21. What If There's a Kissing Scene?

That night, Jiang Xueming spent ages explaining everything that had happened on the journey to his younger sister.

Jiang Bailu only half understood. Her body language was wildly expressive, her left hand and right hand moving in slow motion.

Her expression was utterly baffled.

"So I got some weird disease, and you have to go to a city more than ten thousand meters underground to find medicine. Then you went and made a deal with a cat, and rode a train with an orangutan—"

"Not an orangutan," Jiang Xueming explained. "That guy's name is Bu Liuxing."

"Ohhh! When you talk about him, it sounds like you're describing animals at the zoo. You use all these animalistic adjectives." Jiang Bailu slapped her forehead. "So you went to an alien planet with that big brother A Xing. You pointed at an alien widow and took pictures of her. Then big brother A Xing slept with her."

Xiao Qi grinned so broadly her mouth nearly split. "This sister-in-law of yours is pretty funny."

"More or less." Jiang Xueming pressed a hand to his forehead. "That's about right."

"And then you came back with the medicine," Bailu said, pointing at Xiao Qi. "With this big sister, and a whole lot of money."

"Right," said Xiao Qi.

"That's about it," Jiang Xueming agreed.

"Then you told me things are kind of special for us right now, and we might be in danger." Bailu spoke like a retired professor, laying everything out neatly. "Like those bad things in the underground station might come attack us."

Xiao Qi cheered. "She finally gets it!"

Jiang Xueming high-fived his sister. "Yes, she understands."

"But," Bailu said, shrugging indifferently, her expression blank, "this is way too ridiculous. The first half sounds just like a fairy tale I read as a kid."

She pointed at Jiang Xueming. "If you weren't actually my big brother, I'd have started wondering if I was on the set of The Truman Show."

Then she pointed at Xiao Qi. "If I hadn't gotten better, and you two hadn't suddenly pulled out that much money, I'd have a hard time believing any of this."

Xiao Qi leaned over and whispered to Xueming, "Did you teach her to be this sharp?"

Xueming looked pleased. "It's always good to think things through."

"I get it now. Damn, you're amazing, bro!" Jiang Bailu sprang up from her little stool, bursting with energy. "You've really outdone yourself. I'm going to tell my classmate about this. One of us is going to end up in the psych ward."

Now that she was better, Bailu no longer looked as listless and frail as before. She was full of life.

"Bad guys are coming to hurt us, but I'm not afraid!" She struck the same fighting pose Ultraman used against monsters. "Big brother! Courage can defeat evil! Where are we going to punish the wicked?!"

Xiao Qi whispered to Xueming, "That line..."

"Too cheesy?"

"Definitely. Where'd she learn it?"

"Self-taught."

"Now that she understands what's going on, what do we do next?"

"Take her back with us. I'd planned to let her go back to school, but after you told me all about the Armadillo Hunters, I don't feel right leaving her behind."

Xiao Qi's gaze wandered, and she stumbled over her words. "It's not that bad, really. If you ask me, those guys still have some principles. They're outlaws, but they don't go after people's families."

"Were you just thinking," Jiang Xueming said, leaning close to Xiao Qi, his gaze intensely predatory, "that if we left Bailu here, it'd just be the two of us on vacation?"

"No," Xiao Qi denied at once.

"How can you take the Armadillo Hunters' side? I can't trust that attitude of yours. If I were a hunter, and I wanted to deal with someone like Jiang Xueming, a stranger who'd just arrived at the station, an undocumented nobody with no one to rely on—and a helpless younger sister to boot—then, to me, someone like that would be..."

Jiang Xueming's gaze turned terrifying as he threw himself completely into the role.

"It'd be like the water suddenly going out in a fifty-story office building during work hours, and me getting to the public restroom first. I wouldn't just give up that kind of prey."

Xiao Qi stared at him, dumbfounded.

"What a fascinating comparison."

July 7.

They boarded the flight home.

Brother Qi had taken care of the siblings' ID checks and boarding procedures.

To be honest, Xiao Qi couldn't understand Mr. Xueming's decision.

"If you're so worried about your and your sister's safety, shouldn't you take her back to the station and hide there right away?"

"No." Jiang Xueming cut her off. "This debt between my family and me has to be settled."

Xiao Qi didn't understand. "Why?"

"My mother told me she gave birth to Bailu when she was fifty-six," Jiang Xueming explained. "My father's nearly eighty now, and my mother's seventy-four."

"Wow, they lived long lives," Xiao Qi remarked, then sensed something was off. "Wait, you're not that much older than Bailu. Could it be..."

Jiang Xueming's expression was cool, his tone unchanged. "Are you wondering if Bailu might have been kidnapped?"

Xiao Qi nodded. That was exactly what she'd been thinking.

Giving birth at fifty-six, especially in a place with subpar medical care, would have been extremely dangerous. It was the sort of situation where either the baby or the mother might not survive.

She was also wondering if Jiang Xueming might have been bought by the family, too.

After all, Mr. Xueming had said the family treated Bailu like a commodity to trade for a bride price. It sounded like they might have bought a baby girl, raised her, then sold her off for money.

They hadn't treated their son much better, either. They'd sent Xueming to a battery factory when he was seventeen.

What kind of place was a battery factory?

A work environment filled with lead and mercury pollution and radiation from electrical equipment. The kind of job where ordinary people would have to retire after thirty years. Having a deformed child was practically guaranteed; staying fertile would be a miracle.

Was that how you treated your own son? Was that the heartfelt love of a couple who'd had a child late in life? They hadn't even expected Xueming to carry on the family line, had they?

It sounded as though they'd sent their son off to a place recommended by an acquaintance to earn money for the household. He was practically free labor.

"I don't want to make a simple matter complicated," Jiang Xueming said frankly. "I can sort out where Bailu and I were born, where we grew up, and who raised us. That's not hard."

"Oh, I get it," Xiao Qi said with a smile. "That's actually really reassuring."

"The debt between my family and me currently comes to eighty-eight thousand in bride-price money, plus the cost of my and my sister's compulsory education and living expenses." Xueming tallied it up. "Even with inflation, it won't come to more than three hundred thousand."

"It only cost that much to raise you two? That's so cheap!" Xiao Qi exclaimed.

Xueming nodded, rattling off the figures as though he knew them by heart. "My memory's good. From the time we were born until four years ago, they spent a little over thirty-five thousand yuan on Bailu and me in total.

"Our parents are illiterate. They didn't invest anything in our education.

"They cooked for us for six years, and barely ever made breakfast. Lunch and dinner were worse than the school cafeteria's."

Xiao Qi suddenly felt that this man was colder than she'd expected. "You've calculated every little thing?"

"Yes. When I went home, I intended to settle the debt." Xueming's expression didn't change, as if he were discussing a business deal. "Do you think I'm a bit heartless?"

"No, no," Xiao Qi muttered. "I just think that if you tear things apart like this, it'll probably turn very unpleasant."

"I'll say it again: I hate making simple things complicated." Jiang Xueming glanced out the window as the plane began taxiing. "Do you think there's any emotional debt still tying my sister and me to our parents?"

Xiao Qi froze.

She looked at Jiang Xueming—just stared at him, dumbfounded. At that moment, all the questions in her mind seemed to resolve themselves.

Why was this guy so strange, so cautious, like a lone wolf living in the steel jungle of a modern city?

All those questions seemed to have an answer now.

"I want to settle this cleanly and properly." Jiang Xueming tightened his grip on the ledger and pen. "I don't want to leave any loose ends. I don't know if they're my biological parents, but that doesn't matter to me. That's the police's job, not mine. I don't want to see pictures of Bailu and me on a telephone pole, looking like criminals. I wouldn't know how to explain to Bailu whether we'd committed some kind of crime."

"I don't want to go back and have the Public Security Bureau call me every few days. Those calls would turn my work and my life into a mess."

"I don't want them to become even more crafty and ruthless. I don't want them learning to use the internet in their twilight years, then crying, throwing tantrums, and threatening suicide in front of a mob of netizens and reporters, all to find the unfilial children who'd once been 'cherished' but had 'run away from home without permission.' I've never wanted to assume the worst of anyone."

"Brother Qi, you said it yourself: the thing underground passengers fear most is being found by hunters. So my most urgent task is to settle this debt. It's like a bomb without a timer. Once it goes off, the hunters can just look up my name on Baidu and find me."

Xiao Qi nodded gravely. "You're right. That'd be a real headache."

Jiang Xueming continued, "I'm sure that if my parents saw my bank balance right now, they'd come up with an outrageous price. A post about it online could get hundreds of millions of clicks. Those Armadillo Hunters would spend the first day arguing nonstop on Weibo, look me up on Toutiao the next morning, check the official WeChat accounts at noon, then see my name on Zhihu while they were on the toilet before bed."

"Then none of us would get away. So, for this, I've come up with a few ways to handle the conversation. Want to rehearse one with me?"

Xiao Qi perked up. "Tell me more."

"Let's say you're a factory girl I met in some remote village," Jiang Xueming began.

Xiao Qi immediately launched into a performance, pulling out her phone and adopting an over-the-top tone. "Today I'm showing you girls my man! Oh my gosh!"

Then Brother Qi changed tack and said to Jiang Xueming, "Next, you put on a beauty filter and show off your looks for the camera, tossing your hair. How's that? I've already worked out the script for the short video. Cheesy enough?"

"Hold on, hold on. That's way too much." Xueming went on, "Here's the rest: you and I are broke, but your parents are around to look after you. You take out a loan against your house so we can go into business selling counterfeit shoes. We end up owing millions. When we finally make it home, my sister gets caught packing orders in the warehouse. Now she's in prison, singing about iron bars. I'll make up a few fake text messages from debt collectors and show them to my parents. They'll definitely tell me to get out of their house and disown me."

Before he'd even finished speaking, Jiang Bailu had already started singing from the seat next to them.

"Iron doors~ Iron windows~ Iron chains!~ I hold the bars and gaze outside~"

Xueming gave his sister a thumbs-up, then said to Xiao Qi, "After all that, we'll have some cash, which we'll use to support our parents and provide for them in their old age. They'll take the money and tell us to get out. Then it'll all be over. They probably won't even call after that. They can just pretend I'm not their son. They'll have money for their retirement, we can live our lives in peace, and everyone will be happy."

Xiao Qi pouted. "My backstory sounds way too damn tragic."

"Or we could stop in another city and find a female acting student to rehearse with me. You could play a debt collector on the sidelines," Jiang Xueming suggested.

The plane lifted off and soared into the sky.

"No way. If I play the debt collector, you'll never make it back. You'd have paid off your debt in kind already. Besides—"

Xiao Qi was quick-witted.

"—what if there's a kissing scene?"