After calling Uncle De, Zhuang Rui put his mind at ease. Only then did he feel his stomach “gurgling” with hunger. He checked the time—it was already past two in the afternoon. In his excitement, he had even forgotten to eat lunch.
He looked up at the window. Outside, the wind was howling, and the snow was falling harder. Zhuang Rui didn’t feel like going out to eat, so he went to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and took out a bag of frozen dumplings. He boiled them in a pot, then peeled a few cloves of garlic, crushed them in a mortar, and added soy sauce, vinegar, and other seasonings. Once the dumplings were cooked, he ate them while they were still hot.
“Ring, ring, ring…”
Zhuang Rui had just finished eating and was cleaning up the dishes, about to go back to sorting through his grandfather's letters to see if he could find anything else good, when the home phone rang.
“Hey, Blockhead, you're such a sly dog, been home two days and didn't even think to give your buddy a heads up? Get your ass over to my shop, we're gonna drink tonight, then big bro'll take you to the sauna, get a good steam—this damn weather's freezing people to death…”
Zhuang Rui had just picked up the phone, not even put it to his ear yet, when he heard the roar coming from the receiver. No need to guess, it had to be that bastard Liu Chuan—every time he called, he roared. Last year when Zhuang Rui came home, his mom answered the call, and later she dragged Liu Chuan home and gave him an earful while pulling his ear for half the day.
Liu Chuan's mom and Zhuang Rui's mother were coworkers, and Liu Chuan and Zhuang Rui were classmates all the way from third grade of elementary school to high school graduation. One was impulsive and competitive, the other steady and composed—no one would've guessed they'd get along so well. Both families treated each other's kids like their own; if they messed up, they'd get spanked just the same. When they were kids, Zhuang Rui got straightened out by Liu Chuan's dad plenty of times, but he still called them uncle and auntie, and he'd bum meals at Liu Chuan's house all the time.
When Liu Chuan was eight, his dad was demobilized from the military to work at the Pengcheng City Public Security Bureau. Liu Chuan grew up in the military compound, and his personality was a lot like his father's—whenever there was a dispute, he'd usually explain things with his fists. His interest in studying was way less than his interest in the arcade by the street.
It's strange to say, from elementary to high school, Liu Chuan and Zhuang Rui were almost inseparable. The time Zhuang Rui spent on playing was by no means less than Liu Chuan's, yet his academic performance was always among the top few in the class, never falling out of the top three. As for Liu Chuan, he also regularly came in third—just counting from the bottom. He even only finished high school because his family forced him to. Judging from the relationship between these two, the saying 'keep good men company and you shall be of the number' isn't absolute either.
After graduating from high school, Liu Chuan's dad found him a few jobs, but the kid couldn't last long in any of them. Either he couldn't stand the boss or he'd end up fighting with colleagues. Later, when the Pengcheng Flower and Bird Market was being rebuilt, Liu Chuan—who had loved raising dogs and keeping cats since he was a kid—persuaded his family to buy a storefront there. He became his own boss, selling pets. Cats, dogs, katydids, crickets, turtles, tortoises—he dabbled in everything. Over a few years, he actually made quite a bit of money. Every day he'd walk around acting all fancy with his phone, driving a beat-up second-hand Toyota. No one could tell that this guy was just a dog keeper.
In recent years, cricket fighting had become a craze in places like Zhonghai and Zhejiang. Liu Chuan had gone to the Shandong countryside to collect a lot of crickets. A few months ago, when he was delivering goods to Zhonghai, he even squeezed into Zhuang Rui's rental apartment there—freezing in winter, boiling in summer—for a few days. In his words, 'Bro, it's not that I can't afford a hotel, but if I'm at my bro's place, what logic was there in staying outside?'
……
After hanging up the phone, Zhuang Rui left a note for his mom, put on the wool hat his sister had knitted, grabbed a carton of Zhonghai cigarettes, tucked it under his arm, locked the door, and headed out. Since it was snowing heavily and more people were taking taxis, Zhuang Rui stood by the roadside for a long time without being able to hail one. So he simply opened his umbrella and strolled leisurely toward the Flower and Bird Market. It wasn't far anyway—a ten-to-fifteen-minute walk would get him there.
As the year-end approached, even though it was snowing heavily outside, there were quite a few pedestrians on the road. Walking and looking around, it didn't take long for him to reach the street where the Flower and Bird Market was located.
Pengcheng's flower-and-bird market was connected to the antique market. It was divided into several zones: pets, birds, flowers, antiques, jade, calligraphy and paintings, books, and stamps. Well-off vendors either rented or bought their own shops, while some enthusiasts set up casual stalls along the walkways on both sides. Each day, they only needed to pay a small management fee to the market administration office.
Zhuang Rui had been here a few times before. Every time he came, the place was packed with people and bustling with excitement, sometimes so crowded you couldn't move an inch. But there had been heavy snow for several days in a row, and most of the casual vendors hadn't set up their stalls. Only a few people set up under shops they had good relations with, while everyone else hid inside the stores to keep warm. It was much quieter than usual.
As he approached Liu Chuan's pet shop, Zhuang Rui noticed an elderly woman standing by the door. She looked to be in her mid-fifties, dressed simply but neatly, holding a cloth bundle in her hand, with a trace of worry on her face. Zhuang Rui didn't pay it much mind and pushed open the glass door to walk inside.
Liu Chuan's pet shop was about twenty square meters. He had bought it for just seventy or eighty thousand yuan, but if he wanted to sell it now, people would be scrambling to offer three hundred thousand. This was only over four or five years, which shows just how much housing prices had skyrocketed.
A few cages were scattered sparsely in the pet shop, all empty. With the New Year approaching and continuous heavy snowfall, he probably didn't have much interest in doing business. A furnace was burning inside the shop, keeping the temperature at a comfortable twenty-seven or twenty-eight degrees. As soon as he entered, Zhuang Rui felt his face, which had been frozen stiff, begin to warm up.
That kid Liu Chuan was hunched over with his butt stuck out, fiddling with the computer. When he heard the glass door open, he didn't even look up and shouted, "There's no stock in the shop. Tell me what you want first, and come back after the New Year."
“Got a general here? I want one...”
Zhuang Rui said jokingly. Last time Liu Chuan went to Shanghai, he’d been grumbling in his ear for days, saying that when he was collecting crickets in Shandong, he arrived a few days late and some general cricket got snatched up by someone else. His look at the time was even more dejected than if his wife had been stolen.
“A general？ I want one too... Damn, it's you. Go sit over there and have a smoke. Let me finish this round...”
Liu Chuan saw it was Zhuang Rui and tossed him a pack of cigarettes. Zhuang Rui leaned in to look and couldn’t help but laugh. The guy was actually playing Super Mario—a total antique of a game—and yet he was enjoying himself.
“Shit, didn’t pass the level again. Hey, kid, you come back and don’t even report to me. If my mom hadn’t mentioned it, I still wouldn’t know. She said you got shot a while back—you okay? Let me see, let me see...” Liu Chuan dropped his game controller, walked over to Zhuang Rui, snatched the pack of cigarettes from his hand, and insisted on checking the wound on the back of his head.
“I’m not that delicate. The wound’s pretty much healed. You’ve got it easy, man. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have gone to college either. Joining you would’ve been way better. You’re even using a computer now—never thought you’d keep up with the times.”
Zhuang Rui lit a cigarette, brushed Liu Chuan’s hand away, and lay back on the shop’s sofa. He didn’t smoke much—only when he was in a great mood or feeling really down. Sometimes, a pack would last him four or five days.
“If you hadn’t gone to college, even my dad would’ve killed you. Oh, and my mom said you’re heartless—you came all the way but didn’t visit her at home. Why do retired people get so nagging? That’s why I can’t stand it and come to the shop.”
Liu Chuan first poured out a stream of grievances, then his eyes lit up and he said, "You might as well quit that job—keep going and you might lose your life one of these days. Seriously, brother, come work with me. These past few years without you around, things just felt off no matter what I tried. You've got a sharper mind than me; if you join this line of work, I guarantee our shop will be the one and only in Pengcheng."