Chapter 16 (2/2)

How come I had never heard him mention it?

Of course, she still told me to be careful.

She had always been scared that Shen Bin came to take revenge. She said that she never thought this kid would be this sweet, and that if she knew she wouldn’t have asked that second brother for that favour.

What comes around goes around. If she had not done that extra thing, I wouldn’t have my Binbin now.

My pa said to me, his woman only had her baby son in her heart. Whoever was nice to her son was her family; whoever was bad to her son was her enemy.

Perhaps most mothers are like this?

Several months went by in peace.

Shen Bin and I lived in the new place, watching the shop by day and going home by night.

He went over to my house whenever he got the time. Aunty this, aunty that—he made my mom a happy woman.

Sometimes I couldn’t go back, he would invite himself over. He would go grocery shopping with my mom, help her in the kitchen, chitchat about everyday gossip with her and even play mah-jong with the old ladies when they were missing a fourth player.

I had never known how to display filial affection. I had always been doted on heavily by my mom. I would reach out and there would be clothes; I would open my mouth and there would be food. I even learned to talk back when I grew up.

Before long, I became jealous. How come my twenty-something-year relations.h.i.+p with my mom couldn’t even compare to Shen Bin’s hundred-day-or-so relations.h.i.+p with her?

I questioned the little brat, “Where did you learn to suck up like that?”

The little brat retorted, “Why would I need to suck up with mom?” He lowered his head and told me that he never had a mom this good.

I felt pretty guilty.

I never thought my mom was that good. My mom didn’t have much education. She was naggy, stingy, biased and sometimes harsh.

To which the little brat said, “Aunty is good. She is so good to me. She even makes underwear for me.”

It used to be my s.h.i.+rt. My ma noticed that I wasn’t wearing it anymore and wanted to remake it into boxers, which I outright rejected. In the end, the little brat began to wear the s.h.i.+rt-turned-underwear around day in and day out, even flas.h.i.+ng it in front of the mirror and asking me if it looked good.

Hey, why don’t you just hurry to bed? If your ge gets a nose bleed, you’re going to have to pay for the dry cleaning. Thank you very much.

My pa praised him, saying he who recognizes his wrongs is virtuous. I swear my pa almost changed his name to Shen Guo, middle name, Gaizhi.

The little brat stood there, tall and stern—he got scared by the old tricks that my pa liked to pull. He came back saying, “Uncle is really knowledgeable. He reads these really thick books.” He told me that most of the characters he couldn’t even read and even if he did, he didn’t understand what they meant.

It was just Guwen Guanzhi in traditional characters. Geez.

Then, the brat started learning Cla.s.sical Chinese with my pa and tested me when he came back home, “What’s the line before ‘the autumn water connected the sky at the horizon, forming a unity’?”

Oh my G.o.d, let’s spend more time discussing the issue of who will be on top instead, please.

I really didn’t expect it to turn out like this.

Around the end of April, a shooting called the April 23rd Murder took place in Fushun, Liaoning, and shocked the entire country. The criminals acted five times in one week, killing six families, totalling twenty-two people, not even sparing the children and elderly.

Complete wipe-out.

Binbin said, that was the way his boss did things, quick and fierce like the lightning, never leaving loose ends.

Then there was no follow-up. It was likely going to become another one of the Republic’s unsolved cases, just like the ’96 Ripper Case in City N.

And I was proven wrong again.

The case was solved and some reporter wrote a doc.u.mentary novel based on it. The three felons were all shot on sight, including the boss who gave me a smoke.

But the boss’ episode did not just end like that.

Before Labour Day, I received a registered mail for Shen Bin. The letter went to my shop—thank goodness my shop was a pretty recognizable icon. It was from some real estate company in Shanghai, asking Binbin to go over and do a home inspection.

We had no idea what was going on but we went anyway. The company was in Pudong. They said their development had been finished for a long time and our unit was the only one who hadn’t done an inspection yet. The lady asked us for the pre-sale contract but how could we possibly have it? But Shen Bin had his I.D. card and residence registry. He was even going to take out his certificate of discharge. The brat told a beautiful lie: the house caught on fire and it was burnt.

Fortunately, the company had the contract. The lady said there were eight in total. The signature on it was Binbin’s.

We paid the inspection fee of a couple hundred bucks and went to inspect the house. Three bedrooms, two living rooms, six hundred twenty-five per square. The place was across from Century Park.

The lady was about to scram after giving us the keys.

I called her back, “That’s it? He gets the house?”

“Oh right, we will contact you regarding the property owners.h.i.+p certificate. There’ve been cases like yours. It’s more of a ha.s.sle but it’s not a big problem.”

I stared at Binbin and Binbin stared back at me.

The brat said he kind of remembers signing these papers. The boss told him to sign for insurance and he did it.

“What if you signed a slave contract instead?” I fumed.

The little brat was more furious than I. “I can read, you know. It’s a property contract, not a slave contract.”

“Then why didn’t you say so?”

“How should I remember?”

His boss actually gave him a house.

I got angrier; well, jealous more like it.

“Brother’s a straightforward guy. I saved him twice. He’s just repaying me.”

Fine, I’ll think of it like that. The man’s dead anyways.

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