Chapter 22 The Eighth Day
The air was still.
A stream of bubbles rose from the fish tank.
The usually docile fish had suddenly become restless for some reason, swishing their tails anxiously back and forth. In the thirty-centimeter-wide tank, the two chased each other as if something was threatening them.
Wen Bairan recalled what the shop owner had said when she bought the fish:
Betta fish are territorial by nature. Two males cannot be kept together—it’s best to keep one male and one female, or mix them with other tropical fish.
She hadn’t expected Zhou Lin to come.
Why was he here?
She thought they had cleanedly broken up.
Seeing him with a new partner at the mall that afternoon, in theory, he shouldn’t have thought of her again.
But now, beneath Zhou Lin’s fury, that hint of imperceptible hurt and betrayal made her feel that perhaps it wasn’t completely over.
Heartache was masked by flustered panic.
She gathered her collar and stood up from the couch, forcing calm into her voice, though a tremor ran through it. "Zhou Lin, calm down."
Zhou Lin was calm.
Calm in a way that surprised even himself.
His fists were clenched at his sides, the veins on the back of his hands bulging as if about to burst through his skin. The distance between him and that man was less than two steps—one punch, and he could guarantee he’d make his face bloom with bruises.
But he couldn’t move.
Something was holding him back.
Wen Bairan sensed his barely restrained intent and instinctively placed herself between him and Song Xu, her brow furrowing. "Zhou Lin..."
Song Xu was always calm, steady as a rock in any situation.
Zhou Lin, however, was a powder keg—once ignited, he was capable of anything.
She imperceptibly straightened her posture, her heel pressing against Song Xu’s toe to make him step back.
Outwardly, they seemed close, but in reality, the fine strands of hair at her crown were just grazing his throat.
Song Xu had already sized up their strength difference the moment Zhou Lin entered. He didn’t think Zhou Lin could touch him.
But Wen Bairan’s actions still surprised him.
She was tense, yet controlled.
The immense mental pressure had unleashed a stubborn, resilient strength within her.
His deep eyes lowered, capturing the image of her furrowed brow, carving it faintly but permanently somewhere deep in his chest.
A faint thrill of satisfaction.
He lifted his eyelids lazily, and backlit by moonlight, the victor permitted himself a faint smile.
Bang—
The fish in the tank churned the water more fiercely, the sound of their bodies hitting the glass making Wen Bairan’s heart lodge in her throat.
Zhou Lin’s dark eyes were like meteors streaking through the sky, wrapped in flames that could scorch everything they touched the moment they landed.
The air crackled with invisible sparks, smelling of something scorched.
Time ticked by.
The open door behind him created a cross-breeze through the room, a strong, hot wind howling as if trying to sweep everything away.
Uncertain what he was waiting for, Wen Bairan felt as if she were being parched.
She swallowed reflexively.
Her throat stung as if needled.
Abruptly, the light in Zhou Lin’s eyes guttered out.
"You have guts."
Leaving those final words, he turned suddenly and stormed out of the house with the gust of wind.
The door slammed shut with a loud crash. Wen Bairan’s heart, pounding in fear, sank and shattered into countless pieces.
Her façade of composure crumbled instantly. She swayed and collapsed.
The floor tiles were bare, and a deep chill radiated from the floor, flowing relentlessly through her abdomen, seizing her organs.
Even her breath misted in the cold.
Song Xu crouched down, gently wrapping his arm around her shoulders and holding her against his chest. "You were going to have to face this eventually."
His voice was cool and thin as ice.
It sliced through the deepest defenses of her heart.
Yes, she was going to have to face it eventually.
Face the fact that she had chosen the point of no return to break up;
Face the revulsion and disillusionment in Zhou Lin’s eyes when he learned the truth;
Face her own greed and vanity.
Now, she had no choice but to admit that her air of elegance and detachment were all fake.
Her pride was merely a facade masking her flaws.
She was crass, mercenary, and scheming. She had greedily hoped that even after breaking up, the image she left in Zhou Lin’s heart would remain pure.
But she wasn’t pure anymore.
Hadn’t been for a long time.
Never really had been.
She had followed her desires and succumbed to her basest instincts.
Reason offered no resistance.
It only proved that this ugliness had always been inside her.
She understood.
But why was she still choking too much to speak?
Song Xu lifted her from the floor; the sofa was still warm.
The skin beneath her skirt touched that warmth and immediately jerked back as if burned.
Song Xu caught her, one hand slipping around her waist, the other lifting her thigh, pulling her close against him.
An intimate position.
Full of desire, yet empty of it.
His narrowed eyes tightened slightly, his tone concerned. “Vivi?”
Wen Bairan buried her face in his shoulder, refusing to lift it. She thought she would cry, but her eyes were dry.
She tried to cry for a while, but no tears came.
She slid down from him, standing barefoot on the sofa, her slender legs merging with the cream-colored leather in the darkness.
She sank down weakly along the wall.
Like a cloud.
Song Xu watched her curl into a ball, hugging her knees, the lower half of her face buried in her arms, leaving only her eyes. Bright, yet hollow.
Her forehead was tightly furrowed.
“Vivi, don’t be like this.”
Wen Bairan’s long eyelashes fluttered as she lifted her gaze to him.
Song Xu’s worried face gradually came into focus in her eyes.
After a long moment, she forced a smile.
A bleak one. “I’m fine.”
By the time Jiang Shijin arrived at Lingang Bay, Zhou Lin was sitting in his car smoking.
//
The designated driver had already left.
He sat alone in the passenger seat, windows and doors tightly shut, the interior filled with smoke, like a hazy dream.
The orange-gold supercar was eye-catching at any hour. Jiang Shijin parked beside it, hurriedly jumped out, and knocked on the window.
“Lin? Zhou Lin! Open up, Zhou Lin!”
The door swung open from the inside, smoke spilling out first.
Jiang Shijin coughed and stepped back as the door swung upward like a wing, releasing even more white smoke—so thick he almost thought Zhou Lin was burning charcoal inside.
“Coughing!” He waved the smoke away, bent down, and peered inside, stiffening suddenly.
The man in the passenger seat stared straight ahead, his glazed eyes fixed intently on a particular window in the building before him.
The side of his face, clenching the cigarette, was tense with an unspoken frenzy and fragility.
He stared, stunned. “Ah Lin...”
It had been twenty minutes.
That man still hadn’t come down.
What were they doing up there?
Upstairs, the red wine on the coffee table was nearly finished, two glasses nestled intimately together. He knew better than anyone how the right amount of alcohol could ignite passion from within. When Wen Bairan was pressed against the sofa, her hair was disheveled, her face slightly flushed, her gaze dazed and seductively hazy.
She likely didn’t realize what that meant.
The faint flush of intoxication softened her usual coldness, making her aloofness and pride appear even more alluringly delicate.
No one could keep their cool or steady their heart around a Wen Bairan like this.
She was so sexy it made you want to ruin her.
His jaw clenched silently.
The cigarette butt and ash fell.
The burn swept across the back of his hand, the reflex from the scorching heat twitching his skin.
Zhou Lin had forbidden Wen Bairan from drinking outside, especially in front of other men.
That time she went out for a business dinner, the group ended up at Du.
It was his turf; she knew it was safe there.
He waited at the next table, waiting to see how she would explain herself to him after dealing with those people.
The night at Du was sweltering, burning his nerves.
At the next table, a greasy, fat-faced man grinned obsequiously, dirty lust oozing from his eyes, clouding his vision. When Wen Bairan stood up for the third time to accept a drink from that man, the short, thick finger that brushed against the back of her hand seemed unbearably vulgar to Zhou Lin.
The ashtray on the table was made of stainless steel.
Throwing it from that distance was like dropping an atomic bomb between them.
It drew blood accurately, and chaos erupted.
People ran around screaming.
When he turned around, Wen Bairan was gone.
In the darkness behind the side door corridor, Zhou Lin’s punishing kiss made Wen Bairan cry out in pain.
“Zhou Lin, are you insane! That was my client!”
She had seen it all; before he acted, she had even shot him a warning look not to do it.
Zhou Lin ignored her completely.
"What kind of client makes you go drinking with him? Can’t you see he has ulterior motives toward you? He was already touching you—and you expected me to take it?" His large hand closed around the nape of her neck, his grip so tight it made her wince in pain. The smell of alcohol and perfume on her mingled into a foul mix that infuriated him.
"Wen Bairan, you are my woman. I, Zhou Lin, have not fallen so low as to need you to sell your body!"
*Smack!*
A crisp sound echoed through the quiet night of the back alley.
Wen Bairan stared furiously at Zhou Lin’s head, snapped to the side from the force, her voice thick with a weariness deeper than the night.
"Do you have any idea how much effort I put into landing this client?"
"Just to make you and your family think I'm good enough, I’ve been killing myself to prove my worth. While you wake up comfortably in your villa every day, I’ve already been out all day in the blistering heat for work."
"Zhou Lin, not everyone has the luxury of acting as recklessly as you."
Her eyes welled up, but she didn't let the tears fall.
She stubbornly refused to show even a hint of vulnerability to him at a time like this.
"You can debase yourself all you want."
"But you don't get to insult me like that."
It was the first time in Zhou Lin’s life he had been slapped, but he felt no anger.
The sting on his cheek made Wen Bairan’s disappointment crystal clear.
He hated seeing that disappointment.
She knew it, yet she still looked at him that way.
Who was really insulting whom?
A bitter end was inevitable.
He even thought about ending it right then and there.
Wen Bairan didn’t come to find him. He drowned himself in alcohol, but it wasn’t enough—he almost wished he could drink himself to death, just so she would know what regret felt like.
It was at this moment that Xiao Zimei saw her chance.
She took him home and intentionally left a piece of lace lingerie in his room.
After much pleading from Jiang Shijin, he finally brought Wen Bairan over. She saw it the second she walked in, but she said nothing.
She had always been calm, as if everything was water off a duck's back.
Zhou Lin sometimes wondered if she had ever really loved him at all.
He told her to leave, and she said okay.
She made him a cup of honey water and placed it by the bedside. As she straightened up, he yanked her down onto the bed.
Zhou Lin hated her so much he wanted to strangle that expressionless, cold face of hers.
He asked her, "How can you be so cold? Look at the state I'm in, and you still want to leave?"
Wen Bairan, accustomed to his mercurial temper, sighed deeply. In the end, that slap had hurt them both. She touched his face and said, "A Lin, we can't keep going on like this."
In the eyes of outsiders, Zhou Lin was a young master, someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
But Wen Bairan knew—he was empty inside.
Over the years, aside from marriage, his pride had become another forbidden zone.
She had carefully protected it, not letting it suffer even the slightest harm.
So he took it for granted, enjoying how she worked hard to build a life while also effortlessly propping him up.
But in the end, he was beyond fixing.
He never asked about her job after that.
She had probably resigned voluntarily and landed a new job.
It crossed his selfish mind that even this new job was unnecessary—she should just stay home and focus on loving him.
It wasn’t until earlier, when he saw those two figures close together upstairs, that Zhou Lin was suddenly struck by memories of the past.
Shock, loss, anger—along with a crushing wave of insecurity and hurt, surged within him.
Was she leaving him?
These emotions hit him all at once, tying his hands and feet. He couldn’t move, didn’t dare to move.
He asked himself—did he even have the right to get angry?
They had already broken up.
Suddenly, Zhou Lin understood why Wen Bairan had been so calm earlier.
That lingerie wasn't just about Xiao Zimei.
It represented countless other times over the past eight years.
She had become numb.
Zhou Lin couldn’t remember when she had stopped crying over the gossip about him and other women.
She wasn’t one to cry easily, so her tears were precious.
Night after night, that feeling slowly cooled.
She had become a puppet.
There had been many times in the past when he had hurt her.
He knew himself—he had weaponized his own vulnerability to secure her doting love.
But he had overlooked how disappointment piles up like grains of sand in your hand.
When it could no longer be held, she chose to toss him aside.
The night wind scattered the smoke inside and outside the car.
The perennial snow covering the volcano melted under the moonlight,
winding into a stream, flowing between the mountains.
The cold glimmer of water flickered across Zhou Lin's face.
It was as if only having come here did he finally understand—
from love to coldness,
Wen Bairan had spent eight years walking alone.
…