Among the Cheng family children, aside from the underage Kejia who stayed with their mother, the others all had their own separate residences. Although they frequently gathered at the Cheng family home nowadays to get close to the matriarch, they still occasionally went back to their own places on ordinary days.
It was somewhat muggy and hot tonight. Baoxin wore a white top with thin spaghetti straps, layered with a light jacket over it. As she entered the door, she gathered the ends of her hair with one hand and casually remarked, “Parking at your place is such a hassle.”
Cheng Keqi didn’t raise his head. “Yeah.”
He lived near StarWorld Hotel. Compared to Cheng Kewei, his place was simply spacious and tidy. The windows were wide open, offering a view of the Taipa coastline. There wasn’t much furniture inside, but what was there was tasteful and high-end. The air conditioning was cranked up high, and Baoxin felt the chill the moment she stepped in. Without any ceremony, she walked straight into his bedroom, pulled a jacket from his wardrobe, and draped it over her shoulders.
“Should I turn down the air conditioning?”
Baoxin sat down on the other end of the sofa and gave a light chuckle. “No. I just wanted to wear your clothes.” She crossed her legs and leaned slightly toward his side. “I heard Baoyi had a huge argument with Second Aunt and stormed out. I thought for sure she wouldn’t come back. But a few days ago she ran back again, and it even seemed like they staged a grand mother-daughter reconciliation.”
Cheng Keqi didn’t react, still keeping his head down as he read.
Baoxin continued, “Later, she even went to Grandma’s place. The two of them talked for a long time—no one knows what they discussed. Sister Huan said that when they walked out of the room, both of them had smiles on their faces.”
Cheng Keqi turned a page. Baoxin went on to mention a few other people’s affairs, but seeing that Cheng Keqi didn’t seem very interested, she stopped talking and turned her face to look at him. He was wearing a light gray casual loungewear set, and his bangs had grown a bit longer, resting against his forehead.
Baoxin leaned in closer. “There’s something on the tip of your hair.”
She raised her hand to brush his bangs aside. Her fingertips lightly grazed the edge of his forehead, lingering for a brief moment before pulling back.
Cheng Keqi finally raised his head. Baoxin said in a low voice, “There wasn’t anything there at all.” Her voice was laced with a smile.
Baoxin withdrew her hand and leaned back into the sofa. Outside the window came the muffled, bustling sounds of the city. When she was little, Macau wasn’t as bustling as it was now; tourists back then were much fewer than today. She used to sit on Sister Huan’s lap, listening to her talk about the street gunfights right before the handover at the end of the previous century. To a small child’s heart, it didn’t feel dangerous at all, because the adventures in the stories always stayed inside the stories.
She truly missed the old days.
“Got any alcohol?” she asked.
“There’s beer in the fridge. Help yourself.”
It really was a hot night.
Over at the Cheng residence, Tan Meiqi held back from turning on the air conditioning, worried it would harm her skin, opting instead to push the window open. Sounds of conversation drifted up from downstairs. She tilted her ear to listen for a moment; it seemed to be the eldest branch’s couple, Cheng Baowen and her husband. What were they talking about? She couldn’t clearly make it out. But she wasn’t afraid of the eldest branch anymore.
The old lady had promised her in person that those two retail stores were to be kept until Kejia grew up. As for the factory side, although Baoyi’s authority had been partially curtailed, Tan Meiqi had always felt that killing yourself over product manufacturing led nowhere—especially since these traditional formulas handed down by ancestors remained completely unchanged and had zero prospects. It was better to hand them over in exchange for security and guarantees.
Cheng Baowen and her husband walked inside. Not long after, two figures in sportswear appeared outside. Even in the gloom of the night, it was easy to tell they were Cheng Baoyi and Tang Shen. Over the past few days, this tutor, Ms. Tang, would finish Kejia’s lessons and then head out for a run with Baoyi. The two of them came and went together, prompting the servants to joke that they were just like Cheng Kewei and Wen Yizhuang.
Tan Meiqi loathed hearing that comparison. Even though Wen Yizhuang was just a dog to Cheng Kewei, he had at least grown up in the Cheng family. What was Tang Shen’s background? Was she even worthy of being considered one of their people?
The more people cared about their own background, the more they valued so-called class. Everyone else in the Cheng family could see this trait clearly in Second Aunt—everyone except Second Aunt herself.
Cheng Kejia had made a lot of new discoveries lately. For instance, he noticed that his elder sister was no longer so blunt and straightforward, wearing her emotions plainly on her face. Occasionally at the dinner table, when the eldest sister made some arrogant remark, he would look at his older sister only to see her calmly and methodically picking at her food with chopsticks.
Sometimes, when his eldest brother Cheng Kewei talked about company matters—things that in the past would have drawn an immediate, argumentative rebuttal from his sister because she felt he was wrong—she no longer argued with anyone. On the contrary, she would occasionally offer a faint smile toward her eldest brother.
In a child’s eyes, this change in his sister was deeply disheartening. In his imagination, someone who was bullied and suppressed should have grabbed a weapon and fought back, charging and shouting like the Goddess of Liberty in an oil painting, rather than acting like this. He didn’t know that his sister, just like him, was studying Chinese history under Teacher Tang. Day after day, she listened to the stories of Goujian the King of Yue, Sun Bin of the Warring States period, Emperor Wen of Han (Liu Heng), Emperor Xuan of Han (Liu Xuandi), a young Emperor Kangxi, and others. All these people and events were telling her one thing: when you are still the weaker party, you must endure in silence and never stick your neck out prematurely.
Stories favored by youths always involved braving wind and rain, utterly unable to stomach swallowing broken teeth mixed with blood. The elder sister he admired so much was now acting like an ostrich—and to make matters worse, their mother particularly appreciated this ostrich-like posture, believing her daughter had matured and learned the art of retreating in order to advance. The little boy frequently found himself depressed and melancholy.
His classmates invited him out to clear his head. As the group wandered aimlessly, they somehow ended up in a tourist-heavy area, right in front of the Cheng Yongtang storefront. He looked up and noticed that the shop had undergone massive changes.
A small fraction of the space had been cleared out to display old photographs and traditional Chinese medicine cabinets, with a few promotional blurbs printed on the walls. Each blurb was two or three sentences long, telling the story of Cheng Yongtang from Guangzhou’s Xiguan in the Qing dynasty to present-day Macau. The left half retained its retail function, but a small herbal tea stall had been added.
Baoyi happened to be there as well, introducing the products to some tourist vloggers. “This bowl is dampness-dispelling tea, this bowl can clear internal heat, and this bowl here is best suited for the early stages of a cold…” A good number of people had gathered around to sample the teas. There were quite a few mainland tourists who had never tasted herbal tea before; finding it all very novel, they posed playfully in front of the cameras while slowly sipping.
His female classmate didn’t know this was his family’s shop, but seeing him unable to tear his gaze away, she followed his line of sight and clicked her tongue, saying, “That’s pretty interesting, huh?”
“What’s so interesting about it?” Cheng Kejia turned his face away, forcing a wooden, apathetic expression. “A little shop like this, trying to reverse its decline with all sorts of gimmicks. It might look crowded right now, but it’s just a flash in the pan.”
The female classmate couldn’t understand why he always had such a melancholy demeanor. But youths always loved to stand out, and Cheng Kejia fancied himself unique; the female classmate had a crush on this melancholic young man precisely because she felt he stood out from the crowd.
Who knows what Cheng Baoyi had been doing behind the scenes, but the shop quickly blew up on social media. A month later, even the local newspapers ran a small blurb: […]
If even Cheng Kejia knew about it, how could the eldest branch not know? Cheng Kewei picked up a piece of fish, eating only the freshest and most tender flesh. Wen Yizhuang sat beside the table, sipping an Americano while watching a shop-exploration short video playing on his phone. The video looped repeatedly until Cheng Kewei grew somewhat annoyed, putting down his chopsticks and telling Wen Yizhuang to stop it.
“What right does she have to call herself the successor?”
Wen Yizhuang ignored the question, tapped the screen to replay the video, and watched it all over again.
The segment where Cheng Baoyi explained the history of Cheng Yongtang to the food vlogger traced the lineage from Guangzhou’s Xiguan in the Qing dynasty all the way to modern Macau. This didn’t sound like her at all. She had never cared about stories; she only cared about products.
Wen Yizhuang laid his phone facedown on the tabletop, reached out, picked up the chopsticks Cheng Kewei had abandoned, and plucked a piece of fish, meticulously picking out the bones. “Doesn’t sound like her.”
“Second Aunt?” There was a hint of disdain in Cheng Kewei’s tone. “Impossible.”
Wen Yizhuang didn’t speak, but a direction had formed in his mind. He placed the boneless fish meat into Cheng Kewei’s bowl. “Once the fish floats to the surface, we’ll naturally find out.”
Cheng Kewei stopped pressing the matter, out of habit handing things over to Wen Yizhuang to deal with—just like habitually tossing him the fish bones to chew on.
Over a week passed without any movement from Wen Yizhuang’s side. When asked twice, he only replied that they needed to wait a bit longer. Cheng Kewei was somewhat displeased, but there was nothing he could do.
That evening, the members of the Cheng family gathered for dinner once again. Baoxin was in the middle of peeling a shrimp for Grandma, but instead of chatting and laughing with her as she usually did, old Mrs. Cheng kept her eyes fixed in Cheng Baoyi’s direction and suddenly brought up that the two retail stores near the Ruins of St. Paul’s were doing quite well.
Before Cheng Baoyi could open her mouth, Tan Meiqi chimed in with a smile, “It was actually Kejia who gave Baoyi the inspiration. He asked about the history of Cheng Yongtang the other day and mentioned a school assignment where they had to film a historical video about Macau’s streets. That’s when Baoyi realized she could use that approach.”
Cheng Kejia felt utterly mortified. Lacking the courage to openly contradict his mother, he buried his head as low as possible and silently drank his soup. Tang Shen used her chopsticks to pick up a slice of beef, the meat trembling slightly between them. The lighting made her fair wrist gleam, and the woven red string made it stand out even more vividly. Sitting across from her, Cheng Keqi stared at her in silence, saying not a word.
While Tan Meiqi chattered on endlessly, Cheng Baoyi casually picked up the conversation. “Since Cheng Yongtang has its own history, we should make good use of it.”
The old lady smiled and nodded. “I remember you like drinking lotus root and pork rib soup—have a bit more of it.” Baoyi smiled and said thank you, Grandma. She didn’t bother telling the old lady that she didn’t actually like lotus root and pork rib soup; the person who loved it was Cheng Kewei.
But Cheng Kewei had zero appetite tonight.
Shortly after finishing the meal, he went to Wen Yizhuang’s room and confronted him point-blank: “What is your plan? Exactly how much longer are we supposed to wait?”
Wen Yizhuang sat on the edge of the bed, very slowly peeling an apple. The peel came off in one long, unbroken strip, dropping into the black trash can. He slowly guided the blade. “I’ve been waiting for the old lady to notice this development. Now, the time has come.”