A representative from the group following Lin Ting stepped forward and whispered something into Wen Lan’s ear. Lin Ting watched as the expression in Wen Lan’s eyes shifted step by step from seriousness to a fleeting moment of disbelief, and finally into a smile that looked almost pitying.
“Tell me, you brought my underling here to see me, are you trying to rebel, or are you trying to surrender?” Wen Lan hooked the corner of his mouth and smiled.
Lin Ting let out a long, helpless sigh. “I am just a good student, really.” He looked around at the people glaring at him with hostility. “For you to send dozens of people to beat up a single high schooler, where would Brother Wen’s face even go if word got out? Don’t you think?”
“Is that so? Why do I feel like it sounds quite impressive if it gets out?” Wen Lan showed no shame whatsoever.
“We were deskmates after all; that is a bond forged over a hundred years. Who knows, maybe we were in-laws in our past lives? How about we just make peace?”
“Yo, why does a word like make peace sound so untrustworthy coming from your mouth? Instead of letting you off today only for you to open that foul mouth and spray nonsense in front of me again tomorrow, wouldn’t it be better to just cut out your tongue right now?”
Wen Lan reached into his pocket, pulled out a folding knife, and chuckled as he fiddled with it in his hand. The lackeys around him all started laughing along as well, and for a moment, an air of joyful merriment radiated outward with Wen Lan at the center.
Lin Ting made no effort to conceal the disgust and disdain in his eyes at that moment and was about to say something when the sound of bustling footsteps suddenly came from behind him.
At this point, it was not just Lin Ting; Wen Lan and his large group of followers all gradually stopped laughing, their gazes looking past his shoulder toward the rear.
Without turning around, Lin Ting knew there were at least a dozen pairs of eyes fixed on his back. The arcade was now completely occupied by this group of people who looked anything like someone you wanted to mess with. The young couple that had been trying to grab claw-machine prizes a moment ago and the junior high school students playing racing games in their school uniforms all scattered away in a rush.
The atmosphere instantly grew scorching and tense. Lin Ting’s feet felt as though they had been set in cement; down to his bones and tendons, he could not move a single inch.
Tap, tap, tap. It was the sound of leather shoes dragging heavily across the floor. Lin Ting did not move.
Clack. It was the sound of a cigarette lighter, followed immediately by the sound of a deep inhalation of smoke slowly being exhaled. Lin Ting could not move.
The smell of smoke gradually approached, accompanied by the scent of cologne, growing closer and closer to Lin Ting. He could not even turn his head.
The loudest sound in his ears right now was not the musical tracks playing from the various arcade machines, but rather the thudding sound of the pressure generated by the approaching figure behind him, causing his eardrums to congest and beat violently. This sound was remarkably similar to a heartbeat, both signaling an impending and immediate threat. Whether it was his imagination or not, ever since this person appeared behind him, the noises in the arcade seemed to grow much quieter.
He heard the source of that threat right beside his ear, but even though it was that close, Lin Ting had no intention of turning his head.
“Who is it that keeps making our Brother Wen angry, hmm?”
Wen Lan’s expression was cold at the moment, completely different from his usual self, though come to think of it, Lin Ting had only known him for a few hours anyway.
Yet Lin Ting had a hunch that the newcomer was not someone to be trifled with.
Even though Wen Lan was a school bully who could effortlessly gather a group of wealthy youths who failed to study properly to pull off things that would make a mother furious, Lin Ting felt that he could still trade blows with them in a fight, provided it was a one-on-one match, of course.
The person who had just arrived was different. Furthermore, not just from himself, but from the expressions and body language of the people around him, it was obvious that this individual and the school bully were in completely different leagues.
“Isn’t this Boss Ye? What kind of wind blew you over here?” Wen Lan’s facial features were already deep-set; right now, he was wrapped in a layer of dark hostility. He looked like he was smiling, but upon closer inspection, that smile was hair-raisingly creepy.
“I just brought a few kids out to have some fun; who would have thought we’d run into you? Wouldn’t you say that’s a coincidence?” Boss Ye took a few more steps forward, and Lin Ting could finally see him from a sideways glance.
This Boss Ye was probably only around twenty or thirty years old. He was dressed in a black suit, wearing what looked like a very expensive watch on his left wrist and a string of Buddhist prayer beads on his right. From the hair combed meticulously strand by strand with hair gel to the gleaming black leather shoes on his feet, the sight suddenly reminded Lin Ting of Gu Jiang.
Although the two men had different aesthetic tastes when it came to suit pairing, they shared one identical trait: they both loved putting on airs.
Of course, Lin Ting dared not say a word of that right now; after all, the man genuinely had the capital to act like a big shot.
“It really is a coincidence. But we are already finished and getting ready to scatter. If I don’t go home soon, even my little genius smartphone is going to start nagging me with mom’s reminders.” Wen Lan said this as he prepared to walk over.
The schools around here were different from Lin Ting’s previous school. Perhaps because wealthy youths faced no pressure regarding entrance examinations, there were no evening study sessions at all. School had been out for a good chunk of the afternoon, and the sky was only just beginning to turn a pale blue.
“Hey, hey, hey, don’t be in such a rush.” Boss Ye suddenly turned around and looked straight at Lin Ting. “Hasn’t the grievance between this little brother and our Brother Wen been settled yet? Could it be that I spoiled everyone’s fun? Don’t be like that, continue, please continue!” With that, he flashed Lin Ting a malicious, ill-intentioned smile.
Only then did Lin Ting get a clear look at Boss Ye’s face. A jagged, crooked scar ran diagonally from his left temple all the way down to the right corner of his mouth, slashing across the tail of his eyebrow and the corner of his eye, and crossing his high bridge of nose. It looked like a giant, ferocious centipede clinging to his face, writhing to life with every expression Boss Ye made.
Lin Ting shivered, opened his mouth to say something, but swallowed the words back down.
Wen Lan glanced at his face for a single second, stepped closer, and used his own body to block Boss Ye’s gaze from looking at Lin Ting, intercepting that malicious smile head-on. “It was all just a misunderstanding. We good students need to go home for dinner.”
Boss Ye was not someone who could be brushed off so easily. With a single hand, he pushed Wen Lan’s shoulder aside, took another deep drag of his cigarette, and blew out a swirling cloud of smoke that drifted and tangled between the three of them. Lin Ting felt a tickle in his throat and wanted to cough, but he forced himself to hold it back.
“Are you his underling?” Boss Ye asked, staring directly at Lin Ting.
“Not at all.”
“Oh.” Boss Ye flicked the ash off his cigarette, raised his head, and looked up at the sky, which was beginning to turn gray.
Twilight had not yet fallen, and the streetlights had not yet turned on. This was the dimtest moment of the entire day. Lin Ting watched as the figures of the large crowd before him grew blurry. He suddenly wondered if he might be dreaming; otherwise, how could he possibly stumble into such a mess?
“Oh, so you are not, then.” Boss Ye seemed to be pondering something. “A Ming! Tell Boss Wen and me what happened this morning right to our faces!”
The man named A Ming stepped forward from the crowd and spoke. “Wen Lan, no, Wen Lan, Wen Lan said he wanted me to be his underling and told me that following Boss Ye had no future. I firmly rejected him, so, so Wen Lan punched me.”
Lin Ting was very familiar with this voice; he had heard it in the alley earlier that morning.
Wen Lan’s expression at that moment was magnificent. His eyes naturally narrowed, one eyebrow pressed down while the other arched upward, and the corner of his mouth twitched upward uncontrollably. Even to an outsider like Lin Ting, it was obvious how utterly devoid of logic A Ming’s words were.
Boss Ye could not possibly have missed that.
“You guys see this!” He tossed his cigarette butt onto the ground and ground it out a few times with the tip of his gleaming leather shoe. As his hand dropped back down, the prayer beads on his wrist fell neatly into his palm, and he began rolling them between his fingers with practiced ease. “Little Wen, you are not playing fair here.”
Wen Lan watched him with unhurried leisure, looking as though he already knew what the man was going to say next.
Sure enough, within less than a minute, Boss Ye spoke again. “You say the kid didn’t want to follow you, so you hit him? That turns you into a mafia syndicator! Since I ran into this kid today, I suppose it is fate. How about…”
He looked toward Lin Ting and took another step closer. “How about you come mix with my crew instead? I guarantee you will be much better off than with that Wen kid. What do you say?”
A chorus of jeers rose from behind.
Lin Ting glanced at Wen Lan. The other boy gave a nearly imperceptible shake of his head.
Lin Ting smiled faintly. “I have always been used to a free lifestyle. Thank you for your kind offer, but I must pass.”
With that, he turned around and prepared to leave.
Yet Boss Ye’s subordinates instantly formed a human wall right in front of Lin Ting. Silent, quiet, and impenetrable.
Helplessly, Lin Ting turned back around.
“It looks like you are quite loyal to your Brother Wen, huh?”
“Boss, you must be joking. I just transferred here today, and I am just a country bumpkin. I have known this guy for less than a day, so there is no real loyalty to speak of.” Lin Ting found it exhausting to talk to someone who deliberately went out of their way to pick a fight. The person opposite him was talking nonsense with his eyes wide open, yet he himself had no choice but to answer properly.
Most importantly, this conflict had nothing to do with him! It was blatantly a long-standing feud between two troublemakers, and he had simply been treated as a convenient target.
“How about this.” Boss Ye stopped rolling his prayer beads, looked at Wen Lan, and smiled. “Let us keep it fair and square. This Saturday, at the cotton mill. We have to let the new kid see what we are both made of, don’t we?”
The words were vague, but everyone present understood that this was a challenge to a street fight.
Although Lin Ting did not understand the stakes involved, he guessed it had something to do with that guy named A Ming.
It was probably the typical scenario where an underling gets beaten up, striking a blow to the boss’s pride, so the boss has to step in to save face.
How utterly boring. The brains of these people seemed to have been kicked by a donkey.
Wen Lan’s dark, fathomless eyes stared straight into the depths of Lin Ting’s eyes, though his words were addressed to Boss Ye. “I don’t think he has any special skills, and none of us are short on people. What do you think?”
“Hey, aren’t you being a bit too impolite to the kid? I think he has a lot of guts, dares to charge ahead, and has what it takes. If you don’t want him, I’ll take him in.” Boss Ye gave Wen Lan zero room to back down.
“Well, since you put it that way.” Wen Lan paused, finally revealing an open, fearless smile. “Then I suppose I will just have to fight you for him. Boss Ye will not mind, right?”
“Of course not. Then it is settled, Saturday afternoon at six-thirty. Same old place.” Boss Ye was extremely satisfied. He patted Wen Lan on the right shoulder and swaggered away, leading his massive entourage of men.
He even remembered to turn back and flash a smile at Lin Ting.
“Wen Lan, is the tap water in the houses of you rich people imported from a neighboring island nation?” Lin Ting felt that the dark cloud hanging over his head had finally dissipated, replaced by a Sword of Damocles with the words of destruction slowly taking shape. At least for now, he felt at ease, and he let out a long breath.
“What the hell are you trying to say now!” Wen Lan made no effort to conceal his irritation. He pulled a cigarette pack and a lighter out of his pocket, clamped one cigarette between his lips to light it, took a fierce drag, and then shoved another one toward Lin Ting.
Lin Ting froze for half a second. Seeing that Wen Lan’s hand was still outstretched, he took it. “I just think that the proportion of brain-dead people here is unusually high. I’d suggest you all get yourselves thoroughly checked out.”
“You!” Wen Lan pointed at Lin Ting with the hand holding the cigarette. The expression on his face looked like his brain could not keep up with the rapid changes, stalling out halfway with an expression frozen somewhere between suppressed amusement and uncontainable rage.
“Since the eavesdropper classmate is about to lose his freedom this Saturday, you’d better study your future boss’s preferences carefully. Otherwise, if you fail to serve him properly later, you might lose your tongue.” Wen Lan glanced at him and brandished his lighter. “Need a light?”
“Oh, I don’t smoke.” Lin Ting tucked the cigarette he had just taken right back behind Wen Lan’s ear, patted his hands together, turned around, and walked away cleanly.
“Screw your grandpa!”