Chapter 4 The Pool Hall
The afternoon sun was blinding. It made my head swim.
I rode the tricycle, sweat mixing with dust and sticking to my face.
But my head was full of Ji Yanli's face behind those Gold-Rimmed Glasses.
Eight years and nine months. I had thought I had already left everything about him to rot behind those prison walls.
It had only been a lie I told myself.
Thirteen years ago, on an afternoon thick with smoke, the crack of pool balls, and cursing.
I met Ji Yanli for the first time.
I had just taken down a rival and become someone who counted in the west of the city.
I was at my most rotten, too cocky to know the sky had a limit.
It was in that shitty pool hall that I saw Ji Yanli boxed into a corner by seven or eight guys.
Back then he did not even go by this fancy name.
They all called him "little bastard," or worse.
The kid looked skinny. They shoved him around.
His back slammed the wall with a dull thud.
But his spine might as well have been welded straight. He would not bend.
The one in front grabbed his hair and tried to force him to kneel.
He still locked his neck and refused.
Blood sat at the corner of his mouth. His eyes were vicious, like a wolf cub nobody had tamed.
And that face was pretty in a way that hurt to look at.
That one look made something drop in my chest.
The ugly little secret I kept in the dark could not stay hidden once I saw the lean line of his waist and those stubborn eyes.
This was the fucking Ideal Type I did not even dare dream about.