How many… how many days has it been?

Looking at the scratch marks on the wall, I couldn’t help but smile bitterly.

Twenty days.

I’d been trapped here for twenty days!!

During these three weeks, I could only get one bottle of mineral water and one bag of bread each day.

Due to severe nutritional imbalance, my entire body was beginning to lose strength.

In this midsummer season, I was locked in an extremely stuffy little room. There was no proper place for me to relieve myself, so the room reeked with a terrible stench.

Countless maggots and flies wandered through the room, and even more cockroaches crawled all over the walls.

How funny… my current predicament really made me want to laugh.

I, someone who normally couldn’t even tolerate dust in my home, was now keeping company with cockroaches all day long.

In the first few days, I ran around everywhere trying to avoid them, but the area here was far too small. No matter what, I couldn’t get around them.

I could only let them crawl all over my body.

Cockroaches feel soft and cool to the touch. When they crawl across your arm, it tickles, and you can’t even feel their slight weight.

I was truly afraid of these things, but I couldn’t avoid them. Every day I could feel goosebumps covering my entire body, but I knew that even when I slept, they would lean against me, delicately rubbing their front legs together.

They talked to me at night, used my body for warmth. I could casually pull cockroaches out of my hair.

In this dark, cramped room, I had no hygiene products whatsoever—only insects… only countless insects…

But who exactly was I supposed to be?

Was I Zhang Laidi, who at age seven had to cook for the whole family every day after coming home from school? Or was I Zhang Chenze, who at age thirty-three had cars sent to pick her up when visiting major companies?

I had two completely opposite lives. This wasn’t normal, was it?

One of them must be a dream, right?

Yes, I must be having delusions.

If I had to choose now… I wanted to be Zhang Laidi.

I didn’t want to die.

I lost. I truly admitted defeat.

These people had absolutely no concept of law. If I still refused him, he would absolutely let me starve to death here.

If I didn’t become Zhang Laidi, then I could only be a corpse.

I was human… I wasn’t a pig. I shouldn’t be locked in a cramped room every day with eating, drinking, and defecating all mixed together.

I wanted to stand up. I wanted to shake off the insects on my body. I wanted to change into cleaner clothes, take a bath, and eat a juicy peach.

I would be Zhang Laidi.

What kind of unreachable beautiful dream had I been reaching for before?

I’d foolishly tried to escape from here, foolishly tried to restart another life.

Those ten years in Chengdu were truly the most absurd dream of my life.

I was wrong. I would never dare again.

As long as they let me leave this room, I could agree to anything.

I was willing to be Mrs. Ma. I was willing to stay in the village. I was also willing to bear him children.

My life had been predetermined to be this way since birth. I had just been struggling as if in a dream.

If people could completely escape these circumstances just through their own efforts, then why would there still be so many tragic people in the world? That wouldn’t be fair to them.

Now my dream had awakened, and I should return to my original life.

My cockroach friends… do you think I’m right?

But why hadn’t that butcher come to find me?

Didn’t he say he’d only starve me for five days?

It had already been twenty days!

Fortunately, I could still distinguish between night and day in this room, and could vaguely hear sounds in the distance. Otherwise I would have absolutely gone mad.

What had been happening in the village recently?

A few days ago I could always hear the sound of police cars, and could vaguely hear arguments, but these past few days it had quieted down.

But I didn’t even have the strength to speak anymore. I couldn’t even call for help.

Who could come save me?

It wasn’t until evening that the door to the room was finally opened.

This door was opening for the second time in twenty days.

“Damn it…” Butcher Ma stood there in a foul mood. He looked around to make sure no one was there, then turned and closed the door.

I gasped for breath with great effort, reaching out my hand, wanting to say something, only to discover that my arms had begun to shrivel.

When did this happen…?

“What the hell were you doing in the city?!” He asked in a panicked manner. “Why did so many police come? Made it so I didn’t dare come here for several weeks…”

“Let me…” I finally managed two words, using almost all my remaining strength. “Let me go…”

“Still want me to let you go?”

Only then did I see he was holding an oil lamp in his hand. He placed the oil lamp to the side and reached to undo his belt.

My expression was somewhat dazed. For a moment I actually didn’t know what he was doing.

“Locking up your wife has been so troublesome… Looks like I can’t wait for you to submit. I need to take care of you first.”

Wait… wait a moment…

I finally reacted, but my thinking was extremely sluggish now. All the words I wanted to say were like vehicles crashing together in an accident, stuck in my throat with not a single one coming out.

He knocked me to the ground with a slap and reached out to start tearing at my clothes.

I had no strength to resist at all.

Could he let me say something?

I agreed… I agreed to everything, but please don’t touch me like this…

Please…

“Eh…” After pulling down my pants, he revealed a contemptuous expression. “You stupid woman… how are you even dirtier than a pig?”

I was about to collapse. The dignity I’d accumulated, the persistence I’d worked so hard to maintain—everything crumbled at this moment.

What terrible crime had I committed to deserve such a tragic life?

What was I supposed to do?

At this moment I was like a corpse. No matter what this foul-smelling man did to my body, I couldn’t move at all.

“Stupid woman…” Seeing I had no reaction whatsoever, he reached out and swung at my face.

I was slapped many times. My mouth was full of the taste of blood, but I didn’t make a single sound.

It wasn’t until he stopped moving on top of me that I shed tears.

This was my life.

This was the life that had been predetermined for me from the day I was born.

I’d heard that on the day I was born, there were a total of six babies in the delivery room, and five of them were boys.

My old man and my mother happily asked the doctor, “Which boy is ours?”

When they learned that the only girl was their child, their faces turned dark and cold, and they turned to leave. If the doctor hadn’t stopped them, I wouldn’t even have parents now.

“Really gone stupid…”

Butcher Ma stood up and put on his pants. Just when I thought everything was about to end, he dealt me another devastating blow.

He took out his phone—who knew how long he’d been using it—and started taking photos and videos of me from various angles.

Whether appropriate or inappropriate to photograph.

Illegal… he was breaking the law again…

But wait… why should I care whether he was breaking the law?

This was going to be my life from now on. I wasn’t a lawyer. I was Zhang Laidi.

In my most helpless, most desperate, most filthy moment, he recorded me thoroughly.

The current me couldn’t even manage to use my hand to cover my face.

“Didn’t you love filing complaints, you stupid woman?” He flipped the phone around and waved it in front of my eyes. “If you dare file a complaint, I’ll spread these photos everywhere, understand?”

After saying this, he spat on the ground, muttered something about “stinks to death,” then slammed the door and left, locking the chains again.

He left again…?

This really wouldn’t do. Don’t leave me here anymore. I felt like I was going to die.

I seemed to be injured… sick… and about to starve to death…

Don’t leave me here…

My whole body was in pain. In a daze I felt cockroaches crawling onto my face.

Don’t touch me anymore… really don’t touch me anymore…

I used all my remaining strength to reach out one hand and removed the cockroach from my face.

I really wanted to crush it to death in my hand.

But that wouldn’t be fair to it.

This cockroach hadn’t done anything wrong. It would only be forced to die because of my emotions. That wasn’t fair.

My circumstances were already tragic enough. There was no need to implicate other lives.