10 A Fierce Battle

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At ten that night, Su Jingqiu was at home changing clothes, getting ready to head to the bar later and put his charms on display. He disliked wearing anything ornamental, so “changing clothes” amounted to little more than putting on a fresh outfit, taking a shower, shaving, and applying toner. When the doorbell rang, his face was covered in shaving foam. His hand jerked, and the razor sliced him with a sharp hiss.

“Fuck,” he swore, gripping the razor as he went to open the door.

The moment the door swung open, he froze. He had no idea how to describe what stood before him. His wife, Si Mingming, had a huge tote bag slung over her shoulder and a twenty-six-inch suitcase at her feet. She was no longer wearing the glaring sun-protective outfit from earlier, but she was still wearing sunglasses.

“How did you know where I live?” Su Jingqiu asked.

Si Mingming thought the question rather idiotic and had no desire to answer it. She simply took off her sunglasses, hooked them onto her T-shirt, and raised her face to look at him. When she saw red blood seeping through the white shaving foam on his face, she said, “You’re bleeding.”

Su Jingqiu instinctively reached up to touch it. Si Mingming, however, quickly kicked the bottom edge of her suitcase and slipped sideways past him. In the blink of an eye, she was standing in his living room. She had practically teleported. She was even faster than Su Jingqiu turning past a defender and driving in for a layup, as though she had studied some peerless martial art.

Si Mingming had arrived uninvited. Si Mingming had barged in without permission. Si Mingming had invaded Su Jingqiu’s territory. He even thought she might lift a leg and pee in the living room the next moment, marking it and declaring it her territory from then on.

But she did not.

Instead, she clasped both hands tightly in front of her. She suddenly seemed a little awkward, as though weighing her words and working up her courage. After a long pause, she asked, “Which room are we sleeping in?”

She was not asking which room she should take. She was asking which room they should sleep in.

In Si Mingming’s way of handling things, the ultimate objective was always clear. In many situations, she would simply skip the minor milestones and head straight for the final goal.

Such as now.

“We?” Su Jingqiu repeated.

“Yes, we.” Si Mingming nodded.

Su Jingqiu glanced at her. His temper had already risen to the top of his head, but then he remembered that the two of them were bound together by “a marriage certificate,” and that he had come to regard her as one of his own. So he suppressed his anger.

Su Jingqiu knew how to vent his temper on outsiders; he had never been the sort of man who bullied his own family. But he was truly furious. He gestured at Si Mingming with the razor and snarled through clenched teeth, “I’ll cut open your main artery!”

His words were bloody enough, but he turned and walked away. A moment later, a clattering racket came from the bathroom. Su Jingqiu was angry, and when he flung the razor aside after shaving, it struck the washbasin without his even noticing.

Si Mingming followed him and stood at the bathroom door, watching.

She had never lived with a man before, and naturally had never watched one shave. Her eyes were filled with interest as she observed him in silence.

It was a rather marvelous discovery. So men became more attractive after washing up.

The instant Su Jingqiu finished washing his face and lifted his head, the face reflected in the mirror was genuinely breathtaking. His clean-shaven skin carried a faint bluish cast. Droplets of water clung to his short crew cut and the tip of his nose, while his large, dark eyes were full of anger.

Realizing that Si Mingming was watching him, Su Jingqiu said, “What exactly are you trying to do? What gives you the right to move into my house without asking me?”

“We’re husband and wife.” Si Mingming answered him seriously. “Before we got our marriage certificate, you never said we wouldn’t live together. You never said we were going to be husband and wife in name only, either. I asked you what principles or boundaries you had, and what kind of arrangement our marriage should follow. You told me to decide—that anything was fine. Do you remember?”

Su Jingqiu remembered.

His heart had been dead and listless then, and he had not been interested in her questions. He had indeed said those things: She could decide. Whatever she wanted.

“So?” Su Jingqiu asked again.

“So, since I’m the one who gets to decide, I think our marriage should be a normal marriage. Living together and eating together is the first step.” Si Mingming spoke slowly, her reasoning orderly and persuasive. When Su Jingqiu said nothing, she pressed him. “What do you think?”

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Su Jingqiu was a grown man who kept his word. No matter how unwilling he was, now that things had come this far, he would still be reasonable.

“Let’s ease into it,” he said. “You sleep in another room for now.”

“Okay. That works.”

Si Mingming smiled.

There was something sly about her smile. Only then did Su Jingqiu understand that this woman had been playing a strategic game with him, proceeding step by step. Her true intention had been to move in from the start, but she had first thrown out an ultimate objective so outrageous that he could hardly accept it. Under the pressure of that ultimate objective, Su Jingqiu had chosen to accept the lesser milestone of letting her move in.

Su Jingqiu did not often use his brain. He simply disliked thinking, but that did not mean he was stupid. This was the wife he had chosen in a fit of madness, blinded by the heat of the moment. Even if he regretted it now, it was too late to swallow a regret pill.

He snorted. As he passed Si Mingming, he suddenly reached out and vigorously ruffled her hair, venting his frustration.

Si Mingming hated having anyone touch her head. Acting on instinct, she lifted her foot and kicked him. Her foot struck the bone of his leg.

When Su Jingqiu crouched down in pain, Si Mingming crouched with him. That kick had not been light. It must have hurt terribly.

She felt a little embarrassed and apologized. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

Su Jingqiu was sweating from the pain and was just about to start cursing when Si Mingming brought her own head close to his and declared with righteous solemnity, “Go ahead. Finish messing it up. I promise I won’t hit you back.”

Her hair was already in disarray. Su Jingqiu had not held back, and he might have hurt her as well.

If the two of them had truly been locked in open combat, things would have been easy. He was a shameless bastard and feared no one who wanted to act like a scoundrel in front of him. Unfortunately, the person before him was unpredictable, alternating between softness and hardness, leaving him with no idea how to respond.

Su Jingqiu planted his palm against Si Mingming’s forehead and shoved her away. In the end, all he said was, “Get lost.”

Si Mingming was not angry. She nodded. “All right. I’ll take a look around our home.”

With that, she stood and walked away.

Su Jingqiu felt that Si Mingming was ill-mannered, recklessly forward, and aggressively invasive. Si Mingming, on the other hand, saw the matter from an entirely different angle.

This was the marriage she had chosen to put into practice. She had to take it seriously.

So she began touring Su Jingqiu’s home.

In truth, she was quite surprised by it. In her imagination, a man with Su Jingqiu’s rough, rugged image would not have kept his home very tidy. Perhaps one room would be piled carelessly with clutter, and there might even be used condoms tossed beneath the bed.

But the home before her was nothing like that.

It was undeniably clean, even somewhat austere.

Her husband seemed to like marble. Marble had been used in many places, and it felt cool beneath her fingers. Apart from the furniture, there was scarcely anything superfluous in the house, nor was there any unpleasant smell.

He must have been very clean. That fit with the way he had disliked her cup. This man had a case of cleanliness obsession.

Lu Manman had once told her about a man she had dated. He had been obsessed with cleanliness. He could kiss Lu Manman anywhere—anywhere at all—but he disliked kissing on the mouth.

Lu Manman had said, “Don’t doubt me. When I say anywhere, I mean anywhere. Including there.”

Then why did he dislike kissing? Because he thought saliva was the filthiest thing in the world.

At the time, Si Mingming had wholeheartedly agreed. Yes. It was too dirty.

A person’s understanding of the world advanced slowly. Now, when Si Mingming thought of Lu Manman’s boyfriend, looked around the room, and then turned back to see Su Jingqiu standing there with a furrowed brow and an unpleasant expression while stubbornly putting on his watch, she found the scene strangely fascinating.

It felt familiar.

Yes, eerily familiar.

Si Mingming occasionally experienced that sensation. Once, when Nie Rushuang had fallen ill and undergone a minor operation, she had lain in her hospital bed giving Si Mingming instructions about what to do after her death. At the time, Si Mingming had felt that she had been through this before. Why did it seem so familiar?

Now she felt the same way. This scene, this moment—it was as though she had once stood inside it.

She tilted her head and thought for a while, then explained it away as something from a parallel universe.

That made sense. She could continue choosing her room.

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In the end, she chose the room next to Su Jingqiu’s.

“With so many rooms, you had to choose that one…” Su Jingqiu said.

“I want to be closer to you,” Si Mingming replied.

Su Jingqiu felt as though he were on the verge of a heart attack. His anger had nowhere to go, and he inexplicably felt wronged as well.

The thought of living under the same roof with this woman, whom he knew almost nothing about, made him deeply uncomfortable. All he could do was take several deep breaths to console himself.

He had made this mess himself. He could not clean it up. All he could do was wait for it to dry out and crumble away.

Unfortunately, the servers at the bar kept urging him to come back. A few young women wanted to open two bottles of liquor costing one hundred thousand yuan each, and their only condition was that the owner drink a glass with them.

At last, Su Jingqiu found an outlet for his anger. He replied, “Drink if you want. If you don’t, get lost!”

After sending the message, he remembered how difficult business had become and how rarely customers opened such expensive bottles. He immediately withdrew the message and sent another:

“I’m on my way.”

Before leaving in a thoroughly dejected state, he ordered Si Mingming, “Touch whatever you’re supposed to touch at home, and don’t touch anything you’re not supposed to!”

In his hurry to leave, he failed to explain which things were which.

Business at the bar was fairly good that weekend. The woman ordering the drinks was a regular who had liked Su Jingqiu for quite some time. She was a rich heiress, and Su Jingqiu was exactly her type.

She had once boasted, “I’d like to see whether my money can really get his clothes off!”

She opened plenty of bottles, but not a single piece of clothing came off.

For one thing, Su Jingqiu’s family was fairly well-off. For another, Su Jingqiu himself was genuinely impervious to temptation. No matter what a woman he disliked offered him, he would not spare her a second glance.

When he arrived, the woman paid without hesitation and even put several bottles aside to drink another time.

Su Jingqiu drank one glass with them. The woman edged closer and placed a hand on his thigh. Even through his trousers, she could feel that his body was more vigorous than the luxuriant trees flourishing outside in summer. Some people possessed a sense of strength that was innate.

When her hand moved higher, Su Jingqiu caught it.

“What are you doing?” the woman asked with a laugh as she pulled her hand back.

Su Jingqiu hardly looked like a respectable man, but despite all her efforts, this shameless rogue was incredibly difficult to conquer.

“My wife keeps a tight rein on me.” Su Jingqiu wrinkled his nose and made a sniffing gesture. “She has a dog’s nose. If she smells another woman on me, she’ll throw me out of the house.”

“Aren’t you single?”

“No, no, no.” Su Jingqiu shook his head and pulled his marriage certificate from his pocket. “I’m married! A legally protected marriage!”

The woman refused to believe him. She took it to inspect it herself, but sure enough, it was real—the marriage certificate was practically still warm. They had registered the day before.

Su Jingqiu took the certificate back and smacked it against his palm.

Who knew this thing could be useful for that?

Maybe getting married was not entirely a bad thing after all.