Chapter 3
Qi Sinian was soon back.
He forced a warm smile onto his face.
“Hungry? What would you like to eat?”
“Shall I pick up Yanyan? We could go out together.”
“It’s been ages since the three of us went anywhere as a family.”
…
“If you don’t feel like going out, I’ll buy some groceries and cook here.”
“Let me check the kitchen. See what we’ve got.”
He turned to leave.
“Your phone’s ringing,” I said mildly.
“It’s rung quite a few times. Aren’t you going to answer?”
Qi Sinian stopped.
“It’s work. It can wait. Today is just for you.”
“There it goes again. You’d better take it.”
“No need—”
“Mine’s ringing too. Let me see—”
Before I could pick up my phone, Qi Sinian lunged forward and snatched it away.
I looked at him, expressionless.
“Why grab it?”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Why the panic?”
Qi Sinian’s face was rigid.
His entire body was rigid.
“You know.”
I put the last flower into the vase, then slid it to the very center of the dining table.
“Know what?”
“That sending Tan Qingqing abroad was really your way of protecting her?”
“That every trip overseas was to see her?”
“That even when she stripped naked to seduce you, you didn’t touch her because you cared too much?”
I took his phone from his pocket.
It rang again.
I answered.
The girl’s helpless sobs came through. “Uncle, I think someone’s come into the house. What do I do? I’m so scared!”
Qi Sinian’s breath caught.
“Qingqing…”
Such tenderness in his voice. Such worry, such panic.
I hung up before he could say anything else.
Qi Sinian stared at me.
As though he’d made up his mind, he turned and walked away. This time, he meant to leave.
So I said, “If something really does happen to her, you’re too far away. You won’t get there in time.”
“Why don’t I give you a chance?”
“Draw up a divorce settlement I’m happy with, and I’ll divorce you.”
Qi Sinian’s mother came from a wealthy family.
She had run away from home for a poor young man, only for him to betray her. Heartbroken, she went back to her family alone. She didn’t even take Qi Sinian.
Only after she died of an illness did that change.
Qi Sinian’s maternal grandfather found him and took him home.
By then, Qi Sinian and I were seventeen. We’d depended on each other for years.
On the day he returned to that wealthy family, he brought nothing with him except me.
And me?
I left everything behind and followed him a thousand miles without looking back.
That was the story of Qi Sinian and me that everyone knew.
But the stories everyone knew had all been made prettier.
Behind that pretty facade, the walls were mottled and bleak.
When Qi Sinian’s mother first eloped with his father, they must have been very much in love.
How long could love last?
A year? Two?
Before long, the pressures of life wore away the beauty of it.
The man had a family to support. He couldn’t give the woman the emotional fulfillment she wanted.
She could only look elsewhere.
Back then, in that small city, my father taught at its only second-tier university.
He was gentle, romantic, and immensely learned.
He and that woman hit it off at once.
First their souls found a connection. Then their bodies did.
I was the first to discover them together.
I was six that year. There was so much I didn’t yet understand.
I only knew it was frightening and disgusting. Tangled together, they looked like two monsters that ate people.
Then my mother found out.
Then Qi Sinian’s father did too.
One night, when he was supposed to be driving out of town for work, he came back without warning.
He caught them together.
He rushed into the kitchen and raised a cleaver.
One blow, two, three…
Twenty-seven cuts to my father’s face, head, and back.
He died outside our front door.
His bloody handprints were still on it.
But he no longer had the strength to knock.
He died.
Qi Sinian’s father was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
Qi Sinian’s mother ran, abandoning him, abandoning everything.
There was heavy snow that year.
With neither parent left, Qi Sinian collapsed in the snow.
My mother stood at the window watching for a long time.
In the end, she carried him inside.
She decided to take him in.
Everyone opposed it.
My grandparents even threw us out.
They would never let the murderer’s son into their home.
My mother didn’t say a word. She took Qi Sinian and me by the hand and walked away without looking back.
From six to sixteen, for ten years, that woman kept us fed by selling snacks from a tricycle cart.
Until Qi Sinian’s grandfather came looking for him.
She killed herself.
She jumped from a building.
No one knew why.
Some said she was clearing the way for me. Only if she died would the Qi family take me too.
Some said she’d suffered too much. Raising two children had long since crushed her.
Others said she’d never escaped the shadow of her husband’s affair and death.
Whatever the reason, that year shattered the world Qi Sinian and I knew.