When checking out, Ren Changdong finally found out who the “Friday” on the island that Zhang Bin had mentioned actually was. The hotel owner was a man in a floral shirt with distinct Latin American features. His top-tier sculpted looks, combined with a wild, savage styling, left one completely speechless.
After returning their room cards, Ren Changdong and He Chengfeng walked out the front door of the hotel together when the curly-haired little server hurried in, holding a disposable paper cup. The little curly-haired boy shielded the half-cup of liquid in his hands tightly the entire way, and as he entered, he crashed right into Ren Changdong with a dull thud.
Ren Changdong watched as the contents of what the boy was carrying spilled all over him. The liquid had a very pungent smell.
The weather on the island had been erratic lately and supplies were tight. The little curly-haired boy had been running around busily helping people since last night, and had only managed to beg for half a cup of medicinal oil with great difficulty.
Ren Changdong looked down at the kid, who was staring back at him with a face full of panic. Before Ren Changdong could say anything, the man in the floral shirt sauntered over from the counter.
The floral shirt-wearing man cheerfully pulled the curly-haired boy away to rescue him, telling him to go inventory the hotel linens. Afterward, the man stripped off his floral shirt and started wiping Ren Changdong’s chest. This overstepping behavior startled Ren Changdong.
“Oh, God.”
The floral shirt man let out an involuntary exclamation at the texture beneath his hands.
Ren Changdong took a step back and raised his hand, holding his palm outward in front of him to stop the man’s seduction attempt. He was a married, normal man and didn’t fall for that routine.
No wonder this hotel is run the way it is, Ren Changdong thought to himself. There wasn’t a single shred of rules or regulations to speak of in this place.
The floral shirt man squatted down to wipe the floor, afraid someone might slip on it later.
Ren Changdong looked down at the head near his feet, wiggling his nose as he recognized the scent of the liquid as medicinal oil.
In that very instant, the speck of sand beneath his shoe sole silently lassoed his ankle. Ren Changdong suddenly realized that after evolving for all these years, humans still weren’t waterproof, and his brain seemed to genuinely be broken.
Ren Changdong had He Chengfeng fetch a fresh set of clothes and a medical kit.
Holding the items, he looked at He Chengfeng: “You go catch the boat first and handle the preliminary work. I’ll take the next boat over and book tomorrow’s flight back to the country.”
He Chengfeng nodded and followed orders.
Ren Changdong went to the hotel lounge to change into clean clothes and threw away the dirty ones. Carrying the medicine, he headed toward the guest room area.
Hearing a knock at the door, Zhang Bin assumed it was He Chengfeng again. Peeking through the peephole, he didn’t expect to see Ren Changdong himself this time.
Through the peephole, the image of Zhang Bin’s view was distorted—Director Ren’s head was huge and his body tiny, looking just like a radish man. The man is getting on in years, Zhang Bin thought, yet here he is trying to act cute.
Zhang Bin opened the door and let Ren Changdong in.
The hotel room was massive and featured an open-plan layout with light-colored resort-style decor, accented by deep, reddish-brown tones.
Ren Changdong sat down on the red sofa by the kitchenette area, while Zhang Bin sat on the island counter directly opposite him. One was suited and booted in formal wear, the other wore a bathrobe; one sat low, the other sat high. They sat facing each other, in an awkward yet not-so-awkward standoff.
Ren Changdong was a man who calculated everything down to the last detail; he didn’t want to leave yesterday’s matters as a messy, unresolved account. For the first time, he tried to care for the emotional state of someone in a subordinate position, tried to guess a stranger’s likes and dislikes, and tried to show a human, warm side of himself to an outsider.
“Your niece must be starting middle school soon, right? The school board and I are quite familiar with each other.”
Ren Changdong spoke up, attempting to cut into the conversation through family ties.
“Are you threatening me?”
Zhang Bin narrowed his eyes, a dangerous glint flashing across his standard, refined face for the very first time. Evidently, though his tongue had been sharp before, he hadn’t actually played for keeps.
It was Ren Changdong’s first time trying to play the emotional card, and his skills were truly awful. Ren Changdong couldn’t blame Zhang Bin for thinking that way about him either, as true trust simply didn’t exist between them.
“My point is that I can secure an admission quota and the allocation of educational resources for the child, ensuring she receives the best education possible over the next six years.”
The sharp edge on Zhang Bin didn’t dull in the slightest: “Our child doesn’t need you to worry about her. All you need to do is stay as far away from her as possible.”
Zhang Bin had originally intended to call a truce with Ren Changdong so as not to mess up his return home for the Mid-Autumn Festival, but the man had just stepped right onto his absolute bottom line.
Zhang Bin warned Ren Changdong: “Your nephew isn’t innocent, but my family has nothing to do with this matter. If you touch my family, you and I will go down together in mutual destruction.”
Ren Changdong took out a bottle of Yunnan Baiyao and placed it on the small coffee table between them.
“Zhang Bin, what I just brought up has nothing to do with Li You,” Ren Changdong said. “Your affair with Li You is one thing, and yesterday’s incident is another.”
Ren Changdong laid out the accounts clearly.
“After you return, if there’s anything you need help with, just say the word. I can promise you a favor of sufficient weight.”
Ren Changdong added: “I mean a weight equivalent to my own life.”
Zhang Bin let out a long breath through his nose. Though his line of work revolved around the powerful and elite, he had no desire to cling to or attach himself to such people. Ren Changdong offering him a promise this heavy only felt prickly and uncomfortable in his hands.
If he ever ran into real trouble, he wouldn’t be willing to beg his enemy anyway.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Zhang Bin said. “I don’t want any more entanglements between you, me, and your family. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have gotten mixed up in such a huge mess.”
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the rain began to pour down, pattering heavily against the large sheets of glass. Ripples splattered across the outdoor splash pool, and in a split second, the entire pool began to shake frantically.
Neither of them looked outside the window.
The spot where Ren Changdong sat gave him a direct view of Zhang Bin’s calves dangling from the kitchen island. Those overly straight calves swung back and forth unconsciously.
“Ren Changdong, if it were a child from my family who went to check into a hotel with a man ten years older on their eighteenth birthday, my methods wouldn’t be any gentler than yours.”
Deep down, Zhang Bin and Ren Changdong were actually the exact same kind of person.
Zhang Bin laid his cards on the table: “I didn’t flee abroad because I was at my wit’s end; I came over here following your cues. Even though I didn’t do anything wrong, I still had to let you blow off some steam, right?”
Ren Changdong asked him: “So, the USB drive and the news about you throwing yourself into the sea—were those also calculated by you in advance?”
Zhang Bin raised both hands up to his ribcage in a gesture of absolute innocence.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Ren Changdong doubted whether he was acting: “Those videos of Li You were handed to me by a man claiming to be your uncle, along with a USB drive.”
Zhang Bin pondered for a moment. He truly had no idea which of his good uncles was so clever, courageous, and energetic that he dared poke Ren Changdong’s reverse scale just for his sake. In his memory, none of his uncles felt like they had lived long enough yet.
“What did he look like?” Zhang Bin probed.
Ren Changdong tossed Zhang Bin’s earlier words right back at him: “You, a partnered fox-spirit lawyer at a major firm—what innocent young man are you pretending to be now?”
Another wave of silence fell between them.
“About as tall as you, well over one-and-a-half meters [Translator note: likely referring to nearly two meters], pale skin, big eyes with red lips, and talks just as nastily as you do.”
“Oh.”
Zhang Bin knew who it was. Men standing nearly two meters tall weren’t all that common.
“That’s not my uncle,” Zhang Bin said. “That’s my dad.”
Ren Changdong refused to listen to his nonsense: “You two don’t look anything alike.”
“My fourth-uncle and I take turns being father and son to each other. As for who gets to play the dad, it depends on who didn’t land in trouble,” Zhang Bin said, turning to settle accounts with Ren Changdong. “Clearly, he’s playing the dad this time, and we all have Director Ren to thank for that.”
Ren Changdong hadn’t expected the man to genuinely be a close acquaintance of Zhang Bin. He had assumed someone like Zhang Bin wouldn’t keep deep friendships.
Ren Changdong looked at Zhang Bin with a fresh perspective.
“Your ‘throwing yourself into the sea’ act—was that also leaked to Li You by him?” Ren Changdong asked Zhang Bin. “If you hadn’t told him, how else would he have photos of you swimming in the sea?”
“I just said so. Your family’s uncle-nephew bond is so deep, am I not allowed to chat casually with my own uncle?” Zhang Bin wasn’t lying. “I told him I fished a drowning guy out of the sea while swimming.”
“After that, people started staging drowning performances on the island every other day,” Zhang Bin narrowed his eyes at Ren Changdong. “Those reckless kids—if you dare give them mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, they’ll dare stick their tongues right down your throat. People who only experience summer do tend to be a bit overly passionate.”
“So later, I went to the indoor pool, thinking surely no one would chase me around there to film an ‘idol drama’. Guess what happened then, Director Ren?”
Ren Changdong pursed his lips and stayed silent. He knew full well that Zhang Bin knew he hadn’t been acting.
“My uncle used to work in media—making up stories based on pictures is the baseline professional skill of that industry,” Zhang Bin said, wearing an innocent expression once again.
“I was just sharing my new rescue record with my uncle.” Zhang Bin pressed his hand over his phone.
“Zhang Bin!” Ren Changdong didn’t want Zhang Bin spreading this matter around.
Originally, Zhang Bin didn’t want any excessive entanglements with Ren Changdong either, so after scaring him a little, he withdrew his hand.
Turning sideways, Zhang Bin retrieved a bottle of inexpensive table wine from the island counter to treat Ren Changdong. Inspecting the wine label, he decided the bottle didn’t need to be decanted, but he went through the motions anyway. Ren Changdong criticized him for lacking any posture while sitting.
“I was wondering why you flew all the way to the island. Turns out you took quite a heavy shock.”
Zhang Bin poured the wine into the decanter with a sloshing sound.
“You consider me insignificant, yet you ran all this way to see me. Eight out of ten times, it’s because you wanted to find out what Li You is after from me, so you could figure out what he’s lacking.”
“You were also afraid that I might actually kick the bucket, leaving him obsessing over me for the rest of his life.”
“Afraid that I’d turn into his white moonlight, hanging forever from your family’s rafters.”
Though that was indeed the gist of it, Ren Changdong refused to accept that phrasing. To be precise, he was afraid Zhang Bin would linger like an unlaid ghost, leaving his household haunted by a pair of water demons.
“So, why is he clinging to you so stubbornly?” Ren Changdong asked Zhang Bin.
Zhang Bin’s tone turned cruel: “Because you’re a bad uncle.”
Ren Changdong wanted to find an answer from Zhang Bin, and Zhang Bin was willing to give it to him—but in exchange, he wanted to extract a “price” from Ren Changdong, wanting to taste a rare glimpse of raw emotion from him.
True to expectation, a look of torment surfaced on Ren Changdong’s face, as if he had just received the harshest condemnation in the entire world.
Pouring the wine and turning around, Zhang Bin saw Ren Changdong like this and was startled to find that his own sense of satisfaction was laced with a trace of something else. Deep down, he knew raising a child shouldn’t be an uncle’s responsibility in the first place.
Zhang Bin began to talk with Ren Changdong about that night which had completely altered the trajectory of both their lives.
“When the kid turned eighteen, not a single family member was by his side, and he had no friends to gather with. All his emotional attachment was poured into a man he’d only met once, and he treated commemorating that day like a sacrificial rite.”
“I went to grab something by the bedside and accidentally caught a glimpse of a notification pop up on his phone.”
“Ren Changdong, the reason I threw him out of the hotel was because at the exact stroke of midnight, his phone was flooded with all sorts of birthday blessings—every single one of them sent from luxury brand sales reps.”
“I knew right then and there that the brat was lying to me. Given his consumption capacity, there was no way he matched the background he’d fabricated for himself.”
Ren Changdong remained utterly silent, while the violent storm outside wailed as if desperate to soak him through.
“Where were you?” Zhang Bin asked Ren Changdong. “What major project were you busy with that you couldn’t even come back for the kid’s eighteenth birthday?”
Zhang Bin felt a sense of self-reproach regarding Li You as well—not because of taking Li You to the hotel, but for something else.
Years ago, when Li You mentioned he had no parents, Zhang Bin had chuckled and dismissed the plotline as a cliché. He had even instructed Li You not to claim he was dependent on an uncle, but to change it to a grandmother instead, saying that claiming to be raised by a middle-aged man carried a higher chance of backfiring.
He blamed himself because while a kid with no parents was pouring his heart out, he had treated the kid’s words like a crude script. Later on, when Li You approached him again, Li You had woven a brand new identity for himself—one with a father and a mother. And Zhang Bin hadn’t even remembered him.
A family-oriented man like Zhang Bin couldn’t stomach the thought of having hurt a child’s heart like that.
Ever since Ren Changdong had cornered him, Zhang Bin had simply gone along with Ren Changdong’s pace and conceded step by step. He could understand another uncle from the perspective of an uncle himself, and he knew only a fool would stubbornly cross swords with Ren Changdong.
Ren Changdong hadn’t originally planned to have an open heart-to-heart with Zhang Bin about Li You, because after arriving on the island, he had already found his answer.
On this isolated island, the torrential rain and the sea had completely insulated Zhang Bin from his original social circles. This island permitted everything to happen, and whatever transpired here would never ripple into Zhang Bin’s life once he returned to the concrete jungle.
Yet Zhang Bin hadn’t touched that curly-haired young man whose tastes matched his own. He was a smart man, but he refused to take advantage of someone else’s “foolishness.” In response to the curly-haired boy’s pure and sincere affection, he returned a guarded sense of distance disguised as indifference.
Watching the curly-haired boy deliver ice yesterday, Ren Changdong had roughly guessed what Li You was after from Zhang Bin.
He looked toward the island counter, down at the disposable paper slippers on Zhang Bin’s feet. He imagined those feet ordinarily walking through the city in leather shoes, stepping right along the edge of the red line.
What Li You was after was precisely that pair of feet which refused to ever cross the red line.