Hearing Jiaqi’s words, tears burst from my eyes.
What… what was I doing?
I had once said “I’m willing to do anything” to the person I least wanted to be with in the darkest corner of this world, and I had also shown my most unwanted self in front of the only person in this world who liked me.
I felt so miserable.
The better Jiaqi treated me, the more I wanted to escape.
I shouldn’t be dragging him down anymore.
“Chenze… what’s really wrong with you?” Jiaqi pulled my clothes back over me, then smoothed my hair. “Did something happen last night? Do you need me to help you solve it?”
“I…”
I knew that once I told him about this matter, it would no longer be just my problem. Jiaqi would be implicated no matter what.
Even if I was the one who killed that family of three, Jiaqi would become an accomplice for knowing and not reporting.
“It’s nothing…” I could only shake my head, burying all the past in my heart, just like every day before.
Criminal Law Article 274: Extortion of relatively large amounts or repeated extortion shall be punished by fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years, criminal detention, or control.
If Chengcai served three years in prison, it would be meaningless to me. After his release, what awaited me would be eternal hell.
Jiaqi looked at me for a long time, then slowly revealed a bitter smile: “Chenze, I once saw an interesting question. Let me ask you?”
“Mm.” I came back to my senses and nodded.
“If someone gave you ten million, would you want it?”
“What?” I didn’t quite understand.
“If someone wanted to give you ten million right now, would you choose to take it or not?” Jiaqi repeated.
“If someone gave it to me for free… then of course I’d take it,” I stared at him blankly.
Xiao Sun smiled and nodded: “Then what if, after giving you ten million, you would die when dawn breaks tomorrow—would you still take it?”
“I…” I sighed with a bitter smile. “Then I definitely wouldn’t take it.”
“That means in your eyes, being able to wake up tomorrow morning is more important than ten million.” Xiao Sun held my shoulders and said seriously, “So every day when we wake up, we should tell ourselves that this is a day more precious than ten million, and we absolutely cannot let it down.”
“What…?”
“Chenze, every day you’re able to wake up is more important to me than many ten millions.” Xiao Sun still showed that resolute and clear expression. “Our future is still very long—let’s cherish each day as we go forward.”
He buttoned up my clothes one by one, then patted my head: “You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to do in front of me, because I don’t want to just be your ‘boyfriend’—I want to become your true other half.”
Heh, my life.
My miserable life—one wrong step, then every step wrong.
If I could have accepted Jiaqi’s affection earlier, perhaps my entire life would have been different.
If someone in this world could love me like this, I could have completely abandoned that ethereal family affection and not held any fantasies about those blood relatives.
I couldn’t have naively returned home to give my younger brother a red envelope as his older sister.
I couldn’t have naively thought that after leaving home for twenty years, their hostility toward me would lessen. I couldn’t have thought that after leaving home for twenty years, the changes in my hometown would be greater.
And I would never have been locked in that dark room.
Unfortunately, I had never been a smart person—just a stubborn ordinary person. Whenever I made any choice, I could never foresee my ending.
So this was all my own fault. I couldn’t blame anyone else.
Stop being good to me. I didn’t want any more hope.
Because I was about to “exterminate my entire family” and become a demon truly deserving of the name in this world.
Over the next few days, I pretended nothing had happened and stayed with Jiaqi, just waiting for the fifth day to arrive.
On the morning of the fifth day, I turned on the air conditioning and TV at home, then went downstairs to unplug the power cord from my car’s dashcam and turned off my phone’s location services.
Then I contacted the highest-priced scalper online, but I didn’t call them—I insisted on communicating via WeChat.
After spending eighteen thousand yuan, I successfully purchased an inner-field ticket to Jay Chou’s concert from the scalper, then bought some Jay Chou fan merchandise from them for two hundred yuan.
I took photos and posted them to my Moments feed, blocking Chengcai before adding the caption “So excited.”
Seeing people starting to like it, I anonymously posted the “do not leak” QR code from the ticket stub to Jay Chou’s forum and asked, “Is this ticket I bought real?”
If nothing unexpected happened, even if I didn’t go to Jay Chou’s concert in person, this ticket would be used up.
Next, I contacted several people in the “gray area” whom I had previously helped with lawsuits and had them discreetly purchase some necessities for “murder and arson” for me, paying them a high hush money fee.
The final step was to go to a street printing shop and print two numbers with blue backgrounds to paste over my license plate and change the plate number. I didn’t need to change all the numbers—with just two digits changed, my car would no longer be my car.
With everything prepared, I drove toward “home” facing the rising sun.
I didn’t take any highways or national roads, passing through small paths in various villages as much as possible. Although the license plate number had been changed, I still needed to avoid cameras as much as possible.
In the evening, I circled around the last section of mountain road, parked the car in an inconspicuous place at the village entrance, then opened my phone’s ride-hailing app and called a car from my home building to the Jay Chou concert venue.
A few minutes later, the driver called.
“Hello?”
“Miss, I’ve arrived. Where are you?”
“Master, I’m not getting in the car. Just drive to the destination, and I’ll pay the fare.”
“What?”
“That’s it. Hanging up.”
Watching the phone app display “trip started,” I locked the screen, turned it to silent mode, put it in my pocket, then took my handbag and walked toward the village.
I chose the most inconspicuous path, avoiding everyone’s gaze all the way, and arrived at my “home.”
I hid the handbag beside the water vat by the door and reached out to knock.
They seemed to be watching TV, the whole family laughing heartily. It took a long time before someone came to open the door.
“Zhang Laidi?” After opening the door, Chengcai showed a delighted smile. “You’re back?!”
“Mm, let me in,” I said to him with a smile. “I want to chat with you all.”
“Mom, Zhang Laidi is back,” Chengcai called out.
“Damn it!”
The woman had been watching TV happily, but when she heard Chengcai speak, she immediately cursed and walked out of the room: “You damn girl still have the face to come back?! What did you do? Why did the police take Old Ma away?”
She moved her bloated body and came before me in a few steps, pointing at my nose and shouting: “Everyone in the village says you’re a husband-killer! What the hell did you do?”
“Hey! Forget it! Forget it!” My old man smiled and pulled the woman back. “Laidi finally came back—don’t curse at her.”
Seeing the old man’s beaming smile, I also smiled and walked toward him, then pushed him aside and walked into the room behind him.
This harmonious room was covered with photos of me.
In every photo, I was crying.
Yet they had just been laughing here.
Yes, I didn’t quite understand before why the old man always smiled whenever he saw me. Now I understood.
Every time he looked over my body, he would show this kind of smile.
My newly acquired sister-in-law was currently holding my photo to catch sunflower seed shells. She had been watching TV and laughing the whole time, never even glancing at me once.
“Sister-in-law,” I called out.
“Hahaha!” She laughed while spitting out seed shells, then glanced at me sideways.
If possible, I didn’t want to harm this girl, because she might have had the same experiences as me.
Before I could say another word, she held the seed shells in her hand out before my eyes: “Hey, throw this away for me.”