Chapter 25

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“I regret it…I’ve been regretting it.”

“Regret what?”

“I regret that…I didn’t tell you everything that day.”

“Tell me what? Exactly what do you want to say?”

“…I don’t want to get married. Not at all!”

I went over to my dad’s place the second day after coming back. My stepmom’s belly was big enough that it was almost scary; she could go into labor at any moment. Despite that, she still took command of the kitchen that day and made a meal for us. She was healthy and the rosy tint on her cheeks proved it. I could see the joy of becoming a mother emanating from her heart. Both my dad and I told her to rest, worrying as she bustled about the house. She smiled, and said, “Don’t worry, nothing will happen. There’s still a week left!”

My dad was tired of the long wait; he wanted the child to be born as soon as possible. He’d pulled some connections to determine the sex of the baby, so that they could have everything prepared beforehand. It was a boy, which meant I was going to have a younger brother soon. That news fulfilled my lowly and selfish wish. My dad didn’t mind whether if it were a boy or a girl. My stepmom was the same. I, however, was glad that the heavens had decided to be kind to me and absolved me of my crime of being unable to carry on the family line. I felt the guilt on my shoulders lessen by a bit. Even if my stepmom had given birth to a girl, I wouldn’t have changed my decision. It was my fate to never marry or have kids this lifetime.

In my spare time, I showed up at my job and informed them that I would be returning to work next month. After that, I was busy coordinating Li Weisen’s wedding. After discussing with Xiao Chuan, we decided to contact everybody on the guest list, with all the coaxing and prodding required to make them attend. At night, we would meet with Li Weisen and go over the amount of gift money we had received on his behalf. The rest of the time, we would accompany him on shopping trips and buy the things he hadn’t prepared yet for the ceremony. We only got everything settled the day before the wedding. That night, we threw him a “Last Party” along with our friends.

The party didn’t include any dancing young women like a typical bachelor’s party. We simply talked, drank, and sang the night away. As the center of the party, Li Weisen was especially lively. Xiao Chuan and I sat at his left and right, turning away drinks so that he wouldn’t miss his own wedding the next day.

All three of us were rather good at singing, but I was tired that night and didn’t feel any desire to sing. Xiao Chuan and Li Weisen were having the time of their lives, digging out old songs from high school and belting out the lyrics. Li Weisen used to like the song “Not Lovers from Birth [1],” that night, he sang it twice in a row.

I patted him on the shoulder, and said, “Don’t sing that anymore. It’s a bad omen. The singer died so many years ago [2] and you’re getting married tomorrow.”

He looked over at me with an undecipherable expression. He then stood up and walked in front of the TV screen and started singing even more passionately. Aside from Xiao Chuan, nobody else had been paying attention to our corner.

Xiao Chuan leaned over, and whispered, “What’s going on? He looks angry at you. You guys still haven’t worked things out? It’s been such a long time.”

“…It’s nothing. Don’t worry about him,” I replied simply. I closed my eyes and leaned back against my seat, but I couldn’t stop the familiar lyrics from penetrating into my ears.

“If we loved each other yesterday, then why am I the only one in pain?

“With tears in my eyes, I search blindly for the dying flame of love.

“We loved each other in the past, but we had mistaken our roles.

“We now sweep past each other, the sounds of entanglements unheard.

“Like a love song without a melody.”

I didn’t know if he was doing it on purpose; there was no point in thinking any deeper on that matter. If he really had such delicate and complicated feelings, then it was better for him to assume that I had played a cruel joke on him. I would never forget the fact that he was getting married tomorrow. I had no intentions of crashing his wedding. I didn’t have a proper reason, nor did I have the right to do so from my position. Our relationship was already set in stone. He and I would both do our part, that was the consensus we had reached the day we saw each other again. The performance he was putting on tonight…it was nothing more than the heat of the moment. Even if he were dissatisfied with me, it could only be the leftover damage to his ego from a year ago. What he and I had experienced together was a thing of the past. Tomorrow…was the final curtain drop.

As we had a packed day tomorrow, Xiao Chuan and I left for home early, but everybody else stayed late. According to our other friends, Li Weisen had sung until twelve in the morning. They had to drag him home and he complained the whole way. He said that they didn’t fulfill their duties as friends and couldn’t even let him enjoy himself on his last night. Fed up with his incessant mumbling, they retorted, “Getting married is a happy occasion, what are you complaining about!”

The next day, the wedding was noisy and lively. The newlyweds made a good-looking pair: a handsome man and a beautiful woman. In high spirits, they welcomed guests while dressed in their ceremonial clothes. Xiao Chuan and I oversaw every other odd chore around the wedding. At the banquet, almost every guest came over to our table to give us a toast. Our entire table had too much to drink by the end of the banquet, several of us ended up collapsing. I was one of the only few still standing, pushing through only due to my experience of drinking hard liquor over the past year.

Xiao Chuan’s alcohol tolerance had grown as well. One of his duties at work was knowing how to drink. After drinking with his boss for so long, it seemed like he’d developed a skill for it. As for Li Weisen, he was only half-drunk despite all the drinks pushed at him due to our vigilant protection. It was his wedding night; he couldn’t be seen stumbling drunkenly into the bridal chamber [3].

After the banquet was over, Xiao Chuan and I got into the car with Li Weisen, taking him right to the front door of his new house. He should’ve been fine as he didn’t have that much to drink, but he still ended up swaying from side to side in the car. While walking upstairs, we supported him from both sides to make sure he didn’t fall.

His hand grasped firmly onto mine and I could feel the sweat on his skin. I didn’t know if it was because he was feeling unwell. Just as I was about to ask him, I felt his grip tighten on my hand. Each of his fingers dug into my hand, his fingernails piercing deep into my palm. Using the light from the stairwell, I glanced over at him. I saw the sweat dripping down his face and his furrowed brows. At that sight, I stayed silent and endured the pain in my hand. When we arrived at his new house, the big “Xi” [4] on the door gleamed a dazzling red. At the same time, I felt something wet amidst the numb pain in my palm.

Xiao Chuan and I pushed Li Weisen through the door and into the arms of his wife—our Saozi—who had returned home early. After that, I finally looked down at my hand—the skin was bleeding. Even though the cuts were small, the bright blood made a stark contrast against my skin.

In shock, Xiao Chuan exclaimed, “What happened to your hand?”

I attempted a smile, and said, “Nothing… I think I cut it when I was opening the beer earlier.”

“How careless. I can’t believe you cut yourself just opening bottles!”

With that, Xiao Chuan and I completed our task as best men. Tired yet relaxed, we took a long walk home, letting the wind blow away some of our drunken stupor. While talking, I asked Xiao Chuan about his own plans for marriage. Unlike before, Xiao Chuan didn’t respond with a face of horror. Instead, he said in a gloomy voice that he wasn’t in a hurry.

Returning the question, Xiao Chuan asked me about my love life. I replied with my usual line, “I haven’t found anyone I like yet, so it’s better for me to be alone. I’ll think about it later.”

Xiao Chuan joked and asked if I were still pining after that middle school classmate. I stared at him blankly for a second before I understood what he was talking about. I smiled, and said, “I’d already forgotten about her. I don’t even remember what she looks like.”

Xiao Chuan then suddenly sighed in a serious manner. He looked at me straight, and said, “Gao Yu, do you think that…when you like someone, the time you spend as lovers is shorter than the time you can spend as friends?”

I was shocked. That question was more mature than anything Xiao Chuan had ever said before. But thinking about it, he was right. Nodding, I asked, “Xiao Chuan, do you have something on your mind? Why are you asking about this suddenly?”

Xiao Chuan had always been bad at keeping quiet about things, but he didn’t tell me anything this time. He merely said quietly, “It’s…better if you don’t know.”

When I returned home, I lay on my bed thinking. The numb pain in my palm had finally evolved into a burning pain that remined me of its presence constantly. I was too lazy to think about the meaning behind Li Weisen’s actions today. Rather, it was Xiao Chuan I was worried about. His life had been smooth sailing so far, so he shouldn’t have too many worries. Or perhaps it was because his life had been too smooth that any little setback was devastating to him. I needed to spend more time with him. He was one of my most important people. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him, even if it was just a bad mood.

A few days after Li Weisen’s wedding, my stepmom went into the hospital and safely gave birth to my brother who was more than twenty years younger than me. His small features were like the shrunken version of my dad’s face. It fulfilled another regret of mine—I didn’t look like my dad at all. I was simply a replica of my mom that she had left behind to provoke my dad, but my face was also the only thing that my mom had left me.

When I returned to work, I was given a few projects and I landed right back into my old profession. I collected interviews and wrote articles about the typical, boring news you could see everywhere and ignored tales of fantastic and strange happenings. Per the National Congress, it was a citizen’s duty to be positive and upright, without focusing on the negative. I was simply following the political situation at the time.

During that time, I ran back and forth between my work and my dad’s, eating whenever I can at those places too. I spent the rest of my time with Xiao Chuan, eating out and talking with him. No matter what I did however—asking him directly or probing from the side—I couldn’t pry his mouth open regarding his secret.

Unexpectedly, my dad started putting pressure on me about marriage, asking me about my love life every day. After her postpartum confinement [5], my stepmom returned to full energy. Since she was on maternity leave for a year, aside from taking care of my brother, she had plenty of time to act as a matchmaker for me. Her enthusiasm was matchless; she practically had a new girl to introduce me to every time I went back. Before, they would occasionally mention setting up blind dates for me, but now it had turned into reality. In just a couple months, I felt as if my head had blown up to twice its size.

Having no way out, I did end up going on a few blind dates, but I never had the desire to progress any further into a relationship with those women. I couldn’t give a woman a happy home life. Since that was the case, I would rather be seen as picky. No matter how wonderful the girl, I could come up with some sort of problem that I didn’t like about her.

More than once, my dad and stepmom asked, “Exactly what kind of girl are you looking for?”

I always answered the same way, “I just don’t feel anything for them. Not to mention I’m not even that old!”

“Then when will you be old enough?”

“At least…after I’m thirty.”

Unexpectedly, that reply had the opposite effect: their enthusiasm raised to another peak, as if afraid I would become unmarketable goods at this rate. Every few days, I went home and saw a different girl standing inside the door. Finally, I used my ultimate weapon—I went back to my house to eat instead and only went over to my dad’s place two or three times a week.

They weren’t happy about it, but my only excuse was that I was busy with work. Good thing it wasn’t a complete lie. As the end of year came around, my workload had definitely gotten heavier; there was no telling when I had to do overtime.

Finally, I escaped from the clutches of endless blind dates. I pulled out as much time as I could to meet with Xiao Chuan. If taking an indirect approach didn’t work, then I simply had to observe. I noticed that Xiao Chuan was smoking and drinking more than usual, and he would sigh heavily occasionally. I could also count on my fingers the number of times I’d seen his girlfriend around him recently. Strangely enough, she’d even called me a few times to ask where he was as she couldn’t find him at all.

As such, I chose a day when I was off to take Xiao Chuan home with me. After a long talk, I made dinner for him and then poured a few shots of hard liquor down his throat. I then put on a displeased face and told him to tell me the truth.

Under my unrelenting attacks, Xiao Chuan’s face finally changed and he told me something I didn’t understand—he regretted not telling me something. I didn’t understand what he was talking about. There was no logic to his sentences and my slow mind couldn’t catch up.

I stared at him like an idiot. His expression was painful; it was a Xiao Chuan I had never seen before.

Just when I was about to switch to a calm voice and say something, he reached over and hugged me. The force of his hug was enough to suffocate me, and then…he kissed me. It was rough kiss that was completely foreign to me. For a moment, I forgot how to react. I could only feel his hot breath on my skin and the strong taste of cigarettes and alcohol in his mouth.

The only thought running through my mind was: This guy…how many cigarettes did he smoke? Isn’t he afraid of burning a hole in his lungs? I’ll have to give him good talk later.

Translation Notes:

[1]《天生不是情人》by Danny Chan (陈百强). Released in 1991.

[2] Danny Chan had a long battle with depression and anxiety while he was alive. He overdosed on sleep medications and alcohol in 1992 and was sent to the hospital for treatment. He remained in a coma for over a year, before passing away in 1993. There were allegations that he was gay.

[3] Name for the bedroom for newlyweds where the couple consummates the marriage.

[4] 囍 (xi). 喜 (also pronounced xi) by itself means joy. When you have two of them together like 囍, it means double happiness. The double version of this character is often used in weddings as a part of the decoration.

[5] A traditional practice in China where new mothers go into a period of rest after giving birth. Basically, staying indoors and eating foods that are considered nourishing for the body. The period typically lasts a month.

Translator’s Note:

Sorry for the long gap between updates. I was busy and couldn’t find the time to translate. I’ll upload Chapter 26 in a few hours. See you then!

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