The group chat called ‘Armor Warrior God Alliance’ had only three people in it, the three of them having played together since they were kids. Back then, the three of them could have skipped meals entirely, huddling together to finish Ultraman Tiga and then move on to Armor Hero.
From childhood to now, the three of them had always believed in light.
Jiang Zhuo accepted the video call, slipped the phone back into his pocket, and talked to them through his earphones.
The one labeled Emperor Hero was the first to speak, noisily yelling Jiang Zhuo’s name in the group chat and asking why they couldn’t see him.
The other two people in the group stayed completely silent. Only after Emperor Hero stopped talking did Jiang Zhuo finally say, “Jiang Yifan, are you sneaking your phone in the bathroom behind your dad’s back again?”
The one labeled Emperor Hero was Jiang Yifan. He and Jiang Zhuo were cousins. Jiang Zhuo’s label was Black Rhino Hero, and the other one was Wind Eagle Hero, Jiang Yunting, Jiang Zhuo’s neighbor.
Jiang Yunting had an older brother named Jiang Yanting, who was in college.
There were more than a dozen older boys and girls in the village who were seven or eight years older than him. Some were in college, some had gone out to work, and some were already married, so naturally they couldn’t really play together.
And the ones younger than him were five or six years younger, so they couldn’t really play together either.
Luckily, the three of them were close in age. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have had any playmates at all.
Jiang Yifan’s father ran a boxing gym in town. Jiang Yifan had trained there since he was little, so whether it was strength or build, he had always been bigger than others his age. By the time he reached high school, he could already knock down a grown man outright.
His dream was to box, to fight for the country and make his way onto the world stage, and he was the kind of person who could really endure hardship when he trained.
The three of them went to the same school. Jiang Yifan had taken the athletics route, and his grades had always been a struggle, so he stopped attending in his senior year and focused fully on boxing.
Before Jiang Yifan could speak, Jiang Yunting spoke first. The moment he opened his mouth, he sounded every bit like a dependable older brother as he asked after Jiang Zhuo: “Jiang Zhuo, are you getting used to staying at your relatives’ place? When are you coming back?”
Jiang Yifan said, “Yeah, yeah, exactly. Second Aunt won’t even say when you’re coming back.”
“Did you go back to your mom’s… I mean, back to Chen Lijuan’s place?” Jiang Yifan had originally meant to say “your mom’s,” but worried Jiang Zhuo would feel bad hearing it, so he hurriedly changed his wording. When he asked, he even deliberately opened his bedroom door and peeked outside. Only after making sure no one was eavesdropping did he dare ask in secret. Otherwise, his mom was bound to get angry again.
“No. I’m not going back to her house.” Chen Lijuan was Jiang Zhuo’s biological mother, and her heart had always been set on going abroad. Chen Lijuan was Jiang Dad’s cousin on his father’s side, though really, the two families were so distantly related that calling them cousins took some stretching.
Back then, Chen Lijuan had called Jiang Dad and asked him to look after Jiang Zhuo for a few months. At first Jiang Dad refused, but after enough pleading and persuasion, Jiang Mom relented too, and so they agreed. She thought, back when Chen Lijuan had been heavily pregnant and then recovering after childbirth, she had taken care of her then too, so what were a few more months? Besides, when Jiang Zhuo had been born, he had looked delicate and beautiful, bright-eyed and full of spirit. Jiang Mom had taken one look and liked him enormously.
They had agreed on the phone that Chen Lijuan would bring him over a week later. It was the dead of winter then, and the Jiang couple had taken their children out and weren’t home. In the middle of the night, Chen Lijuan had secretly left the child at the door without even a word. Jiang Yifan’s mother got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, heard crying, and the dog was barking fiercely too, and only then did she discover the baby. Luckily they found him in time and got him to the hospital quickly. The doctor said that if they had been any later, he wouldn’t have survived.
So every time Jiang Yifan’s mother heard the name Chen Lijuan, she especially couldn’t stand it and would always curse her a few times for being heartless and the like.
On the other end of the phone, although Jiang Yunting was on a video call, his fingers were tapping away at the keyboard. He had Jiang Zhuo’s chat window open, typing and deleting, writing and erasing, never once pressing send. He had too many questions he wanted to ask Jiang Zhuo, but asking anything now would be pointless, so in the end he only said, “Anyway, take good care of yourself over there.”
Jiang Yifan didn’t hear the sigh in Jiang Yunting’s voice and kept chatting idly with Jiang Zhuo. “Yeah, yeah. I dreamed last night that you got beaten up. It was miserable. Hey, with no big brother there to protect you, be careful with everything.”
Hearing Jiang Yifan call himself big brother, Jiang Zhuo deliberately teased him: “I’m the big brother!”