WHF Ch 52 – “You’re too young, not spicy enough.”

The dish was out of the wok. Yu Tianbai turned sideways to make room for Xiu Ma. The kitchen was not big, and he and the young master squeezed past each other between the cabinets for a good while, a dance of giving and taking, ebbing and flowing.

“I wouldn’t know how to drink the expensive stuff anyway. I’d have been satisfied if you brought me a bottle of Erguotou.”

Yu Tianbai pushed the whiskey deeper into the cabinet, lest he accidentally knock over the young master’s several thousand kuai.

Xiu Ma looked at him, then replied directly:

“I used that alcohol to braise the pork ribs.”

“Don’t do that.” Yu Tianbai immediately went back on his word. “Let’s drink it together when we have time.”

The dining table was set, and the long unused bowls and chopsticks were brought out. The apartment actually started to have a hint of a lived-in feel. The young master had made two dishes and a soup, all of which looked quite proper. He was skilled at everything from flash frying aromatics to flipping the wok. The pork bone soup with plum blossom was even stewed to a creamy color. Yu Tianbai held the soup bowl, clucking his tongue in amazement.

“Buy a few pieces of pork tenderloin some other day, I can also make guo bao rou.” Xiu Ma sat down with a smug look on his face, pointing at the dishes. “Try it first.”

Yu Tianbai picked up a piece of eggplant from the Di San Xian. The soy sauce color was stir fried beautifully, and the taste was not bad either, just a bit hot. The piece of eggplant, cut like a rolling knife, sloshed around in his mouth for a few circles before he swallowed it.

Say no more, Yu Tianbai gave a thumbs up.

After swallowing the eggplant in his mouth, he placed the glass bottle of Arctic Ocean soda towards Xiu Ma: “Let’s just eat out some other day. If I get used to you cooking for me, I’ll feel awkward when I’m eating alone and can’t have it.”

The person across the table did not reply, silently opening the soda with a bottle opener.

After they were well into the meal, Yu Tianbai still had not quite adjusted to the fact that the young master was such an essential home commodity. He sighed at the empty bowl in front of him:

“The first time I saw you, I thought you would never have the chance to touch a kitchen in your entire life.”

The young master was still drinking his soup. He lifted his eyes from the soup bowl: “You should know that first impressions are unreliable.”

“Yeah,” Yu Tianbai paid no mind to Xiu Ma’s words. “What was your first impression of me?”

Good question. Upon hearing this, Xiu Ma put down his soup bowl: “I thought you were the type of person who would never have a home.”

It was hard to tell if this was a compliment or an insult. Yu Tianbai turned and gestured around, saying with a playful grin, “Aren’t you in my home right now?”

“That’s right,” Xiu Ma placed his chopsticks on his empty bowl. “That’s why first impressions are unreliable.”

The warm light from the kitchen shone down, making everyone’s subtle movements particularly obvious. Across the table, Xiu Ma’s fingers curled up, then relaxed again. Yu Tianbai’s impression of this pair of hands had changed. When they first met, he only thought they were a good looking pair of hands. Now he knew that the owner of these hands also worked very hard for a living. The good looks were just the surface, but Yu Tianbai still could not help but stare, until a question from the young master interrupted him.

“After the winter break ends, will you live here or go back to Changchun?”

Returning from a brief and beautiful harbor to a long and hopeless reality, Yu Tianbai bit his lip with his side teeth.

“Either is fine, it’s very casual. I don’t even know my own schedule.”

Just being asked made him feel annoyed. He decided to throw the question back: “What about you? You should be going back to school in May, right?”

Similarly, a sense of helplessness about life appeared on Xiu Ma’s face. He replied, “I’ll go back to finish my thesis, and then it’ll be time to graduate.”

“Starting school early is really a good thing. You can take a year off and still graduate early.”

Yu Tianbai could not help but admire the young master’s intelligence. Of course, the young master was not the least bit modest. He boasted shamelessly:

“The main reason is that I’m smart. Otherwise, starting school early wouldn’t prevent a delayed graduation.”

If this had been when the two of them first met, Yu Tianbai would have already thought of eight hundred sarcastic remarks for him, but not now. Now, Yu Tianbai had already witnessed him mentally calculating a large order in ten seconds in front of a merchant.

Yu Tianbai blinked, trying to imagine what the young master was like on campus.

“After you graduate, will you return to the Northeast or stay in Beijing?” He asked the classic graduation question reserved for top students that almost everyone asks. “Beijing is pretty good, it wouldn’t be bad for you to stay.”

And Xiu Ma accurately and directly seized upon the weakness in his logic: “If you really think Beijing is so great, why did you leave yourself?”

Yu Tianbai’s arm, draped over the back of the chair, swayed slightly. He smiled: “Of course it’s because I’m not smart enough, I couldn’t stay.”

Sincerity can defeat awkwardness. Xiu Ma was speechless for a moment, then stacked his own bowl on top of his: “You do the dishes later.”

Looking to the future was unreasonable. The prerequisite for looking to the future was having a future. Allocating tasks like washing the dishes was a more reliable life plan.

However, compared to washing dishes, there was something more important that needed to be looked forward to.

“Wait a second,” Yu Tianbai pushed the rice bowl aside. “Let me first tell you about the seafood restaurant matter for tomorrow.”

Time for business. Xiu Ma leaned forward, and their heads moved closer.

“The restaurant is quite large, with two doors, front and back. The front door faces the main road, has surveillance, and there’s no place to park—” As he spoke, Yu Tianbai picked up the chopsticks next to him, placing one on each side to represent the main road, and a soy sauce dish in the middle to represent the restaurant. “We’ll park in the small alley next to the back door. There’s a health supplement store and a foot massage parlor here, so parking a van shouldn’t be conspicuous.”

Yu Tianbai paused, probably looking for props. After fumbling for a while, he found two cloves of garlic, broke them apart, then put them together, placing them next to the chopstick representing the back alley.

“This is the two of us,” he said.

Xiu Ma was noncommittal, but he did not really want to be represented as a garlic clove. Yu Tianbai clearly did not care that much. He continued:

“We don’t need to be too early tomorrow. The restaurant doesn’t open until almost noon. We’ll stake out the place before the lunch rush, and then wait until—”

“Wait for an opportunity and then vault inside?” Xiu Ma began to rub his palms together.

Yu Tianbai, pinching the garlic cloves, did not speak, but looked up at him. Xiu Ma, with his elbows propped on the table, immediately wiped the excited expression from his face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Who did you learn this reckless streak from?” Yu Tianbai asked him. “I didn’t teach you to just charge headfirst into everything.”

Xiu Ma wanted to speak but stopped. He chose to evade. If they were to delve into their pasts of charging ahead recklessly, the two of them could bicker for an entire night.

“We’ll disguise ourselves a bit,” Yu Tianbai continued, moving the garlic cloves to the side, one large and one small, just like the unlucky boss and his equally unlucky young master employee on the cold streets of Jiamusi. “We’ll stake out from the car. Don’t be anxious in the morning. First, let’s figure out the organizational structure of the restaurant.”

A restaurant even had an organizational structure. Xiu Ma listened with a pout as he spoke. He hadn’t expected the unlucky boss to be able to speak so coherently, guessing everything from the possible layout of the private rooms, the composition of the clientele, to the security resources. He even had considerable research on the arrangement of the urinals in the men’s room, which made Xiu Ma cluck his tongue in amazement.

Just as Yu Tianbai finally finished speaking, peeled the garlic, and was about to pop the clove representing Xiu Ma into his mouth, Xiu Ma’s question came:

“Why did you suddenly take the initiative to help find Fang Hui?”

Yu Tianbai chewed silently a couple of times, then answered him: “You’re too young, not spicy enough.”

“Huh?” Xiu Ma did not react for a moment.

“I was talking about the garlic,” Yu Tianbai tossed the remaining clove into his mouth. “New garlic.”

The two of them fell into a mutual silence for a moment. Seeing that the young master had no intention of backing down, Yu Tianbai swallowed the raw, young garlic clove and opened his mouth to speak:

“The work for the health supplement store is almost done. If it weren’t for this Fang Hui matter, I would have had to send you back.”

Xiu Ma was silent, taking his arms off the table and leaning back against his chair. The person opposite him continued:

“Besides, if your coming here just meant you spent a whole winter break moving boxes for me, how boring would that be? At least let there be some insights and experiences on your internship certificate, right?”

The young master was still silent. Yu Tianbai savored the taste for a moment, then was suddenly hit by the spiciness. New garlic really had a quiet but powerful kick. It was raw and juicy upon entering the mouth, but once you closed your mouth to savor it, it began to fight back explosively. As he got up to find some tea, Xiu Ma also stood up.

He had originally intended to take the plates to the kitchen on his way, but as his hand touched the table, Xiu Ma suddenly thought of something.

“The disguise you mentioned, what kind of disguise are we talking about specifically?”

On the other side of the kitchen, the unlucky boss gave a knowing smile. Xiu Ma immediately felt that something was very wrong.

The next morning, on the bright and spacious Guangfu Road in front of the station, a sneaky Wuling Hongguang van appeared. A slogan was stuck to its body, one that looked like it had just been printed—White Horse Immortal’s Performance Troupe, brand new and suspicious.

The person in the driver’s seat was again wearing that pair of round spectacles and a black silk shirt with a coiled dragon dark pattern. Suspicious, and did not look like a good person. The person in the passenger seat was wearing the same style of blind man’s sunglasses. The coiled dragon patterned shirt fit him quite well, making him look sharp and distinguished. Although he did not look like a bad person, he was equally suspicious.

“We’ll definitely be more conspicuous like this.” Xiu Ma pushed the lenses on the bridge of his nose down a notch. Yu Tianbai had forced him to wear these sunglasses, and he was not yet used to the visual experience of the world being half dark.

“How could that be?” Yu Tianbai had clearly adapted long ago, completely at ease. “When the time comes, we’ll rip off the sign on the car and change our clothes. Who would be able to recognize you?”

Xiu Ma did not want to refute his inherently illogical statement. He flicked the sunglasses back up onto the bridge of his nose. In the driver’s seat, Yu Tianbai fell into deep thought, muttering to himself as he pondered:

“The sign being too new is indeed unreliable. Should I go get some sandpaper to rough it up?”

Without considering the feasibility of his idea, Xiu Ma’s way of thinking had already begun to follow the unlucky boss. He rested his arm on the window frame, his hand propping up his chin. In this classic pose, he said without changing his expression, “Don’t do that. Just buy some Li Liangui’s smoked meat pancakes. The sweet bean paste will be just enough to smear on it, and it will have a smell too.”

It was obvious he was being sarcastic. As the days went on, the young master’s skill level in being sarcastic had improved. As expected of a top student, though it was more likely a result of his own excellent guidance. Yu Tianbai decided to throw the words back:

“You just finished breakfast this morning and you’re already hungry?”

Compared to sitting idly in the car, bickering with Yu Tianbai was indeed a good option. Just as Xiu Ma adjusted his posture to prepare a powerful counterattack, his mouth was covered by a hand.

Covering his mouth was not all. Yu Tianbai’s other hand wrapped around his neck, pulling him right into his line of sight on the spot. The two of them looked in the same direction.

“That’s him.”

In the back alley that the car window faced, at the back door of the seafood restaurant, a fat man in a long gown and mandarin jacket floated forward. The reason it was described as floating was because he was surrounded on all sides by a cloud of underlings, and his legs, compressed by his stature, were completely hidden within the long gown, with only his large belly bobbing up and down.

The owner of the Seafood Grand Restaurant, Fatty Lin, made his grand entrance.