AUS Chapter 35: Liu Jiang Is the Good Kid

Once they neared the buildings by the main road, Liu Sisi stopped the van.

Everyone in the van held their breath and looked at Qin Bowen, which in turn made him feel restless. I made a decision for him, letting the people in the van stay where they were, while Liu Jiang and I would get out with him to find a quiet place to listen to what this “instigation” he mentioned was all about.

Under the streetlight, in front of a row of unsold storefronts, he was somewhat hesitant to speak the truth, but in the end, he did. It was just that his description of the truth made us feel like he was lying.

He thought it over and over, then lowered his voice: “Someone paid me to spread rumors about him.”

Liu Jiang and I looked at each other. I spoke first, I said: “Who the fuck are you trying to fool?”

If Qin Bowen had a shell, my words would have definitely made him retract right back into it. Unfortunately, he didn’t, so he replied to me timidly: “It’s absolutely true! If you don’t believe me, look at my proof.”

Saying this, he went to get his phone, then held the text message interface in front of my eyes.

To my surprise, there was indeed a message from such a person. In the dialogue box with a black background, white text, and gray bubbles, a message sent from a virtual number was prominently displayed in the middle—

[Start spreading it this week. The money will be delivered on time.]

The punctuation was all in place, and the speech was direct and efficient. It was just the purpose of this action—that was puzzling.

I took the phone and scrolled to the very beginning of the messages. It was indeed this person who sent the first text.

Who?

I looked up at Qin Bowen: “Do you know who this person is?”

He quickly shook his head.

“You don’t know who it is, and you’re still his lapdog, just for this little bit of money?” I felt the fire in me burn all the way up to my throat. I stood up with a whoosh. Liu Jiang subconsciously pulled me, but I had no intention of getting rough. I just turned my head and walked a few steps to the riverside railing.

The night wind blew away some of my anger. I looked at the cruise ship on the river in the distance, and a thought suddenly got stuck in my mind.

Doesn’t Qin Bowen’s family live in a high-end residential complex? Isn’t he very rich?

If that were really the case, would he stoop to being a lapdog for someone whose true identity he didn’t even know, just for that little bit of money?

No, I had to look at the text messages again.

But when I turned my head, I suddenly saw an old man next to Liu Jiang and Qin Bowen.

The old man wasn’t walking aimlessly; he was heading straight for them. He was pushing a small wooden flatbed cart, on which were piled a small mountain of seasonal peaches. Next to the cart were bundles of plastic bags—this was a street vendor.

The old man’s voice was hoarse, looking as if he had been on the road for a while: “Why are you here—not home yet?”

From the moment the old man appeared, Qin Bowen had kept his head down. Now that the old man had spoken, he wished he could hide himself away even more. Liu Jiang raised his hand and slapped him, and he seemed to wake up as if from a dream. He looked up, blinked his eyes, and opened his mouth to roar.

“Didn’t I tell you not to talk to me when we’re outside?” He got excited, and his voice cracked a little. “Go, go sell your goods!”

The old man didn’t react to his roar at all. His weary eyes were just covered with another layer of gray. The old man lowered his head, preparing to continue pushing his cart up the slope.

“Wait a minute!” Liu Jiang suddenly stood up and walked towards the old man.

He helped the old man park the cart in a flat spot and said to him: “Please leave your things here for now. I’ll come and buy them later.”

After saying that, he turned his head to Qin Bowen: “You, come here for a second.”

Saying this, he grabbed Qin Bowen’s sleeve, dragging the person like a chicken waiting to be slaughtered.

Not good!

At almost the same moment, a kind of intuition welled up from the bottom of my heart. I had to follow.

I crossed the one-way street on the spot and ran in the direction of the two of them.

They stopped in the back alley between the buildings. When I rushed in after making several twists and turns, I only saw Liu Jiang’s fist land directly on his face.

This was the way a real fight should be. No trash talk, no wind-up, just straight to the point.

Qin Bowen’s frail body swayed to the left, as if he had been directly pierced by that punch. He was like a lonely, withered leaf, swaying a few times before falling directly to the ground.

But this wasn’t over. Liu Jiang still wanted to rush up and pull him up. I hurriedly rushed over and hooked my hands under his armpits.

“Forget it, forget it, leave him with a breath,” I persuaded him while pulling him back. It took a lot of effort to steady him. The ground rustled under our feet.

I turned Liu Jiang around, held his face with both hands, looked directly into his eyes, and gently persuaded him: “Today is not the time. Just do me a favor, don’t get rough, okay?”

His breathing was heavy. I could feel the rapid pulse in the side of his neck. I pressed my hand against his face, trying to use the rhythm of my breathing to help him slow down.

After about ten seconds, my efforts paid off. After a few deep breaths, his heartbeat completely stabilized.

I stood up straight, raised my hand to pat him on the side of his cheek, told him to wait for me, and turned to face Qin Bowen, who was still half-lying on the ground.

He watched us from beginning to end, but didn’t dare to utter a single word. Now, seeing that I was about to approach, he was so scared that he scrambled backwards on the ground.

I, however, was in no hurry. I pulled up both sides of my school uniform pants and squatted down to look at him.

“Who is that to you?” I asked him.

Seeing that I didn’t continue to strike, he stopped his movement of shifting towards the base of the wall behind him, but his voice still carried extreme fear. He trembled and said: “I… I really don’t know. He just suddenly started sending me messages one day…”

“Not about that,” I interrupted him with a frown. “The old grandpa waiting outside, is he your relative?”

Qin Bowen was hesitant to speak, but given the situation where it was either tell the truth or die, he still chose the former.

After a few exchanges, I understood the situation.

The old man waiting outside was indeed his relative, and moreover, his only relative. His hometown was on a small fishing island near Liancheng. His parents came to Liancheng to work when he was six or seven. Before he started high school, his parents brought him and his grandfather, who had raised him, to Liancheng. Not long after, the couple went to the south for a labor dispatch, and the old and the young were once again dependent on each other.

The last time I fought with him, our parents were called. That time happened to coincide with his father’s return home. The rare family visit time in a year was wasted on his disappointing son being called to the school—alright, I was a bastard too. After all, I was the one who threw the first punch.

In order to lighten his parents’ burden a little, the old man had specially asked his neighbors and folks back home who owned orchards to pull some strings, buying several batches of seasonal fruits at a low price each year, and pushing a small cart to sell them in the streets and alleys of Liancheng.

However, the harsh and arduous conditions did not foster excellent qualities in Qin Bowen. There was no self-improvement, no respect for the old and love for the young. Instead, it made him develop towards another extreme.

Obviously, his so-called high-end residential complex, studying abroad after graduation, and a series of identities created for the sake of an official-sounding air were all lies.

I looked at Liu Jiang and suddenly understood why he was so angry.

Liu Jiang’s parents had also been away from him for a long time. They should be working abroad. I had never asked which country specifically. The past me didn’t care, and the current me didn’t dare to ask.

Because the fact that he didn’t have his parents by his side was once the reason my parents looked down on him.

Both raised by their grandparents, choosing to be content with what one has, or blindly pursuing what one does not have—these would be two completely different lives.

At first, Qin Bowen spoke timidly. Later, his voice became smaller and smaller, and finally, he burst into tears. I found it noisy, so I went out to get a peach from his grandfather and stuffed it into his mouth. I didn’t expect the peach to be a crisp one, and it almost knocked out his front tooth.

Every pitiful person must have their hateful aspects, but I really couldn’t sympathize with him in this situation.

I went out to find Grandpa Qin again. I used five crisp red bills to buy all the peaches on his handcart, divided them into five plastic bags, and told him he didn’t need to give me change.

“The few of us are good friends,” I was talking about myself and Qin Bowen, but my smile was slightly stiff. “Last time he treated us to a meal, we haven’t treated him back yet. You keep it!”

The old man didn’t doubt me, but he was a little hesitant to take the money. He asked me if my home was far, and if I needed him to push the peaches to give me a ride.

I waved my hand and refused, telling him we would leave a little later.

Liu Jiang also came out. His smile was much more natural than mine. He said to Grandpa Qin: “You can go first. We’ll send him back later!”

After saying that, he even helped the old man turn the handcart around. The old man got on the seat of the cart, and his steps as he left were much lighter than when he came.

Returning to the space between the buildings, Qin Bowen was sitting silently on the stone bollard used to block cars, still slowly chewing on the peach I had used to shut his mouth. At Liu Jiang’s and my feet were the remaining five bags. We glanced at each other and decided to call it a night.

Outside the alley, Liu Sisi and the others had already gotten out of the van. It looked like they had heard about eight or nine tenths of our conversation just now.

She had taken off her sunglasses, and Haozi had taken off his coir raincoat. The group of people looked at each other, and no one’s awkwardness was any less than the others’.

“Let’s go back first,” Liu Jiang said, carrying two bags of peaches. I stood next to him, carrying three bags.

Qin Bowen’s real home address was in an urban village not far from the graveyard.

When we first said we were going to pass by there, Qin Bowen’s horrified expression probably wasn’t because he was afraid of ghosts and monsters, but because he was afraid we would discover his true identity and residence.

Sometimes, a person’s vanity is much more terrifying than ghosts and monsters.

Following the address Qin Bowen gave, Liu Sisi drove the van into the village. After passing through a narrow cement road, the van stopped in front of a small courtyard at a corner.

The self-built brick and tile house had two floors, looking slightly smaller than Liu Jiang’s home, but it was also clean and tidy. There was a pear tree in the small courtyard, its branches extending beyond the wall. Many of the pears on the treetop had fallen off, leaving only some small ones still hanging on the tree.

Qin Bowen wiped his nose before getting out of the car. When he reached the gate of the small courtyard, he turned his head to look at us. He probably wanted to open his mouth and ask if we wanted to come in and sit for a while, but looking at us from left to right in our strange costumes and with awkward expressions, he decisively swallowed the words he wanted to say.

“See you tomorrow!” I shouted with gusto.

He seemed to have been frightened by my shout, tucked in his tail and ran off, without even turning his head back.

On the way back, we were silent. No one knew how to comment on the current situation. The revenge that was supposed to be exhilarating had turned into an awkward situation of prying into someone’s privacy.

As soon as we arrived at their place, Liang Yi and Haozi ran off as if their lives depended on it, not even wanting their props anymore.

Only the sister, the brother, and I were left in the car. Liu Sisi ruffled her hair and looked at Liu Jiang through the rearview mirror.

Liu Jiang looked out of the car window. He knew she was staring at him without having to turn his head. He drew out his voice and mumbled: “I know what you’re going to say—”

I guessed Liu Sisi was definitely going to say something about how they had agreed to go out and have fun, but how they ended up in such a situation. But she didn’t. She turned her gaze back to the road ahead and commented: “He’s quite pitiful too.”

Yes, pitiful. So pitiful that a second later, he was about to go around spreading rumors.

But I didn’t have the mind to think about how many annoying things he had done because of his own pitifulness right now. I had another matter to deal with.

When we arrived, the two of us went back to the room. On the blanket, I placed my phone between us.

Before leaving, I had forwarded all the text messages the “mysterious person” sent to Qin Bowen to myself, including the content of the conversation and the sending time. I copied everything, not even missing a single punctuation mark.

Now, it was time to see who would win in a battle of wits.

In any case, I would not lose.