Chapter 1
I froze.
I swallowed all the arguments lodged in my throat.
The truth was, I hadn’t expected her to agree.
The last two times I’d brought it up, she’d demanded to know why, her eyes red.
How could I tell her there was someone else?
All I could say was that life felt empty, that I couldn’t find a reason to keep living it.
She’d sat there crying all night. The next day, she’d quietly gone to the supermarket and brought back a bag of flour and some butter.
She wanted to bake me a cake.
I’d frowned as I watched her bustling around the kitchen.
I couldn’t name what I felt.
She simply didn’t understand.
When a man no longer had room for a woman in his heart, everything she did was wrong.
Baking was wrong. Housework was wrong. Even breathing was wrong.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t good enough.
But love, once gone, was gone.
It wasn’t leftovers in the fridge, something you could heat up and eat again.
I sounded her out.
“It’s… that simple?”
She untied her apron and put the half-cut tomatoes from the chopping board into the fridge.
“In the ten years we’ve been together, before and after we married, when have I ever lied to you?”
“You’re not making dinner?”
“No. Our last meal together deserves a little ceremony.”
She wiped her hands and made a call. Mahjong tiles clattered over the speakerphone.
“Mom, Zhou Chen and I are discussing the divorce tonight. Go and pick up Youyou.”
There was a pause on the other end, as though she hadn’t heard properly.
“…What did you say?”
“Pick her up and take her home. I’m hanging up.”
Now I understood.
She wanted to use my mother to pressure me.
She was going to be disappointed.
My mother liked Lin Wei even more than I did.
She had local household registration.
Whether it was her education or her ability to handle people,
she left Jiang Yao far behind.
At the restaurant just outside, I handed Jiang Yao the menu out of habit.
“Order whatever you want. I’ll pay.”
She didn’t stand on ceremony, casually pointing out three dishes.
Once the waiter had left, I took the divorce agreement out of my bag.
“I’ve thought about the apartments. You take the smaller one, the one with no mortgage. I keep the big one and give you another million yuan. Youyou stays with you, and I’ll pay three thousand a month in child support. Does that work?”
Jiang Yao pushed the agreement back.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Why?”
“There’s still over three million left on the mortgage for the big apartment. What happens if you stop paying and the bank comes after me? I don’t want to be raising Youyou and paying the mortgage for you and another woman.”
I frowned.
I didn’t like the sound of that.
I was the CEO of a state-owned company, earning a million a year.
As if I couldn’t pay a mortgage.
She was clearly using this as an excuse to refuse the divorce.
I took the agreement back.
“Let’s eat first.”
The first dish arrived soon afterward.
Stir-fried tomatoes and eggs.
My chopsticks paused. I frowned slightly.
Here it came.
Next she’d shed a few tears and remind me of the basement we’d rented thirteen years ago.
The first thing she’d ever cooked for me back then was stir-fried tomatoes and eggs.
I’d worked until the early hours that night. When I came home, she was asleep, slumped over the table, with an upturned plate in front of her.
When I lifted it, the food underneath was still warm.
Perhaps I’d been dizzy with hunger. Perhaps the light had been too dim. I’d probably made a few careless promises I hadn’t meant.
But—
that was thirteen years ago.
No one could bind another person for life with something they’d said in their twenties.
No one.
So I spoke first.
“Yaoyao, the past is the past. I’ve told you more than once that I don’t like this dish.”
She looked up at me. There was something in her eyes I couldn’t read.
“I know.”
Then she picked up a piece of egg with her chopsticks and gently placed it in the takeaway container beside her.
“I ordered it for Youyou.”