Chapter 4

Not once did she ask whether I was in pain.

That evening, Zhou Xu came.

Mom let him in, then stopped me from returning to my room.

“Talk things through.”

He looked as though he’d been awake all night.

Sitting opposite me, he waited a long time before asking, “Why?”

The question seemed absurd.

“We broke up.”

“But the baby was innocent.”

“So I was supposed to come back and marry you because of the baby?”

His lips moved.

“We’ve been together so many years.”

Mom grew anxious beside us.

“You can rebuild your feelings slowly. Register the marriage first. Work out the rest afterward.”

He lowered his head without disagreeing.

Watching them take turns, I felt helpless in a way I couldn’t describe.

“There’s nothing to discuss.”

I got up and went to my room.

He stayed downstairs until dawn that night.

Mom kept lifting the curtain to look.

“He still hasn’t gone.”

I didn’t answer.

“How can you be so heartless?”

“Weren’t you the one who found him hardest to give up?”

I folded clothes into my suitcase.

Mom stood in the doorway, her voice growing quieter.

“Where are you going?”

“To find work.”

“You haven’t recovered. What work?”

“In Nancheng.”

She froze.

“When did you decide?”

“Today.”

A former client had called that afternoon. His company in Nancheng happened to need a project planner. He asked whether I’d like to interview.

The base salary was a little lower, but they offered three months’ accommodation.

I’d accepted.

Mom thought I was acting out of anger.

“Fine. Go. A little hardship will teach you how good you have it at home.”

Dad asked, “How long can you last in a city where you don’t know anyone?”

“I’ll try.”

“Does Zhou Xu know?”

I zipped the suitcase shut.

“It has nothing to do with him.”

Three days later, I boarded the high-speed train to Nancheng.

No one saw me off.

Mom said she felt unwell. Dad had work.

Zhou Xu somehow heard and called more than a dozen times before departure.

I answered none of them.

As the platform slowly slipped backward outside the window, I removed my SIM card, snapped it, and dropped it into a rubbish bag.

**7**

My first month in Nancheng didn’t go smoothly.

The company dormitory was a two-bedroom apartment I shared with three other women. I slept in a small space partitioned from the living room. My suitcase could only fit at the foot of the bed.

On my third day, I began working on a project.

My new boss, Mr. Song, spoke quickly and had a short temper.

He criticized my first proposal from beginning to end.

“What worked at your old company won’t necessarily work here. Redo it. On my desk tomorrow morning.”

I stayed in the meeting room revising until two.

It was raining when I left.

For a moment, I remembered the day I’d been fired: holding my cardboard box in the rain, bleeding, not knowing where to go.

But this time was different.

A flawed proposal could be revised. Work I couldn’t do well, I could learn.

I didn’t have to guess what someone had changed the door code to. I didn’t have to dread finding an apartment full of people waiting to criticize me when I came home.

The next morning, Mr. Song read the proposal and said only, “This works.”

Back at my desk, I realized my palms were soaked with sweat.

That evening, my roommates asked me to join them for hotpot.

I nearly said I still had work.

Then I swallowed the words.

“All right.”

In my second month, I passed probation. Mr. Song put me in charge of a new project.

The client happened to be a competitor of my former company.

When word reached them, my old boss contacted me for the first time.

She sent a long message explaining that public pressure had forced her to dismiss me.

At the end, she asked whether I could let my old company have the project.

I replied: *No.*

She called immediately.

“Su Wan, you can’t be so heartless. We approached this client first.”

“You didn’t sign a contract.”

“You worked here for years. You know how long we spent preparing.”

Her words sounded familiar.

Whenever anyone needed me to step aside, they told me not to be heartless.

“I know,” I said. “I did all the preparation.”

Silence.

I hung up.

A few days later, Xiao Zhao quietly told me that several things had gone wrong with my old project after I left.

The client rejected the next proposal and ended the collaboration.

Only then did my former boss remember that, for the month before she fired me, I’d stayed until eleven almost every night.

At the time, she’d considered that merely an employee’s duty.

Mom began sending emails too.