Don’t Be a Kept Man

Chapter 109: Reborn

Lin Xian was quite a small town located quite far away from cities, but it was a place that was always bustling with people and noise, making it quite a lively town.
On this particular day, an all-black car was parked by an old tenement building.
With just one look, one would know that it must be quite expensive, which made it very different and out of place amongst its surroundings.

An old man was reading the news as he waited for new customers in his small little shop on the ground floor of the building.
When he saw the mark on the front of the car, he sucked in a breath of cold air as he thought to himself, woah what a fellow, a car worth more than millions of yuan.
Even if he didn’t eat or drink, he probably still won’t even be able to buy such a car for decades.
When did this poor town attract such a rich man into coming here?

It was not only him as the pedestrians walking nearby were all looking.
In the midst of these gazes, a man dressed in a full suit ensemble finally stepped out of the car.
With fierce looking eyebrows and a pair of peach blossom eyes that leaned on the longer and narrower side, his face looked like he was smiling even if there was not a smile on his face, almost as if he was a wandering vigilante from a game.

Wen Chuo backed up a few steps and then looked up towards the top of the building.
Through the dangling and clustered strings of electrical wires in the air, his gaze stopped at the fifth floor, and his chin lifted slightly as an expression of pride and superiority from coming back with a fortune and achievements under his belt seeped onto his face.

Not long after, a man who looked like a driver came rushing out of the building.
Meeting up with Wen Chuo’s eyes, he wiped the sweat off his forehead, looking a bit nervous, 

“Chairman Wen Chuo, a widow currently lives there and even after asking a few times, she said there was no such person called Bai Yang.
Have you, dear sir, perhaps remembered incorrectly?”

Wen Chuo slightly narrowed his eyes and coldly looked at him, 

“That idiot lives here.
I’ve only been gone for three years, so there’s no possibility that I’ve remembered wrong.”

Wen Chuo furrowed his eyebrows then and impatiently pushed him aside.
He walked up into the building himself as the driver stood downstairs and watched him go; watching him walk up to the fifth floor, knock on the door of room 503 and walk straight in before getting pushed out by that shrewish widow who was now screaming so loudly everyone could hear.

“Are you insane! I’ve lived here for two years now and have never heard of Bai Yang whatsoever.
Have you lost your mind huh!”

In this kind of place, doors were built right next to each other, so close they might as well all be living together on the floor, and not to mention the other buildings packed so close together.
So before long, people were pushing their windows open to watch the spectacle.
Wen Chuo’s face darkened immediately upon her words and the driver tittered about, not daring to go up near him at all.

This newly appointed Chairman Wen Chuo was quite an amazing, ferocious character.
Supposedly a child born out of an affair, he had been living in one of the countryside towns on the outskirts somewhere for more than ten years before he was taken back by the family head to be recognized.
Only a few years since then, he had already won over his big brother of the main descent, becoming the Wen family’s official heir.

Wen Chuo’s temper wasn’t the greatest and the driver had some inkling of an understanding of that himself.
But after a long moment of hesitation, he finally bolstered his courage to step forward as Wen Chuo came down, 

“Chairman Wen Chuo……”

Wen Chuo ignored him and walked over to the convenience shop on the ground floor.
He bought the most expensive cigarette and leaned against the glass cabinet to ask, 

“Shop owner, let me ask you a question.
Where did Bai Yang, who lived up in 503, move to?”

The shopkeeper was a bit confused and suspicious, thinking that this name sounded so very familiar, but he couldn’t remember who it was.
Wen Chuo knocked on the table with impatience, 

“That idiot who’s always picking up bottles around here for money.”

“Oh Bai Yang—-” 

A fairly chubby lady came out from the back of the shop, brushing aside the plastic curtain strips used as a private doorway.
Her hands held a basket of just plucked vegetables and she ‘ah-oh’ed on the way down to sit on the little stool, 

 

“Doesn’t he have some problems with his brain.
Hmm, had been here a few years ago…… oh three years ago, he had been dazedly looking around all over the streets for someone, but he wouldn’t say who he was looking for.
He ran out on a rainy day and never came back.
When the rent was due later, San-shen2 couldn’t find him so she rented it to someone else.”

After the shop keeper’s wife said that, she saw Wen Chuo not making a single peep and gave him a second glance, feeling that the sight of him was weirdly familiar, 

“Ack, you……have I seen you before?”

Wen Chuo ignored her question and only asked her in response, 

“……Who was Bai Yang trying to find?”

The shopkeeper’s wife shook her head, 

“Ha, how many years ago was this.
I’ve already forgotten.”

And then when she lifted her eyes, Wen Chuo had already left.
He didn’t even take the cigarette he had just bought with him, and the shop owner happily put it back in the cabinet, 

“Rich people are just not the same.
Hah, his car, do you know how much money that is worth? More than 500 thousand yuan.
Why would he be here huh.”

And then asked, 

“Who did he ask you about just now?”

His wife didn’t even lift up her head to say, 

“Bai Yang ah.
Really, your brain can’t fit a single thing in there.
The woman who hung herself and lived on the fifth floor.
The police even came here a few times because of that incident.
That Bai Yang is her kid.”

The moment she said that, the owner remembered and slapped his thigh with force, 

“Oh, Chen Mei Ying’s huh.
That woman is ruthless.
I heard Bai Yang was scared crazy because of her.”

His wife rolled her eyes, 

“You can try being with your own mother’s dead body for an entire night.
How old was Bai Yang! If it were you, you wouldn’t be right in the mind either.”

“Hey, say what you want, but don’t bring my mother into this.” 

The owner unhappily shook his newspaper and said as he continued to read, 

“I just remember Wen Chuo.
That young rascal couldn’t learn to be on the straight and narrow, always racking up his tab with me here every day, fooling around with the troublemakers from the opposite street.
Heh.
I remember he was always with Bai Yang, that little idiot, and they had always seemed to get along.
Too bad he disappeared not long after.”

“What getting along.
That young rascal was always trying to swindle money out of Bai Yang.
What a lack of conscience he had, deceiving a mentally ill for their money.” 

The shopkeeper’s wife wiped her hand on her apron before a thought flashed through her mind.
She suddenly stood up, 

“Omona, I just remembered who that rich man was.
He’s Wen Chuo!”

This kind of small countryside town had, about ten years ago, a beautiful woman move in.
She brought along with her a ten year old son, and they lived in 504, being neighbors with Chen Mei Ying.
When Chen Mei Ying committed suicide, they had even tried to take care of Bai Yang, but unfortunately, good people never lived long lives.
She got cancer, didn’t have money to pay for the hospital, and passed away not a few years after.

Her son was Wen Chuo.

The streets were narrow and bicycles were scattered about everywhere, without a care if they were blocking anything.
The driver drove very wonkily to avoid the obstacles, until they finally got to a wider street.
Glancing at the rear mirror and seeing Wen Chuo’s emotionless face staring back at him, with eyes so sharp they could kill someone, his body all the way down to his organs shivered in fear, and in his terrified state of mind, he unconsciously stepped on the gas pedal.

They were driving around a corner and incoming from the other direction was a big truck full of wooden materials.
When the driver realized what happened, his mind shattered into pieces as he desperately tried to stop the car.
But in the end, they were unable to avoid it and with a “bang” they crashed right into the truck—-

The clouds in the sky interchanged hands many times, as if nothing out of the ordinary happened.

Wen Chuo had met an idiot a long time ago.
That idiot had no father nor did he have a mother.
Separated only by a wall from his home, that idiot had to work at such a young age to feed himself.
Picking up garbage, picking up scrap materials.

Wen Chuo thought he was quite pitiful, and so when that idiot was being bullied, he would always come to protect him.

Then when Wen Chuo had no mother either……

That idiot said he would pick up garbage to raise him.

Why not?

Wen Chuo knew that idiot liked him, but he didn’t like the idiot.
Yet he ignored his conscience and lived off of him for twenty years, only to escape by himself out of Lin Xian, this kind of broken, poor and shabby place.

The day when the Wen family came to pick up Wen Chuo, the idiot had been running behind the car, running and running like his life depended on it.
He was so stupid he couldn’t speak properly, only yelling Wen Chuo’s name desperately, as if his life was on the line.

Wen Chuo had asked the car to stop for three minutes, and within that time he had held onto the dummy, quietly speaking, 

“Go back.
Wait until I’ve earned enough money and I’ll come back for you to let you live a good life.”

That idiot didn’t understand what a good life was, and he only tightly grasped onto Wen Chuo’s hands, not daring to let go.
He kept fervently shaking his head, as buckets of sweat dripped down his forehead, and his lips were pursed, full of stubbornness.

But Wen Chuo knew what a good life was.
Before he was ten, he had lived in a mansion.
He had expensive cars driving him in and out; he knew the taste of steak, he knew the taste of cake.
He also knew that his mom was a wealthy man’s wife, yet she was swept out the door by a homewrecker.

Wen Chuo hated.
He hated and he was unwilling.
He hated those people and was even more unwilling to settle into such a run down and tattered small place, living the rest of his life with an idiot.

“Go home and wait for me.
I’ll be there in a bit.”

Wen Chuo tugged the fingers of the dummy off of his collar, one at a time, pulling them off.
Without turning his head back, he went back into the car.

The sun was setting down in the mountains from far away and its hazy and faint yellow sunlight was shining through the front door of an internet cafe.
A boy was leaning against the back of the chair as he napped, with a pair of headphones around his neck.
After a while, the boy twitched, and his nose was filled with the smell of cheap cigarettes and instant noodles: a very distant but familiar scent.

Hearing the tapping of keyboards by his ear, Wen Chuo irritably opened his eyelids.
When he took in the surroundings before him, his pupils dilated and he stood up with a bang.

“Fuck, did you die in your sleep, Wen Chuo.
Scared me to death.”

Beside him was a gangster, with his hair shaved like a lightning bolt, yelling as he played his game.
This scene was all too familiar and Wen Chuo sat down in disbelief, staring back at the reflection in the computer monitor and seeing a head full of red hair on himself.

He was quite handsome and this kind of bold color suited him quite well.
It added a bit of seductiveness, but his face still held that bit of youth to him.
A face that looked like he was still eighteen.

He lay down on the table, and after great difficulty, he was finally able to digest the fact that he had been reborn when his shoulder was suddenly slapped by the lightning boy, 

“Yo, that dummy is waiting outside for you.”

 

When Wen Chuo was young, he did quite well in school.
But when he grew older, he fell off the tracks.
He hadn’t really continued after finishing high school, and instead had begun to play games all day in an internet cafe.
His heart was higher than the sky as it was thinner than a sheet of paper3, waiting wholeheartedly for the Wen family to take him back.

It was not quite realistic, but it was perfect for a daydream.

Wen Chuo followed his gaze to look outside and his eyes froze.

 

Standing outside the internet cafe was a clean looking young man with black hair, wearing a t-shirt that had been washed so many times the color had been stripped off.
And he was skinny, so skinny he was like the shadow of a balsam poplar tree.4

His eyes kept staring at Wen Chuo, and he did not utter a single word with his lips slightly pursed.

Bai Yang had experienced too much of a shock when he was a child and so his brain was a bit slow.
Not one to like talking either, he seemed like an idiot, without much difference to those who had mental issues either.
But the things he should know, he knew.
He knew that staying in an internet cafe, playing games, was not a good thing.

On a normal day, he would stand outside waiting for Wen Chuo.
If Wen Chuo didn’t come out, he’d just keep standing there.
When it turned dark, when it was time for dinner and Wen Chuo still hadn’t come out, Bai Yang would go inside to drag him out.

So to speak, this was not an idiot who would be good to provoke.

This time, Wen Chuo didn’t need Bai Yang to drag him out.
He quickly flew up from his chair as if the floor was turning into lava, wanting to rush out when he was blocked by the owner, 

“Ah ah ah, Wen Chuo, you still haven’t paid for the instant noodles yet.”

Wen Chuo subconsciously patted his pockets.

Empty.

He looked at Bai Yang, excited but also apologetic, and his heart was pounding like a racehorse, 

“That…..lend me some money.”

Bai Yang looked at him for a few seconds before turning away to leave.

Wen Chuo: “……”

The owner of the internet cafe knocked on the table, as evidently it was not the first time this has happened, 

“What are you going to do huh.
Sell your kidney or saw off your flesh? 15 yuan and 5 kuai.
Think about it.”

Wen Chuo coldly laughed, 

“That kind of shit, needs me to sell my own kidney?”

Wen Chuo was the head of the troublemakers in this area and so the moment he spoke like this, the other thugs around rose up as well, 

“That’s right.
A few bowls of cheap noodles and even expired ones at that.
Even if you give it to us for free, we wouldn’t eat it.”

The owner snorted, 

“You rascals.
No matter what you say, there’s no use.
Either you all pay up your debts with me today, or not a single one of you can think about leaving.”

Annoyed, Wen Chuo borrowed 20 yuan from a familiar hooligan whose name he could not remember before running out of the bar as if there was a fire behind him.
Who would have known that he would bump right into Bai Yang who had just come back.

In his hands were a few yuan bills and even some coins.
Wen Chuo didn’t even need to look to know that this was the money Bai Yang earned from selling his bottles.
He didn’t mind it however and just hugged Bai Yang into his embrace.
He patted him in a bro-like hug, angry but smiling as he said,

“Big dummy, where did you run off to!”

There was an unspeakable kind of emotion, a joy arising from getting something back that he’d lost.

Bai Yang paused his movements with his eyes in a confused daze, as if he didn’t really understand why he was saying that.

TL Tidbit:

And we’re back! I hope you all Galactic Judges had a great and safe week : ) This volume is fairly short, but an interesting volume nonetheless!

The schedule for the release of this volume (subsequent volumes I think) will probably not change from the 2 releases per week on Monday and Thursday, as Plum and I find a bit more flexibility with this kind of schedule (altho the particular weekday may change in the future, which we will see for now!) 

In any case, hope you enjoyed a breather from the volume that was volume 4 (*^﹏^*) and hope you like the story of Wen Chuo and Bai Yang ٩۹(๑•̀ω•́ ๑)۶

Notes:

*1 Mentally challenged idiot: so in terms of meaning, the way that “傻子” is meant here, usually means idiot/dumb/can’t (or doesn’t) think for himself kind of person, but it also means here as you might have already guessed someone who’s not quite mentally sound (usually used in a very dismissive tone).
It’s kind of used interchangeably in this volume (but more so towards the mentally challenged meaning) as well as to mean both (and also has other connotations depending on how it’s used such as a mom calling her son that but could be affectionately…).

 

But just to make it easier on myself (of sorts, to just have an easy “noun” so to say instead of describing it everytime), I’m just going to try and stick with idiot/dumb, etc.
(… depending on the case as you may see later) but as you read, when it’s being referred to Bai Yang especially, know that it has another meaning attached to it.

 

*2 The term ‘-shen’ is like aunt but can be for like an older aged female (married/like an aunt) and can also be called by non-familial members.
The “san” means three, but is usually used to denote the “rank”, so to say, of the husband a woman usually marries (there can be other reasons) but to explain very primitively (lol), most commonly, say your dad has three brothers (and he’s the youngest out of the four), you would usually call the wife who married your oldest uncle as Da-shen (Da as in big), the wife who married your second oldest uncle as Er-shen (second aunt) and the third as San-shen (third).
Of course there are many other situations for someone to be called “san” or “-shen”, but just to illustrate here as a very basic understanding : )

 

*3 This phrase came from the novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, and it’s the same phrase as in volume 2 or 3 but on a very basic level, it means to have dreams of being someone greater or doing much better but in reality life and death is not up to your own choice, but by who your family/background is.
And this specifically references to people who are from poor backgrounds, unable to fulfill their dreams, and never will be able to fulfill their desires, looking upon those that can but are hindered by their poverty or their background, so they have low self esteem/feel like they can never do anything else and be bitter and regretful, hateful, etc.
In this case, it’s to point out that Wen Chuo had a dream that was exactly that, a dream.

*4 Balsam Poplar: They kind of look like birch trees but grow very straight.
These trees are also called the same name in pinyin as Bai Yang (so they are technically “Bai Yang Tree”  )