WHF Ch 66 – An Unassuming Flair

At 6:59 a.m., Xiu Ma opened his eyes.

Dawn had just broken over the Northeast. Through the gap between the curtain and the wall, he could see the misty sky outside. It looked like it was going to be a rainy day.

In Yu Tianbai’s house, the secondary bedroom was warmer than the master bedroom. It was probably because the room was smaller, so the heating was more concentrated. The heat had caused Xiu Ma to kick off the covers several times during the night, and he had only managed to fall asleep properly just before dawn. In theory, he should have stayed in bed a little longer, but Xiu Ma wasn’t in the habit of lazing around, and today was the day he had arranged to take leave—he had to get up.

Three days had passed since they returned from the hospital. The wound on Yu Tianbai’s hand no longer needed a bandage. Neither of them had mentioned that night again, but the smell of disinfectant that had lingered in the emergency room seemed to have never dissipated, always floating in the corridors of the small apartment.

Although it was later discovered by Xiu Ma that Yu Tianbai had dropped a piece of gauze behind the washing machine.

Yu Tianbai stood there, holding a laundry basket with an innocent look on his face, meeting the gaze of Xiu Ma, who was holding the gauze. The source of the terrifying smell that had been wafting through the house for days was finally found. The gauze was thrown into the trash.

However, looking further ahead, the root of the problem had never been approached.

---

Three days ago, in the hospital break room, the police officer had given them his information—Professor Fan had been murdered and his body dumped.

“But this isn’t just a single incident,” the officer said, quickly picking up the ballpoint pen he had just put down. “There are several other cases related to this murder.”

Fang Hui’s disappearance, and now this assault on Tu Laoqi.

“The connection is that everyone involved used to work at the glass factory,” the officer paused here. “So I must remind you to pay attention to your personal safety for the time being.”

This time, Yu Tianbai didn’t try to clear Xiu Ma’s name of any connection to all this. After all, the young master was with him now. If what the man in front of him said was true, then he was the one who had dragged Xiu Ma into this.

But fortunately, Yu Tianbai could still find a way to console himself. He said calmly, “At least you’re not telling us to watch our behavior so we don’t get treated as criminal suspects.”

As a public servant, the police comrade certainly wouldn’t scold him on the spot for such an outlandish thought. The officer sat on a red leather folding chair, rubbed his cheeks with his hand as casually as he could, and then asked, “Regarding this series of cases, do you have any suspects in mind?”

This time, he finally didn’t lump the young master in with him. Yu Tianbai looked up and thought for a moment. There was indeed someone he wanted to mention.

“If you’re suspecting the glass factory director, we’re already investigating him,” the officer interrupted his thoughts. “But he’s basically been ruled out as a suspect. No motive, no means. He’s too timid.”

The awkwardness spread again, but fortunately, it shouldn’t be them who felt awkward, but the subject of their conversation himself. This was something to be happy about.

Since the man named Sun had been ruled out as a suspect, there was no one else to suspect. Yu Tianbai racked his brains. All he could think of was the song he and Xiu Ma had sung together on the night in Mudanjiang, and the indescribable mixture of anger and embarrassment on Sun Jiu’s face.

Looking at it that way, it seemed quite reasonable for this person to want revenge on him.

Seeing that the questioning was coming to an end, the police officer finally began to organize his scattered documents. Just looking at them, the workload seemed immense. Yu Tianbai silently paid his respects in his heart.

“Do you have any travel plans in the near future?” the officer asked one last question after the documents were back in order.

Of course, they did. He was going to let the young master go back to his hometown in Songyuan.

“No.”

The two of them said in unison, decisively.

A refusal always carries a hint of hesitation. If someone’s refusal is without hesitation, it might actually mean the opposite. The public servant’s gaze swept over their faces, and he ultimately chose to believe them.

But as it turned out, it would have been better not to.

---

Back to the present. Xiu Ma sat up in bed, rubbing the back of his head in the unique chill of seven in the morning.

For the past few days, he had been sleeping in Yu Tianbai’s secondary bedroom. Nothing had happened, literally nothing. Yu Tianbai was in the master bedroom, and he was in the secondary. Other than occasionally going out to unload goods, the two of them did their own things in the house. There was no TV in the living room, so they stayed in their bedrooms, their separate bedrooms.

Xiu Ma didn’t have the habit of playing on his phone, so he had gone through all the books in Yu Tianbai’s cabinet, from Romance of the Three Kingdoms to Water Margin to The Plum in the Golden Vase. In the end, he went back to Romance of the three Kingdoms. Reading indecent things in someone else’s house just didn’t feel right.

And Yu Tianbai hadn’t asked him to cook.

The vegetables they had bought a few days ago were still in the fridge. The dried tofu could be frozen, the cabbage could last for a few days, and so could the pumpkin. The only thing he was worried about was the bunch of chives they had brought back last. It would be pressed against the wall of the fridge, flickering in and out of sight with every opening and closing of the door, gradually wilting, then turning yellow, sticking to the other good leaves, and then rotting together.

Just like the days when his mother wasn’t home when he was a child.

Yu Tianbai didn’t seem to mind. He would always say, “Let’s eat out today,” and then hurry Xiu Ma out the door. The ingredients in the restaurants in the Northeast were fresh, and the portions were huge. Yu Tianbai ordered without restraint, and in the end, Xiu Ma would be so full his mouth felt dry, but Yu Tianbai would still want to take him for a barbecue. The reason was simple—a farewell meal.

Xiu Ma stared at the grilled chives on the grill pan. They were sizzling with oil and would surely be delicious and spicy. But what he was most concerned about was their old friend in the fridge. That bunch of chives was about to reach the end of its life as food.

After a far too lavish farewell meal, the two of them walked along the riverbank in the early spring evening breeze, then returned to the small apartment in silence, to their respective rooms.

So nothing had happened between them these past few days. Other than that one night in the hotel, nothing at all had happened.

At home, Yu Tianbai would obediently wear his pajamas. Although his usual words and actions made him seem like the type to sleep naked, at home, he really did wear them properly, from head to toe. He was just short of adding a cotton hat. And he would close the bathroom door firmly before lifting the toilet lid. He always took a full set of gear with him when he showered, never once opening the door to ask for a towel.

In contrast, Xiu Ma would often go into the bathroom, turn on the heater, and then, after stripping naked, realize his towel was still drying on the balcony. He would open the bathroom door and call for Yu Tianbai.

The man was quick. He would come along the living room, but he would toss the towel from three meters away, letting it land precisely on Xiu Ma’s outstretched arm in a free fall. Then he would walk away without looking back.

Leaving Xiu Ma alone in the whistling warm air, feeling as if he were a guest at a temple, just borrowing the place for a bath.

Even a dorm room full of male college students wasn’t this chaste and celibate!

And as it turned out, they were going to be this chaste and celibate until the very end.

Xiu Ma threw off the covers and left the room. Yu Tianbai was always an early riser, and today was no exception. Before Xiu Ma came out, he was on the balcony, with the window open, holding a cigarette. Breakfast was on the table: wontons and fried dough sticks from the stall downstairs. He must have timed it perfectly; they were still steaming but not scalding hot.

“You’re awake?”

He flicked the ash into the ashtray on the windowsill, took two final, forceful drags, then closed the screen window and waved the smoke away from the window.

The weather was bad today. Otherwise, he would have been able to see Yu Tianbai standing in the misty white smoke, exuding a bit of that old Shanghai man’s world-weariness—or perhaps it should be called old Beijing.

Yu Tianbai was wearing a maroon pajama set. Compared to the young master’s short-sleeved shorts, he was bundled up tightly. As Xiu Ma stood at the doorway, privately assessing their different definitions of room temperature, Yu Tianbai walked to the dining table, pulled out a chair, and gestured to the seat opposite him, asking, “Eating?”

Waking up in the morning to find that someone has already bought breakfast is certainly an enviable thing. But Xiu Ma was considering the fact that once he sat down, his shorts would be so short they would look like underwear.

“I… I’ll go change. It’s a bit cold,” he said, gesturing towards his room, but his body moved in the opposite direction. His consciousness finally returned in the bathroom. He was holding a tube of toothpaste, about to squeeze it onto his face, and he hadn’t even brought the clothes he had said he was going to change into.

He stared at himself in the mirror. The tips of his ears were already red. Yu Tianbai must have seen it clearly.

Congratulations to the winner of the Most Embarrassing Person award!

Ten minutes later, Xiu Ma came out of the bathroom with a head of freshly blow-dried, messy hair—he had even managed to squeeze in a shower.

Xiu Ma anticipated Yu Tianbai’s questioning and answered in advance, “It was too cold. Just warming up.”

Yu Tianbai looked at his summer-like loungewear and said nothing.

Another five minutes passed, and the young master was finally properly dressed and reappeared at the dining table. This time, he was back in his classic young master attire: gray sweatpants, a navy blue stand-up collar sweatshirt, with a vest tucked under his arm. He looked a bit like the protagonist of Back to the Future, about to kill his way back to his parents’ era.

Xiu Ma picked up half a fried dough stick first. Seeing that Yu Tianbai’s gaze hadn’t left him, he asked, full of doubt, “Is my face not clean?”

Yu Tianbai was also direct. “It’s clean. I’m just looking at how good-looking you are.”

Compared to Xiu Ma, Yu Tianbai was certainly not a reserved person. He would genuinely praise Xiu Ma for being good-looking, and he did so often. But Xiu Ma, on the other hand, had never gotten used to it. He always needed to take some time to ponder the hidden meaning behind every compliment from the good-for-nothing boss.

But Yu Tianbai had no other meaning. He genuinely thought Xiu Ma was very seriously and naturally good-looking.

“Have some wonton soup,” Yu Tianbai said, pushing the spoon over as he watched Xiu Ma chewing on the fried dough stick, looking pensive and absent-minded.

Once the young master started eating, he became very well-behaved and didn’t even talk. So the room was quiet for a while, so quiet it made one’s heart race.

“The nine o’clock bus?” Yu Tianbai decided to break the silence.

“Mmm,” Xiu Ma was indeed drinking the wonton soup, very obediently.

Then it returned to silence. Xiu Ma had bought a bus ticket departing at nine for Songyuan. As he had said, Yu Tianbai wasn’t going with him, just staying in Jiamusi. This didn’t meet the police officer’s expectation of “don’t run around for a while,” nor did it meet Xiu Ma’s own expectations.

He felt that Yu Tianbai should be a little more flustered than he was now, at least not so at ease. After all, three days ago, he had been told by name that a murderer, whose whereabouts were unknown, was watching him.

“What about you during this time?” he asked Yu Tianbai back. “Just at home?”

If it were a day earlier, Xiu Ma wouldn’t have been at ease with him just being at home. After all, the security door in Yu Tianbai’s house could be easily opened with a utility knife blade.

So on the morning before he left, while Yu Tianbai was chatting at a client’s shop, Xiu Ma walked straight into the furniture and building materials city next door. A little later, Yu Tianbai silently looked at the now-empty, square doorway. A few workers were carrying a brand-new door, standing in the corridor and looking at him.

“This,” Yu Tianbai pointed, “I can’t reimburse you for.”

Xiu Ma was standing on the other side of the door. Yu Tianbai couldn’t see him and could only guess at his expression. It was probably one of indifference. The person on the other side of the door said, “No need for reimbursement. It’s a gift.”

It was indeed a look of indifference.

The workers were efficient. They installed the new door for them without another word. The door had a password and fingerprint lock. The worker explained how to set it and then left. The corridor was once again left with just the two of them.

Other rich kids gave bags, perfumes, and running shoes. His own young master gave him a security door. Worth it. So worth it.

Now the smell of the new security door hadn’t even dissipated. It stood majestically in the south of the room like a tripod, joining the two of them for their meal.

“Normal work,” Yu Tianbai answered him. “I can’t just not work because you’re on leave, right?”

“Then you should run over to the police station entrance more often,” the young master was no longer fighting with that bowl of wonton soup. He picked up the fried dough stick again. “If anything happens, you can go straight in.”

Putting aside the suspiciousness of loitering at the police station entrance in real-time, Yu Tianbai was more inclined to question the young master’s indecisiveness at this moment.

“You’ve been through thick and thin with me for two months. You shouldn’t be worried about my safety now, right?” Yu Tianbai took the other half of his fried dough stick. “Worry more about yourself.”

Xiu Ma weighed the half in his hand and then went back to attacking the bowl of wonton soup.

What Yu Tianbai said wasn’t without reason. Compared to worrying about an old rogue who had been in society for over ten years, he should be more worried about a college student like himself whose salary was almost paid with coupons. But taking it a step further, was Yu Tianbai worried about him?

If he was worried, what would that look like?

“I thought you would just not let me go back,” he looked up at the person opposite him. Yu Tianbai had never been interested in eating. If it weren’t for the other person being there, the good-for-nothing boss would have probably already left his food to go stand watch at the window.

Hearing Xiu Ma’s doubt, Yu Tianbai straightened his posture. He was sometimes like this. When he heard a question that was hard to answer, he would first indicate with his posture that he was thinking, and then answer. It was hard to say whether he was really thinking, or choosing some roundabout, high-EQ rhetoric—Xiu Ma had him figured out now.

“I can’t just tie you to the police station entrance because I’m worried about you. There’s no sense in a boss not approving leave for his employee.”

Indeed, very high-EQ. All-around, stable and steady.

Yu Tianbai’s logic was just like the pajamas he was wearing. It had an unassuming flair.

Xiu Ma paused for a moment before he realized his gaze had shifted to the V-neck of his collar. He wore the red bead necklace even when he slept, and it was now faintly visible with his occasional movements.

And Yu Tianbai had long noticed Xiu Ma’s gaze. He gave the kid a little more time, then slowly asked, “What’s your answer?”

Alright, Xiu Ma still hadn’t figured him out. In some respects, Yu Tianbai was still one step ahead.

At times like this, only simplicity and directness could win.

Xiu Ma had finished the fried dough stick in his hand, and only some cilantro was left floating in the wonton soup. As a qualified new-era college student who never wasted food, he put down his spoon.

“I should go.”

He really should go. There was an hour before the bus departed. He had to take his luggage to the bus station. The reason he had to leave early was because Boss You didn’t even plan to drive him.

But Yu Tianbai still had a conscience. At least he helped him check for anything he might have forgotten, and saw him to the door. He stood in the corridor, watching Xiu Ma’s back as he walked away without looking back, and said goodbye with great energy, “Be careful on the road!”

The young master might have really been unhappy. The sound of his footsteps didn’t pause until he reached the bottom of the stairs. The unit door opened and then closed. Yu Tianbai felt the cold wind of early spring blowing up his pant legs.

Done.

He immediately turned around and went back into the house, packed up the leftover breakfast garbage, changed into a fleece jacket and coat in a flash, grabbed the car keys from the entryway, and followed Xiu Ma’s footsteps down the stairs.

The reason he was so indifferent to the young master’s return to his hometown was simple. Because he was going back with him.