Chapter 3

“Do you want to know why my last stepmother divorced Dad?”

The sudden voice startled me.

To make it easier to keep an eye on Leting, I never quite closed my own bedroom door when I rested. I always left a gap.

He was standing just outside it now, his tone mocking. He had clearly been listening in silence for some time.

“I’ll tell you myself. I’m the one who actually knows what happened.”

He had eavesdropped without asking, but he didn’t come into my room uninvited. He knocked twice.

“Can I come in?”

“Yes.”

Only then did he push the door open. Carrying a cold can of Coke beaded with condensation, he dropped casually onto the sofa beside my bed.

“You’ve been here nearly a month now, haven’t you?”

“More than a month. You’ve had two monthly exams. Your teacher says you’ve improved a lot. You might get into the advanced class next year.”

“You even joined my class’s parents’ group?”

He gave a pointed smile, full of rejection and disgust. He tilted his head to hide a fleeting look in his eyes; his lashes trembled.

I pretended not to notice.

“Your dad’s away. Of course I should keep up with these things. Someone has to reply ‘Received’ in the group.”

The night was quiet. Now and then, wind brushed the window and tossed the shadows of the trees against the glass.

“She was introduced to him, too, like you. She used to answer calls at the neighborhood repair center.”

After a long silence, he slowly looked up at the plain round ceiling light.

“We had some money by then. Dad had already bought this house. His offer was pretty much the same: look after me, and he’d hand over all his wages.”

That woman had seemed completely different when she first came into their home.

She had eagerly tried to win them over. For the first time, the two of them, adrift for so long, felt the warmth of a family.

It might have been the happiest period of Leting’s life.

His grades had soared. From the bottom of the worst class, he climbed to the top of a selective one.

But their troubles weren’t over.

That happy life lasted less than two years.

One day, Leting came home from school and heard her on the phone with Chu Xing. She was saying vicious things. Apparently, he had only earned a little over eight hundred thousand yuan that year, less than he had promised.

By middle school, Leting understood money well enough. He couldn’t believe the household needed that much, so he began quietly watching how she spent it.

He looked up the prices of things in her room. Along with designer goods costing tens of thousands, he found receipts: over a thousand for a manicure, more than two thousand for a hair appointment, over five thousand for a meal, and tens of thousands for cosmetic surgery.

He was furious and told Chu Xing everything.

But his father was gentle, honest, and almost impossible to anger. He always tried to see the other person’s side.

“When people suddenly have money, they loosen up a bit,” he said. “Like people who’ve just struck it rich. It’s all right. I’ve found more opportunities now. I’ll earn more than that in future.”

Chu Xing wasn’t entirely wrong.

Extravagant as she was, she had never neglected Leting. If anything, she looked after him meticulously. She even took him shopping for his underwear and socks herself.

So, although he was angry, he hadn’t seriously considered doing anything drastic.

Then came his ninth-grade year.

“I was sitting on my bed reading.”

As he spoke, Leting stood and came closer. He knelt on the edge of the bed and stared into my eyes.

He reached for my hand, as if to reenact what had happened. I realized what he was trying to show me and quickly pulled away.

He began explaining how his stepmother had forced unwanted sexual contact on him.

He didn’t finish. The revulsion and rejection in his eyes told me enough.

She had sexually abused her own stepson, leaving a ninth-grade child with trauma that would not simply disappear.

“Why did she leave? Because of what you saw tonight. Because she found what I’d hidden under my bed. Because she knew I wasn’t even afraid to die.”

Apart from the house, there was little left for Chu Xing to keep. She screamed abuse at them, took everything of value, and fled.

At some point, rain had begun outside. The room had grown cold.

I looked at Leting. He looked back with the same empty, numb expression.

I was listening to someone else’s story.

He was telling someone else’s story.

“Why tell me all this now?”

“You can pretend to be whatever you need to survive. A loving mother and a dutiful son. A peaceful little family. Whatever you like. I’m telling you as a warning. If you want an easy life here, know your place.”

“All right. I’ll remember.”

I didn’t challenge his hostility. I simply nodded.

“Go to sleep. When the holidays come, your stepmother’s taking you to get even.”

“Who needs your help?”

“I’m not good at swallowing humiliation. Watching you two put up with all this is suffocating me.”

He said nothing.

Leting thought I was only talking.

He certainly hadn’t expected me to drag him out of bed at six on the first morning of the weekend and take an intercity coach straight to his birth mother’s address.

“Are you out of your mind, Yang Qian? Did I ask you to get revenge for me?”

“Show your stepmother some basic respect. Call me Aunt Qian. Or I’ll tell your dad.”

If this wasn’t dealt with properly, the hatred building inside him would become a time bomb. Who knew when it might go off?

“Two big men, letting people push you around like this. Impressive.”

Again, he had nothing to say.

Jiangcheng’s owner, Jiang Datong—the wealthy man Leting’s birth mother had married—sold health supplements and cheap cosmetics.

The company wasn’t large, but it made handsome profits. He cheated customers, exploited employees, squeezed suppliers, and was up to his neck in lawsuits.

I took Leting straight to Jiangcheng’s competitor and asked to see the owner.

Small-business owners generally spent their days at the office unless they were out entertaining clients. I handed over some documents I had gathered overnight in exchange for contact details for Jiang Datong and Leting’s birth mother.

Leting looked bewildered throughout. Only when we were on the coach home and I was messaging his mother did he ruffle his newly overgrown hair and ask, “Where the hell did you find all that?”

“HR people have their own ways of looking things up.”

A photograph and a name were enough to dig up plenty of useful information through HR groups.

“At a company like that, people keep copies of documents when they leave. They need proof to make sure they get their last paycheck.”

I had been lucky. Along with screenshots of Jiang Datong telling employees to cheat suppliers and customers, I had obtained compromising photographs of him and his mistress in his office.

We had a few quiet days after returning home. While Leting was at school, I kept watching developments at Jiangcheng.

Sure enough, less than a month later, a local news account released a video of Jiang Datong’s wife catching him with his mistress in the office. Husband and wife fought in public. Both ended up in hospital.

A few days later, suppliers stopped working with Jiangcheng. The company defaulted on deliveries, lost its biggest client, and faced a huge contractual penalty.

The bank sensed trouble and immediately withdrew its cooperation. Jiang Datong couldn’t even get a loan to keep things going.

His competitor, meanwhile, saw business boom as Jiangcheng collapsed, taking all its clients. Bankruptcy was only a matter of time.

“Well? Feel better?”

I took Leting to a restaurant for a proper meal and sent him all the information.

Through the rising steam of the pickled-mustard fish and spicy poached pork, he kept his eyes lowered for a long time. Finally, he nodded.

“Eat. It’ll get cold.”

His voice was a little hoarse.

He didn’t thank me. He didn’t stop arguing with me, either.

But he began wearing loose, comfortable clothes around the house instead of wandering about in nothing but shorts.

“I don’t need to drag the details of your two stepmothers out of your dad, do I? Send them to me.”

“What are you planning now?”

“I’m bored. I need a little excitement.”

He fell silent.

It was clear that, however long ago it had happened, the hatred remained deep inside him.

Outwardly, he acted as though I was a nuisance. That night, he still sent me everything he knew about the two women.

There was no need to take revenge on the first stepmother.

I had someone record a video and sent it to him.

She was living in a damp, dim room of less than thirty square meters.

Only forty, she looked over fifty. Thin and gaunt, she sat on the bed and tried to smile seductively at the camera.

“How much?” the person filming asked.

“Forty.”

“Are you sick?”

“I’ve been treated. Really, I’m better. Thirty’s fine, too. Don’t go.”

Her bed was a mess. Nothing about it suggested she had recovered. Even through the screen, I could almost smell the room’s foul air.

In the end, she had paid for her choices. She was back on the path she had once mistaken for something sweet, only to find it lined with broken glass.

“Do you believe people get what they deserve, Leting?”

He lay on the embankment, his gaze empty and distant.

His lips moved, but he didn’t answer. He only watched the orange-red sunset, as though a performance in the sky were drawing to a close.

“It’s all right. You will.”

I sent him another file.

It showed what had become of his second stepmother.

A woman earning three thousand a month had suddenly had access to a million a year. Her standard of living had risen too quickly.

Designer luxuries. Expensive food. Cosmetic surgery to perfect her image. A magnificent house.

An aircraft that ran out of fuel at ten thousand meters could only fall.

In little more than a year, her credit cards and online loans had collapsed into over 1.8 million yuan of debt. Private photographs of her were circulating everywhere. Debt collectors had beaten her badly enough to send her to hospital several times.

“Leting, you don’t always have to go to extremes to deal with hatred. You may have stopped speaking to them long ago, but they’re still watching you and your dad. Seeing you live well hurts them more than killing them would.”

“Don’t lecture me.”

“Then let’s talk about something practical. Your dad’s coming home early this year. At New Year, we’ll go out into the Pacific to meet him. We can spend a few days at sea together before coming home.”

Most children would have been delighted to hear their father was coming home early and they would all go on a trip.

Leting only looked dispirited.

“Mm.”

He hardly ate any dinner.

He wasn’t the only one.

When I video-called Chu Xing that evening, the man on the screen wore a painfully forced smile. He looked like an old boat worn down by seawater, exhausted and powerless. His brow was furrowed, and every word seemed carefully chosen to please me.

“How long will you be home?”

“Maybe… quite a while… probably until… next year.”

He drew a sharp breath. His eyes reddened, though it barely showed against his sun-browned skin.

That strained expression wasn’t a smile. He looked closer to tears.

“Has someone been giving you a hard time?”

“Of course not. Who on the boat would dare? The waves have just been a bit rough.”

“Then it’s settled. Leting and I will come and meet you at New Year.”

“Yeah… all right…”

Distracted, he answered a few times, then said he needed to check something in the cabin and ended the call.

For the next while, father and son were exactly alike: wilted as frostbitten eggplants.

Even Leting’s arguments with me lost their edge. Occasionally, he helped clean the shared rooms. If he passed the fried-chicken shop on his way home, he would bring me some fried chicken ribs.

“Honestly, the pair of you look as if you got caught doing something scandalous together.”

Leting bit down on his chopsticks.

“Can you say something halfway decent, Yang Qian?”

“Call me Aunt Qian. Or Mom.”

“The word ‘Mom’ isn’t in my vocabulary. Give up.”

New Year was almost upon us.

I packed warm clothes and a few necessities. Leting took two days off school. We wheeled our suitcases to the port to board the inexpensive little cruise ship we had booked.

The plan was to meet Chu Xing at the nearest offshore port where his fishing boat stopped for supplies. Then we would sail home with him and experience life at sea.

He had been distracted lately, and the signal was unreliable. Only when we messaged him after boarding did he seem to wake up to what was happening. He video-called at once.

“Leting! Qianqian! You’ve really left?”

“Yes. We’re on the cruise ship.”

“We said we were coming to meet you. Have you forgotten?”

Leting and I waved at the screen.

Chu Xing forced a smile and wiped his face.

“Why don’t you enjoy the trip and take the cruise ship back? Life on a fishing boat is hard. I’m afraid…”

“That’s what we’re coming to experience. Right, little Tingting?”

I patted Leting’s shoulder, ignored his glare, and went on.

“Your son wants to see his dad. I want to see my husband. What’s a little hardship?”

“Ha…”

On the screen, Chu Xing kept rubbing his hands and face. Nearly forty, he was smiling shyly like a boy.

But the smile soon gave way to worry. His eyes reddened. He kept swallowing as though something had caught in his throat.

Beside me, Leting blinked, announced he needed the bathroom, and practically fled.

“All right, we’ll let you work. Call when you dock.”

The winter sea wind was damp and cold.

Three days later, we finally met Chu Xing at the little port.

Wearing a dark blue raincoat, he took us to a nearby restaurant for grilled fish. Before we boarded, he took off the coat, put it around me, and carefully fastened every button.

“The wind’s strong out there. An umbrella won’t help. Don’t get soaked and catch cold.”

“It’s only a few steps. And why aren’t you two worried about the cold?”

“We’re tough. We’ll be fine.”

He was more than ten years older than me and fussed over me even more than he did his son.

A piece was missing from the boarding plank. Afraid I would miss my footing, he insisted on carrying me aboard.

The sailors laughed at him.

“Old Chu would put his new wife on a pedestal if he could.”

But after the laughter, a few faces grew grave. One man turned away and sighed. Another wiped his face and shook his head.

“What’s wrong? You’re nearly home with your families. Why does everyone look so unhappy?”

“Nothing… We’re just tired. Don’t… don’t think too much about it.”

The fishing boat was nothing like the cruise ship, but Chu Xing had a small cabin of his own. He had cleaned and tidied it before we arrived.

Leting went to squeeze in with the sailors, leaving us some privacy.

Chu Xing had got wet while boarding. He stood in a corner changing his clothes.

Water from his hair ran down his strong back and gathered at his waist.

“Let me dry your back.”

I took the towel from him and wiped his skin.

That was when I saw the old burn and the countless scars, large and small, across his back.

His warmth was reassuring. I brushed my fingers over the scars.

“It must have hurt so much.”

He was different from Leting.

Whatever he had endured, he never seemed to resent it or complain. He simply went on, quietly living through days that had never been peaceful.

“All right, all right. Rest for a while. I’ll finish up and come back.”

His back stiffened. He suddenly caught my hand, hurried into his shirt, and bent to escape the cabin.

I caught a glimpse of his flushed skin, red all the way to his ears, and spent a long time secretly smiling.

I was half asleep by the time he returned.

The waves were high that night. The boat rocked without pause.

He held me from behind, rested his head on my shoulder, and wrapped the blanket tightly around us.

Like many couples who had met through introductions, we hadn’t built much of an emotional foundation. We had started with a little mutual attraction and a practical weighing of our circumstances.

Even in each other’s arms, we weren’t especially intimate.

But after a while, some changes were inevitable.

His breathing grew heavier. Then, as though afraid I would notice, he rolled away from me.

“I do like you, Chu Xing. You deserve to be liked.”

I turned and put my arms around his waist.

“What about you? What do you think of me?”

“You’re wonderful. I like you very much.”

He hadn’t expected me to be awake. His voice sounded flustered. He turned as if to hold me, then hesitated and kept his distance.

I didn’t understand that hesitation. Quietly, I felt let down.

Desire wasn’t the most important thing in my life. Still, I cared whether my husband found me attractive.

There was nothing wrong with his body. Yet he wouldn’t be close to me. It hurt.

We had both been married before. There was no need to act as though we were saving ourselves.

And we were legally married now.

“Go to sleep.”

I lifted my head, kissed the corner of his mouth, and forced a smile.

Then I turned away without another word.