WHF Ch 22 – “I’ll stay with you.”

His phone wasn’t on vibrate, it was silent, but Yu Tianbai, the moment the screen flickered, imagined a heart-stopping ringtone for him.

After the imaginary ringing sounded for the third time in his head, Yu Tianbai decided to take the initiative and get out of the car, giving him some motivation to answer the call. But his hand had just touched the driver’s side door when the person in the passenger seat opened the door first, slipped out, and closed the door behind him. The ringtone in Yu Tianbai’s mind ended with the sound of the closing door.

Silence returned to the car. He saw Xiu Ma turn around, phone pressed to his ear. This time the window was completely closed, and he couldn’t hear what the other person was saying on the phone.

He was glad the window had been closed beforehand.

But even closed, it wasn’t entirely airtight. With his lips sealed, he could still hear the faint sound of Xiu Ma’s voice. Yu Tianbai hesitated for two seconds, then reached out and turned on the car stereo.

On a random afternoon at the end of January, the local radio station was unexpectedly playing Teresa Teng’s “Tian Mi Mi.” It wasn’t that he disliked the song, it was just that he’d heard it so often in his childhood that it reminded him of women from the older generation, reminding him of the person Xiu Ma was currently talking to on the phone.

As the lyrics sang “It’s you, it’s you,” he reached out and switched to the next channel, listening to the impassioned advertisement for a men’s health clinic. Yu Tianbai fell into deep thought.

He had never been able to figure out this kid’s family structure. He wasn’t a nosy person—at least he didn’t think so—but some aspects of Xiu Ma were truly enigmatic.

He was a young master, this much was certain. Like the Ferrari that had mentally bowled Yu Tianbai over when they first met, like the air of disregard for money he exuded at every moment. But at the same time, he had a down-to-earth ordinariness about him. He could enjoy street food with gusto, sleep soundly on the floor, and persevere even with a lousy, unscrupulous boss.

Yes, an unscrupulous boss.

Yu Tianbai felt that his summary was quite good, with just one problem: the last sentence seemed to be insulting himself.

He idly fiddled with the dial, glancing out the window, and unexpectedly, Xiu Ma had already hung up the phone swiftly and was turning back towards the car. This made him, the unscrupulous boss, a little flustered. He turned down the radio, unlocked the car doors, and leaned back in his seat, feigning composure.

But Xiu Ma had no intention of getting back into the passenger seat. Not only that, his next sentence almost knocked Yu Tianbai out of the driver’s seat.

“I have to go,” Xiu Ma said, simply and directly.

“Go?” Yu Tianbai asked, “Where to?”

A rare speechless expression appeared on Xiu Ma’s face. He propped himself against the car roof, looking back over his shoulder. Yu Tianbai noticed his face was a little pale.

“I’m quitting, I have to leave,” he enunciated more forcefully than usual. “My mom is sick, she hasn’t been taken to the hospital yet.”

Yu Tianbai heard him clearly, completely clearly, but still asked, “What?”

A few seconds later, he abruptly leaned forward, his hand resting on the passenger seat. “She made the call?”

“Not her,” Xiu Ma sniffed, pinching the bridge of his nose, but his eyes weren’t red. “The housekeeper called.”

At this point, Yu Tianbai understood his family structure even less, but one thing was clear, he needed to leave now.

“You can’t go.”

Xiu Ma froze, then took his hand away and looked at him.

“Look around,” Yu Tianbai gestured. “This is the middle of nowhere, not the city. How are you going to get back?”

Seeing that Xiu Ma didn’t speak, Yu Tianbai turned and released the handbrake, looking straight ahead.

“And you said it yourself, I can’t just leave you and run.” He said this firmly, but Xiu Ma didn’t respond, which made him a little less firm. He glanced at the passenger seat. “Tell me the address.”

Songyuan, Jilin, 2:00 PM.

Yu Tianbai suddenly regretted his decisiveness. He stood in the wind outside a building in Songyuan, watching Xiu Ma unlock the unit door downstairs.

The journey had been smooth, and neither of them had spoken. He was usually very observant, but this time, looking in the rearview mirror, he couldn’t read this kid’s thoughts at all.

Nervous? Sad? Anxious? Or some other emotion?

He also couldn’t imagine what would happen when they arrived. It would probably be a chaotic scene—but to be honest, he knew next to nothing about family matters and parents. He could act tough in front of robbers, he could teach a lesson to a thoughtless kid, but what expression should he use to face his own or someone else’s parents?

His reaction to this was comparable to a newborn’s. So after struggling in the wind for a moment, he said to Xiu Ma:

“I’ll wait for you here.”

The entrance to the old apartment building was a wind tunnel. Yu Tianbai stood there with his hands in his pockets, his voice like the rustling of treetops in a storm. Xiu Ma squinted at him for a moment before understanding.

“Aren’t you cold?” Xiu Ma’s voice was much louder. 

“You can wait in the hallway.”

The person opposite could only respond by shivering theatrically.

But if he went into the hallway, he wouldn’t have to go inside the apartment. Good idea. After a moment, Yu Tianbai, with the air of someone who had carefully considered the matter, quickly followed him into the building.

The hallway of the old matchbox-style building was narrow. Xiu Ma walked in front, nearly touching the ceiling. Yu Tianbai followed behind, thinking about what excuse he could use to explain why he was staying on the first floor to wait, but unexpectedly, the person in front took three steps up the landing and turned to knock on the door.

“She lives on the first floor?”

Yu Tianbai couldn’t help but ask. He didn’t say “your family,” because this place was vastly different from the red-brick and white-tile mansion in Changchun.

“Yes,” Xiu Ma replied. “What’s wrong?”

I thought you’d have to go up a few floors so I could make an excuse not to go up. Of course, Yu Tianbai wouldn’t say that.

He took one hand out of his pocket, gestured back and forth a few times, then put it back in his pocket, replying to Xiu Ma: “Nothing.”

Nothing, he was also trying to convince himself.

Xiu Ma stared at him, seemingly about to say something, when the motion-sensor light above them went out. Both of them cleared their throats simultaneously, but neither opened their mouths to speak. Just as the silence was intensifying, the sound of a door opening broke the stalemate.

The door they were about to knock on opened. Inside stood a timid young face, wearing an apron. It was the new housekeeper, Xiao Juan—she must have heard the sounds of their alternating throat-clearings.

No greetings, no explanations, not a word more. Xiao Juan stepped aside, gesturing for them to enter.

Should he go in?

After the girl’s gaze landed on Yu Tianbai, he finally moved his feet.

No pills, no IV drips, nothing related to illness. The apartment was a typical small Northeastern city home, with light wood furnishings and a glass screen. As Yu Tianbai looked around the living room, he heard a harsh question erupt from the room next door:

“Did I have to say it like this for you to come back?”

It was the same voice from the phone.

Yu Tianbai turned his head towards the sound and first saw a wheelchair in the master bedroom doorway, then the woman in the wheelchair, Xiu Ma’s mother. But to his surprise, this woman couldn’t be described with any pleasant words. Bloated, disheveled, and頹, the folds of flesh around her mouth made her look angry, and indeed she was.

At this moment, Yu Tianbai finally understood what had been off about Xiu Ma along the way. He wasn’t anxious, and he was very calm. He seemed to have known from the beginning that the woman was lying to him.

This was more terrifying than the illness itself.

Xiu Ma didn’t immediately answer her. He first looked around the room, then stopped at the master bedroom doorway, two meters away from the woman. He turned to look at his mother:

“Is there anything you’re dissatisfied with about the new housekeeper?”

“You have the nerve to ask me if I’m dissatisfied with anything?” The woman’s tone instantly rose, hoarse but not lacking in volume. “I want Fang Hui back, I want her back! Only she treats me like her own daughter, none of the others are any good!”

Saying this, she swung the blanket covering her knees and threw it, but the light blanket didn’t carry half her anger, swirling to the ground, more like it had collapsed under the weight of the atmosphere in the room.

Xiu Ma silently picked up the blanket from the floor, shook it out, and replied with his head down:

“The new one can do it too, I’ll pay her, whatever she wants.”

“You’re useless as a son!” The woman exploded again, and then the room fell into a heavy silence.

Yu Tianbai leaned against the low screen near the door, unable to utter a word.

At this point, Xiao Juan, who had been standing to the side, finally took a step. She walked along the wall to the door, quietly took her coat off the hanger, and murmured softly, “I’m going to buy groceries.”

“I’ll go too—” Yu Tianbai quickly followed, “To buy a pack of cigarettes.”

With that, he opened the door first. The hallway light came on, making the room seem a little bleak. Before closing the door, Yu Tianbai glanced back. Xiu Ma wasn’t looking his way, leaving only a back that didn’t seem like him at all.

If this had happened on the street, he would definitely have intervened.

Yu Tianbai stood behind the Dafuyuan supermarket, thinking this. He just lit a cigarette when the wind burned a section of it down. It was indeed a city by Chagan Lake, thoroughly cold.

But if it really happened on the street, who would he help?

Help the woman? But sitting in her wheelchair, she looked more like Empress Dowager Cixi than a victim.

Help Xiu Ma? He truly seemed like a victim in this eighty-square-meter old apartment in Songyuan, but elsewhere he was a young master. Utterly perplexing.

As he was talking to himself, the young housekeeper came out of the supermarket and stood silently not far from him, until Yu Tianbai turned and noticed her.

“Buying such a big fish?” Yu Tianbai put out his cigarette, making small talk with her. Xiao Juan was carrying quite a few grocery bags, but a freshly scaled crucian carp was the most conspicuous.

Xiao Juan smiled awkwardly and replied, “Sister Xiao Fang told me before she left, Auntie loves this dish. If there’s no fish stewed with tofu for dinner, she might not eat.”

Xiao Fang? The melody of the village girl named Xiao Fang echoed in Yu Tianbai’s mind. He belatedly remembered that this seemed to be the housekeeper the woman had mentioned, the previous one.

But why did this name sound so familiar?

There seemed to be too many questions today, making him appear overly inquisitive.

“That must cost quite a bit of money every month,” he replied to the housekeeper, taking most of the bags from her.

It was always bad to pry into other people’s affairs. Yu Tianbai carried the bags as they walked, the young housekeeper silently following beside him. After hesitating repeatedly, he chose a neutral question.

“The previous housekeeper you mentioned, did she work here for a long time?”

The young girl reacted for a moment before replying, “Not too long. We’re from the same town. She came to the city to work two or three years before me. She’s probably been a housekeeper for about two years—she’s the one who introduced me to this job.”

But the woman in the house had personally said she wanted her to be like a daughter. Yu Tianbai stopped the impulsive words that were about to escape his lips. After a while, he rephrased:

“Did she have a good relationship with the lady of the house?”

Xiao Juan had been keeping her head down. Hearing this question, her face nearly buried itself in her collar. She hesitated for a long time. “I don’t know the specifics, but Sister Xiao Fang asked to leave herself. She was in a good mood before she left, not like she had encountered anything unpleasant.”

The north wind made Yu Tianbai squint. He felt the girl beside him glance at him a few times, as if hesitating about something.

“But there’s one thing, Sister Xiao Fang told me not to mention to the family that we’re from the same town.”

Yu Tianbai slowed his pace, replying, “That’s quite strange. Northeasterners love to chat, not mentioning being from the same town is a bit dishonest. Could it be because—”

“You’re back?” Xiu Ma stood at the entrance to the building, hands in his pockets, looking at them.

He stood tall and lanky amidst the drab old apartment building, out of place.

Xiao Juan hurriedly nodded in greeting, took the crucian carp that Yu Tianbai had been carrying for her, and went back inside, leaving the two men standing in the howling north wind, neither moving.

They both felt that the other had something to say.

After a stalemate, Yu Tianbai shook out a cigarette from his pack.

“You go in first,” he said slowly, staring at Xiu Ma’s shoulder. He knew Xiu Ma wasn’t looking at his face either. “I’ll smoke a cigarette and then go back in.”

“I’ll stay with you,” Xiu Ma gave an unexpected answer.

Yu Tianbai looked at him for a long time before realizing that Xiu Ma wanted to smoke a cigarette with him. This was a first.