Chapter 2

The contract was due to end at the close of the year. The remaining three months slipped through my fingers, and suddenly there were only three days left.

In those last days, I clung to him more than ever.

Zhang Yanqiao never seemed annoyed. He indulged every request with the same patience, and when I begged him to put work aside for a two-day holiday, my steady, exemplary husband agreed at once.

I chose a hot-spring resort in the mountains. All I wanted was two quiet days with him, without anyone to disturb us.

On our last night, we both drank a little too much. In the steam drifting through the moonlight, I called him by a name I hadn’t dared use in years.

“Yanqiao-ge.”

It was what I had called him as a child.

He looked at me through the mist, tenderness and a trace of surprise in his eyes. Then he chuckled.

“So… my Mrs. Zhang likes taking the initiative.”

The moon slipped behind the clouds. Heat and wine blurred together as we held each other. It was the closest we had ever been, and it would be the last time.

Wine made me reckless. I dared to do things a proper Mrs. Zhang never should.

For just one night, I wanted to be myself: the little girl he had once carried up a slope on his back, calling him “gege” in the afternoon sun.

“Yanqiao-ge… do you remember what you used to call me?”

I whispered against his ear.

He didn’t answer. He only held me tighter, his gaze tender and hazy, as though a fire burned within it.

At last, in a low, husky voice, he said, “A-Ni.”

The private name only we shared.

By the time I went limp in his arms, thick clouds had swallowed the moon. Everything was quiet except our mingled breaths and racing hearts.

He carried me back to our room, kissed my forehead, and murmured, “A-Ni. Would you like more?”

I said nothing. Tears slipped silently into my wet hair.

If he had been cruel, as cold as his family, if he had never been so gentle, perhaps letting go would have been easier.

But he was so good to me. So tender. The ideal husband anyone could want.

Only, after tonight, he would no longer be mine.

***

At four in the morning, he was fast asleep. My phone kept lighting up and vibrating. They were urging me to leave.

Still, I couldn’t bear it.

I sat beside the bed, watching his face, afraid to blink as though that alone might make him disappear.

The phone flashed on and on. In the end, I stood and made myself walk out.

Once outside, I ran. A second’s hesitation and I might have turned back, torn up that divorce agreement, and broken my word just to remain beside him.

But I couldn’t.

He was an honorable man. He wouldn’t drive me away. He might even let me remain Mrs. Zhang.

I would never respect myself again.

A black car waited at the bottom of the slope. The driver opened the door.

“Miss Shen. It’s time.”

I got in without looking back.

“Let’s go.”

The headlights cut through the night, then vanished into it. Everything behind us disappeared in silence.

***

Zhang Yanqiao woke at six, as always. His routine had never been disrupted.

Before marriage, he got up each morning, went for a run, had breakfast, and left for work. Marriage had added one habit: before leaving the room, he kissed the forehead of the woman sleeping beside him.

He had never thought of himself as a man ruled by desire. After marrying Shen Ci, however, he found he couldn’t get enough of her.

He had once expected to remain a bachelor. He had scarcely spared a second glance for any of the well-born young women his family chose.

Then his mother mentioned Shen Ci, the granddaughter of their former housemaid, and something in his heart stirred.

The marriage was arranged quickly.

On their wedding day, he smiled at the shy young woman in white. The little girl who had once called him “gege” was his wife now.

This morning, though, his hand found only cold, empty bedding.

He sat up abruptly. Fog hung beyond the window. Steam still rose from the springs, and the stone seats and courtyard hadn’t yet been tidied.

He frowned.

Shen Ci had been different last night: passionate, taking the lead, as though trying to impress something upon her memory.

He called her. Her phone was off.

Then he called his secretary.

“Check all the cameras. Find Shen Ci’s travel arrangements and documents. Bring a car to pick me up.”

He sat down and forced himself to remain calm.

The pieces began to fit together. For almost a month, she had been unusually affectionate, always wanting to stay close. She had never been like that before.

Perhaps he had been too careless.

She was so gentle and compliant that he had mistaken it for contentment. He had never truly asked what she needed or thought.

Now, faced with the empty place beside him, he felt a dull ache spreading through his chest.

Loss. Something he had never known.

“Mr. Zhang, the weather bureau has just issued a warning.” His secretary glanced cautiously at his face. “Heavy rain is expected in this area. Driving back now would be very dangerous.”

Zhang Yanqiao looked as composed as ever.

“We leave now.”

“But sir, the weather really isn’t—”

“I said now.”

The surveillance results and the information his secretary had gathered lay before him.

Shen Ci had left at four. Almost three hours had passed.

He couldn’t afford another second.

His secretary had no choice but to tell the driver to start the car.

Zhang Yanqiao strode toward it, still giving instructions.

“Keep watching the airport. Report anything you learn about her immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The harbors, too. And her hometown. Send people to all of them.”

“They’re already on their way.”

That eased him a little.

Shen Ci and her grandmother had only each other. The old woman was still in their hometown, being looked after by the Zhang family.

Wherever Shen Ci went, she wouldn’t vanish and abandon her grandmother.

He believed he would find her there.

What he didn’t know was that an hour earlier, Shen Ci and her grandmother had boarded a boat. They were leaving the little fishing village for the city where her grandmother had been born.

The Zhang family had arranged everything. They had even prepared a plausible explanation for him.

They never needed to use it.

As the car descended the mountain in heavy rain, rocks suddenly broke loose from the slope. The driver swerved to avoid them but struck the rock face.

Zhang Yanqiao suffered a severe head injury and lost consciousness. A helicopter rushed him to the best hospital in Harbor City.

When he woke, his memories were confused. They stopped at a point before his marriage to Shen Ci.

A Zhang Yanqiao who remembered only that far had little reason to concern himself with an elderly servant and her young granddaughter.

He had forgotten.

His family, naturally, had no wish to remind him.

Nine brief months of marriage dissolved like a thin veil of mist.

Like Shen Ci herself: a housemaid’s granddaughter, too small to matter in their world.

A month later, he left the hospital and returned to work, to his normal routine.

A routine that was empty and utterly without savor.

***

Far away, in a small Jiangnan town, Grandma and I lived quietly in our old house.

A peaceful, silent New Year without Zhang Yanqiao.

On New Year’s Eve, I held a little sparkler, watching its silver light flicker in the air. Then he appeared on television, visiting local residents with a group of officials.

Even in the crowd, he was the one you noticed.

His face and voice were as gentle and composed as ever. He was only a little thinner.

So my leaving hadn’t changed his life at all.

My heart clenched.

I quickly turned off the television. That night, I tossed and turned, unable to sleep.

In my dream, his eyes were cold and his voice unfamiliar. He told me he was married. He had a wife. I should stop entertaining impossible hopes.

Childhood games were only games. I shouldn’t have taken them seriously.

I began to cry in my sleep.

Grandma limped into my room and gently held me.

“A-Ni. Heaven decides the ties between people. You have to learn to forget what isn’t yours.”

“But I love him so much…” I choked out. “I really do.”

She stroked my hair.

“Loving someone doesn’t mean you have to have them. Look at the moon. Sometimes it’s happiness enough to admire it from a distance.”

I understood.

But who had never wanted too much?

Only someone who had touched the moon could know how it hurt to let it go.