Chapter Four: I Find It Disgusting

When I drank myself into oblivion, unable to tell day from night or remember who I was, when I vomited until it felt like all my organs had come up, I was vaguely aware that I was slumped over a toilet, the bowl filled with crimson liquid.

Before I lost consciousness, I could just make out the sound of Xia Qi and Li Wanqiu crying. My eyelids fluttered open and shut, and then I knew nothing at all.

When I woke, the doctor delivered unfortunate news: due to a severe gastric perforation, a third of my stomach had been removed.

He recited the standard precautions, but strangely, I felt almost lucky. The price of losing that third of my stomach taught me two things: never to drink recklessly, and never to fall for a heartless man, or it could be fatal.

I spent two months in the hospital. Every day, Xia Qi and Li Wanqiu came after class to keep me company, telling me stories about school. The three of us would sit in silence for a while, or sometimes end up sobbing in each other's arms.

Kylin, my closest male friend—the scion of a wealthy family in Kangcheng—would show up every other day in his ostentatious pink sports car, just to spend a little time with me.

Days slipped by uneventfully. My mother brought me light meals every day. After work, my father would sit silently by my bedside; we rarely spoke.

Occasionally, my grandfather would visit, and I was more willing to talk when he was around.

I hadn’t seen Du Fanchuan or Yi Huayang again. Only one day, Zhou Fan came to see me and accidentally let slip that my father was reaching out to his friends in America, hoping to send those two shameless people abroad.

I registered this without emotion, staring blankly at a spot on the ceiling.

What I didn’t expect was for Du Fanchuan to show up at my hospital room. In the two months since I’d last seen him, he’d grown so thin his cheekbones jutted out, and he looked a complete mess.

We sat in silence. His eyes reddened before he finally broke it: “Lanshan, I’m sorry.”

I turned my back to him. “I’m tired. Please leave.”

He didn’t move. “Lanshan, will you come with me somewhere?”

I lost my patience and sat up, my voice cold. “Du Fanchuan, spare me your false concern. I’m not interested. The day you shamelessly slept with Yi Huayang, we became strangers.”

He wrung his hands; the scars on them stood out, ugly like two centipedes.

Tears fell. “Lanshan, I know I wronged you. I know I made a terrible mistake… I don’t mean anything else, I just wanted to talk to you. You have no idea—I haven’t slept in ages, I…”

I didn’t know where he wanted to take me. Maybe I was gambling, gambling that I still meant something different to him.

The car moved at a steady pace along the road. Du Fanchuan handed me a bottle of water—my favorite lemon drink—but I eyed him with disdain. “No. I don’t want it. It’s dirty.”

He withdrew his hand, his voice barely audible. “You… really can’t forgive me?”

I gave a cold laugh. “Du Fanchuan, who do you think you are?”

He said nothing more. I didn’t speak either, only texted Kylin to tell him I was out with Du Fanchuan.

He quickly asked where I was going. I said I didn’t know.

I was growing impatient, so I asked Du Fanchuan where exactly he was taking me.

He didn’t answer, instead saying, “I can explain what happened that day. I went to your house to find you, I wanted to take you out for your birthday. You weren’t there, and Yi Huayang…”

I covered my ears. “Du Fanchuan, shut up. I don’t want to hear it.”

He pressed on. “I know very well that I love you, Lanshan. I was wrong, terribly wrong… Even when I was with her, making love, I was thinking of you… It was just a momentary lapse, a mistake any man could make…”

Memories I’d tried to dilute came flooding back—those moans, those cries, those disgusting movements. I shouted at him to stop.

He drove on, steady as ever. “Lanshan, I know you’re angry. But you still love me, don’t you? Let’s start over. Give me time. I’ll talk to your sister, and then you and I can go abroad together, for good. Didn’t we promise each other? To have a son and a daughter, didn’t we…”