Self-deception
Zhou Jianxing's figure shrank into a small black dot at the end of the road until it disappeared from sight.
Wen Lingyi remained standing, motionless. She fished out a cigarette case from her pocket, pulled out a long, thin cigarette, and lowered her head to light it. The crimson flames flickered and dimmed, and a wisp of gray smoke curled up, blurring the expression on her face.
Everything was like a sudden, bizarre dream, and now the dream suddenly ended, leaving her standing there in a daze, trying to distinguish what was illusion and what was real. Her heart was immersed in the remaining sense of nothingness in the dream, and she felt empty from time to time.
Su Zhe arrived at the door at some point and stood next to Wen Lingyi. He looked at the empty street like her and shook his head.
"Tsk, Miss Wen, are you tired of playing around? I remember you said a few days ago that you would order a car for her? How come you changed your mind faster than turning the pages of a book? I thought you were somewhat serious this time." Su Zhe's tone was filled with a hint of cynicism.
"My business has nothing to do with you. Don't ask questions that you shouldn't ask." Wen Lingyi didn't turn around to look at Su Zhe. Her gaze remained in the distance, and she spoke in a sarcastic tone, "You two brothers and sisters are the same. You both like to meddle in other people's affairs."
"How did Xiaoqing provoke you again?" Su Zhe was a little confused.
Su Qing and Wen Lingyi have been best friends for many years, and many of the private conversations between them would never be known to him, so he naturally had no way of knowing the complicated entanglement between the two women.
"When your girlfriend saw me just now, her expression was very strange, as if she had seen a ghost. You didn't use me as a shield to make her angry and run away, did you?" He was still curious about the woman who had just left dejectedly, and continued to ask.
"I have completely broken up with her," Wen Lingyi's voice suddenly turned cold. "She is not my girlfriend, don't yell at me."
"A woman's heart is like a needle in the sea, impossible to fathom." Su Zhe sighed with emotion, then touched his chin and commented, "But I think this one looks pretty good. She looks much more honest and decent than Zhu Yang, and her looks and figure are impeccable."
"When you called me the other day, I thought you were that type."
Wen Lingyi flicked the ash from her cigarette expressionlessly, and a piece of burnt ash fell to the ground, her eyes completely frozen.
"Su Zhe," her voice was very soft, with a clear warning, "I've been in a very bad mood recently, so you'd better not mess with me."
"It seems like you really like her." Su Zhe seemed to have not received her warning signal at all, and continued to tease fearlessly, "So? Did you pay the breakup fee? You can't just play with someone for nothing and then dump her, right? This is not like your style, Miss Wen."
Wen Lingyi ignored him, extinguished the half-smoked cigarette butt in the cigarette extinguisher on the porch, turned around and walked straight into the house, leaving him with only a cold back.
"Hey, what about those dumplings in your refrigerator?" Su Zhe raised his voice towards her back. He was still thinking about that one bite. "Can I cook them and eat them?"
Wen Lingyi paused, half turned sideways, with no expression on her face: "Don't touch my things."
She repeated, her tone more emphatically: "Don't touch my things, be quiet."
·
Wen Lingyi walked straight to the wine cabinet. Behind the glass door, various famous wines were neatly displayed. Her fingertips unconsciously brushed across the cool glass surface, and she suddenly remembered Zhou Jianxing's words to her when she was pressed against the wine cabinet: "Nothing you give me hurts."
So what about now? Did Zhou Jianxing feel the pain from what she had given him?
The pain she felt was only a hundred or a thousand times greater than Zhou Jianxing's.
Wen Lingyi casually picked up an unopened bottle of whiskey from the wine cabinet, holding the cold bottle and walked straight back to the bedroom.
There was no main light in the room, only a dim bedside lamp was on, casting a small, blurry halo of light on the floor.
Within the range of light, there were two completely empty wine bottles scattered around, and another bottle that was almost empty, tilted on the carpet, with a lonely glass next to it.
These past two days, she had no energy to do anything and was too lazy to even clean her room.
After returning from Zhou Jianxing, she locked herself completely in this room, numbing her nerves with alcohol until her consciousness became blurred and her head was spinning, and then she fell asleep, trying to use sleep to escape the pervasive pain when she was awake.
Breakup fee? Zhou Jianxing betrayed her trust, so why should he get a breakup fee from her? Wen Lingyi thought almost paranoidly.
Moreover, she thought that the money she had spent on Zhou Jianxing was enough - to pay for the 120,000 compensation from Chen Chiguan, the jewel necklace that was sold for 6.8 million at the auction, and the 120,000 deposit that had already been paid for the car.
She was too lazy to even carefully count the remaining small amounts of money.
Over the years, she had never invested so much money in any other woman. Even Zhu Yang did not receive such treatment.
There was even a moment when Wen Lingyi thought miserably that she should take the necklace back. How could he profit from a woman who had betrayed her?
But the thought only flashed through her mind, and she finally held it back.
Doing so would make her seem too petty and too low-key, which is inconsistent with her usual style.
What she wants back is not money.
·
All of this, in the final analysis, was her own fault.
Thinking of this, she tilted her head back and took a deep gulp of wine from the bottle. The rich, spicy wine flowed over her tongue, slid down her throat, and burned all the way into her stomach, becoming the perfect breeding ground for all sorts of wild thoughts.
Those thoughts became bizarre under the catalysis of alcohol, sometimes so clear that it was suffocating, and sometimes as chaotic as a tangled mess.
In fact, she was the one who crossed the line first.
She shouldn't have any unrealistic expectations or fantasies about Zhou Jianxing.
The details that were ignored in the past are now replaying uncontrollably in my mind.
It was when she, under the guise of "Seal the Heart and Lock the Love", cautiously asked Zhou Jianxing if she liked men, that the other party gave an ambiguous and intriguing answer.
The two of them were shopping for groceries at the supermarket. She half-jokingly asked Zhou Jianxing if he wanted to have children in the future. He answered without hesitation, "Yes."
It was Zhou Jianxing, wearing an apron, busy cooking for her in the kitchen, or in the bathroom, carefully scrubbing her underwear in a small basin. That virtuous, gentle, and homely look...
Perhaps, her appearance was a huge surprise to Zhou Jianxing's original life trajectory.
If it weren't for her deliberate approach and seduction, Zhou Jianxing would most likely be a well-behaved "straight girl".
She followed the routine to find a man of comparable conditions, get married, and have children. She put on an apron and worked hard for the family in her own kitchen. She bent over to wash clothes for her husband and children. In her spare time, she fiddled with the flowers and plants on the balcony, keeping the "small family" in the secular sense in order, warm, and fulfilling.
Of course, this is not to say that women should be like this or that, but Zhou Jianxing does have a natural and almost dutiful quality of a "good wife and mother".
And she seemed to enjoy it, even enjoy it.
If Wen Lingyi had not appeared, Zhou Jianxing's life might have continued slowly and steadily along that "correct" and stable track.
Instead of being entangled with a "married" woman and trapped in a hidden relationship like now.
It was she who made a fatal misjudgment of Zhou Jianxing.
In fact, there are already clues everywhere in life, and they all clearly point to one fact: Zhou Jianxing and Zhu Yang are essentially the same kind of people. What they desire is a secular, stable life that is recognized by the mainstream society.
Perhaps, the foreshadowing of today's tragic separation was already laid on the first day they met.
She remembered the first time she met Zhou Jianxing. At that time, Zhou Jianxing didn't know her yet, and there was a smile on his face that was as bright as the midday sun without any gloom.
After meeting her, Zhou Jianxing's smile seemed to gradually turn bitter. When he left today, even that bitter smile had completely disappeared, leaving only numbness and emptiness.
When people face great harm from others, especially from loved ones, they sometimes subconsciously turn the blame on themselves, desperately looking for reasons within themselves to rationalize the harm inflicted by the other party, and almost masochistically tell themselves:
It is normal for all this to happen because I am also at fault, so I deserve it.
The other party's fault thus seems less unforgivable.
To some extent, this is also an extreme form of self-deception.
But at this moment, this thought made Wen Lingyi feel a little better when facing Zhou Jianxing's "betrayal." As if this could give her a reason to keep going.
After all, hating someone wholeheartedly is an extremely exhausting thing.
So, from a certain perspective, perhaps it was she who led Zhou Jianxing astray in the first place. And now, Zhou Jianxing has simply come to his senses and wants to return to the "right path", so there doesn't seem to be anything to criticize too much.
The relationship between them was vague from the beginning. They were employer and worker, hunter and prey, a relationship where both parties got what they wanted from each other, close physical partners with sex, barely lovers.
However, it seems that they were never lovers. Wen Lingyi clearly remembered that she had never made any promise to Zhou Jianxing about being a lover.
But, if it's not explicitly stated, does it count? In Wen Lingyi's heart, she didn't know when Zhou Jianxing's existence had already surpassed those simple labels.
It turned out that she regarded Zhou Jianxing as her lover.
However, Zhou Jianxing betrayed her.
There was another possibility that was even more terrifying and unbearable for her.
Perhaps between that man and Zhou Jianxing, she was the third party who appeared later and inadvertently interfered with other people's feelings.
This has happened before.
Zhu Yang had originally wanted to practice "monogamy", but she would never accept sharing the same woman with any man or any woman.
In her understanding, love has always been absolutely exclusive and unique. In a specific relationship, at the same time, it can only be directed towards one person solely and loyally.
How could Zhou Jianxing be so close to her, enjoying her kindness and her dependence, while secretly preparing to marry another man behind her back?
Considering that there were two missing condoms in the drawer, the two people might have already had the most intimate and dirty relationship.
Another violent, uncontrollable urge to vomit suddenly rose up my throat.
She stumbled to the bed, picked up the trash can in the corner, and vomited out the wine she had just drunk mixed with the sour gastric juice almost without reservation. Her throat and nasal cavity were filled with an indescribable burning sensation.
Obviously, she had been so good to her. She was even foolishly and seriously considering developing a long-term and stable relationship with Zhou Jianxing, trying to ignore the bloody pain of the past and muster up the courage to start over for this person.
But the little courage she had accumulated with great difficulty was rewarded with such an end.
How ironic.
Even the old scar that was about to heal due to the passage of time was torn open again because of Zhou Jianxing's betrayal, becoming more bloody and mangled than before.
Zhou Jianxing accurately stabbed the wound with the deepest and most brutal blow.
Why betray her? Why her? Why does this always happen to her?!
Are men really that good?
Wen Lingyi hugged the cold bottle of wine, her body curled up, tears streaming down her face. She lay on her side on the cold floor, her long black hair wet with tears, sticking to her face and neck.
Su Qing is right.
She should have listened to the advice and stopped playing when she had enough, instead of letting herself get deeper and deeper into it until she was completely sunk.
Her failure and pain at this moment only proved once again that Su Qing was the bystander who was always calm and correct.
In this world, no one is truly trustworthy. No relationship is everlasting.
If that's the case, why take it too seriously? Why invest everything? In the end, it will only hurt your heart and your body, and become a laughing stock.
As his consciousness was gradually blurred by the alcohol, Wen Lingyi struggled and groped on the floor for a long time before finally finding his dropped cell phone.
The screen lit up, the glare making her squint. She struggled to open the screen, found the familiar number, and dialed it.
If you know you're wrong, you should correct it; if you're beaten, you should stand up straight. Her mistakes have now been ruthlessly proven by reality, so why bother stubbornly competing with her best friend since childhood?
"Qingqing..." As soon as the phone was connected, her voice, filled with heavy crying and drunkenness, came over.
Su Qing, on the other end of the phone, heard the familiar voice and state and roughly guessed what had happened. It was nothing more than another sad cycle of history.
She sat up from the bed helplessly, rubbed her eyebrows, and began to fumble with her clothes to change and prepare to go out.
"Stay where you are," Su Qing sighed, "I'll be there soon."
After saying that, she hung up the phone.
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