After leaving Shanghai, I didn’t return to Suzhou. Instead, I rushed back to Xitang overnight. Upon arriving at the inn, I immediately knocked on Leyao’s door, but there was no response after a long wait. I then used a spare key card to open her room door. Inside, I found her lying on the bed, eating potato chips while watching a TV drama.
I threw the key card toward her with dissatisfaction, and it just so happened to knock the chips out of her hand. She angrily said, “Zhaoyang, are you out of your mind?”
“I knocked for a long time, why didn’t you respond?”
“I thought it was someone knocking on the next room’s door. Besides, you have a key card yourself. Why would you need to knock?”
“How could I not knock? What if you were changing clothes or something? It would be so awkward if I saw you!”
Leyao clearly didn’t care about such embarrassment and ignored me, turning her attention back to the TV show. I grabbed the remote control and, out of frustration, turned off the TV.
Suddenly, Leyao threw all the potato chips she was holding at me, scattering them all over the floor. I couldn’t tell whether she was genuinely angry or just joking. If she was really mad, it was completely inexplicable.
I fetched a broom and started sweeping while grumbling, “Are you out of your mind? What did I do to you?”
“Who told you to turn off my TV!”
“Just for that?” I angrily threw the broom to the ground and said, “Fine, clean it up yourself.”
Leyao ignored me completely, picked up the remote again, and resumed watching TV. I increasingly felt something was off with her, but I had no idea what was wrong. Still, I wasn’t about to indulge her. I directly unplugged the TV and said, “Stop watching. We need to talk about something serious.”
Leyao picked up the remote and hurled it at me. I dodged sideways, watching as it smashed into pieces on the floor. Leyao didn’t stop there—she grabbed the phone from the bedside and prepared to throw it at me.
I kicked off my shoes, jumped onto the bed in one step, grabbed her hands, and pinned her down, furious. “Can’t you talk properly? Why are you throwing things?”
Leyao fiercely defended herself, “I learned it from my mom. I grew up watching her throw things!”
“Then should I act like your dad and kick you too?”
Leyao burst into tears, sobbing incoherently, “You men are all beasts! You only like hurting women who love you deeply. You and Luo Ben are exactly the same!”
I was pondering the deeper meaning behind her words when I became distracted, and Leyao took the opportunity to kick me hard, sending me crashing to the floor with a loud thud that seemed to shake the whole room.
I stayed motionless on the floor, pretending to be hurt. Leyao, who had just been crying, suddenly panicked and scrambled off the bed, pushing me repeatedly while calling my name, “Zhaoyang, are you okay? Are you okay?”
I glanced at her sideways, grimacing in pain, “I’m hurt. I almost died from the fall!”
“Sorry, but you deserved it. I couldn’t help myself!”
“What the hell kind of apology is that?” I said, rubbing my waist and feeling a sharp pain. I suspected I had bruised myself badly from the fall.
…
Leyao helped me sit on the bed and fetched some pain-relief ointment, applying it gently to my waist while rubbing it in. I was still angry and muttered, “So this is how you make it up to me? Kicking me and then having to rub me down afterward?”
“Come on, I’m a famous star. You should feel lucky that I’m even helping a nobody like you!”
“You really deserved it!”
Leyao pinched me hard at the sore spot and glared, “Are you done yet?”
In unbearable pain, I quickly said, “No, no, I’ll stop. Please go easy on me.”
She finally let go and pulled my shirt back down before sitting on the sofa by the bed, silent and unreadable. I couldn’t figure out what she was thinking now or why she had acted out so violently earlier.
After a long silence, I finally asked her, “You probably know why I came here, right?”
She was much calmer now and softly replied, “Yes.”
“Then can you tell me now where Wei Manwen is?”
Leyao didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she took two photos from her handbag and handed them to me. I was surprised but took them from her and looked at them carefully.
The photos were taken in a remote, underdeveloped mountainous area. In the pictures, a group of school-age children in simple clothes were sitting in an open grain yard. Teaching them was a woman wearing a headscarf. Her face wasn’t very clear, and her skin looked very rough, with a noticeable patch of redness on her cheek—clearly the face of a woman who had lived in the mountains for a long time.
I pointed at the woman in the photo and asked Leyao, “Who is she?”
Leyao was silent for a while before replying, “She is the Wei Manwen you and Luo Ben are looking for.”
I looked at the photos again carefully, but I couldn’t connect this rough-looking woman with the refined, well-educated Wei Manwen I had seen in a photo Luo Ben once showed me. I became increasingly shocked and asked Leyao again, “Are you sure it’s really Wei Manwen?”
Leyao nodded, “Absolutely, it’s definitely her.”
“What happened? What occurred after she left Luo Ben?”
Leyao sighed deeply and remained silent for a long time before saying, “After returning to Beijing from Suzhou, she suffered from severe depression for about six months. After gradually recovering, she went to a poverty-stricken mountainous area in Jinping County, Guizhou Province, to volunteer as a teacher. I can summarize her past three years in a hundred words, but Zhaoyang, you can probably imagine the pain she has gone through, right?”
I nodded, feeling a deep sorrow for this woman named Wei Manwen. I knew that when Luo Ben learned this news, he would be overwhelmed with guilt and grief. No wonder Leyao had kept delaying telling him—it was the cruelest outcome for Luo Ben. The painful decision he had made back then had only led to even greater pain for Wei Manwen.
Luo Ben was wrong—terribly wrong. He had underestimated how deeply Wei Manwen loved him. The pain both of them had endured for the past three years—who was to blame?
Was it Wei Manwen’s parents, who had insisted she give up? Or was it Luo Ben’s own arrogance? Or perhaps Wei Manwen herself, for clinging stubbornly to her feelings?
“Zhaoyang, what should we do now? Should we tell Luo Ben this result and let him hurt CC, another woman who deeply loves him?”
I felt heavy-hearted and couldn’t respond immediately. I just took out a cigarette, lit it, and stared blankly at the smoke rising and dispersing.
Leyao looked at the two photos again, holding back tears for that pitiful Beijing woman in the pictures.
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