Younger Brother
The torrential rain in the afternoon had turned into a light drizzle by evening. The road down the mountain was muddy and difficult to travel. But for a man and a woman to stay overnight in the same house was, in truth, a little difficult to explain.
Especially since Zhuyu's whole family knew she had gone to Liu Sizhao's house.
“Then what do you want to do?”
“I have to walk back. Otherwise, it really would be hard to explain.” Zhuyu took a flashlight from her bag and tested it. It had plenty of power.
He covered his face with his hand and let out a long sigh.
With such a large house, preparing a guest room was easy enough. Walking a mountain road on a rainy night was what truly tested the limits of the human body.
Fortunately, Zhuyu had called Third Auntie, and Third Auntie had repeatedly shouted that she absolutely must not come back tonight! It had just rained heavily, and it was nighttime. Walking along the mountain road was dangerous!
Unfortunately, she hadn't lowered her voice at all when she got to the second half.
“You have to be careful!”
“I know. I just won't go back...”
“Not the mountain road. I mean, be careful about that other kind of safety. Xiao Zhao is a good person, and I trust him, but, well, when an unmarried man and woman are together, I'm just afraid something might happen...”
Zhuyu had the call on speakerphone. Liu Sizhao was sitting right beside her, though he was out of frame.
“All right, all right, I know, I know. I'll just treat him like an older brother. There's nothing going on between us. There are seven or eight rooms upstairs and downstairs, and the place is huge. It won't, it won't... there won't be any of that thing where sparks fly and a fire starts.”
“Well, if it were an ordinary young man and sparks did fly, no matter what, we could make him give us an explanation. The two children would have to get married. But Xiao Zhao is different. As the saying goes, if a cow won't drink, you can't force its head down into the water. We can't force his head down...”
“All right, Auntie! I know! I'll definitely stay far away from him! Bye-bye, I'm having dinner!”
After the call ended, the two of them sat at opposite ends of the sofa. Several minutes passed in silence. Neither spoke.
Zhuyu cleared her throat, breaking the dead silence. “According to my auntie's theory, if sleeping in the same house means you have to get married, then I would have been married at nineteen. By now, I'd probably be the heroic mother of three.”
Liu Sizhao looked up at her, seeming to want to say something but stopping himself. He turned his face away and said nothing.
Zhuyu thought he had been put off by the thought and asked what he had wanted to say, telling him he could say it.
“By the time you're the heroic mother of three, I'll have been married for the third time, at least.”
They really were two equally seasoned old hands. Having ended up in the simple, unsophisticated countryside, they still had to take the road of playing innocent.
Dinner was made up of semi-prepared food from the refrigerator, refrigerated meat-sauce-and-cheese lasagna. Liu Sizhao's refrigerator was stuffed with this kind of semi-prepared food. Every week, someone would buy it in the city and have it delivered to him.
“Seriously, what are you actually doing here? Is the pressure of work too much, so you've come to the mountains for a spiritual retreat? I see plenty of rich people like living this kind of life. Hiking to Tibet, climbing the Himalayas, believing in Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism...”
They were working together to put a duvet cover on the bedding, each holding one corner and shaking it out until it was straight.
Liu Sizhao yawned. “You already know, so why ask? Don't let the way I look fool you. Actually, I spend every day hiding at home meditating, doing yoga, and contemplating the truths of life.”
“You really can spin anything.”
“I just came here to rest. Work is too exhausting. I'm tired in my heart. I don't want to do it anymore. From now on, I'm going to enjoy life.”
“Then who did you leave your company to?”
“There’s a board of directors.”
“Oh, really? Then why is there still an annual financial report on the desk in your study? Oh, your heart is still young despite your age. An old steed in the stable still aspires to gallop a thousand miles.”
“...Don't misuse idioms. When a pilot gets on a plane and turns on autopilot, don't they still have to check every now and then to see where the plane has flown?”
“Where's Xunli? Is he still studying in America?”
Once the bedding was ready, he lay down on the bed and stretched out an arm to pull the blanket up to his chin. “I threw him away ages ago. Threw him out onto the street. He's probably somewhere eating whatever he can find in the trash by now.”
Although she had known for a long time that the brothers didn't have a good relationship, Zhuyu couldn't help being curious. She sat cross-legged beside him and gently pushed him, not letting him fall asleep.
“Why do you hate him so much? Isn't he your younger brother?”
Ten years ago, Liu Sizhao had been the older brother who was three years older than her. When she had first seen him this year, he had been the serious and proper Mr. Liu. Now, in her eyes, he was simply a man who liked drawing, couldn't cook, and, so long as he was in good health, had an active emotional life.
Sizhao turned over to face her, but still spoke with his eyes closed. “I'll give him to you as your younger brother. Do you want him?”
“Uh... It's not like I wouldn't.”
“What if you weren't born of the same mother? What if Uncle Sheng had him with another woman outside? One day, he was brought home, and from then on he had to call you older sister. Would you really want him?”
Zhuyu studied Sizhao's closed eyes and brows. His eyebrows swept upward, his outer eye corners were long, and there was a faint crease on his eyelids. That little boy actually looked quite a lot like him.
“Is that why you're angry with him?” she asked in a very small voice, dimming the lamp beside her a little.
Sizhao said nothing. Just when she thought he was about to fall asleep, he slowly opened his eyes.
“If I had died back then, he would have become my replacement.”
People who did business needed descendants to carry on the family business. If one died, the other had to step up.
“My mother divorced my father very early on and moved to New Zealand. She started a family with a Chinese professor and had new children. She should be living quite well. During the time I was sick, I was in contact with her. She said she would pray to the Lord, asking Him to bless me with a speedy recovery and to bless me with happiness.”
She didn't know what to say anymore.
“They all had replacements and new lives. I was the only one who didn't.”
The bedroom was pitch-dark, with only a small lamp left on. Zhuyu took the hand he had left outside the covers and gave it a gentle “Mm.” So this was the situation in which his paintings had been created.
“Do you still hate Xunli?” Compared with his, her hand was small enough to disappear inside his palm.
“If he had never been found, or if I had actually died, that would have been a good thing. The two of us can't coexist in the same place.” He drew Zhuyu's fingers toward him and leaned closer to examine the calluses on her palm.
His words made her heart tremble. “Where exactly did he go?” Zhuyu swung Sizhao's hand back and forth.
“He got lost. Really lost.” Sizhao studied the expression on Zhuyu's face. “Even you like him more than you like me?”
Zhuyu felt a few minutes of sourness, then suddenly widened her eyes. “Is this one of your tricks too? We've known each other for so long, we're hardly strangers anymore. And you're pulling tricks on me too, you little punk.”
As long as a man knew how to act pitiful, it was only a matter of time before a woman's cold heart melted into tenderness.
“Actually, I don't usually need to use this trick. Three steps forward is usually enough for me. This is already my ultimate move. Why doesn't it work on you?” He propped himself up on one elbow against the pillow and half-sat up, looking quite amused.
“Not becoming someone's mother is my ironclad rule when it comes to relationships. Anyway, where exactly did he go?”
“Ah, all right. I don't mind telling you. After my father died, I called him back for the funeral. He was a grown man, with a passport, a visa, and money. His bodyguards lost sight of him at LaGuardia Airport, and he ran away. Nobody knows where he went. Years have passed, and I still haven't found him.”
For a person to disappear from this world, all it took was one flight. He had no family or friends. Money would eventually run out, too. By now, he might not even be able to come back if he wanted to.
“Aren't you worried about him?” Hearing this, Zhuyu felt uneasy beneath the absurdity of it all.
“You already know how bad our relationship is, so why ask whether I'm worried about him? Is there any point?”
“But he didn't do anything wrong. The people who did wrong were the previous generation. He was just a child. Now that both his parents are dead, you're the only person who can take care of him. If even you won't, doesn't that mean he has no one to rely on in this world?”
Sizhao was Zhuyu's older brother. Xunli was the one who had been her childhood playmate. In summer, they kicked soccer balls around together, ran wild through the mountains, and collected crickets and cicada shells. The two of them had their good days and bad days. Sometimes they were the best of buddies, and sometimes, when they got into fights, they would throw mud at each other.
That boy's social media profile picture had been black for ten years. She had always thought his account had been hacked. She had even considered asking around to find out what Xunli was doing, but her father didn't know, and Aunt Zhou had returned to the city long ago. Zhuyu had figured that, as the younger son of the Liu family, he couldn't possibly be doing badly, so she hadn't thought much more about it. When she finally got the real answer, it felt as though a hammer had struck her heart head-on.
“I really don't care.” He lay back down on the pillow, his tone calm. “What happened between him and me isn't something that can be explained in a few words.”
There wasn't the slightest expression on his face when he said it. Even though this coldness wasn't directed at her, Zhuyu nevertheless felt as though they had suddenly become strangers again. A cold sweat broke out across her palms.
“I still remember the things you used to say when you cursed him. You said he came from a lowly background, that he was stupid and ignorant. Did you really think that way, or did you only say it because you were furious?”
His eyes were half-open, his eyelashes lowered. “I know what I can say to make you like me, and I also know what I can say to make you never want to see me again. But since you asked, you obviously want to hear the truth. So I'll tell you. Yes, that's what I thought back then.
“His mother supported him by singing in a dance hall. She raised him until he was in his teens, then she died. My father found him in a juvenile detention center and brought him back. Do you want me to go on?”
He watched as Zhuyu silently lowered her head. This was why he didn't want to talk about his private affairs. If you peeled away the layers one by one, you would see these unpleasant truths. And there was nothing the person listening could do about them.
“I feel sorry for you, and I feel sorry for him too...” Sizhao hated Xunli, but had Xunli ever had it easy? In Zhuyu's memories, he had always been that fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy. He knew his older brother hated him, and that his father didn't truly care about him, but he had nowhere else to go. He could only remain like a stranger in a family that wasn't his.
When the time came that he could leave, he disappeared without the slightest hesitation.
“I don't want to pretend to be merciful in front of you, or pretend to be a good older brother. You heard my words and saw my actions in the past with your own ears and eyes, so I can tell you that they were all real. Even today, I can still remember that feeling of loathing from back then with perfect clarity.”
Eighteen-year-old Liu Sizhao, with his jet-black hair and snow-white face, had features so handsome they looked as though they had been rendered in the fine-line style of a meticulous Chinese painting. Of course, the person in a painting had none of the vitality of a living human being.
“Don't think too highly of me...”
“I know. I already knew what kind of person you are without you having to tell me. Thank you for not lying to me.”
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