The title comes from a line in the Japanese drama Me and Him, Who Will Break Up in 100 Days, which ended today.
I liked its mood from the first episode. The documentary-like way it was filmed throughout, the script and dialogue, the actors' performances — all of it is close to full marks in my personal taste in shows.
Maybe because the kinds of films and dramas I watch are fairly concentrated, my taste has gradually narrowed. It has to be either genuinely excellent, or carry a social or public expression beyond plot and story.
Japanese drama is a field I have followed for a long time.
I remember writing an early repo related to Japanese dramas too, if that barely counts. It has been two years now.
There have been many excellent Japanese dramas in those two years, but the one that made me unable to stop myself from sharing here is this one.
But I am not mentioning it today to write a review. I want to leave a trace of how it made me feel. Something extremely private.
There is a line in the drama:
‘The people who create the future world will never be people like me.
The people who long to live in the sunlight are the ones who will change the world.
If the world becomes that warm, someone like me, who cannot fit in, can only lie on my back and wait to die.
Of course, I do not intend to stop that from happening.
But if I can ask for one thing, I hope people do not forget that someone like me once existed.
Even after I am gone.’
‘Lie on my back and wait to die’ comes from a joke in the drama. Ashu sees that his partner's tropical fish has died and casually says, ‘Was it afraid of heat?’ His partner gets angry. To Ashu, the tone sounds like a question: ‘How could a tropical fish be afraid of heat?’
That joke reminded me of another. A tries to cook and the food tastes bad. B immediately comforts them: ‘It is okay. You will do better next time.’ Does something not feel right?
It being bad is a fact, but that does not mean the person who made it sees it as a ‘failure,’ or a failure that needs someone else's comfort.
How many things like this have I done in the past? I do not know.
Oh, back to that line: ‘The people who create the future world will never be people like me.’ When Ashu said it, I embarrassingly cried... For a moment I felt represented, then immediately woke up: do not put a halo on yourself or make excuses.
Anyway, this drama matters to me because it lets some people say things that are not mainstream, like the repo I wrote before. Whether it is humanistic care or minority narratives, part of my attention naturally flows toward these places and is drawn to them.
Sometimes we are used to treating some people as pathological: people who are too cold and distant, too logical and rational to care about human feelings, too solitary and used to being alone for a long time...
But perhaps these people are only existing in their truest state, while the story of the ‘normal person’ that the world gives us is like shackles, wrapping around the body like a poisonous snake.
Only today did I find a better name: ‘atypical,’ not ‘pathological.’
Last year I tried writing a novel. In the process I found that I was not suited to it and could not do it well.
Still, I left some traces. More importantly, I found that the protagonist in my story carries some of my attitude toward life.
I had imagined a series about three generations of women.
‘Me’ would be a story of a mother's daughter.
‘My Mother’ would be the mother's story.
‘My Mother's Mother’ would be the story of the mother's mother.
But I could not keep writing... The total word count was only fifteen thousand?
When inspiration is thin and imagination is lacking, there is really nowhere to argue.
But I decided to leave the ‘Me’ part here. If I am ever in the mood, perhaps I will go back and finish the grandmother's part and the mother's part.
Statement: this piece was written almost completely free from real-world logic and constraints. Take it as a record of shaping an ‘atypical’ character.
May I ask whether your mother is Li Wanying?
01
When I got the lawyer's call, I was still flirting with a guest.
After he lifted his wineglass, he pulled me around the waist.
I reached out in turn and helped him adjust his tie.
His warm breath came toward me, and I quickly covered my nose and mouth.
‘Second Young Master Yan, you are acting up again.’
He found it boring and let me go.
‘Tch. You really cannot take a joke.’
Then he turned to chat with a beautiful woman in the booth.
I took out my phone, which had been vibrating for a long time. An unfamiliar number jumped across the screen.
I thought it was news about the part-time work I had looked for a few days earlier.
‘Hello?’
They told me that my mother had been in a car accident.
She did not make it to the ambulance. She was gone.
My legs went soft. I almost fainted.
I had not spoken to her much since I left home last spring.
But I was her only family, so this call could only come to me.
Ever since I could remember, she had raised me alone.
When I was in elementary school, I saw that everyone else had a father and other family members.
I could not understand it. When I got home, I asked why I only had a mother.
She said they had all left this world.
‘Zhiyu, I will try my best to give you all the love they should have given you.’
I did not tell her that I did not care that much. I had only wanted to ask.
But my mother really did try.
I never lacked food, clothes, or things to use.
During winter and summer breaks, she would take me abroad.
It looked like we did not live an ordinary life.
But I knew what had paid for it.
‘Miss Jiang?’
Luckily there was a tall table beside me. I knocked my elbow against it, and the pain pulled me back.
‘Where is my mother now?’
I rarely got sick. I barely went to hospitals all year.
I had never been inside a morgue.
When they lifted the white sheet, nausea rose in me.
I turned my head away. I did not dare look.
I thought I would be devastated. I was not.
My mother often said that life and death were decided by fate.
Sometimes dying was a good thing.
‘Isn't living better?’
My mother smiled. ‘Of course living is better.’
Then she rushed over and hugged me.
My mother was very good at expressing love with her body.
Every time she picked me up from school, she kissed my forehead and hugged me.
Even after I went to university, those two things never changed.
‘You and your mother are so close. I am jealous, so jealous.’
Jiang Manlin always complained to me about the small and large conflicts she had with her parents.
I had heard so much that my ears grew calluses.
‘How about telling your parents to divorce?’
‘Look how free my mother is living by herself.’
‘No man to fight with, and she treats me so well.’
Jiang Manlin almost threw her pencil case at me, saying reproachfully that no one taught people to break up a family.
No, she was wrong. Someone did.
I only learned that later.
‘Hello, Miss Jiang. I am Zhou Sen, the attorney representing Mr. Ji Delin.’
Mr. Zhou was the person who had called me. He spoke very politely.
He watched me sit and poured me a glass of water.
Then he took a tablet from his briefcase and showed me the autopsy report, the police report, and video from the scene.
My mother had run a red light.
The report said alcohol was in her system.
When Ji Delin's car came over, it could not brake in time and sent her flying.
He had been hurrying home for his son's birthday and had urged the driver not to waste a moment.
I could not understand how alcohol could be in my mother's body. She never drank. Even when she worked at a place like Xinghe Club, she never touched it.
‘Judging from the scene, Mr. Ye was not at fault in this accident.’
‘But he feels bad about it and will give you money as compensation.’
‘Here is the agreement. Please look it over. If there is no problem, sign it, and the money will be transferred to your account.’
The video made my heart jump.
When I watched The Matrix with my mother, the truck hit Trinity and she did not blink.
If she were watching this video now, I wonder if she could watch it through.
When the agreement landed on the table, I turned off the tablet.
No use looking at more. Better look at something useful.
Very generous. One million.
‘Also, we checked your mother's insurance. The total payout will be close to six million.’
Seven million.
My mother died, and I got seven million.
Mom, was this another gift from you?
But before, you would ask whether I wanted it.
I was tired.
After confirming there was nothing wrong with the terms, I signed.
Mr. Ji did not owe me charity.
But since he gave it, I would take it.
‘My condolences, Miss Jiang.’
Mr. Zhou sighed as he turned away.
He must have thought I was strange.
My mother was gone, and I neither cried nor made a scene.
Maybe my mother's education had been too successful. I truly treated death as something ordinary.
Accidental death and natural death are only different ways.
02
My mother and I both loved the ocean.
Once when we went to the sea, she said the phrase ‘returning home after death’ was wrong.
If she was wrong, then the deep sea was her home.
I teased her then: when you die, I will scatter your ashes in the ocean.
Every time I saw the sea, I would think of her.
Someone said words cannot be spoken carelessly.
I really brought her ashes here.
The wind was too strong. Scattering them? Not realistic.
So I filled a bottle with seawater, then poured it back out.
The scene was a little funny.
But the wind was so strong that sand got into my eyes.
It hurt enough that tears kept falling from the corners of them.
Before I came back to China, my mother said that after she retired, she would move to Victoria.
Then I would have to earn money to support her.
Now I had not earned much, and she did not need me to support her.
But perhaps the seawater could carry her ashes to Victoria Harbour?
Then one of her wishes would come true.
My mother's social circle was simple. It seemed everyone knew what kind of person she was.
When they heard she had died in a car accident, even the fact that I did not hold a funeral felt reasonable to them.
People are contradictory.
When we are born, we cry loudly and everyone around us smiles.
After death, we cannot state anything, but everyone around us cries.
My mother said she did not smile when I was born.
Because I was an accident.
She did not abort me because she wanted to see whether she was suited to being a mother.
‘Mom, you are the best mother in the world.’
She slowly shook her head. ‘Go on, flatter your mother as much as you like.’
‘Really. I am not lying.’
‘My friends are always jealous of me. They all want to trade mothers.’
‘I do not want to trade.’
Even though I was only an experiment, I was happy with it.
Because it was her, and she was my mother.
03
That day I rushed straight to the hospital after the call, without telling my supervisor.
The VIP private rooms that night were all important guests.
Because I was fairly good at mixing drinks, the supervisor had put me on the schedule.
After I left, a colleague had to take over in a hurry.
The supervisor was flooded with complaints and almost forced to resign.
He called to say I did not need to go back to work.
If not for Jiang Manlin, I might not even have received compensation.
She had arranged that job for me.
Her family had some connections.
When I met her in high school, I thought she acted aloof.
But she was cool.
I took the initiative, and we became friends.
We even went to the same university abroad.
‘Manlin, can I ask you a favor?’
I pouted and made my eyes look innocent.
She shivered without meaning to and quickly stood to clear the dishes.
‘I cannot go back to Xiangwan. I have no face left to see that supervisor.’
She had just reached the kitchen door when she turned back.
‘Didn't you find a part-time job at a café recently?’
I shrugged and started scrolling through my phone.
‘They thought my latte art was bad and did not take me.’
The dishwasher clicked.
She washed her hands and sat across from me again.
‘Then tell me. How can I help?’
‘I want to work at Xinghe.’
She had just raised water to her mouth and choked.
‘A proper job. I will not touch that kind of thing.’
‘I promise.’
I even held up three fingers.
She set down her glass and reached for a tissue.
‘Don't you have seven million now?’
‘And what did you say when you complained about your mother to me back then?’
Her look made my skin crawl.
A few days earlier, when she heard me say expressionlessly that my mother was gone, she said nothing and simply hugged me.
I pushed her away.
‘Don't worry. I am still alive.’
‘And I am going to live well.’
I wanted to show my mother that living was still better.
But to prove it, I had to find a way to earn money.
‘I used it to buy a house.’
‘What?’
I was not lying. I really used it to buy a house.
There was still a gap of several million.
When Jiang Manlin walked in, she ran to the balcony. The river wind felt so good.
She lay on the bed in the room, went to look at the kitchen, then returned to sit on the sofa.
‘Look at you, Jiang Zhiyu.’
‘You settled down behind my back.’
Then she changed direction. ‘What about your mother's house?’
What about it?
I planned to rent it out.
Not long after I posted it, dozens of messages poured in.
I was very picky about tenants.
At first I only planned to rent to a woman, but one young man caught my attention.
He offered to pay ten percent more rent each month, rent annually, and pay three years up front.
I stared at the chat box. Then he sent a few photos.
They were photos of an apartment he had rented off campus while at university.
They were live screenshots with date information included.
You could tell he knew how to live.
The home was neat, and he got along well with friends.
Fine. Him.
When I showed him the apartment, he looked briefly at the layout.
‘If you have other options you prefer, I can wait one week.’
What I was really thinking was: please sign quickly.
He looked clean. He seemed nice.
‘Can I keep a cat here?’
‘No.’
My mouth answered before I could think.
I had nothing against cats. I had something against pets that shed.
Not all cats shed, right?
‘Okay. I will rent it.’
Only when he signed and handed me the contract did I recover.
I had thought he would stop considering my mother's house because he could not keep a cat.
Before he put down his pen, I had especially told him it was my mother's house.
She had just died in a car accident.
He was not surprised at all.
‘If I had no grudge against her, she would not come looking for me, right?’
Then he winked.
Fine. I had met a scientist.
04
For many days, I begged Jiang Manlin to arrange work for me at Xinghe.
Even as a waitress would be fine.
She always said she would think about it.
While she was thinking, I put everything in my new home in order.
Lying on the sofa and looking at the ceiling, I missed my mother.
Over more than twenty years, my mother had changed houses three times.
The first two were school-district homes because I needed to go to school.
The third was the one I had just rented out.
When I went abroad to study, she sold the earlier house.
She bought a moderately sized one and said it was exactly right for living by herself.
When I was abroad, I often laughed at her. I did not even have a boyfriend yet.
Why was she so eager to send me away? Did she hope I would never come back?
She said that parents had once been children too.
They knew what they wanted and did not want.
By putting themselves in their children's place, they should know what their children might think.
I did not feel it then. I always thought what my mother gave me was what I wanted.
Including persuading me to go abroad.
I was already curious about the huge world.
However good my mother was to me, she could not stop me from going far away.
By coincidence, she wanted me to go out too.
I had just walked out of the bathroom when the doorbell rang.
Jiang Manlin bounced in energetically.
‘I arranged your job.’
‘You can start whenever you want.’
I still had a towel wrapped around my hair.
Before she finished speaking, I ran to hug her.
She pushed me away in disgust and pointed at my dripping hair.
‘Oh.’
‘There is ice cream you like in the fridge.’
I quickly slipped back to the bathroom to deal with my hair.
Jiang Manlin really listened to me.
She arranged a waitress job.
I carried drinks and sometimes had time to learn from the head bartender.
After a while, I found that the guests there were quite decent.
Had I misunderstood my mother?
Before I sorted out my doubts, I would not let go of a single clue.
‘Master, why do all floors above twelve have separate elevator cards?’
I was the kind of waitress without an elevator card.
After I started work, I brought breakfast to the guy in the surveillance room every day. I always said they gave me extra when I bought my own.
He was the first person I saw when I came to work, so I gave it to him.
Over time, we became familiar.
I even knew how many children he had, what their names were, and where they went to school.
When I wandered near him while taking a break, he waved.
Looks like the laxative worked.
While he was gone, I copied all the surveillance data from the day my mother had her accident.
When he came back, his face was as white as someone who had just been seriously ill.
[Sorry, brother. I will bring you apple and Chinese-yam soup tomorrow.]
I felt secretly guilty.
But it was wasted effort. The data from the twelfth floor and above was not there.
And my mother's main work was not below the twelfth floor.
There were a few scenes where waiters accidentally spilled alcohol on clients.
Those clients made a mess and argued so much that I wanted to hide.
When my mother arrived, she scolded the waiter a few times, and the person stopped.
It seemed my mother had some power at Xinghe. She was not only a pretty face.
The head bartender pushed a few glasses of wine toward me. ‘Room 1010 ordered these. Take them quickly.’
I rolled my eyes, took the tray, and walked toward the elevator.
You will not tell me?
I had my own way.
I was not the only one entering the elevator.
There were several bodyguards in suits, going to the twentieth floor.
Of course, there were colleagues going with me to the tenth floor.
In a burst of impulse, once the doors closed, I followed the bodyguards to the twentieth floor.
Someone in the distance seemed drunk and out of control.
Suddenly, a young man burst from the crowd, his back toward me, swearing loudly.
‘You *, stop * telling me what to do, or you will regret it.’
He smashed the glass in his hand to the floor.
The bodyguards followed him carefully.
When he turned and saw me, his eyes lit up and he rushed toward me.
I was so frightened that I ran in the first direction I could.
Seeing someone come out of an elevator ahead, I ran inside.
Some wine spilled on the tray, but it was still under control.
I was almost caught by the elevator doors when someone held them open for me.
I pressed the tenth-floor button wildly, my heart pounding.
Luckily. Otherwise I would have lost another job.
I looked up to thank the person who held the door, and it was my tenant.
When he signed the contract, his clothes had a Korean style.
Anyone would have believed he was a university student.
He had said he had just returned from overseas and was interning at a large company.
Now in the elevator, he was also in a suit.
But the material did not look like it belonged in the same class as the bodyguards' suits.
His eyes were sharper too.
I saw his surprise and quickly turned away.
Until I stepped out of the elevator, neither of us said anything.
05
When I stepped out of the elevator, the view was different from usual. I turned around several times before I found the private room I was meant to serve.
‘Little girl, why are you so slow this time?’
‘I'm sorry. The elevator stopped floor by floor. There was nothing I could do.’
He waved it away. ‘Fine. I'll mention to your manager later that there are too few elevators.’
I backed out, but just as the door closed I heard him say: ‘They're stingy too. So many entrances and exits for the high floors, and they don't care if people downstairs live or die.’
Curious, curious, too curious.
On my way to the subway after work, my tenant messaged that the Wi-Fi was too slow for gaming. I argued that a gigabit connection could not possibly lag, then unplugged and reset the router and restarted the modem. The speed was still an awful less than 200 megabits. He leaned against the dining table and watched me repeat every fix he had already tried.
Then I thought of the spare network cable. I switched it and everything returned to normal.
He watched me in a way that made me uncomfortable. I kept thinking of our elevator encounter that afternoon, and I was curious about him too.
‘Landlord Jiang, why do you work at Xinghe?’ he asked.
I said a friend had helped me get a few months of part-time work as a transition. He said that the rent from his apartment already gave me tens of thousands a month after tax; being a waitress did not seem like my kind of work. He guessed strategy consulting or business negotiation.
He thought too highly of me. I had tried that before. A deal failed, a friend lost money, and I did not dare touch it again. Yan Lize had given me the chance, but I could not negotiate with clients, especially old men. When they rejected a proposal, I did not think about what I could say to make them satisfied. I just left. They were not the only clients; they chose to be stubborn.
Yan Lize had wanted to hit me after hearing that story, then only said, ‘You should change jobs.’ Jiang Manlin later found me bartender work. I was good at it, and turnover always grew when I was there, but my supervisor took all the credit and did not raise my pay.
My tenant said it meant I did not know how to choose clients, or my boss assigned tasks without using his brain. Fine. Now I knew how to answer Yan Lize next time.
I asked why he had been at Xinghe, dressed so differently. Before he answered, his oven chimed. He brought out a tray of cupcakes. I had not eaten after work and ate ten in one go. He said I had a good appetite. I apologized and explained that you could not eat carelessly at the club; I had barely eaten lunch.
Before I left, he asked why I did not call him by name. I could not admit that I had not actually read his name on the contract. If someone feels right, I give them trust.
‘Jiang Zhiyu. My name is Ye Bojun. Nice to meet you.’
I smiled. ‘Thank you for renting my mother's house.’
The elevator doors were already closing when I remembered that he had not answered my question. It was fine. There would be another chance.
06
While delivering drinks to Room 1010, I saw Yan Lize. I thought he was at Xiangwan, his usual playground, but the person opposite him was an older man. I was thinking too much.
‘Do you know this girl?’ the man asked.
‘No.’
‘No.’
Yan Lize and I answered together. We knew each other well enough to be that coordinated.
When Jiang Manlin arranged my old job at Xiangwan, Yan Lize had worried I would be harassed. He followed me to work, then got himself into the place too. Thinking of the two of them fighting in front of me over my job made me want to hit them like moles.
Jiang Manlin said her mysterious ‘ex-husband brother’ was better than Yan Lize. I had heard about him for years: two childhood friends and a childhood sweetheart, scattered by school. I acted cute and begged her to introduce him, but Yan Lize ran away in terror. I ate every ice cream in the freezer out of anger.
He caught me at Xinghe and asked whether I could not keep the Xiangwan job, or whether he had given me too little money. Neither.
‘Yan Lize, do you know Xinghe?’
I had watched for days but did not dare return above the twelfth floor. I was afraid of the drunk young man and of getting into trouble. In university, Jiang Manlin and I had once gone to a bar, where a drunk man trapped her. I came out of the restroom, smashed a bottle over his head, and pulled her away. The police considered it self-defense, but I was frightened afterward. We then learned every boxing and kickboxing class we could find. We did not need to become experts; we only needed to be able to knock someone down.
I asked Yan Lize for the surveillance data from above the twelfth floor on the day my mother died. He said, ‘Just that?’ and told me to ask Jiang Manlin the next day.
07
On my next day off, I went to Jiang Manlin's. A boy's back flashed before my eyes as I entered the round driveway. Something was wrong.
Jiang Manlin rushed at me crying that she had been rejected. Her parents promptly escaped and left her to me. She ate bananas furiously and complained that Ye Bojun had no eyes: she was beautiful, and he had dared not want her.
Ye Bojun? My tenant?
Yes, she said. The brother she had always told me about.
I did not tell her he rented my mother's house. We had taken boxing classes together, and I knew how much it hurt when she hit without holding back.
Then she pointed to a hard drive on the coffee table. Ye Bojun had just brought it, saying Yan Lize asked him to. She had been confused: who delivered a hard drive to someone who had rejected his marriage proposal?
We watched the surveillance footage and followed the clues from before my mother's accident. There were two important people. The first was Ye Bojun's mother, Ye Qinwen, whom Jiang Manlin knew. In the video, she and my mother looked close. The second was a regular client from the twentieth floor, possibly the drunk young man I had seen.
My mother went into Ye Qinwen's office for more than an hour. Ye Qinwen walked her to the elevator. Then my mother received a call and went to the twentieth floor.
The client was bullying a male waiter who was kneeling on the ground. My mother helped the waiter up and sent him away. The recording had no sound, so I could not know what they said. Within minutes the client's anger faded. Before my mother left, he called her back and offered her a drink. She hesitated, then drank it all. Ye Qinwen came in. My mother left.
Afterward, as she left the elevator, she shook her head every few steps. The receptionist spoke to her, then watched her go.
‘There was something in that drink!’
The guest in 1010 had been right: high floors had more elevators and exits. When I ran away before, I had happened to reach another elevator that did not require a card.
I asked Jiang Manlin how I could find the bastard. My mother had already been cremated and the autopsy had only found alcohol. What could I still do?
‘I will beat him up,’ I said.
‘Then I will help you,’ she said.
Was it my mother who died or yours?
‘I am afraid you will accidentally kill him, then end up in prison.’
She decided to find Ye Bojun and see who the man was. I asked why. Surely Yan Lize was the person to ask; he was the one who had told Ye Bojun to bring the hard drive.
Then Jiang Manlin finally told me: Ye Bojun was Xinghe's successor, and Ye Qinwen's son.
What?
Then it was a good thing I had not spoken to him in the elevator. But why was someone like him renting my mother's shabby apartment? The footage made it look as if his mother had saved mine. Even rich people did not spend money like this.
08
I was changing in the staff area when Xiao, a colleague, said the manager wanted to see me. I panicked. Had they found out that I had slipped up to the twentieth floor?
The manager was quietly organizing files. He took out a card.
‘Starting today, your service grade is being raised. You will often deal with clients on the high floors. There are many people and many eyes up there. If it becomes too much, tell me.’
Too much? Not at all.
I left thanking him, thinking of how to thank Jiang Manlin. I had only just found a way in, and she had turned around and given me this gift. Now I had a legitimate reason to enter the twentieth floor.
I often saw Yan Lize in private rooms, seriously discussing projects with clients. He was strangely attractive when he was being proper. Then I would remember the face he made when he needed to be hit. What was wrong with having another younger brother? Younger brothers were nice too.
Strangely, I did not run into Ye Bojun at all. I did not dare ask Yan Lize about him.
Then Jiang Manlin called. She had sent me the client information from the footage and told me to call her before I acted. Her hands had been itching for a fight.
The bastard had some power. No wonder my mother had not dared refuse his drink.
A thought crossed my mind. I slapped my thigh. That was it.
Room 2004 seemed to be his personal room. Every time he came, he went there. We would meet him there.
Yan Lize arranged for him to come. I went in carrying drinks. He saw me and his eyes lit up.
‘You are Jiang Qing's daughter, right? No wonder I haven't seen her lately. She changed her daughter into a waitress.’
So he did not know my mother had died.
He tapped his chin. ‘If not for your face, I would wonder whether you were really her daughter. She was already a vice president. Why only arrange drink service for her daughter?’
Vice president? My mother was a vice president?
I did not know. My mother never talked to me about work. When I returned from abroad early without telling her, I followed her out of curiosity and saw her go to Xinghe. A man greeted her respectfully in the underground garage. I had followed her for days, trying to work out which rich man supported her.
One morning I overheard her speaking on the phone. She said I had come home and that she had always hoped I would stay abroad. Then she said, ‘Her temper is like mine.’ The person on the other end was talking. She asked, ‘Do you want to meet her?’
I shut my door before hearing more. I guessed wildly that I was either illegitimate or that someone had been paying her all these years. I thought of the eyes fathers gave my beautiful mother at school meetings. I thought she had simply chosen not to waste her advantages.
I moved out that day, told her I would work and earn money myself, and asked her not to contact me. She never sent another cent. I had been home less than a week, and she did not even ask me to stay longer.
09
‘What else do you know about my mother?’ I asked the client.
‘That's your mother, not mine.’
He asked Yan Lize to leave, then invited me to sit. I knew what kind of look he was giving me, but he had desire without courage. I brought my drink close.
‘Brother Li, drink first. Otherwise it will get warm.’
When he took the glass, he still touched my hand. I endured it. Soon he would not be able to jump around.
He sipped the drink and said, ‘It seems I'm really my father's son. Even the people we like come from the same mold.’
My pupils shrank. What did he mean?
He realized he had said too much, then tried to say only that his father stared at my mother the way he stared at me. I punched him without thinking. He fell onto the carpet.
‘Why are you hitting me, little sister?’
He pressed ice to his face and said I should leave him alone, and stop asking about my mother. Then he tried to go.
The door burst open. It was not Yan Lize, but Li Junqin's father, Li Yanxin.
When he saw me, he froze.
‘May I ask whether Li Wanyun is your mother?’
Everyone froze.
‘No. My mother is called Jiang Qing.’
He apologized for being presumptuous. He scolded his son and apologized to me if Junqin had offended me. Junqin tried to show his bruised face, but one look from his father made him quiet.
I said he had not offended me. He was just a little greasy. Then I left carrying my tray.
But what did Junqin mean? His father, Li Wanyun, my mother, me?
That night Jiang Manlin invited me to Yan Lize's home for dinner. I asked if she already had his keys. She said he had thrown her a spare long ago, and only now did she think of using it.
Near the subway, a car stopped in front of me. It was Ye Bojun.
‘Get in. I'll give you a ride.’
He knew I was going to Yan Lize's house. I did not mind saving taxi money.
I asked if he had arranged my promotion to A-level service. He admitted it. At first he did not know the friend Jiang Manlin wanted to help was me. He had only arranged a vacant waitress job. After he saw me with Yan Lize, he became seven or eight tenths sure. Yan Lize had asked him for surveillance access even though he never interfered with Xinghe.
‘You know about my mother?’
He would not answer directly. I thought he and the others had told him. As Xinghe's successor, he had to care if a vice president had suddenly disappeared. But why did it feel as if only a few of us cared about something that had happened so long ago?
10
Ye Bojun and I entered Yan Lize's home one after another. Yan Lize put down his dishes, took my bag, then hooked me under his arm.
‘Why didn't you leave with me, Ye Bojun? So you went to pick someone up.’
I stepped on Yan Lize's foot. He yelped and let me go.
The food was steaming. I reached for shrimp with my bare hands. Jiang Manlin shouted, ‘Did you wash your hands?’ and I slunk into the kitchen.
She told Ye Bojun to sit beside her. I wisely sat with Yan Lize. He was still thinking about the kick I gave him. Before I could pick up my chopsticks, Jiang Manlin stopped all of us.
‘I still have one question. Jiang Zhiyu, how do you know Ye Bojun?’
I was about to tell the truth, but he cut in. ‘We met by chance at the club.’
He lied. And I followed it, saying I had bumped into him at work. He had been the one who ‘bumped’ into me.
Yan Lize asked why I had needed him to get surveillance footage if I could just ask Ye Bojun. He saw Jiang Manlin's face and immediately started eating.
Ye Bojun said he had only come to pick me up because her mother's case had something strange about it. He had taken over his mother's work and could not watch coldly.
We discussed what to do next. Li Junqin said his father loved someone named Li Wanyun. Li Wanyun and my mother. My mother and Ye Bojun's mother. The surveillance showed that my mother and Ye Qinwen were close, and Ye Qinwen had given her the job. Why had she shown nothing when my mother disappeared?
Ye Bojun said he would talk to his mother. I would keep asking Junqin about women his father had known. Jiang Manlin's job, according to Ye Bojun, was to feed us. She was delighted.
After dinner, Yan Lize, Jiang Manlin, and I left Ye Bojun to wash dishes.
‘Why did you lie?’ I asked him.
He stopped with a soapy plate under running water.
‘What if I said I know who killed your mother?’
I looked at him sideways. Was it him? It did not seem likely. Who would kill someone and then rent their home?
‘I think who killed my mother is no longer the most important thing. The story behind her attracts me more. It makes me feel I never knew her at all.’
I turned off the water and looked at him seriously. ‘Whatever your reason for getting close to me, if you can help me uncover this secret... even if you killed my mother, I would not blame you.’
He faced forward and let out a long breath. ‘Then I can relax.’
‘And my mother was not killed by me.’
11
With Ye Bojun and Yan Lize behind me, I had more permission at the club. I even got into more of its business. Xinghe was not like my stereotype of an entertainment club. It was very strict about illegal transactions and the people involved.
One day, while I was nearly killed by bitter coffee, Ye Bojun came to find me on the twelfth floor.
‘Your mother's case may not be simple,’ he said. ‘She changed her name twenty-seven years ago. We cannot find information from before that.’
Twenty-seven years ago was the year I was born. He asked whether I was twenty-seven and I told him that meant he had to call me older sister. He smiled and changed the subject. He would go home that weekend and ask his mother, then come find me.
I told Yan Lize and Jiang Manlin. Yan Lize could not get near Li Junqin, who had apparently been forced by his father to study. No one could find a Li Wanyun. Li Junqin's mother had died over ten years before; his father had raised him alone and had not remarried or been near another woman.
Jiang Manlin had one clue. She asked her mother whether she knew the name Li Wanyun. Aunt Sun nearly pricked herself with her embroidery needle. She asked where Manlin had heard it, then said she did not know the person and told her to spend more energy helping at her father's company.
Manlin felt that her mother's reaction was wrong. She knew something and would not say it.
The next day Ye Bojun's mother called. Before he could come to Yan Lize's home, she came to find us.
When we entered, the bowls on the dining table were still half full. Ye Bojun looked as if he wanted to cry but did not. The other man in the room had to be his father. He brought tea, his face darkening, then lowered his eyes in panic when he saw me.
Ye Qinwen touched my face with tears still at the corners of her eyes.
‘You look so much like your mother.’
‘Aunt Ye, what exactly was your relationship with my mother?’
Jiang Qing had been called Li Wanying before she changed her name. Her father was a Singaporean Chinese. At school, she met Ye Qinwen, who had come to study abroad, and they became close friends.
The Li family said that Li Wanying was wild and did not listen to them. To Ye Qinwen, she had a freedom and clarity Ye Qinwen could not learn. Ye Qinwen believed she could face love as Li Wanying did, and that was how she made a terrible mistake. Li Wanying's life left its track.
But Li Wanying had said, ‘Maybe this is fate. Otherwise I would have had no other way to leave the Li family.’
Li Wanying was the youngest of five children. Her siblings had married, but she had no interest in it. After graduation, Ye Qinwen planned to return home after one more year to help with the family business, and Li Wanying chose to go with her. The Li family relaxed slightly, saying it would give her time to settle down.
After returning, Li Wanying joined the company of Ye Qinwen's future boyfriend. At first, he was not her boyfriend, and the two did not know each other. Li Wanying introduced them and watched them meet, understand each other, and fall in love.
Then their fathers met by chance in Singapore. They had been comrades during wartime. Discovering that their children knew each other and worked at the same company, they immediately arranged a marriage.
The boyfriend fought with his father but could not change anything. Li Wanying was furious that her father still did not respect her, but all the arguments only delayed the marriage.
Then Ye Qinwen's childhood friend, Li Yanxin, fell in love with Li Wanying the first time he saw her. She refused him again and again. Seeing her promised to someone she did not love, and Ye Qinwen trapped in the situation, he let love blind him.
He drugged Li Wanying, trying to force a marriage through sex. She contacted Ye Qinwen, who urgently contacted her nearby boyfriend. The boyfriend rescued Li Wanying, hit Li Yanxin, and told him he did not deserve her.
At the same time, Ye Qinwen had just received a medical result saying she had almost no chance of becoming pregnant in her lifetime. On the way from the hospital, her mind was in chaos. Even if she married the person she loved, she could not give him a child.
When she arrived, Li Wanying was hiding in the bathroom and her boyfriend sat miserably in a chair. Ye Qinwen poured water, took out medicine she had bought on the way, and locked the two of them in the room.
When he woke, he demanded to know why. He learned that his girlfriend could not have children. It took him a long time to come to terms with both things, but from that day on he could not face Li Wanying.
Li Wanying woke knowing she had been assaulted, but her mind was blurred and she did not know who had done it. Under pressure, Ye Qinwen admitted it was her boyfriend and that she had arranged it. Li Wanying slapped her and stood to buy emergency contraception.
Ye Qinwen stopped her. She knew she had done wrong, but begged Li Wanying to let the mistake continue and keep the child, if there was one. She knew she was selfish. She hoped for a son and hoped he might one day return to the family line.
Li Wanying saw through her. ‘Ye Qinwen, you betrayed all the years of our friendship.’
Ye Qinwen had known Li Wanying from her first year in Singapore, and Li Wanying had then spent another two years with her after returning home.
‘I did not know you looked down on his love for you so much. I feel sorry for him.’
They both cried. Before leaving, Li Wanying said only this: ‘If there is a child, I will keep it not because of you or him. It is because I want to.’
She used the pregnancy to fight to cancel the arranged marriage. Her father could no longer insist, and the other family would not allow their son to marry a pregnant woman whose child's father they did not know.
A few years later, Li Yanxin followed his family's arrangement and married Li Junqin's mother. He only heard that Li Wanying's marriage was canceled and that Ye Qinwen's childhood friend had married as planned. After that, nobody saw Li Wanying again. It was as if she had disappeared from the world.
When Ye Bojun began high school, Ye Qinwen saw Jiang Zhiyu while handling his enrollment. She followed me, found Jiang Qing, and knew she was Li Wanying. She sent Ye Bojun abroad, which made him see Jiang Manlin and Yan Lize less often.
Xinghe was preparing to open then. Ye Qinwen chose Q City carefully and, unexpectedly, found her old friend there. She struggled for a long time but went to see Li Wanying. Li Wanying refused to meet her several times. The last time, she opened the door.
After the broken engagement, Li Wanying had completely fallen out with her family. Her father said that if she stepped out of the house, he would no longer have a daughter. She changed her name to Jiang Qing. Her mother, feeling sorry for her, gave her the trust fund that should have been hers, so that she could raise a child alone without too much hardship.
She moved from T City to Q City because she planned to send Jiang Zhiyu abroad one day. She never expected to meet Ye Qinwen again. They spoke about ordinary family things and both cried again. They carefully avoided meeting when I was there.
After I went abroad, Ye Qinwen invited Li Wanying to help manage Xinghe. By then it had been open for nearly three years. Li Wanying finally agreed and became vice president as Jiang Qing. Her professional background fit.
The day Jiang Qing had her accident was her final day at Xinghe. Ye Bojun was coming home, and Ye Qinwen would slowly bring him into Xinghe's work. Ye Qinwen thought enough years had passed that they could let the past go. Jiang Qing could not. She could not forgive.
She could not act as if nothing had happened and return to their lives. She had chosen to have Jiang Zhiyu and did not regret it, but she could not explain the feeling of being unable to get past it. She simply could not get past it.
She told Ye Qinwen that after leaving Xinghe, she would move to Victoria. It would be their last meeting. Ye Qinwen did not insist. They spoke for more than an hour, and Ye Qinwen walked her to the elevator.
Then Jiang Qing received a call that Li Junqin was causing trouble. Li Yanxin's earlier act had made Ye Qinwen cut ties with him. Unable to find Li Wanying, he resented the Ye family. After his investment project failed, he humbly brought Li Junqin to ask Ye Qinwen for help. After that, Li Junqin came all the way to Xinghe, occupied Room 2004, and kept demanding that Jiang Qing appear.
To Jiang Qing, it was like a child throwing a tantrum without knowing his strength. She went to the twentieth floor. Ye Qinwen followed because she could not let him continue. Just then Jiang Qing drank the wine Li Junqin handed her. When she saw Ye Qinwen, she left the scene to her and went first.
‘Zhiyu, it was all my fault,’ Ye Qinwen said. ‘I should have noticed there was something wrong with the drink. I should not have pushed the father of the child to hurry.’
I stared at the man across from me. Jiang Manlin and Yan Lize saw my reaction and froze too.
‘I... I killed Jiang Qing,’ the man said, burying his face in his hands.
Ji Delin was Ye Qinwen's husband and Ye Bojun's father. It was Ye Bojun's birthday, his first after returning home from years abroad. Ji Delin was delayed at work, and Ye Qinwen urged him to hurry while he was going to pick her up. Near the Xinghe intersection, a woman ran the red light.
Ji Delin called the hospital and police, but because he had never experienced anything like this, he did not dare go up and look at her. By the time Ye Qinwen arrived, Jiang Qing had already been sent to the hospital. The police confirmed the car owner was not at fault. Because a person had died, Ye Qinwen thought they should give more compensation. They left it entirely to the lawyer and did not show themselves.
Ye Bojun did not see it that way. He knew that he had been adopted from an orphanage by Ji Delin and Ye Qinwen, and knew what parents meant to a child. He began investigating whom his father had killed and whether she had family or children. Information about Li Wanying had been sealed by the Li family, leaving only what existed about Jiang Qing. That was how he found me.
He became my tenant, indirectly arranged my work at Xinghe, met me there, gave Yan Lize surveillance access, investigated my mother, and asked Ye Qinwen about her relationship with my mother...
12
I looked at Uncle Ji, who was so overcome with pain he could barely hold himself together, and Aunt Ye, who had somehow moved to sit beside him. I picked up my tea. It was cold, and a little bitter.
I did not know how to respond. Or maybe I did not know what response I was supposed to have.
My mother's life felt like something from a previous lifetime. It was so far away. I could not fully enter her pain, and I could not fully understand the choices she made.
Was she in pain? As far back as I could remember, she was almost always cheerful. Even when I made her unhappy, she would complain a little, calm herself down, then come back and talk things through with me.
Why did she choose not to forgive? I would not forgive either, if it were me. Why? I did not know.
Then I said something that surprised even me.
"Uncle Ji, Aunt Ye, could you put your company, including Xinghe, in my name?"
Ten eyes looked at me, completely still.
"I am joking. Do not take it seriously. The mood is too heavy. I cannot hold it."
"The dead cannot come back. You did not mean for this to happen. And besides... if what happened back then was still hurting her, dying may have been a release for her."
"But I do not think my mother was unhappy. Otherwise, she would not have said she wanted to move to Victoria, right?"
I had once gone to British Columbia with my mother. We wanted to eat at Jam Cafe in Vancouver, but the queue was too long, so we gave up. Then we found a branch in Victoria. She ordered the same dish for days and never got tired of it. The fried chicken was good. The sausage gravy was good too.
After that, Victoria became her ideal place to grow old. In the end, she delayed it because of me, and because of Xinghe. Maybe that was the biggest regret of her life.
"So let us stop torturing each other," I said. "I think that is what my mother would say too."
I did not want to stay any longer. Before I left, Uncle Ji said, "You are a lot like your mother."
I gave him a thin smile. "I think so too."
Yan Lize drove us away. The three of them stood behind us and watched.
"Where to next?" he asked.
"Li Junqin's house."
"What? Are you going to beat him up?" Jiang Manlin leaned forward from the back seat.
"He does not know that my mother has died, and I am not going to hold him responsible. There is no need to punish him. For some people, being tied to a living death can be harder than dying."
There were still things I wanted to ask him in person.
Not long after we were announced, Li Yanxin came out to receive us himself. Once we sat down, he asked, "Wanying changed her name to Jiang Qing?"
I nodded. "Uncle Li. My mother and I are not going to pursue what happened back then, so please do not carry too much pressure either."
There was guilt and tenderness in the way he looked at me.
"Then... who is your father?"
The question had finally arrived. "He died not long after I was born. I do not know much about him."
Sorry, Uncle Ji. I did that on purpose.
When Li Yanxin began to ask about my mother, I stopped him. "Please do not ask. She probably would not want to be remembered by you anymore."
He opened his mouth, then said nothing.
"Where is Li Junqin?"
"He is in the study, in a remote meeting."
"No need to call him. I want to talk to him alone. That day he was quite rude. I might want to hit him."
I slipped into the study quietly. He was still wearing his headphones and talking to people on video. When he took them off and stretched, he jumped out of his chair.
"Why are you here? Do not tell me you came to hit me again."
His face had recovered well. When I rolled up my sleeve, he crouched down and covered his head.
"And did you put laxatives in my drink that day? I was miserable for days."
I pulled his chair over and sat down. "Li Junqin, I do not understand. You are such a coward. How did you dare to provoke my mother?"
"Do you really want to know? Then promise you will not hit me."
"If I wanted to hit you, I would have done it already."
The day Li Yanxin took him to see Ye Qinwen, she refused to help. Before they left, Li Yanxin saw Jiang Qing in the distance and stared at her for a long time. It was an expression Li Junqin had never seen before.
His mother had once told him that his father had deeply loved someone, hurt her, and then lost contact with her. He thought Jiang Qing might be that person. But his father asked an employee her name and learned it was not Li Wanying. He left disappointed.
"I thought I could keep bothering Aunt Jiang. Maybe she could become my stepmother."
I stared at this idiot, half believing him. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-three..."
I pressed down the hand that was starting to move again. "What meeting were you in just now?"
"My thesis defense."
The Li father and son really did not feel related by blood.
"So where is your mother?"
"What? Do you want my mother to be your stepmother too?"
"No. I want her to be my mother-in-law." He gave a shy little laugh.
"Ah -"
Fine. Even if there was no bump, his forehead would swell.
"Jiang Zhiyu! You promised not to hit me!"
"Little brother, if I listened to you, I would not be your older sister."
I patted my hands and left. If I stayed, I was afraid I would beat him to death.
"Uncle Li, he has already apologized to me. Do not be angry with him. Raising him like this is actually quite good."
Li Yanxin watched me walk out, then looked at Li Junqin following behind while holding his forehead. His face went dark. Jiang Manlin and Yan Lize had been holding back their laughter the whole time.
"What did Li Junqin say about the drink?" Jiang Manlin asked.
"I did not ask. If Li Yanxin had been more like Li Junqin back then, I think my mother would have said yes to him."
I changed the subject quickly. Yan Lize understood there was more behind my words. He turned back and made Jiang Manlin deal with me.
"Drive properly," she said, looking down at her phone. Yan Lize gripped the steering wheel harder.
13
I saw Ye Bojun and his family again a year later.
I had sold both my apartment and my mother's. I planned to live without a fixed home for a while. With the truth about my mother clear, Ye Bojun no longer had a reason to rent her apartment. I even wondered if he had really lived there much at all. When he moved out, I returned the extra rent I had charged him.
"By the way, how old are you this year?" I asked.
He looked up, surprised. "Twenty-five."
"Then you really do have to call me older sister."
He gave a helpless smile. "I never said I wanted to."
I kept helping him pack. "Please take good care of Aunt Ye and Uncle Ji from now on. They are getting older. I do not want my mother's story to weigh on them too much."
He went quiet, then said, "My father is your father too. Are you not going to do your share?"
"After I was born, I treated my father as dead. I do not want to become family with Uncle Ji. At most, he was someone my mother once knew. That is all."
"All right. You do not need to remind me. I know what to do."
He did not have much to move. Soon he was finished.
"Older sister, you can come to my home sometime. My mother talks about you a lot."
He tossed me the key and walked toward the elevator. But I knew I would not take the initiative to see them again. Aunt Ye and Uncle Ji cared deeply about people. When they saw me, they would think of my mother. I did not want them to live with that weight.
On the day I left, Ye Bojun brought his parents to the airport. Yan Lize and Jiang Manlin were there too. We did not say much. I wanted to give them a hug, the way my mother used to hug me.
As I walked toward Ji Delin, my chest felt tight. As his only blood-related child, would he hope to hear me call him Dad? I did not know. But when he hugged me back, he was stiff and awkward, as if my gesture was more than he had expected.
Aunt Ye reminded me again and again to be careful, to get insurance, and so on. I laughed. She and my mother really were not the same kind of person. I did not know how they had become such good friends in the first place.
When I said goodbye to Ye Bojun, I repeated what I had told him when he moved out. Then I added, "If you feel too much pressure, you can always call me across the ocean."
After his family left, Yan Lize and Jiang Manlin stayed with me for check-in. Jiang Manlin and I walked ahead and whispered.
"Zhiyu, when you leave, what will happen to him?"
"I will leave him to you."
"No way. I am going to keep chasing Ye Bojun."
"Did you not call him your ex-husband?"
"Pah. People can get back together after breaking up. They can remarry after divorce too."
After check-in, Jiang Manlin left first. Yan Lize pulled my suitcase and walked me to border control. I turned and hugged him, and he held me tightly.
"Are you not going to say anything?"
His heart was beating so fast.
"Once I finish handing over my work, I will come find you."
I pulled back and blinked at him. "Really?"
"Yes. My brother agreed. My parents said, 'Whatever. As long as someone is running the company.'"
"So you are going to live on your family's money forever?"
"Jiang Zhiyu! Do not look down on me like that. I work in financial investment consulting. I can work remotely."
"Oh, we have upset Young Master Yan now." I even raised a little fist toward his chest. Trying to act cute gave me the creeps. Going a little crazy was more natural.
"All right, I am not teasing you anymore. I have to go in."
I wheeled my suitcase forward a few steps, then turned back and crooked a finger at him. He walked over, confused.
"How about one more goodbye kiss?"
His eyes lit up. He put an arm around my shoulder and leaned down. This time, I met him halfway.
(End)
After finishing this, I realized I had still been influenced by quick, addictive short fiction. I have not read that much of it, but I have to admit that some writers of that kind of story write beautifully. Beautifully enough to make me cry with envy.
While writing this story, I really did cry for Ye Bojun. It surprised me. I guess only the person who created a character knows how many relationships are behind a change in that character's original setting.