The first joke was a shield.
He was five. His father's hand was a leather belt, cracked at the edges. The air smelled of stale beer and rage and something else, something sweet and rotten from the kitchen. The belt buckle was shaped like a snake's head. The tongue was a rusty clasp.
Liang Wei stood in the corner. Tiny. Trembling. He'd spilled the rice. A white scatter on the floor like broken teeth. Some grains had stuck to his wet sock.
His father loomed. Belt raised. The snake head caught the light.
Words fell out of Liang Wei's mouth. Not a plea. An observation. A strange, flat fact.
"Your belt," Liang Wei whispered, voice thin as paper. He sniffled. "It's crying. Look. The buckle is so sad it's trying to run away. It wants to be a... a necklace."
His father froze. Belt mid air. He looked down at the cheap, tarnished buckle. At the snake.
A snort escaped him. Then a grunt. The rage cracked, just for a second. The belt lowered. His father's shoulders slumped a fraction.
"Clean it up," his father muttered, turning away. "And stop talking nonsense."
Liang Wei cleaned. His hands shook. But inside, a discovery was made, small and hard as a pebble.
Humor was a lever. It could redirect force. It could change a vector. It was messy, but it worked.
It was the first discipline he ever mastered. Before running. Before hiding.
The Circle gave him an audience.
He was the joker. The pressure valve. When tensions ran high, when a plan frayed, when Long Jin's green stare grew too cold, Liang Wei told a joke.
A stupid pun about comic books that made no sense. An impression of a teacher that was mostly just him crossing his eyes. A witty observation about a rival's haircut that was really just "it looks like a dead squirrel."
They laughed. The tension broke. The machine oiled itself and kept moving. Chen Bo would snort. Wang Lei would grin. Long Jin's mouth would do a thing that wasn't a smile, but the green in his eyes would flicker, like a screen adjusting.
He saw his role. Vital. Invisible. The grit in the oyster that sometimes made a pearl, but mostly just made the oyster uncomfortable.
He made them human when the system tried to make them gears.
The disavowal article didn't feel like a betrayal.
It felt like a punchline to a joke he never told. A bad one. The kind that hangs in the air and then just... dies.
The article called him a "liability." Cited "divergent ethics."
He read it in his one room apartment, empty bottles littering the floor. He laughed. A raw, barking sound that echoed off the bare walls and hurt his throat.
"Divergent ethics!" he shouted to the water stain on the ceiling. It looked like a rabbit. "My only ethic is don't get hit! And I'm failing!"
He took another drink from the bottle. The burn was a familiar friend. The cap was missing. He'd lost it days ago.
The laughter died. Left something hollow behind. An empty bottle of its own.
He wasn't angry at Jin. He was... unemployed. His audience was gone. His purpose revoked. The lever had nothing left to move.
The shield was broken. Now the blows landed straight on.
He worked a night shift at a packaging warehouse. Mindless. Repetitive. Boxing things for other people. The cardboard gave him paper cuts. The tape gun jammed constantly.
His mind replayed the old jokes. The good ones. The time he'd mimicked Michael Zhou's walk, all stiff and precise, and made Chen Bo snort milk out his nose. The milk had come out in two streams. It was beautiful.
Now Chen Bo was gone. Wang Lei was in jail. The Circle was a ghost story he told himself when the conveyor belt got too monotonous.
His father was dead. Liver failure. The belt was buried with him, probably. Liang Wei hoped the snake buckle was finally at peace.
Liang Wei's own liver was working overtime. A family tradition. He burped, tasting the cheap beer from hours before.
Michael Zhou found him at a bar. Not a nice one. A sticky floor, neon sign kind of place. The neon buzzed. One letter was out, so it read "LUC Y'S."
Liang Wei was three drinks deep. Numb at the edges. He was picking at the label on his bottle. It came off in sticky ribbons.
Michael sat on the stool next to him. Ordered water with ice. The bartender knew better than to question. The ice cubes cracked in the glass.
"Liang Wei," Michael said, not looking at him. He adjusted his cufflink. It was a simple silver square. "The comedian."
"The liability," Liang Wei corrected, swirling his glass. A bit of beer sloshed onto his hand. He licked it off. "According to the press."
"Humor is a tool," Michael said. He took a sip of water, didn't seem to taste it. "A powerful one. It shapes perception. It disarms. It makes bitter truths palatable."
"You sound like a textbook," Liang Wei said. "A boring one. With no pictures."
"My grandfather needs a new voice for a media project. A satirical column. Maybe a short web series. Something to... guide public opinion. With a light touch." Michael finally looked at him. His eyes were very dark. "Someone who understands how to make people laugh while they're being led. Who knows how to use a lever."
Liang Wei took a long drink. The beer was warm now. "You want me to make jokes for you."
"I want you to do what you do best. For a real audience. For real money. A studio. Writers. A budget." Michael placed a card on the sticky bar. It was pristine. White. "The Zhou name opens doors. We can make you famous. Instead of... this." He didn't gesture, but the word this hung in the air, taking in the peeling vinyl stool, the buzzing sign, the sticky ribbons of label on Liang Wei's fingers.
This. The empty glass. The stained shirt. The dead end life. The paper cuts.
"What's the catch?" Liang Wei asked. His tongue felt thick.
"The subject matter," Michael said smoothly. He spun his water glass slowly, leaving a wet ring on the bar. "We'd provide the topics. Corruption in emerging tech sectors. The dangers of unregulated financial prodigies. The folly of trusting mysterious 'philanthropists' with no history." He smiled. It was a small, neat movement. "You'd have creative freedom. Within the theme."
Liang Wei stared at the card. It was pristine. It would stain in this place. He imagined the crisp white picking up a greasy fingerprint.
They wanted him to joke about Jin. To use his lever to dismantle his friend's reputation. To make the public laugh at the Calculator. To turn their shared history into a punchline for Zhou's profit.
It was the perfect revenge. For the disavowal. For the exile. It glittered.
He picked up the card. Held it between two fingers, careful. It was heavier than it looked.
"Funny," he said.
"Is that a yes?"
"No." Liang Wei flicked the card. It spun through the air, a white blur, and landed in a puddle of something dark and unidentifiable behind the bar. It made a soft, wet sound. "It's just... funny. You think I'm angry at him. You think I want revenge."
Michael's smile vanished. His face went smooth and blank. "Don't you?"
"He saved my life," Liang Wei said, his voice quiet, suddenly sober at the core. "When my father... got worse. When the belt wasn't a joke anymore. Jin found me a safe place. He paid for it. He never told anyone. Not even the others. He just did it." He met Michael's eyes. "You don't disavow a life debt. You just carry it. Even when it's heavy. Even when it hurts. Even when it itches like a wool sweater you can't take off."
He finished his drink. Stood up. The room tilted gently, then righted itself.
"Tell your grandfather his offer is a punchline with no setup. It just... it falls flat. You gotta have the setup, or else it's just a weird thing you said."
He walked out. The night air was cold. It cleared nothing. It just made him shiver.
He dreamt of the tree.
In the dream, he was carving his name. But instead of a knife, he used a laughing mouth. The bark giggled as he cut. The blood that welled up was bubbly. Like champagne. It tasted like warm beer.
He woke up sweating. Not from fear. From loss. His mouth was dry.
The laughter was gone. The real laughter. The shared, stupid, healing laughter that sounded like milk coming out of a nose.
He'd sold it for nothing. Given it away. Let it drown in a bottle with no cap.
A package arrived at the warehouse. Addressed to him in block letters. No return address. His supervisor handed it over, suspicious, holding it by the corner.
"It's not ticking," Liang Wei said.
"Just open it off the floor," the supervisor grumbled. "I don't want a mess."
It was a small, flat box. He opened it in the break room, under the flickering fluorescent light. It smelled of dust and old electronics.
Inside was a single, old, VHS tape. A label on the spine, handwritten in fading marker: BLOOD OATH AFTERMATH - UNCUT. The handwriting was Chen Bo's, all loops and leans.
He had to dig. He found an old player in a dusty storage closet at the back of the warehouse, next to broken pallets. Hooked it up to a small CRT monitor that showed a green tint.
He pressed play. The tape whirred, hissed.
Grainy footage. The rooftop. Hours after the oath. They were all there. Seven kids, bandages on their palms. The camera wobbled. Whoever was filming... Xiao Ming, probably... kept zooming in and out for no reason.
They were eating ice pops. The cheap kind that stained your tongue blue. Jin was talking, his voice tinny through the tiny speaker, about property trusts. His eyes glowed faintly, a pale ghost in the low quality tape.
Then Liang Wei told a joke. Something about the ice pop looking like a frozen ghost, a blue ghost who died of sadness. His voice was high, childish.
The camera shook with laughter. Chen Bo snorted. Wang Lei grinned, showing blue teeth. Jin's stern face cracked. Just a little. A real, small, human smile. The green in his eyes seemed to soften, to warm, for just that second on the grainy tape.
The footage continued. Twenty minutes of them just being kids. Jin wasn't a calculator. He was just a boy with a green secret, surrounded by friends who didn't care, who were laughing with blue mouths. They shoved each other. They talked over each other. The camera panned to the sky, then back, forgetting what it was doing.
Liang Wei watched, transfixed. He'd forgotten this. He'd forgotten the after. The intimacy of the shared blue tongues, the wobbling camera, the pointless, meandering joy.
The tape ended with a loud click and static.
He ejected it. Held it in his hands. The plastic case was cool.
A message. From Jin. A relic. A piece of the gold wire.
I remember the laughter too. I archived it.
He didn't drink that night.
He sat in his apartment. Cleaned it. A little. He found the missing bottle cap under the couch.
He thought about levers. About redirecting force.
The Zhou family was a force. A crushing, impersonal weight. A steamroller.
Humor couldn't stop a steamroller. But it could paint a stupid face on it. Make it look ridiculous. Make people point and laugh. A steamroller with a goofy face is still a steamroller, but it's harder to take seriously.
He had an idea. A terrible, dangerous, perfect idea. It made him smile, a real one, for the first time in weeks.
He went to the public library the next day. Used a computer in the back. The keyboard was sticky. He created an anonymous account with a nonsense name.
He started writing. Not a satirical column for Zhou.
A joke. A single, sprawling, elaborate joke. A shaggy dog story.
It was a story. Posted on a nascent online forum. A tech hub frequented by students and young programmers.
It was a parody. A fictional tale about a giant, faceless corporation named "Z Corp." It detailed their ridiculous, over the top attempts to squash a tiny, annoying startup named "The Gnat."
The story was absurd. Z Corp used disguised kangaroos to deliver legal threats (because kangaroos have pouches for documents). They hired a melancholy philosopher to debate the Gnat into existential submission. They tried to buy the moon to block its sunlight, but got into a bidding war with a retired billionaire who wanted it for a cheese repository.
It was stupid. It was silly. It had typos.
And it was a direct, blatant allegory for Zhou's tactics against Long Jin. The "Gnat" was a tiny, buzzing, uncatchable thing that wrote biting code.
He wrote it with a light touch. A comedic flair he thought he'd lost. He made Z Corp not terrifying, but laughably incompetent, a giant tripping over its own shoelaces. He made the Gnat not a hero, but a pesky, unkillable idea.
He posted it. Signed it "The Court Jester."
Then he waited. The library computer timed out. He had to log back in.
It spread.
Tech workers shared it. It resonated. The metaphor was clear to anyone who knew the players. The Zhou family's heavy handed moves, rendered as cartoonish buffoonery. People started calling certain aggressive business tactics "pulling a Z Corp."
It didn't hurt Zhou. Not directly. Not financially.
It changed the narrative. It made them look clumsy. Desperate. Funny.
The most dangerous thing to a predator is not a bigger predator. It's being laughed at. It's becoming a meme.
Michael Zhou wouldn't be angry. He'd be humiliated. The ice in his water glass would crack from the tension.
The response was swift.
Not from Zhou. From the system.
An email arrived in a dummy account Liang had used once, years ago, for a Circle joke about their math teacher. A single line. No subject.
Leverage acknowledged. Direction effective. Risk: extreme. Cease. --- J
A warning. Jin had seen it. Recognized the hand, the rhythm of the stupidity.
He was telling him to stop. For his own safety. It was the strategic move.
Liang Wei smiled. A real smile, feeling the stretch of unused muscles. He wrote back. One line, full of typos he didn't bother to fix.
The jester's job is to tell the king when hes naked. Even if it gets him fired. Consider this my resignation letter. P.S. The Gnat should sting back. It'd be funnier.
He didn't expect a reply. The dummy account was a dusty relic.
He got one. An hour later, as he was making instant noodles.
Acknowledged. The jester is pardoned. And remembered. Archive the tape. --- J
Liang Wei leaned back in his chair. The empty apartment felt less empty. The noodles boiled over, sizzling on the stove. He didn't care.
He hadn't rejoined the fight. He'd opened a new front. A comedy club war. A theater of the absurd.
His shield was reforged. Not to block blows. To reflect them. To turn crushing force into ridiculous spectacle, to make the steamroller look so stupid people forgot to be afraid of it.
He went to work the next night. His supervisor called him over, face grim.
"Someone called," the man said, gruff. "For you. A Mr. Zhou. Said to give you a message."
Liang's blood went cold, but his face stayed still. "What message?"
The supervisor shrugged, uncomfortable. "He said, 'The court has no need for a jester who can't read the room.' That mean anything to you?"
Liang Wei forced a laugh. It sounded real enough. "Sounds like a bad movie line. Probably a wrong number. Or a prank. I get those."
He went back to boxing. His hands were steady. The tape gun didn't jam once.
The threat was clear. But the fear was gone, replaced by a bright, buzzing energy.
He had made them a punchline. And a punchline has no power once it's been told, once it's been laughed at. It's just words.
He was the teller.
That was his power now. His lever. His itchy, imperfect, human lever.
That night, he didn't dream of the tree.
He dreamt of a stage. A single spotlight, with a moth bouncing around inside it.
He stood in it. He told the joke about the belt. The sad snake buckle.
The audience was the Circle. They laughed. Not to deflect pain. Just to laugh. Their mouths were blue. The moth landed on his nose. He blew it off.
Jin sat in the front row. No green glow. Just a boy. Smiling a small, real smile. He had a piece of blue ice pop on his shirt.
It was a good dream. A weird, good dream.
He woke up. The dawn was grey. The smell of old beer was still in the room.
He had a shift. He had a life. It was still broken, full of cardboard cuts and sticky floors.
But he had a purpose again. A tiny, defiant, joyful purpose.
To be the itch they couldn't scratch. The joke they couldn't silence. The court jester of a rebellion that fought with laughter and absurdity and grainy VHS tapes.
It wasn't much.
But it was his. And for the first time since the blood oath faded, since the blue stains washed away, it was enough.
He got up, and his knee cracked loudly in the quiet room. He laughed at that too.