It was a cold night when the snow began to melt. I had my hands in the pockets of my jacket, walking with Weiran along the neon-lit, hazy streets, feeling even more strongly the emptiness of the city. The various lights surrounding us were nothing but superficial brilliance.
Finally, there was a bar ahead. I said to him, “Let’s go in here and have a few drinks.”
“Let’s find a quieter place.”
“There are quieter places, but I don’t know if you can adapt to them.”
“As long as it’s quiet.”
After Weiran signaled his agreement, I brought him to a small restaurant that I often visited with Fangyuan when I worked at the Plaza Department Store. It was seldom crowded and served home-style dishes at very reasonable prices.
When we entered the restaurant, the proprietress still remembered me and was as warm as ever, but she mistook Weiran for Fangyuan and called him Xiao Fang. I knew that Fangyuan might not have visited the place for a long time, and Weiran’s physique somewhat resembled Fangyuan’s, so the proprietress, with her vague memory, made the mistake.
It was too cold, and the small restaurant hadn’t even turned on the heating. Instinctively, I ordered a hotpot and a dozen bottles of Tsingtao beer, and sat on opposite sides of the table with Weiran. The purple bamboo used for decoration on the table further highlighted the quietness of the nearly empty restaurant. Regardless of the taste of the food, in terms of quietness, there was no place more suitable for Weiran’s needs.
I opened a bottle of beer and handed it to Weiran, then poured the ingredients into the hotpot one by one. The rising steam and the spreading spicy aroma finally brought some warmth to the small private room. I directly raised my beer bottle towards Weiran and said, “Let’s drink.”
Weiran also raised his beer to me but didn’t clink glasses with me. We each started drinking. I drank about a third of the bottle, while Weiran finished his in one go. I felt cold just watching him. After all, it was the dead of winter, and drinking beer like this was no small thing! Thus, I could sense his sense of defeat. Yes, such a huge commercial warship had sunk in his hands, and this feeling was unbearable for an ordinary person. Moreover, I knew that Weiran wasn’t a spoiled heir who ignored the family business. He had ambitions, which Mi Cai had once mentioned to me. But in the past two years, he had been too eager for quick success, overestimating himself, and thus got stuck in the vortex of loss-making investments, unable to extricate himself.
I pointed my chopsticks at the duck blood rolling in the hotpot and said, “This is good. Have some; it will keep you warm.”
Weiran didn’t respond. After a long silence, he finally said to me, “Zhaoyang, I envy you… no matter what you’re going through, at least you have expectations and someone to rely on. When you’re down, that woman will always come back to you, but me…” He shook his head and didn’t continue.
I asked myself, compared to Weiran, a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth, was I really that lucky? Maybe so, but even if it was luck, it was only just obtained, something he would never see. He had no idea how I had suffered through the hardships of life before.
After finishing the remaining beer in my bottle, I told him, “What people are best at is imagining others’ lives as too perfect when they are down. In reality, what you see may not be the truth, and there is no such thing as a perfect person in this world. Life itself is a kind of cultivation for us… Therefore, you should see what you still have now, rather than just thinking about what you are about to lose or have already lost. That will only make you more and more painful.”
Weiran smiled bitterly, “…The group is already in this state. I don’t have any other wishes. I just hope she can be by my side at this time, to accompany me through the darkest period of my life…”
“You should know that she is also in a difficult situation, unable to extricate herself!”
“Therefore, we should support each other and go through this low point in life together… Yes, since the days we studied in the United States, we have always been like this. She would give me a lot of business advice, and we had full trust in each other. But since you appeared, everything has changed. She gradually became evasive, pursuing her own independence… She forgot that we once promised to be firm allies in business, and that our interests and even our lives should be integrated… She has deceived me!”
I looked at him and saw a kind of distortion in his downfall, but I could understand it. After all, he had lived a smooth life for decades. Suddenly encountering such a big setback was unbearable for someone who had always lived in comfort… Not to mention him, even seasoned businessmen would go to the extreme of ending their lives when their careers face a total collapse, because this sense of defeat and the chain reaction brought by the collapse are unbearable.
I exhaled lightly and told him, “Everyone pursuing their own independence is a normal thing. I really don’t know how you have viewed Mi Cai all these years. She isn’t a pet; she is an individual with independent spirit… You should learn to respect, respect freedom, and moreover, I deeply believe that Mi Cai hasn’t betrayed her promise, she’s just overwhelmed with her own problems.”
Weiran closed his eyes and tilted his head back, remaining silent for a long time… The atmosphere became oppressively heavy. After maintaining this posture for a while, he opened another bottle of beer and drank recklessly, seemingly trying to find some comfort in that cold liquid.
I didn’t continue to drink with him. I just absentmindedly listened to the sound of melting snow dripping from the eaves. In this world, no one could truly understand another person’s pain. He needed to learn to adapt himself.
…
The night grew deeper. Supporting a somewhat tipsy Weiran, I left that small restaurant. Throughout, I didn’t ask him whether he would persist with the investment in Zhuomei, because the reality he faced had already given me the answer. If it weren’t for a major business crisis, he wouldn’t have let himself get into such a bad state. Perhaps now, all that remained was an official statement announcing the withdrawal of investment in Zhuomei.
On the sidewalk, Weiran and I sat together, waiting for his assistant. Moments later, his assistant arrived and, with my help, assisted Weiran into the car. Thus, there was no one related to me left on the vast street. At this moment, I actually envied Weiran for having the courage to get drunk, at least for him, it might bring a quiet night, while stirring up a storm for Zhuomei…
I walked along the road toward my home, but my thoughts kept returning to Mi Cai because of this chance encounter with Weiran. I recalled her past and promises with Weiran, and also remembered how I had passionately kissed Leyao in the snow last night, unable to control my emotions. For a moment, my heart was in turmoil. Although I really wanted to call Mi Cai, I hesitated to take action. I couldn’t help but wonder: How was Leyao dealing with Cao Jinfan? Could she really just treat it as a dream?
Perhaps she really could…
While I was distracted, the phone suddenly rang in my pocket without any warning. I took it out and looked; it was a call I had been longing for, yet I hesitated. In my hesitation, I answered the call and soon heard Mi Cai’s voice, as pleasant as always, but now with an added weariness and longing for me.
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