Xingzhou City (10)
Fortunately, Xingzhou City was Huo Sixuan’s turf. Otherwise, Tan Guhong suspected she might very well have been mistaken for a gambling cheat, had her hands and feet chopped off, and thrown into international waters to feed the fish.
“Tomboy, you’re having quite a good time!”
Huo Sixuan’s office was on the 49th floor of the hotel. Its style was simple, spacious, and bright, commanding a high vantage point with a broad view.
She stood with her back against the desk, arms folded across her chest, looking at Tan Guhong with an unfriendly expression.
“Sorry, Monica. I didn’t mean to.” Tan Guhong raised her hands in surrender. “I just don’t believe my luck at gambling really turned around. Don’t worry, I absolutely won’t take a single cent of this money.”
Huo Sixuan gave a soft snort. “Who cares whether you take the money or not? It’s not coming out of my pocket anyway. What matters is that you’ve caused such a huge stir in Xingzhou City. It’ll soon be known throughout Singapore, and before long, reporters will come to interview you and write about you. Do you know how difficult those people are to get rid of?”
Tan Guhong’s thoughts stirred. “The money isn’t coming from you? What does that mean?”
“What else could it mean? You don’t really think your gambling luck has shot through the roof and you’re unbeatable, do you? In that case, I might as well hand over my title as the Southeast Asian female gambling king to you!” Huo Sixuan poured two glasses of MOSCATO from the simple bar nearby.
“You’re drinking in broad daylight?”
“It’s only 5% VLO. What kind of alcohol is that?”
Huo Sixuan rolled her eyes, handed Tan Guhong a glass, and said meaningfully, “In this world, there are only master gambling cheats, never gambling kings. From today onward, as long as you don’t play slot machines in Xingzhou City, you will only win and never lose at any manned gambling table. And all the money you win will come from a special account. There’s no upper limit. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
Tan Guhong silently took a large sip of wine.
There was no need to guess who had arranged all of this.
“He really went to such lengths just to make someone happy. I can’t believe he came up with this!” Huo Sixuan snorted coldly, then looked at Tan Guhong. “What about you, Tomboy? What exactly is going on between you two? Don’t think I don’t know where you slept last night. Did you really drink that boy’s love potion and fall for him completely?”
Tan Guhong remained silent for a long while before giving a quiet laugh.
“Maybe I did.”
In just a few short days, her state of mind and circumstances had changed again. There was no way, nor any need, to keep stubbornly telling Huo Sixuan that there was nothing between the two of them.
She had probably really fallen for him, only not completely yet. If she put in some effort, there was still room for rescue.
“I can’t stop you!”
Seeing Tan Guhong admit it so directly, Huo Sixuan was at a loss for words instead. She sighed and sat down beside her.
“Forget it. If you want to date, then date. It’s no big deal. If you don’t like each other anymore, just break up! Don’t listen to whatever my eldest brother says about a marriage engagement or whatever. He’s an old-fashioned old fogey. I’ll talk him around.”
Tan Guhong smiled and clinked glasses with her. “Thank you, Monica.”
Huo Sixuan drained her glass and said, “All right, stop thinking about these unhappy things. It’s not worth worrying over a man. Monica will take you to do something fun. The clothes we had custom-made arrived this morning. Let’s go try them on together!”
Huo Sixuan lived at Xingzhou City most of the time. Tan Guhong followed her into her dressing room and was completely stunned by the sight before her.
It was a two-story, circular room with an enormous floor area. All kinds of clothes were packed densely onto racks and inside sliding cabinets, yet everything was neatly organized, cluttered but not messy. Entire walls were lined with designer handbags and luxury shoes. The sight was intensely striking, practically the ultimate dream of every girl.
Although Huo Sixuan had neither a husband nor children, she lived a rich, carefree life, and was by no means lacking in young, beautiful men at her beck and call. She was not lonely in the slightest.
At that moment, she eagerly put on one after another of the newly tailored designer outfits to show Tan Guhong, looking just like a little girl showing off her toys.
Tan Guhong could not help asking, “Monica, don’t you really have anything to say to me?”
Last time, she had clearly admonished Tan Guhong again and again to stay away from Luo Jingming, going so far as to describe her own grandnephew as a complete bastard. This time, after Tan Guhong admitted it, why was she saying nothing at all?
“What is there to say?”
Huo Sixuan casually said as she arranged the lace gloves in her hands, “You two weren’t together, so I could still warn you. Now that you are together, what can I say? Women in love are all fools. They won’t listen to anything anyone else says. I’ve been through it myself, so I know best. The greater the pressure from the outside world, the more determined you two might become to stay together. I’m not going to be the villain!”
Tan Guhong burst out laughing. She really was straightforward.
“What about your experience with love?”
“There’s not much to say about that either. With this sort of thing, you have to drink the water yourself to know whether it’s warm or cold. But if you really want me to tell you something, the only thing I can say is, don’t just crave the sweetness of love.”
Tan Guhong froze. “What do you mean?”
“Simply put, love is life. It comes with all five flavors, sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, and salty. A love that is nothing but bitterness and heartache is no good, but only craving the sweetness isn’t realistic either. Only by genuinely giving your heart and loving someone can there be sweetness. But once you’ve given your heart, you can’t pretend you don’t care anymore. Hurt, jealousy, pain, inner conflict, all of that is normal. They’re the complimentary gifts that come with the sweetness. You can’t shake them off. This world is very fair. It all depends on what each person can accept. If you can accept it, then keep the relationship going. If you can’t, then just walk away.”
After hearing this, Tan Guhong remained speechless for a long time.
Huo Sixuan turned around from the full-length mirror and looked at Tan Guhong, making two soft “tsk-tsk” sounds. “A little girl who’s never been in love before. What on earth are you thinking?”
“I don’t know.” Tan Guhong answered honestly. “But I don’t want to get married.”
It had nothing to do with whether her feelings ran deep or shallow, nor with who that person was.
No matter what, she would never place the fate of her entire life in someone else’s hands.
“Who said you have to get married?” Huo Sixuan rolled her eyes. “Eastern attitudes toward love can be so rigid sometimes. Spending a lifetime together may sound romantic, but how many people actually make it through a lifetime together? Most of them just end up as a pair of resentful spouses bound together. Promises, marriage, all of it is unreliable. In the end, it’s women who get tied down, while men get to walk away so freely.”
At this, she sighed.
“Men, you know, when they love you, their love is that genuine, and when they stop loving you, that’s just as genuine. Their hearts are like a funnel. Once they’re full, everything just pours out, as though nothing ever happened.”
“Monica…” Tan Guhong could not help asking softly, “Have you ever truly loved a man?”
“Of course I have.” Huo Sixuan slowly slipped out of the intricately embroidered haute couture dress she was wearing. “I’ve been in quite a few relationships over the years. Most of them were just for fun. If we’re talking about men I truly loved, there were probably only three and a half.”
“Where did the half come from?”
Tan Guhong stepped forward and helped her pull the zipper all the way down her back.
“Don’t interrupt me!” Huo Sixuan glared at her through the mirror. “Are you going to listen or not?”
“I’m listening, I’m listening…” Tan Guhong admitted defeat. “Go on.”
“Actually, you’ve probably heard something about the first three already. One was A-Hui, one was Henry Chen, and the other was Wentai.”
Tan Guhong had indeed heard about all three of Huo Sixuan’s relationships. Every one of them had been passionate and tumultuous, stirring up a storm throughout the city.
When she was young, Huo Sixuan dropped out of school to play music and lived in Hong Kong for a long time. She fell in love with Du Guanghui, the ace producer and musical prodigy of Hong Kong at the time. But the two of them were young, impetuous, proud and arrogant, neither willing to give an inch. They broke up and got back together countless times over the years, suffering terribly in the process. Eventually, they broke up for good. Huo Sixuan was heartbroken for a long time, while Du Guanghui soon married a beautiful Miss Hong Kong. To this day, the two still resent each other and have sworn never to have anything to do with each other again for as long as they live.
Later, Huo Sixuan got together with Henry Chen, the son of a Chinese-American businessman. They were well matched in family background, a golden couple in every sense. But Henry Chen was a philanderer and cheated on her several times. Every single affair made the front page of the newspapers, leaving Huo Sixuan utterly humiliated. Their breakup was especially ugly. The two spent half a year trading insults through the media from afar, at one point becoming the laughingstock of San Francisco’s Chinese-American upper-class social circle. But a few years ago, the media reported that they had been spotted playing golf together. Time had changed things, and it seemed that their old grievances had long since vanished.
The third was Long Wentai, the gambling king of Southeast Asia. That was several years ago. By then, Huo Sixuan was already over fifty, while Long Wentai was a full twelve years older than her. Their late-life May-December romance left the whole world astonished. Long Wentai’s children and grandchildren vehemently opposed the relationship, but the two continued doing exactly as they pleased, perfectly content in each other’s company. With Long Wentai’s support, Huo Sixuan even successfully bid for a Singapore gambling license and opened a casino, looking every bit like a husband-and-wife team. Rumors even spread that the two had reached the point of discussing marriage. Unfortunately, five years ago, Long Wentai suddenly died of a heart attack, and everything came to an abrupt end.
“The reason I call the last one half is because it wasn’t really a relationship. I was simply in love with him on my own.”
Tan Guhong had never expected that someone as bold in love and hatred as Huo Sixuan had once suffered from unrequited love too. Curious, she asked, “Why?”
“Because he had a wife and children, so from beginning to end, I never told him how I felt.”
Huo Sixuan smiled unconcernedly. “That was after Henry and I broke up. There were rumors about me all over the United States, so I hid out at my younger brother’s place in Beijing, your Grandpa Huo’s place, and that was where I met him. To be honest, he wasn’t my type at all. His looks were passable, but he was stiff and serious, like a piece of hard wood. Even now, I don’t understand why I fell for him. But maybe it was precisely because he was different. He was unlike everyone I had ever met. How should I put it… Do you know about the Populus euphratica?”
“I do.”
Tan Guhong nodded. It was a tree that stood on the Gobi, tall and magnificent in the desert, with an astonishing vitality.
“Alive for a thousand years without dying, dead for a thousand years without falling, and fallen for a thousand years without decaying. Whenever I saw him, I thought of the Populus euphratica.”
Tan Guhong was slightly distracted. A thought flashed through her mind, but she failed to catch it.
Huo Sixuan composed herself and smiled. “All right, that was all a very, very long time ago. I let it go ages ago. Those few men certainly left me battered and bruised, but none of them made it to the end with me. You know, I’m just too greedy for the sweetness of love. I only wanted to enjoy being in love, not put in the work of maintaining a relationship. But I had my problems, they had their problems, and fate had its problems too. After all, finding a perfectly flawless other half is simply too difficult. There’s no such thing as perfection in this world to begin with, is there?”
Tan Guhong suddenly remembered a Spanish word: Media naranja.
Literally, it meant “half an orange,” and was used to describe one’s destined other half.
Back in college, her Spanish teacher had been extremely literary-minded and liked to weave his own reflections on life into his lessons. He had said that finding the right person to love was like finding a complete, golden, fresh and juicy sweet orange. Unfortunately, most people could only encounter the wrong sour lemons and bitter gourds.
“Then do you still think love is beautiful?” she asked softly.
Even after encountering so many sour lemons and bitter gourds, had she still not given up longing for love, still chasing after it, still searching for it?
“Yes. Even if the odds are only one in tens of thousands. Even if it lasts only a few days. No matter how much betrayal, how much ugliness, love is still worthy of being celebrated.”
Huo Sixuan let out a long, wistful sigh.
“That’s what it means to be unforgettable. Once you’ve experienced it, you’ll understand.”
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