Wei Qian thought that when he got his university diploma, he would be so excited that he couldn't sleep all night, because he had achieved his dream. But the reality was that his life was so chaotic that it took him a full year to remember that he couldn't even attend the graduation ceremony.

He thought he was crawling, but before he knew it, he had stood up and was running.

Lao Xiong and his colleagues had their own company before, but it seemed very frivolous. They hired a lot of temporary workers, and most of the time they did everything themselves. When they sold tea, they registered a certain tea company, and when they sold medical equipment, they named it a certain foreign trade company.

They have accumulated a number of messy industries and an even more messy network of contacts in a guerrilla-like manner.

Just after Wei Qian and his team completed their first project involving large-scale capital, Lao Xiong and the other two finally sat down, rented a floor of an office building in the city center, wrote out the articles of association in detail, revised them several times and finally established a formal company. They also changed the names of a tea company and a foreign trade company that were like copycat shell companies, unified the brands, and formed a group.

The earliest members were actually only Lao Xiong, Sanpang and Wei Qian. Later, as they expanded, they recruited many people one after another. The entire company was like an inflated balloon and began to have complex internal organs.

The status of Wei Qian and his three brothers gradually changed from "like dead dogs" to "looking glamorous on the surface, but actually tired like dead dogs."

The ship began to sail tentatively near the coast.

In the second year, Lao Xiong and his colleagues successively carried out two or three short, quick and profitable small projects. They were no longer invisible shareholders, and they stepped out from behind the scenes to the front stage in broad daylight.

The old bear's ambition is growing day by day, and he seems to have vaguely seen the coming golden age.

This is a public and private matter. Wei Qian's decision to win Wei Zhiyuan back is not just talk. He always does what he says, and once he makes up his mind, he will take action immediately.

After making inquiries from many sources, Wei Qian privately contacted a seemingly formal psychological institution. Soon after, after making an appointment, he ran over wearing large sunglasses that covered his face. His behavior was even more secretive than that of an underage girl having an abortion.

As a result, the smiling tiger-like white coat collected the consultation fee and told him in a gentle voice: "Although homosexuality has not yet been recognized by the law, our country deleted it from sexual perversion two years ago. The situation you described may just be a tendency that adolescents develop during their growth and development, and it may gradually disappear as they mature physically and mentally. Of course, it is also possible that he is a real homosexual. The cause may be very complicated. We will discuss it later, but it brings great psychological pressure to adolescents. Family members need to treat it scientifically and not overreact. They need to slowly guide them."

After hearing such professional words, Wei Qian immediately held on to a glimmer of hope and asked, "What happens after the counseling? Can it be turned back?"

The doctor in the white coat smiled and said in a tone of salvation: "Through patient guidance, children can build up enough self-confidence, face the differences between themselves and others calmly, and finally find a path to happiness that belongs to them."

Wei Qian looked at the psychologist, then looked at the ashtray on the corner of the table, and thought carefully about what would happen if he opened a meeting with this kid using an ashtray.

After this experience, Wei Qian thought that these psychological counselors were purely half-baked and not reliable at all. Even after getting this so-called "scientific" answer, he still refused to give up. A few days later, he found a calendar of a beautiful woman and put it on the wall of the living room.

Wei Qian's taste is really worrying. He can't stand oriental beauties in the traditional sense, so he entrusts Sanpang to search for one.

If Sanpang could be trusted, even sows could climb trees.

He got a set of calendars from somewhere, and in them were all blonde, blue-eyed, busty girls, all with bare chests and backs. They all looked exactly like each other, with big eyes and double eyelids. They wished the Chinese people good fortune and prosperity with their bright smiles, which were enough to blind people's eyes.

Wei Qian hung this picture in the living room, which perfectly destroyed the literary and artistic home atmosphere created by Mrs. Xiong, and immediately lowered the taste to the level of the urban-rural fringe area. The whole house began to be filled with a "festive" smell of "good luck in the opening of the donkey meat and hot pot shop".

Wei Qian tried to use basic carnal desire to awaken Wei Zhiyuan's interest in women, but before Wei Zhiyuan could express his opinion, Old Lady Song gave up first. She shouted angrily, "Oh my god, how come these women are running out with only their underwear on? Who put them there? What? Your brother? I think your brother is just bored and is going backwards! This is outrageous, take them off for me!"

They took down the calendar when Wei Qian was not at home, and Song Xiaobao took the opportunity to smuggle in some private merchandise and put up pictures of Japanese and Korean male stars that had just become popular.

When Wei Qian returned home in the evening and pushed open the door, he saw Wei Zhiyuan standing at the foot of the wall, looking at the group of greasy pretty boys on the wall. The eldest brother was extremely angry at that time.

He strode over and asked with a sullen face, "Does it look good?"

Wei Zhiyuan turned around with an ambiguous smile and looked at him deeply: "It's just so-so. I've seen better-looking ones."

Wei Qian was so shocked by the amount of information in his words that his gallbladder trembled. He immediately rolled up all the pretty boys that Xiao Bao was hanging out with and threw them away. At the same time, he decided to investigate who Wei Zhiyuan usually interacted with and what did it mean to "see someone better looking"?

Where did this vixen come from that seduces teenagers into doing bad things?

He's also a male vixen.

What a painful term this is.

Finally, the New Year calendar featured "Spring Flowers and Autumn Fruits" which was in line with Mrs. Song's aesthetic taste.

...is still full of down-to-earth rural style.

Both attempts were declared unsuccessful, and Wei Qian kept quiet for a while. Later, he learned from some irresponsible research report that some gay men lacked fatherly love and interaction since childhood.

It was impossible for Wei Qian to create a father for Wei Zhiyuan out of thin air, so he had to bite the bullet and do it himself.

When spring came and flowers bloomed, Wei Qian squeezed out a day during the weekend and decided to take Wei Zhiyuan to do some leisure sports that belong to men - fishing.

It was not easy for Wei Qian to squeeze out a whole day. His life during that period was quite chaotic. He was overworked every day. There was no concept of overtime. He worked non-stop from the moment he opened his eyes in the morning to the moment he closed them at night.

He vaguely returned to the time when he would start planning how to spend the whole day as soon as he opened his eyes every morning.

The day before leaving, Wei Zhiyuan checked the things he was going to take with him one last time before going to bed.

He is the kind of person who never needs an alarm clock. He usually wakes up on time thanks to his biological clock. But if there is something that requires him to get up extra early the next day, he will also wake up extra early spontaneously. It's as if there is a clockwork installed in his body.

Of course, this specialty also has its disadvantages. If he is worried about getting up early the next day to do something, he will easily have trouble sleeping.

Wei Zhiyuan woke up once at three o'clock, and then he lay down again and started dreaming.

His dreams were fragmented, with almost no complete plot. He dreamed that he passed through many places, sometimes a speeding train, sometimes a dirty corner, and sometimes a cramped and narrow room. All the places had a lid, and they all seemed dark, with monotonous and dull colors.

Wei Zhiyuan moved uncomfortably on the bed, but did not wake up. In his dream, there was no monster that suddenly appeared to scare him, nor was there a cliff that suddenly fell. He seemed to be trapped in such a long and real nightmare. He was neither excited nor scared, but just felt extremely depressed, as if he was accustomed to it and numb.

In the dream, he was always surrounded by all kinds of eyes. The faces of all kinds of people passing by him were blurred, and those people's flat faces only had one pair of eyes, and each pair of eyes was staring at him sinisterly.

Those gazes were like tiny sesame-sized bugs, not fatal, but they kept crawling over his body, bringing him an indescribable sense of horror.

All the sounds disappeared, all the touches seemed false, and wherever he looked, there were only malicious glances. Wei Zhiyuan finally started running.

He "ran" himself awake.

Wei Zhiyuan sat up from the bed, sweating profusely, and turned on the bedside lamp - it was four forty-five in the morning.

He paused, rested his elbows on his thighs, wiped the sweat off his face, and sat there to calm his breathing.

His chest seemed to be blocked by a ball of cotton, making it difficult to breathe. Wei Zhiyuan couldn't lie down any longer, so he got up and washed up.

He looked in the mirror at his current appearance, tall and handsome, with prematurely grown shoulders like outstretched wings, and full of vivid power when he moved.

Perhaps because he had not yet awakened from the nightmare, Wei Zhiyuan suddenly remembered something that happened long ago.

At that time, he was... six years old? Seven years old, anyway, he was still wandering aimlessly. Civilized society seemed to be separated from him by a wall, transparent and untouchable, but clearly refusing him to enter.

One day, he was resting at the corner of the street and saw a man walking out of a small restaurant with two boxes of food. The disposable lunch boxes were probably not sturdy enough, and when the man took a few steps, the lunch box at the bottom leaked. He was burned and let go of the box, and the whole box of food spilled all over the floor.

The man turned around and went to argue with the restaurant staff, cursing. The aroma of food filled the air. The tempting smell was like a fatal poppy to a hungry child.

Wei Zhiyuan couldn't help it, and finally mustered up the courage and walked over quietly.

He squatted on the ground and secretly picked up the food with his hands to eat. The person who was arguing with him noticed him and was immediately shocked. His expression can be clearly seen - his eyes were wide open, his hair stood on end, as if he saw a rat in the gutter, feeling disgust and hatred.

Then, the man started shouting and cursing loudly, as if Wei Zhiyuan was not picking up the food he dropped, but was instead ruining his appetite.

"It's so disgusting!" Wei Zhiyuan remembered the man saying this, and then he was kicked hard and rudely. The splashing hot soup fell on the child's delicate skin and burned the inside of his wrist. To this day, there is still a scar there that is so small that it is almost invisible.

This is the invisible wall - he is not considered a human being in people's eyes.

Those who pity him pity him as if he were a kitten or a puppy; those who dislike him for being dirty hate him as if he were a stray cat or a dog; those who have bad intentions towards him estimate his weight with ulterior motives as if they were people who want to eat cat and dog meat.

They may think he is a little fool, or mentally ill. No one would think that his intelligence is normal or even extraordinary. No one even knows that he has human emotions.

All the malice was engraved openly on the surface of the earth, lying before Wei Zhiyuan word by word, growing into his own viciousness that came from within.

Difficult to destroy and difficult to defeat.

Wei Zhiyuan thought he had forgotten them, but these memories kept appearing at inopportune times. It was as if there was a small screening room in his mind, where old movies would be played from time to time, and he could remember them vividly, as if it were yesterday.

But this isn't really yesterday after all.

Wei Zhiyuan stared at the scar on his wrist indifferently for a few seconds.

Until now, he still hated other people's unreasonable gazes, but he was no longer afraid of those gazes. He still knew that he was pathologically pursuing power, but so what?

The boy thought that one day he would have the power to flatten the world, and no one would be able to stop him. He even had an arrogant dream of becoming powerful enough to influence the rules of this world.

At this moment, another person suddenly flashed before Wei Zhiyuan's eyes. He seemed to see the face of the unknown pervert who was led to the cold storage by him step by step and froze to death. It is said that the human brain will automatically block unpleasant memories, but Wei Zhiyuan's brain is like a cold hard drive, never letting him forget anything.

Why do you suddenly think of him? He's dead.

Wei Zhiyuan laughed at himself, turned and walked out of the bathroom. As soon as he came out, he almost bumped into Wei Qian.

Wei Qian's steps were almost staggering. The two of them agreed to get up at five in the morning and set off, but when Wei Qian got home the night before, it was already two-thirty in the morning. He washed up hastily and was too sleepy to fall asleep. It would probably be at least three o'clock when he finally closed his eyes.

Wei Qian felt that he had just fallen into a deep sleep when the sound of the alarm clock rudely drilled into his brain, destroying his delicate sleep in one fell swoop.

It took almost drug-detoxification willpower for him to get out of bed.

Wei Zhiyuan watched his brother swaying from side to side like a tumbler for a long time before accidentally bumping into the wall. Wei Qian almost slid down the wall and fell asleep at the base of it.

Wei Zhiyuan grabbed his shoulders and supported him, and asked softly: "Why don't you sleep a little longer? Don't go today?"

Wei Qian waved his hands silently, struggled to get up and walked into the bathroom.

It was not until the cold water hit Wei Qian that he came back to his senses. Every cell in his body was clamoring that he didn't want to go out and wanted to sleep, but he was still suppressed by the collective.

Wei Qian thought to himself, boy, I would risk my life for you.

Fishing places are usually in the suburbs, and it takes nearly two hours to drive there. Wei Qian just got his driver's license and bought a mid-to-low-end family car for daily use. He has a little money in hand these years, but he still doesn't spend much on himself. It's not that he is naturally calm, not vain, and doesn't want to show off like a saint at a young age.

But he is not rich enough to make himself feel secure.

How much money do you need to feel safe?

Wei Qian couldn't say for sure, but he thought that with his low cultivation and shallow ideological realm, if there really came a day, he might really do something extravagant like "drinking one bowl and pouring out another".

Poverty is engraved in his genes and directly affects the synthesis of every protein molecule in his body.

Wei Zhiyuan on the side didn't know whether he hadn't woken up yet or what, he kept supporting his chin, looking out the window without saying a word.

Wei Zhiyuan had never fished before, and Wei Qian had also fished once when he was a child - when his stepfather and biological mother were still alive, Sanpang's father took the three of them to play.

At that time, Sanpang's father was still young. He was cut from the same mold as Sanpang today, with the same good temper and smooth talk. He was with three little boys of different heights, weights and body shapes. The boys played and fought as they walked, but Sanpang's father didn't care. Only when the boys made too much noise would he turn back to maintain order to prevent them from falling into the river.

While sitting down waiting for the fish to bite, Sanpang's father and Sanpang started to talk bad about Sanpang's mother behind her back, just like two poor serfs who had been liberated and were singing to denounce the oppressive officials together.

Fishing is sometimes more like a "gentlemen's tea party", where they can get together and discuss women, complain about life and the troublesome kids at home without restraint.

The two men arrived not too early and someone had already set up their fishing rods. They found a small pavilion by the water to rest and shade themselves from the sun, sat on the steps, and set up their fishing gear.

With his limited experience, Wei Qian clumsily taught Wei Zhiyuan how to put bait on the fish hook, how to watch the float, and how to cast the fish hook.

Wei Zhiyuan wanted to cheat and act clumsy, so his brother had to pick up a worm and hold his hand to help him put it on the fishhook.

The earthworm, which died with its eyes open, held the sweetness that fell through his fingers, and Wei Zhiyuan seized every moment to enjoy every bit of it.

The fishing float floated quietly on the water. The sun had not yet fully risen. Wei Qian remembered what Sanpang's father had said to them while squatting by the water, so he recited it to Wei Zhiyuan: "The fun of fishing lies in the process of anticipation."

Wei Zhiyuan turned his head and looked at him: "I've been looking forward to it for a long time, but I can't catch a single fish? It's all in vain, aren't you disappointed?"

Wei Qian choked up. Back then, none of the three silly boys had ever asked such a pointed question.

He worked his sleep-deprived brain, but ultimately could not come up with a more educational sentence, so he could only tell the truth: "That would probably be quite depressing, but it's unlikely. Fish ponds are now charged for, and if the boss is so dishonest in doing business that people can't catch any fish, no one will come here in the future."

After saying that, Wei Qian stretched and leaned against a stone pillar: "But there is really nothing to gain, so just take it as an enjoyment of the beautiful scenery of the lake and mountains."

The sky gradually became overcast, and after a while, it actually began to rain. They sat in the gazebo, so they were not afraid of getting wet. A light breeze carrying moisture rolled in from the surface of the lake. Wei Zhiyuan watched Wei Qian's eyes slowly close, and finally he put his hand on the fishing rod on the stand, and fell asleep.

The rustling sounds of rain gradually merged into a line, the surface of the fish pond was turbulent, and farther away was a field of farmland, connected to a vast wilderness as dark as the sky.

The rain gradually blocked my eyes, and the scenery of the lake and mountains became blurred.

Wei Zhiyuan had already withdrawn his gaze and turned his head to look intently at Wei Qian's quiet sleeping face.

After a moment, he carefully reached out his hand and tentatively touched Wei Qian's hair. Wei Qian did not respond and really fell asleep.

Wei Zhiyuan lowered his head, put two fingers together, gently placed them to his lips, kissed them devoutly, then stretched out his arms and lightly stroked Wei Qian's lips with the two fingers.

The gloom on his face finally cleared away, revealing a somewhat childish smile.

Wei Zhiyuan stretched out his legs, and the pent-up darkness that had been trapped in his heart since morning seemed to have been briefly comforted and lay down obediently.

At this moment, he felt the "joy of anticipation" and saw the real "beautiful scenery of lakes and mountains".

Wei Qian was awakened by the sudden sinking of the fishing rod in his hand, and the tail of the rod lifted up and hit his arm. He quickly grabbed the tail of the rod, shook his wrist hard, stood up, and reeled in the fishing line in circles. A big fish weighing about two kilograms was dragged ashore, sinking and floating.

Wei Qian turned around and said to Wei Zhiyuan: "Give me the fish basket. Where is it?"

Wei Zhiyuan bent down and pulled out the fish basket that was stuck in the mud on the shore and caught it. The fish fell into the basket as the hook was removed, and it moved restlessly for a few times. When Wei Zhiyuan put the fish basket back into the water, its tail flicked up a series of water droplets.

Wei Qian woke up and was in a very good mood. He had dreamed of fish and was awakened by the fish, which was a good omen.

However, just as he sat back down and had not yet had time to summarize his interim victory, Wei Zhiyuan spoke.

He said calmly amid the sound of the pattering rain: "Brother, I like men, you actually know that, right?"