Chapter 2 — Too Frail for Tonics

But reason told me that killing her could cost me my own life. Besides, I had only just started my business. I wasn’t ready to stand on my own.

All I could do was endure it. And keep enduring it.

From then on, I poured every ounce of resentment toward my wife into working as hard as I could.

Two or three months later, my business began to pick up.

My wife, meanwhile, had gained another ten-odd kilograms.

She still sat there eating and scrolling through her phone. The crunching drove me mad.

And then there was the snoring, the endless farting. Those sounds were torture.

I genuinely couldn’t understand how she could be so hungry.

She would belch and keep stuffing food into her mouth. Even a starving ghost reborn wouldn’t eat from morning to night like that.

Every day, I came home, watched her eat, and hoped she would choke. Or eat herself to death. Even when she drank water, I hoped she would choke on that.

But the damned fat pig was stubbornly hard to kill.

She didn’t choke. She didn’t eat herself to death. She didn’t even drown on a mouthful of water. Her checkups showed nothing seriously wrong.

I was in despair.

Divorce? My mother-in-law would make sure I left with nothing.

I had put up with this woman for so long, and my business was only just beginning to thrive. I couldn’t accept that.

What was I supposed to do?

Keep enduring it?

I had a whole lifetime ahead of me. I couldn’t spend it with a woman as fat as a pig.

She wasn’t just fat. She was filthy and slovenly, too.

No. I had to find a way to get rid of her.

But how?

I thought about it all night. Eventually, I had my answer: let her keep getting fatter.

Then use other people’s prejudice to hurt her.

Once they had hurt her, she would start tormenting herself.

I wanted her to torment herself to death.

Yes. That was it.

After making up my mind, I began treating my wife differently.

I had rarely taken her out before. I couldn’t stand the looks people gave us.

Now I saw things differently.

What did a little embarrassment matter to a man?

A brief spell of humiliation would buy me my freedom from her—and her property.

I didn’t want everyone calling me a bastard.

But divorce would leave me with nothing.

At first, after we married, she had done a little housework. Before long, she stopped altogether. Everything waited until I came home from work.

I had slaved away for her for so long. It couldn’t all be for nothing.

And I had warned her when she first started putting on weight. Instead of controlling herself, she had called her mother over to lecture me.

I hadn’t forced her to eat. She was the one who refused to stop until she turned into a pig.

Being fat was bad enough. She had to be lazy and dirty as well.

If she had been a little more hardworking, a little cleaner, I might have managed to tolerate her.

She had driven me to this.

From then on, I took her out whenever I had the time.

She was so fat that she couldn’t find clothes to fit. Every day, she wore the same few dark, oversized outfits.

A few steps left her panting.

And in crowded places, she liked to pull that fat face into what she thought was an adorable expression and wheedle at me.

Honestly, she looked more frightening than a ghost come to terrorize the village.

I had to put up with that contorted face while strangers laughed, stared, and pointed.

Fortunately, I had made peace with the embarrassment.

My wife, however, seemed entirely untroubled by their ridicule.

She was utterly thick-skinned.

Her confidence didn’t disappoint me.

These things couldn’t be rushed. They took time.

If I wanted to destroy her self-esteem completely, I had to expose her to as much scorn and mockery as possible.

Once she realized that everyone looked at her with disgust, I would have what I wanted.

Then I began taking her to the mall to buy clothes.

We searched every corner and still couldn’t find anything that fit.

The tactful sales assistants told her they didn’t have her size at the moment.

Others made no attempt to hide their disgust the instant they saw her.

After a few trips, my wife’s expression finally changed.

Perhaps she had realized that people despised her for being fat.

When she grew upset, I comforted her gently. She shouldn’t live for other people’s opinions, I told her. She should just be herself.

I didn’t only take her shopping. I frequently brought her along to gatherings with my friends.

After work, I would hold her hand and walk with her around the apartment complex or through the park.

My mother-in-law was delighted by the change in me.

She had no idea I was doing it all to kill her daughter.

And even if her daughter died later, no one would suspect me.

As far as the world knew, we were deeply in love.

The more often I took my wife out, the more contempt she encountered. Eventually, she began talking about losing weight.

But how could someone that fat lose weight so easily?

She was only saying it.

Once I understood that, I told her calmly that a plump woman was blessed and brought good fortune to her husband. As long as she had no serious health problems, that was all that mattered.

My wife was deeply moved by my understanding and acceptance.

So moved that her appetite soared. She ate half a pot of rice and several plates of food.

That night, she even blocked the toilet.

The damned fat pig. I couldn’t take much more.

We could have had such a good life. Her mother had money, I was handsome, and she had to go and eat herself into a pig.

I genuinely couldn’t understand it. Why couldn’t a woman take better care of herself?

Was controlling her mouth really that hard?

Four months later, my mother-in-law died of heart disease.

Some of my wife’s classmates came to pay their respects.

They were all astonished by how much she had changed.

The woman named Ma Li, in particular, told her to lose weight almost as soon as they met.

But my wife was grieving. Losing weight was the last thing on her mind.

Two weeks later, she came home from shopping with Ma Li in tears. Why hadn’t I stopped her eating? Why had I stood by and let her turn into such a lump of fat?

I had no answer to that.

Quite apart from the fact that she was an adult, it wasn’t as though I hadn’t tried. She was the one who refused to listen.

Besides, I left early and came home late. She spent all day at home, eating.

How was I supposed to control that?

Did I have to sew her mouth shut?

She was so worked up that I could only grit my teeth and soothe her.

Once she had calmed down, she told me her classmates were all calling her a “fat pig” behind her back. She was determined to lose weight.

I could see she meant it. I even felt a little hopeful, and encouraged her with every sweet word I could think of.

Then, the very next afternoon, she bought a huge supply of weight-loss pills.

When I got home that evening and saw them, I couldn’t help sneering.

She thought she could swallow pills to get rid of all the fat she had eaten her way into?

She clearly had no intention of controlling her mouth. In that instant, the last scrap of hope I had for her disappeared.

And events proved me right.

After a while, she wasn’t any thinner. She had put on a little more weight.

She asked me why.

I knew perfectly well it was because she couldn’t stop eating, but I lied. Perhaps the dose wasn’t high enough, I said. She was, after all, a little… too heavy.

Or perhaps these pills didn’t suit her. She should ask her friends about other weight-loss products and buy a few more kinds to see what worked.

My wife believed me.

From then on, she brought home more weight-loss pills every few days.

She took excessive doses every day while continuing to eat junk food. In a little over ten days, she began suffering from dizziness and a racing heart.

I watched her symptoms and put on a pained expression.

“Why put yourself through this just to save face? So they called you a ‘fat pig.’ What does it matter? Fat pig or not, it doesn’t change how we feel about each other.”

Those repeated words—“fat pig”—provoked her again.

She gritted her teeth and shouted that she would lose the weight. She had asked Ma Li, she said. These reactions were normal. If she kept at it, she would get thinner.

I thought for a moment, then gently suggested cutting back a little on what she ate.

Her face changed at once. She cried and screamed that the pills she had bought didn’t require dieting. She was already dizzy. If she didn’t eat enough, how would she have the strength to lose weight?

Once again, I could only grit my teeth and comfort her.

More than a month later, the side effects had become severe. Her face turned ashen, she vomited, and her body began to swell.

I immediately offered to take her to a doctor.

But she had grown heavier and looked so haggard that she flatly refused to go to the hospital.

We argued about it.

In the end, I had no choice but to ask our elderly neighbor to come over and talk to her.

My wife insisted that she had already lost a few kilograms. These were normal reactions. She didn’t need a doctor.

Our neighbor was a warmhearted woman. Only after asking several times and confirming that my wife really would not go did she soothe her and leave.

After that, I stopped trying.

I had achieved my purpose. And now I had the neighbor as a witness.

Whatever happened to my wife later would be her own doing. It would have nothing to do with me.

It wasn’t as though I had never hoped she would change. She was the one who had given up on herself.

She was a hundred and sixty centimeters tall and weighed more than a hundred and thirty-five kilograms.

Even rolling over was a struggle now, and still she couldn’t control her mouth.

I understood that she wanted to lose weight. But without eating less, even the best weight-loss pills would be useless.

If she kept putting herself through this, sooner or later she would kill herself.

She was so lazy now that she couldn’t even be bothered to leave the apartment. All day, she sprawled on the sofa, scrolling through her phone and ordering takeout. She ate from morning until night.

Every day, the first thing I did after work was put the dirty clothes in the washing machine. Then I cleaned the apartment and cooked her dinner.

Afterward, I washed the dishes and took the trash downstairs.

I worked like a slave. She watched it all and took it for granted.

She never once asked if I was tired.

I really couldn’t go on living with a woman like that.

Then something happened that I hadn’t expected.

Some time later, she grew dizzy and collapsed onto the floor again. After falling, she vomited.

What I couldn’t stand was that she didn’t even bother turning her head. She just lay on her back, vomiting all over her own face.

I had to wash her and clean the stinking mess off the floor.

Instead of feeling guilty as she watched me rush around, she laughed smugly.

“You can play the respectable man all you want out there. Once you come home, you still have to grovel to me.”

The words cut into me like a knife.

I slaved away for her and received not a shred of respect. This woman deserved to die.

She used her money as an excuse to humiliate me every other day.

In that instant, a vicious plan came to me. I abandoned the idea of taking her to a doctor.

Then a thought struck me, and I barked at her a few times.

“Woof, woof.”

She found it hilarious and laughed wildly.

I pretended to ask a few questions about how she was feeling. Then, suppressing my nausea, I cupped her fat face in my hands and said in surprise, “Baby, you look as though you’ve lost a lot of weight.”

She brightened immediately and hurried over to the scales, her enormous backside swaying.

When she saw she had lost a few kilograms, she was beside herself with excitement.

The stupid woman. After throwing up that much, how could she not weigh less?