Antidote (Jie Yao) – Chapter 30

解药
(Antidote)

「Chapter 30」

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Translator: Firagara
English Proofreader: Brie

(NOTE: Please DO NOT re-distribute/re- translate without our permission. We may cease this project if found shared/re-translated online without permission)

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The BL donghua “Antidote” was adapted from this novel.

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In all honesty, seeing Chen Qing slam his chopsticks and get genuinely mad, Cheng Ke was very moved.

Jiang Yuduo had said, Friends are very important.

Chen Qing was his friend, and was indeed worthy of this “importance”.

Cheng Ke hadn’t experienced such gravitas. He didn’t have such friends. In his darkest moments, none of his so-called friends stood with him, but instead neatly and unanimously became Cheng Yi’s friends. The only person who kept the same attitude towards him, was someone who technically wasn’t a friend, Xu Ding.

Thus, even if Jiang Yuduo made a friend such as him, Cheng Ke had no idea if he would be as defensive of Jiang Yuduo as Chen Qing had been, if put in the same situation..

“I find people like you really funny,” Chen Qing jabbed towards at him, “Do you look down on people that much? How long have you known him? How long have I known him? Sure is easy for you to open your mouth and accuse people of being nuts! Who the fuck are you calling nuts?”

“Not crazy…” Cheng Ke corrected Chen Qing, “I mean…”

“Who the fuck careswhat you mean,” Chen Qing interrupted him, “You’re the nutjob here!”

“Sorry.” Cheng Ke could only apologise. With Chen Qing all riled up, there’s no chance of him listening to reason.

“Third Bro treated you as a friend,” Chen Qing continued pointing. The word “sorry” to people like Chen Qing probably was as worthless as someone coughing to attract attention. “ He was worried something would happen to you, and specially got Da Bin and the others to look over you, and this is how you fucking see him behind his back?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Cheng Ke sighed again, “I only want to figure out what’s going on, since I almost got crippled by him today.”

“Are you crippled now!?” Chen Qing asked.

“What if he didn’t stop?” Cheng Ke slammed his chopsticks on the table too, “You’d been beaten by him before too, you know how much strength he uses! I’m asking you precisely because I treat him as a friend! If it were anybody else, I’d have had him arrested and call it a day! See if I fucking care!”

Chen Qing glared at him with his brows furrowed for a while longer. With less tension in his voice, but still obviously displeased, “I find that you rich lot have too much free time. Such a simple issue and you can think up a million conspiracy theories.”

Cheng Ke poured wine for Chen Qing, “Let’s just say we show concern for friends in different ways.”

“Let me just warn you,” Chen Qing nodded, “You better not show this kind of ‘concern’ for Third Bro in front of him.Your kind of concern is the sort that’s asking for a beating.”

“Sure,” Cheng Ke nodded, “How old were you both when you met?”

“He was about 10 or 11,” Chen Qing drank a mouthful of wine, “I was older by two years, but I wasn’t taller than him then.”

“…You still aren’t.” Cheng Ke said.

“Do you even know how to make conversation?” Chen Qing tutted, “Are you taller than him?”

“About the same. I’m not shorter than him, whatever the case.” Cheng Ke smiled.

“So?” Chen Qing said, “Go compare with Ba Pie then, he’s one ninety-something, who gives a shit if you people are one eighty-something.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Cheng Ke nodded to stop Chen Qing from derailing the topic, and brought it back, “He said he was an orphan?”

“That’s right, when he arrived he was alone, and had no luggage,” Chen Qing said, “But he had about two, three hundred dollars. That was quite a lot back then, richer than you, rummaging through a bin for a hundred dollars in this day and age.”

Oh fuck off!

“Oh,” Cheng Ke took a sip from his glass, “That is quite wealthy.”

“Know why I’m this loyal to him?” Chen Qing said.

“Why?” Cheng Ke asked.

“He saved my life,” Chen Qing said, “The first time we met was when he fished me out of a lake.”

“Is that so…” Cheng Ke was surprised.

“I’ll tell you something, I was pretty useless when I was little…of course, not that I’m much use now either,” Chen Qing said as he gnawed on a piece of bone, “I was always bullied as a kid by hooligans slightly older than me. I couldn’t win fights and had a loose mouth, so I was always getting beaten up.

“Can’t you just shut up and be more modest?” Cheng Ke asked.

“No, I have my pride and sense of justice!” Chen Qing crushed the bone with his teeth, “That day they went overboard. They tied me to a rock and threw me into the lake.

“What the fuck?” Cheng Ke couldn’t believe it, “Were they not afraid of getting people killed?”

“The fuck they’re afraid of,” Chen Qing said, “You’re a local, don’t you know that this piece of land here only started developing seven or eight years ago? There was no fucking thing here, and I heard the old pier used to be a cemetery too.

“That was some decades ago.” Cheng Ke said.

 “Regardless, if you really died there, no one would know., It was late at night,” Chen Qing said, “There wasn’t any surveillance around so, when people were beaten to death on the streets in those days, that was that. A few of those cases haven’t been solved even now.”

This was something Cheng Ke knew, and one of them was even a case of family annihilation. His mother would always mutter prayers every time she mentioned it.

“It was Jiang Yuduo who rescued you?”

“Yeah,” Chen Qing nodded, “It was the beginning of autumn that time, not too cold yet. He was sleeping by the bridge and saw it happen.”

Cheng Ke didn’t speak. A night at the beginning of autumn, even if it wasn’t freezing, would still be pretty cold. A ten-year-old boy, sleeping by the bridge.

“Back then, he impressed me in two aspects,” Chen Qing raised two fingers, “One, how calm he was. After those people threw me in they were watching me suffocate from the lakeside. If it were someone else they surely would have yelled or run off, but he slipped into the water without anyone noticing.”

Cheng Ke looked at him and nodded.

“Two,” Chen Qing waggled his two fingers and picked up another piece of rib into his mouth, “He could really fucking hold his breath! Damn, he could hold his breath the longest among all the anyone I’ve ever seen!”

“Can’t you hold your breath pretty well too?” Cheng Ke asked.

“No, he untied the rock from underwater, then butted me to the surface,” Chen Qing said, “I could gasp and struggle on the surface, while he stayed underwater and dragged me like a kite a few hundred metres to shore.”

“Usually a drowning person flails a lot. He was safer that way,” Cheng Ke said. Except that when he recalled that Jiang Yuduo was only ten at that time, it was rather amazing, “And that way he would not have been noticed by the people on the shore, right?”

“You’re right,” Chen Qing pointed at him, “Smart, no wonder Third Bro likes you. He was especially careful that time, worried that someone would discover him.”

Cheng Ke sighed gently.

“From that time onwards, I decided to follow him,” Chen Qing said, “Third bro is the best leader I’ve seen.”

“Why is he called Third Bro?” Chen Qing asked.

“His surname is Jiang, which is written three strokes in its character*,” Chen Qing said, “So I call him Third Bro. When you’re on the streets, you have to have an alias.”

(T/N: This is the simplified version of the explanation- skip ahead if you’re not interested in Chinese characters or calligraphy. Basically the word Jiang in Chinese looks like this “江”. Chinese words are often composed of roots and radicals, with the radical being a hint towards the meaning of the word. The word 江 is composed of the radical for water “氵”, which are the three left strokes, and the root on the right “工”. When 氵 is written awkwardly like those by children with bad penmanship, it looks like three instead 三. This is the basis of Chen Qing’s convoluted choice of nickname- breaking down the word Jiang into its meaningless radical and root, then morphing the warped version of the radical into another word. 

The attachment of Bro/Sis to the end of an adjective or noun or the shortened version of a person’s full name is often used by the Chinese (No matter Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia or abroad) to indicate reverence, familiarity or fondness.)

Cheng Ke smiled.

Chen Qing can’t really hold his liquor, and just a little red wine would get him excited, blabbing about how Jiang Yuduo was like as a kid- about how he would butt heads with others, how he would go and work at Lu Qian’s, how he would help one after another of his lackeys.

But Cheng Ke had to admit, Chen Qing was not a complete idiot. No matter how excited he got, he remained tight-lipped about Jiang Yuduo before he first met him.

“At that time this place was a mess, with fights and protection rackets around,” Chen Qing tutted, “Decadence and fighting, night and day… Third Bro never claimed to be boss, but no one dared to piss him off. No one could beat him one on one.”

“Yeah,” Cheng Ke nodded. He could tell Chen Qing utterly worshipped Jiang Yuduo.

“That time there was also a rumour that was spread a lot,” Chen Qing chuckled, “They said Third Bro had no pain nerves, couldn’t feel pain.”

“Really?” Cheng Ke asked.

“Rubbish, but he really could endure pain really well.” Chen Qing said.

Maybe not just endure it, but possibly ignore it sometimes.

The table full of food was mostly eaten by Chen Qing. Cheng Ke watched as Chen Qing drank the last mouthful of soup, and wondered how he could maintain his lumberjack physique.

“That’s it, I already said plenty today,” Chen Qing wiped his mouth, “Third Bro said that if there’s anything you need during this time, you come look for me instead. He’s probably embarrassed to meet you after hurting you.”

“It’s fine.” Cheng Ke said.

“I’m leaving,” Chen Qing took out his phone, “I’ll add you and send the address to you. Help me drive the car back, and remember to do it before nine, if you’re late I’ll be yelled into mush by my superior.”

“Yeah,” Cheng Ke took his phone and swapped contacts with Chen Qing. Looking at the address he sent, “I say, how is it that you’re swapping cars to drive every day?”

Chen Qing smiled, “Let me know what kind of car you want to drive, I’m buddy with the clients, it’s no problem borrowing those cars for a day or two.”

“I’m not into driving.” Cheng Ke smiled.

“I’m leaving,” Chen Qing stood up, put on his coat, and walked towards the door, “There’s one more thing I want to say.”

“Yeah,” Cheng Ke responded.

“Third Bro is not nuts,” Chen Qing said, “If he really was, would people here still be afraid of him?”

“Yeah,” Cheng Ke nodded.

“Rest well,” Chen Qing opened the door, and pointed at the corner of his eye, “pay attention to that injury, if anything looks wrong, you let me know. My mother has contacts in a hospital, I can take you for a check up.”

“Sure,” Cheng Ke said.

When Chen Qing left he slammed the door as usual, making even the windows rattle.

Cheng Ke sighed and stood beside the table for a while, before taking the largest sized bin bag and sweeping all the lunchboxes in. He was starting to feel regret. If he hadn’t plated the food, he’d have been done with cleaning up.

What’s the point of being particular? Now he has dishes to do.

He slowly collected the plates into the sink. It looked like it was time to buy a dishwasher.

But even if he were to buy one, it wouldn’t be able to wash these dishes in front of him right now.

Since waking up, Cheng Ke had already unable to muster up much enthusiasm for the day. Now that he’d heard Chen Qing talk aimlessly about Jiang Yuduo for a night, he only felt even more bothered and without direction.

After looking at the plates for a while, he threw them into the bin bag as well.

There, all tidied up.

He had many plates left, and he usually only ate instant noodles and had no use for them anyway.

Cheng Ke took a shower. His shoulder, which already started scabbing, on being rinsed by water hurt a bit. He sprayed some alcohol slapdashedly and returned to the living room couch to sit.

How was he going to kill time through this long, long night?

He took the remote for the projector, thinking of watching a movie, but put the remote back down as he fingered the power button. Thinking about yesterday’s movie, he felt chills running down his back.

The house wasn’t large, but when he remembered the banshee in blue, with him alone in the house it felt vulnerably spacious, and with his shoulder injury making him associate to that scene with the shoulder tapping.

“Shit,” Cheng Ke laid on the sofa, and wrapped the blanket that hadn’t been packed away yet over himself.

Frankly, what made him scared wasn’t Cho Yan-may the ghost.

It was because once the lively atmosphere from Chen Qing’s presence was gone. Cheng Ke gradually stirred from his whirlwind of thoughts to remembering Jiang Yuduo’s violent punch hurling towards him.

He was rather scared, still.

Chen Qing insisted that Jiang Yuduo didn’t have mental issues. Cheng Ke could feel that he truly believed it and wasn’t just protecting his Third Bro’s image.

Cheng Ke was conflicted. Some of Chen Qing’s words made sense. If Jiang Yuduo really had mental problems, how could he have stayed here all these years, keeping the thugs wary of him?

Thugs are thugs, and thugs are no fools. They would be afraid of an adept-in-combat, crowd-subduing ringleader, but not an adept-in-combat, crowd-subduing…nutjob.

Maybe it wasn’t as serious as he thought. With a painful childhood like Jiang Yuduo’s, he was over-cautious, and perhaps would mistakenly hurt someone from hypervigilance.

Cheng Ke furrowed his brows.

Therein lied the problem.

This kind of mental state was not normal in the first place.

It also couldn’t explain how Chen Qing, who was close enough to him to be able to enter his home freely, had somehow never seen “them” or witnessed “them”” hurting Jiang Yuduo.

Cheng Ke lit a cigarette, staring into the television that wasn’t on.

After finishing it, he entered the bedroom.

Bedtime.

Stop thinking about it.

Why should he, who didn’t even bother to thoroughly evaluate how and why Cheng Yi manipulated him out of his home, bother to take to heart a street hooligan whom he only knew for such a short period of time?

In any case, the morning’s incident did not bring him any serious repercussions, and Jiang Yuduo would no longer appear before him.

…No longer appear?

Fuck.

Chen Qing’s car had to be driven back before nine in the morning. Heeding the estimated duration of the trip by the GPS, Cheng Ke woke at past seven, cooked some instant noodles to eat and headed out.

Usually he’d still be drifting in and out of sleep at this time, yet today he could wake up because he didn’t get much sleep the entire night.

Other than inadvertently thinking back to whether Jiang Yuduo had mental issues, his mind kept going back to that assault.

He didn’t want to think too much about Jiang Yuduo assaulting him, nor did he assign blame. After all, he dislocated Jiang Yuduo’s wrist.

Except even though he had fought with others since he was young, and fighting with Cheng Yi for all things big and small was nearly a weekly occurrence, none of the fights had ever been like this.

He couldn’t deny that a pampered young master like him was thoroughly shaken.

Among the routes given by the GPS, he chose the closest.

Halfway into the route, he discovered that it would pass through the narrow street where Jiang Yuduo’s place was.

That gave him a mysterious feeling. Cheng Ke used to play, eat or visit bars around the area, but had never gone down this street. But after knowing Jiang Yuduo, he realised that as long as one headed that way, one had to pass by this street, as if it were a key junction.

He wanted to drive to a main street, to bypass this street.

But upon seeing the windows of Jiang Yuduo’s place, he didn’t drive out.

He even tried to glance through the windows as he passed by.

The curtains remain pulled.

He couldn’t help but imagine Jiang Yuduo at this very moment, possibly standing next to the window, peeping out through the gap of the curtains.

“Third Bro, it’s not that I’m not paying,” A young lady from room 702 with a face full of unremoved makeup leaned on the door looking at Jiang Yuduo, “You have to at least let me know in advance for me to prepare the cash. First thing in the morning you come over, who’d have it ready for you?”

“Where’s your phone?” Jiang Yuduo asked.

“What do you want? My phone’s worth more than the rent!” The young lady glared.

“Let me see,” Jiang Yuduo said.

The lady hesitated for a moment, then handed the phone out.

“Unlock it.”Jiang Yuduo didn’t take it.

“What is it!” The lady was very reluctant.

“Do as you’re told!” Da Bin said from behind, impatient, “If you don’t want to then pay your rent! It’s not like we’re here to rob you, why is it that you’re treating paying rent like martyrdom?”

The young lady tutted and unlocked her phone.

Jiang Yuduo took the phone, opened the SMS inbox and scrolled down to find the notice for due rent that he sent, then turned the screen towards her and said, “I’m not here for trouble, I’m here for the rent. If you want trouble, I’ll give you trouble regardless of your face or chest.”

“For fuck’s sake!” The lady snatched the phone back, turned around towards the house closing the door, “How troublesome, wait here!”

Jiang Yuduo stretched his foot to block the closing door, and she looked back.

“Faster.”Jiang Yuduo watched her.

After a few minutes of mucking about, the lady finally handed over the rent.

Jiang Yuduo stored the money, and kicked the next door.

The cheaper the rent,the harder it was to collect.

Many who could only afford such cheap, be it a cent, were unwilling to offer it cleanly and quickly. A day or short as ten minutes, if they could delay it, they’d feel that it was worth it.

Jiang Yuduo had never experienced what it was like to delay paying rent.

He had slept in all sorts of places when he didn’t have money, and when he did, and Lu Qian asked him for rent, he would hand it over without hesitation.

He was scared of that feeling of being pressured.

Among the rooms in apartment three, the quickest to pay rent was this tenant- the thin uncle living next to the lady.

In the few months that he stayed here, whenever it was time to collect rent, he would open the door, hand over the money and take the receipt in one swift motion, not a single word spared.

However, the thin uncle didn’t open the door today. Jiang Yuduo waited outside for a few minutes without a stir inside.

“I thought this person never went out?” Da Bin was curious as well, and moved forward to knock a few times, yelling, “Open up! Rent is due!”

The door next to it opened and the lady popped her head out, “I hadn’t heard him come out to throw out the trash for two days already.”

Jiang Yuduo looked at her.

“Probably died inside?” She continued, “Seemed like he had some illness in the first place.”

Jiang Yuduo frowned, and turned his head to give Da Bin a look.

Da Bin took out the key to open the door, and as he pushed it ajar he yelled again, “Anyone here?” 

The window inside the room had a slight gap, and as the door opened and drew out the air, a dusty and decadent funk rolled out.

Collecting rent from this tenant was a short matter, so this was the first time Jiang Yuduo smelled the scent of the room. He couldn’t understand how that thin uncle was able to take a tidy room and live in it to the point where it gave such a funk.

But he knew this smell very well.

No light, no ventilation, no cleaning, no tidying, nor a livable presence.

He had spent many years living in such a funk.

The funk where not even a glimmer of hope could be seen.

“Motherfucker!” Da Bin entered the room for two seconds before retreating, a face full of panic.

Jiang Yuduo knew what happened inside with a single look. He didn’t enter, and after closing the door let Da Bin call the police.

The police arrived quickly. The tenants, masters of disappearing acts when it came to paying rent, now flock out on this floor to rubberneck.

Jiang Yuduo found it somewhat hard to breathe.

Someone died.

No one knew his name.

Lu Qian’s place had his name registered, but only just. After that page was flipped and the next person’s details were written, no longer would anyone remember who this was, what he was called, where he was from nor what he was doing.

And now this person was dead.

Gone amidst so many people.

Yet no one noticed.

Jiang Yuduo had never seen anyone die.

But he imagined it countless times.

An existence devoid of notice.

A disappearance devoid of notice.

After leaving apartment three, Jiang Yuduo didn’t head home, but went to the mall.

The mall had a lot of people, and a lot of voices. If there was danger, it would be hard to spot.

But in the mall the lights were bright and colourful, and every look soothed his stifling mood.

He sat on the resting benches next to the stairs and looked at the crowds silently.

Cheng Ke entered from the mall entrance, his face slapped by the hanging cotton blinds, looking rather pissed off.

(T/N: No idea why the large entrance of a mall would be using huge cotton blinds as partitions acting like doors, but that was the original text.)

Jiang Yuduo lowered the tongue of his cap to cover his face, but his eyes couldn’t help but follow Cheng Ke.

After entering, Cheng Ke looked at the directory’s map for ages, probably unaware of which floor the thing he wanted to buy was on.

Cheng Ke stood in front of the map for almost a minute without moving. Jiang Yuduo sighed as the thief closed in behind him and almost stuck to his back. If that thief breathed any harder he’d feel it on his neck, but he remained completely oblivious.

He indeed had a wealthy upbringing, having no vigilance against thieves.

As the thief reached out his hand towards Cheng Ke’s coat pocket, he finally finished reading the map and walked towards the escalator. The thief withdrew his hand but not his thieving heart, probably thinking that an easy target like that didn’t come often. As Cheng Ke entered the lift, the thief followed.

Jiang Yuduo stood up and quickly entered as well.