Chapter 10

Life went back to being quiet, but it felt like the sea before a storm, dark currents surging underneath.

He was more attentive than before, asking after me every day. I tried to learn from him, to hide my own emotions too, but I wasn’t as good at it. Even a simple smile was hard.

“I’ll stay with you tonight,” he said softly, sitting down at the edge of my bed.

“I’m used to sleeping alone. I can’t fall asleep with someone next to me.”

“Okay.” His hand froze halfway through the motion, and in the end he only pressed a restrained kiss to my forehead.

The bedroom door slowly closed, his lonely silhouette on the other side.

There was always that door between us.

From the kitchen came a familiar clatter. Suhang was fussing over that Feixiacui again, carving and arranging it like a work of art.

“Honey, I made this for you!”

“I don’t have much of an appetite lately. Take it to your colleagues.”

I probably wanted to pretend more than he did that nothing had ever happened, that it was just an illusion, just spam in my mental inbox. But I was born sensitive, like a wounded cat that stays instinctively on guard against any potential harm.

That realization left me both sad and sober: I couldn’t afford to make the same mistake again. I could never treat anyone as my entire world anymore.

I reached out to a few old friends from my university music club. Some worked at banks now, some were trainee lawyers-all of them far from the musical dreams we used to have.

Back then I was the club’s “sponsor,” so everyone called me Boss.

One of them recommended me for a piano teaching job at a music training center. Three classes a week, teaching kids simple pieces. Standing in that practice room felt good; at least for those hours, my chaotic thoughts quieted down.

Suhang was unusually supportive.

Whenever he could, he would show up downstairs right on time, leaning against the car door waiting for me. The minute he saw me from afar, his face would light up with a smile. With the sun on him, he looked every inch the perfect husband, the kind anyone would envy.

Among my good friends there was a girl named Zhang Man, now a trainee lawyer. When she saw Suhang, she practically drooled with envy. “Boss, you’re living the good life!”

Back in school, she’d been the type with a fierce sense of justice. She couldn’t stand my rich-girl airs and called me a “poser.” But once, we stood up together for a classmate who was being bullied, and somehow that turned us into friends.

The last time we met up, she’d complained that her career was going nowhere-still hadn’t passed the bar exam, exploited by her boss, ostracized by colleagues, just a walking bundle of negativity.

I asked her out alone and told her I needed a favor.

I said I wanted her to investigate Suhang.

“Are you insane? With a husband that good, how could he possibly…”

But after I named my price, she immediately changed her tune. “Investigate him! Boss, I’ll dig up everything on him, down to the last crumb!”