Faced with Coach Ma's question, I was completely flustered, and it took me a long time to reply: "This matter starts with Yang Sisi... well, it's a bit complicated."
Coach Ma poked the fire with a stick, making it burn even brighter, which reflected on his weathered face. He flicked off some ash and said to me, "Take your time, I'm not in a hurry."
"When I came to Dali, I originally planned to take the train..."
I used the fewest words I could to tell Coach Ma everything that had happened since I left Shanghai. After listening, he rested his chin on his hand for a moment, then smiled like a bystander and said, "Even without Sisi by your side, you would have had this day sooner or later... You can't hide this forever."
“I know… but right now is the critical moment when the inn can resume business. With this sudden turn of events, I really don’t have the confidence to stay in Dali any longer. My parents are very stubborn and conservative people. In their minds, only staying in a big city like Shanghai and doing a decent job is considered a proper career.”
"Then why did you come to Dali in the first place?"
"This story goes back to another woman... When I was in Shanghai, I had a fellow villager who was friends with Taozi. She also worked as a hostess at a club. One day, she met up with a group of guesthouse owners from Dali and told them about the culture and lifestyle there. She really wanted to go back... Then, she urged me to open a guesthouse there and gave me 190,000 yuan... At first, I just wanted to appease her, but a few days later, tragedy struck... Because she refused to go out with clients, she got into a fight with them. In the chaos, she was hit on the head, and just like that, she was gone...!"
At this point, I choked up a little, because I remembered the scene of her inviting me to the bar to chat that day. When she talked about Dali, she was like a blooming flower.
I wiped my face hard and said, "I never thought that life and death were separated by a thin line. After this incident, I had an epiphany... I didn't want to live like a grandson in Shanghai, but my soul was dead... I didn't want to be a slave to the house, nor did I want to be a machine for procreation. I wanted to change my lifestyle, so I took the 190,000 yuan she gave me, along with all my savings from over the years, and came to Dali."
Coach Ma looked at me, this time abandoning his bystander attitude, then clenched his fist and pounded his chest, saying to me, "That hurts..."
My heart is shattered!
I lit another cigarette, smoking it as I faced the surging Erhai Lake, feeling utterly lost and bewildered... I seem to be rather inept at handling interpersonal relationships, which is why I chose such a low-level method of maintaining the status quo with lies, and now, karma is coming my way...
Coach Ma then asked me, "That girl who plays the princess must love you quite a bit, right?"
"It's love... but I don't like her job."
“No normal person could accept this… But have you ever thought that even if you marry a respectable woman in the future, what if she had several ex-boyfriends before you? Not only were she sexually assaulted by them, but she also developed genuine feelings… But princesses, at most they were sexually assaulted; they didn't develop feelings, they just wanted money. So tell me, which one would you choose that would be a bigger loss?”
I stared blankly at Coach Ma... I was shocked by his crude and violent remarks, but thinking about it, they really made sense.
Coach Ma patted my shoulder and said, "These days, what woman is truly clean before marriage? As men, we only ask that a woman be devoted to us after marriage, regardless of what she did before. Besides, you've definitely slept with other women before marriage, so how can you expect a clean girl to spend her life with you? Anyway, I think men and women should be equal, at least in terms of gender relations."
"Stop talking, it's even more fucking hurtful!"
Coach Ma chuckled, then lit a cigarette. After taking a drag, he squinted at Xiaguan, the most bustling area across the sea… He continued, “See that? All the most luxurious hotels in Dali are concentrated on the other side of the sea… Tell me, how many condoms are wasted in those hotels in one night? And how many of those couples aren’t planning to spend their lives together?… People these days, so restless… so vulgar!”
I looked at Coach Ma and replied, "Now that you mention it, you seem to be reliable and upright."
"What's the meaning?"
"From what I've observed, you're a man who hasn't had a sex life for a long time. If you weren't so celibate, you wouldn't be able to resist either."
Coach Ma took a while to realize that I was mocking him for not having a sex life. He immediately flicked his cigarette butt at me and then cursed me as a "son of a bitch."
...
After joking around, I sighed and then said to Coach Ma, "Things have come to this point, and there's no escaping it now! Can you try to see from an outsider's perspective if there's any way to resolve this?"
"It's not difficult."
Seeing Coach Ma's confident demeanor immediately ignited a spark of hope within me. I quickly handed him another cigarette and lit it for him. I don't know why, but I had a lot of faith in this guy. Although he spoke rudely, he certainly had a unique perspective on things.
Coach Ma sat by the flickering flame, looking every bit the sage. After flicking away the ash, he said to me, "Let's make a hypothetical scenario: if you gave your mother a gold ring as a gift for a holiday, and one day, that gold ring was accidentally lost... do you think your mother would be worried?"
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