Polluted Jianghu: 新年少鹏

It was a new day that found you deep into your cups at a seedy dive bar. You rolled up to the establishment, placed out a line of shots and told the bartender, "this much." The dead eyed man looked at you, shrugged, and started pouring them out in silence without asking you why the heck you were drinking at 10 AM. Blessed silence. The bar was deserted except for you. "Can I smoke?" You almost forgot to ask.

I don't give a fuck, the bartender's shrug says as he digs out his phone. You hear… that's a Miyoho jingle. This guy is pulling gatcha. You are in awe.

The nicotine haze fills your brain. It was a cheap carton. The kid that was manning the convenience store counter still stared at you and said, "you know those things will kill you, right?" Man, what's with that? Even Ming Ming, queen shit of the transient youth, didn't smoke the cigarette between her lips. You feel like macrodosing on LSD right in front of city sec would have less people crossing the street from you than lighting a cancer stick. Jing-Jin-Ji was a city of fucking squares. Blue grey smoke billows out of your mouth like smoke from a burning apartment building.

There's six shots of vodka in front of you. Two of them are empty. You smash back the next two.

This feels familiar. All this. Hanging around in shitty parts of the city, in between jobs and in between lives. Could be any city. Almaty. Moscow. Islamabad or Turpan-II. South as Kunming and north as Harbin. No, you've been to… not Singapore, that prude of a city. Everythings so clean it makes you want to vomit. Hanoi! Yes, Hanoi. "Beijing's little socialist brother," you giggle.

A car pulls up outside. You turn. Somewhere within you you expect Uncle's weathered grey van, stocked up with entire shelves of the supermarket for a ride back to the 'stans. But it's not. It's just a taxi. God, these things come at you harder and harder ever since you met that trypophobia trigger.

You almost got it now. There's that story of the what, four? Five? blind men stumbling around an elephant. You're at least two blind men, groping around your life. Facts you know, you trace on the tiled bar. You're some kind of merc. Operating out of the 'stans, because all your memories come from there and you can list the smaller cities that most people couldn't find with a map and an internet search. Like Aktau in Kazakhstan. And Tursunzoda. You're pretty sure you slept in a dumpster there. Also, you smuggled the white shit. Opium and crack cocaine. Mr. Worldwide, shippin' that shit from America.

Okay. Now, how does your uncle factor into this? You don't recall the claw hand being a very integral part of Central Asian martial arts. All they know is hip throw and arrow through the butt and very possibly lie.

Your train of thought is derailed by the taxi's passengers. You can see them through the corner of your eye as you duck your head down and pretend to be engrossed in your poison. They're wearing Zhenyan patches.

Shit. You completely forgot about them. The fuzz were after you. Slid completely out of your head, given the last couple days. They take a seat right behind you goddamn does God have something out for you? Did you kick a puppy? It's karma. Good actions beg good results. Bad actions beget bad results, and murder is pretty up there.

"Tellin' ya, this place has real good shit. Good food, chief, I- hey, what happened to the other guy?" Zhenyan One. Looks young, modelesque. Rugged in that not too rugged way, with a light dusting of stubble on his cheeks.

"Caught a stomach bug." The bartender doesn't even look up.

"Well shit. Sorry, chief. Dragged out all the way out here and the guy isn't even here." They took a seat behind you. Why. The chief was wearing a face mask, and from the mirror set behind the bar (in a vain attempt to make the dive look larger) you can see livid red marks. Which is an understatement. When she took it off and stuffed it in her pocket the marks become a topographic map of some hilly place with lots of crags.

"No big deal," she growled through a voice recorder. Cold sweat runs down your back. "Grab a bite and go."

"Great. Good to see you out of the office, though. Ever since, uh, that thing, the Snakehead case-"

"What thing? He died and when I find the fuck that did it I'll kill him."

Man, what would it be like if you just… turn and take off the bandages? Say, well, here I am, I am for the taking, what are you gonna do?

"Right, but you do know that the Ma family wants him alive, right? And the state doesn't pay cash for deaders."

The captain made a buzzsaw growl. You take out the cheap flip phone Flay handed to you. There's a web browser, even if typing with the number pad makes you want to die. Ma surname, Ma surname, goddamn, of all the leads in the world you just had to stumble over the one of the most common ones.

"Anyway, lighter subject, lighter subject. How's your new dog?"

A fraudster named Ma. A J3 guy who burned down his own building to collect the insurance money. There's another from Kunming who was busted carrying absurd amounts of meth over the border. You scroll down the miniscule browser. Xi'an apartment block burned down, family of ten dead. Another one? This is useless. You're not a data-sci intern. Get the money, pay an infobroker. That's the job.

"Rowdy little pup. Burning another hole in my wallet. It's good though."

"What is it now? Tenth dog, nine cats?"

"Yes."

"You have a problem."

"I have them under control. Do you want one? Dahuang has pups."

"I'll call my parents. Speaking of, you know, I sent my mom a pic of the squad?"

"Threatening sentence."

"Yeah, and she was wonderin' why you don't have that… face fixed?"

A lull. You're abstractly interested now, like if you were bumming around a friend's apartment and there's something interesting on the television, so you keep an eye on it. "It's unique." You slam down another shot and the world begins to swim at the edges. Great. "If I didn't have it, I would be another thug. Now, people remember me. At least."

"It's frightful."

"Good." Other guy shrugs. The door swings open once again, and who's that in the white rain jacket, it's Yuexia. She stops in the threshold. "Hey," the captain said. "That's a coincidence."

"Oh, hi, sis." She waves. "Just going to get that guy. Don't let me bother you."

Fuck.

The captain turns around. Might as well face the music now. You get off the stool, slowly, carefully. "That guy? The mummy? Why?" She doesn't look like she's twigged on. Great. You can make it out without causing an incident.

Yuexia flaps a hand. "This and that," she replies ariely. "C'mon, let's go. Gotta hustle."

"Is it about the yakuza?"

Tag In
[]- "No, it's not about the Yakuza. Why would you think that?"
[]- "Yes. We're planning to cause a gang war and make money off of it."
[]- Just Leave: Not your business.

"Yes." Here it goes. The two Zhenyan contractors snap their eyes at you, and Yuexia looks as if she would like nothing else to slug you in the face, the only thing stopping her being her basic human decency against beating a guy that was a cripple yesterday. "We're gonna start a gang war, pointlessly immiserating everyone who depends on the grey economy, causing multiple deaths in the resulting chaos, in order to enrich ourselves with ultimately transient blood money. Will that be an issue, officer?"

"Could be." The captain leans back. "Which districts you hitting?" The other guy relaxes a bit, following his captain's example, but not by much. You have no doubt that he can have that long handled knife by his side out in a second.

"Over at Chengde."

"Whatever." The captain shrugs. "Go have fun, little miss Ma." Wait, Ma? It would be just your fuckin' luck if they were the same family. Still, optimism. There's always going to be a brighter side to something you think you hope.

"Up yours! C'mon, Grand Abbot Tutankhaten." She pulls you by the sleeve out of the dive, and onto a bus. "You know," she says as she pays for two, thanks noblesse oblige, the guillotine rests today, "there's one hundred and three locked up in there?"

"So what?" You take a seat, and Yuexia drops into one across the aisle.

"So there's exactly five people off from one hundred and eight. We're so close to the one hundred and eight stars of destiny."

The bus screeches in front of a traffic jam that eats up an entire block. "We do have more, you know. Me and you, that's a hundred and five. Flay, hundred and six. Now add on Cho and Han and there you go, your hundred and eight stars."

"What about Wang?"

"What about him?" Giggling arsehole. You hope he trips on a rake and breaks his neck. Finally, the bus moves. You wriggle around, catching your staff before it clatters on the ground, vaguely uncomfortable with the plastic seats.

"He's a man, isn't he?"

"Is this important for some reason?" Snow weighs heavy on the branches, flower buds poke out of old wood. "Is having an exact hundred and eight body count so important to you?"

"Because it's a sweet literary reference," she cries. "C'mon, philistine, don't you read? At least tell me you played the video game. We're so close to being the brotherhood of Mount Liang, just one off! It's a cultural touchstone."

You couldn't name even one of the motherfuckers. "That just makes you a giant nerd, you know. But, if it's so important to you-"

"-it is."

"-then I'll kill one. There. Hundred and eight."

The bus screeches to a halt. A line of kids in school jerseys jog over the intersection, and all you can think is that this is super early to go back to school, shouldn't they have another week off? It's a bit surreal, that perfect line of blue and white penguins jogging along. One of the few times where the country is free for the taking and the little dudes run around for tests. That's pretty sad. Even Yuexia is out there playing action hero. "Please don't do that," speaking of her… "It's a sweet literary reference but please don't kill anyone over it."

You grunt. "What's your deal with the captain, anyway?" you ask suddenly. No point in not asking, really.

"Oh, her? Childhood friends. Hung out where I grew up and my master was friends with the Xi'an Zhenyan branch head."

"That's significantly more pedestrian than what I imagined," you admit.

"Eh, welcome to life." She blows a stray strand of hair out of her face. "Do you remember anything yet?"

"About what, my life?" The young girl nods. "Why'd ya wanna know?"

"Common humanistic curiosity," she expounds. "I've got a real live fish from the deep end of the Jianghu. Kinda curious, not going to lie."

You shrug. "Dunno much. All I remember is bumming around the west in a cramped car." It wasn't so bad when you were younger. Not that tall, the van seemed like half the world, and you watched the scenery go by with the unending fascination of youth. And as you grew older, that world shrunk, bit by bit until all you cared about was your phone and Weibo, engrossed in meaningless arguments thousands upon thousands of kilometers away. Then… Then you don't know what happened. Probably toured the world cracking heads.

"Eeeeh. That's it?"

"Welcome to life, I guess. Think this is our stop."

The yakuza prison is in the middle of a road dominated by construction sites and towers-to-be. Even the snow couldn't cover the wind blowing dust and construction runoff around the block. The driver gives you two- the oddest fucking pair, if there's an odder pair in this city you'll eat your own shoes, a little miss rich in a thousand yuan jacket and this beat up hooligan motherfucker- a look, and then the bus speeds off in the distance.

"Right!" Yuexia clapped her hands. "That's it, right?"

The prison is the only finished building amidst this half built section of town. It is a beige, inoffensive brick, windowless and isolated. Security cameras dot the outside, spider-like specks turning this way and that. "It feels like a trap," you muse. Too light. It wouldn't surprise you if it was just a giant facade.

"Where else would you put a prison?" Yuexia raises as a counterpoint. "Anyway, it's not like you care. All you're gonna do is march in, kick down the doors and start punching people until you see a key."

She's right but you're not gonna say it.

Knock Knock
[1.2] {Wrathful Manifestation} Knock on the door and demand their release. You see no reason to prove Yuexia wrong.
[1.2] {Harmonious Society} Hey, all men are brothers, right? And yaks go all in on that honor stuff. Ask the boss for a one on one meet.
[]- Flying Leap: Let's try to be quiet for once. Climb onto the scaffolding of a nearby tower and jump on the roof, and then make your way down.