Chapter 11 Courtyard 6

The smell of wine on Wang Meng’s body was from baijiu. People who loved to drink may think that wine smelled good when it was in a bottle, but once it ended up in your stomach and mixed with your human scent, the smell became something indescribable. In wuxia novels, some beautiful women were depicted as smelling quite refreshing after they drank once their body odor mixed with the alcohol, but I didn’t really believe it.

We helped him into the living room and I made him some honey tea to relieve his hangover. Although there usually weren’t many parties here, there were still all kinds of people who got drunk during the holidays so I kept various medicines and hot drinks on hand.

Wang Meng took off his shoes, sat down cross-legged on my sofa, and looked at me with a frown on his face. “Boss,” he said, “let me tell you something. I’ve taken more care with the things you’ve asked me to do than I have with the things my own mother has asked me to do. Are there any more outrageous things you want to buy? Why don’t you just ask for the moon while you’re at it?”

Fatty glanced at me with an expression that seemed to say, “This kid is showing his true colors now that he’s drunk. Since you haven’t been in the shop for a while and he’s been in charge of things, he seems to have some misconceptions.”

Who doesn’t go crazy when they drink? I said to myself. I understood that, so as long as he didn’t dirty my sofa, I would be fine with it. “Were you able to buy it or not?” I asked him.

“Would I be here if I wasn’t able to? Boss, I was still in Harbin this morning. I found the thing, but the price was twenty percent higher than expected. Big brother and I drank eight bottles of Lao Cunzhang⁽¹⁾ before the price was finally settled within our budget. Big brother was very happy and sent me all the way to Liancheng Airport, but I let my mouth get away from me and portrayed you as someone unparalleled in this world. Big brother wanted to visit you personally, so here I am.”

I looked at him and instantly felt that there was something he had said that I didn’t quite understand. After thinking about it for a moment, I asked him, “Big Brother is here, too?”

Wang Meng looked to the side, “Big brother’s right here! Huh?”

I glanced at Fatty while thinking to myself, this isn’t good. Is Wang Meng imaging things or did he really bring someone here but they got lost along the way?

Fatty and I immediately grabbed our flashlights and went out, only to find a large man lying in the ditch by the field outside.

The big man was totally unconscious and half of his body was submerged in the water. Fatty and I dragged him up—the guy weighed at least two hundred catties⁽²⁾—and found that his body under his clothes was covered in leeches.

“Wow, Wang Meng can actually outdrink this kind of guy? He’s really grown.” As Fatty said this, he lit a cigarette to burn the leeches off. Then, we dragged him back to the restaurant like we were dragging a corpse back. “So, this guy turned out to be a guest,” Fatty said. “Moreover, he’s from the same area as Little Brother. Let’s put him in the house.”

No, I said to myself. We have to clean him off. Otherwise, my floor and carpet will get dirty.

I felt the guy’s pulse and found that his overall condition was fine. Fatty started to boil some water, so I moved the guy to the table and stripped him naked. Once the water was boiled, Fatty brought a bucket over and we wiped the guy’s body down.

We ended up covered in mud as we were cleaning him, but I really liked my clothes so Fatty and I put on aprons. After seeing how many tiny leeches were latched onto his skin, we knew that Fatty’s hands and cigarette would be useless, so we took out a kitchen knife, sliced open his skin a little bit, and then burned the leeches off with a lighter.

While we were busy doing that, I heard what sounded like a car pulling up outside. I didn’t think too much about it, but soon, the village secretary came in with another group of strangers. He had his arm slung around some of their shoulders and hadn’t even entered the door before he shouted at us, “Boss Wu, please work overtime. Our town leaders have some friends who came here from Qinghai. They heard about how delicious your food is and how popular you’ve become on the internet. There are about a dozen people, so please serve us some of your specialty dishes.”

When he finally entered the door, he saw me carrying a bucket and Fatty holding a kitchen knife. We were both standing around the table wearing aprons, and on the table was a naked man who weighed more than two hundred catties. The naked man was very pale, unconscious, and his body was still covered in blood.

The group of people were completely stunned when they saw this scene. The village secretary had a witty remark lined up, but when he saw this situation in front of him, he became tongue-tied and eventually stammered out, “So—what a coincidence. Are—are you cutting up a corpse here?”

Fatty laughed—he also realized what this kind of scene looked like—before casually asking, “Would you like a piece?”

“No need, no need.” The village secretary almost bit his tongue and looked to me as if asking for help.

I coughed, “Would you believe this is my second party?”⁽³⁾

The tourists were completely dumbfounded; everyone was now in a deadlock. I took a deep breath, wanting to explain what was really going on, when Poker-Face suddenly squeezed through the crowd carrying a naked Wang Meng over one shoulder. He placed Wang Meng on another table, and I saw that Wang Meng was already sleeping like the dead.

Poker-Face whispered to me, “He threw up. I left his clothes and pants in the yard.”

I knew what he meant. He was worried that Wang Meng would continue vomiting and get the sofa dirty, so he carried him over here.

He then looked at the crowd and took out some menus from beside the register.

<Chapter 10><Table of Contents><Chapter 12>

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TN Notes:

(1) A cheap but popular Chinese white wine brand from northern Chinese. Its quality apparently isn’t bad despite being cheap. It has a soft taste that isn’t very strong and is a bit sweet. It’s basically a type of baijiu, which is a colorless liquor typically coming in between 35% and 60% alcohol by volume. FYI, Harbin is in northeastern China.

(2) 200 catties=100 kg=~220 pounds

(3) Also called “Party B” in a contract. Second party is usually a service provider/seller so they can be referred to as a “supplier” in this case.

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