Chapter 1#
Fifteen-year-old Li Meng returned home with his schoolbag on his back, only to be stunned as soon as he entered the door.
The living room was a mess. Jiang Qin pinned Jin Yan to the ground and punched him hard. Jin Yan immediately flared up, flipped over, kicked Jiang Qin against the wall, and cursed angrily, “Give you an inch and you take a mile, huh? I’ll beat the hell out of you!”
Jin Yan looked very wretched. His left brow bone was beaten red, his sleeves were rolled up unevenly, and his Vacheron Constantin watch strap had long broken. He looked like a flustered rooster.
Jiang Qin wasn’t much better. Half of his glasses were shattered and hanging on the bridge of his nose, and his shirt buttons were scattered all over the floor. He bent over, clutching his stomach where he had been kicked hard, then grabbed a half-finished bottle of red wine from the wine cabinet and smashed it towards Jin Yan’s head.
Li Meng screamed, “Stop—! Stop, stop, stop, stop!”
“Fuck!” Jin Yan snatched the wine bottle, utterly furious. “Jiang, you really want to kill me, right? Which pretty boy did you hook up with outside? Speak clearly! Speak clearly to me today!”
Jiang Qin punched him back onto the sofa.
Jin Yan jumped up to fight back, but Li Meng rushed over and hugged his thigh. “Dad, calm down! Let’s talk this out! Stop fighting, stop fighting!”
Jin Yan was dragged back onto the sofa, panting heavily, his eyes bloodshot.
Jiang Qin turned and went back to the bedroom, stuffed his phone, wallet, laptop, and a few changes of clothes into his bag, strode out, and said coldly, “I’ll email you the divorce agreement.”
“Fuck you, divorce then! Whoever doesn’t divorce is a coward!”
Li Meng was scared silly and subconsciously said, “Mom…”
“Order some takeout for dinner yourself and go to sleep. Remember to go to school tomorrow morning.”
Jiang Qin threw the twisted glasses into the trash can and slammed the door as he left.
Li Meng felt it was terrible.
His dad beat his mom, and then his mom dumped his dad.
He asked Jin Yan, “What exactly were you arguing with Mom about? Didn’t you pay off that woman last time? I thought you guys had made up!”
Jin Yan’s face turned green and red. After a long while, he said angrily, “Kids shouldn’t meddle in adults’ business. Eat your dinner, wash up, and go to bed!”
Li Meng gave him a contemptuous look and went back to his room to call Jiang Qin. However, no one answered Jiang Qin’s phone. From eight to eleven, he called for three or four hours until Li Meng finally fell asleep from exhaustion.
His last impression before falling asleep was the light from the living room seeping through the crack in the door. Jin Yan sat motionless on the sofa smoking, with seven or eight empty beer cans thrown on the floor.
Li Meng finally realized he was facing the biggest crisis of his life—his parents’ divorce.
He once thought that same-sex couples like Jin Yan and Jiang Qin wouldn’t divorce. Since he could remember, their relationship had been very good. Jin Yan ran an influential entertainment company in the mainland, and Jiang Qin worked at a major accounting firm. With affluent economic conditions and a free family atmosphere, he once felt he was the happiest child in the world.
Although there were occasional small quarrels, those were the bumps of normal family life. The most intense one didn’t even last overnight—the two of them were as good as new when they came out of the bedroom the next day. Li Meng mocked them for a long time because of this.
He didn’t know when it started, probably because they were getting older. Both were over thirty, and their tempers had become calm and forbearing.
A while ago, before the New Year, Li Meng felt the atmosphere at home was very wrong. Jiang Qin always looked cold, and Jin Yan looked like he couldn’t be bothered to say much. Later, he found out that Jin Yan went out drinking with a bunch of producers and called a room full of female artists to the private room, only to be caught red-handed by Jiang Qin.
This incident didn’t cause much of a splash. Except for one actress calling Jin Yan to say she was pregnant, which Jin Yan quickly silenced with money, Jiang Qin basically didn’t have any extreme reactions.
However, from then on, something was wrong with this family.
Jiang Qin was busy with work, leaving early and returning late every day. Jin Yan already traveled frequently for business, but during that time, he traveled even more often. Li Meng rarely saw his parents together. On the few occasions the three of them were together, Jin Yan always spoke with thorns, while Jiang Qin didn’t speak at all.
Li Meng knew they would quarrel sooner or later, but he didn’t expect it to be so intense, nor did he expect the usually gentle Jiang Qin to hit someone.
There must be something I don’t know, Li Meng thought through gritted teeth while half-asleep.
I’ll ask Jiang Qin tomorrow. The heavy responsibility of maintaining the family’s integrity falls entirely on my shoulders.
When Jin Yan’s phone rang, it was already the afternoon of the next day, and the sky outside was bright. A big man over 1.8 meters tall, he slept in his clothes on a 1.2-meter sofa. Sleeping groggily, he knocked his phone off the coffee table when he stretched out his hand.
“Damn it…” Jin Yan sat up impatiently. “Hello, what is it?”
“Old Jin,” Wei Hong’s voice was very serious on the other end of the phone. “Do you know your wife is drafting a property division agreement and preparing for a divorce?”
Jin Yan raged, “Yeah! I didn’t know! Thanks for reminding me specifically. I thank your whole family!”
“…Oh, no thanks needed, it’s my duty. Where are you? Want a brother to bring wine and get drunk with you? Actually, I quite sympathize with you. Losing a wife at your age, where are you going to find another one…”
Jin Yan almost couldn’t help roaring, but the anger from more than ten hours ago seemed like a burnt-out bonfire, leaving only a little ash mixed with sparks. He had no strength to shout anymore.
“…I’m at home,” he said weakly. “Be careful when you come out, don’t get photographed by reporters.”
Wei Hong, the currently popular top actor and also the recognized nice guy in the circle, came to the door personally carrying two bottles of white wine and two dishes of side dishes, his face full of “tsk tsk tsk, I knew you’d have this day” sympathy.
“Yo, look at your face, blue, red, black, and purple, all complete. You opened a dye shop. How does it feel to sleep alone?”
Wei Hong sat down, poured two glasses of wine, and put the salt and pepper peanuts and sliced beef and ox tongue in chili sauce on the plates, looking like he was about to have a heart-to-heart talk.
“Old Jin, I say that’s enough. Everyone knows you have a quick temper, but you shouldn’t have hit him no matter what. You used to make this kind of principled mistake often. I thought you had changed long ago. Why did you do it again yesterday? Jiang Qin almost went to the hospital.”
Jin Yan’s face was dark and silent. After a long while, he snorted.
“Jiang Qin’s bad temper isn’t a new thing. Others don’t know, but don’t you know? He didn’t starve you or freeze you. When he got anxious, he just gave you the cold shoulder for two days. Even for the sake of him accompanying you to start from scratch back then, you shouldn’t have hit him just like that.”
Wei Hong shook his head and sighed. Jin Yan finally couldn’t hold it back, pointing at his panda-like eye sockets and asking, “Do you think I did this to myself?! Do you know how many times he hit me?!”
“This… this… Old Jin,” Wei Hong said helplessly, “Jiang Qin won on quantity, but you won on quality.”
Jin Yan: “…”
“Listen to me, when you sober up, go apologize to Jiang Qin obediently. Live your life as if nothing happened. It wasn’t easy for you two to come this far through wind and rain. You survived the days of eating chaff and swallowing vegetables, so how did it come to this now? What hurdle can’t be crossed?”
Wei Hong picked up a peanut and signaled Jin Yan to eat. Jin Yan stared at the chopsticks for a long time without moving, his expression gloomy and unpredictable. Suddenly, he slammed the wine glass down and said, “This isn’t over.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, you’re endless!”
“You don’t understand,” Jin Yan said word by word, “I tell you, Jiang Qin has someone outside.”
Wei Hong was stunned.
“You can’t tell, right? I didn’t believe it at first either. Yes, I sometimes drink and socialize, but I didn’t bring trouble home. Except for that time before the New Year, I didn’t do anything in front of him! And him! He simply trampled my dignity under his feet!”
Wei Hong opened his mouth, and it took him several seconds to find his voice. “You… you saw it with your own eyes?”
Jin Yan looked gloomy and didn’t say a word.
“Brother, this isn’t something to guess randomly. You, you, you… calm down. How does Jiang Qin have someone outside?”
“…”
“Did you see it or do you have solid evidence? Did Jiang Qin have a showdown with you? Chasing shadows is a big taboo in marital relationships, I tell you. Besides, is it possible for someone like Jiang Qin to cheat? It’s good enough that you don’t cheat!”
Jin Yan sneered, as if he wanted to say something but held back.
Wei Hong stared at him suspiciously. After a long while, he saw him hold up nine fingers.
“Nine months,” Jin Yan said. “He hasn’t let me touch him for nine months.”
Wei Hong: “…”
“At first, he said he wasn’t feeling well, but the hospital couldn’t find anything wrong. When he came back, he started getting busy with work, running out of town whenever there was a chance for a business trip. Then he said I snored at night and insisted on moving to the study to sleep. All kinds of reasons, anyway, he just wouldn’t let me get close.”
“Every night listening to him sleep next door, I was so horny I wanted to bang my head against the wall. This is my home. Damn it, is this still my home?! Is there anything so inhumane?! In the spring, I tried everything except drugging him, but he just said no means no!”
Jin Yan slammed his chopsticks down, almost knocking over the glass bowl.
“I tell you, he treated me like a pollution source, avoiding me even when walking. If it weren’t for the kid, he wouldn’t even want to say a word to me! Does your wife treat you like this? I’m not talking about nine months, just one month! Can you stand it?”
Wei Hong said decisively, “Don’t even mention it.”
Jin Yan sneered, “Do you know how the fight started yesterday? Yesterday afternoon, while the kid hadn’t come back yet, he was cooking in the kitchen. I was watching him and couldn’t stand it, so I went over to chat with him.”
Jin Yan’s “chat” obviously couldn’t fully cover his actions, but Wei Hong could roughly imagine what happened.
“I hadn’t done anything yet, and he turned to leave! I chased after him, and he told me to stay away! Tell me, could I not be angry?! I was still trying to reason with him then, but before I could say a few words, we started pulling and pushing. Then, damn it, this guy started hitting me, and later he even smashed a red wine bottle at me! If that had hit me, would I still be sitting here now?!”
Wei Hong nodded seriously, “Attempted marital rape. Indeed, you shouldn’t be sitting here.”
Jin Yan was furious and roared, “What do you mean marital rape? I’m his man! This is my legal right! Depriving me of this right is damn illegal!”
Wei Hong: “…”
“I tell you, either Jiang Qin really has some disease—which I can accept—or he has someone outside, for sure. The former is almost impossible; I know he’s perfectly normal. The latter possibility is as high as eighty percent, otherwise, he wouldn’t avoid me all day like I’m a severe pollution source.”
“…I still think Jiang Qin doesn’t look like someone who would cheat…”
“I tell you, Wei Hong, you don’t know him. When we first started dating, someone kept pestering him. He had the same attitude towards that person as he does now, wishing he could separate even their breathing with a transparent glass plate. I felt long ago that there must be a problem with him treating me like this, I just didn’t catch the evidence.”
Jin Yan’s face was distorted, and he said murderously, “If I catch who it is, I’ll tear him apart alive!”
Wei Hong only felt that this man in front of him had burned his brain due to long-term dissatisfaction and excessive lust. He cautiously thought about whether it would be more reliable to hire a psychiatrist for him. Forget about taking him out to visit prostitutes; it would be difficult to find a Jiang Qin type in such places.
Just then, Jin Yan received a text message on his phone. It was from his and Jiang Qin’s precious son, student Li Meng:
“Dad, I’m just telling you I skipped class this afternoon. School is boring anyway. I found Jiang Qin. You useless man who can’t keep his wife, I’m going to coax Jiang Qin back for you.”
Jin Yan’s fingers trembled.
Wei Hong looked like he had been struck by lightning. After a long while, he said, “Good kid. Raising a son to prevent old age is damn right!”