Chapter 11

Shen Zhuo didn’t sit the entrance exam the next day.

He couldn’t face Song Mian.

He had never worried so much about her grades.

Even after graduation, she never came to see him.

It was like a sword of Damocles hanging over his head. He couldn’t sleep through the night.

Only when he saw that Song Mian had come first in the province did he feel relieved.

She still didn’t visit him. His family arranged a marriage between him and Zhao Mingzhu.

But now the sight of Zhao Mingzhu’s face disgusted him. He was no good person himself, admittedly, but she disgusted him even more.

The harder his family pushed him to marry her, the more sickened he felt.

Song Mian still didn’t come.

One day, looking out from a dimly lit floor, he suddenly thought about jumping.

It wasn’t the first time he’d had that thought. It only grew stronger as the engagement date approached.

One perfectly ordinary afternoon, his mind went blank. Amid a burst of screams, the world before his eyes blurred.

He forgot how long he’d fought his family, how many times he’d tried to die. At last, word of a compromise came.

His mother was deeply disappointed. “You’ve been like this since you were little. Hurting yourself to get what you want. You should know that only works on people who care about you. I’ve asked Song Mian to come. Whether you can keep her is up to you. She’s cleverer than you are.”

It was like a gift from heaven to someone dying of thirst.

Song Mian said she was going to Qing University.

He thought he would go too.

But after repeating his final year, he discovered that he had no talent for studying.

Song Mian, meanwhile, was already able to take over matters at a subsidiary, and handled them very well.

Dejected, he ignored his family’s objections and enrolled at a second-tier university near Qing University. He didn’t care about his prospects. He only wanted to see Song Mian.

Every weekend, he went to the neighborhood around Qing University and waited like a man turned to stone, longing for his wife to return.

At university, Song Mian shone even more brightly than she had in high school.

Even his mother praised her constantly, almost wishing Song Mian were her daughter instead.

She was always surrounded by people. What reassured him was that she seemed to have eyes only for him.

In their fourth year of university, Song Mian secured admission to postgraduate study without an entrance exam.

The Zhao family, once roughly as powerful as theirs, had declined rapidly over those four years.

Zhao Mingzhu drugged him and tried to sleep with him. He shoved her off the bed and jumped out of a second-floor window.

When he reached the door outside, he saw his fiancée.

He rushed toward her in excitement, only to glimpse disappointment in her eyes.

He didn’t dare think about what had disappointed her. He clung to her even more closely, and even began taking care of his face.

By the time the Zhao family collapsed, Song Mian was twenty-eight.

He saw Zhao Mingzhu’s stepmother storm into the room and berate Song Mian to her face for being an unfilial daughter.

A chill went down his back. He distinctly remembered Song Mian saying she was an orphan.

He could never forget how she’d sold the apartment her mother left her to pay for his treatment.

But Song Mian said, without expression, “Mother.”

That single word shattered every illusion he had.

He didn’t dare ask why.

At twenty-eight, Song Mian was still only his fiancée. His mother had begun to fear her too, and stripped her of her authority in the company.

But by then her own business was flourishing. The company she’d founded at university had forged partnerships in several quarters. She had become a celebrated new figure in business.

All kinds of suitors appeared around her, while he was like a resentful spouse.

Everyone said he wasn’t good enough for her.

When Song Mian asked to end the engagement, it was all over.

He came dazedly to his senses and realized it had been one magnificent deception.

The moment he’d lied to her ten years earlier, he’d sown the seeds of all this.

“Could you lie to me again?”

In the lecture hall.

The crowd was loud.

Every camera was pointed at her. She sat above them, speaking with ease and confidence.

He never asked that childish question again.

(The End)