Chapter 16: Chancellor

21ST FEB 2022~ VERALUCTL

After another ten or so minutes, Mo Cong stood up, looked around once more, then left in the same low-key manner as he had entered.

Without hesitation, An Jie grabbed his jacket and bag and followed him out.

Mo Cong turned into a small alleyway as if he had done so many times before. At first, there were a few couples making out and trades being made in the dark, but slowly, there became less and less people, their noises growing more and more distant. Even the street lights seemed to slack off in their work.

Mo Cong had one hand in his pocket, his steps unhurried, his posture casually relaxed yet as if keeping an eye on his surroundings.

After crossing several similarly sparsely populated alleys, he walked into an even narrower place. Only one light still shone there, its lampshade broken, leaving behind a bare bulb that flashed occasionally.  

A man in a dark coat stood beneath the light.

Mo Cong walked over and nodded at him. “Si-ge1.”

The man raised his head. He was about thirty or so with a very svelte-looking face, a pair of rimless glasses on his nose. Smiling, he looked at Mo Cong. “What, did you meet with the old rat?”

Mo Cong felt out a cigarette from his pocket, held it in his mouth, and replied in a mumble. ‘Si-ge’ very naturally took out his lighter and lit it for him. “How was it?”

Mo Cong took in a deep breath. “It’s done.”

Si-ge’s expression didn’t change much, he only nodded. “The old rat had no other choice; Cao Bing had pushed him too far. That Cao Bing will never become much; all this for so little money. Oh, and did you get his stuff?”

Mo Cong looked at him with a trace of mockery. “Si-ge, have you gone stupid? Giving it to me, does he want to die?”

Si-ge frowned. “That’s true. What a pussy, that old rat, but it’s best to find a way to get it as fast as possible…”

“And what will you do with it?” Mo Cong leaned against a utility pole and breathed out a puff of smoke. He inhaled deeply, the smoke he let out like mist. “Even if you really want Cao Bing to die, you might not have to use it. Even rabbits will bite if they are pushed too much, but… if he knows that the old rat and his items are in our hands, what do you think he’ll do?”

Si-ge mused for a moment. “Don’t get carried away, Cao Bing is a tough one and a backstabber; he would even betray his own blood brother. Such people can’t be trusted…”

“Who said he could be trusted? But I heard that Cao Bing recently…” Mo Cong smiled meaningfully. “Got into the land business.”

“Mhm?” Si-ge paused. “You mean the land he bought in the east? What about it?”

“Nothing.” Mo Cong smiled eerily. “That old gun Zhai has been keeping a low profile for many years now, silently washing out his business2, but that doesn’t mean the lion’s den is somewhere a dog can enter.”

“The east suburb?” Si-ge’s first reaction was denial. “That can’t be, Zhao Haidong’s people stopped being active there long ago.”

“Whether it can or can’t, you’ll know when you see it. I won’t tell you the specifics yet.” Mo Cong narrowed his eyes and flicked away the cigarette’s ash. “What if we make a bet…”

“Fuck you man, you’ve got your eyes on my new car again, haven’t you?” Si-ge snickered. “A bet with you? If I do that, I won’t even be able to keep my pants on my ass. Alright, we’ll do as you say… Everyone knows now that I have a ‘chancellor in black’; who knows when they’ll come digging after you. Don’t you go switching sides when it happens.”

Mo Cong laughed. This time, the expression on his face was much more normal; without all the gloom, it was as if he was still that warm-hearted, enthusiastic boy neighbor. “Give me a Carrera GT with a beauty sitting inside and who knows, maybe I really will switch sides. Keep an eye out, Si-ge.”

Si-ge pointed at his face seriously and asked, “Do I look like a beauty?”

Mo Cong paused. “Like… the beauty’s father.”

“You little brat, screw off!”

Mo Cong laughed and waved at him. “Then we’ll leave it here, I’ll go back now.”

“Chancellor, wait!” Si-ge suddenly called out, his expression becoming serious. “It’s Zhai Haidong’s birthday at the end of the month. The invitation is here. Are you going?”

“Oh, old gun…” Mo Cong’s steps didn’t falter as he took a glance at Si-ge, the corners of his mouth rising slightly in an expression between amusement and mockery. “I don’t care.”

He left without looking back.

Si-ge sighed, taking off his glasses and wiping them with a corner of his clothes before walking off in another direction.

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An Jie passed Mo Cong on the main street and hailed a taxi. It was very late already. All the taxi drivers were experienced in reading the mood. The young man who just got into the car gave an address and then sat there sullenly, his expression dark.

This one had probably just experienced something not so pleasant. The driver didn’t make a nuisance of himself by trying to strike up a conversation. He reached out and turned on the radio which was playing an old song, each word enunciated clearly with a touch of sappiness. 

An Jie looked out the window. As he followed Mo Cong, it was as if he was looking at the An Yin Hu from ten years ago: young, self-assured, untamed… But An Yin Hu didn’t have such extreme expressions, such radical eyes.

Mo Yannan had spent his whole life holed up in his sea of knowledge, not understanding the ways of the human world, not understanding the human heart. The man was cowardly, the overwhelming complexity of society causing him a great deal of stress, fear, and even inferiority. He lost his wife, leaving his young children without a mother. He felt guilt… but such guilt and love could only be expressed through secret attention. 

His children grew up day by day, the restlessness and rebellion of youth making them distanced from their useless father, even hating him. He panicked. He was even more of a child than them: naive, simple-minded, unable to communicate.

That child, Mo Cong, was undoubtedly a good actor, able to present himself as he wished in front of different people… Young people being rebellious: there was nothing wrong with that, but he was stepping out of line.

Zhai Haidong. An Jie’s tongue rolled over that familiar yet strange name. Ten years ago, when that old gun wasn’t the old gun yet, he wasn’t called Zhai Haidong. He had a louder, more dreadful name:

Shui Shi.

An Jie suddenly felt his glorious ideal of becoming a new person, studying hard, and becoming a useful member of society was in danger of breaking down. 

Getting off the taxi, he glanced at his phone; it was almost eleven at night. He sighed and walked into his neighborhood. Just as he turned to his building, An Jie stopped dead in his tracks and frowned.

There was a row of large bins under every building in the block. Apparently, ever since SARS, the rubbish chutes of every building had been blocked off in the name of hygiene and preventing the spread of bacteria, so slowly, the residents had taken to bagging their trash and taking it to the bins downstairs when they went to work. A garbage truck came every morning to collect the trash.

Some time ago, when An Jie had come down to buy a midnight snack, he had noticed a familiar figure by the nearby rubbish bin. He remembered that girl; she was in the same class as him, not too pretty but very durable; she spoke softly and he had never seen her with those crazy girls running around during breaks.

Her name was… something ‘Ling’.

The girl had kept rummaging through the bin, a few bottles in the plastic bag by her feet. Her hair was a little messy; the weather wasn’t too hot, but the long hair near her temples was sticky with sweat and plastered to her chin, either from embarrassment or fatigue. Back then, An Jie hadn’t dared to move, and had walked back up as quietly as he could.

How embarrassing would it be for her if she was seen by a fellow classmate rummaging through the bins in the dead of the night? Ever since then, An Jie had avoided going downstairs during that time period; it just so happened that he came back late today without realizing it though, and she also just happened to be outside of his unit.

Sighing, An Jie turned to the nearby convenience store, bought a bottle of beer, and sat far away on the curb next to the lawn, hiding himself in the shadows of the trees, waiting for the girl to finish.

Perhaps because it was Friday, but a lot of families seemed to have done a more thorough cleaning than usual and brought out a lot more trash; the girl seemed to have decided on a bin and had been tossing through it for quite a while. It wasn’t too comfortable sitting outside on a late autumn evening; An Jie wrapped his jacket around him tighter, slouching over a little, feeling slightly depressed.

He recalled the old professor, the row of holes on Mo Jin’s ear, and Mo Cong’s gloomy expression, and suddenly felt like he had gotten into trouble on a whim.

He might as well move away again, continue being a little translator. He wasn’t afraid of adventure, but he did mind being bothered.

“Eh? An Jie, are you here… pretending to be a mushroom?”

He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn’t notice a person approaching him, their words startling him. Mo Cong looked oddly at the person curled up by the road in a dark jacket. He really did look like a mushroom. An Jie’s mind turned quickly. He should have known from the start that Mo Cong’s ability to approach someone without a presence was definitely not natural.

Mo Cong rubbed his hands and bent down to talk to him. “A drink? Hey, I say, a breakup isn’t that bad, right?” His expression was honest but his tone heavy with humor, completely different from the Mo Cong he had only just seen. An Jie sighed inwardly. What an undiscovered diamond of the acting world.

An Jie raised a finger for him to keep his voice down before pointing his chin towards where the girl stood. “That girl is in my class. I originally thought that it wasn’t a good time to walk over and planned to wait for her to finish packing before going inside, but I don’t know if she’s planning to find gold in that bin or what; I’ve frozen up and she’s still not done.”

Mo Cong stretched out his neck, took a look and lowered his voice, his expression perverted. “Hm… not bad, but not as good as our Xiao Jin.”

“You Xiao Jin is far too trendy,” An Jie smiled ruefully. “I’m old, I belong to the generation above; how could I keep up with such strong footsteps?”

Mo Cong smiled. He suddenly noticed a particular vicissitude in the words of the young man by him, shrunken up in a ball on this cold, icy night. No matter how flirtatiously or careless he said it, the feeling could still be felt through his expression and his tone.

He looked up. The girl had finally finished sorting through her loot and was now heading towards her next target. She walked in a hurry, her figure quickly disappearing behind another building.

“Oi, the beauty from your class is gone, you’re free now.”

An Jie stretched and picked up the empty bottle. “Let’s go.”

The two didn’t speak a word, even after reaching their respective doors. Perhaps it was because it was too late, or perhaps it was because of fatigue.

In this city, there were people with evil intentions everywhere.

Author’s Notes: Comments comments~~ rolls around

1‘Si’ for the number four, and ‘ge’ for ‘older brother’ to show respect. ‘Fourth brother’.

2Making his business appear legal, or actually making it legal.