Chapter 8 - 1#

That night, Jiang Qin went to sleep in the study.

Jin Yan coaxed the child to bed, then sat on the edge of the bed, sighing repeatedly, looking quite sentimental.

Li Meng, wearing his little floral pajamas, asked eagerly, “Will Jiang Qin really leave us?”

Jin Yan didn’t speak, and after a long while, he asked back, “Did he say he wouldn’t take you with him?”

“Yeah, he said you need my shares.” Li Meng suddenly felt very curious. “Dad, what’s wrong with Jiang Qin? Why are you still looking for someone else outside?”

“I only love your mom.”

“Then what’s the deal with that Xu Xiaoxuan?”

Xu Xiaoxuan was the female star who called Jin Yan saying she was pregnant. Jin Yan didn’t even dare to confirm it. His first instinct was to give money, lots of money, just begging that Jiang Qin wouldn’t find out about this.

He wasn’t afraid that Jiang Qin would break up with him if he found out—at that time, he couldn’t imagine that Jiang Qin would actually break up with him one day. He just felt that, whether it was true or not, Jiang Qin would be very sad if he knew.

Jin Yan knew from a young age that there weren’t many people in this world who were good to him, and Jiang Qin was the first on the list.

“I really drank too much at that time,” Jin Yan said dejectedly. “Thinking about it now, there must have been something wrong with that wine. In that kind of place, it’s not guaranteed that the wine wasn’t spiked with something to boost the mood… The problem is Wei Hong was there that day too. He didn’t drink any less than me. How did he manage to stroll home?”

Li Meng said disdainfully, “In the final analysis, isn’t it just that your self-control isn’t strong enough?”

“What do you know? If you walk by the river often, how can your shoes not get wet? Alcohol is a harmful thing. You’d better touch it less when you grow up.”

Jin Yan thought for a while, then said, “No, your mom mentioned something else today… The problem is I can’t remember anything else I did to wrong him.”

Li Meng scrambled up. “Right, right! That day I went to the hotel to find him, he said he felt you’ve changed now, and he also said he finds you scary! what bad things did you do that Jiang Qin found out about?”

Father and son looked at each other blankly, both completely clueless.

But asking Jiang Qin directly was impossible—Jiang Qin was unimaginably tight-lipped. In the revolutionary era, he would have been a standard martyr.

Li Meng asked cautiously, “Dad, if Jiang Qin really leaves, where do you think he’ll go?”

Jin Yan said casually, “How would I know?”

“Will he stay in this city? That way I can still visit him every weekend.”

“I don’t know.”

“Then… does he have any relatives?” Li Meng rolled his eyes and said, “I’ve never heard that Jiang Qin has family.”

Jin Yan was slightly shaken, and in an instant, he remembered Jiang Qin’s parents.

His impression of that university professor couple was now very faint. The most profound scene was once when he met Jiang Qin on the street. He stopped and just said two words when his mother came, pulled Jiang Qin away, and whispered, “Why are you hanging out with this kind of person? Let’s go, let’s go!” while looking up and glancing at Jin Yan.

That moment left such a deep impression on Jin Yan that even the scene of his parents chasing them out with a knife later became somewhat blurred, but that glance remained in Jin Yan’s memory.

From then on, he never took that highly educated couple to heart again. When Jiang Qin came to this city with him to strive, they were both penniless. Later, when they made it, Jiang Qin started sending money to his parents, but not long after, the couple changed their account number, obviously a true severance of ties.

Later, Jiang Qin used Jin Yan’s subordinates—that was one of the few times he used Jin Yan’s power—to find out where his parents had moved, and then often bought things and had people send them over.

But later, those things were returned too. The day the package was received, Jiang Qin wasn’t home. Jin Yan saw it and had someone throw it away, not letting Jiang Qin know afterwards.

If they divorced, would Jiang Qin go back?

If he went back, would his parents accept him?

Jin Yan used to hate Jiang Qin’s family very much. Later, as he grew older, he slowly began to understand the thoughts of that kind of aloof, wealthy, traditional scholarly family. He tried to put himself in their shoes and felt that the possibility of Jiang Qin being accepted after going back was really quite low.

Can’t divorce, he thought heavily in his heart.

That night, Jin Yan lay alone in bed and had a dream.

He dreamed of a summer many years ago. It seemed he was only seven or eight years old, moving into a small courtyard in an alley with his nanny. The neighbor’s little boy stood at the courtyard gate, his skin as white as a girl’s, his eyes black and wet, looking inside curiously.

“Hey, you, what’s your name?”

“…My name is Jiang Qin.”

“Jiang what? Hmm, never mind. Come on, brother will take you to catch fish in the river.”

“Oh, okay.”

So the young little Jiang Qin foolishly put his hand in Jin Yan’s palm. The two kids ran to catch fish, catch cicadas, and raid bird nests, playing wildly all summer, until Jiang Qin’s parents returned from their study tour abroad and hated it immensely after learning everything.

“What did Mom tell you? Stay away from the neighbor’s kid, understand?”

“Their family aren’t good people. His dad is… his mom isn’t his dad’s proper wife either. You wouldn’t understand even if I told you. Anyway, families like ours can’t get involved in this kind of thing!”

“Look at what you’ve learned all summer? Not playing the piano, not practicing calligraphy. Go kneel by the well!”

“Finish the homework Dad assigned you before dinner! You’re not allowed to go out and play casually anymore!”

…

Jin Yan lived in the alley for two years until the news came that his mom had died.

An illegitimate son without status immediately fell into a situation of helplessness: his dad only remembered him occasionally, and his brothers wished he would die sooner.

During that time, Jin Yan fell in love with listening to Jiang Qin play the piano.

When Jiang Qin practiced the piano, he would open the backyard window. Jin Yan would scramble onto the wall like a monkey and hear him practicing “Für Elise” over and over again in the piano room.

At that time, he didn’t know the name of the piece, he just thought it sounded good. Later, he heard people play it at various concerts and high-end receptions, but no one could play it as well as the Jiang Qin in his memory. It was simply the sound of nature.

When Jin Yan was eleven or twelve, he became the leader of the kids on the street. He showed typical paternal genes: cruel, decisive, resolute, charismatic, a born leader and formidable figure. Jiang Qin was still going to school properly at that time and never came to the street to hang out with them, but he was still protected by Jin Yan. Whenever he was blocked in a small alley and robbed of his pocket money, as long as he shouted “Brother Jin,” Jin Yan would immediately appear out of nowhere. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call it a divine intervention.

During that time, “The Legend of the Condor Heroes” was popular all over the streets and alleys. Jin Yan secretly ran to the video hall to watch it. Hearing Jiang Qin call him “Brother Jin” in a childish voice made him feel heroic. From then on, ignoring Jiang Qin’s objections, he insisted on calling him “Sister Rong.” This nickname lasted until Jiang Qin was fifteen or sixteen, because by then Jiang Qin was in high school, his fists were hard, and if Jin Yan dared to call him that again, he would hold Jin Yan down and beat him.

At that time, Jin Yan was already the veritable leader of the little hooligans in this area. Not to mention riding the wind and clouds, he certainly had a hundred responses to a single call. Because of fighting for territory with weapons and group fights with knives, he had been to the juvenile detention center several times. Even the most experienced beat cop would get a headache hearing his name.

And Jiang Qin was the other extreme: he was refined and handsome, excellent in studies, a senior “Three Good Student” for many years, played the piano well, and was fluent in English. It was said that his parents had long planned to send him abroad for studies.

Such a person dared to pull Jin Yan down and beat him. Jin Yan would cry out in pain but never fought back.

Actually, those were the bleakest days of Jin Yan’s life: after years of excessive drinking and lust, his father finally died under a woman’s skirt, leaving behind countless family assets and a smuggling route worth ten thousand gold. Jin Yan’s older brothers were all grown up by then, and none of them were pushovers. They immediately fought in front of the mourning hall.

When his father was around, he could still take care of his late-born son a little. Once he was gone, no one really cared about Jin Yan anymore. If Jiang Qin hadn’t secretly given him pocket money and stolen money from home to help him pay tuition, Jin Yan would probably have been expelled from high school then and there, truly becoming a hooligan who robbed homes and plundered houses.

Many years later, Jin Yan got drunk at a dinner table once and forcibly hugged Jiang Qin, telling others: “God actually treats me very well! When I was young, I had my old mom. When my old mom left, I still had my old dad. When my old dad kicked the bucket, I still had your Brother Jiang to discipline and take care of me. Without your Brother Jiang, how could I be where I am today!”

The people at the table all agreed and came over to toast Jiang Qin, making him laugh and cry.

Jin Yan was more than a year older than Jiang Qin, but he knew about the birds and the bees several years earlier. At that time, Jin Yan ran to the video hall every day to kill time. Sometimes they showed some crude soft-core porn movies, and he would watch from the back, his blood boiling after watching.

But there were very few little delinquent girls hanging out with them at that time, and even if there were a few, they weren’t pretty. The first beauty to appear in Jin Yan’s life was his “Sister Rong.”

When Jiang Qin was fifteen, he had already started to develop. His voice deepened, he shot up in height, his skin was as white as ice and snow, and his eyes were a pale amber. He made the little girls in school blush and their hearts beat faster. Logically speaking, he didn’t resemble the heavily made-up naked women in the porn movies at all, yet Jin Yan felt that Jiang Qin was beautiful no matter how he looked, tempting no matter how he looked. In the middle of summer, when Jiang Qin wore short sleeves, he even caused Jin Yan to have nosebleeds a few times.