WHF Ch 10 – An Old Lover Thinking of Me

The day after Yu Tianbai kicked Xiu Ma out of the car, at a glass factory on the edge of Heilongjiang, Tu Laowu and Tu Laoqi sat side by side outside the factory director’s office. Behind the wall in the office, the director seemed to be on the phone with someone.

The Seventh leaned toward his uncle, lowering his voice: “Uncle, is the factory director Korean?”

His uncle turned his head, giving him a meaningful yet pained look, and after a while replied: “Our car fell into the Songhua River, and you still have the nerve to think about these useless things?”

The nephew shrank back, muttering under his breath.

“But according to what you’re saying,” Old Five leaned in closer, lowering his voice, “he might actually be an ethnic minority. Otherwise, how could someone so young become the factory director?”

The Seventh chuckled: “I just think he looks like one. Han Chinese don’t look like that.”

But his mood didn’t rub off on Old Five, who stared grimly at the end of the corridor, and after a moment sighed deeply: “I wonder what this Korean is like when he gets angry.”

No one spoke. In the empty factory corridor, the director’s polite yet flat voice could be heard talking.

Standard Mandarin, clear pronunciation—just from the voice alone, one could tell he was a young talent.

Uncle and nephew sighed in unison, only hoping that this young talent would maintain his polite demeanor after meeting them.

At this moment, Tu Laoqi suddenly hissed: “Uncle, the hammer that Secretary Yan instructed us to throw away together, is it with you?”

After speaking, he began searching around himself. Seeing this, Old Five also became nervous.

“Weren’t you holding it—didn’t you put it in the car?”

After searching everywhere, the Seventh stood up and patted his pants, then turned to look at Old Five.

“I feel like I haven’t seen it since halfway through the journey.”

The atmosphere immediately became tense. Old Five pursed his lips, his breathing became audible, his eyes fixed on his nephew. Just as he was about to erupt, a pair of feet appeared before them.

“Why aren’t you waiting inside?”

Yan Guoxian held a thermos in one hand, a folded newspaper tucked under his arm, wearing his unchanging pointed-collar sweater.

The uncle and nephew were both stunned. Old Five stood up first, with the Seventh quickly following, standing silently beside his uncle. Seeing the suddenly serious pair, Secretary Yan didn’t have much of a reaction, just pursed his lips and adjusted his glasses.

“Secretary Yan, we’re really sorry,” Old Five spoke first. “You introduced us to work under the director, but we failed the very first job.”

Old Five kept his head down for quite a while. He was waiting for the secretary to generously say “It’s okay,” but all that greeted him was silence. Tu Laoqi secretly glanced upward, only to see the expressionless Yan Guoxian—who even opened his thermos and took a sip.

“Save those words for the director,” his tone was gentle, but the content merciless. “After all, I’m just an intermediary. The real judgment lies with the director, don’t you think?”

After such a smooth response, Old Five was completely silenced. The secretary, tucking his newspaper under his arm, took a step toward the office, then stuck his head out to call them:

“The director seems to have finished his call. Why don’t you go in and talk?”

In the spacious director’s office, the young director in his early thirties sat at a redwood desk, his mobile phone still in hand, thumb between his teeth. He looked like he hadn’t yet recovered from the recent phone call.

“Director Sun.” Among the uncle and nephew, the uncle greeted first.

Sun Jiu didn’t turn to look at them, his left eye narrowed for a moment, but his mouth responded somewhat politely with a “Mmm.”

It wasn’t exactly polite, but it wasn’t arrogant either. This was the uncle and nephew’s second time meeting this young director—with fine features, a talented appearance, and a manner of speaking that was difficult to describe. Yes, indeed difficult to describe.

“You two, did you see the news this morning?” The director asked his first question.

The Seventh glanced at his uncle, quickly responding: “Director, how would we dare to look at the news at a time like this? We know that we’ve lost one of the factory’s cars along the way, and we didn’t complete the task—”

He stopped abruptly because he noticed the director’s indifference. After a moment, the director’s finger finally moved away from his mouth, and he asked his second question:

“I said, did you see the news this morning?”

With only a difference in phrasing from the first sentence, the uncle and nephew looked at each other in confusion.

“If you had seen the news this morning,” Sun Jiu slowly stood up, straightening his navy blue jacket as he walked to the window, “you should have seen our factory in the local news, right?”

This was what it was like to communicate with cultured people—disconnected, yet with a subtle sophistication. Old Five picked up where his nephew left off:

“Director, isn’t it normal for our factory to be in the news? You’re young and accomplished, and our factory is—”

Sun Jiu immediately turned around and roared: “I’m talking about the car you dropped in the Songhua River that made the news!”

They had never heard the director speak so loudly, so after this outburst, no one spoke in the office for a full half minute. Outside the office at the assistant’s desk, Secretary Yan turned a page of his newspaper, displaying a satisfied smile.

“The car you dropped in the river, the dead person in the car, the dead person is from my factory! Do you think I’m not famous enough, huh?”

After speaking, the director collapsed back into his chair, unbuttoning his shirt and exhaling sharply with pursed lips.

“This car…” Old Five froze for a good while, “who pulled it out?”

“How would I know? Why don’t you ask yourself?” The director was rubbing his brow, almost talking to himself. “Maybe it was one of my enemies.”

The uncle and nephew exchanged glances for the second time. Having worked together for ten years, they were all too familiar with this situation—once the boss turns away and falls silent, the business is about to fall through, and the principal investment is about to fly away.

“Director,” Old Five suddenly blurted out two words.

Sun Jiu didn’t look at him. Old Five’s gaze wandered: “I have another way to minimize your losses.”

The director didn’t respond and stood up to leave. Seeing this, he quickened his pace: “We can silence the only two witnesses.”

“The only two witnesses?” Sun Jiu stopped and turned to ask him, “Aren’t those just you two?”

After these words, even Secretary Yan at the assistant’s desk was displeased. He perked up his ears toward the room. A few seconds later, a burst of laughter suddenly erupted in the quiet office.

“Director, you really know how to joke,” Old Five laughed until his face stiffened, frantically nudging his nephew with his elbow. “Quick, thank the director for giving us a chance.”

Sun Jiu put away the faint smile on his face and casually said: “Continue.”

Old Five hurriedly stopped his foolish laughter and leaned slightly closer: “When we were flagging down cars on the road, only one stopped.”

The pleasant expression lasted only a second before the director’s face turned unprecedentedly grim.

“You were flagging down cars?”

“After all, before deciding to walk back to the glass factory, we also wanted to flag one down for the return trip!” Old Five hastily explained, with the Seventh eagerly nodding beside him.

At ten in the morning, the young talented Director Sun stared at the ceiling for a good while before finally resolving to face his incompetent subordinates.

“What did the person who stopped look like? Do they remember you?”

Old Five pondered: “One had yellow hair, quite young. Couldn’t see the face of the other one, wore a baseball cap.”

“Baseball cap?” This time it was the director’s turn to ponder. “These days, drivers who wear hats are usually bald. I don’t know any bald people among my acquaintances.”

The uncle and nephew quickly nodded in agreement. After a moment, Old Five lowered his voice and continued: “So we plan to—”

“Say no more. None of this is what I’m asking for. Whatever decision you make, it’s up to you.”

Concise, but not simple to understand. After speaking, the director turned and headed for the door. By the time he reached the redwood door, the uncle and nephew were still standing in place, staring at each other.

The door opened, and the director returned to his usual approachability:

“I’m going to attend a friend’s wedding next, and I don’t have time to look after factory matters.”

He turned his head, expression calm: “You two, take care of things yourselves.”

---

At ten-thirty in the morning, one hundred and eighty kilometers away at the edge of the Suiman Expressway, Yu Tianbai sneezed violently in the bright sunlight. The hairdresser behind him, who was about to cut his hair, flinched.

“Don’t move! If you keep moving, I’ll really cut you bald.”

Yu Tianbai rubbed his nose. In the dusty mirror of the barber shop, his complexion didn’t look so good.

“Maybe some old lover is thinking of me,” he replied irrelevantly.

The young hairdresser’s attention was still on his hair, asking absently: “Is it the previous boss of the glass products factory—the one who looks Korean?”

“Wow, your memory is really good,” Yu Tianbai complimented, but there was no appreciation in his tone. He felt like smoking, but didn’t want to in front of the young girl, so he just sighed and leaned back against the chair.

This was a place he passed through every year when restocking, on the Suiman Expressway that he traveled once in winter and once in summer. He usually stopped for two days in Shangzhi, got a haircut at his regular shop, and if he was in a good mood, toured the area. But he was certain that he wouldn’t be in the mood this year—firstly because he had abandoned someone on the road for the second time, and an unwarranted sense of guilt was acting up; secondly, because of the hairdresser’s words, he was reminded of someone from the past he shouldn’t be thinking about.

“But,” Yu Tianbai couldn’t quite believe his past self, “was I the one who told you all these things back then?”

The hairdresser picked up the spray bottle, and Yu Tianbai felt a chill down his spine.

“Who else?” It must be said that she had a strong professional ethic, never looking up at the talkative, difficult customer. “Was I personally watching you two men dating?”

A silence fell over the shop. A customer nearby slowly turned to look. Yu Tianbai cleared his throat nonchalantly.

The glass factory boss the hairdresser mentioned was someone he met two years ago, not long after leaving Beijing. They met at an exhibition in Changchun. When he walked across the blue carpet toward him, Yu Tianbai thought he was just another customer. Unexpectedly, after exchanging business cards, he gained a lover—and the longest relationship Yu Tianbai had after the age of twenty-five, lasting almost a full year. Then they broke up amicably, or at least it counted as amicable.

What was the reason again?

“His surname was Sun,” Yu Tianbai muttered to himself.

“Remember this—this time you’re the one who told me his name first,” The haircut was almost done, and the young woman stepped back to admire her work. Yu Tianbai raised his face to look in the mirror. He finally looked like himself again.

The hairdresser shook out the cape and asked: “Are you still having a meal in town before leaving?”

Yu Tianbai draped his coat over his shoulders, squinting at the doorway, and answered: “Whatever, as long as it’s not iron pot stew.”

But someone would definitely be having iron pot stew.

Compared to his slight guilt from before, Yu Tianbai suddenly felt enlightened. Just thinking about the dashing young master taking out discount coupons in an iron pot stew restaurant made him want to laugh out loud. Would the young master care about discount coupons? He wouldn’t, but Yu Tianbai would. Yu Tianbai cared about his displeasure upon seeing the coupons, though unfortunately he couldn’t witness it. While grinning foolishly at the air, he pulled a cigarette from his pocket. After all, they wouldn’t meet again, so what was wrong with keeping a souvenir?

Wait, souvenirs—Yu Tianbai suddenly felt the inside pocket of his jacket.

“Did you forget something?” the hairdresser behind him asked.

“Not exactly,” Yu Tianbai quietly withdrew his hand from his pocket. “More like I took something extra.”

The young master’s twenty-thousand-yuan knife was still with him. He suddenly lost interest in spending another day in Shangzhi.

At this very moment, ninety kilometers away in Wuchang City, the young master was indeed staring at the discount coupons, but he wasn’t in an iron pot stew restaurant. He was looking through a layer of red light—the red light of a foot massage parlor.

In the ambiguous lighting, a woman in a beige suit leaned close and lowered her voice: “Sir, the technicians you requested are all here.”

Xiu Ma raised his eyes. In the corridor near the foot bath bed, a row of people in red and green outfits stood.

He put away the discount coupons, nodded to the woman, and said quite politely: “Thank you.”

The woman’s smile was meaningful as she bowed slightly and retreated to the door. When the door closed, Xiu Ma turned his face toward the doorway, facing a row of high heels and low-cut outfits, and slowly stood up.