Wen Lan collected his thoughts and looked at Lin Ting. “You can shut up now. If you are bored, go home and wash your mother’s feet.”
“Hey, let this little brother finish what he has to say. By the way, I haven’t asked your name yet,” Boss Ye spoke up.
“Lin Ting. The one with the fire radical, like the alkane.” He continued, “You guys said whoever wins gets me as their underling, but shouldn’t you at least ask for my opinion?”
Wen Lan remained silent. In the dark, Boss Ye leaned in to let one of his lackeys light a cigarette for him, quietly waiting for Lin Ting to continue.
“Me? I just came to this school, and this guy kept picking fights with me, even bringing a crowd to follow me and plan a group beating. I’ve been unhappy with him for a long time.” Lin Ting’s tone was full of disgust. He took a few steps toward Wen Lan and spoke face-to-face. “At my old school, I was someone others didn’t dare mess with anyway. Tell me, how am I supposed to swallow this anger?”
“What do you want to do?” Wen Lan stared at him, the distance between the two barely twenty centimeters.
“I’ve wanted to beat you up for a long time.” Without giving either of them time to react, Lin Ting threw a punch straight at Wen Lan’s stomach.
This punch was delivered without holding back at all, and since the two were so close and Wen Lan never expected such a development, he took the blow squarely. He was instantly forced to retreat several steps, though thanks to his solid physical fitness, he managed not to fall over.
“What the hell, you bastard! Are you out of your mind?” Wen Lan flicked off his knuckle duster, and with a clean, swift punch accompanied by a fierce rush of wind, he smashed it right against Lin Ting’s left cheek.
Lin Ting was well prepared. He raised his left arm to block in front of him, taking the full force of the punch while simultaneously bending forward at the waist. Since Wen Lan was lunging straight ahead, Lin Ting used that momentum to deliver a sweeping kick right into the back of Wen Lan’s left knee.
“You’re the one out of your mind! Everyone around here has something wrong with their brains, especially you, Wen Lan!”
Wen Lan’s left knee buckled from the blow, but he immediately flipped and leaped back up, lunging straight toward Lin Ting. Lin Ting was instantly knocked down by the weight of over one hundred pounds, making it hard for him to get back up for a moment.
Wen Lan fiercely pinned Lin Ting’s neck down with one hand while trading blows back and forth with Lin Ting’s fists using the other. “I’m not letting you go! Believe me, wherever you go for the rest of your life, I will beat you up. If you have the guts, don’t let me see you ever again, you mad dog!”
Lin Ting laughed. The next second, he opened his mouth, tilted his head up slightly, and bit down hard on Wen Lan’s arm.
Lin Ting had good teeth, and his canine teeth were extremely sharp. Taking the bite, Wen Lan instantly lost all his strength and flung Lin Ting a few meters away.
Lin Ting wobbled to his feet, leaned against the wall, and smiled in the moonlight.
The next second, Lin Ting leaped onto a rusted machine tool and used the height advantage to lunge at Wen Lan again. The two instantly locked into a chaotic brawl once more, with fists smashing into faces, arms, and stomachs. Just as Wen Lan used his physical strength to pin Lin Ting down, Lin Ting used a mouthful of sharp teeth to regain the upper hand.
Until both of them were completely exhausted, Boss Ye’s group just stood by watching the show, while Wen Lan’s underlings were a nervous wreck, not daring to step forward and break up the fight.
Lin Ting sat on the ground, leaning back against the corner of the wall, and spat out a mouthful of blood-tinged saliva, though it was unclear whether it came from Wen Lan’s punches or the bites he had given Wen Lan.
Wen Lan was in no better shape by this point, but he still managed to stagger to his feet, his arms and shoulders covered in bloody marks. “Lin Ting, are you a mad dog? If you took the wrong medicine, get lost right now and stop making a fool of yourself here. From now on, I’m going to beat you up every single time I see you.”
“I should be saying that to you! From now on, every time I see you, I’ll charge over and bite you!” Lin Ting did not show an ounce of weakness.
“Are you two done making a racket?” Boss Ye stood nearby, watching the farce for half the day, and his expression looked exceptionally ugly.
“Anyway, there’s no way I’m becoming his underling,” Lin Ting said to Boss Ye.
“As if I even want you.” Supported by Pockmark, Wen Lan limped back over to the old sofa and lay down.
“Boss Ye, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. How about you take me in as your underling instead? You see, I’m all alone with no one to rely on. If I want to cause trouble for Wen Lan, I have to think twice about whether he’s going to bring a gang to sack me in a sack and dump me in some warehouse for a beating. If you take me in, I’ll have a backer. From now on, every time I see him, I’ll beat him up, and every time I see him, I’ll bite him until he rolls around on the floor.” Lin Ting smiled as he looked at Boss Ye.
Wen Lan gave Lin Ting a deep look, then turned his gaze toward the man surnamed Ye. “This guy is just a mad dog, hard to manage. If Boss Ye likes the excitement, take him.”
Boss Ye laughed. “You really can’t judge a book by its cover. The last time I saw this kid, he was all quiet and gentle.”
Lin Ting remained seated on the ground, leaning against the corner of the wall, feeling that gaze scan over him. After a long wait, that gaze finally turned into words: “Forget it. A stray dog is hard to train, and it would just end up causing a lot of unnecessary friction between us brothers, hurting our relationship.”
Wen Lan smiled. “You said it. Boss Ye is a smart man.”
“Let’s have a meal together next time, just the brothers of us catching up.” After leaving those words behind, Boss Ye led his gang away.
In an instant, the factory building was left with only Wen Lan’s crew and Lin Ting.
Lin Ting half-closed his eyes, as he was truly quite tired, and felt the group of people close in around him.
Big Ears spoke up first. “Brother Wen, what should we do with this kid?”
“Leave him be. Pretend nothing happened today, and just stay away from this mad dog from now on.”
“Who the hell is a mad dog? You brought a bunch of people who can’t even fight to go toe-to-toe with these freaks. Do you seriously not feel like your brain is full of imported nuclear wastewater?”
Wen Lan was silent for a moment. With a hand gesture, Pockmark and Big Ears picked up their milk tea and potato chips and went over to support him.
Watching the two of them fumble about in a flurry, Wen Lan was torn between anger and laughter. “Can you two throw this junk away? Do you think we’re out on a picnic?”
“It’s fine, hand them to me!” Lin Ting smiled.
Pockmark’s gaze darted among them for a moment. Holding the milk tea in one hand, he took the potato chips from Big Ears with the other, shoved them into Lin Ting’s arms, and went right back to supporting Wen Lan.
The group headed toward the door.
“Thanks, mad dog.” Just before reaching the door, Wen Lan paused, turned his head with a smile, and the moonlight happened to fall across his hair and bridge of nose, outlining his profile in deep, cool blue-black contours. The sharp angles and facial features, which should have looked cold and harsh, were suddenly softened by the gentle moonlight into a trace of tenderness.
“Get lost already!” Lin Ting said. With that, he hooked the corner of his mouth and smiled as well.
It had been a long time since he last got into a fight. Now that it was over, Lin Ting felt that although his body ached, that anesthetic-like numbness had vanished, and his feet finally felt firmly planted on the ground.
Lin Ting polished off the milk tea in three gulps and didn’t forget to grab the tub of potato chips on his way to the pharmacy to buy a bottle of povidone-iodine.
When he arrived home, the first person he ran into was Gu Yi standing in the courtyard.
“Are you… do you need to go to the hospital?” Wearing a polo shirt, Gu Yi was placing a massive duffel bag over a meter tall in the corner. It looked like he had just finished some high-end, upper-crust recreational sport and grabbed a meal on the way back home, and Lin Ting vaguely caught a whiff of seafood coming off him.
“I’m fine.” Lin Ting shook the plastic bag containing the iodine and potato chips. “Just some scrapes, I can patch myself up.” Without waiting for Gu Yi’s dumbfounded expression in the courtyard, he headed straight to his room.
Once the bedroom door was shut, Lin Ting collapsed flat onto the bed, leaving the entire world as quiet as if he were the only person left in it.
Before he could decide whether to go downstairs and have Auntie Fang heat up some food or simply go to sleep and eat tomorrow morning, because he really didn’t want Su Li and Gu Jiang to see him looking like this right now, though the probability of Gu Yi keeping his mouth shut was roughly zero.
Just as he was hesitating, the phone in his pants pocket buzzed.
Who could possibly be looking for him at this hour?
Figuring it was likely an advertisement, Lin Ting casually unlocked his phone. The large characters of Wen Lan flashing on the screen made him bounce straight up from the bed.
Eaten yet? Want to grab a bite together? My treat, whatever you want.
Lin Ting hesitated for a moment before replying: Alright, treat me to seafood.
When Wen Lan showed up at Lin Ting’s doorstep riding a small electric scooter, his mood was exceedingly complicated.
“My man, aren’t you a rich second-generation heir?”
Hearing this, Wen Lan raised an eyebrow. “What? Rich heirs aren’t allowed to ride electric scooters?” With that, he handed over the second helmet hanging from the vehicle.
Lin Ting took the helmet and put it on. It was neither too big nor too small, a perfect fit. “I thought rich kids were always chauffeured around, playing golf and eating Japanese cuisine.”
Hearing this, Wen Lan chuckled. “I was worried nuclear wastewater might affect your precious brain, so before the ocean currents complete a full circle, let’s go eat some domestic seafood.”
The scooter’s shock absorption was practically zero. True to his character, Wen Lan drove straight through speed bumps, potholes, and manhole covers with his eyes closed, wavering back and forth between a disregard for morality and traffic laws. Along the way, Lin Ting was jolted so hard he felt like his tailbone was about to snap.
“Wen Lan, did you forget you have two wounded patients on this bike?”
“Weren’t you acting all tough back at the cotton mill? Chickenening out already?” Taking advantage of a red light, Wen Lan turned back with a mischievous, ill-intentioned grin. “You hit me first, so I’m just retaliating in a reasonable manner.”
“Fine, you wait. Let me finish this meal first.” Lin Ting raised his chin at him. “The light’s green, let’s go.”
Weaving and bumping through traffic, the electric scooter finally stopped in front of a seafood barbecue restaurant. The owner seemed to recognize Wen Lan and started greeting him from afar the moment he spotted the scooter.
The owner looked like a northerner with a heavy accent, and he was exceptionally warm and hospitable. “Your usual private room.”
“You come here often?” Lin Ting asked.
Wen Lan navigated the path with practiced familiarity. The restaurant was actually much larger than it appeared from the outside, with a layout so chaotic and maze-like that Lin Ting suspected he wouldn’t be able to retrace his steps to find the restroom later.
“Yeah, I usually bring Song Mi and the others here once or twice a month.” Wen Lan stepped into a private room, pulled out a chair, sat down, and began flipping through the menu.
“Song Mi?” Lin Ting turned the name over in his mind for a good while, utterly failing to remember who it was.
Wen Lan tossed the menu over to him. “The guy just handed you milk tea and potato chips, and you already forgot him? How cold-hearted.”
“Oh, you mean Pockmark.” Lin Ting flipped through the menu as a waiter approached. “Raw sea urchin, salt-and-pepper mantis shrimp, get a bowl of sea cucumber rice, garlic lobster, steamed oysters, give me 10 of those, and let me see…”
“Add a portion of braised abalone. That’s all for now.” Wen Lan waved a hand at the waiter, then turned to Lin Ting. “If you can’t finish it, pack it up and take it with you. I’m too lazy to carry leftovers.”
Lin Ting found the guy rather interesting. “Are you a sports scholarship student or something?”