Chapter 9

Chapter 9

When we first moved here, Lu Huaixu suggested hiring a nanny to help with the child.

I refused.

On one hand, I had long craved the freedom of being alone. On the other, I needed peace.

An undisturbed peace.

Having lived a muddled life until thirty, I found myself forced to scrutinize and re-evaluate my past during what should have been the most important stage of a woman’s life.

I had beauty, but no substance to back it up.

I was weak-willed, content to just drift along.

I had poor stress tolerance; whenever things got hard, I turned to binge eating, numbing myself with the easiest desires to satisfy. Once I fell into that vicious cycle, it just kept repeating.

That day, I stood before the mirror and looked at myself.

A thought suddenly popped into my head.

“What if… I got a divorce?”

That idea had never taken shape in my mind before, but once it surfaced, it brought with it a shuddering sense of relief and liberation.

But I had nothing.

No job, no savings, no competitive edge. I wouldn’t be able to get custody of my child.

Thinking it over, I realized I only had two advantages.

The first was my beauty, which was currently buried under layers of fat.

The second was my ability to focus-the one thing that had allowed my less-than-brilliant mind to make it through my studies.

So, I decided to do two things.

Lose weight.

And study for the civil service exam.

The prerequisite for starting these two tasks was, first and foremost, leaving that house.

I needed the time and space to recover and rebuild.

…

At this moment, my daughter’s steady breathing echoed beside me, and the warm yellow light of the desk lamp spilled across the open pages of my book.

On this birthday night-a night forgotten by a husband who had gone to see another woman-I was instead enveloped by a long-lost sense of groundedness and peace.

My heart had never been more still.