Chapter 61

Aunt Xu returned to Shanghai, and Jiang Huai would come every day. If it was too late, he would bring back some food. If it was still early, he would cook dinner himself. Sometimes Zhou Yue was still sleeping when he came back, and she would always sleep for a while after sending Songzhu away. During that time, her younger brother and Tiantian slept in the same room with her. With Songzhu playing with her younger brother for the whole afternoon, her younger brother could sleep soundly until night.

When Zhou Yue and her younger brother were sleeping, Tiantian would play and read quietly beside them. When her younger brother woke up, she would take him out of the crib and play with him. At this time, her younger brother would not cry at all. Tiantian would make a "hush" gesture, and her younger brother would show his gums with newly grown tender teeth and smile silently like a little old man.

Compared with Zhou Yue, the younger brother loves Tiantian more and loves to follow and imitate him more.

Tiantian went to greet Jiang Huai when he got home. He could run downstairs quickly carrying his younger brother. The three men whispered in the living room for a while. Jiang Huai went to the kitchen to make something for Tiantian first, and then made dinner. While washing and cutting vegetables, he asked Tiantian what happened during the day. Tiantian only said that his mother and Aunt Li were playing with his younger brother in the living room, and he was playing in his room and reading. He didn't hear what they said, but he heard Aunt Li teaching his mother to sing opera and laughing. When he went to the kitchen to get biscuits and drinks, he saw the two of them shaking their long white sleeves in the living room. Aunt Li was standing and his mother was learning to shake her sleeves in a wheelchair. His mother also sang, but she became mute after singing a few words.

"Did your mother eat garbage again?" Jiang Huai used scissors to deal with the swimming crab. He was very skillful and finished it in just a few strokes without any expression on his face.

Tiantian looked at him for a moment, nodded, and quickly added, "Mom will be happy if she eats it."

Jiang Huai snorted and put the food into the pot.

While waiting for the soup to stew, Jiang Huai asked Tiantian to leave his younger brother alone and let him go play. He sat on the sofa holding his younger brother, picked up a few toys (mostly educational toys) and gave them to him. He leaned on the sofa and watched him play, enjoying the rare parent-child time.

However, this rare parent-child time wasn't all pleasant. He leaned wearily against the sofa, his shirt collar open, and looked down at his son, who was stuffing moon blocks into the holes of the stars. He frowned and scolded, "Ai Nong, how could you be so stupid?"

After cursing, he raised his head, rested his head on the sofa and sighed: "It's over, I raised a fool, damn it." The more he thought about it, the more powerless he felt, and no matter how he thought about it, he was not satisfied.

After the soup was ready and the food was cooked, Jiang Huai left his brother with Tiantian again and went upstairs to call Zhou Yue to eat.

Zhou Yue woke up because the bedside lamp was on, but at the lowest brightness. She opened her eyes, her mind was blank. People with weak qi and blood also have blurred vision. She waited for a long time before she could see the person next to her clearly. He was wearing a white shirt and gold-rimmed glasses with a soft glow. She actually remembered the cramped little room on Shahe Street. He was writing furiously at the table with his back to her, like a noble and aloof revolutionary youth.

"What are you doing?" Jiang Huai's neck was stiff, and his brows were furrowed. "Why are you hugging me so tightly?" He thought for a long time and said, "I'm busy with business, not going out to have a good time. If I'm not busy, where would I get the money to spend on you?" He adjusted his glasses and softened his voice a little, "Once I'm done with this, I can come back early."

Zhou Yue hugged him, looking at the wall dyed orange by the light. After a while, she closed her eyes and gently pushed him away. "You are a bitch. I can't be bothered by you, nor can I care about you."

Jiang Huai was hugged by her and scolded by her. It was like being fed a date and slapped in the face. He stood there for a moment, unable to react. When he finally came to his senses, he found that the warm hug made him feel heartbroken, while her scolding was like a date, which made him feel sweet.

That was a complete blank in Jiang Huai's human nature. He stared at Zhou Yue with a gloomy face for a long time. The sinister confusion and anger turned into cowardly depression, meaning that she scolded him. He rubbed against her stickyly, and sniffed at her neck with the tip of his nose, "You smell so good." The word "cheap" was almost written on his face.

"Don't I stink more than a dead rat?" She pushed him away with a disdainful smile, but he clung to her again. The two of them pushed and shoved each other for a long time. In the end, she couldn't go on any longer, she had no strength left. He held both of her hands in one hand, her hair disheveled as she watched him lying on top of her, panting and moving violently. Beads of sweat on his forehead stuck to his white hair. A drop of water fell from the tip of his nose and landed on her lips. She tilted her head and spat, sneering: "Chairman Jiang is not fully recovered yet. Take it easy. Dying on a woman will make people laugh." He gritted his teeth and stared at her with bloodshot eyes. He grabbed her wrists and squeezed them until they made a cracking sound. He watched her smilingly use his hands to lift up her messy hair. Under the light, her cold temporal bone swayed like a silver afterimage, jumping up and down. This thing was a death warrant, a stimulant, a drug. He pushed the needle all the way in and suddenly injected it into his bloodstream, making him shiver all over and his vision went black...

He melted into a puddle of water, cuddling against her like a dog. His scalding palms covered the cold mechanical shell, sending up a cloud of steam. His long eyelashes and willow-shaped eyes were as gentle and sorrowful as smoke and water. He was hurt and trapped by love, just like the woman in the costume in the painting. He murmured infatuatedly, "This is the pain you endured for me."

Afterwards, Jiang Huai leaned against the headboard, holding Zhou Yue in his arms. He looked at their merged shadows on the wall and said, "When this is over, let's go abroad." The woman in his arms rested her head on his chest, and he couldn't see her face clearly. She stared at the shadow under the soft light with him for a while before she slowly said, "Where are you going?"

"Thailand."

There was another silence, and Zhou Yue chuckled. "Why would Mr. Jiang go to such a poor place like Southeast Asia?"

"A poor place." He laughed, as if she had told a big joke. He placed his palm on her cheek and rubbed it, looking down at her. "I want to let you live a good life that even gods would envy."

"There are methods more effective than medicine. We will definitely have a child that belongs to us both." His eyes gleamed, paranoid and neurotic. "I want to see your belly grow bigger day by day, to see stretch marks appear on your face. I want that child to come out of your body."

After a while, Zhou Yue chuckled softly with her back to him and patted his hand soothingly, "Okay."

After they took a quick shower and went downstairs to eat, the Western clock in the living room had already struck eight o'clock.

The dishes at home now are not as sumptuous as when Aunt Xu was here. There are only two or three dishes and a soup. Jiang Huai also sat next to Zhou Yue from one end of the dining table. He was still silent while eating, but every time he raised his head, his brows were furrowed more tightly.

Zhou Yue fed the two little men. After the younger one drank milk, she held him in her arms tightly and wouldn't let go, rocking him to sleep. She still smelled of milk, and Yue Wa smelled the scent while sleeping. He instinctively pulled open her clothes and nudged himself against her chest with a grunt. She just lay there with her clothes open, looking nonchalant. She held the younger one in her arms and smiled at the older one, telling him not to just eat meat but to eat more vegetables.

He looked at her, thinking of her vicious and wanton smile and cold skull, but her body was as soft as a white cloud, warmly embracing him and wrapping him, like a quagmire from which there was no escape, or like the destination of a wandering half-life. In a turbulent world of ice and fire, his soul flew back and forth between hell and heaven several times.

But none of this could compare to the hug she gave him when she was still dazed just after waking up. That hug made him more hungry and sad than the collision of their organs, because at that moment her love and longing that seemed real and fake, her heart beating faster than usual reminded him of every time they made love over the years, her red and convulsing body, her charming moans, and the expression that made people want to kill her when she surrendered to him for various reasons... All of this was as fake, cheap, superficial and not worth mentioning as industrial saccharin, and the only real heat and passion he had ever seen in her, she had never given him even once, and that was just a smile from her under the stage, in front of the crabapple tree many years ago.

"It seems you are not hungry." Jiang Huai picked up a piece of vegetables with chopsticks, his face expressionless.

"You eat yours, but the child needs someone to serve him?" She used her free hand to scoop a spoonful of soup into a small bowl and handed it to Tiantian. Her tone was flat, but her fox eyes were half closed, revealing a coquettish smile. She raised her eyes and looked at him, but he lowered his eyes first.

She looked at him with a smile for a while, "What's wrong? Why are you unhappy again? You were fine just now, but now you look so unhappy." After saying that, she rolled her eyes at him, lowered her head and continued to serve the children.

"Don't want to go to Thailand? It seems that even if I told you to go to Thailand, you wouldn't be very enthusiastic. The magnificent mansions and luxurious houses that other women can't even dream of are just a bowl of clear soup noodles for you." He wiped his mouth, threw away the handkerchief and leaned back in the chair.

After listening to this, Zhou Yue lowered her eyes and thought for a moment, then put down her chopsticks and whispered in Tiantian's ear to take her brother out to play. Tiantian nodded obediently, skillfully took her brother from her mother's arms, jumped off the chair and ran away.

"What do you want?" Jiang Huai said after the child ran away.

Zhou Yue said nothing, seemingly unsurprised by his incoherent question. She placed the vegetables and fish in her own bowl and began to eat. He tilted his head to watch her eat, waiting until her chewing slowed down, her chopsticks pausing in the nearly empty bowl of chopped fish and rice. He whispered, "A magnificent palace is just another place to keep me tied up. What's there to be happy about?"

"You are tied up. Are you chained? Or did I not let you go out?" He said expressionlessly.

"Going to the hospital, picking out fabrics, getting measured for clothes, and trying on shoes." She lowered her head and fiddled with the bottom of a bowl. "It's almost the same as being tied up."

Jiang Huai lowered his eyes and looked at her. A smile slowly appeared on his face. He tilted his head, his eyes climbing up her neck like a snake, and his face turned sideways. "Then tell me, where do you want to go?"

Zhou Yue looked up at the window. It was late at night and the courtyard lights were on, but it was a cloudy day with a drizzle. There was not a single star in sight and the moon was surrounded by darkness. There was no way out.

"Just wandering around." She lowered her head and said, "Before I was in Blue Ocean, I basically slept through the day and had to work at night, so I never had a chance to wander around Shenzhen properly."

The sound of rain outside the window made the huge living room even quieter.

"Okay." Jiang Huai was silent for a while and then smiled even more broadly, "Ajie and I will accompany you."

Zhou Yue lowered her head and chewed the last piece of fish, spitting out the bones. When she looked up at him, she smiled again, "Okay."

She raised her head to look at him, and he lowered his eyes to look at her. They stared at each other for a long time. Her long eyelashes slowly blinked, lingering between his eyebrows. The years had made her tired but also gave birth to attachment and deep affection. "It's time to change your glasses again."

"Yeah." He looked away from her, lowering his eyes even lower, and sighed silently, "It's time to change."

"Which pair?" She smiled, and he smiled too, adjusting his glasses. "This is the third pair." He smiled wistfully. "If I change again, I'll have to get reading glasses."

"I'll accompany you this time." She smiled like she was coaxing a child and raised her chin towards him.

"good."

That night, Zhou Yue sent him out as usual. During that period, he came home every day, so his whereabouts were very clear. There were one or two days a week when he would go out at night, saying that he was going out to work, and he would come back home from the company the next night.

After he left, Zhou Yue coaxed Tiantian to sleep. Her brother would wake up once around ten o'clock to drink milk. At this time, she would turn on the TV in the living room, turn the volume down to the lowest, listen to the evening news, and walk in front of the floor-to-ceiling window with her brother in her arms.

"XX Mountain Country Park in Shenzhen's Luohu District... a natural oxygen bar with lush greenery and abundant rare plants, it's a great place for weekend family outings... The privately owned buildings are retro and elegant, adding a touch of scenic beauty... It's a well-established country park, but hikers are advised to avoid off-road paths..."

Zhou Yue turned her back to the TV, holding her brother as she walked back and forth in the dark living room. The rain was still falling outside the window, but car lights on the winding mountain road flickered like fireflies. She hummed softly:

"Who can make me feel deeply and restore my soul to peace?

Let me abandon the worries of the next life and regain the pure dreams of the past

…

Let me lie down under the moon."

The younger brother lay in her arms listening to her sweet singing, laughing with saliva dripping from his mouth, his tender little teeth rubbing against her neck and face. He didn't know how to kiss, so he could only put his soft little mouth on her face, warm like a small leaf covering her face, bringing a scent of milk.

After Zhou Yue finished singing, she smiled out the window and said, "Dad still wants to run away." She lowered her head and kissed her brother's cheek, then whispered, "We have to keep him here."

The younger brother didn't understand anything, he only heard "Dad", so he hugged her neck, rubbed her neck with a sweet smile, and called "Mom" in a baby voice.

Zhou Yue hugged him and looked at him quietly. After a long moment, she smiled and asked, "Will you remember Mother Zhou?"

The younger brother vaguely understood that it was a question, nodded, and mumbled something, which made Zhou Yue laugh. Her eyebrows and eyes were like crescent moons. She hugged him to her chest, stroked his back again and again, and greedily inhaled the milk fragrance on his small body. She looked up at the pitch-black ceiling and smiled, "You are nice to talk, little rascal. When you grow up and don't want to be held anymore, just forget me." After suppressing the heat in her eyes, she said, "It's okay, just forget it. Your mother Zhou is a bad woman, there is nothing good to remember."

A few days later, Jiang Huai came to pick her up with Liao Jie as promised. This was the last time Zhou Yue saw the beautiful and ever-changing Shenzhen. That day, she met a person, the person she expected.