0852 Chapter 31

 

Extra Story Three: Qiu Zhen’s Monologue

When I stood in the dock, standing on the opposite side of everyone, with tens of thousands of pairs of eyes fixed on me, some filled with hatred, some with resentment, some condemning me from the moral high ground, none of that mattered. I no longer felt anything.

The presiding judge announced: “The defendant, Qiu Zhen, is guilty of rape. The charge is established. He is sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment.” Everyone thought I would repent, that I would regret what I had done, but only I knew that she would never love me. Rather than be two parallel lines that would never intersect, I would rather use such a despicable method to possess her. I have never regretted that.

What I regret is that I can never see her again. Yes, I am a coward. I am a weakling. I did not have the courage...

When I ran into her again outside the Four Seasons Hot Pot Restaurant, I knew I was finished.

That evening, I went to eat nearby with a few friends and stepped outside midway through to take a phone call. She was walking toward me from across the street. I could not make her out clearly, only a blurred outline, but that was enough to throw my thoughts into disarray. She had cut her long hair and was wearing a red padded coat, her chin tucked into the collar. Small and thin, she passed by me with almost no presence at all. But I recognized her.

As if possessed, I reached out and grabbed her arm. After a moment of shock, I saw fear and hatred in her eyes. Six years apart, and her hatred for me had not changed in the slightest.

I gave a mocking smile. Good. At the very least, she had not forgotten me. I took the initiative to greet her: “Long time no see, old classmate?”

She avoided my gaze and tried to pull her arm back, but she failed. I could feel her body trembling. That had to be coming from deep within her.

“Let go.” Her voice was colder than this damn weather.

Countless times in the past, in unfamiliar rooms in foreign countries, I would dream of her. She would hold a sharp dagger and stab it toward me without hesitation. Her voice would be just as icy then, questioning me again and again, asking why I had treated her that way.

“Because I love you.” But I only had the courage to say it in my dreams.

Yet she mercilessly wanted to put me to death.

I suddenly woke up, rubbing my chest, my head already covered in cold sweat. The steady breathing beside me reminded me that there was another person in the room. She had blond hair and pale skin, a foreign girl I had only just met. Yes, throughout all these years, I had never lacked women around me. They had the figures and the faces, and came when called and left when dismissed, each one obedient and adorable. I often imagined them as her. I would sleep with them, but every time I covered those unfamiliar faces with their clothes. I would not allow them to make a sound, would not allow them to touch me. I closed my eyes and imagined her face, imagined her calling my name again and again.

I missed her in this sick and repressed way. During the day, I continued to swagger around recklessly and without restraint. Only in the dead of night, when I returned to my dreams, would I acknowledge what was truly in my heart. I knew I could not go on like this, but what was laughable was that once, when I tried taking the clothes away and looked at the girl underneath, I actually lost my erection halfway through.

Realizing that I was seriously ill was what made me wait and wait for the day I could finally return to the country.

Yet this reunion was something I had never anticipated.

Things were terrible. Perhaps we were both strong-willed people who did not know how to compromise. I did not know how to express my feelings. I only hoped that she would obey me unconditionally. After that unpleasant parting, I began following her, finding out where she worked and lived, sending people to investigate her relatives, friends, and coworkers. With a little manipulation, I managed to get hold of something I could use against her father.

Everything was under my control. She had been angry and had resisted hysterically, but none of it was any use. She had only one path left, and that was to compromise with fate. Six years after we separated, I finally possessed her again.

At New Year’s, I had someone book two plane tickets to an island. The scenery there was beautiful, the sand fine, the seawater clear, with vast stretches of brilliant sunlight. Perhaps because of her mood, she did not resist as much as she used to. During the day, we went out to sea and fished. At dusk, we walked across the soft sand and watched the sunset. We could speak calmly for a few sentences. Even in bed, she was not as tense, and would give me the slightest response. In this unfamiliar country, we had only each other. The seawater seemed to wash away the past, and everything felt like a brand-new beginning.

The change made me deliriously happy. I discovered another side of myself that I had never known existed. I had never known that I could speak so softly and gently, or that I could make decisions without always insisting on having my own way. I would ask her what she wanted beforehand. I did not lose my temper. I did not hurl cruel words at her. This was almost the happiest period I had experienced in all these years.

The date of our return drew closer day by day. On our last night, we came out of the restaurant after dinner. The setting sun had already sunk to the horizon, the red glow cutting the clouds and palm trees into silhouettes. From the distant bar street came lively music. People were all heading in that direction.

We walked against the flow of people. Wu Qiong was ahead of me, the evening breeze lifting her smooth, tousled short hair, the afterglow falling across the skin of her shoulders.

I did not know how long we had walked. The music gradually faded, and all I could hear beside my ears was the roar of the waves.

Wu Qiong finally stopped. She lowered her head and rubbed her tender little feet against the white sand.

I stood beside her, and we remained quiet for quite a while. “What are you thinking about?”

Her little feet drew lines through the sand again and again. She did not answer me.

“Do you like it here?”

Wu Qiong raised her head slightly, lifting her chin as she looked toward the end of the sea. Amid the noisy roar of the waves, I still heard her give a quiet hum.

“This place is pretty nice.” I smiled faintly. My palm unconsciously slid over her hair and came to rest on her slender neck. “Then shall we come here and stay for a while every year?”

There was a tenderness in my voice that even I did not notice. Yet the body beneath my hand stiffened. I watched the light in her eyes vanish, and the corners of her lips flatten. Without saying a word, she turned around, evaded my hand, and walked toward the hotel by the shore.

My heart suddenly spasmed. I clenched my fist. The fine sand beneath my feet still retained the warmth of the day, but I could not feel any warmth at all. So it turned out that, from beginning to end, it had all been wishful thinking on my part. She hated me. That had never changed.

Wu Qiong had already walked several meters away when I stepped forward and pulled her back. “What?” I smiled cruelly. “You don’t like it?”

The calm I had deliberately maintained came to an end. She struggled in my arms. “I don’t like it. This place isn’t suitable for you and me to come to. We’re both filthy through and through.”

She practically shouted it.

“If we’re dirty, then wash us clean.” I was hurting too, and I could not let her have it easy. “But where we go is not up to you.”

I imprisoned her in my arms, pinching her gaunt chin between two fingers as I lowered my head and kissed her lips. After a few seconds of stunned reaction, Wu Qiong began struggling desperately. She hit me with her hands, pinched me, and stamped her feet down hard, but I did not move an inch. On the contrary, I kissed her more and more deeply, almost gnawing at her.

When the taste of blood spread between our lips and teeth, Wu Qiong finally stopped resisting. In return, I took her lower lip between my teeth and bit down hard, successfully drawing a muffled groan from her. The metallic taste grew even stronger.

We kissed like that for a long time. I lifted her by the waist, our lips pressed together, and I murmured indistinctly, “Stop trying to provoke me all the time. You won’t get anything out of it.” I kissed her and said in a dazed, husky voice, “Be good.”

Our relationship fell into another stalemate. On the plane back to the city, we sat at opposite ends of the aisle and barely exchanged a word. Just before landing, I had the attendant beside me ask where she was going. As expected, I got no response.

When we walked into the airport terminal, the moment my feet touched the cold, hard marble floor, the chill surrounding me reminded me, Wake up. We were already back in Zhangzhou. I silently drew a breath and turned my head to look. Wu Qiong was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and long pants underneath, with only a beige windbreaker over them. She had on flats. It made her thin, small body look even more frail and delicate.

I clenched my fist, opened my coat at the front, and shrugged it off. But the footsteps beside me suddenly stopped. Her eyes were fixed ahead. She finally spoke to me first: “I’m going to the restroom.” Then she hurried back the way we had come.

I looked in the direction she had been staring. Ten meters ahead stood a man dressed entirely in black, his wrist casually resting on the handle of a pink rolling suitcase as he lazily looked over. His features were sharply defined, his tall figure straight and imposing, and he radiated a distinctive air that made him the kind of person anyone could remember at a glance in the entire airport terminal.

So Wu Qiong’s strange behavior suddenly made perfect sense, because that person was Lu Qiang.

I still remembered the first time she and Lu Qiang met. We were still in university then. I had pursued Wu Qiong relentlessly without success, so I used a group activity as an excuse to gather our classmates at Chao Hui. There was a lot of alcohol that day, and I told everyone to drink as much as they wanted. We were all poor students. Normally, our lives consisted of the dormitory, cafeteria, and classroom, three points in a straight line. At most, we would go outside campus for a meal. Few of us had ever been to such an upscale club, so we had a great time. Almost all the imported liquor we brought was finished. Those who did not like making a fuss left early, while some lay sprawled across the sofas in all directions, like puddles of mud.

I had drunk a lot too. When the room gradually quieted down, I moved closer to Wu Qiong. She was about to leave. Perhaps the alcohol had numbed her nerves. I grabbed her back, and amid our stumbling and tangling, we fell onto the sofa together.

I was still a brash young man then. Once I had gotten a taste of lust, it was almost impossible to stop, but at that moment I felt the back of my collar tighten as someone grabbed me and yanked me straight up from behind. I was just about to start cursing, but when I turned around and saw that it was Lu Qiang, I immediately backed down.

Wu Qiong seemed to have grabbed hold of a lifeline. She got up and ran behind him to hide.

His fist showed no mercy as it struck me in the face. “You little bastard, getting bold, huh!”

“Qiang-ge, why are you hitting me?” I both admired and respected him, while also being somewhat afraid of him. Even after he hit me, the most I dared to do was talk back once.

“Who taught you to force yourself on a woman?” he asked through gritted teeth.

I lowered my head and said nothing. He kicked me hard again, sending me straight back into the sofa.

Lu Qiang had not exactly been a good man back then either. In the world of fame and fortune, people maneuvered against one another and used every means available. But he had always been upright and aboveboard, putting everything out in the open. He behaved like a true man of integrity. Among the people under him, one call from him brought everyone running, and no one disobeyed him. Likewise, there were plenty of women around him. If things worked, they stayed together; if they did not, they parted. I had never seen him force anyone to stay.

From childhood to adulthood, I had never even respected my own father, yet for some reason, I admired him.

Likewise, he treated me like a real younger brother. That day, I had infuriated him badly. He braced his hands against his hips and pointed at me. “Apologize.”

I held my aching stomach where he had kicked me and looked toward Wu Qiong. At the time, she was standing diagonally behind him, her head tilted up as she looked at him. It was only much later that I understood the meaning hidden in that gaze.

I sat up a little straighter. “I’m sorry. I drank too much just now.”

Wu Qiong hid behind him without saying a word.

After standing there for a while, Lu Qiang called toward the outside, “Genzi, take this girl home first. You come with me.” The last sentence was directed at me.

I knew a beating was unavoidable, but ironically, he ultimately failed to teach me a lesson. After that, something subtle changed between Wu Qiong and me. Whenever Lu Qiang was mentioned, she generally would not resist going out with me. As for my declarations of love, she did not agree to them, but neither did she strongly reject me.

The following year, on my birthday, she made an excuse that she had something to do and would not come, so I had no choice but to repeatedly ask Lu Qiang to invite her for me.

She came, but Lu Qiang did not stay long. Yet no one could have anticipated that after that night, the fates of the three of us would change.

I was momentarily dazed. When my eyes came back into focus, he was already walking toward me.

I did my best to adjust my expression and went to meet him. “Qiang-ge, what are you doing here?”

He said, “Waiting for someone.”

We stood there talking about some inconsequential things. I could tell that he no longer even considered me worth bothering with. Perhaps he had been disappointed ever since the time I started pestering Wu Qiong again.

He did not stay long before leaving with a woman, while I waited in the same spot for nearly ten minutes before Wu Qiong finally came out with her head lowered.

That day, I did not take her home. We started arguing outside the airport. More precisely, she was arguing with me. I had always held the upper hand, hadn’t I?

She grabbed me by the collar. “You bastard Qiu, don’t push me too far.”

I smiled. “What will happen?”

“We’ll both go down together.”

“Good.” I looked at her for a long while before finally stopping my smile. “I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

At the time, I thought that going down together would be good too, wouldn’t it? At the very least, we would not have to torment each other anymore, and we could both be freed. But as it turned out, I was a coward, a complete and utter coward...

Someone beside me nudged me, and I came back to myself. In front of me was a diamond-patterned wire fence. On the other side, people were playing basketball on the court. They wore identical clothes and had identical haircuts. There were guards standing nearby, and they could not move freely, making them look somewhat stiff and cautious.

The man secretly slipped me a pack of good cigarettes. My father had specifically had me brought in and told him to take special care of me. I put the cigarettes away, nodded at him, then followed the railing to the right. An old man was squatting on the steps. He slept beside me. I heard that he had been sentenced to life imprisonment. At the end of last year, he had just been diagnosed with lung cancer. Looks like he would be staying here until the end too.

I sat down beside him. “Smoke?”

He shook his head.

“It’s good stuff. They don’t sell it in here.”

He said, “I cough badly after I smoke.”

I did not persuade him again. The two of us sat quietly. In some ways, I felt that we were strangely alike. We were both already terminally ill. The only difference was that he had a date with death, while I did not.

After a while, he casually advised, “You should smoke less too. You just got sick, after all.”

I shrugged indifferently, shook out a cigarette, and lit it. In the span of a year, I had lost nearly forty jin. At over six feet tall, I had become skin and bones. With my low immunity, I often ran fevers, and with the prison’s poor conditions, whenever I fell ill, I could barely even get out of bed. Night after night, I was tormented by nightmares.

The dreams had never stopped since Wu Qiong left. At first, I slept day and night simply so I could see her again. Once, I dreamed of the day we entered university. As luck would have it, the four-season osmanthus trees at the school were in bloom. Pale yellow petals covered the entire tree-lined path. Whenever the wind blew, the petals drifted down, as if an osmanthus blossom rain had fallen, accompanied by a faint fragrance. She stood beneath the tree, wearing a pure white dress. Her hair was very long, gently brushing her bare shoulders. Her smile was brilliant then, her face bright, fair, and luminous, with the color of youth and health.

I walked toward her, but another girl suddenly appeared in front of me. I had lost a bet with some others and been egged on to tease the first person who came along. The people around me were all a bunch of spoiled rich kids. How could I back down with my pride at stake? So I stopped the girl who had come over first.

That girl kept dodging and shrinking away. I pestered her until her face flushed scarlet, while the group behind me shouted and jeered, whistling lewdly. Wu Qiong walked around us. In the instant she brushed past, I clearly saw her brows crease slightly, her face full of disdain and disgust.

I turned to look at her. She walked farther and farther away. I called her name, but her back grew fainter and fainter, like air I could not grasp, gradually dispersing...

I suddenly woke from the dream, covering my face with both hands. Something wet seeped through the gaps between my fingers, and I could no longer tell whether it was sweat or something else.

I wished time could turn back, but who could grant me that?

That day, ignoring everyone's objections, I drove to the school. I did not see the four-season osmanthus trees in bloom, and there was even less chance of seeing her.

Afterward, my sleep became terrible. I began lying awake all night, night after night. My body rapidly wasted away within a month. I felt that I was becoming more and more seriously ill. One or two sleeping pills no longer worked, so I swallowed an entire bottle. But I did not die, because I was a coward, and so I still lived to this day.

After recreation time, we lined up to return to our cells. Along the way, Old Deng was called out. Apparently, he had a family visitor. In all the time I had been here, it was the first time I had seen anyone come to visit him.

But when he returned, he was extremely abnormal. I spoke to him, but he did not respond to a single word.

In the middle of that night, I vaguely turned over in my sleep. Through narrowed eyes, I saw a dark shadow beside me and suddenly shuddered. Old Deng was sitting on his bunk, his head turned toward me.

I steadied myself and propped myself up. “Why aren't you sleeping?”

He suddenly said, “I have a daughter.” After a long while, he added, “Her name is Deng Qiong.”

My heart suddenly contracted. Even a Chinese character in a name similar to hers was enough to disturb my thoughts. My throat felt as though a wad of cotton were stuck in it, making it difficult to swallow.

Before I could keep up with his train of thought, he said again, “Have you ever done something you feel guilty about?”

I found it amusing. Among the people who ended up in here, who had a spotless record?

“I have,” I said.

He looked at me for a long time, yet did not say a word. He simply lay down and went to sleep.

The weather changed in the early hours of that morning. Without any suspense, I came down with another fever. My whole body was burning hot, my head splitting with pain, every muscle aching as though it were being torn apart. My body and mind were suffering a double torment, as if I were living in hell. It was truly worse than death.

This must be karma, I thought. I wished someone would take a knife and help me end this wretched life.

When I thought that, I absolutely never expected that one day it would actually come true.

It was the fifteenth day of the third month of the lunar calendar. After nightfall, I rarely managed to sleep lightly for a few hours. In my half-conscious state, I only felt a pressure around my neck, lodged against my throat, making it extremely difficult to breathe.

I thought I was dreaming again. I tried to break through the dream and regulate my breathing, but the pressure grew stronger and stronger. My chest tightened, my breathing stopped for several seconds, and I suddenly woke.

When a person faces danger, the instinctive reaction is to resist. When I saw Old Deng straddling me, using brute force to clamp my throat, I crossed my hands and grabbed both of his little fingers, bending them backward. I immediately gained control of him.

Only one dim light was on in the room, but I knew it was enough for the monitoring room to see everything. In a weak voice, I shouted, “Old Deng, have you gone crazy? Get off me.”

His eyes were bloodshot. He struggled with all his might against my restraint. “Haven't you done enough things to feel guilty about? Are you especially afraid of dying now?”

I froze for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“I want to kill you.” Old Deng spoke through clenched teeth like a man possessed, as though he feared nothing, without making any effort to lower his voice. One of his hands broke free and fumbled around behind his waist for a long time.

Until that moment, I still thought he was joking. “If you don't want to get thrown into solitary, get off me. Someone's coming.”

The moment I finished speaking, I saw him pull a steel nail from behind him and swiftly thrust it toward my throat.

My pupils contracted. When the steel nail was only two centimeters from me, I seized his wrist. We were both weak enough, and as our bodies collided, we struggled against each other. Before long, both of us were gasping for breath.

“You're serious?”

“I’m going to kill you.” He repeated it.

“Do I have some grudge against you?”

“A blood feud.”

I frowned and desperately searched through my existing memories for the name Deng Qiming. I swore I had never known him before.

“Let go first.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw people from the other bunks cautiously approaching. I was almost completely exhausted. “Is there some kind of misunderstanding?”

“I have a daughter...” he murmured.

“Old Deng, calm down!”

“But I never even got to see her once. I originally thought I still had a chance. This old life of mine held on until today...” His eyes were crimson, his lips trembling. “But she’s already dead.”

An alarm sounded inside the room. Someone came over and tried to pull him away, but at that moment Old Deng used every last bit of his strength, and I could barely hold him back.

“My daughter’s name is Deng Qiong.”

“Old Deng!” I was drenched in cold sweat, my hands trembling violently. From the corridor came the sound of boots striking the concrete floor, hurried and disorderly. The prison guards were coming.

“She also has another name. Her name is Deng Qiong. You know Deng Qiong, don't you?”

All movement stopped abruptly. I opened my eyes wide in horror. “What?”

A person’s instinct at a moment like that is truly miraculous. I seemed to already have the answer in my heart, yet unconsciously asked, “Which Deng Qiong?”

“The one you killed!” he roared.

I drifted into a daze amid my shock, and everything he had done suddenly had an explanation. A buzzing filled my ears. I vaguely heard the prison guards shouting at the other inmates to return to their places, chaos breaking out all around, accompanied by the clashing of iron locks and iron doors.

The strength with which I had been gripping his wrist loosened. My consciousness returned to that night. I had sat alone in a pool of blood until dawn. Wu Qiong’s face was deathly pale, her eyes empty, and she was already lifeless. Everything had been decided. The reality that she and I were separated by life and death could no longer be undone. And I had held that dagger, trying several times to plunge it into my own body, only to give up at the last moment.

Yes, I was a coward. I had even swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills in an attempt to kill myself. The waiting was the most terrifying part. When my stomach began to rebel, my insides churned violently and surged toward my throat, and I became afraid. Before I lost consciousness, I hurriedly called an ambulance.

It was ironic, wasn't it? So I deserved to face a situation like this today. I had no courage, so let someone else do it for me. Perhaps I should thank Heaven for taking pity on me and letting me escape this sea of suffering a little sooner.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the prison guards had already rushed in. I suddenly gave up resisting altogether. At that moment, the steel nail in Old Deng’s hand plunged without hesitation into my main artery...

“Th-thank you.” I smiled and spat out the last two words to Old Deng.

He did not even blink. The steel nail viciously ripped downward, and I heard the sound of flesh tearing. Blood gushed out, a thick liquid spilling from my mouth and nose. Then someone shoved Old Deng away, and the prison guards came forward to staunch my wound. For the next few minutes, I was jostled and jolted along the way. I felt no pain. My body was cold, constantly convulsing, my consciousness gradually becoming blurred.

I was pushed outside. The sky was pitch-black, without a single star, but today was the fifteenth day of the third month of the lunar calendar, the night of the full moon. It seemed like a good omen.

Someone said beside my ear, “Hold on. Don’t go to sleep.”

But I was too tired. My eyelids gradually became impossible to keep open. I was finally going to see her. I was a little excited.

The world before my eyes gradually sank into a white haze. Without a sound, I blindly walked forward. Something fell onto my shoulder. I turned my head and saw a pale yellow petal. More and more petals fell, carrying a faint fragrance. I raised my head and realized I was standing on a familiar tree-lined path. Trees towered on either side, their pale yellow blossoms clustered thickly, covering the entire canopy.

Someone was walking toward me from the distance, the breeze lifting the hem of her white dress.

It was my girl.

I went to meet her, looking at her with the gentlest, most reverent gaze.

Her eyes curved with a smile as she blinked curiously. “Is there something you need, classmate?”

My Adam’s apple bobbed. In a steady voice, I said, “Hello, my name is Qiu Zhen.”

A flower petal fell onto her hair.

She looked at me intently. After a moment, she gave me a smile I had never seen before.

✦

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