Nuptial Chamber Next Door

We bought a lot of food we used to love in Japan from the supermarket. I told Ye Zhengchen that all this might not fit in the small refrigerator I had. He immediately bought a double door refrigerator.

I didn’t dare tell him the refrigerator might not fit my house, for fear that he would end up buying me a big house!

When we came back from the supermarket, I spotted Zhong Tian pacing in front of my apartment. He seemed to be deciding whether to go up and ring my doorbell.

Ye Zhengchen looked at him and scrunched his brows in displeasure but said nothing.

“ I’ll go and talk to him. Wait for me in the car”, I said.

Ye Zhengchen pulled at my hand, “ Girl..”

“ There is no way we are getting back together again. I just want to tell him a few things.”

He hesitated and then let me go. “ I’ll wait for you.”

I called out to him, “Zhong Tian,are you looking for me?”

He stopped pacing and looked at Ye Zhengchen’s car. Then he spotted Ye Zhengchen through the windshield and turned towards me.

“ Xiao Bing, I am leaving town today. Before I go, I wanted to tell you something.”

“ Go ahead.”

He took out an ATM card. “ This is your money. I’m giving it back to you. Thank you for helping me out when I needed it.”

“ I should thank you. Even though I didn’t treat you very well, you still helped me resolve our breakup with my dad…”

Before I could finish my sentence, Zhong Tian walked up to me and hugged me.

“ Xiao Bing, I am really, really sorry! Please let me just hold you for a while. Just like a brother…”

I didn’t mind hugging him as we said goodbye, but Ye Zhengchen was watching.

I raised my hands to push him away, when I heard him whisper, “Ye Zhengchen told me that you were willing to sleep with him in order to save me. He even told me that you were prepared to marry him to secure MY future…”

“What the hell are you talking about?!” I pushed him away with force. Why did Ye Zhengchen tell him all this? He knew this would be a big blow to Zhong Tian!

“Xiao Bing, you are too gullible”, Zhong Tian shook his head in desperation.

“ I didn’t steal a single penny and I haven’t committed any crime. I was very close to the task force from the beginning and I was feeding them information about the situation. I was even giving them evidence. Ye Zhengchen did not need to save me. I would never go to jail! As for the news on my death penalty, he deliberately released that news to pressurise you.”

My brain stopped thinking.

I turned around and walked over to Ye Zhengchen like a zombie.

He was still sitting in his car, and I could not discern the expression on his face.

“ He planned all this…including the corruption charges.”

“ The corruption case?” I shook my head, “ that’s impossible! Absolutely impossible.”

“ Did you know the person in charge of this case is Zheng Wei? And that he is Ye Zhengchen’s best friend? From the time that the case was filed to now, Ye Zhengchen knows everything!”

I don’t know why, but this was a recurring theme in my life. Whenever I would think that happiness was within my grasp, fate would play a cruel joke on me and snatch away all that happiness.

So I stood there, completely paralyzed. “Why are you telling me this?”

“ You have the right to know the truth.”

The truth? When I was young and ignorant, I wanted to know the clear, unvarnished truth. Now, I wasn’t so enamoured of the truth as I had been earlier. I would rather Ye Zhengchen hide all this from me for the rest of my life. I would rather not ever know the real truth.

My priority was to be happy. And even if it was just a ephemeral bubble, I was not going to poke it.

I looked back at Zhong Tim. “ Dont tell me he was the one who forced you to break up with me!”

“Xiao Bing, I had little choice. I have aging parents who depend on me. I can’t go to jail”, Zhong Tian said. He hesitated a while and then added, “ And I know that you don’t love me at all. He was the one who was always in your heart.”

I nodded maniacally. I understood everything perfectly. Any normal man would choose this option with a woman he did not love. He would be mad to choose going to jail over breaking up with me.

“ Are you done/” I asked

“ I am leaving now. Please take care of yourself.”

“Zhong Tian”, I called out to him a he started walking away, “ That day… what you told my father… was that something Ye Zhengchen asked you to say as well ?”

He hesitated and then nodded.

Everything was crystal clear. Ye Zhengchen would always be Ye Zhengchen.

Ye Zhengchen walked out of the car and stood beside me.

“ He told you”, he stated calmly.

“ Why must you use such means?”

“ Because I know you. I know you would never break up with Zhong Tian unless he broke up with you.”

“ If you wanted me to break up with him, you could have told me. Why tell him that I was willing to sleep with you to save him. You know that’s not the complete truth…”

Ye Zhengchen interrupted me in a deep voice, “ He hit you ! He hurt you ! I hated myself when I saw that. I wanted him to feel ashamed of himself.”

“ You !”

I couldn’t find the words to curse him. I was so angry that my body trembled. But some strange part of me wanted to rush into his arms and tell him that I loved him. That I would always love him, no matter what he did.

“ Girl, I was wrong”. He pulled me in his arms and spoke gently, “This is the last time. I promise I will never keep things from you in future.”

My emotions swung between the two extremes of love and hate. I pushed against his chest aggressively.

If I had known, I would not have pushed him like that.

If only I had known.

As soon as I pushed him, Ye Zhengchen grimaced and bent down, hugging his chest.

“ Brother…”

At that instant, I forgot all my grievances and I was overcome with worry.

“ What happened? What happened to you?”

“Nothing”. He shook his head, but his face was pale and scary.

I carefully unbuttoned the shirt and opened it.

His chest was ridden with scars. His ribs were jutting out like a skeleton.

“ What the…” I should have discovered this earlier. That night, when he first came to me he was already behaving strangely. But I never even imagined that he would come to visit me with such heavy injuries.

“ Don’t worry.” He struggled to smile through the pain.

“ It’s just a slight injury. I will be fine.”

Miumiu : Hmm. I am not so sure I would forgive YZ so easily, Why is he always manipulating people ?