Translator: Mukyuu
Editor: Mikyuu
Once they drove into the county, past memories crashed over Wang Xiaoming like waves, almost drowning him.
As if responding to his memories, the car slowed down. Baal turned to see an old grandmother with a cane walk alongside them. As if sensing his gaze, the old grandmother turned around and gave him a small smile, revealing a few lonely yellow teeth.
…
Baal forced down the impulse to move the old grandmother away and turned his head around to ask Wang Xiaoming, “Are we there?”
“Huh?” Wang Xiaoming subconsciously pressed on the brakes.
Baal watched as the old grandmother passed them.
Wang Xiaoming glanced to his left and right. “We’re not there yet, right?”
…
Did he think Baal would know?
Baal squinted. “What were you thinking?”
Wang Xiaoming paused, lowered his head in thought, and then answered, “I was trying to find a branch of the Bank of China.”
Baal took out his cellphone and handed it to him. “114.”
Wang Xiaoming looked at him in surprise.
Baal said proudly, “The ones who come up with a solution at the critical moment are the wise ones.”
…
Heaven and Hell must have a different definition than the Mortal Realm when it came to “wise men.” That was the cultural difference.
Wang Xiaoming accepted the phone and put it away. “Actually…”
“You don’t think my idea is a good one?”
“It’s not that.” Wang Xiaoming licked his lips and said, “I just wanted to say that we’re there.”
…
Baal got out of the car to see a white building next to them with the right Chinese characters written at the top. “My line of sight was blocked by a short woman.”
“It was an old grandmother,” Wang Xiaoming corrected him. “I saw her too, so I let her go first.”
“Old?” Baal raised his eyebrow. “She was a hundred at most. Is that old?” To him that was practically a baby.
Wang Xiaoming answered, “But she ages faster.”
Baal pressed his lips, “I’m not competing with that.”
Usually when he said he wasn’t competing, it meant that he had lost. Of course, hearing Baal say that he lost was out of the question.
Wang Xiaoming walked into the bank to withdraw the money.
In order to make using it easier, he had made a point of asking the Kindred responsible for distributing his salary to exchange it into Chinese yuan when they transferred it to his account. So his account now had about a million yuan.
He handed the card over to the bank staff. “Withdraw all please.”
“Of course,” The banker accepted the card with a smile, swiped it, and her smile froze when she saw the amount displayed. “Sir, apologies. Did you mean that you wanted to withdraw everything?”
Wang Xiaoming nodded. He actually had a bit of savings from before. Though it wasn’t a million, it was enough to last himself and Baal to the next month.
“I’m sorry, but without an appointment, you can only withdraw fifty thousand. If you wish to withdraw it all, you’ll need to make an appointment,” the employee explained dutifully.
Wang Xiaoming said, “But I want it now.”
The employee apologized, “Then we can only process fifty thousand for you.”
Baal walked over to stand beside Wang Xiaoming and asked disinterestedly, “Where do you store your money?” As long as he knew the location, he could just grab it.
…
The employee’s mouth widened until a goose egg could fit inside because his words were really too much like something a bank robber in the movies would say.
There actually really were robbers who looked handsome, dashing, and like a celebrity…
Her mind slowly created a tragic story in which an unimportant bank employee and a bank robber fell in love during a robbery but had to be separated because of uncontrollable forces.
Wang Xiaoming thought she had gotten scared and hurriedly explained, “He’s just asking. He didn’t mean anything by it.”
The employee asked, “So how can I get him to mean something by it?”
“…” Wang Xiaoming finally saw that the lights in her eyes weren’t tears of fear, but glimmers of adoration. “Uh, how about you withdraw my fifty thousand first?”
“Sure.” The employee shifted her gaze unwillingly from Baal’s face.
…
Wang Xiaoming walked out of the bank with a worried expression.
Baal reached out and pinched Wang Xiaoming’s cheeks. “What is it?”
Wang Xiaoming stared down at the tip of his shoes and said quietly, “I have a lot of relatives.”
Baal frowned. To him, every human except for Wang Xiaoming was annoying… oh wait, he should say every human now.
Wang Xiaoming continued, “If they do something to you…”
“I’ll have their families collect their bodies from the Pacific Ocean.”
Wang Xiaoming asked, “You know where the Pacific Ocean is?” Hadn’t Baal said he needed to know an exact location before he could move something there?
Baal gave him a sideways look.
“No, wait.” Wang Xiaoming pulled himself back on track. “What I mean is, can you show them some mercy for me?”
“Why?” From his expression just now, Baal absolutely understood that Wang Xiaoming didn’t really like those humans that much either.
“Because they’re my family.”
Baal reminded him disinterestedly, “Ex. You’re no longer human.”
“For humans, that’s an insult.”
“For Hell, that’s a compliment.”
“…”
There really were clear cultural differences.
Wang Xiaoming coughed once and said, “Let’s get in the car, hmm?”
Wang Xiaoming’s family lived in a neither-new-nor-old five-story tall pink and green building.
The walls along the hallways were covered with ads for various agencies, and cell phone numbers and footprints were all jumbled up.
Wang Xiaoming climbed the stairs very slowly.
When they were halfway up the second flight of stairs, he suddenly paused and said to Baal behind him, “I’m very nervous.”
“Then we won’t go.” Baal would love that.
…
Wang Xiaoming looked at him silently for a while and his eyes turned from nervous to calm and steady. Finally, he said, touched, “Thank you for your comforting words. Let’s go.”
Puzzled, Baal frowned. “I comforted you?”
“Yeah. Because you’re always behind me and accommodate me in everything so that I don’t have to worry about anything, I can charge forward bravely like this.” Wang Xiaoming grabbed Baal’s hand and gave it a tight squeeze. Then he turned around and continued heading up the stairs.
“…” Baal followed silently behind him.
On the third floor, Wang Xiaoming stopped in front of a dark-brown door. He steadied his breathing and then reached out to knock.
“Who is it?” The question was asked in the local dialect.
“Mom, it’s me.” Wang Xiaoming also answered in the local dialect.
The door opened to reveal a dark face covered with dark spots. Her eyes lit up slightly when she saw Wang Xiaoming, but her attention was quickly drawn to Baal, who stood behind him.
“He is?” Her voice showed clear traces of hesitation and panic.
Because countless times in the past, she had opened the door like this and then watched as the people who had gotten caught in Wang Xiaoming’s unlucky streaks demanded restitution.
Wang Xiaoming laughed, “My friend. His name is Baal.”
When she heard it was a friend, Wang Xiaoming’s mother relaxed a bit and dug out the keys from her pocket, unlocking the door and letting them in.
The already small and crowded room seemed to instantly shrink even further into a chicken coop the minute Baal walked in.
Wang Xiaoming’s mother self-consciously seated them in the living room and then busied herself with pouring tea and serving snacks.
Wang Xiaoming looked at her white hair and emotions coursed through him. He remembered that she used to take great care of her looks, so she would go to the salon every month and dye her hair. Sometimes it’d be red, sometimes it’d be blond; nothing his father said had stopped her. But now, she didn’t even have the mind to dye her hair.
“You two sit for a bit, I’ll go next door to fetch your father,” Wang Xiaoming’s mother said and then hurried out the door.
Wang Xiaoming explained quietly, “My dad is either playing mahjong next door or watching someone else play mahjong.”
Baal was very interested in mahjong. “Is that fun?”
Wang Xiaoming recalled what happened to the players who had played Blood Chess with Baal and feared his parents would suffer the same fate. He mumbled out a vague, “Yeah, that, it’s just four people stacking up lots of little wooden blocks and forming them into a square.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Baal asked persistently.
Wang Xiaoming answered, “Just the process of piling it up, pushing it down, piling it up, and then pushing it down again.”
“…” Baal said with a frown, “Humans are becoming more and more childish and boring.”
After about half an hour, Wang Xiaoming’s parents came back, each angry at the other.
His father walked in with an angry expression and plopped himself down on the single sofa next to them without a word.
Wang Xiaoming’s mother kept nagging and complaining that his father only knew how to play mahjong and never did anything for the family.
Wang Xiaoming looked at Baal self-consciously and wished desperately for a hole he could crawl into. Though he had already prepared himself for exposing Baal to everything before they had come, there was a difference between preparing for it and being ready for it.
Baal was actually enjoying himself. In truth, he wished they’d start fighting to make the scene even more entertaining.
“Are you done?!” Wang Xiaoming’s father suddenly shouted, which scared Wang Xiaoming’s mother into swallowing all her complaints.
Wang Xiaoming called quietly, “Dad.”
“Mm.” His father replied disinterestedly but stared at Baal and asked, “Who is he?”
To ask someone who they were right in front of them was clearly a rude move. Wang Xiaoming’s mother took the opportunity to say, “Your son’s friend. What? He can’t bring home a friend?”
Wang Xiaoming’s father snorted, “Who knows what kind of friend that is!” He was actually venting his frustration at being dragged out halfway through his mahjong game.
“He really isn’t a regular friend.” Wang Xiaoming paused and when he realized that everyone’s eyes were on him, he forced himself to forge ahead, “He’s the friend that I’m spending the rest of my life with.”
…
At those words, not only were Wang Xiaoming’s parents surprised, even Baal was caught off guard.
Since he understood humans, especially Chinese, Baal knew very well that parents had a hard time tolerating what was labeled as “homosexuality” for humans. In the end, Baal didn’t care about anyone’s opinions except for Wang Xiaoming’s, so Baal didn’t care whether Wang Xiaoming told his parents or not.
But he couldn’t deny that when he heard Wang Xiaoming say “spend the rest of his life with,” his heart was filled with… overwhelming joy!
