chapter 4

chapter 4

Qin Shen walked over to the boy, bent with a smile, and stroked his cheek.

The child’s face looked uncannily like his.

The boy chattered about everything that had happened at kindergarten while Lin Jin watched with a tender smile.

Anyone would have called them a happy family.

Growing excited, the boy reached to hug Qin Shen.

Qin Shen stepped back and avoided him. His reprimand was mild.

“Chengcheng, you forgot again.”

Chengcheng pouted. “Why can all the other children hug their daddies, but I can’t? I don’t drink milk anymore. I don’t smell like milk now.”

Qin Shen gave Lin Jin a cool glance.

She hurried forward to coax the child. “Daddy has to work at night. He’s very tired, so be good, Chengcheng.”

“Why does Daddy have to work every night?”

Lin Jin fell silent, then turned to Qin Shen. “Do you have to leave? Can’t you make an exception just once?”

His expression darkened.

“The next time she visits the company, you leave the building immediately. If you appear in front of her again—deliberately or otherwise—you know what the consequences will be.”

He checked his watch, put on his coat, and strode away.

Several minutes later, when the living room was empty, I sprinted from the house.

I drove mechanically through the falling snow. The flakes struck my windshield like arrows, melting into winding trails of water.

Ten years earlier, on another snowy day like this one, eighteen-year-old me had been curled in my mother’s arms in the back seat of a car when I first saw Qin Shen shivering in the cold.

Our car skidded and knocked over his glove stall. The driver got out to apologize, but Qin Shen only pressed his lips together, shook his head, and silently bent his thin body to gather his wares with hands red and swollen from the cold.

He sold gloves, yet he had not allowed himself to wear a pair.

I lowered the window and asked brightly, “How much are the gloves?”

He straightened. His dark, shining eyes rested on me for two stunned seconds before he answered softly, “Eight yuan for women’s, ten for men’s.”

I tilted my head. “One of each, then. You choose them for me.”

He handed me a pink pair and a black pair.

I took the pink gloves and waved them in the air, smiling. “The men’s pair is for you.”

As the car pulled away, I looked back. The poor, lonely boy stood straight beside the road and stared after us like a proud stalk of bamboo in the snow.

We met again at university.

Later, my mother recognized his potential and decided to sponsor him. She sent both of us to an elite school abroad.

We had been married five years, and that little boy was about three.

Lin Jin must have become pregnant a year into our marriage—only six months after Qin Shen first told me about her, and barely two or three months after my mother died.

I clenched the steering wheel and sobbed like a child.

Until the age of twenty-eight, my life had been smooth. I was beautiful and wealthy and well-liked. Everyone called me a kindhearted young woman.

My parents had divorced peacefully, and both my mother, a chairwoman, and my father, a scholar, had filled my childhood with abundant love.

After we married, Qin Shen adored and indulged me. Every glance and gesture declared his devotion.

I had polycystic ovary syndrome. When the doctor said conception would be difficult, I was devastated, but Qin Shen dismissed it with a joke: now Jiang Li would have no one to rely on but Qin Shen forever.

He had treated me as more precious than his own life.

And yet, while I still grieved my mother’s death—while I trusted him completely, depended on him, and could no longer imagine life without him—he had slept with Lin Jin.

I did not understand.

I truly could not understand.

It was as though the world had suddenly bared its fangs and torn away a veil to show me its darkness.

Shock, rage, panic, and fear swallowed me.

“Mom, what am I supposed to do?” I whimpered.

Then came a violent crash.

The world flipped and spun. I was thrown from the car.

I lay on the road and stared up at the sky. At last, the snow seemed weightless, each flake drifting lazily into my eyes.

When I opened them again, I was lying in a hospital bed.

A scream rang beside me.

Lele rushed over, wild with relief, and threw her arms around me.

“A-Li, you’re finally awake! Do you know you’ve been unconscious for eighteen days? If you slept any longer, Qin Shen would have died before you!”

“Qin Shen…” I murmured weakly.

Lele hurried to reassure me. “He’s here. The doctor just forced him to go home and sleep. You’ll understand when you see him. This accident has nearly destroyed him.”

While the doctor examined me, Lele talked without pause.

I had spent three days fighting for my life in the ICU. Qin Shen had stood outside for all three, eating nothing and never once leaving the hospital.

When I was finally wheeled out, he collapsed straight backward with a thud, terrifying everyone.

Throughout the next half month of my coma, he sat silently by my bed night and day, growing more haggard with every hour.

“The only day he left the hospital, he went to a temple on Changshan. A passerby filmed him and posted it online. Look.”

Lele held her phone in front of me.

Before the temple in the heavy snow, Qin Shen knelt motionless. His head hung low, his body buried beneath a thick layer of white until he resembled a frozen statue of despair and stubborn faith.

The video was titled: What Devotion Could Make a Man Kneel for Hours in the Snow?

Lele’s voice choked. “A-Li, he loves you beyond reason. I envy the love you two share.”

I turned toward the gray, murky sky outside the window and slowly closed my eyes.

When Qin Shen appeared in the doorway, breathless, I did not recognize him at first. He looked exhausted and haggard. His usually bright eyes had sunk deep into his face, and he had lost at least ten pounds.

He walked toward me in a daze and cautiously touched my cheek and eyes, as though he could not believe I was real.

“A-Li, you’re awake. I’m not dreaming, am I?”

His eyes were red, and his voice trembled violently.

I said nothing. I only watched him.

He crouched beside the bed, his voice catching. “Don’t be afraid, A-Li. Those injuries will heal. I’ll stay beside you through all of it.”

He kept that promise.

Although I was conscious, I could do little but lie weakly in bed. Qin Shen cared for me himself. He patiently fed me water, wiped my body with painstaking care, calculated every dressing change, and memorized the name of every drug.

At night, he held me gently and spoke in a voice soft enough to melt.

“A-Li, I failed to protect you. What if I stop eating dinner too and come straight home after work?”

“Do you know what I thought about outside the ICU? No, I shouldn’t tell you. You’re too tenderhearted. It would frighten you.”

“A-Li, you can never, ever leave me. Do you understand?”

Doctors and nurses marveled that they had never seen such a devoted, considerate husband. Lele swore that when she married, she would use Qin Shen as her standard.

Little by little, I could eat and walk again. But I remained despondent and said nothing all day.

Qin Shen comforted me, saying it was post-traumatic stress. If I did not want to speak, then I did not have to. With him there, I need not concern myself with anything.

Like a wounded animal sealed inside its den, I waited through one day after another for my body and heart to heal.

One day, while Qin Shen was peeling an apple with his head lowered, I looked up and saw Lin Jin in the doorway.

She and I gazed at each other across Qin Shen.

Gone was her timid manner. Her eyes met mine directly.

“Secretary Lin is here,” I said slowly.

Without lifting his eyes, Qin Shen calmly peeled the last strip of skin, handed me the apple, and only then turned with a frown.

“Secretary Lin? Weren’t all the documents signed electronically?”