Chapter 10
The entanglement among the three of us-Nie Feng, Gu Xiaoyan, and me-had gone on for far too long. I don’t think he ever imagined that one day I would finally come to my senses and ask him for a divorce.
At the very moment I brought up divorce, he probably felt as if a heavy burden had been lifted from his shoulders.
Because, given Nie Feng’s character, shackled by that damned sense of responsibility, even if he and Gu Xiaoyan were deeply in love, he would never have taken the initiative to ask me for a divorce.
In fact, nothing particularly special happened on the day I asked for a divorce.
It was just that Xiao Hai’s homeroom teacher called me, asking me to come to the school because he had gotten into another fight with a classmate.
When I arrived, Xiao Hai and a chubby little boy were standing against the wall. The other child’s father was already there-a big, burly man-standing there glaring at me, saying, “How do you teach your child? Look at what he’s done…”
Xiao Hai glanced up at me. He was covered in grass and dust, his face dirty, looking at me stubbornly without saying a word. I walked over, crouched down beside him, and quietly wiped the dirt from his face with my fingertips. Then I softly asked, “Why did you fight?”
He pressed his lips together and stayed silent. The other child’s father, seeing that I was ignoring him, forcefully shoved my shoulder from behind.
I wasn’t prepared and fell forward. Before I could get up, Xiao Hai, silent as a little beast, suddenly darted over and bit the man’s leg, clinging to him…
The teachers in the office screamed in shock, and the whole office descended into chaos.
By the time we left the school, the neon lights were just coming on. Xiao Hai and I were both in a sorry state. I held his hand and pointed at a shop window, asking, “Do you want some ice cream?”
He stared at his toes and nodded. Children are easy to comfort. On the drive home, he was already less downcast, but just before we reached the house, he asked me, “Mom, where’s Dad?”
His eyes were a little red. I knew he’d been wronged today. He’s not the type to cry easily-so stubborn even at such a young age-but when I apologized to that big, burly man in the office, Xiao Hai suddenly burst into loud sobs as he stood off to the side.
Even though he and Nie Feng have never been particularly close, I know he was thinking that it would have been better if Dad had been there.
It was clearly the other child who started the fight. If Dad had been there, Mom wouldn’t have been bullied, wouldn’t have been hit and still had to apologize, and he wouldn’t have been scolded by the teacher.
I rested my hand on the steering wheel, not knowing what to say.
Since Xiao Hai was born, the total time Nie Feng has spent with him doesn’t even add up to half a month.
It was at that moment that I suddenly felt exhausted and thought, forget it.
But these things are impossible to explain to Nie Feng, whose understanding is still stuck eight years in the past.
And I no longer wanted to waste words with him. I looked at Nie Feng coldly and said, “You have countless ways to find out the whole truth. You just don’t want to believe it yourself.”