Chapter 53: A Gentleman… Has Lifelong Worries
“Oh my heavens,” Jiang Xiaoyuan sighed. “What kind of person have you become after drinking?”
Qi Lian smiled at her, swaying back and forth before suddenly collapsing onto the car roof with a loud thud. At first—when he still managed to call for a designated driver—his face was slightly flushed. Now, after being hit by the cold wind, his brain seemed frozen.
His face was deathly pale, his eyes half-open, as though he were sleepwalking.
After drinking, there’s usually a brief period of transition between feeling the effects and becoming completely incoherent. Jiang Xiaoyuan figured that his transition period was over, and now he had officially entered the stage of complete inebriation.
“Don’t you dare lie down!” Jiang Xiaoyuan jumped up in alarm, anxiously grabbing his elbow. “Get in the car, will you? Please hold on for a bit longer. If you really pass out, I won’t be able to carry you!”
Qi Lian slowly withdrew his elbow from her grip, lifted his hand, and placed his scorching palm on top of Jiang Xiaoyuan’s head.
“What happened to your forehead?” he asked softly, his voice surprisingly coherent.
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “I scraped it falling down the stairs.”
“Be careful,” Qi Lian said gently. “You only have one body for a lifetime. If you really hurt yourself, there’s nowhere to get a replacement.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “…”
“Alright, mister, could you please get in the car first?” Jiang Xiaoyuan tried to coax him in. “Don’t worry, I’m tougher than a Nokia phone. I won’t be so vulnerable to falls.”
But who would’ve thought that this drunkard, with just one hand resting lightly on the car roof, couldn’t be moved at all, no matter how hard Jiang Xiaoyuan pushed. She ended up sweating all over but still couldn’t budge him.
Taking a step back, she put her hands on her hips and sighed. “Do you even know you’re a bad drunk?”
Qi Lian seriously refuted: “I’m not. I never cause trouble.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “…”
Qi Lian: “What was I saying? Oh, right. That day, I planned to kill someone.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan didn’t take him seriously and sighed dramatically: “You’re still on about that? I’m honestly impressed.”
“That day… someone stabbed my leg,” Qi Lian continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. He lay sprawled on the car roof, squinting at the distant intersection. “I was sad and furious. When I floored the gas pedal, I thought, someday, I’ll make them pay for that slash.”
His voice didn’t sound particularly drunk—just slow, softer than usual.
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “Who was it?”
“I don’t remember,” Qi Lian said quietly. “I don’t even recall what the grudge was. It was probably over something trivial… like someone not showing face to someone else.”
He paused briefly, his voice carrying a bit of a nasal tone as he continued, “Old Man Chen told you that I was the one who bailed him out. The truth is, I didn’t even remember who he was at the time. My house was always empty, and I was desperate to be noticed by others. I never missed an opportunity to show off.”
“My house was always empty too.” Jiang Xiaoyuan shrugged. She jumped up onto the curb, pressing her hands against Qi Lian’s shoulders, which were all muscle and bone. “Come on, get in the car, will you?”
Qi Lian obediently walked around the car and headed to the passenger side, opening the door and preparing to get in. He seemed steady on his feet, not at all like someone who was drunk… But as soon as he tried to step into the car, he tripped, and his whole body flew into the car from the passenger side.
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “…”
Heaven help me.
She had no choice but to crawl in from the other side and use her hands and feet to help Qi Lian up.
Qi Lian: “A gentleman… has lifelong worries. Liang Qichao[mfn]Liang Qichao was a prominent Chinese intellectual and political figure during the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China. He was a leading proponent of reform and modernization in China, and played a significant role in the intellectual and political movements of his time.[/mfn] once said, the greatest suffering in life is the burden of unfinished responsibilities… Thank you.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “You’re welcome—what a bunch of nonsense though. It’s stressing me out.”
Qi Lian struggled to sit upright in the passenger seat, letting Jiang Xiaoyuan fasten him securely with the seatbelt. He stared straight ahead at the intersection. As the Cold Clothing Festival approached, people would burn paper clothes for their ancestors, and faint flickers of firelight could still be seen among the scattered paper ashes along the roadside.
But there are no ghosts in this world. Once the ancestors have passed, they’re simply gone—disappearing into the infinite parallel dimensions, leaving behind only shadows in the minds of the living, waiting to be gently erased by time over the years.
“My dad always had someone on the side,” Qi Lian said softly. “He even had an illegitimate son, about the same age as me. That kid grew up to be a thug. On my first day of high school, he blocked me at the school gate with a group of guys and slapped me.”
When he said these words, he spoke clearly. His thoughts were surprisingly organized, as though he were fully sober.
Jiang Xiaoyuan:“Then why didn’t you call the police?”
“Yeah, why didn’t I?” Qi Lian smiled. “You wouldn’t understand. As a kid, calling the police felt like… what’s the word… like telling the teacher on someone. Even if it got him punished, I’d still feel like I’d lost to him.”
While restarting the car, Jiang Xiaoyuan nodded in understanding. “Got it, it’s the second-year syndrome.”
Other than fighting violence with violence, everything else seemed like cowardice—when bullied by a thug, you had to personally become a thug and use the same thuggish methods to solve the problem. If bitten by a dog, you had to crouch down and bare your teeth in return, to show that even higher primates aren’t easy to mess with.
Rationally, everyone knows it’s kind of ridiculous, but at that particular age, some people just think that way.
And then there are others who think like that their entire lives.
Jiang Xiaoyuan shook her head, choosing not to comment. She wasn’t much better than Qi Lian back then herself. Setting up the GPS to his house, she prepared to make a U-turn.
Qi Lian rambled incoherently until he fell asleep, while Jiang Xiaoyuan followed the frustrating and unreliable navigation, taking countless wrong turns along the way. Eventually, she finally made her way to Qi Lian’s bachelor apartment.
After barely waking up the drunkard, Jiang Xiaoyuan helped him up the stairs.
Once she’d settled him on the couch, she stretched her sore neck and said, “Alright, I’m heading out.”
Qi Lian, curled pitifully on the couch, weakly waved her off.
At the door, Jiang Xiaoyuan glanced back, catching sight of the faint light in his half-closed eyes. She changed her mind and turned around.
“Poor guy,” she thought. She rummaged through his fridge, found a carton of milk. After checking that it had not yet expired, she heated it up in the microwave before bringing it to Qi Lian.
Having slept a bit, Qi Lian seemed slightly more alert, blinking his heavy eyelids. “You didn’t leave?”
It was Jiang Xiaoyuan’s first time genuinely taking care of someone, and she was awkward but sincere about it.
“No, I didn’t. Here, drink this,” she said. “After you drink it, throw up, and then I’ll make you some noodles before I go.”
Qi Lian, trying hard to think, replied, “I don’t have any noodles.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan waved it off, confident. “No worries, instant noodles work the same.”
After vomiting and washing his face with cold water, Qi Lian heard a loud “sizzle” from the kitchen, as if something was about to explode. Jolting awake, he rushed over, only to find oil and water splattering everywhere under high heat, while the “genius chef” Jiang Xiaoyuan stood there, one hand holding a pot lid like a shield, the other poised with an egg, uncertain about how to crack it.
Seeing him approach, she shouted through the smoke, “Which end of the egg should I crack to keep the shell from falling into the pot?”
Qi Lian: “…”
He quickly turned on the range hood, poured a cup of cold water into the pot to calm things down, then took the egg from her hand. “Do us both a favor and step aside—have you eaten yet?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan, feeling a bit embarrassed: “Hehe.”
Qi Lian swiftly chopped up a pile of vegetables before the water in the pot started boiling. Then, with a quick tap and a crack, he dropped two eggs into the pot, expertly cooking the noodles with a casual kind of domestic grace.
Watching him, Jiang Xiaoyuan suddenly asked:“So, what happened next?”
Qi Lian: “What?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “After you, with your injured leg, went to kill someone—what happened next?”
Qi Lian was silent for a moment, then calmly stirred the pot with his chopsticks. “That day, I didn’t make it because something happened on the way. Someone else went instead, a friend—a young guy with a baby face who used to follow me around and call me ‘brother.’ He stabbed someone and later got sentenced to prison. Luckily, the person survived, so there’s still a chance he’ll get out one day. Another friend heard about what happened, got blind drunk… His family situation wasn’t great. His dad was abusive, used to hit people when drunk, once even slapped his mom deaf in one ear. It’s ironic—at some point, he started drinking too. That day, after getting drunk, he had a fight with his dad, pulled out a knife, and slit his dad’s throat. When he sobered up, he jumped from the rooftop and killed himself.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan’s eyes widened in shock.
Qi Lian: “Pass me the salt,”
The kitchen wasn’t well lit. Jiang Xiaoyuan, who hasn’t recovered from her shock, quickly grabbed a box of white crystals. She couldn’t tell whether it was salt or sugar, so she sneaked a few grains to taste, but couldn’t distinguish between salty or sweet before Qi Lian swiftly took it from her hands.
“The three friends who went with me to get Old Man Chen back… two of them are done for in this life. The other, still in one piece, was forced to go abroad by his family. He just came back recently,” Qi Lian fished out a noodle, tasted it, and decided it was done, so he turned off the heat. “Grab a bowl, it’s in the cabinet next to you. The one who went to prison was just released, so today Old Man Chen treated us, and we had a few too many drinks.”
Qi Lian’s hair was still damp from washing his face, hanging loosely over his forehead. His eyes looked a bit misty. “The one who went abroad got a meaningless degree and has been drifting aimlessly. Now, following his family’s advice, he’s taken a job at a small state-owned enterprise, probably settling down for good. Fangzhou… Fangzhou just went with his wife for a prenatal checkup, about to become a father. As for me? These past few years, I’ve been drifting from place to place, working for that invisible savior.”
Life is like a fragile surface, ready to crack at any moment; a single misstep can cause a split from one side to the other. Years later, looking back, the cracks grow wider, and the people who were once together find themselves separated in worlds that are forever out of reach.
Once again, Qi Lian couldn’t help but think of Xu Jingyang again.
In some ways, that person changed the entire course of his life.
“Your extreme reaction to the world doesn’t prove your strength or toughness,” the person in the wheelchair had once said to him on a summer afternoon. Qi Lian could still recall it word for word.
“When the world slaps you, and you jump up and curse, the more the world slaps you, the more it shapes you into someone who just keeps cursing. Do you remember what you’re supposed to do? Do you remember who you are? You’re really just a pitiful little thing.”
Neither of them bothered finding a place to sit. They each stood in the kitchen, holding a bowl of soup noodles and eating right there.
Seeing Qi Lian lost in some kind of memory, Jiang Xiaoyuan couldn’t resist asking: “Why do you call Xu Jingyang a savior?”
“Because he told me one truth,” Qi Lian replied, “When you find the existence of the crack, you have to jump, even if it kills you. Otherwise, it’ll be too late.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan thought to herself, What kind of nonsense is this?
She listened, completely baffled, suspecting that Qi Lian still hadn’t fully sobered up.
Qi Lian glanced at her and noticed a strand of her hair falling from her ponytail, brushing softly against her cheek. Suddenly, under the influence of alcohol, he had an urge to tuck it behind her ear. He raised his hand halfway before realizing what he was doing, awkwardly freezing with his hand suspended mid-air.
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “…”
Qi Lian: “…”
Qi Lian’s mind went blank for a full two seconds before he snapped back to reality, clearing his throat. To cover up the awkwardness, he reached past her and grabbed a bottle of rice vinegar from the shelf, asking sheepishly: “Do you want some?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “…Are you originally from Shanxi?”
Newly inducted Shanxi native Qi Lian, trying to maintain his composure, added an absurd amount of vinegar to his bowl and took a sour, eye-watering bite. The veins on his forehead stood out.
“Let’s just treat it as a wake-up call,” he thought.
Jiang Xiaoyuan’s holiday felt as short as a matchstick—before she could even see the light, it was already burned out.
The next day, she got up at 5:10 a.m., started working on her Nirvana marketing account, finished up, ate something simple, and at 8:30 a.m., Teacher Jiang arrived right on time.
Jiang Bo didn’t look much better than Jiang Xiaoyuan, who had tumbled down the stairs. One side of his face said “sleep-deprived,” while the other side said “don’t mess with me.” He walked in without saying a word, threw a folder on the table.
Empress Dowager Jiang said: “Preliminary contest registration materials. You go prepare them. Show me your draft in three days, and I’ll review it before submitting. Also, help me greet a client later. I need to go find somewhere to crash.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “Boss, your face looks grim, did you sell a kidney?”
“Shut up,” Jiang Bo gave her a cold view of the back of his head. “Do you know what ‘layer-by-layer selection’ in the regional preliminaries means? It means everyone has to use their connections and network! Do you think you just submit a few pieces and that’s it? The selection committee can’t possibly review all those entries! I’ve spent two days drinking with idiots, and I’m really at my limit.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “…”
Jiang Bo: “What are you looking at? It’s not just about skill. Lots of young girls spend more time on their faces than you spend working. There are experts everywhere. If you don’t make the right connections, your work won’t even get seen. If you want to get things done, you need to hustle.”
With that, Jiang Bo waved impatiently and disappeared into the break room for a nap.
Jiang Xiaoyuan looked silently down at the preliminary contest requirements—“Prepare a short self-introduction, create a bridal look based on the theme ‘Spring Bride,’ provide a demonstration video, bring your own model, and keep the total time under 45 minutes.”
Setting everything else aside, the amount of effort required to prepare a complete bridal look, from conception to execution, was enormous. That didn’t even include the time to shoot the video, source the bridal outfit, or find a model.
And after all that hard work, was it really true that no one would even look at her submission if she didn’t pull some strings?
Before her journey had even begun, the enthusiasm Jiang Xiaoyuan had felt for the contest had already faded by half.
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