On the surface, Lin Xing stayed calm as he followed Luo Tengfei into the private room. Inside, besides his two roommates, there were also several girls, the roommates of Luo Tengfei’s girlfriend.
The girls wore light, clean makeup, and they all turned to look when someone came in.
Lin Xing wasn’t shy around girls. He stood there, smiled, and greeted them: “Hi, I’m Lin Xing. Sorry I’m a bit late, did I hold up your meal?”
Everyone politely said it was fine. Lin Xing found a seat and slipped naturally into the conversation.
Gatherings like this were partly about getting to know each other. Even if nothing came of it, they were still a chance to widen one’s social circle. Aside from Luo Tengfei, Lin Xing’s two other roommates did their best to keep the conversation going. Compared to them, Lin Xing seemed less enthusiastic, more distracted.
Part of it was a difference in orientation, and part of it was that Lin Xing’s mind was still stuck on the elevator encounter from earlier. What should have begun and ended online had unexpectedly developed faint threads of connection in real life.
Even after he’d calmed down from the awkwardness in the elevator, Lin Xing still felt somewhat uneasy.
But the barbecue here really was delicious, the lamb was especially fresh, and with well-balanced seasoning, the group of young people ate until their mouths were glossy with oil. With the boys keeping the conversation flowing, the atmosphere stayed lively and unbroken.
Lin Xing gradually relaxed.
At the end of the day, he couldn’t even be sure whether the person in the elevator really had been Chi Tong. And even if it was, the man had no idea who Lin Xing was anyway. Worrying about something that might not have happened at all was just overthinking.
The iced cola slid down Lin Xing’s throat into his stomach. He set the bottle down on the table with a “clack,” with the same force he’d have used for a beer can.
“Haha, cheers!” Lin Xing laughed, his eyes curving. Under the light, his skin looked pale and cool-toned, and his lips, slightly numbed by the spice, had turned a faint red, giving him a soft, almost endearing look.
The girl sitting across from Lin Xing kept sneaking glances at him.
Lin Xing didn’t notice at all. He had drunk quite a lot, and after telling Luo Tengfei in a low voice that he was going to the restroom, he left the private room.
Guided by a staff member, Lin Xing went to the restaurant’s bathroom. After finishing and washing his hands, before he even had time to dry them under the warm-air dryer, he saw the staff member who had been standing outside the restroom exchange a few words with another employee, then raise a walkie-talkie and say something.
Lin Xing could only catch a few key words. Pieced together, it sounded like there was a fight outside.
Where there’s a commotion, there’s always someone drawn to it.
Lin Xing had already eaten about half his fill and wasn’t in a hurry to return to the table, where his roommates were still joking around and trying to flirt with the girls. The gathering had eased his earlier tension. He quickly pulled out a tissue to wipe his palms and followed the hurried steps of a few staff members toward the entrance of the restaurant.
The layout of the barbecue place really was a bit complicated. From the elevator, you had to take a winding path to reach it. Aside from a shop next door that looked like a high-end KTV or entertainment club, there wasn’t much else around.
When Lin Xing came out, he saw the customers outside eating happily and noisily, with no sign of any conflict, so he wondered whether the “fight” actually meant people outside the shop.
When he reached the entrance, he noticed several employees standing there managing the situation.
More precisely, they were managing the customers queueing outside the restaurant, all of whom were craning their necks to look in one direction.
On the other side, there really was a group of people standing there. They were dressed differently, some were clearly staff from the entertainment venue next door, others were customers. It wasn’t clear what had happened, but they were obviously in a tense standoff, and it looked like it could turn physical at any moment.
The staff on that side also seemed rather passive. They didn’t step forward to physically separate the two groups, instead, they looked like they were only trying to mediate with words, almost like a monk droning through sutras, all talk, no action.
Lin Xing asked a barbecue-restaurant staff member for a small popsicle. The staff smiled, handed it over respectfully, and even considerately stepped aside to give him a better view.
The people in the scuffle shifted a few steps amid the shoving, and the confrontation became clearer.
It wasn’t two evenly matched groups, it looked more like one person against many.
Lin Xing saw that someone was surrounded in the middle by a crowd. It hadn’t fully escalated into a fight yet, but just from the way things stood, it was obvious he wasn’t in a good position.
As the saying goes, two fists can’t beat four hands, let alone two fists against a dozen.
“Why aren’t they breaking it up?” Lin Xing asked, puzzled.
He had been talking to himself, but unexpectedly the staff member beside him actually answered.
“They don’t dare,” one of the barbecue-restaurant staff said in a low voice. “Stuff like this happens a lot. Who knows how important the people involved are? Unless it really blows up, we usually don’t step in directly.”
Since their shop was right next door, they were clearly very used to situations like this.
Lin Xing gave an “mm,” as if he understood. But the instincts of a law-abiding citizen still stirred within him. He figured that if this ended quickly it would be fine, but if it dragged on, he should probably find the right moment to call the police.
At this point Lin Xing was still relatively relaxed. He bit into his popsicle, chewed a couple of times, and thought about the group over there who looked like they operated on the edge of the law, they could use a good lesson from it.
He could vaguely make out that some of them looked very young.
Wealthy second-generation kids [1]fu’erdai, the privileged children of rich families jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2795319_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2795319_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); partying recklessly out on the town wasn’t uncommon, and it often made the news. Truly disciplined young heirs were still a minority.
While thinking this, Lin Xing suddenly thought of Chi Tong again, not because of his own social embarrassment this time, but because Chi Tong had always been a subject of discussion on the D platform regarding his background and wealth.
Chi Tong’s filming style involved very little interaction with viewers or fans. Aside from that one time he clarified things for Lin Xing, he had no footage of speaking directly to the camera.
As a result, something quite amusing had happened: many clips from that clarification video had become material for fan edits. Some short close-up shots were even cut out and used as “proof” of his top-tier looks.
Back to the point, Chi Tong had never mentioned his family background, but anyone with a sharp eye could tell that many of the items in his videos were not things an ordinary middle-class family would casually own. More interestingly, those items didn’t always carry obvious luxury-brand logos, most were objects whose names ordinary people couldn’t even identify, yet which clearly had an extremely high-end feel.
If one had to categorize him, his family at least wasn’t newly rich from his father’s generation, they had to have some deeper accumulation of wealth.
In the past, when Lin Xing thought of Chi Tong, he had only seen him as a low-key, high-end, handsome internet celebrity. But after the way Chi Tong had clarified things for him, Lin Xing’s impression of him had improved quite a bit.
Not to mention that the earlier private messages Lin Xing didn’t even want to recall hadn’t been treated as some kind of “pervert incident” either. Although he was too embarrassed to face it, deep down he still felt a faint increase in goodwill toward Chi Tong.
So at that moment, Lin Xing thought confidently: Chi Tong is definitely not like these people.
And then he suddenly saw that the person surrounded in the middle of the crowd over there seemed to be the same handsome man he’d encountered in the elevator, the one who might be Chi Tong.
A drop from the melting popsicle fell onto his wrist, and Lin Xing didn’t catch it in time. It splattered onto his skin with a “plop,” snapping him back to reality.
Damn, damn it!
Lin Xing hurriedly looked down at the stain on his wrist while also trying to get a better look at the situation. For a moment, he was completely flustered.
The situation over there, however, clearly did not take the stain on Lin Xing’s wrist into account. After the sudden eruption a moment ago, the previously tense standoff seemed to explode all at once. Lin Xing could only see several young men grappling with Chi Tong. Amid rising and falling arguments and low growls, even the barbecue-restaurant staff had clearly grown agitated.
A number of customers in the waiting area were holding up their phones to record. Seeing this, Lin Xing grew anxious, if this got uploaded online, wouldn’t Chi Tong end up with damaging rumors?
But he couldn’t stop others from filming. What surprised him instead was that several staff members from the entertainment venue next door came over to stop the customers from recording.
Those staff didn’t say anything harsh, but their sheer presence was quite intimidating to ordinary law-abiding citizens. Most of the waiting diners silently put their phones down. Even those unwilling to give up and trying to film in secret couldn’t find a clear angle under such pressure.
Lin Xing didn’t intend to film, but seeing the fight break out, under normal circumstances he would already have called the police from the sidelines. Yet today, because Chi Tong, someone he felt somewhat familiar with, was involved, his body reacted faster than his brain. Before he could think it through, he blurted out, “Hey, what you’re doing is illegal!”
His voice wasn’t actually very loud, but after the intimidation from the entertainment-venue staff, the good citizens around him had already gone quiet. The group fighting wasn’t that loud either. At this particular moment, his voice suddenly seemed magnified many times over, strikingly noticeable.
For a moment, the diners all turned to look at him, the barbecue staff looked at him, and even the burly men from the entertainment venue, along with a few young men who seemed to be trying to break up the fight, all turned their attention to Lin Xing.
They were all wondering: who on earth had the nerve to step forward and shout something so righteous?
When they looked over, however, they only saw a slightly youthful-looking boy holding an unfinished milk-flavored popsicle.
Everyone was full of question marks. That… didn’t exactly match the weight of those words at all.
After blurting it out, Lin Xing immediately realized he’d acted on impulse. But since everyone was already looking at him, pretending nothing had happened would be awkward. And deep down, he didn’t actually want to pretend, he didn’t want to watch Chi Tong get beaten.
Besides, well… this was in public. He was just trying to break up a fight. Surely, even if something went wrong, the police would arrive quickly with the forces of justice to save him.
Steeling himself under everyone’s gaze, Lin Xing took two steps forward and said, “This is a public place, don’t fight. And it’s a whole group bullying one person.”
In his view, what he said was perfectly reasonable. And to most people, it did sound reasonable. Among the waiting diners were even some who had tried to film earlier but failed and were still a bit put out, they crouched slightly at the back and chimed in, “Exactly!”
Unexpectedly, this made the young men on the other side look as though they had suffered an injustice they couldn’t explain.
As for how this chaotic situation came about, one has to go back to the moment Chi Tong got off the elevator.
The word “Xingxing” he had faintly heard at the elevator entrance brought a sliver of clarity back into his otherwise muddled mind.
This wasn’t the first time Chi Yu had invited Chi Tong to a gathering, but Chi Tong usually refused.
Chi Yu had never gotten along with Chi Tong since childhood. Chi Tong had grown up in a family environment lacking warmth, and he understood very clearly what attitude Chi Yu and his uncle, Chi Guangxu, held toward him.
On the way here, Chi Tong hadn’t forgotten this at all. In fact, it was precisely because of it: the reason he came was that a self-destructive impulse inside him had been urging him toward ruin.
But that mood was disrupted by a brief moment of hesitation as he stepped out of the elevator. After entering the private room and seeing Chi Yu with his group of friends, men and women wearing either genuine or forced smiles, the room filled with a suspicious haze of smoke, Chi Tong suddenly regained a bit of clarity.
Somewhere between his pathological urge for self-destruction, he recovered a fragment of rationality.
Some of Chi Yu’s friends were quite pleased when they learned Chi Tong had agreed to come. Being able to connect with Chi Tong was something many of them could only hope for.
Getting Chi Tong to show up this time earned Chi Yu plenty of approving thumbs-ups.
Chi Yu himself had been feeling rather pleased, but he didn’t expect Chi Tong to leave before even properly settling in. In an instant, it felt as if he’d been slapped across the face. Under the stunned gazes of everyone else, his temper flared too.
He was convinced Chi Tong was deliberately toying with him.
“You can’t just leave now!” Chi Yu stepped forward and grabbed him.
Chi Tong shoved him away and walked out on his own, the group trailing behind him, half coaxing and half blocking his way to the door.
The others gathered around to try to talk him down, but they only dared to plead, none of them dared lay a hand on Chi Tong.
Chi Yu grabbed Chi Tong’s arm, suppressing his anger. “It’s not often I organize something and invite you out. At least show me some respect, stay and hang out a while before you go.”
“Hang out doing what?” Chi Tong shot back. “What exactly do you want me to do?”
Chi Tong was already infamous, and at this moment his presence was even more intimidating. His dark eyes carried a frightening glint, like a blade already drawn, reflecting a mad, dangerous light.
Several people who had been itching to physically confront him immediately backed down.
Chi Yu was even more familiar with that look. The last time Chi Tong had looked at him like that, his head had been forced underwater in a swimming pool.
Chi Tong really would kill him.
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