Chapter 15 (2/2)

He was dead.

I fell into chaos. Something had snapped in my head. “You sc.u.mbags. He was a kid who never had a single good day in his life and you make him put his life on the lines for you. There is honour amongst thieves. Yeah right! Just a bunch of horses.h.i.+t. You motherf.u.c.kers. You make him sell his life to you by doing him a few favours and then you kill him when he doesn’t want to keep working for you. You coldblooded b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. You d.a.m.n devils. I curse you, I curse your whole family, all to h.e.l.l. You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Motherf.u.c.kers. You all burn in h.e.l.l. f.u.c.k you…”

I don’t know what I said. I probably had never screamed so many profanities in my life. I don’t think they could hear me clearly either. I cried while I cursed them. I cried especially loud. I bawled my eyes out and my face was wet with tears and snot. I had never cried so much in my life either. I felt so bad that I wanted to tear my insides out. I had wanted to spoil him with my love for the rest of my life.

It’s all nothing—my ma and pa, the rental shops, the bad and the good—none of it matters, as long as you’re alive.

I held onto his finger.

I’ll do anything as long as you’re alive. I don’t need anything else.

As long as you’re alive.

Wahhhhhhhh.

No one gave a d.a.m.n about me as I screamed and wept.

I was pulled up by the hair. The devil was crouching right in front of me, smiling.

“Why ya howling like that? Someone lost their mommy and daddy?”

You f.u.c.king son of a b.i.t.c.h.

I cried so much that I couldn’t think clearly and I swung my fist out. And I think I actually hit him since he covered his mouth. Alright. I got him.

Then, I got hit on the back of my head. My nose knocked onto the floor. There was something warm. It was bleeding.

“The f.u.c.k you howling for? The boss ain’t said Bin-zi is dead,” the tall guy spat.

“Get out first,” the devil demanded.

Not dead. He wasn’t dead.

I was stupefied.

I squeezed the finger that had become a bit warm. It was still reattachable. It was reattachable within twenty-four hours.

Wait a second. I remembered when Binbin licked his fingers when he was eating chicken, his fingers were long and slender. When I f.u.c.ked him, I had held his hand under mine; it was longer than mine. But the finger in my hand now was short and fat. Also, there were thick calluses. Binbin didn’t have any. His fingers were smooth.

I threw the finger on the ground and yelled at the devil who sat back down. “This isn’t Binbin’s finger. What did you do to him?”

The man just laughed. His face was swollen from my punch and he was laughing.

“How can you tell?” he asked.

I slowly propped myself up. I was hurting all over. “What’s it to you? This isn’t his finger. Where is he?”

“You’re about to die and you still care about ‘im?”

He lit a cigarette out of nowhere, took one puff and pa.s.sed it to me.

What the h.e.l.l?

But I still took it from him and took a few puffs which calmed me down.

“You’re,” he paused and continued when he saw that I was looking at him, “Bin-zi’s boyfriend, ain’tcha?”

Boyfriend? Was it that obvious? I turned my head away.

“The f.u.c.k you being shy about?”

Would they use me to blackmail Shen Bin? “I’m his ge. What are you talking about?”

The man chortled as he lit another cigarette and sucked on it.

What was so funny? Maybe it was because I smoked his cigarette, but I kind of thought he might have not been so…

“And here I was thinking to myself.” He took another cigarette out, lit it and spat out a cloud of smoke.

“All these years I’ve been in the South, hmmph, I ain’t never seen a real man. Not one had guts. Shen Bin, though, he got guts.”

“My illness started actin’ up in the slammer and he saved me. I told ‘im I could bust ‘im out and in exchange, he’d work for me outside. He said no way. Then when I found out ‘bout his s.h.i.+t afterwards, I got someone to get rid of that piece of trash. He still didn’t wanna work for me though. Tsk, good for ‘im!”

Judging from his expression, he really thought highly of Binbin.

“But soon, outta nowhere, he told me he’d work for me and asked me to bust ‘im out ASAP. I guessed he wanted to take revenge on ya ‘cause you visited him that one time.”

“Boy, it took a long time. Took lotsa effort too, gettin’ him out. Had to set the place on fire and then put it out and send out bribes, the whole works. He went back home after he got out but I ain’t seen him take no revenge.”

I bit my lips.

The little brat. The little brat.

It was all for me.

“He’s helped me lots. Took a bullet for me just before New Year’s. Saved my a.s.s again.”

He blew out lots of rings of smoke. The car wasn’t big to begin with and the air became foggy. He rolled down the window. It was pitch black outside but I could still see that we were definitely by the river.

After a while, he turned to look at me again, studying me. “What’s so good about ya? Is f.u.c.kin’ ya better than f.u.c.kin’ a b.i.t.c.h? What does he see in ya?”

His words made me feel uncomfortable. Dammit. What was the big deal?

“I owe ’im. He’s like a brother. I won’t let ’im follow me anymore.” He rolled the windows back up and came up to me. He grabbed my jaw roughly and stared into my eyes. “You needa stick with ’im from now on. Be good to ‘im. He ain’t got family. He only got himself.”

My eyes got wet. Maybe this man was actually real to him. His eyes were filled with sorrow when he said ‘he only got himself.’

I nodded furiously.

He had gotten off the car too and soon, he and the tall guy went back on. The tall guy even patted me on the head. “Sorry, Bin-zi’s loverboy.”

I got abandoned by the river.

I was aching all over and my consciousness was staticky like I was dreaming. They probably had originally planned to kill me.

I couldn’t stand up so I just stayed there for a while. Soon, he came.

He hoisted me up and began crying when he saw how messed up I was.

I realised we both were crybabies.

I grabbed his hand and studied it. There was a new wound on his right index finger.

“Brother said whoever didn’t wanna go with him can just pretend to not know him after New Year’s but he’d have to get rid of his trigger finger. I-I’d planned to… he’s a real man so I’d wanted to go but… And when I brought the knife down, he stopped me.”

I held him tight.

Everything you did was for me.

“What did you all do for him?”

He took a moment to gather his thoughts before telling his story.

That boss had wanted to go clean and run a security company but it was still borderline illegal. He had a wife in the Northeast but always kept it a secret because he didn’t want people to hurt her. Then, last August, his wife got murdered. He decided to go back north to avenge her.

“Yannoe, Sister was pregnant. They raped her before killin’ her and even took pictures. After they killed her, they ripped out the baby. Brother and Sister were really close.”

“Those people knew Brother would hunt them down so they hired a gunman to gun him down. That’s why I became his bodyguard.”

“Brother didn’t let me go with him and he kicked everyone close to him away. I just found a bunch of murderers and people with nothin’ left to lose to go up north with him.”

I didn’t tell him everything. I think the boss originally wanted him to go along. He didn’t have anything left to lose either, and he was fierce and willing to risk his life. The boss knew he was a loyal guy so he said that on purpose to let him walk right into the trap.

But the boss had a sorry life too, for sure.

He had let us go in the end. His eyes had some humanity left in it.

“Ge, he called sayin’ that he was sorry. He didn’t know you were my…”

“Boyfriend.” I finished his sentence. I felt absolutely wonderful seeing him blush. ‘Boyfriend,’ so what? No harm came to that t.i.tle.

“Thank goodness I was your boyfriend. If not, they would’ve butchered me into pieces.”

He pursed his lips. “If he killed you, I’d f.u.c.k him over.”

Then it occurred to me that the boss probably let me go because he knew that Binbin would.

But I was really happy and the tiny bit of jealousy that I had towards the boss disappeared without a trace.

Heehee. The brat only liked me.

Heehee.

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