Respected and admired by the people all around them—it was what the Li Family garnered from everyone in their society. Coming from humble beginnings, through the sheer hard work done by their ancestors in the past, the Li Family's success and renown were widely spread across the city and even the country of itself.
The old matriarch grabbed the little boy's chin and smiled, "You should be grateful that you're even alive, Li Yang. Stop running around and demolishing what your elders worked hard for, foolish brat."
Shattered pieces of a vase lay strewn on the floor of the Li Mansion.
The boy struggled to hold back his tears, a choke threatened to surge from his throat. "I-It wasn't me."
"Men don't cry, Li Yang." The older woman narrowed her eyes at the boy, his words falling off to deaf ears. "And stop blaming other people for your mistakes and start cleaning it up. Your mother spoiled you too much, now look at you." Li Yang's grandmother pulled her hand away and scrunched up her face.
She finally spun around and strode away from the hallway, leaving the young boy alone.
It only took a minute or two before the sound of padded footsteps came back in the hallway. A boy not much older than Li Yang appeared with a confused look on his face, "What are you standing there around for, Yang? A maid can clean that up, come on."
"...Y-You bumped this, I tried to catch it."
"Geez. That's just stupid, you could have hurt yourself." His older brother rolled his eyes and stepped towards him. He tugged the smaller boy's arm, "Let's go. I'll call the Butler to take care of it."
Li Yang shook his head and knelt down, he eyed the large shattered pieces of the vase. "Can we fix this?"
"What? You're going to hurt yourself."
"...we have glue right?" Li Yang carefully picked up one of the shards and held it up.
The other boy slapped it out of his hand. "Don't—ow!" Through sheer bad luck or misfortune, the vase shard embedded itself into his brother's hand instead.
He ended up getting scolded further that day.
. . .
Li Yang was told to stay in his room, but he was too curious for the reason as to why. It didn't help that his brother didn't drop by as he promised and he soon snuck out of his room. He ended up peeking out from one of the available doors to the large hall. He soon realized that there was a small gathering for older men and women that he couldn't recognize, except he could tell that they were important people of note.
A proud father introduced one of his children, "This is my son, Li Liang."
"Good evening, Ms. Chen." The boy bowed his head. He was dressed up to the nines.
"My, my he looks like his father! What about your other son?"
His father's face twitched for a moment before his features relaxed into a smile, "My wife insisted we keep him at that time, but ah, he's too shy to attend functions like this one."
The boy closed the door quickly and as quietly as he could—he noticed his grandmother too late. And she had glared at him from within the room, a silent notion for him to leave. And he did just that, not wanting to cause further troubles.
. . .
What was supposed to be a quiet dinner with the family turned cold and terse as the patriarch soon spoke up. "You're taking a Business Degree." His father glanced past Li Yang and stared at his first son. There was no inflection in the man's tone, he said it as if they were simply stating facts.
His older brother glared at the older man, "You can't insist me to take that."
… Li Liang left on the same night to pursue what he wanted.
And that was the beginning where his father and even grandmother started paying a lot more attention to him. The validation and acknowledgement that he had wanted had finally come. Even when that meant the pressure burdened on him weighed even harder now that his brother had gone out of the picture.
He had a lot of catching up to do.
. . .
The brother that had been gone finally reappeared one day in the university, or perhaps he had always been there and he had tried to pretend that the young man didn't exist. And it was easy before, both of them had stuck in each of their own little worlds.
But it was hard to do it now.
Not right when the man confronted him.
"Will you help me run this company?" Li Liang held out his hand to him, determination set on his face. "I know that father insisted that you run our old family business, but this will be the future and I'm sure you know it as well—there will come a time where everything will be done on the internet. It's already begun in the western countries, and even here. Heck, we're already at this age."
Li Yang frowned at them, "Then you're already late. The forerunners would already benefit from this, and a recent company would have a hard time setting foot now." The man in front of him was no longer the prim and proper older brother, wearing nothing but a hoodie and sweats—it was weird to see them like that.
Would this have been him if their roles didn't get reversed before?
And yet as usual, exactly like the old times, his brother was oblivious. Even with the hardship he had gone through, their confidence in themself stayed the same. Li Liang cracked a grin at him, "I know what I want in mind and I won't stop at it—all I'm asking is for a little support."
It was the same tone that the boy often used to drag him to trouble.
But he wasn't as naive as before, Li Yang crossed his arm over his chest. "...You want me to be the face."
His brother shrugged and motioned to himself with a self-deprecating smile, "It sounds better on paper when it's the beloved Li Yang who started it, but I'll be the one covering the start-up I swear. I know they keep too many tabs on you."
"Where did you even get the money?" Li Yang glared at the man. It was too suspicious, not a single cent had been given to them on the day that he had left.
His older brother rolled his eyes and dug his hands into his pockets, "I got it through legitimate means—mind you, don't give me that look. Lighten up, you won't get a girlfriend at all with the way you're looking right now."
He blinked and rubbed his face, "T-there's someone—"
"With your knowledge in finances and my talent with the latest trends online and in the technology world." Li Liang motioned to himself with a smile, "It's foolproof."
"You can't really say anything with a hundred percent certainty."
"You know that I was only making an expression." His brother snorted.
Li Yang rubbed his face, "...It doesn't help us at all."
"Geez, when this thing finally goes through and we celebrate our company's first anniversary, do you know what I'm going to do?" The older brother gave him a smile.
Li Yang frowned, "Don't count the chicken before the eggs hatch."
"We'll throw a party and you are going to get drunk, let me correct myself—wasted. Absolutely wasted."
He grimaced, "I don't like the sound of that."
"Hah! It'll help loosen up that stiffness of yours, Yang. I'll even invite the prettiest women around when it succeeds. Who knows? You might even lose your v-card."
"You can't say something like that—"
"I'm your brother, I can guess that much." An offhand shrug was the only reply, until the man's eye glinted. "The closest girl you got on your side is someone I've seen before—"
He frowned and narrowed his eyes, "No one. You didn't see anything, Liang."
"Alright, I'll shut my mouth." Li Liang held his hand out once more to him, "So what do you say? We'll you help me? I'll assure you that you'll actually start acting normal for once. Loosen up and smile, you've always been too stiff and I'll help you on that, especially when you're supposed to be the face."
"This is why companies have Public Relations to handle this kind of thing." Li Yang muttered.
"Then we'll get that. You probably know some guy or girl who can handle that. So what do you say?"
His older brother's hand was extended to him. An offer. A chance for partnership. A gamble. A risk. It was going to give their father a heart attack and their grandmother a seizure once the word goes out. And this might have made their mother happy.
"...I'm not accepting this because of the part of getting drunk or anything else you've said, I'm doing this because I trust you." Li Yang shook the other man's hand. "Let's do this."