After the call ended, Yin Xigui stood in the living room for about ten seconds.
His breathing gradually slowed from ragged to steady. The grip of his fingers on the edge of his phone loosened, then tightened again. He dialed another number. When it connected, he said only two sentences.
“I want everyone. Now. The abandoned freight-transfer station outside the city.”
The person on the other end did not ask a question. They acknowledged the order and hung up.
Yin Xigui slipped the phone into his pocket. On his way out, he paused at the entryway.
In the mirror beside the shoe cabinet, his face was pale, shadows dark beneath his eyes, his long pink hair loose across his shoulders. He gathered it behind his head and tied it into a clean ponytail, exposing the full line of his face.
The person in the mirror did not wear his usual soft smile.
Something dark lay in his eyes, cold and sharp. His lips had become a taut line.
When Yin Xigui pushed open the courtyard gate, three black cars were already waiting in the lane beyond it, their engines murmuring low.
Eight or nine lean men stood beside them, hard shapes bulging at their waists.
The middle-aged man at the front nodded when he saw Yin Xigui. There was no needless greeting. “Everything is ready.”
Yin Xigui nodded and was about to get into a car when another vehicle raced into the mouth of the lane. Its brakes shrieked through the night.
The door flew open. Lin Zhi rushed out, collar crooked and hair disheveled, plainly in a hurry.
“Xigui!”
Lin Zhi ran in front of him, spreading his arms between Yin Xigui and the car door. “What are you doing? Have you lost your mind? You are taking so few people into Yin Rui's territory? Do you know how many men guard that place?”
Yin Xigui looked at him. He seemed neither angry nor surprised; it was the glance of someone interrupted by an unrelated passerby while rushing somewhere.
“Move.”
“I won't.”
Lin Zhi stepped forward, raising his voice. “You know he took that person precisely to wait for you to walk into the trap! If you go, you are doing exactly what he wants! He is prepared, do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Then you are still going?”
Something long suppressed broke through Lin Zhi's voice, hot and sharp.
“For one lower-tier citizen? Xigui, look at yourself. You have exposed every card you had for him. You have poured every connection you built into this. And now you want to throw yourself into the tiger's jaws?”
At last Yin Xigui turned and looked directly at him. Streetlight cut across his face, drawing the sharp contours of one half of it. He looked nothing like the soft person he usually appeared to be.
“Lin Zhi.”
His voice was not loud, but each word sank like a stone into deep water. “You managed my accounts for two years, and I thank you for it. But do not think that managing them for two years gives you the right to decide which choices I am allowed to make.”
Lin Zhi's face went pale for an instant.
His lips parted. His throat worked once. Then he suddenly reached out and seized Yin Xigui's wrist.
“Xigui, I like you.”
His voice dropped, carrying the force of someone throwing everything away. “Why do you think I managed those things for you for two years? Why do you think I kept helping you negotiate everything? I like you. I have liked you since the first time I met you. But after he arrived, he was all you could see. You have done so much for him—have you ever thought about how I feel?”
The lane fell quiet.
The people beside the cars all looked away, pretending to watch something else. Yin Xigui lowered his eyes to Lin Zhi's hand around his wrist, its knuckles white with effort.
He gently removed it.
“I know,” he said, his voice as flat as if discussing the weather. “But I do not like you. I never did, and I never will.”
Lin Zhi's hand stiffened in the air.
Yin Xigui had already turned toward the car. Before bending into the back seat, he glanced at Lin Zhi once more.
The remaining streetlight showed every part of his calm expression.
“Go home. If you have stopped that funding, then it is stopped. I do not blame you. But do not interfere in my affairs again.”
The door shut. The window rose.
Lin Zhi remained in place as the three cars drove away one after another, their taillights trailing three red streaks through the night before vanishing around the corner.
He stood in the empty lane for a long time.
The night wind made his hair even messier. He gripped the wrist Yin Xigui had just freed and rubbed the faint lingering sensation over the bone with his fingertips.
“...Do not interfere again.”
He repeated the final words quietly, then slowly released his wrist.
The three cars sped through the night for about forty minutes.
Under the headlights, the gate of the abandoned freight-transfer station outside the city came into view.
Its rusted wire gate stood half open. Inside were discarded containers and shelves. Two or three black cars stood in the open yard, and shadowy figures moved between them.
Yin Xigui unbuttoned his coat as he stepped out. Eight men followed him from the cars, their steps striking the concrete in unison.
Without hesitation, he walked toward the half-open gate.
The two men at the entrance tried to stop him. The people behind Yin Xigui moved first.
Those men were slammed against the wire fence with muffled impacts. Yin Xigui passed them without slowing.
He crossed the yard crowded with abandoned shelving, turned through a narrow passage between two containers, and saw a warehouse lit in the distance.
Its door was half closed. Light spilled across the ground in a long warm-yellow strip. Several guards stood outside and came toward him when they saw him.
The eight men behind Yin Xigui moved as well. The clash of metal rang especially sharply in the night, followed by bodies stumbling and the dull sound of fists landing.
Yin Xigui passed through the fighting, walking faster and faster. The warehouse door grew closer. Through its gap, he could see cement floor and clutter piled along the walls.
He pushed the door open.
The warehouse was much larger than it had seemed outside. Abandoned machinery sat across its bare concrete floor, and rusted iron racks crowded the corners.
Sheng Linyou was against the far wall. His hands were fastened to a vertical iron pipe, the cuffs connected to a short chain that restricted how far he could move.
He sat with his head bowed. Dust and darker stains marked his shirt. Several whip marks crossed his bare forearm, the skin slightly split.
Yin Xigui stopped for a moment in the doorway. His fingers around the frame had gone white.
Sheng Linyou lifted his head.
He was injured too. Dried blood marked his temple, and the skin at the corner of his mouth was broken.
But when he saw the figure at the door, the eyes that had been dim for days suddenly lit.
“Yin Xigui...”
Yin Xigui did not answer. He was already moving. As he ran toward Sheng Linyou, he saw from the corner of his eye the figure who had remained seated in the side corner of the warehouse: Yin Rui rose from a folding chair, turning a short black baton in his hand, his expression caught between surprise and interest.
Clearly, he had not expected Yin Xigui to charge in with this kind of force.
“Cousin.”
Three of Yin Rui's men blocked Yin Xigui a few steps short of Sheng Linyou, weapons glinting coldly under the lights.
Yin Xigui did not stop.
As he went forward, he twisted aside from the first swing of a baton, drove his elbow into the man's ribs, and slipped past him as the man doubled over.
The second man moved faster. His baton struck Yin Xigui's shoulder with a dull blow. Yin Xigui's body lurched, but he did not stop. He caught the man's wrist in his backhand and twisted. Bone cracked.
Before the third man could act, one of the people who had entered behind Yin Xigui threw himself in to take him on.
Yin Xigui reached Sheng Linyou. When he crouched, his knee struck the concrete hard.
His hands shook as he worked at the cuff lock.
“Brother, look at me.”
He spoke as he worked, his voice trembling. “Look at me. Don't close your eyes.”
Sheng Linyou leaned against the iron pipe and looked up at him.
Under the warehouse lights, Yin Xigui's profile was tightly drawn. A thin streak of blood marked his jawline. His pink ponytail had slipped from his shoulder to his chest, the ends brushing the cold pipe as he moved.
“You are hurt—” Sheng Linyou began, his voice hoarse beyond recognition.
“It is nothing.”
At last the clasp sprang open. Metal clicked, and the cuff fell away from Sheng Linyou's wrist.
Yin Xigui threw it aside. As he reached to help Sheng Linyou, his gaze caught on the whip marks across his forearm.
His breathing stopped for a beat. Then he kept moving, lifting Sheng Linyou from the floor and bracing him at the waist, supporting half his weight against his own side.
Yin Xigui's shoulder dipped under Sheng Linyou's weight.
Near the entrance, the warehouse had become a melee.
Yin Rui had retreated to the wall. His expression was dark, and the baton in his hand rose halfway before falling again.
In a short time, the people Yin Xigui had brought had gained control of most of the scene.
Yin Xigui supported Sheng Linyou toward the door.
As they passed Yin Rui, he stopped. He turned to his cousin. Under the warehouse's harsh white lights, the two men met each other's gaze from three or four steps away.
“You lost.”
Yin Xigui's voice was quiet, but every word was clear. “Today, I came to save him. The next time you touch him, I will not settle for merely fighting you.”
Yin Rui watched him for several seconds. The familiar curve at the corner of his mouth appeared, then faded.
“That mouth of yours—”
“What this mouth says is not important.” Yin Xigui cut him off. “What matters is that you will never know whether the things in my hands were truly deleted.”
Yin Rui's pupils narrowed.
Yin Xigui had already walked past him with Sheng Linyou, pushing the half-closed door fully open.
Night wind poured through the doorway, carrying cold clean air from outside.
With each step, Yin Xigui felt the weight leaning on his shoulder become more solid. The hand at his waist slowly tightened too.
They passed the fight as it gradually died down and walked toward the black car waiting outside.
Yin Xigui opened the rear door and settled Sheng Linyou inside, then bent in after him.
The instant the door closed, his shoulders finally sank. He leaned back against the seat and turned to look at Sheng Linyou beside him.
Sheng Linyou looked back. In the dim interior, separated by almost no distance, they could see everything in each other's eyes.
Sheng Linyou reached up and touched the thin bloodstreak on Yin Xigui's jaw.
His fingertip came away with a bead of blood not yet dry. Yin Xigui did not so much as frown. He only watched him.
“He hit you.” Sheng Linyou's thumb brushed the mark along his jaw.
“I'm fine.”
“Your shoulder—”
“I'm fine,” Yin Xigui repeated softly.
He leaned forward and rested his forehead on Sheng Linyou's shoulder. The ends of his pink hair fell across Sheng Linyou's chest.
He closed his eyes. After a long while, he managed a complete sentence, so quiet it seemed meant only for himself.
“I finally got you out.”
Sheng Linyou lifted an arm around his back, his palm resting against the warmth of his spine.
Yin Xigui was trembling slightly. Sheng Linyou could not tell whether it was from the fight, a strained muscle, or something else.
He tightened his arms and rested his chin on Yin Xigui's hair, closing his eyes.
The car was utterly quiet.
Outside, distant voices cleared up the aftermath, scattered and faint. The engine murmured steadily.
Pressed together in that small space just beyond chaos, neither of them hurried to speak.
They only held each other.