AD | Chapter 4

In the end, I took the job.

I figured I owed Chen Hao a thank-you. I invited him to dinner at Aifengtang and ordered his favorite—crab congee.

Chen Hao was a conscientious agent. Before the congee even arrived, he got straight to business.

“Well?”

I answered honestly. “They raised the fee and paid part of it upfront. I’m allowed to request changes to the material, but I have to clear them with Lin Zhian first.”

“So I’m no longer the middleman?” he said. “Actually, you know, I never took a cut from you.”

I felt my face heat up. It took some effort to keep myself from blushing.

Chen Hao nodded.

“Writing an autobiography for a celebrity still comes with pressure. There are things you can’t say, and things you absolutely mustn’t say. Look.”

He handed me a newspaper.

The entertainment section. A huge headline jumped out at me:

SINGER LIN JIAHUI EXPOSED AS FORMER NIGHTCLUB WORKER; MANAGEMENT COMPANY DECLINES COMMENT

Chen Hao said, “I happen to know the reporter who wrote this. He told me that not long after the story came out, he received a very generous sum of money, along with a very clear request not to mention it again. And the people who witnessed the interview immediately changed their stories, too. Money really does make things easier.”

“At least that proves Lin Jiahui really is a mysterious woman,” I said.

I paused.

“Was the money delivered by a man who was ridiculously handsome?”

Chen Hao frowned.

“Xiao Qin, I’m suddenly regretting this. Can you back out? I have a feeling this is going to be trouble…”

“Ha.”

I laughed.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

He said nothing.

“But I can’t turn back now.”

“Why?” The tone of my voice clearly startled him.

I rattled off the answer.

“Because I’ve already installed two new air conditioners, bought a bottle of Jo Malone rose perfume, and there are two workers sweating their asses off in my bathroom right now installing my new bathtub.”

I expected Chen Hao to get so angry he’d throw a spoon at me.

Instead, he merely sighed.

“Think it through carefully.”

“Thank you,” I said after a moment. “I know you’ve always tried to find opportunities for me. Otherwise, I might have starved to death in Beijing.”

“Don’t say that. Besides, I owe you.”

That irritated me all over again.

“Chen Hao, how many times have I told you? You don’t owe me anything. I don’t blame anyone for what happened. And I don’t want you bringing it up again.”

“But I…”

“But what? You’re annoying, you know that? How many times do I have to say it? I don’t want to talk about the past.”

He fell silent.

After a long moment, his voice trembled slightly.

“Xiao Qin, I heard yesterday that…Zhang Li…came back to China.”

Zhang Li.

Who the hell was Zhang Li?

I propped my head in my hand and thought.

What exactly was Zhang Li to me, anyway?

“My head hurts,” I said.

“You’re still afraid to hear his name?” Chen Hao asked.

“What do you think?”

“I thought you said it was all in the past.”

Apparently even Chen Hao had moments when he knew he was right and refused to let go.

I said goodbye to him and went home alone.

I lit a cigarette—a slightly stale Red Double Happiness I’d managed to dig out from somewhere—and took two deep drags.

The past rose around me like smoke.

Zhang Li.

Yes.

I was afraid to hear that name.

Zhang Li was my first love.

Four years ago, I came to Beijing because Zhang Li wrote me a letter.

Xiao Qin, why won’t you come? Don’t you trust me? Do you really think I’d let you go hungry and cold, or make you sleep on the streets? Would I ever treat you badly?

Back then, Zhuang Xiao Qin was a stupid girl.

I read that letter and happily ran off to Beijing.

I was eighteen, fresh out of high school, with no useful skills and nothing to my name except a pretty face. I believed that every girl in love was a princess.

At first, I really was.

The sweet days lasted for several months.

Zhang Li worked at an advertising agency. He often brought his colleagues home to eat the boiled fish I made—badly—and would proudly announce, “This is my wife!”

Chen Hao was one of those envious colleagues.

I just hadn’t noticed what was really in most of their eyes: condescension.

They were highly educated and well paid.

I’d just graduated from high school and spent the better part of a year drifting around without a job.

But happiness can blind you.

Back then, I had no idea I was only Cinderella.

How did everything fall apart?

Zhang Li told me he was going to Europe to study communications.

Scholarships were hard to come by for international students studying communications, so I asked him:

“What about the money?”

He suddenly exploded.

I had never seen him so furious.

“Money? You have the nerve to ask me about money? You’ve been in Beijing for a year and never once thought about getting a job. Do you know how much the rent costs? The utilities? How much I’ve spent on your clothes?”

I was stunned.

For a very long time, all I could do was whisper in my own defense:

“But I didn’t come here on my own…”

I didn’t understand then that it didn’t matter.

When love is gone, it’s gone.

You can scream until your throat breaks. You can blame the heavens and curse your fate.

None of it will bring it back.

Zhang Li really did leave.

Two weeks later, he went away.

Before he left, he wrote me a note:

Xiao Qin, there are two months left on the rent. Your bank card is in your bag. You should know the PIN. There’s another eight thousand yuan in the account. It should be enough to get you by until you find a job.

Two months.

A very long time.

I took the card and went to China World.

A Versace printed chiffon dress cost four thousand yuan.

A pair of Ferragamo lambskin heels cost another three thousand.

That left me with a thousand.

I withdrew it, went to Santia for steak, and took a taxi home.

That day, I was beautiful.

In the white chiffon dress, with silver heels glittering beneath my feet, I looked like a princess.

All I needed was a diamond tiara.

When the little knife touched my wrist, please believe me: I was still desperately attached to life.

I woke up in a hospital.

My left wrist was wrapped in thick bandages. An IV was dripping into my right arm.

I spent a long time trying to remember what had happened.

I was genuinely puzzled.

What had gone wrong?

Had I somehow pulled a Marilyn Monroe—taken sleeping pills and then called someone for help?

I turned slightly.

A voice greeted me, wild with relief.

“Zhuang Xiao Qin! You’re awake!”

It was Chen Hao.

He told me he was sorry.

That night, he had gone to my apartment intending to apologize. I wouldn’t open the door. He sensed something was wrong, broke it down, and found me barely alive.

“What do you have to be sorry for?” I asked weakly.

He said, “A month ago, the company had a party. I introduced one of my girlfriends to Zhang Li.”

"And then?"

“That girl fell for him. Her family is very wealthy. They’ve all immigrated to Switzerland. She’s paying for Zhang Li to study communications in Stuttgart, Germany.”

He paused.

“They’re getting married in Vienna.”

At that moment, I felt an enormous sense of relief.

Real relief.

From somewhere deep inside me.

So leaving me hadn’t been my fault.

He had simply found a better life.

Chen Hao took care of me in the hospital for half a month, barely leaving my side.

I told him I wanted to go home. I couldn’t afford the medical bills anymore.

“I’ll cover them,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me. I owe you.”

Chen Hao left the advertising agency and joined a second-rate publishing house.

Everyone said he’d lost his mind.

His official explanation was that advertising agencies encouraged a shallow, frantic kind of life. Besides, he was getting older and no longer wanted to spend his life working endless overtime.

But I knew the real reason.

Maybe I was the only one that knew.

He had read the blog I wrote when I was bored and decided I had potential.

“Zhuang Xiao Qin,” he said, “do you want to pay me back for your medical bills?”

“Yes.”

“Then how about writing a book for a director? His name goes on the cover, of course. Interested?”

“Why me?” I asked. “I’ve never written anything.”

“Because you’re cheap,” Chen Hao said.

Then he added, “And because I owe you.”

That was my first job as a ghostwriter.

I remember it clearly.

I buried my head and wrote more than a hundred thousand words.

I earned five thousand yuan.

When Chen Hao put those bills into my hand, I cried.

It was strange.

When Zhang Li left me, I hadn’t cried.

When I decided to kill myself, I hadn’t shed a single tear.

But when those red banknotes touched my skin, I completely fell apart.

I cried until I could barely breathe.

“It turns out,” I told Chen Hao between sobs, “that of everything in this world, money is what I love most.”

“If you need to cry, then cry,” he said quietly.

“Everything passes.”

Everything passes.

It was one of those truths that never stopped being true.

Heartbreak, love, laughter, tears—all of it eventually loses its battle with time and becomes nothing more than memory.

But now he was back.

That bastard was back.

I had spent years gathering all my strength, imagining how I would get my revenge.

And now that the opportunity had finally arrived, I had no idea what to do.

Maybe I should deliberately show up in front of him, slap him across the face, and tell him that I was no longer the Zhuang Xiao Qin I had once been.

Ridiculous.

Even if we lived in the same city, we might never have a reason to see each other again.

Maybe that was better.

Neither of us would have to witness the other’s triumph.

Neither of us would have to feel the other’s pain.

So what was I afraid of?