WHI – Chapter 13

Chapter 13

The elevator stopped on the 48th floor. Lin Ting didn’t ask where they were going, nor did he care. He simply followed Wen Lan out of the elevator.

“Am I not looking out for you? If it were someone else, making my hot spring establishment a bloody mess and scaring away a bunch of guests, I’d hang them on the front door for a month as a public spectacle.” Wen Lan wound his way through the quiet corridor. Although there were private room doors on both sides, the sounds suggested it wasn’t a KTV.

“If you’re looking out for me, why are you stingy with a cigarette? Where’s the fire?” Lin Ting gestured with the unlit cigarette butt in his hand. “Your KTV is quite soundproof, isn’t it?”

“Hiss… Just say what you want to say, don’t beat around the bush. Isn’t this because I was afraid you’d ‘fear dying young’ again?” Wen Lan tossed the lighter from his pocket. “Is your KTV for mute people to sing in?”

“Damn it, don’t make me laugh!” Lin Ting was about to imitate Wen Lan’s previous method of lighting a cigarette when he was once again amused by the remark.

Wen Lan stopped in front of a door, pressed his fingerprint, and pushed it open.

“You’re taking me… to get a room?” Lin Ting had just taken a puff of the cigarette and hadn’t had time to savor the taste when he was shocked by the large bed before him. He swallowed the smoke straight down and coughed violently.

“Lin Ting, are you out of your mind?” Wen Lan pushed him on the back, and after they entered the room, he closed the door. “I treat you like a subordinate, and you want to sleep with me? Ah, no, you want me to sleep with you.”

The room was unlit. Outside the floor-to-ceiling window were the iconic buildings of the city center. Beyond the thin glass, the city’s most dazzling neon nightscape twinkled with tens of thousands of small squares.

Wen Lan casually picked up a bottle of mineral water from the table, unscrewed the cap, and handed it to Lin Ting. Lin Ting took it and drank a few large gulps before his coughing finally subsided.

“The cigarette doesn’t taste good, does it?” Wen Lan placed his hands on the desk and sat on it.

Lin Ting sat on the edge of the bed, pulled the ashtray on the table closer, and flicked the ash like he’d seen before. “It has no taste. Why do you guys smoke this stuff?”

“Whatever you want to do now, that’s what we want to do when we smoke,” Wen Lan looked at him.

Lin Ting stared at the wisp of white smoke rising from the cigarette tip, drifting and dissipating to the left and right. “Gu Yi, the son of my mother’s current husband.”

“And you…”

“No blood relation. She didn’t give birth to him. My parents divorced when I was in middle school.” Lin Ting felt that the nicotine had no effect in alleviating his worries. He suppressed the urge to return the cigarette butt to Wen Lan and took another drag.

“Oh… So you moved here with your mother after she remarried?” Wen Lan watched him smoke and lit one for himself.

Snap! The lighter’s blue-green flame was exceptionally leisurely in the darkness.

“No, she remarried in middle school. I lived with my grandfather first. Grandpa passed away a few months ago, so I came here.” Lin Ting, whether it was because he had just beaten someone up or because the flame had captured his mind, spoke more than he ever had to someone he didn’t care about.

“With your grandfather? What about your father? Oh right, you said your dad is also dead.”

“No…” Lin Ting interrupted him, but before he could finish half a sentence, Wen Lan seemed to realize and added, “Ah! My mouth. I didn’t mean it like that. I meant, he’s gone, as in, not here anymore. Yeah.” Wen Lan seemed a little embarrassed.

Lin Ting found his demeanor amusing and didn’t bother to explain further.

Murderer? Dead? It was all the same.

Ever since that rainy night, that night of blood and rain everywhere, splashing into his shoes and seeping into his toes, that night with the strong scent of iron mixed with the unique grassy smell of rain, that night when the struggling dying eyes and the panicked shocked eyes pressed down on him simultaneously, until he was pushed to the ground by the rain.

In his heart, he had cleanly erased the word “father.”

“Why did you bring me here? Do you want me to have sex with you?” Lin Ting extinguished the cigarette butt in the ashtray on the table and looked at Wen Lan with raised eyebrows.

“You bastard, I was being kind by giving you a room to stay in, afraid you wouldn’t be able to return to the Gu family, and you…” Wen Lan realized, laughed, jumped off the table, extinguished his cigarette butt, and made a move as if to hit him.

Lin Ting jumped off the bed laughing and ran into the bathroom, locking the door. “I found out you’re not good at taking jokes.”

“Your mouth is too foul, hurry up and open the door, I want to pry your teeth open to see what they’re made of.” Wen Lan knocked on the door from the outside. After a few rounds of banter, they both got tired of laughing and sat down by the door.

Lin Ting also sat down behind the bathroom door.

“Hey!” Wen Lan raised his hand and knocked on the door panel with his knuckles. “What are you going to do? You beat up your younger… brother?”

“We don’t even know who’s older, and besides, which eye of yours saw me as being on brotherly terms with him?” Lin Ting knew he was right behind the door and that the other person couldn’t see him, but he still turned his face to look behind him.

“Don’t know who’s older? Didn’t you ask?”

“No, I… I don’t know my exact birth date. The birth certificate was lost long ago. The household registration was changed to August for school. We’re in the same year, and it seems to be only a few days apart.” Lin Ting even found this statement ridiculous. “It seems to be at the end of the year. Maybe I knew when I was little, but then my parents’ relationship deteriorated, and they didn’t celebrate my birthday much. Then they divorced again, and I went to my grandfather’s. I don’t remember myself anymore. Now… I don’t want to ask my mother again. She might not even remember.”

A long silence followed, so long that Lin Ting thought Wen Lan had left without him noticing.

“Ah, it’s okay. I didn’t celebrate birthdays with my parents much either. It was just that Song Mi and those guys who celebrated for me every year…” Wen Lan’s voice grew lower as he spoke, and the last few words became indistinct. “How about… you celebrate with me?”

“What?”

“If you don’t know your birthday, I’ll give you mine.” Wen Lan smiled. “Brother Wen will look out for you.”

“When is your birthday?”

“Next month, probably around the same time as yours.”

“Okay, then I’ll have a birthday from now on. Damn it, it’s like we’re twins.” Lin Ting’s eyelids felt a little damp. He reached up to touch them and then wiped his hand on his clothes.

“Mm.” Wen Lan’s voice was a little choked. Even a short syllable was tinged with a tremor.

They fell into a long silence. Neither wanted to say another word, but neither wanted to move. They leaned against the door panel, drawing a sliver of warmth from each other in the darkness.

With unspoken understanding, neither asked nor spoke.

The long-suppressed emotions suddenly found a crack to escape. Lin Ting, overwhelmed by the unexpected drowsiness, drifted off to sleep, leaning against the door.

Half-dreaming, half-awake, he heard the metallic click of a lock from the door panel above. The space behind him suddenly emptied, and he felt himself being pulled onto a warm and gentle surface.

He slept very soundly that night, not even knowing if he had dreamt when he woke up in the morning.

Warm, gentle.

Mm.

Lin Ting looked at the high-end mattress beneath him and deeply felt the power of money.

Wen Lan must have left last night – after all, his subordinates were waiting for him to sing. The alarm clock by the bed clearly showed it was already past noon. Lin Ting took out his phone to check.

One contact had sent five messages.

It was Wen Lan.

– If you’re awake, go to the 33rd floor for breakfast.

– Why aren’t you awake yet? Breakfast ends at 10 AM, no extensions.

– Don’t worry, Gu Yi was warned and cleaned up and sent away last night. Brother Wen handles things cleanly and efficiently!

– If you want to stay a few more nights, tell me. I’ll input your fingerprint. This room isn’t rented out. I usually come here when I have nowhere else to go.

– Last night, I heard the staff changing the pool water and cleaning secretly whispering about you, haha. I wanted to scold them back, but considering you weren’t entirely in the right, I was furious. How about I send you a list of commercial properties under my company? You can compare and remember. Next time you want to beat someone up, choose a different opponent. I can thank you more.

Just as Lin Ting was about to reply, another message from Wen Lan arrived.

– Holy crap, you’re still not awake. Don’t tell me you’ve slept yourself to death. You’re not really sent by the opposing party, are you?

Lin Ting pressed the screen and sent a voice message: “You guessed right. The opposing party gave me 5 million and told me to come here to fight from now on. Even if I die, I have to crawl into your hot spring to die.”

– Wasted a whole night serving you, tsk.

Lin Ting looked at the phone screen and laughed for a long time before getting up to wash and prepare to go home.

He didn’t know how to face his mother and Gu Jiang. Gu Yi had meant well, but he had beaten him until his nose bled.

He only realized he hadn’t called for a car after leaving the club. Fortunately, a taxi was parked at the entrance, and Lin Ting got in.

Along the way, he considered many possibilities, such as his mother standing at the door slapping him, or his luggage being thrown out.

Until he nervously approached the small Western-style building, he realized his palms were already sweating.

Lin Ting pushed open the courtyard gate. The courtyard was empty.

He stepped inside. From within the house, he could vaguely hear the clinking of cutlery against porcelain plates – it seemed they were having Western food for lunch.

Creak – the door on the right was pushed open.

Tap, tap, tap – Lin Ting walked step by step towards the dining room.

He stopped about two meters away from the table, looking at the tabletop. Everyone’s cutlery stopped, and the atmosphere became quiet.

Gu Yi’s face was swollen, with some traces of medicinal liquid, indicating he had already been treated.

“You’re back? Gu Yi said you stayed at a friend’s house last night?” It was his mother’s voice. She had her back to Lin Ting and didn’t turn around.

No one at the dining table looked at him.

“Mm, I happened to run into a friend…” Lin Ting looked up, steadied his nerves, and cursed himself for where the fighting spirit from yesterday had gone, now so timid…

“I have something to tell you later. Go up to the study and wait for me.”

“Mm.” Lin Ting then remembered he hadn’t eaten, but with things as they were, he didn’t want to join them for a meal.

As he went upstairs, he pulled out his phone and sent Wen Lan a message:

– I’m hungry. Your breakfast only lasts until 10 AM, which is too inhumane.

– No, who eats breakfast after 10 AM? Isn’t that lunch? You didn’t eat anything, did you?

– Didn’t you say breakfast expires after 10 AM?

– …That means breakfast expires, not that you shouldn’t eat lunch. I suggest you shake your head and listen for the ringing.

– My head is full of your primitive cave hot spring water.

Lin Ting watched the screen show “typing” and then stop, and he laughed for a long time before pushing open the study door and walking in.