Chapter Twenty-Eight

The KTV room was filled with smoke, and psychedelic lights flickered on the walls and floor, mixed with the smell of perfume and alcohol. Zuo Xutong felt as if she had walked into a fairy cave with seven fairies, four male and three female.

Near the entrance, a couple was kissing passionately in a booth. The woman was dressed like someone ready to swim at a summer beach. She walked past them, but they didn't stop. In this place, kissing seemed as commonplace as singing.

She walked over to Luan Mingfeng, glanced at the few scattered bottles on the table, and, covering her ears which were almost deafened by the loud music, shouted, "Let's go."

Suddenly, the singing stopped abruptly, the noise seemed to be abruptly cut off, and the private room fell silent instantly. The person holding the microphone turned around, sized up Zuo Xutong, took a few steps closer to her, slightly raised his chin, and asked arrogantly, "Who are you looking for?"

"I am President Luan's assistant." Zuo Xutong's voice was not loud, but every word was clear.

"Oh, the female assistant." The person deliberately dragged out the word "female," with an insulting upward lilt at the end.

"Zhao Jian, why did you stop singing?" the man pouring the wine asked.

"Let our female assistant sing us a song." Zhao Jian handed over the microphone. He looked like a villain from a Korean drama, and his mouth and eyes were crooked when he spoke.

"I can't sing." Zuo Xutong's gaze fell on his hand holding the microphone.

"You're not mute, how could you not know how to sing?" Zhao Jian pressed aggressively.

"Forget it, don't let her sing anymore, she sings terribly." After saying that, Luan Mingfeng picked up the wine glass on the table and drank it all in one gulp. In no time, he had already poured himself three or four glasses and drunk them, as if the glass in front of him was not wine but mineral water.

"I've come to pick you up, shall we go?" Zuo Xutong whispered in his ear, smelling the strong odor of alcohol on him.

"You don't have to work tomorrow, what's the rush?" Luan Mingfeng reached out to grab her, but his gaze went unfocused. Two figures appeared in front of him. He lowered his head and rubbed his temples, trying to clear his head.

"If you don't sing, you'll have to punish yourself with three drinks." Zhao Jian wouldn't let her go. He was probably tired of the girls at the KTV and suddenly found a woman who was a bit of a novelty, so he acted like a male dog in heat, wanting to sniff a female dog's butt.

Zuo Xutong pushed away the wine glass he was shoving in front of her with disgust, frowning as she said, "I don't drink."

Zhao Jian, a seasoned businessman, was very good at reading people and immediately sensed her dislike for him. He frowned and said unhappily, "Oh, Brother Luan, where did you find this assistant? She can't do anything."

"What a joke, who doesn't know how to drink? If you can drink water, you can drink alcohol." At this moment, the only woman in the private room who wasn't wearing a "swimsuit" spoke up. Only then did Zuo Xutong notice that a very beautiful woman was sitting in the corner. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to describe her as a beauty. Even if Zuo Xutong had face blindness, he would remember that she was Geng Yue, the investor of Polar Blue Sky.

"Yes, come on, female assistant, don't spoil the fun." Zhao Jian once again handed her a wine glass.

"I don't drink. I'm an assistant, not a hostess."

Zuo Xutong's repeated rejections made Zhao Jian feel utterly humiliated, so he sarcastically remarked, "Accompanying someone? You really think highly of yourself?" He then laughed, his shoulders shaking, and loudly asked the other two men in the private room who were still relatively sober, "Would any of you be willing to have a woman like that accompany you?"

They all shook their heads in agreement, and one of them chimed in, "You're dressed like a supermarket salesman. Didn't Brother Luan pay you a salary?"

When his advances were rejected, Zhao Jian changed to a ferocious expression, his tone harsh: "Don't pretend to be reserved with me. Do you think I want to sleep with you? Look at your widow-like face, who the hell would be tired of living to want to sleep with you?"

Zuo Xutong had never suffered such humiliation. She trembled with rage, her eyes reddening. Suddenly, she swung her hand, knocking over Zhao Jian's glass. The expensive whiskey spilled everywhere, and the glass shattered on the marble table. Enraged by her action, Zhao Jian grabbed her hair and slammed her onto the table. A protruding shard of glass pierced her clothes and embedded itself in her shoulder.

The woman next to him screamed and tried to get away, but just as his fist was about to land, her wrist was gripped tightly by a hand.

"Let...let her go," Luan Mingfeng shouted incoherently.

"She's just an ignorant female assistant, right? Brother Luan, let me teach her a lesson. Tomorrow I'll find you someone a hundred times better than her."

"Let her go." Luan Mingfeng said it again, his words still slurred, but his tone was unquestionable.

Zhao Jian reluctantly lowered his fist, released Zuo Xutong's hair, and cursed viciously.

Luan Mingfeng bent down, staggered forward, and helped her up. Even though he was somewhat delirious, he still asked, "Are you alright?"

It was only then that everyone realized this was probably no ordinary female assistant. However, the men in the private room were all well-informed and influential figures. In their eyes, it was commonplace for a female assistant to be her boss's mistress, so they wouldn't treat her any differently just because she was Luan Mingfeng's woman. Besides, Luan was a notorious playboy who changed women as easily as he changed clothes; who knew what kind of woman would appear by his side in a couple of days?

Perhaps even Luan Mingfeng himself didn't realize that as he grew older, he gradually exhibited tendencies towards male chauvinism. He enjoyed women's admiration but never cared about their true needs, much less wanted to form deep emotional bonds with them. Of course, he could give them large sums of money to squander, but once their material needs were met, they would become demanding, continuing to ask him to invest his time and emotions in them. If they didn't get what they wanted, they would become incessantly nagging and even complaining. So over the years, his approach to women became increasingly simple and brutal: using money to stabilize their emotions and expensive gifts to silence them. He found that this method was surprisingly effective.

With Luan Mingfeng's help, Zuo Xutong stood up awkwardly. She brushed off the sunflower seed shells and glass shards covering her body, then reached for her left shoulder and felt a two-centimeter-long piece of curved glass. She gritted her teeth and pulled it out of her flesh. No one noticed her action, and the wound on her back was hidden by her long hair.

Having lived for thirty years, this was the first time she had experienced what it meant to be powerless. Faced with this bloody reality, she could only swallow all the humiliation. She forced herself to calm her emotions, then looked at Luan Mingfeng and asked again, "President Luan, shall we go back?"

Unexpectedly, Luan Mingfeng remained silent for a while, then raised the wine glass in his hand in front of her and said with a serious expression, "Take this and go apologize to President Zhao."

With so many people here tonight, her "lack of appreciation" made the situation so awkward, which made Luan Mingfeng feel very embarrassed. So he did something he would never do when he was sober.

Zuo Xutong froze, as if she had been hit hard by a bottle, standing there blankly. The broken, colorful lights of the KTV danced merrily on her pale face, and a bead of sweat slowly slid down her cheek. Her lips trembled slightly, and then, incredulously, slowly turned up in a smile.

Zuo Xutong tilted her head back and laughed silently, almost to the point of tears. It felt as if a gaping hole had been torn open in her chest, and a chilling coldness rushed in through the crack. She gritted her teeth and used all her strength to force back the tears in her eyes, until her head throbbed and her eyes swelled.

This was a world she had never experienced before. If Luan Mingfeng hadn't dragged her into it, she would never have met someone like Zhao Jian. He treated women as tools for sensual pleasure, lacking basic respect and understanding for them. In his eyes, women were just a bunch of breathing silicone dolls. The feelings he could give them were nowhere near as much as the protagonist of "Cast Away" gave Wilson (a volleyball).

Zuo Xutong will never forget the humiliation of tonight, but now she has to make a choice: between dignity and achievement, between resigning and leaving, and between completing the project.

For a full half minute, the two of them stood there frozen, everyone staring intently at them. Finally, she reached out and took the wine glass from Luan Mingfeng's hand, picked up a bottle of foreign liquor of unknown alcohol content from the table, poured herself a full glass, and waited until the amber liquid overflowed and dripped through her fingers before putting down the bottle. With a sense of dignity, she walked step by step to Zhao Jian and solemnly said, "Mr. Zhao, I'm sorry, it's all my fault."

After saying that, she downed the glass of 40-proof brandy in one gulp. Then, looking dazed, she picked up the empty glass and walked straight out of the private room.

At the entrance of the club, she threw down her wine glass, hailed a taxi, and told the driver, "Yuanjiang Road."

She couldn't hold her liquor and didn't like the feeling of having no direction or direction when drunk. Just like now, she only remembered that she had to go home, but forgot the way home. She still thought she lived on Yuanjiang Road and had completely forgotten about moving.

Zuo Xutong arrived at her old rented apartment, took out her key to open the door, only to find it was too big and wouldn't fit in the lock. A gust of evening wind blew in, dispelling some of her drunkenness, and she suddenly remembered she had moved. Her legs gave way, and she collapsed to the floor. The corridor was pitch black, like an endless abyss. Looking into that bottomless darkness, her vision blurred. Anger and resentment, like a burst dam, finally overwhelmed her. Tears that had been building up for seven years burst forth, transforming into a heart-wrenching sob that echoed through the empty corridor.

The sound carried upstairs, and the couple who were enjoying their late-night intimacy stopped what they were doing, pricked up their ears, and held their breath. The man said, "Listen, it sounds like someone is crying."

"It's a woman."

"She's crying so hard, she must have been dumped by a guy."

"I despise those whine and howl in the middle of the night."

"Come on, let's change positions."

The woman understood and turned over, and the two continued their previous physical exchange. After a while, she said breathlessly, "My family used to raise pigs. Once I saw them mating the pigs. The boar was on top of the sow, in this position."

The man repeated the mechanical movements without saying a word. After a while, the woman spoke again: "What's the difference between a human and a pig? They both eat, drink, defecate, sleep, and do this."

Perhaps it was because the woman compared people to pigs, but the man's pace suddenly quickened, and the woman's screams, like a snapped string, abruptly plummeted from a high note, transforming into chaotic tremolos that echoed through the darkness. This was the most captivating sound from the very beginning of humankind, before the birth of any music, a sound that could drive one to madness and irrationality.

At the same time, Zuo Xutong stood up from the cold wind of the night, wiped away her tears, and took a step under the clear light of a waxing crescent moon.