Slice of Life

While my brother discussed the most elegant way to sever an artery, I tended my vegetables.

While my sister sharpened her fangs for the coming feast, I tended my vegetables.

While the whole family prepared to revel beneath the blood moon, I was still tending my vegetables.

I cared so much about growing them well that I converted the cellar into a climate-controlled greenhouse and trained our familiar bats to serve as pollinators.

Mom and Dad took one look at the sea of green filling our grounds.

Exasperated but helpless to change me, they took the rest of the family on vacation so they would not have to see it.

For a long while after that, I enjoyed the idyllic peace of country life.

Then one day, as I was picking pests off my cucumbers, a luxury car screeched to a halt outside the gates.

A wealthy young lady in a lace dress pointed at my castle and shrieked coquettishly to her eight brothers, “Baby wants it turned into a Barbie dream castle!

This is where a princess belongs!”

I grew up without a father or a mother.

When the widow at the east end of the village lost her son, I ran over and asked if she wanted to be my mother.

When I saw how strong the rough woodsman at the west end was, I asked if he wanted to be my father.

That was how the three of us pieced together a family.

Li Xiuyi was my fiancé.

Yet, at his own birthday banquet, he announced that he was marrying another woman.

Everyone turned to look at me, their eyes filled with uncertainty.

Amidst the awkward atmosphere, I was the first to start clapping.

I even presented a ring as a blessing.

“I wish you a long and happy marriage, and may you be blessed with a child soon.”

I was the famous beauty for miles around.

Oval face, shapely figure, hardworking. Suitors came asking for my hand from one end of the village to the other.

After weighing my options again and again, I chose Shen Jingzhi.

He was the only scholar in the several villages near us, with clean, handsome features, a gentle way of speaking, and a scholarly air no one else had.

My parents said he had a bright future ahead of him.

If I married him, maybe I’d even end up a government official’s wife someday.

They were only half right. Shen Jingzhi did indeed earn an excellent ranking later on.

But he was also unexpectedly taken back by the General’s Mansion and, in the blink of an eye, turned into a young master from a powerful family.

He didn’t want anything to do with his past anymore.

Neither I nor my mother-in-law was wanted anymore.

My dream guy suddenly asked why I had stopped simping for him.

I checked my spreadsheet and realized I had accidentally left him off the roster.

So I sent him a queue number and promised he would get his turn after two more rounds.

“Don’t worry, I work fast, Ziyue.”

He replied, “My name is Qi Pei!”

At thirty-five, I experienced a cliff-drop divorce.

In truth, it wasn’t entirely without warning.

I am a police officer and Liang Xu is a prosecutor; in the eyes of others, we were a match made in heaven.

Late one night, Liang Xu turned off the light, climbed into bed, and spoke slowly.

“I feel like my life right now is nothing more than a pool of stagnant water.”

After that, he changed careers to become a lawyer, specializing in litigation for the wealthy.

We changed houses, and we changed cars.

The day our son started elementary school, he asked me for a divorce.

“Even though we have sex once a week, it feels like a routine chore.

“Perhaps you should try someone else, too.”

And I really did.

But then Liang Xu lost control of his emotions, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me violently.

“You’re a cop and he’s a crook! Can you please wake up?!”

With a swift counter-move, I pinned his arm behind his back.

“I got used to drinking lukewarm water, so now I want to taste some strong liquor. He’s rich, handsome, and young-what could he possibly want from me other than myself?”

When I was five, my father brought home a handsome deaf boy and made him my child husband.

I prided myself on being a progressive woman; since childhood, I always told people he was my brother. I never expected that, more than ten years later, one drunken night,

I slept with him – and forgot about it.

The celebrity Zhu Yuan is dead. I still hate her. She always made me feel as wretched and hidden as a rat scurrying across the street.

And yet, I found her third gift. It was a plain music box sitting in the hospital corridor.

I casually handed it to the child in the neighboring bed.

She was dying, too.

My computer got hacked, and the hacker threatened to leak intimate photos of me and my ex-boyfriend.

I logged into my big Weibo account and started flaming the hacker right back:

“Then post them, if you dare!

“My ex-boyfriend is handsome, and his body is incredible. Anyone who sees him will be jealous of me.”

The hacker snapped. “Do you have no shame?!”

The netizens said, “I want all the information on her ex-boyfriend within one minute!”

After I accidentally fell into the water at six, I became the silliest girl in all Jiangnan.

And yet, I was also the luckiest, for I had a husband who was wonderful in every way.

From what I wore to what I ate, he personally took care of everything for me.

Then one day, I wanted a second bowl of iced cream at dinner.

When he refused, my cousin, who had never liked my husband, questioned me.

“A-Fu, don’t you think your husband bosses you around too much?”

My husband answered coldly on my behalf.

“She doesn’t.”

My cousin tried again.

“Your cousin never bosses you around like that, so doesn’t that mean I’m still the better one?”

My husband frowned, then calmly wiped the corner of my mouth.

“Good A-Fu, did you hear that?”

“Your cousin is trying to drive a wedge between us.”

“He’s absolutely rotten.”