Chapter Ninety: How Are You Not Ashamed?

I put on a simpering smile, and he pinched my cheek, cutting me off without mercy. “Come off it, Yi Lanshan. With that little trickle of yours, you couldn’t even reach my pinkie.”

I kept smiling with all the pious sweetness I could muster. “Yes, yes, yes. Young Master Luo is absolutely right.”

When we reached the narrow alley Li Wanqiu had described, I opened the door and got out. But Luo Angge had no intention of leaving. “I’ll give you an hour. I’ll wait for you at the mouth of the alley.”

Realizing what he meant, rage surged through me. “Luo Angge, I’m done with this game. Do whatever you want. I’m not playing anymore.”

The car door was still open. In the moonlight, something twisted and vicious gleamed in his features. He gave a mocking smile. “Not playing anymore? Yi Lanshan, have you thought it through? If you really have, I can call Xia Qi right now...”

I cut him off. “So you won’t give me the money? Who wants your filthy money anyway? Shu Congxuan can help me.”

He glanced at me and laughed under his breath, as though I were the biggest fool alive. “Yi Lanshan, talking to you lowers my IQ. If Shu Congxuan could help you, if it were only a transfer, why wait until he comes back?”

I had no patience for his nonsense. I turned and walked away, only hearing his voice behind me. “I’ll be waiting. Come and beg me.”

Li Wanqiu saw me and jumped. “What happened to your face? It’s swollen.”

I shrugged. “I fought with those people and scraped it against the wall.”

She muttered a curse. “Damn it. If he ever falls into my hands, I’ll ruin him.”

I asked her how things were going. She tugged me to the entrance of a tiny courtyard house and hid with me there. “That scumbag Jiang took Wang Keying to get a room. He should be back any minute.”

We fell silent. She lit a cigarette and handed it to me. I took a few drags, then broke into violent coughing just as Jiang Chenghuan’s voice floated over from the other end of the alley. “All right, go back first. I’ll come get you tomorrow.”

Then the voice vanished.

Li Wanqiu made a kissing gesture and grinned at me wickedly.

I had no words for what I felt in that moment. Ever since Du Fanchuan betrayed me, I had understood that nothing in this world comes with a guarantee, especially not love.

But I had somehow never imagined that a loyal, dogged boyfriend like Jiang Chenghuan could have such a short shelf life, or be so rotten inside.

Soon Wang Keying came over. She did not notice us. She went straight in, opened the door, and called out, “Grandma, I’m home.”

At once an old voice came from the yard. “Stop doing tutoring from now on. We don’t need that little bit of money.”

Wang Keying said, “This is this month’s tutoring pay. The child’s father said I taught well and specially raised my salary.”

“How did it go up so much all at once?”

“It’s not that much. Your granddaughter here is the top scorer in the college entrance exam. Isn’t I worth this much?”

Li Wanqiu nudged me. “Damn it. It has to be that scumbag Jiang Chenghuan’s money.”

I could wait no longer. I walked over, shoved the courtyard gate open, and shouted Wang Keying’s name.

Li Wanqiu came up behind me. Something rolled to a stop at my feet, and only then did I notice she had actually brought fruit.

Wang Keying came out. Seeing us, she startled and asked warily, “Who are you?”

Li Wanqiu covered my mouth. “Hello. We heard a lot about you and came to ask if you’d tutor for us. Would it be convenient to talk?”

When the bent, frail old grandmother came into view, I was a little shaken. In the dim light she looked so worn, coughing again and again.

Wang Keying supported her. “Grandma, go to bed first. These are two friends of mine. We’re just going to talk for a bit.”

The old woman looked us over. “If they’re friends, then invite them in. Don’t stand around in the yard.”

Li Wanqiu hurriedly carried the things in her hands over and helped the old woman into the house. “Grandma, we heard your health hasn’t been good, so we’ve wanted to come see you for a long time. Keying is such a sensible and obedient girl. We wanted to ask her to tutor my younger brother.”

“Oh, then thank you so much. That girl has had a hard life. It’s all my illness that has burdened her.”

Wang Keying looked me up and down. I stepped into the light so she could see more clearly, and I saw the fear in her eyes at once.

She must have seen my photo at Jiang Chenghuan’s place. I smiled in satisfaction. “Should we say this in front of your grandmother, or outside?”

She rushed to my side. “Who are you, exactly?”

I gave a cold laugh. “Didn’t you already guess? What, you had the nerve to steal someone else’s boyfriend, but not the nerve to admit it?”

She shoved me hard. “You... you’re talking nonsense.”

At that moment Li Wanqiu came over and stood beside us, staring hard at Wang Keying’s ashen face. “Wang Keying, before we came, we already looked into everything. What else do you have to say?”

“I don’t know you. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get out,” Wang Keying said.

As she spoke, she came to push us, but we did not move. She pulled out her phone and dialed.

I snatched it from her hand, saw the flashing character on the screen, and smashed the phone to the ground with savage force.

Then I did something I had never even imagined I would do: I slapped her across the face. Li Wanqiu jumped in to help, and together we easily dragged Wang Keying outside.

In the courtyard she did not dare make too much noise, because she knew that if her grandmother were alarmed, we would certainly tell the old woman what had happened.

Once outside, she turned from a meek little tabby into a fierce tiger, shaking us both off at once, then running.

Li Wanqiu and I were both possessed. We chased after her from both sides, each of us seizing one shoulder and forcing her to the ground.

I don’t know whose fist fell first. By the time we realized something was wrong, Wang Keying had already passed out.

Li Wanqiu and I sat on the ground panting, not frightened at all, only feeling a cathartic satisfaction.

At last we had avenged Xia Qi.

A few minutes later, Li Wanqiu got up to check whether there were any cameras nearby. It was an old, almost dilapidated neighborhood. Forget cameras; even the streetlights looked like they came straight out of the eighties.

The two of us acted as if nothing had happened and walked to the convenience store at the corner, where we used the public phone to call Jiang Chenghuan.

Li Wanqiu’s voice, altered by the device, was especially sinister as she laughed. “Young Master Jiang, your little darling is about to die. You have twenty minutes. If you don’t show up, don’t blame us for being ruthless.”

Sure enough, before twenty minutes had even passed, Jiang Chenghuan appeared in his car. He took the unconscious Wang Keying into his arms, got her inside, and drove off toward the hospital.

Hidden in the dark, Li Wanqiu and I watched the car disappear into the distance. Suddenly, I felt bored. So this was what it felt like to avenge a best friend. So this was all there was to beating someone up.

On the way back, we passed a pharmacy. A part-time college girl stood at the door promoting vitamin C: buy one bottle, get two brand-new condoms free.

It was the strangest promotion I had ever seen.

Not far away stood a tall, lean, handsome young man, probably the girl’s boyfriend, watching his girlfriend with unmistakable tenderness.

There were plenty of people passing by, but no one wanted to buy a bottle of vitamins and go home with two condoms tucked under their arm.

Maybe Jiang Chenghuan had provoked me too much, because I bought five bottles of vitamin C in a fit of righteous generosity and casually took ten condoms home with me.

Originally, Li Wanqiu and I had arranged to go to the hospital the next day and see what was going on, but I never expected my parents to come.

I did not even have time to destroy the morning-after pill box in the trash, or the condoms on the coffee table, before my mother anxiously grabbed me and asked what I had been doing for so long that I hadn’t come home.

I glanced at Yi Huayang and Rong Luozheng standing to one side, and at my father with his grim face, along with the tonic gifts they were holding, and said irritably, “I’ve been in a bad mood these past two days and don’t want to see anyone. Go back.”

My father suddenly asked, “Are you in love?”

I did not answer. He suddenly kicked over the trash can, pulled the contraceptive pill box out from the floor, and hurled it hard into my face.

“What is this? Say it. What have you been doing?”

I might as well have thrown caution to the wind. “You saw it already. Why ask me?”

My father slapped me across the face. I lost my footing and fell against my mother.

My mother held me, tears streaming down her face. “Lanshan, explain it to your father. It’s not like that. You didn’t do anything, did you?”

Yi Huayang poured cold water on me. “Mom, stop covering for her. If she didn’t do anything, why would she be taking contraceptives? She probably went off fooling around with some man. He must be rich, and old too. Yi Lanshan, how could you become someone else’s mistress?”

With a cold laugh, I shoved my mother away. “Yes, I slept with a rich old man. Yes, I became a mistress. More than once. Haven’t you always said I’m nowhere near as good as Yi Huayang? Fine, then I’ll learn from her. What’s so hard about sleeping with men? What’s so hard about being a mistress? What’s so hard about sleeping with different men? Isn’t it easy, Yi Huayang?”

Her face changed at once. She pointed at me. “Yi Lanshan, don’t think I don’t know. That man’s name is Luo Angge, isn’t it?”

I was shocked. I had not expected Yi Huayang to be so all-pervasive that she even knew this.

But I could never admit it, not even if you beat me to death. I would rather admit I was mad, stupid, or idiotic than admit I had any connection at all with Luo Angge.

I pretended not to understand. “What Luo Angge? I don’t know him.”

She laughed coldly. “You don’t know him? You already slept with the man, and you’re still saying you don’t know him?”

Seeing my expression, my parents decided Yi Huayang had been telling the truth. They concluded I was some rich man’s mistress and that every cent I had came from sleeping with men.

Rong Luozheng dragged Yi Huayang outside. My father, furious beyond endurance, grabbed a feather duster and came at me with it. I did not dodge. I let him hit me.

“I’ll beat you to death. I’ll beat you to death. Let’s see if you still have any shame!”

I endured the pain and glared at him fiercely. “What have I done wrong?”

My father raised his hand and started hitting me again and again. “What do you mean, what’s wrong? He’s married. He’s rich. You think he’d even look at you?”

It felt as if someone had scattered a handful of chili powder into my heart, and the burning spread slowly to every living part of me. No matter how I washed it away, it was already too late.

My father was right. Luo Angge looked down on me. In truth, I looked down on him too.

Not only did I look down on him, I even wanted to cut him into a thousand pieces, and that still would not have been enough to appease the hatred in my heart.

My mother sobbed as she snatched the feather duster away. My father flew into a rage, shoved my mother hard aside, and knocked her against the dining table.

Then he came at me again, striking me with his bare hand, slap after slap to my head. A few of them landed especially hard on my ears, leaving them ringing and buzzing.

“Yi Lanshan, how can you be so shameless?”