Chapter 5
Edward Quan ·
13
A week later, Chen Zhao moved his things out.
We hadn’t seen each other for a while. He seemed to have lost a lot of weight.
I’d heard a few things about him.
Chen Jiahe had dumped him, then immediately gone abroad.
Before leaving, she’d even called him useless.
At last, the flattering filter over his first love had shattered completely.
Only a heap of wreckage remained.
That made the look he gave me all the more wistful.
“We can still be friends after breaking up. If you need anything, you can come to me anytime.”
“Xiaocao.” His eyes reddened. “I really do love you.”
Before I could speak, a car horn sounded nearby.
Zong Lu got out.
Arms folded, he looked at me.
“Zhang Xiaocao. Come here.”
Chen Zhao looked puzzled.
“He’s…?”
Unable to bear it any longer, Zong Lu strode over.
He took my hand, not sparing Chen Zhao so much as a glance.
Once we were in the car, he sat in silence for a long time.
I looked at him unhappily.
“Were you giving me orders just now?”
“Zong Lu, what gives you the right to speak to me like that?”
“I haven’t agreed to be your girlfriend.”
He looked at me coldly.
Without another word, he started the car.
14
That evening, I returned to Xicheng.
I’d only taken that one day off.
Zong Lu came back with me.
Nobody at the company noticed anything unusual about our relationship.
That was my condition.
“I need a healthy working environment.”
His lips curved.
“All right.”
After that argument, things between us returned to the way they had been.
I was neither warm nor cold. He was neither hurried nor slow.
Zong Lu became a little more normal too.
There was a slight chill in the night breeze.
After work, I saw Chen Zhao again.
He was waiting under a streetlight. When he spotted me, he waved.
“Xiaocao!”
I walked over.
“What is it?”
He smiled and took a protective charm out of his pocket.
“They say this temple’s prayers really work. I got this for you.”
Before I could speak, someone rushed over.
Thud!
A fist slammed straight into Chen Zhao’s face.
Zong Lu looked at me coldly. Then he bent down again, seized Chen Zhao by the collar, and punched him once more.
“Keep pestering her, and I’ll kill you. Try me.”
Chen Zhao recovered enough to fight back, but Zong Lu easily restrained him.
I stepped forward and pulled at Zong Lu.
“Have you finished acting crazy?”
Only then did he look up at me again.
The next second, he grabbed my hand and dragged me toward his car.
15
The moment he opened the door, he pushed me inside.
I struggled.
He lifted my face and kissed me.
I slapped him across the face.
He bent down and kissed me again.
A rusty, metallic taste spread through my mouth.
Zong Lu knelt over me, gripping my face.
The intensity of the desire in his eyes frightened me into looking away.
Suddenly, his shadow fell over me.
His hot mouth pressed against mine again.
I pushed at his shoulder.
“Zong Lu, you…!”
He pinned me down.
“He has no chance anymore. What are you still hesitating over?”
“Can he make you happy?”
“Am I not better than him?”
“Why are you still seeing him?”
The parking lot was dim. He had his back to the light, leaving the car even darker.
His usually cold features now held a trace of madness.
“Zhang Xiaocao. Be angry with me. Take whatever revenge you want.”
“But I won’t let you keep contacting him.”
I glared furiously at him.
“What right do you have to forbid me?”
“Who are you to forbid me?”
The peace of the past few days shattered completely. Every pretense was stripped away.
I was so angry I laughed.
“So you know I’m angry with you. When you did all that, did you ever think about me?”
“Why shouldn’t I be angry?”
“You destroyed my perfectly peaceful life. Why shouldn’t I be furious?”
I’d known since I was very young that I wasn’t a generous person.
I settled every score. I hated wrongdoing with a vengeance.
If someone hated me, I would hate them back.
However much someone hurt me, I would repay it in full.
I knew Chen Zhao had failed to control himself. That was why he’d fallen into Zong Lu’s trap.
But that didn’t mean I thought Zong Lu was innocent.
Why should I be the only one hurting?
He had to hurt too.
Zong Lu laughed as well. In the darkness, his smile was a little chilling.
“It’s fine. After today, he won’t dare contact you again anyway.”
“Zhang Xiaocao.”
He looked at me.
“This is a game between the two of us. We can play it however we like. But if you bring in a third person…”
His lips curved.
“I really will go mad.”
“If you don’t believe me, try it.”
15
Zong Lu first met Zhang Xiaocao in their first year of college.
She was selling student cards in the fierce summer sun.
Even from a distance, he could hear her voice.
Flattering. Eager to please.
Such a glib, persuasive tongue.
His first impression wasn’t good.
It could even be called rather bad.
Yet, strangely, he still remembered her saying that day:
“My name is Zhang Xiaocao.”
She had wheat-colored skin. When she smiled in the sunshine, her teeth were almost dazzlingly white.
Her eyes were full of spirit.
They often reminded him of a leopard cub, brimming with energy and determination.
He saw her working part-time in more than one place around campus.
A milk-tea shop.
A clothing store.
Tutoring.
Sales.
She was so good with words that more than once he found himself watching her, lost in thought.
Zhang Xiaocao had something he’d never possessed.
The tenacious vitality of wild grass.
When the spring wind blew, it grew again. Nothing could make it submit.
Despite having so little time, she still managed an A+ in every course.
But Zhang Xiaocao didn’t like him.
Whenever he looked at her, she quickly looked away.
As though she’d seen something filthy.
It bothered him a little.
But young people had their pride.
Zong Lu was no exception. He stopped allowing himself to pay attention to her.
Until, not long afterward, he overheard people talking.
“Have you heard? Xiaocao’s pursuing Chen Zhao.”
“It’s easy when the girl does the chasing. Only a thin sheet of paper between them. And honestly, Xiaocao might look ordinary, but that drive she has when she works? The more you watch her, the more attractive she gets.”
He couldn’t put a name to what he felt.
Irritation?
Discomfort?
Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t happiness.
That day, he saw Zhang Xiaocao on campus.
Under the moonlight, she was kissing Chen Zhao.
He stood watching in silence.
That night, after going home, he had a strange dream.
He dreamed that the person kissing Zhang Xiaocao had become him.
She looked at him with bright, shining eyes.
“Zong Lu, don’t tell me you like me?”
“But me? I hate you.”
He woke with a start.
For a very long time, he thought he must be insane.
He and Zhang Xiaocao had barely exchanged a few words.
Yet she had become the person who taught him what first love felt like.
But love often needed no reason.
That day, he saw her group trying to hail a taxi by the roadside.
Some impulse made him stop the car.
When she saw him, there was no happiness in her eyes.
Only annoyance.
Ignoring that fleeting discomfort, he agreed to drive them home.
In the end, he dropped Zhang Xiaocao off last.
She leaned her head against the window, unusually quiet.
But her WeChat notifications were especially grating.
He saw who was messaging her.
Pretending to be casual, he asked:
“Your boyfriend?”
A little surprised, she answered:
“Yes.”
He said nothing more.
Asking a question when you already knew the answer brought no happiness.
It only made him feel that he truly was mad.
A faint self-contempt stirred inside him.
Eventually, after several days, he decided to study abroad.
At the time, Zong Lu thought these feelings were temporary.
Just a fleeting infatuation.
Time would wear it away.
Life overseas was incredibly busy.
He really did think of her only rarely.
But on those occasional nights when he remembered her, his dreams were always hazy with desire.
Later, he returned home.
At his own family’s company, he saw Zhang Xiaocao again.
She seemed to have changed.
And yet she seemed not to have changed at all.
Then, at some moment, the feelings buried since his youth surged back.
Stronger and stronger.
Until one day, he discovered a system.
“Do you want Zhang Xiaocao?”
The system asked him.
“Do you want her?”
“I can help you get her.”
“All you have to do is agree to let your own experiences nourish my story.”
At the time, he didn’t understand what the system meant.
But his greed was too great.
Desire was a bottomless abyss.
Amid his self-loathing, he clicked “Agree” without hesitation.
After all, he thought…
Loving without possessing. Longing without fulfillment.
The shackles of morality. Restraint. Suppression…
Sooner or later, they would turn into demons.
16
At twenty-eight, I agreed to be with Zong Lu.
By then, I’d left the company and founded my own furniture brand.
He’d helped me work through quite a few things along the way.
He knew what I wanted.
And he was willing to nurture, little by little, the ambitions I’d always kept suppressed.
I wanted so badly to rise.
When I was very young, when we were so poor I went hungry…
All I’d wished for was enough to eat.
Later, when I saw other people going to school, my wish became getting into college.
Once I’d passed the entrance exams and arrived in Haicheng, it changed again…
I wanted a home of my own in this city.
I had to admit that my desires were enormous.
So I seized every resource within my sight and fought desperately to climb higher.
Over the past few years, my relationship with Zong Lu gradually settled into calm.
Chen Zhao never appeared again.
Zong Lu became an ordinary person once more, knowing when to advance and when to retreat.
If I didn’t agree to be with him, he didn’t rush me.
I didn’t understand what he loved about me.
Loved me enough to give me jewelry, houses, cars.
Loved me enough to come over and cook for me all the time.
Loved me enough to pave my way without a word of complaint.
Nobody had ever treated me so well.
Nobody had ever loved me as unreservedly as Zong Lu.
But even the last trace of resentment in my heart had long since dissolved.
On his birthday, Zong Lu got drunk.
I knew he was pretending.
He knew I knew.
I lifted his face and asked:
“Zong Lu. Do you want to…?”
“I do.”
He lifted my face and kissed me.
His kiss was urgent, a little fierce.
As though he wanted to swallow me whole.
When I woke, he asked:
“Does this mean we’re a couple now?”
“No.”
He asked me that question twenty-one times in total.
I answered him twenty-one times too.
Even I didn’t know why I kept refusing.
Until the year I turned twenty-seven.
Suddenly, I felt a little tired of thinking about it.
I agreed to be with Zong Lu.
At twenty-eight, he took me home to meet his family.
His mother was nothing like she’d been at our first meeting.
On the contrary, she was extremely welcoming.
As though she’d completely forgotten that she was the one who had once told me to leave her son.
At twenty-nine, I accepted Zong Lu’s proposal.
That night, he was unusually gentle.
Afterward, he held me and said:
“All these years, I kept tormenting myself over whether you loved me.”
“But now I’ve figured it out. It’s all right if you don’t. You’re here beside me anyway.”
“You won’t run away. You won’t leave me. That’s enough.”
I froze.
Zong Lu laughed.
The next second, he rolled over and pinned me to the bed.
He spoke softly.
“Zhang Xiaocao. Look. The moon is beautiful tonight.”
Once again, I asked the question that puzzled me.
“Zong Lu. What do you love about me?”
He kissed my lips.
“I don’t know either.”
Love had begun before he realized it. Once discovered, it grew without restraint.
If he truly had to give a reason…
“I only know this, Zhang Xiaocao.”
“You are the fire of my desire.”
— THE END —