Shang Zhitao was dragging her luggage toward the gate of the housing complex when she ran straight into her three dear roommates heading out. She stopped short and asked, "Where are you all going?"
"To find the rental agent." The three of them had been working overtime at home when the power mysteriously went out. After some digging, they discovered the agency had pocketed the electricity money they'd paid. They called to ask about it and somehow got cursed out by the agent instead.
Back then, shady rental agencies ran wild, and most people assumed they'd be lucky enough to avoid trouble. Somehow it always found them anyway.
"Wait for me a second, let me drop off my bags. I'm coming too."
"You don't need to." Sun Yuanzhu told Shang Zhitao to wait at home, then turned to Sun Yu. "And you. I told you to stay, but you insisted on tagging along."
Shang Zhitao just pushed her suitcase along and ran after them, shouting as she went, "Wait for me! I'm coming!" There had been a lot of news lately about these predatory agencies, and Shang Zhitao knew better than to underestimate one. She was an adult, technically, and this was the kind of moment where you stood with your people.
Zhang Lei exchanged a glance with Sun Yuanzhu and tried to talk Sun Yu down. "Go home. Two grown men can handle this, we don't need you two. Wait for us at the apartment."
"I'm not going back." Sun Yu shoved a pair of scissors into her bag. "I know how to fight. If those thugs try anything, I can hold my own." Ever since that event in Handan got crashed by troublemakers, Sun Yu had taken to carrying something for self defense. As she put it: any hooligan who wanted trouble had better think twice before starting it with her.
She talked a tough game, though she'd never actually thrown a punch. Life had simply pushed a once delicate girl into becoming someone who could handle anything.
Shang Zhitao dropped off her bags and caught up with the others. When they reached the agency's cramped little storefront, Sun Yuanzhu stopped and turned to negotiate with the two women. "How about this. You two wait outside. If it turns into a fight in there, call the police."
"No." Sun Yu refused.
"Calm down, listen to me." Zhang Lei took off his coat and handed it to Sun Yu. "We can't let them corner all four of us at once. If it really comes to blows, you two call the police first, then start shouting for help. You'll come in after that, but we'll have to watch out for you on top of everything else. Deal, brothers?"
"Deal."
Shang Zhitao had never been through anything like this. She pulled out her phone and had 110 ready to dial, watching the storefront closely. She didn't even notice her own fingers trembling. Before long they heard a table slam inside, followed immediately by a shouted curse. Sun Yu charged in. Shang Zhitao dialed 110 on the spot. She didn't realize she was crying until she heard herself give the address in a shaking voice, hung up, and screamed a few times, "They're beating people up!" Then she ran in too.
Zhang Lei had been right. They needed to shout like that, because shouting drew a crowd, and a crowd meant they wouldn't get away with it easily.
She never knew where the nerve came from. Probably just the simple conviction that she couldn't let her friends face this alone. When she got inside, she saw several of the agency's men had Sun Yuanzhu and Zhang Lei surrounded, all of them grappling. Sun Yu had grabbed an ashtray from the side and swung it at someone's head, but another man blocked her and reached out to hit her. Shang Zhitao rushed in and shoved him back with all her strength.
A crowd began gathering outside. Fights at rental agencies were common enough back then, but eventually someone couldn't stand watching anymore and shouted that the police were coming, which finally made the agency's men back off.
The onlookers packed the doorway so tightly that no one could get out. A few of the agency's young men tried to slip out the back, but Sun Yuanzhu was quick enough to block them. There was a cut on his lip that he didn't bother to wipe away. Now that the fighting had stopped, he tried reasoning with them instead. "Pay us the electricity money now. If you won't, then hand over the money and the utility card and we'll pay it ourselves."
"Don't push your luck! We told you, the money's with the company, it's got nothing to do with us!"
"We don't know who has the money, but we need our power back on today!" Zhang Lei was genuinely furious with them. As someone in business, someone who made a point of getting along with everyone, he rarely lost his temper. Today he was livid.
One of the agency's men, clearly used to acting like a bully, saw that these two young men weren't easily scared and decided to go after an easier target instead. Enraged, he swung a punch at Shang Zhitao's face. Sun Yuanzhu was fast enough to strike his arm, but the fist still grazed Shang Zhitao's cheek, and her pale, soft face swelled up instantly.
This was too much.
In twenty three years of living, Shang Zhitao had never been humiliated like this. She lunged forward and sank her teeth into the man's arm. It was winter and he was bundled up, so how much damage could a bite really do? She clawed at his face with her other hand instead, wishing she had long nails like Lumi's.
The police finally arrived. Looking around the room full of men and women, it was clear the agency hadn't come out badly hurt. The ones who'd taken the beating were the four tenants, people who had clearly always been law abiding and had only snapped today under pressure. The officers hauled everyone to the station for mediation.
"Who started it?"
"They did!" Fingers pointed at the opposing side. The agency's men were clearly more practiced at this, and since there was no proof of who threw the first punch, the bystanders had only noticed once the fight was already underway.
"Where's the electricity money?"
"At the company."
"Where's your company located?"
The officer asked mostly as a formality. There was nothing in this particular stretch of the neighborhood he didn't already know, and this was just going through the motions.
The agency men exchanged glances, and one of them spoke up. "We don't know... we just work out of the shop, we've never been to the company."
Nonsense.
The officer cursed them silently in his head: look at the lot of you, every one of them a piece of work. Of all the jobs to take, why a scam rental outfit?
There was no reasoning with these men. They'd clearly been through this before and knew how to stick together. The officer turned to Shang Zhitao's group instead. "How do you want to settle this?"
"First, we're injured. We need to go to the hospital for an exam..."
"We're injured too! We need an exam too!" the thugs shouted over them.
"Quiet!" The officer slammed a hand on the table, and the room fell silent.
"Second, we want our money back along with the utility card, and we want to speak directly with the landlady." Sun Yuanzhu glanced at Shang Zhitao and Sun Yu before continuing. "Third, the women were badly frightened. We want a public apology and a guarantee that there won't be any more harassment."
"Hospital first." The officer looked over the four young people who'd taken the worst of it, thinking to himself that they really did have some nerve.
"I have one more request." Sun Yuanzhu cut in before the officer could move on. "There must be other tenants who've gone through the same thing. Please get in touch with them so this can be settled together, or we'll take this to court."
Sun Yuanzhu had always been such a gentle person. Today, over two hundred yuan, he'd turned this hard. Shang Zhitao suddenly remembered a lesson from school about the May Fourth Movement, how it was the frailest looking students who woke up first. She understood, in that instant, that the best thing an education could give a person was probably exactly what she was seeing in Sun Yuanzhu right now.
They went to the hospital to have their injuries documented. The police raided the agency's den, seized their account books, and arrested the accountant. By the next day, Shang Zhitao and the others were already meeting with the landlady. The speed of it was almost startling.
But the landlady said, "With things blown up like this, I'm worried about them getting back at us. You know how it goes, paint thrown on the door, locks jammed with glue, the whole building can't get any peace. I'm sorry, children."
Faced with the grey haired landlady, none of them knew what to say. Her worries were entirely reasonable. She was an elderly woman with no children nearby, and if trouble like that came knocking, she wouldn't be able to handle it.
"Auntie, could you give us a few days? We'll go find a new place."
"Would three days be alright?"
"Yes."
They went home and sat in the living room, none of them in much of a mood to talk. It was Sun Yu who finally spoke first. She'd dealt with a shady agency before and had lived through something like this. "So what next, do we look for a four bedroom, or a place with partitions?"
"Let's look for a three bedroom." Zhang Lei, who'd been quiet for a long while, finally spoke up. "I've been thinking about moving somewhere closer to the office. I just got promoted, work's been too busy, and the long commute has been wrecking my sleep."
The last time Shang Zhitao had faced something like this was in the spring of her junior year, when the girls in her dorm had talked about where they'd all go after graduation. Someone said Beijing, someone said home, someone wanted to try their luck in Shenzhen, someone was preparing for grad school entrance exams. They'd all been so young then, with so little experience of parting, and the conversation that day had turned unexpectedly sad. Everyone ended up in tears.
Today Shang Zhitao didn't cry. She already knew that sooner or later, everyone drifted apart. New jobs, new relationships, marriage and children. People who lived together for a year or two stayed close at first, then slowly lost touch, and eventually vanished into the crowd of everyone else. In the end, only a handful of people remained close.
Gathering and scattering, that was simply the truth of life.
No one knew what to say. Zhang Lei scratched the back of his head. "Forgive me for going first. I really do love you all. But there's no banquet that doesn't end."
"Why so sentimental?" Sun Yu stood up and clapped her hands. "Forget it, forget it. We're not talking about apartments today. Today we're sending Zhang Lei off in style. Let's go drink!"
Shang Zhitao nodded. "Alright, alright. Drinks it is."
The four of them headed out to a barbecue place next door, each of them with some visible bruise on their face, drawing sidelong looks from strangers. They were all a little embarrassed themselves. After more than a decade of schooling, none of them had ever imagined they'd end up throwing punches like the delinquents from their old classes, that everyone in society eventually had to fight this kind of battle at least once.
While waiting on their food, Shang Zhitao looked at her own nails and said to Sun Yu, "I'm going to grow my nails out. Like Lumi's. Then file them into a point, so next time I won't come out on the losing end." Over the past year, Luan Nian had drilled into her the habit of constant self reflection, and now, even after a brawl, she was already reviewing the fight in her head, working out how she could win next time.
That made everyone laugh. Her face was still swollen on one side, the corner of her mouth split open, and she looked a little ridiculous saying it. They looked around at each other, every one of them worse for wear. A complete rout.
Sun Yu raised her glass. "A toast to Zhang Lei. Congratulations on getting out of this dump and starting fresh."
"Don't say it like that." Someone in business met all kinds of scenes, in and out, but tonight he seemed genuinely moved. "These past two years have honestly been the happiest stretch of time since I came to Beijing. No matter what I dealt with at the office, no matter how angry I got, coming home and seeing the three of you fixed everything. I'm moving out, but that doesn't mean what we have has to end."
"In Beijing, finding friends you'd actually throw a punch alongside, that's not easy to come by."
The whole day had actually been kind of absurd. Over two hundred yuan and a matter of principle, the four of them had taken quite a beating, and yet none of them felt ashamed of it. If anything, having fought together made them feel closer than ever, like real friends.
But life was always going to move on eventually.
Crowds come and go, bustling and endless, and even the liveliest gathering has to break up sometime.
They drank far too much. The two men, in a break from character, ended up relieving themselves under a tree along the street inside the North Fifth Ring Road, slapping each other on the shoulder as they went. "Don't be like me. Don't be like me. This isn't civilized, this isn't polite." Then one of them threw up everywhere.
Shang Zhitao and Sun Yu stood off to the side with their backs turned, shivering a little in the cold wind.
Sun Yu rubbed at her swollen arm, then looked at Shang Zhitao's puffed up face, and a wave of sadness caught her off guard. "Look at the two of us. What did we even accomplish this year? And right at the end of it, we go and get ourselves banged up."
"At least it went out with a bang. Not a wasted year."
It felt like a dream, the good and the bad, all of it lived through in one stretch. Zhang Lei moved out the very next morning. Sun Yu went off to organize an event, and Shang Zhitao and Sun Yuanzhu went out to look for a new apartment.
Before they left, Sun Yuanzhu noticed the bruising on Shang Zhitao's swollen cheek. That punch really hadn't been light. A pang of concern hit him, and he went inside for rubbing alcohol. "Let me clean that up for you?"
"Okay. Thank you."
Shang Zhitao turned her face toward him. Sun Yuanzhu's touch was very gentle as he dabbed the cotton swab against her skin, and he asked softly, "Does it hurt?"
How could it not hurt?
But Shang Zhitao shook her head. "It doesn't hurt. Sun Yuanzhu, I think you should stop getting into fights from now on. Someone who does academic work shouldn't be brawling."
"They threatened us. Said if we kept making trouble, they'd stuff you and Sun Yu into a sack. That's why we fought."
Shang Zhitao's chest went warm. She sniffed. "It wasn't worth it."
"It was worth it."
Adults were always supposed to weigh whether something was worth it first. As if there were really that many interests to calculate.
"Getting to know someone isn't easy. When I can't see it happening, I won't get involved. But once I've seen it, I'll always protect you both."
Shang Zhitao felt her eyes go a little damp. She gave Sun Yuanzhu a light punch in the chest, mimicking Zhang Lei's tone. "Thanks, bro."
"You're welcome."
No need to be so polite about it.