Chapter 53
Zhou Yue spent the Spring Festival of that year like this. Jiang Huai left that night. While putting on his clothes with his back to her, he smiled and spat, "You look like a rag bag." Then he left.
Zhou Yue lay on the railing of the crib and looked at Tiantian, and he looked at her. Her eyes were dark, she was sucking her fingers, making humming sounds, and there were red spots on her forehead and eyelids.
"Madam." Aunt Xu appeared at the door. She didn't scream or say anything. She just took a wool blanket and draped it over her, then cleaned up the shocking mess on the floor.
"What does he eat?" Zhou Yue was still lying on the railing, looking at Tiantian through her eyelids which were red and swollen as if they had been stung by a wasp.
"Milk powder." Aunt Xu said softly, looking up at her. "I've eaten it."
"But he was crying."
Aunt Xu paused in her mopping motion and smiled, "Maybe she was frightened. It's normal for a little kid to cry."
Zhou Yue watched for a while longer, then took Tiantian out of the crib. She stiffly tried to imitate Jiang Huai by lifting up his soft neck and placing his little head, which was about the size of her fist, on her shoulder. He immediately became excited, humming and rubbing her shoulders with his eyes, nudging her neck with his little nose, as if he wanted to dig open her flesh and blood to find the part that was connected to her.
He exhaled a strange smell, hidden under the smell of milk, like the smell of burning. It burned her blood from her nostrils, even her blood vessels were on fire, and her heart was beating wildly, making her dizzy.
She suddenly let go, and Tiantian fell on the bed with a thud and started crying. Her cry was as weak and aggrieved as a kitten's meow.
She stood with her hands behind her back in fear, watching Aunt Xu scream and jump up to hug Tiantian in her arms. She anxiously shook his body and tried to comfort him, saying, "Don't cry, don't cry," while she cried out in grief: "Oh, what can I do... This is such a sin..."
"Take it away, don't leave it here with me." Zhou Yue said with lingering fear. After that, he never slept next to her again, and she never fed him milk once.
Aunt Xu placed Tiantian in the innermost bedroom on the first floor of the villa. The room was empty before and was only painted white. I don’t know when it became a very simple baby room. There was a small bed against the wall. The four walls were painted sky blue, like a clear sky, and there were also cotton candy-like white clouds painted on them. There was a moon painted on the ceiling, but there was nothing else. It was as empty as heaven.
Aunt Xu said that Jiang Huai originally intended to use that room as a baby room, but now it looks like an unfinished building.
Every late night, besides the sound of water splashing at the foot of the mountain, she could also hear Tiantian's crying.
He cried weakly beside her, but when he got to that room, his sobs shook the earth and he cried heartbrokenly, as if he came into the world because of burning love, but was greeted with only coldness.
Zhou Yue hid under the covers, biting her nails until all ten of her fingers bled. She asked Aunt Xu, "Why is he crying all the time? Didn't we feed him formula?"
"I want my mother's." Aunt Xu was helpless and anxious.
She put her ear against the wall and could feel the vibration of his distant, weak heartbeat through layers of foam and sponge.
Occasionally, when she got up at night, she asked Aunt Xu to take her to Tiantian's room. It was pitch black, with only a night light on next to the crib. The lampshade slowly rotated to the quiet lullaby, and the moon and stars swam on the wall.
The little person on the bed was sleeping on his stomach, his whole body was snow-white, like a furry elf deer.
She moved closer to him, along the wall, and he woke up almost immediately. He tilted his head back and looked at her through the gap in the crib railings. The light from the night light rippled in his bright, dark pupils like crushed stars.
Wherever she went, his eyes followed her. Once, when she circled behind him, he flopped over and somersaulted, lying on the bed to look at her. But because his neck was still too weak, he soon fell face down on the pillow. After a moment's rest, he raised his head to look at her again...
"Ma'am, do you want a hug?"
"No."
Zhou Yue's feelings towards this child were really complicated. Whenever she wanted to love him, she would also feel the same degree of disgust.
Whenever she thought about where his other half of his blood came from, she didn't even want to look at him.
But what made her most desperate was not her complicated feelings for Tiantian, but that because of his arrival, she thought about death less and less.
On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, Jiang Huai came again. The doorbell rang and Aunt Xu opened the door for him. He walked in with a swagger, wearing a suit and tie. The emerald green tie clip had just the right sheen, not eye-catching, but luxurious and unique enough, an embellishment that only women would think of.
He didn't wear any perfume that day, but there was a fragrance on his body, which was different from the sandalwood from the Buddhist beads on his wrist. It was the fragrance of some plant, faint, light and cool.
"Oh... go see my baby son."
He didn't even look at Zhou Yue who was playing the piano in the living room. He threw the flowers and toys in his hand to Aunt Xu and walked towards Tiantian's bedroom.
The piano music stopped and Zhou Yue turned to look out the floor-to-ceiling window.
It was noon, and the sun was making people drunk. In Shenzhen's climate, people only needed to wear a thin coat on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. The woman in the yard was only wearing a cream-colored sweater and a white dress that reached her ankles. Her black hair covered her face.
Zhou Yue squinted her eyes in the sunlight pouring into the living room and saw her breasts exposed from under her skirt. Liao Jie was standing beside her, wiping the food residue from the corners of her mouth with a handkerchief while talking to her with a smile, but she just looked at the sky without any reaction.
A little girl with a Disney princess backpack on her back was running around her and Liao Jie. She looked about six or seven years old. Her sweet laughter came in through the window, like the song of a lark. After running for a while, she got tired and threw herself into the woman's arms. The woman seemed to wake up from a dream. She lowered her head and gently stroked the girl's forehead and the hair on her temples again and again. From Zhou Yue's perspective, she could see her cheeks puffed up with a smile. A breeze blew through the courtyard, and the red lanterns fluttered in the wind.
"Lantern Festival, a happy reunion!" Jiang Huai carried Tiantian out in a blink of an eye, his voice coming from far away. He walked past Zhou Yue and sat down on the sofa. He kissed Tiantian on the face and tickled his belly with a smile, "Did mommy feed you milk today? Definitely not, right?" After saying that, he raised his eyes to look at Zhou Yue's face which had not yet faded from purple. He followed her line of sight to glance out the window, lowered his head and made a cross-eyed expression, which made Tiantian giggle.
He picked Tiantian up, lifted him up high, then put him down again, lifted him up high again, and held him in the air. He tilted his head back and smiled as he studied his still unrecognizable little face. He said softly, "Alas...poor thing. When you were born, you weighed less than three pounds. Your mother wouldn't even feed you milk. She resented your father, and she also resented you. She saw other families of three reuniting, but she wouldn't reunite with us two."
Tiantian didn't understand anything and just smiled at him in a babbling voice.
Zhou Yue stopped looking out the window and lowered her head to finish playing "To Alice", then "Moonlight", "Starry Sky"... Jiang Huai held Tiantian in his arms and played with him. He assembled a new train for him on the floor of the living room. The little train whirred around the track, went into the tunnel, and came out puffing out smoke, making the little guy crazy with joy. However, children have limited energy after all, and he fell asleep on the carpet while playing.
"Aunt Xu." Jiang Huai smiled and rubbed Tiantian's back. After calling her, Aunt Xu came out silently from some room and took Tiantian away silently.
Tiantian went to bed, Zhou Yue closed the piano, it got dark, and the family of three in the courtyard disappeared without a trace.
The living room was silent, and Jiang Huai was also looking at her silently on the sofa.
"Alright!" He finally smiled, patted the armrest of the sofa and announced, "Let's eat. We have to have a reunion dinner after all."
That day was Jiang Huai's vegetarian day, so the chickens, ducks, fish and shrimps on the table were gone, only vegetarian food and dumplings. Zhou Yue looked at the dumplings in the bowl and the silver chain tied to the corner of the table, and didn't eat any of them. Jiang Huai sat opposite her across the long dining table, his white head lowered, eating with relish.
She said nothing and stood up, her chain making a thin jingling sound.
"Sit down and eat." Jiang Huai held the bowl, the sound of the spoon colliding with the porcelain bowl was louder than his voice, "Don't make things difficult for the people around you."
Zhou Yue turned around and glanced at Aunt Xu standing in the corner. She was wearing a neat and clean buttoned jacket, ruffled trousers, and dark-patterned cloth shoes. Her brows were lowered without any extra expression.
Zhou Yue sat down and finished the reunion dinner with Jiang Huai.
After dinner, Jiang Huai sat on the sofa and read the newspaper as usual. Aunt Xu fed Tiantian milk powder and took Zhou Yue to take a bath.
The fireworks on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month were even more lively than those on the first day of the Lunar New Year. The night sky became a kaleidoscope. The crackling sound of firecrackers and people's laughter came from the distant foot of the mountain. Zhou Yue lay on the bed, the blue fireworks bloomed and cooled in her eyes, as cold as the scent of roses stained with tears on the pillow.
"You're not asleep yet." The man behind her put his arm around her waist, lifted her nightgown with one hand and reached in, rubbing his lips against her hair and earlobe. When his lips touched her cheek, her gradually heavy breathing stopped. He sneered and turned over to press her under him. His dark eyes were full of playfulness in the flickering fireworks. His white hair turned red like blood, and in the blink of an eye it turned blue like ice. "You miss him so much, do you want me to take you downstairs to see him?"
"But I can't bear to leave." He pushed forward, his eyes bloodshot in the light of the fading fireworks. He looked down at her with a condescending smile, showing her his bandaged hand. "Look how you bit me. It hurts so much. Every time I think of you, I feel pain. The more it hurts, the more I want to kill you. In Hong Kong, I wanted you to die. If you died, I would never feel pain again. But in the end, I still sent him to protect you."
"I'm warning you, sooner or later you'll die on a woman." Zhou Yue grinned at him, and he smiled back. "There are only two things a man should do in his life: pursue his career and have sex with the woman he loves. What's the problem?" He lowered his eyes and smirked as he looked down at her, moving slowly. He raised his eyelashes and tilted his head to look at her with an infatuated look. "Wouldn't dying on you be exactly what you want?" He sighed, closed his eyes, raised his head, and moaned deeply. "You said you're like this, why am I still obsessed with you? I've thought about it for a long time. It's you who hurts me."
Zhou Yue didn't say a word that night. After they were done, he buried his head in her neck, panting. When he regained his breath, he said, "As long as you are willing, you will be the only one by my side. I will give you whatever you want." As soon as he finished speaking, Zhou Yue felt a chill on her right ring finger, and the vivid blue diamond sparkled in the night.
Zhou Yue stayed awake until dawn. Her hands tied to the head of the bed were as cold as the mist on the floor-to-ceiling window. Before leaving, he untied her hands, took the skirt that was stuffed in her mouth, kissed her on the forehead, and left.
She watched the sun rise, the frost on the windows melt, and water droplets flowed down the windows.
"I want you to pay with your life."
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