American Adventure: My Uncle is Don Quixote-Chapter 47 - 44: We’re Also Interested in Football
After unloading the plates, Li Wei racked the barbell on the power rack and began to test his lower body strength.
Eight red 25-kilogram steel plates, followed by some smaller fractional plates.
He started his squat at 250 kilograms.
This was the kind of weight that would clear out any commercial gym, but here in the basement, the only witness was the whirring washing machine.
Li Wei wore no protective gear—no belt, no knee sleeves.
With a level 1.7 physique, the strength and resilience of his joints meant he no longer needed such external aids.
He ducked under the bar, his trapezius muscles locking onto the barbell’s rough knurling.
He shot right up. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶
270, 280, 290... He kept adding weight until it surpassed 315 kilograms. Only when the barbell itself began to visibly bend did Li Wei finally set his new record.
A 250-kilogram bench press and a 315-kilogram squat.
At his current body weight of about 95 kilograms, he could likely place in the top 10, or even top 5, at an international powerlifting competition.
He couldn’t test the effects of his increased agility in the basement, but he was sure it had improved significantly as well.
Just as Li Wei was feeling secretly pleased with himself, he heard the front door on the first floor open. Don Quixote had come in.
"What’s with all those cardboard boxes at the door?" Don Quixote asked as he saw Li Wei come up from the basement. "Remember to flatten those boxes and tie them up, or those lazy-ass garbage collectors might refuse them and hit you with a fine."
"My gym equipment arrived," Li Wei said, looking at Don Quixote’s grim expression. "But why are you back so early?"
It was just after 3:00 PM; normally, Don Quixote should still have been in Susan’s small office.
"I..." Don Quixote looked utterly devastated. "I’m so fucking screwed."
?
Li Wei thought for a moment, then said, "Did you kill your ex-wife?"
"Not yet. I haven’t figured out a good way to do it yet," Don Quixote said as he opened the fridge. "You bought beer—excellent. I really need this right now."
He opened a bottle of beer, threw himself onto the sofa, and chugged the whole thing.
"Since it’s not about your ex-wife," Li Wei said, sitting down next to him, "then what is it? Are you about to lose your job again?"
"Quite the opposite," Don Quixote grumbled. "I did my job too fucking well, and that’s the terrible part."
??
"Are you even speaking English?" Li Wei had no idea what nonsense this old dog was spouting. "Can you try saying something a human can understand?"
"My dear nephew, come here," Don Quixote beckoned to Li Wei, his face serious. "I have something to ask you."
Li Wei leaned forward. "What is it?"
"Let’s say your boss sees you often working overtime, working hard," he said. "What would a normal boss do?"
"A normal boss would give you a bonus, or a token raise. At the very least, they’d give you an extra one of those dry, stringy turkeys for Thanksgiving."
Li Wei continued his objective analysis, "If you’re diligent enough, they might even consider moving you from a temp position to a full-time contract, and then you’d get that damn social security and health insurance."
"Exactly!" Don Quixote slapped his thigh. "But Susan—she just called me into her office and locked the door. I thought she wanted to go over this quarter’s materials list. But instead, she looked me right in the eye and asked if I was free this Friday night. She said she wanted to take me to dinner to thank me for spending the last two weeks sorting out years of her messy accounts."
"That’s a good thing!" Li Wei said happily. "I bet she’s into you!"
Li Wei had known for a while that Susan had a bit of a crush on Don Quixote; he just didn’t expect she would wait over two weeks to make a move.
"That’s the problem!"
Don Quixote leaped up as if he’d sat on a pin. He began pacing rapidly around the cramped living room, his leather shoes clicking restlessly on the floor. "This is a trap. Li Wei, you’re still young. You don’t get it. A woman’s invitation is like a signal from the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. On the surface, it looks like she’s giving you liquidity, but really, she’s trying to lock you into a higher position of debt."
"But given your current situation," Li Wei shrugged, "do you really think she has anything to trap you with?"
Don Quixote’s expression froze. It seemed that was indeed the case.
He was no longer the dashing JPMorgan Chase investment banking VP in his early thirties, but a down-and-out accountant-slash-inspector who had to live at the mercy of others.
"So I think you can relax," Li Wei advised. "There’s no harm in giving it a shot. Besides, it’s still a few days until Friday. You can observe the situation and then decide."
"No matter what," Don Quixote continued to pace the living room, "I still feel like disaster is imminent."
...
「Two days passed in the blink of an eye.」
After receiving an email from Franklin K. Lane High School, Li Wei went to a used electronics store. He spent 200 USD on a nearly obsolete Dell laptop and politely declined the clerk’s offer of 100 gigabytes of free, pirated HD porn from producers like Woodpecker and Brazzers.
On the way back, he also registered for his driver’s license test. In New York, all you needed was to be at least sixteen and have a passport.
「On the morning of the third day, it was the big day—the start of the school year for students across the East Coast of the United States.」
Li Wei hitched a ride with Don Quixote, heading off for his own first day of school.
However, he hadn’t expected to enter the school as a complete nobody. From the moment he got in line for the security check, people started pointing at him and whispering amongst themselves.
"That’s him..."
"The backup quarterback..."
"...So handsome..."
"...Asian..."
By the time Li Wei passed through security and entered the academic building covered in graffiti, this feeling of being watched didn’t lessen but instead grew stronger.
"Excuse me," he said, stopping two high school girls who were walking by. "Do you two know me?"
The two girls looked at each other, flattered and surprised, then started giggling.
"Of course!" one of the girls said, looking him up and down. "You’re Bruce Lee, the new starting quarterback."
"Uh," Li Wei said, "I am the new quarterback, but I’m not Bruce Lee. My name is Li Wei."
"Sorry," the other girl said, popping a bubble of her gum with a POP. "It’s just that you’re really famous, haha."
"Why is that?" Li Wei asked, a little puzzled. "Today’s my first day of school."
"Oh, that," the first girl said, taking out her phone and scrolling through it. "There’s a video of you knocking over three defensive ends going around the whole school. Who would’ve thought someone so good-looking could be so strong."
"Yeah, Li Wei," the other girl, chewing her bubble gum, winked at him. "We’re also really interested in football. Could you come over to our house this weekend and teach us?"
