Chapter 6

Nothing dramatic happened the day I decided to leave.

There was just an announcement in the company group chat.

If no one was confirmed to lead the eastern China project by Friday, the company would recruit externally.

I stared at it for a minute.

Then I opened the notes on my phone.

There was a sentence I’d jotted down two years earlier.

I’d just finished my qualification exams then. I was spending the night in a hotel working on a tender. At three in the morning, life had suddenly seemed utterly hopeless, so I’d written myself a note:

“Before thirty-two, be the person who gets to make the final decision, at least once.”

I’d almost forgotten it.

But in that moment, I suddenly remembered that twenty-five-year-old Liang Cen had plans.

She wanted her qualification, wanted to lead a project, wanted to save half a million yuan.

She wanted to go to Iceland. Wanted a very large desk.

She wanted to get married too.

But it was only one thing on the list.

At some point, marriage had become like a bucket of ink tipped into water, slowly colouring every other plan until they were all subject to its conditions.

Work had to take marriage into account.

Which city to live in, business trips—marriage had to be considered.

Age, my body—marriage had to be considered.

Even the position of my desk had to take marriage into account.

Yet I’d never asked: did marriage take me into account?

That afternoon, I messaged Wei.

“I’ll take the eastern China project.”

He sent a single word back:

“Good.”

Then I sent Chen Shuo that message.

“Let’s not register our marriage next week.”

By the time he came home with the fish, I was sitting in the living room.

The bass was in a clear plastic bag, still moving.

Chen Shuo set his keys on the shoe cabinet and looked at me for a long time.

“What exactly do you mean?”

“I’m taking the eastern China project.”

His expression changed at once.

“Are you using this to force my hand?”

“No.”

“Then what do you mean, saying you won’t get married?”

“That I won’t.”

The flat was so quiet that all we could hear was the water in the plastic bag.

The fish suddenly thrashed its tail.

Chen Shuo looked at me as though we’d never met before.

“Over one project?”

“It’s not about the project.”

“Then what is it?”

I opened my mouth.

And found it almost impossible to explain.

How was I supposed to tell him?

Because of a study?

Because of fifty extra minutes commuting every day?

Because he’d said my work was more flexible?

Because his mother thought I should pick up the children?

Because my mother had once given up a training opportunity?

Those things were too small.

So small that any one of them, taken on its own, would be enough for someone to tell me to stop making trouble.

All I could say was:

“Chen Shuo, I’ve realised that the home we’re planning means adding a wife to the life you already have. For me, it means rebuilding my entire life.”

He frowned.

“Be specific.”

“We bought near your workplace because you couldn’t change jobs.

“I can’t go away for long after we marry because your job can’t move.

“If something happens with a child, I take more leave because you can’t.

“When your parents come to stay, there’s a room ready. If my parents need something, I go back to look after them because they’re close by.

“I have to give birth, so my career has to pause. I have to take on more of the small things at home because you think my work is more flexible.”

I looked at him. “You haven’t forced any of this on me. There’s a reason for every single thing. But why am I always the one who has to adjust?”

Chen Shuo grew agitated. “What do you want, then? Someone has to compromise!”

“Yes,” I said. “And I don’t want to any more.”

He stared at me. “So you want me to compromise?”

“No.” I shook my head.

“I’ve just finally admitted that you don’t want to either.”

After I said that, neither of us spoke.

It was probably the closest we’d come to the truth in seven years.

Chen Shuo wasn’t a bad person. He just wanted a life he recognised.

A secure job. A flat. A wife, one or two children.

His parents coming to help now and then. Dinner waiting when he got home.

Family trips to the supermarket at the weekend.

I wasn’t someone who instinctively rejected those things either.

I’d just suddenly realised that I would be paying most of the cost of making that picture real.

And he meant no harm.

That made it harder.

You can fight malice. It’s much harder to fight a way of life everyone takes for granted.

Finally, Chen Shuo asked, “Do you think your career matters more than I do?”

I thought for a long time. “No.”

“Then what?”

“I can’t keep putting myself last.”

His eyes reddened at once.

I cried too.

Seven years isn’t seven sentences.

Of course it hurt to let go.

It hurt to let go of the man who’d carried me on his back at the hospital when I graduated from university, who held my icy feet between his legs in winter. Of the first year-end bonuses that sent us running to a buffet costing over three hundred yuan, where we were so pained by the price that we chose only the expensive seafood.

I even hated letting go of the way he always squeezed the toothpaste in the middle.

Those small, meaningless traces of a shared life are harder to cut away than any vow.

So that night I cried terribly.

Chen Shuo cried too.

“Seven years,” he asked. “You can just throw it away?”

I shook my head. “I’m not throwing it away.

“It’s because it’s been seven years that I know what comes next.”

If someone meets you at eighteen and you date until twenty-five, you can still say there are things you haven’t seen clearly.

But we were twenty-nine.

We’d bought a flat together, renovated it, cared for our parents, discussed children. We’d each spent seven years in the workplace.

Saying we didn’t know what the future would be like was really just avoiding it.

I knew.

He knew too.

Neither of us had wanted to be the first to say so.