth but genuinely didn’t know how to retort.

The guy tilted his head, as if pondering.

“And if you don’t know my name, how did you remember me?”

White.

Xiu Ma thought he was very white—not just his skin, but the whole person gave off a white vibe. Even though he didn’t have a single white piece of clothing, this whiteness wasn’t just about cleanliness. It was something you could hear in his tone, an aloof, superior kind of white.

The road was empty, but the car suddenly screeched to a halt with a sharp brake. After the sound of brake springs, Xiu Ma’s nose was inches closer to the passenger-side windshield.

The van stopped in the emergency lane by the side road, half on the pavement, half in the snow below. The guy just stared at Xiu Ma, unbuckling his seatbelt.

“My name’s Yu Tianbai.”

Xiu Ma hadn’t recovered from the shock of the sudden stop. He slowly turned his face.

“Why’d you stop the car?”

This road, this snow, this wilderness—it made him think of phrases like “left to rot in the wild.”

Yu Tianbai slapped his hand on the center console.

“To smoke. Didn’t you ask if I could avoid smoking in the car?”

He tucked the cigarette pack into his pocket, opened the car door, and the north wind slipped through the gap.

“Oh, one more thing,” Yu Tianbai was already standing on the snowy ground outside, bending down to look at him. “Know what’s the one thing that hasn’t changed about you from two years ago?”

Then, Yu Tianbai stretched his lips into a flat smile. It looked like a grin, but his eyes were narrowed.

“Stupid.”

With that resounding word, he slammed the car door shut just as resoundingly.